Yesterday we heard about a domestic abuse case from Holloway involving a bricklayer who set about his drunken wife with an iron poker. Today the roles are reversed as it is the woman who is in the dock accused of using violence against her husband. To add spice to this story of marital strife the victim was a policeman and his wife ended up in prison, which must have made life very uncomfortable for the remainder of their married life.

PC Arthur Moss, stationed at Forest Gate station in K Division, was at home at 7 o’clock in the evening of the 11 February 1891. His wife Elizabeth came home much the worse for drink and Arthur probably upbraided her for it. The couple had a number of small children and they witnessed and got involved in the fight that followed.

Presumably annoyed that her husband, the symbolic head of the house and ‘arm of the law’, had criticised her drinking (again) Elizabeth reacted violently. According to the report in the newspaper:

‘She picked up a full cup of tea and threw it over him, then hurled a saucer at his head. Going to the dresser, she hurled a dozen plates, one at a time, at him. One of them hit him on the side of his face, cutting his nose;  others struck him about the body’.

As she picked up a lamp to strike him with Arthur managed to grab her and wrestled her to the ground, and one of the children removed the weapon from her hands before she could do any more damage with it. Enraged by this Elizabeth contented herself with biting her spouse’s hand.

PC Moss reported the incident at Forest Gate to Inspector Death and Elizabeth was arrested and brought before the magistrate at Stratford Police Court. The bench were told that the inspector had visited and found that the children ‘were terrified’ by the experience. PC Moss testified that his wife was often drunk and had threatened to set light to his bed and to ‘kill you before the night is out’.

The policeman had sustained cuts and bruises as a result of the attack and Elizabeth had apparently threatened to harm the children if they did not come and speak up for her in court; Moss would ‘find them weltering in their blood’ she had warned him.

Elizabeth had little to say in her defence only stating that she ‘had had a lot of trouble recently’ as ‘her children were ill and the place in uproar’. Perhaps what she was intimating was that her husband wasn’t around much and she wasn’t coping very well. Policemen worked long hours and marriages were often strained. Not that this was an excuse for her drinking or for her violence and the bench was not inclined to be lenient.

Elizabeth was sent to prison at hard labour for a month, how this helped PC Moss is not very clear. Hopefully he had a sister or mother that could help out, otherwise he’d need a very considerate station sergeant. Going forward this not only affected the relationship between Arthur and Elizabeth, and their children; by challenging his authority and it being dragged through open court Arthur’s public reputation had been affected adversely. A man that could not control his wife was a lesser man in many people’s eyes in the Victorian period, for a policeman this must have been particularly hard to take.

[from The Standard , Monday, February 16, 1891]