If you have read this blog before you may be familiar with one of my favourite characters from the late 19th century, the fabulous Tottie Fay! I’ve written about Tottie’s numerous appearances before London Police Court magistrates in my latest book Nether World and I’m delighted to find her once more in the pages of London press.

On this occasion Tot was gave her name at Marlborough Street as Violet St John. The previous evening she had told the desk sergeant who booked her in for a night in the cells that she was ‘Violet Lorraine governess from Bessborough-gardens.’

She stood in the dock at Marlborough Street dressed in black silk and lace, and sported a black hat with ribbons and feathers. It was April 1889 and she was probably in her mid 30s. She listened as a policeman gave his account of meeting her in St James’ Square in the early hours of Sunday morning. Fay/St John was ‘very drunk and holding onto the railings’. Her behaviour had drawn a small crowd of about 20 onlookers who were ‘laughing and jeering at her’.

As was policy the constable asked her to move along and typically, Tottie replied with exaggerated outrage: ‘Go away!’ she told him, ‘How dare you speak to me you low fellow, I am a lady of position and character’.

The magistrate, Mr Hannay, asked the officer if he knew Tottie. ‘I should think so’ the constable replied, prompting laughter in court.

By 1890 Tottie was very known after all.

Hannay asked his prisoner if she wanted to cross examine the policeman. She did not and burst into tears instead, and said she would ratehr speak to him.

‘I have been locked up really for nothing’, she complained, ‘I have had the misfortune to lose my landlady yesterday and I was going through the square broken-hearted, when the constable took me’.

She admitted to having had a few glasses of drink but refuted the idea that she was ‘what low people call drunk’. ‘I was in trouble’ she continued, ‘and walking along quietly and ladylike, when the officer molested me’.

Having established that Fay had not ‘gone quietly’ and had given the policeman quite a bit ‘of trouble’ he now had to decide what to do with her. Fay protested her innocence and pleaded with him to just let her go, but when the gaoler informed him that she had been before that court alone over 50 times he had little choice under the law as it stood. He opted to hand down a hefty fine – 40s – which she could not pay. She was then led away, as the report explained, to spend a month in ‘her old quarters at Millbank’ prison.

From The Standard, Tuesday 9 April, 1889