Violence between women was not prosecuted as frequently as that between men, but we shouldn’t think it was a rare event. Lambeth Police Court just such a serious case of violent assault involving both a female assailant and a female victim in early September 1855.

Eliza Williams was brought up before the magistrate to answer a charge of cutting and wounding. Williams was a ‘good-looking’ and ‘rather well-dressed’ young woman and her victim was Catherine Upton, another young lady living close by.

Upton was married but seems to have been separated from her husband as, and this was the underlying cause of the attack, having a relationship with Eliza’s former lover. As a consequence ‘a strong feeling of jealousy existed in the mind’ of Eliza ‘against her more favoured rival’.

A week before the court hearing Eliza confronted Catherine and they quarrelled. Eliza picked up and smashed a glass number and stabbed her in the head with a shard of the glass. The wound ‘bled profusely’  and needed medical attention.

Now there were in court Catherine explained that she did not wish to press the charge and further. I suspect this means she was content to have the magistrate hand down a lenient punishment rather than take the case before a jury where Eliza might expect to get a long gaol term. Mr Elliott note her wish and sent Williams away for six weeks.

Eliza was far from happy with the outcome however; she raged at the bench and at her accuser declaring that she would ‘give it to the complainant when she got out’. This only landed her in more trouble with the magistrate who now insisted that on release she must post bail against her good behaviour towards Catherine for two months.

At that she was led away to begin her six weeks of confinement.

[from The Morning Chronicle, Thursday, September 3, 1855]