Phoebe Lodd was by all accounts a ‘young woman of considerable personal attractions’. Her charms had certainly tempted Joseph Kippax to start a relationship of sorts with her. Unfortunately for both of them, Kippax wasn’t exactly free to pursue a romantic engagement with Phoebe, since he was already a married man.

Kippax was a cheesemonger who sold his wares at weekly markets. In the course of his business he’d met Phoebe and the two had become intimate over the course of a few weeks. Phoebe was so taken with Joseph that she left her home and parents and started travelling around the fairs with her new beau.

She’d moved into his lodgings at Bexley Heath and must have hoped that their relationship would soon be formalised in marriage. One imagines her pressing him on just that issue because, as a respectable girl, she could demand nothing less.

Joseph however, had no such intentions and eventually he was forced to admit that he couldn’t marry her as he was already wedded to someone else. He told Phoebe that ;the intimacy between them must cease’. Had his wife found out? Or, having got what he wanted from the affair, was he simply ready to discard the girl and move on to his next conquest?

Kippax wasn’t prepared for Phoebe’s reaction however. On hearing his reflection of her she ‘took a clasp-knife from the table and stabbed the [cheesemonger] as he was lying on the bed’. Having dealt a blow to her lover Phoebe turned the knife on herself in an attempt to kill herself.

A doctor was called and found Kippax in a serious condition with a wound in the chest which could have have been worse had the blade not glanced off his ribs. Phoebe’s injuries were not at all serious and she was soon arrested and presented at the Worship Street Police Court charged with cutting and wounding and attempted suicide.

In court Phoebe made no attempt to defend herself and was fully committed to trial at the Kent Assizes. She sobbed bitterly as she was led away. Whatever the outcome of the jury trial Phoebe was ruined; she had engaged in a sexual relationship with a married man who had publicly rejected and denounced her and then attempted her life, adding a charge of mental instability to her disgrace.

Kippax’s injuries would heal and so I think we know who was the real victim in this case.

[from The Morning Post, Tuesday, March 15, 1859]