Mary Adams was at home with her young son when she heard a knock at the door. ‘Go and answer it’, she instructed her lad, ‘it will be the greengrocer’s boy’. However, when the boy opened the door two women rushed past him up the stairs and burst into Mrs Adams’ room.

One was only little but the other was a ‘tall, dark woman’ who demanded:

‘where is my husband?’

‘I don’t know where he is, or who he is’ replied Mary, apparently completely mystified as to why her home had suddenly been invaded by the pair.

‘You do know, you _____!’ the tall intruder said, and attacked her. She grabbed her by the hair and hit her about the head with a sharp weapon, which Mary thought might have been a knife (but which was probably a large key). The other woman joined in and poor Mary received a considerable beating before a policeman arrived in response to her cries of ‘police!’ and ‘murder!’

PC Thomas Hurst (553K) found Mary ‘partially insensible’ and covered in her own blood. He did what he could for her and searched the two women for weapons, but found no knives. The victim was taken to be patched up by the police surgeon while her abusers were arrested and locked up overnight. In the morning (Tuesday 13 August, 1872) all three appeared at the Thames Police court in front of Mr Lushington.

Mary Adams was the wife of a cab ‘proprietor’ and lived in relative comfort at 355 Mile End Road. The couple had one servant, a young girl named Caroline Padfield, who saw what happened and backed up her mistress. Mary’s boy also told the magistrate about the attack on his mother.

Lushington now turned his attention to the two women in the dock. The smaller defendant was Elizabeth Row and she was clearly just the other’s helper. The real perpetrator was Ester Millens and she explained why she was there and gave an alternative version of events.

According to Esther’s evidence she had found her husband at Mary’s house and when she had ‘upbraided him’ about it he had turned round and told her she was no longer his wife and that he intended to make Mary his wife. She said that Mary and her (Millens’) husband were having supper together and the room was full of Esther’s furniture. It must have looked as if he’d moved out and acquired a new family. Quite where Mr Adams was (if he was indeed still alive) isn’t at all clear.

As to the violence, Millens claimed that Mary was quite drunk when she arrived and must have injured herself by falling over. She added that she was a victim herself, having been locked up in the room by the prosecutrix, and then arrested (unfairly) by PC Hurst.

It sounds like quite a tall tale; where was the estranged Mr Millens for example, and why should the little boy lie about the attack on his mother? Mr Lushington released Elizabeth Row but remanded Millens in custody so enquiries could be made.

The papers widely reported the case (but not its eventual outcome, of which I can find no record) even as far as Dundee. They linked it to another example of ‘female savagery’ that week – a vicious fight between a charwoman and a neighbour in Islington which nearly ended in tragedy. Male violence was commonplace and so I expect examples like these, of women fighting each other, were somehow more newsworthy.

[from The Morning Post, Wednesday, August 14, 1872]