Less than a week after the Whitechapel murders had reached fever pitch in the newspapers with the discovery of two murders in one night, the reports form the Police courts of the metropolis provide an almost welcome sense of normality. The cases that made the editor of the Morning Post’s selection included someone uttering counterfeit coin, the theft of several items including a watch and chain, and (separately) a box of razors. One man was brought for loitering with intent and another for cruelty to a horse and two for evading the strict licensing laws.

Perhaps the editor felt there was enough violence on the ‘front page’ and calculated that his readership would prefer some reassuring mundane accounts of the everyday.

Esther Robson was still dealt with severely by the court, despite the focus on a crazed animalistic killer elsewhere.  She appeared at Marlborough Street charged with sending begging letters to a number of people ‘of the theatrical profession’ asking for help.

Mr Newton was told that she had written letters claiming that ‘her husband was lame, she was ill, and that [her] family was in very distressed circumstances’.

Using the name ‘Fanny Williams’ she’d penned heartfelt messages to Lady Theodore Martin, Wilson Barnett, Hermann Vezin, a Miss Wadman and Miss D’Arville. She told them that her husband had once worked in the theatre and several of them had sent her money.

For ‘attempting to procure charitable contributions by means of false presences’ ‘Fanny (or rather Esther) was sent to prison for three months with hard labour.

Hermann Vezin had worked as an actor in London, débuting on the stage in 1852. The American born actor went on to have a starred career on the stage. A ‘bright and dapper little man’ (as the London Post described him) he married a fellow actor, Jane Thompson and they worked together for many years. Lady Theodore Martin was in her 60s by 1888. London born she worked as an actress under her given name Helena or Helen and had married Theodore in 1851. Helena published a study of Shakespeare’s female characters in 1885.

Miss D’Arville was probably Camille D’Arville (real name Cornelia Dykstra). The Dutch-born operatic singer worked the London stage in the late 1800s before moving to the USA in 1888. I doubt her decision to quit London had anything to Esther’s attempt to con her, and her photograph (below right) suggests she wasn’t an easy woman to fool either. She enjoyed a long career in entertainment, forming her own company before retiring in 1908.

Despite declaring after her second marriage (in 1900) that ‘I believe that any other woman who pursues a profession after her marriage makes a miserable failure of it’, Camille went on to do a number of things well into the new century. She died in 1932.

Esther Robson disappears from history in 1888.

[from The Morning Post, Friday, October 05, 1888]