Category: Westminster Police Court
Cowboys in the dock at Westminster as the ‘Whitechapel fiend’ makes his first appearance.
On the 3 August 1888 two Americans appeared before the magistrate at Westminster Police court. John Dunn was probably every small boy’s idea of an American – a cowboy and ‘professional horseman’, part of Buffalo Bill’s travelling Wild West Show, he would have cut an exotic figure in the dock. The other man was darker skinned, described as a Mexican and giving the name Richard Chester Dare.
Dare (described as ‘a powerful man’ with the press) was charged with assault, and Dunn with aiding him. On the Thursday night both had been drinking at a pub on the Broadway when they had fell into an argument with a gun maker’s assistant called William Head. We can probably imagine the nature of the dispute, two US citizens in London arguing with a local about the merits of American vs British firearms.
Head left the pub but Dare hadn’t finished the quarrel and took it outside. As the gun maker walked home Dare and two others came up behind him and pushed him. A fight ensued and Head was knocked to the ground. Head and Dare grappled together before William escaped and made his way home.
He had been wounded quite badly, sustaining a bruise to the side of his face which had closed his left eye and had been stabbed in his side. It is likely that in the chaos of the moment and being a little the worse for drink he hadn’t noticed the American pull out a knife at the time. However, in court before Mr Partridge he testified to seeing a knife in the cowboy’s hand.
Both men were remanded to appear again but on application Dunn was granted bail. His was the less serious charge and Mr Partridge was told that Dare was supposed to be on his way to Brussels to join up with ‘Mexican Joe’s’ troupe, so perhaps the chance that he might slip away from justice was uppermost in the magistrate’s mind. He also instructed the police to inform the American consul of the men’s arrest.
William ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody toured Europe several times between 1887 and 1906, the first in 1887 which coincided with Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. One of the reviews of the 1887 show in London (at the American Exhibition) gives us a flavour of the event:
The size of the enclosure was one element of the impressiveness of the coup d’œil and this was cleverly increased by the picturesque scenery which enclosed half of the circle. At the edge of the ash-covered circle in the center were drawn up on parade the whole strength of the Wild West company. There were the various tribes of Indians in their war-paint and feathers, the Mexicans, the ladies, and the cowboys, and a fine array they made, with the chiefs of each tribe, the renowned Sergeant Bates, the equally celebrated Buffalo Bill, the stalwart Buck Taylor, and others who were introduced by Mr. Frank Richmond who, from the top of an elevated platform, described the show as it proceeded.
Cody took his troupe back to the USA in May of 1887 having performed for both the Queen and the Prince of Wales. Yet some of the performers stayed behind, enjoying the life they found in London’s bustling city streets. Presumably two of these were Dare and Dunn. Sadly, at this point they both vanish from the pages of the Victorian newspapers so we don’t know what happened to them.
A few days later the body of Martha Tabram was discovered on a landing in George Yard, in the heart of the Whitechapel slum. She had been viciously stabbed and her killer was nowhere to be seen. Although there is considerable dispute as to whether Martha was the first victim of ‘Jack the Ripper’ a consensus is developing that suggests she was killed but he same person that murdered five or more women that summer and autumn.
As the police searched for a serial killer in 1888 the idea that the killings might have been perpetrated by a native American or another member of Buffalo Bill’s travelling Wild West circulated. After all, it was said, what Englishman could do such a terrible thing?
[from The Standard Saturday 4 August 1888]
A drunken mother loses her temper and then her liberty
Royal Army Clothing Factory 21/6/1918 during a visit by King George V and Queen Mary (IMW collection)
On Wednesday 28 July 1875 Emma Leven was set in the dock at Westminster Police court to face a charge that she had tried to kill her own baby. She was remanded overnight by the sitting magistrate Mr Arnold, who wanted to hear from a number of people, including the key witness, who had not appeared that day.
The case hadn’t been reported at the time but we should read nothing into that. Hundreds of summary hearings took place every day at London’s police courts and the papers only carried reports of one or two from each of them daily. This case was ‘of interest’ however, so when Emma was brought back from the cells on Thursday a scribbler from the Morning Post described the hearing for his readers.
Emma was married and – according to Mrs Elizabeth Turner, Thomas Tullogh, and William Rush – on the night of 27 July she was drinking in the Eagle public house on Grosvenor Road¹ and was ‘very drunk’. Her baby had been left outside and it was crying its eyes out. One imagines Emma was under some pressure to deal with the crying infant, and no doubt felt a mixture of anger, resentment, and embarrassment as all the eyes of the pub were turned on her.
Suddenly he declared that she would throw the child in the Thames, and rushed out of the pub. She lifted the child into her arms and set off at a run in the general direction of the river. Alarmed, Mrs Turner hurried after her and managed to catch up with Emma just before she hurled the poor thing over the railings and into the water.
A policeman was summoned and Mrs Turner took charge of the baby as Emma was led away. While Mrs Turner suckled her child Emma screamed abuse at her all the way back to the police station. For some reason however, Mrs Turner did not appear in court on the Wednesday, while Tullogh and Rush did. Turner somehow managed to sign the register of witnesses attending that day, despite not doing so, this would impact on her, as we shall see.
In court on the Thursday Emma Leven had sobered up and was contrite. She was ‘too fond of her children’ to ever intend to hurt them she told Mr Arnold. She had gone to the pub that evening to meet her husband and some friends; one drink had led to another and she had drunk too much. She was sorry.
Her husband was more belligerent. He told the magistrate that he didn’t believe a word of what Mrs Turner had said. Perhaps there was some bad blood there; local jealousies and neighbor disputes were all too common, feuds could develop out of the smallest slights amplified over time.
What mattered here though was not what Mr Leven believed but what Mr Arnold (as presiding magistrate) did. And he believed the case was proven.
He rebuked Mr Leven for ‘having little regard for his child’ and challenged Emma’s declaration of ‘fondness’ for her child. If, he said, ‘she chose to get so drunk that she rushed to the side of the river to throw the child in she must put up with the consequences’. She had been drunk and disorderly and he would send her to prison for a month. On her release she would have to find sureties of £20 against her good behavior for the following six months.
Having dealt quite severely with Emma Leven he turned his attention to the witnesses.
He was full of praise for Turlough and Rush but very disappointed to hear that their employer had stopped their wages for coming to court the previous day. The pair worked at the Royal Army Clothing Factory on Grosvenor Road in Pimlico (where the Eagle pub was) and he instructed the chief inspector of B Division to pay the factory a visit.
‘The men had attended in the performance of a public duty’, he said, and ‘if they were stopped of their wages it would have the effect of deterring people from coming forward and giving evidence in the public cause’.
Arnold recognised that justice relied on the participation of the general public. The men deserved praise not a penalty.
The same was not the case for Mrs Turner however. When she asked for her expenses (presumably for attending court and looking after Emma’s baby) Mr Arnold dismissed her abruptly. He had ‘no fund at his disposal expect the poor box; he told her but as she ‘had not attended the court on Wednesday, although she had signed the sheet, he should not allow her expenses’. The suspicion is then that the magistrate, while keen to recognize public spiritedness was less impressed by self-interest and dishonesty.
The Royal Army Clothing Factory was established in Pimlico in the 1850s to make and supply the British Army. It was part of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps and remained in Grosvenor Road until 1932, when it closed.
Today the site is covered by the private housing development Dolphin Square which was erected in the 1930s following the factory’s demolition. In recent years it has been home to a number of famous people (including the tennis star Rod Laver and Princess Ann – not together I hasten to add) and several politicians including Harold Wilson and David Steel. Oswald Mostly, the most prominent British fascist of his generation, was living in the Square in 1940 when he was detained as an enemy of the state during the Second World War. Having once stayed in an apartment in Dolphin Square I can attest to its general air of opulence, but I never met any celebrities
from Morning Post Friday 30 July 1875
¹ The Eagle is still operational in Pimlico, now renamed the Grosvenor though.
Barrow wars: competing for territory in the world of fruit and veg
The difference between a fixed trader – generally but not always a shopkeeper – and a costermonger became the key distinction in a case heard before Mr Woolrych at Westminster Police court in early December 1870.
William Haynes, a fruiter and potato dealer with premises on Churton Street and Tachbrook Street in Pimlico, was summoned to explain why he had obstructed the carriageway. He was prosecuted under the ‘new Street Act’ for ‘allowing two barrows to rest longer than necessary for loading or unloading’. The court heard he had left them there for five hours.
His defense lawyer (Mr Doveton Smyth) accepted the facts of the case but tried to argue that since his client sold apples from these barrows he might be classed as a costermonger, and therefore be allowed to do so.
Mr Woolrych might have admired the creativity of the brief but he rejected his reasoning. The word ‘costermonger’ might have derived from “costard,” a large apple’, as the lawyer suggested but ‘that term had become obsolete’.
There was ‘no doubt the present acceptation of the word costermonger was an itinerant trader who hawked perishable articles, such as fruit, vegetables , and fish, etc., and in the course of that vocation went from place to place’.
The magistrate pointed out that Mr Haynes owned two shops and didn’t move them around. Mr Woolrych left the fruiterer off the fine but insisted he pay the costs of the summons. The lawyer said he would take the question of ‘whether a tradesman cannot be a costermonger if he please’ to the Court of Queen’s Bench for a higher authority to determine.
Two weeks later Haynes was back in court and again defended by Mr Doveton Smyth. Again the charge was the same, as was the defense. This time the defendant was fined.
Two years later, in April 1872 William Haynes was one of three Pimlico greengrocers brought before the Westminster magistrate for obstructing the pavements.
The court heard that they occupied premises ‘where costermongers are allowed to assemble in accordance with the provisions of the Metropolitan Street Act’ and that the area was a ‘a regular market on a Saturday night’. Once again Mr Smythe presented the argument that his clients had as much right to trade from stalls outside their shops as the costermongers did to sell from barrows nearby, so long as ‘did not infringe the police regulations’.
But it seems they did infringe the law.
Inspector Turpin from B Division said that Haynes’ stall was fully 50 feet long while Joseph Haynes (possibly his son or brother), had one that was 35 feet long. Both stalls forced pedestrians to walk out into the road to get past.
The defendants pleaded guilty, promised to ‘make better arrangements’ in the future, and were fined between 10 and 40s each, plus costs. They paid up but with some protest.
This was not something that was going to go away however. The greengrocers could afford to keep paying fines and may well have thought it a necessary expense to be able to compete for trade with the costermongers.
Ultimately, as we know, the grocer in his shop would win the battle for the streets with the coster and his barrow. The latter were eventually restricted from selling wherever they liked and confined to fixed markets; the grocers developed a network of independent shops that ultimately grew into small and then larger chains, displacing very many of the independent traders that they competed with.
Today we have a high street with very few independent grocers and greengrocers; most of that business has been captured by the supermarkets.
[from Morning Post, Wednesday 7 December 1870; Morning Post, Friday 19 April 1872]
The Salvation Army refuses to a leave a sick woman in peace
I’m sure we have all had to put up with annoying disturbances at some point in our lives; last year an inconsiderate neighbour chose to party hard until the wee hours as she celebrated her 40th birthday. At about 4 in the morning I was obliged to ask her guests (she had retired to bed) to turn the music off.
I might have expected it from a student house but not a group of middle aged professionals.
If you live in a big city (like London or Paris, or New York) you are likely to be disturbed by the sound of traffic, railways, the sirens of emergency vehicles, and the refuse collectors. These are the normal everyday sounds of urban living however, and we get used to them or accept them as necessary. It is quite different then if someone sets up a band outside your house and plays music incessantly for hours on end.
This was the scenario that brought a vet to seek help from Mr Shiel at Westminster Police court in June 1889.
The vet (described only as a ‘gentleman’, his name not being recorded in the newspaper report) lived in Turk’s Row, Chelsea where he ran ‘an infirmary for horses and dogs’. He told the magistrate that a ‘band of Salvationists’ (meaning the Salvation Army) had congregated outside his property on several occasions recently to perform.
‘There were’, he explained, ‘at least 20 persons singing to a tambourine accompaniment’ and he had called the police after they refused to stop. A policeman had intervened and ‘begged the people to go further off’ but they refused. Instead they just continued making more of their ‘hideous’ noise than they had previously.
The poor vet described how he had told the group’s leader that his wife was ‘lying dangerously ill’ having had complications in her pregnancy. He just wanted her to be able to rest but the officer in charge of the Salvation Army band refused to believe him, and called him a liar.
He asked for a summons to bring the ‘Army’ to court.
Mr Sheil was sympathetic but not very helpful. Couldn’t the police have done more, he asked? ‘They have no power’, the vet replied, or at least ‘they don’t like to interfere’. Had an (often Italian) organ grinder stood opposite his house the police would have happily taken them away, but not, it seems, the men and women of the ‘Sally Army’, however disruptive they were being.
The magistrate would not grant a summons and instead suggested the applicant visit the ‘headquarters of this so-called Salvation Army, and see, in the name of religion, they will continue to disturb a person who is ill’. In other words, challenge their Christian principles and beliefs rather than apply the same rules to them as would have applied to itinerate street musicians.
If it seems hypercritical to us it certainly did to the vet. He left court muttering that ‘he did not see why he should not have a summons, and that the he considered the law ought to protect him’.
It is very hard not to agree with him. Once again it is a case of one rule for some, and another for others.
Today of course the Salvation Army is a well respected charity organization with branches all over the world; in the late 1880s it was an embryonic and divisive group which found itself in court quite frequently on charges of disturbing the peace or obstructing the streets. How times change eh?
[from The Standard, Wednesday 26 June, 1889]
For an interesting blog post on the involvement of Black Britons in the Salvation Army see Jeffrey Green’s post here
For other stories from me about the Salvation Army see these related posts:
An ‘infernal din’ disturbs the peace on the Sabbath and lands the Salvation Army in court
Brickbats and stones ‘welcome’ the Salvation Army to Hackney
William Booth in court, for doing something about homelessness
The ‘irrepressible’ Tottie Fay, the ‘wickedest woman in London’.
On 7 March 1887 the readers of the ‘occasional notes’ section of the Pall Mall Gazette were introduced to the ‘wickedest woman in London’, an epithet bestowed on a colourful character who went by several names. In the article she is referred to as Lily Cohen but also ‘Tottie Fay, Lilian Rothschild, Violet St. John, Mabel Gray, Maud Legrand, [and] Lily Levant’.
The writer goes on to add:
‘She is just thirty years of age. It would be interesting to have an accurate biographical and scientific diagnosis of this superlative specimen of human depravity’.
Well I’m not sure I can satisfy all of that request but I thought it might be possible to trace ‘Tottie Fay’ through the courts in the pages of the newspaper archive. And, I’m glad to say, she appears quite frequently.
In March Tottie (or Lily) had been sent to prison for a month, officially for being ‘disorderly’ but in reality for being one of the capital’s many prostitutes. Indeed ‘Tottie’ was described as the ‘wickedest woman in London’ by the magistrate. Millbank Prision, where he sent her, was an awful place to be incarcerated; damp, frequently flooded by the nearby Thames, and considered only fit to house short-term prisoners by this time. It was closed just three years later (in 1890) demolished thereafter to make way for the new National Gallery of British Art (now the Tate).
In her appearance at Marlborough Street Police court in March 1887 the sitting justice, Mr Mansfield, noted that she ‘had more than once perjured herself by making false accusations against men, and had for a ling time persisted in a life of vice and crime’. He regretted that he was only allowed to send her away for a month or fine her 40s. Since she didn’t have the money, off to gaol she went.
If that was supposed to teach her a lesson it failed. Not that we should be surprised by this. It seems Tottie had been in and out of prison on several occasions before 1887 and had probably been up ‘before the beak’ too many times to count. Offenders like her knew that the best strategy was not to be caught too many times in the same place and set before the same magistrate. If you became ‘known’ to the police and the magistracy your chances of avoiding heavy fine and/or prison were slim indeed.
In January 1889 Tottie was back at Marlborough Street but this time Mr Hannay was in the chair. He’d not encountered her before which gave her the opportunity to try and convince him that she was victim of a malicious prosecution and police brutality.
By this time the paper noted that she had acquired several new aliases, taking he rally past 20, and adding Blanche Herbert, Florence Larade, and Amy St Clair to those listed earlier. She was charged with being ‘drunk and riotous in Piccadilly’ on the New Year’s Eve. She was dressed smartly, if in a rather ‘gaudy dress’, suggesting that she looked like a ‘woman of the town’, a West End prostitute not one of her poorer East End sisters.
She’d been arrested at the Bath Hotel on Piccadilly after the proprietor had thrown her out for her disreputable behaviour. He testified that Tottie had been ‘running undressed all over the hotel’. When approached she locked herself in a room and refused to come out. The door was forced and she was dragged out and led away by the police. It seems she’d been using a room there to meet clients, on this occasion a West End gentleman (who didn’t appear in court).
She protested her innocence and complained about her treatment:
‘Even the chambermaids shed tears when they saw a lady like me being taken away by a rough policeman’, she told the magistrate. ‘I am truly innocent, although I have been here lots of times. Do give me a chance and I shall give up this unhappy life’,
adding
‘I will go into a servants’ home, a monastery, or even to America – anywhere in the world if you will let me go’.
She pleaded with the justice, imploring him that she was a ‘poor motherless orphan, a real young lady, whose mother lies in her grave’.
‘Do let me go, and you shall never see me again. Oh, do! do! do!’
She might have saved her breath because Mr Hannay fined her 40s or another month inside.
It did no good.
In April that year the ‘irrepressible Tottie’ was back up before Mr Hannay. The court reporter noted that she’d been at Marlborough Street so many times that they had a special book just to record all her appearances.
Again the charge was disorderly behaviour, this time with drunkenness. She’d been arrested in St James’ Square after a large crowd had gathered to hear her tell a sad story about the death of her mistress. A policeman arrived having been alerted by a reports of a woman ‘misbehaving herself’.
She was dressed in her finery in court: ‘a cream-coloured bodice trimmed with lace, a black shirt, and a large dress-improver’ (which was too large for the dock so became ‘much disarranged’). Over her gloves she wore five rings.
Again she claimed to be ‘a lady’ and complained about the rough way the policeman had treated her. She admitted to having a drink but only because she was so upset at the loss of a woman who had been ‘just like a mamma in every respect’. Hannay fined her 40s with the option of prison if she couldn’t pay.
In June Tottie was back again. But now she gave her age as 22 (shaving a decade off if the other reports are accurate), and was calling herself Lily de Terry with an address in Grosvenor Square. PC Evans (316F) had arrested her on the 8th June 1889 after he found her with a crowd around her protesting that someone had stolen her purse.
She was ‘very drunk’ and as he questioned her she tried to get away, saying ‘Oh, I have got it now, thank you’. When he stopped her she gave him a mouthful of verbal abuse and threw herself to the floor. He and another constable removed her and, the next day, she was brought up before Mr De Rutzen who questioned her. Tottie gave a very similar tale of being a lady, not being guilty, apologizing, and promising not to err in future. This magistrate took pity and gave her a small fine or a day in gaol by default . She tanked him with a ‘heaven bless you!’ and was removed.
By now she was so famous that the Illustrated Police News even included an artist’s impression of her arrest.
In August the ‘stylishly-dressed’ and ‘so well known’ Tottie Fay was in court at Westminster accused, under the name of Mabel Granville (22) with using obscene language. PC Orebard (220B) was called to a pastrycook’s shop on Belgrave Street after she’d refused to pay for her purchases of ‘two pots of tea, four eggs, and a considerable quantity of bread’. She was drunk and her language was ‘shocking’. Mr D’Eyncourt ignored her (now well worn sob story) and fined her 14s or 14 days imprisonment.
I suspect she paid that fine because within a few weeks she was back in court, this time at Bow Street. A Mr Armstrong testified that Tottie had tried ‘to push into his house’ and was ‘otherwise molesting him’. Once again she was well dressed, with ‘a profusion of rings’, and presented herself in what one paper described as ‘her usual simpering semi-hysterical manner’. The court ordered her to find two sureties of £20 each for her ‘good behaviour for six months’. A tall order one imagines.
That was not the end of Tottie, in April 1890 she was back at Marlborough Street (as Dolly Leblane) where she was remanded on a charge of drunk and disorderly. Sergeant Brewer, the court’s gaoler, told Mr Newton that this was Tottie’s 31stappearance in court. She’d racked up well over 31 by May that year, appearing on a simailr charge having been arrested ‘amongst a lot of disorderly women’ in Piccadilly and telling the same story about her ‘mamma’ having ‘brought her out and lost her’. Sergeant Brewer not totaled her charges at 45 and gave Mr Newton (and us) some background to her story.
‘Her father was a costermonger’, the gaoler explained. ‘and for many years he resided in the Seven Dials, and was a member of the gang known as “The Forty Thieves,” ‘.
At this Tottie spoke up from the dock.
‘Oh, how can you say so? If I am a gay woman [i.e a prostitute] , you have no right to say that I am not a lady’.
She was remanded, as charges of theft were also alleged. He asked for a plain clothes officer to ‘see what he can find out’. On the 18 May she was up again charged with stealing clothes from a Mrs Green valued at £2. Her criminal career was catching up with her and Mr Newton was determined that ‘I must be stopped’. He committed her for a jury trial; things were getting ominous for Tottie.
On the 27 May 1890 Tottie (as Dolly Le Blanc) was tried at Clerkenwell Green in the London County Sessions on a charge of stealing with intent to defraud. She claimed to be an actress at the Alhambra Theatre but the manager appeared to deny this was the case. Her fantasies continued, and she wove an elaborate story of taking a train from Paris, having breakfast with her daughter, forgetting her luggage at Victoria and denying both charges of stealing clothes and food. Despite a ‘tearful appeal to the Court’ the jury convicted her and she was sent to prison for six months with hard labour.
That ought to have been the end of it but she appears again, several times in 1891 (in April at Marlborough Street for example, charged with fraud and theft). This time a pen portrait of Tootie by the artists ‘P.I.P’ was reproduced in the Illustrated Police News alongside a lengthy account of her life and crimes. In May she was on trial for obtaining goods by false pretenses and sentenced to 12 months. She gave her name as Dorothy Le Blanc and the court recorded her age as 42. The papers referred to its as her ‘temporary retirement’.
In September, while the real Tottie Fay languished in prison a stage comedy focused on a police court included her as a ‘notorious’ character, ‘creating hearty laughter and applause’. I’m not sure Tottie would have liked that. She might have enjoyed the attention but I think she really did see herself as a victim of a hard life and a society which didn’t support her. She had a great sense of self-respect despite her drinking, evidenced by her desire always to look as glamorous as she could. As she went from being a high-class prostitute to a drunk reduced to stealing small amounts of food and drink, she also fell foul of the criminal justice system.
1891 wasn’t the last time Tottie Fay appeared in court but, for now, it is where I am going to leave her. Not perhaps the ‘wickedest women’ in London but perhaps one of the most colourful.
It is hard not to like her.
[from The Pall Mall Gazette, Monday 7 March, 1887; Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, Saturday 12 March, 1887; Birmingham Daily Post, Wednesday 2 January 1889; Portsmouth Evening News, April 9 1889; Illustrated Police News, 22 June 1889; Sheffield Evening Telegraph, 20 August 1889; Reynolds’s Newspaper, 25 August 1889; Morning Post, 3 September 1889; Reynolds’s Newspaper, 8 September 1889; Portsmouth Evening News, April 26 1890; Cornishman, 1 May 1890; Lloyd’s Illustrated Newspaper, 11 May 1890; Sheffield Evening Telegraph19 May 1890; Morning Post, 28 May 1890; The Standard, 11 April 1891; Illustrated Police News, 25 April 1891; Daily News, 7 May 1891; The Vaudeville, 12 September 1891.
‘What would become of the little children?’: charity and kindness make a rare appearance in a Police Court
Tomorrow is the last day of February meaning that (as we do every four years) we get a 29thday of this month. Did you know that 1888 was a leap year? Making a very tenuous link today is also the artist John Tenniel’s birthday. Had he lived he would be 200 years old today.
On 29 September 1888 the magazine Punch published a cartoon by Tenniel alongside an article on slum living in the East End of London. Tenniel’s iconic image of the Nemesis of Neglect (above), was published at the height of the Jack the Ripper murders, while London reeled from the terror created by a serial killer the police seemed unable to catch.
Tenniel’s drawing and the text that accompanied it suggested that the murderer was a product of the degraded environment in which all the victims had lived, and died. It also warned polite society of the dangers of not doing ‘something’ about the abject poverty of the East End, which risked the ‘contagion’ spreading to reach the wealthier parts of the metropolis.
In February Whitechapel was relatively quiet; the series lodged in the National Archives at Kew as the ‘Whitechapel Murders’ had not yet started, but poverty was very much in evidence.
At Westminster Police court a 76 year-old man appeared to ask Mr D’Eyncourt for a summons. He wanted to bring a charge against the one of the officers at St Luke’s workhouse in Chelsea. The elderly man moved slowly and spoke with difficulty, clearly suffering as he was from fresh injuries. He told the magistrate that he’d sustained these when he was turfed out of his bed at 6.45 in the morning by a workhouse attendant.
He was, he said in response to the justice’s questioning, 15 minutes late in getting up after the bell rang at 6.30. But he had only just got to sleep having been kept awake by others’ coughing and cramp in his legs.
‘I am so badly bruised that I have not been able to walk upright since’ he complained.
The poor man had no family or friends and had been an inmate of the workhouse for six years. Mr D’Eyncourt granted his summons and said he would not have to pay for it. He would hear what other inmates said and call the accused party before him.
At Southwark Sarah Ann Davis stood in the dock with a baby in her arms. She was accused of begging in London Road, having been arrested by a police sergeant. Sarah denied the charge, she ‘was selling some pins to get some food for her children’ she explained.
Sergeant Ireland told Mr Slade that the prisoner’s husband was currently serving a prison sentence for begging. As if that compounded the woman’s crime and demonstrated she was guilty.
The magistrate asked her why she didn’t turn to the workhouse.
‘I don’t want to break up the home while my husband is away’, she replied.
Mr Davis was, she said, and out of work carpenter who’d do any job if he could get one. 1888 was not a good year for work: this was the year that the word ‘unemployment’ entered the dictionary and for the past few years large numbers of unemployed men and women had gathered in Trafalgar Square to listen to socialists and free traders bemoan the state of the economy and the capitalist system that had seemingly failed so many.
Slade called her landlord to the stand and asked him about the family’s character. He was told that the Davis’ were good, respectable and quiet tenants, but were two weeks behind with their rent.
‘You are not going to turn them out?’ The magistrate asked.
‘On no, sir, certainly not. What would become of the little children?’ the landlord replied.
‘Very well, I will discharge her now. You can go know, Mrs. Davis. You will receive some coal and bread tickets from the Poor-box Fund, and you had better apply to the Relieving Officer for some out-door relief’.
Then he warned her against begging in future, and she left, with applause for the magistrate ringing out in court.
Individual acts of decency by men like Mr Slade and Sarah’s landlord were not enough of course to mitigate the realities of abject poverty in late nineteenth century London. On another day Sarah might have gone to gaol and had her children taken away. Another magistrate might have told her it was the ‘house or nothing, and she would have again lost her children.
Tenniel’s image of the ghoul raising from the ‘slum’s foul air’ was so powerful because it reflected a sort of stark reality, even if it was as fantastical as his more famous illustrations for Alice in Wonderland.
[from The Standard, 28 February 1888]
‘Furious driving’ and RTAs: have we lost control of our streets?
While the Metropolitan Police courts dealt with all manner of crimes, misdemeanors, and complaints, the press only selectively reported them. Sensational cases, hard rending ones, and those which reflected a current concern were the most likely to grab the ‘headlines’ in the later 1800s.
On 12 January 1881 the Morning Post chose to focus attention on dangerous driving in central London, highlighting three cases that came before the Westminster magistrate Mr Partridge. Of course none of these involved cars or vans or motorcycles; none of the vehicles we associate with road traffic accidents had been invented in the 1880s, everything was horse drawn in Victorian capital.
Yet accidents were fairly common, and being run over by a horse drawn cart or carriage was just as likely to result in injury and death as being hit by a car today. More so perhaps, since medicine was much less effective and the emergency services much less well equipped.
Speeding was termed ‘Furious driving’ – driving or riding that endangered life – and was punishable by a fine or imprisonment; cab drivers found drunk by police could be arrested, those driving ‘furiously’ would be charged accordingly. Drunk driving was clearly as much of a problem in the 1800s as it was in the 1900s.
On 11 January John Smith was charged before Mr Partridge at Westminster with being drunk in charge of his hansom cab and running over a little girl. Smith had been driving along the Fulham Road and turned quickly (too quickly really) into Marlborough Road, just as Rhoda Thompson was crossing it.
Smith’s cab hit the child who went under the wheels and was run over. A policeman saw the incident and intervened, making sure Rhoda was taken to St George’s Hospital. The cab driver appeared to be drunk and so he was escorted to the nearest police station to be charged. In court Smith said he was distressed by the accident but not drunk and said the officer must have mistaken his shock for inebriation. The magistrate was told that the girl was still in hospital and her condition not yet known, with that in mind he remanded Smith in custody to see what happened.
Next up before him were George Franklin (21), James Galleymore (also 21) and Fredrick Drake (a labourer, whose age was not given). Franklin and Galleymore were carmen, the nineteenth-century equivalent of van delivery drivers today. Franklin had been arrested for being drunk in charge of a horse and cart and knocking down John Silcock in the King’s Road, Chelsea. Galleymore and Drake were both drunk and disorder the court was told and the former was also charged with assaulting PC Campion (506T) at Chelsea Police station.
Franklin was driving a van ‘rapidly’ as it went round the corner by the police station, just as Silcock was crossing the road. Silcock, an elderly man who was employed as a timekeeper by the London Omnibus Company, was knocked down but, fortunately, not badly hurt. He’d been carrying a small child in his arms and miraculously, she was also unharmed.
Mr Partridge, perhaps minded to make an example of the trio, said ‘he was determined to do all in his power to put down this reckless driving in the streets’. He sentenced Franklin to two months in prison with hard labour, gave Galleymore six weeks, and fined Drake 10s for being drunk (warning him he’d also go to gaol if he failed to pay).
Finally, John Lincoln was brought up to face a charge of being drunk in charge of his Hackney cab. On Monday evening Lincoln’s cab had collided with a ‘light spring van’ being driven by William Dyerson on the Vauxhall Bridge Road. Such was the force of the crash that Mrs Dyerson was thrown out of the van onto the street, breaking her arm.
A policeman saw the whole incident unfold and rushed to help the lady. Lincoln was arrested and the officer declared he was drunk and driving ‘recklessly’. Mr Partridge decided the incident was severe enough to require a jury trial and committed him to the next sessions of the peace.
Lincoln (who gave his age as 52) appeared at the quarter sessions on 24 January 1881 where he was found not guilty of furious driving but was convicted of willful misconduct, and of causing ‘bodily harm’ to Jane Dyerson. The court fined him 20s.
In the streets around me a 20mph speed limit is in place, because there are several schools near by. This doesn’t stop people driving ‘furiously’ and on the main road cars and vans frequently race across the zebra crossing, even when pedestrians are halfway across it. They know that they are very unlikely to be caught or prosecuted for doing so, and so can speed and endanger lives with impunity.
I’ve raised it with the council who aren’t interested. I’ve raised it with the police who were too busy to even respond to me. It seems that unless someone dies we don’t road traffic incidents as seriously as Mr Partridge once did.
[from Morning Post, 12 January, 1881]
A curious child gets a knockout blow
Not all stories are exactly what they seem when you start reading them. I found this one, about a Thames lighterman – one of the men that operated the flat bottomed barges ferrying goods up and down London’s central river – assaulting an eight year-old boy, and assumed it was a simple case of child abuse.
However, the incident – unpleasant as it was – actually revealed that something else was going on in the capital at the end of November 1889.
Matthew Petter should have been at Sunday school on the 24 November. But, like many young boys, he was curious and as he crossed Vauxhall Bridge he got distracted watching the boats go up and down. As he watched he noticed a small group of men who were having an argument with a lighterman.
Henry Bliss (28) was a lighterman and when some of his fellows had recently downed tools and gone on strike, he carried on working. This hardly endeared him to his colleagues and today they were showing him how they felt.
Their hoots and cries of ‘blackleg’ escalated from verbal into physical brickbats being thrown; rubbish, bricks and stones were lobbed in his direction and Bliss lost his temper. He picked up a half-brick and threw it back, aiming at his tormenters. The brick missed them and struck a railing, bounced off and smacked young Matthew on the head, and knocked him senseless.
The crowd of angry rivermen roared in outrage and rushed forward to seize Bliss. He turned his boat and headed out into the river. The mob chased him along the bank and some took to other crafts. Finally Bliss gave himself up to river police, asking for their protection, as he clearly feared for his life.
The boy was hospitalised and when Bliss appeared to answer a summons at Westminster Police Court he was very apologetic, offering to compensate Mrs Petter for the cost of treating the little lad’s injuries. Mr D’Eyncourt probably sympathized with the lighterman – magistrates tended to side against striking union men – so he fined him a nominal 2s 6d and Mrs Petter accepted a payment of 50sin compensation.
[from Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, Sunday, December 8, 1889]
the police magistrate 