Tag: bad language

Racism ‘on the buses’?

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In the 1880s London buses (more properly ‘omnibuses’) were privately run. This meant that they sometimes switched their routes to take advantage of a sudden influx of passenger business. So instead, for example, of the modern 242 going to Dalston from Liverpool Street it might choose to run to Islington if sufficient people wanted to go there. I can’t imagine a situation where that would happen today but if it did there would be uproar from the stranded passengers left waiting at the stop.

This is exactly what happened in June 1880 however, as Jacob Allen was trying to get home late at night on a Sunday from Bank. An omnibus pulled up and the conductor shouted: ‘Burdett Road and Mile End’ and a number of people boarded, including Allen.

Then, as a number of other ‘buses appeared, all heading in the same direction, the conductor shouted ‘Limehouse and Blackwall’, thereby ‘altering the direction altogether’. He ordered everyone to get off declaring:

‘Come out, come out, I wont carry you to Mile-end’.

Everyone did get off the bus except for Allen; the engineer realized that  this revised route suited him much better anyway so he sat down and puffed on his cigar and waited to be carried home. The conductor still insisted he leave however, and when he tried to explain the bus man abused him verbally, calling him a ‘stuck up monkey’ and grabbed the cigar out of his mouth.

Allen complained at the man’s rudeness but it did no good, the conductor manhandled him off the bus and left him fuming on the pavement. Determined to have satisfaction Jacob Allen applied for a summons and had the man hauled up before Sir Robert Carden at the Mansion House Police court.

The conductor’s name was Moore and he had little by way of a defence. Allen had found at least one witness who supported his version of events and added that Moore appeared to be drunk at the time. Apparently he had told Allen that ‘he would not carry such trash’. Given that the complainant was an engineer and smoking a cigar I wonder if Allen was black and this was a case of racism? All Moore would say was that the man was intoxicated and that was why he refused him travel but this was vehemently denied. If he’d been out in London late on Sunday Jacob Allen may well have been drinking but this seems like a slur and Moore could produce no evidence for it.

Sir Robert found for the complainant and commented that Moore’s ‘omnibus was one of those private ones which went anywhere. It was clearly proved  that he had used bad language’, adding that ‘the sooner his master got rid of him the better. Civil language cost nothing’ after all.

He fined him 20s or 14 days in prison.

London had (as it has today) an extensive transport network involving omnibuses, trams, over ground and subterranean trains and the ever-present hansom cabs. This allowed Londoners to move around the city from east to west, south to north, at almost all times of the day or night, regardless of the depth of their pockets. It may also have helped one deeply disturbed individual carry out some of the most heinous murders this country has ever known. For more about the man who might have been ‘Jack the Ripper’ see Drew’s new co-authored study on the Whitechapel and Thames Torso murders of 1887-1891 available now on Amazon:

[from The Standard , Saturday, June 26, 1880]

The punishment fits the crime as a cab driver is prosecuted for cruelty

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Animal cruelty is nothing new sadly. In recent weeks there have been reports of dog fighting gangs, hare coursing, even the re-emergence of cockfights; and there countless small acts of human cruelty towards animals, most of which don’t get reported. One area which has decreased is cruelty towards working animals, notably horses. This is chiefly because we don’t employ horses as we used to.

In my forthcoming book on the Whitechapel (or ‘Jack the Ripper’) murders I look in some detail at London’s meat trade and at the role of the Victorian horse slaughterer. Horses were ubiquitous in the nineteenth-century capital: the pulled hansom cabs, omnibuses, trams, carriages for the wealthy and carts for tradesmen, individuals rode horses and horses were everywhere. Horses died or grew old or sick and were slaughtered and invariably their carcasses were processed and reused as meat or glue or some other by-product.

Legislation in 1849 and 1850 allowed prosecutions of those that willfully mistreated animals and many of these prosecutions were brought by, or with the support of, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) which had been founded as early as 1824. Sometimes however, accusations of cruelty were linked to other issues, as this case from 1839 (and before the acts applied) reveals.

In February 1839 Thomas Green was brought before Mr Rawlinson at Marylebone Police court charged with ‘being drunk and cruelly using his master’s horse’. Green was one of London’s cabbies, men who never enjoyed a very good reputation amongst the magistracy, police and press in the period.  Cab drivers like Green drove for others rather than owning their cabs and animals as independent businessmen. Theirs was a hard life with long hours in all weathers, and often with drunken or otherwise belligerent and difficult customers.

Hansom drivers had a reputation for being awkward, aggressive, and for drinking and all of these combined in Thomas Green to find him arraigned before a court of law. His boss was William Green (no relation) who lived in Dorset Square. William was too ill that day to attend court so his wife went along in his stead. Mrs Green told the magistrate that the prisoner had brought his horse home the previous night in a terrible state:

The poor beast was ‘covered in weals and sweat, and so weak it could hardly stand’. Moreover Green was drunk and when she berated him for this he turned on her and ‘called her the most disgusting names’.

Mrs Green called the police and had Thomas arrested.

There were plenty of offences that cabmen could be charged with, of which one was being drunk in charge of a vehicle. He might also be prosecuted for bad language, or assault. I suspect in this case Mr Rawlinson wasn’t clear exactly what he was going to do the man with but was intent on punishing in for something.

He decided to send Thomas Green to prison for a month and as he saw him as ‘a very bad offender’ he added ‘hard labour’ to the punishment: Green would spend a month on the treadmill, pointlessly walked and climbing until he literally fell down with exhaustion. Given that this is pretty much how he had treated his horse the punishment, for once, seems fitting.

[from The Morning Chronicle, Friday, February 22, 1839]

Transport woes mean a bad start to the week for one Victorian worker

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London Railways, 1899

In the 1800s increasing numbers of people commuted to work five or six days a week. Trams and railways were the preferred option for the working classes, as horse drawn omnibuses ran a little later and were a bit more expensive. Most working men had to be at their place of employment very early, by 7 o’clock, so they either needed to live close by (as the dockworkers in the East End did) or required reliable public transport to get them there.

Given that wages were low transport had to be cheap, which is why men like Alfred Shepperson took the train. Thousands used the workmen’s trains from the beginning of the 1860s, these usually ran early and charged just two pence return (instead of the flat rate of a penny per mile that was the cost of third class travel on the railways). It was an imperfect system however, some train services ran too late, others too early, and casual workers were particularly badly affected by this. Calls for better transport echoed down the century as the government recognized that this was crucial if they were to encourage migration to the developing suburbs north and south, and so clear the crowded slums of central, south and east London.

On Monday 27 July 1868 Alfred Shepperson had a bad Monday morning. He arrived at Walworth Road station at 7 am as usual, ready to start work nearby as a sawyer. He presented his ticket (a workman’s ticket) to Henry Ricketts at the gate but the Chatham & Dover Railway employee refused it. It had expired on Saturday he told him, and he’d need to pay 4d for his travel.

Shepperson growled at him declaring he see him damned first and an altercation seemed inevitable. Then a man stepped forward, smart and of a higher social class, who paid the sawyer’s fare. This might have been the end of it but Shepperson’s blood was up and he was in no mood to be reasonable. He continued to protest and was asked to leave the station quietly.

Unfortunately ‘he refused, made a great disturbance, calling [Ricketts] foul names, and threatening to have his revenge on him at the first opportunity’.

The ticket inspector was called and when be tried to steer the sawyer out of the station Shepperson’s rage intensified and he became ‘extremely violent’ assaulting both men and ripping the inspector’s coat in the process. Bystanders intervened before Shepperson could throw the man down some stairs. Eventually he was subdued and hauled off to a police station.

On the following morning he was up before Mr Selfe at Lambeth Police court where Shepperson claimed he didn’t know the ticket was out of date.

‘Can you read?’ the magistrate asked him.

‘Yes, sir’

‘Then you must have seen the ticket was not available, for it is plainly printed on it’.

Shepperson had no answer for this so tried to deny the violence he was accused of, and hoped the magistrate would ‘overlook it’.

‘It is quite clear to me you have acted in a disgraceful manner’, Mr Selfe told him, ‘and I shall certainly not overlook such conduct. You are fined 20s., or 14 days’ imprisonment’.

The sawyer didn’t have 20s (about £60 today, but 4-5 days’ wages at the time) so he was led away to the cells to start his sentence, one that might have had more serious repercussion if he had then (as was likely) lost his job.

[from The Morning Post, Wednesday, July 29, 1868]

A drunken attack on a compassionate ‘bobby’ or an example of police brutality? You decide

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Given that the Victorian police patrolled set beats across London late into the night it is hardly surprising that they spent a considerable amount of their time dealing with those they found drunk and disorderly or drunk and incapable. While some were happy to go home quietly others resisted the police, with mouthfuls of abuse or by resorting to physical violence. Sometimes the offender would be allowed to sleep off his or her inebriation at the ‘nick’ but if they had added to their offence by attacking the officer that arrested them they could expect an appearance before a Police Court magistrate in the morning.

This was the fate that awaited Daniel Donnell, a ‘rough looking fellow’ who had been found dead drunk in the gutter by PC Colville of H Division (the police division that would later head the investigation to capture ‘Jack the Ripper’). PC Colville was making his way through Roberts Place when he noticed a man lying off the pavement and ‘foaming at the mouth’.

The constable knelt down and helped the man to sit up before undoing his shirt collar and scarf so he could breath more easily. It took a few moments before Donnell achieved consciousness but when he did he reacted badly. When the PC asked him where he lived he refused to say and ‘commenced to make use of most disgusting language’ before punching the policeman hard in the face.

As the copper reeled Donnell attacked again, punching him and knocking him to the floor where he started kicking him in the side. Another offer was soon on the scene and he struggled with the drunk. In the end it took several officers to secure Donnell and frog-march him to the station.

When the case came before Mr Saunders at Thames Police Court Donnell claimed he’d only been defending himself. He alleged that PC Colville had attacked him with his truncheon first, something the policeman denied. This defence might have had more credence if Donnell had reported it to an inspector when he arrived at the station house but there was no record of him doing so.

Mr Saunders didn’t believe his story and with more than one policeman lining up to verify each others’ account of that night Donnell had little chance of being believed anyway.

The magistrate told him that ‘such scandalous conduct as he had been guilty of could not be tolerated, and he would go to prison for seven days with hard labour’.

This is one of those cases in which two very different accounts are possible but only one emerges as being plausible to the press and magistracy. It is deemed inconceivable that the police would use violence against a working class man found drunk in the street who resisted attempts to move him on. The police present themselves as the victims in a situation where they acted out of concern for a drunk’s welfare and were met with violence and abuse as a result of this.  There is clearly a possible alternative scenario here but given that the policemen of H Division could present a united front there was zero chance that anyone would believe it. How many more ‘drunk and incapable’ or ‘assaults on the police’ could be interpreted differently if independent witnesses had been around to validate them?

That said it is equally possible that Donnell was simply a violent, foul-mouthed drunk who did exactly as described  and fully deserved the week’s incarceration he received from the ‘beak’.

[from The Illustrated Police News, Saturday, March 26, 1881]

You are ‘ruining my brains’:the effects of imprisonment on one Londoner

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Kate Driscoll was a regular in the Clerkenwell Police Court. The 25 year-old book folder* of ‘no fixed abode’ had been sent to prison on numerous occasions in the late 1890s for acts of violence or criminal damage, usually when she was much the worse for drink.

On Saturday, the 7 January 1899 she was entered Frederick Glover’s music shop at 185 Upper Islington. It was just before midnight (and so we learn that in those days shops were sometimes still open, even very later a night) and, as usual, Kate was drunk. This time her ‘poison’ was rum but I imagine she drank whatever she could get her hands on.

Having pushed her way into the shop she collided with a music stand sending it, and the musical score on it, tumbling to the floor. Mr Glover, understandably concerned for his merchandise, remonstrated with her and got a mouthful of abuse for his trouble. As Kate tried to pull over another display Glover grabbed her and managed to manhandle her off of his premises and in to the street.

Kate sat down on the pavement, and removed one of her boots. Slowly pulling herself upright she turned and aimed the heel at the window to express her displeasure at being so rudely ejected. As the boot made contact with the shop window it smashed the plate glass, doing an estimated £4 10s worth of damage.

The sound alerted PC Jones (222C) who arrested her and marched Kate off to the station, but not before she had managed to land him a punch in the face. On Monday she was back in court at Clerkenwell before Mr Bros, the sitting magistrate. There Kate admitted the damage and the assault on the constable.

‘I admit I struck him and knocked his helmet off’, she told Mr Bros, ‘but the officer threw me down. What I did was in self defence’, adding that ‘the drink was in me’.

‘I have no doubt about that’, countered the magistrate, ‘what have you to say’?

”Well these long terms of imprisonment you are giving me are ruining my brains’ was Kate’s riposte; ‘I only came out after doing six months on Saturday last, and, you see, the least drop [of alcohol] upsets me’.

There was little alternative to prison for Kate in 1899; the Police Court Missionary Service had been attending courts for the last couple of decades but they only really helped those willing to ‘take the pledge’ to abstain from alcohol and Kate wasn’t quite ready for that. After 1887 courts could release offenders convicted of certain crimes on their recognisances but this applied only to first offenders, and Kate Driscoll hardly qualified.

So Mr Bros, whether happily or against his better judgement, did what he had to do and sent her to gaol once more. She got two months for the criminal damage and three for the assault.’Five months, oh my heart!’ cried Kate, ‘I can do it’ she added, before she was taken away to start her latest period of incarceration.

[from The Standard, Tuesday, January 10, 1899]

*someone employed by a printer or bookbinder to fold sheets of paper to form the pages of a book. We can now do this mechanically. 

You can use this site to search for specific crimes or use the Themes link in the menu on the left to look for areas or topics that interest you. If you are interested in a particular court (such as Bow Street or Marylebone) you can also limit your search to one court in particular. Please feel free to comment on anything you read and if something in particular interests you then please get in touch. You can email me at drew.gray@northampton.ac.uk

Winter is coming and for one mother that means a spell inside

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Winter is coming.

Hallowe’en has come and gone and Bonfire Night is looming. The clocks have gone back and the air has turned distinctly chilly. Yesterday in town I noticed more rough sleepers than usual around King’s Cross and St Pancras and reflected once again that our modern society still hasn’t solved the problem of poverty.

The reports from the Victorian Police Courts provide ample evidence that desperation and poverty were endemic in the 1800s. This was a society without a welfare state, with no old age pension scheme, or National Health Service, or social services. Where we have a benefits system (however flawed) they had the workhouse or charity and recourse to either meant shame and failure.

In our ‘modern’ world we have people whose lives have been destroyed by drink or drugs and both provide the really desperate with the anaesthetic they need to simply survive on day-to-day basis. I saw a notice yesterday that said, ‘would you smash up a phone box to get 24 hours in a dry cell with food?’

This is a reality for some people in ‘modern’ Britain.

In October 1865 Mary M’Grath was charged at Thames Police Court with being drunk and disorderly and punching a policeman. Mary was about 30 years old and had a baby with her in court. PC John Mansfield (393K) testified that on the previous afternoon he had seen Mary rolling about, quite drunk, on the East India Dock Road.

She was carrying her infant and staggering about so badly that she kept banging into the nearby ‘walls and houses’. The child was ‘injured and screamed fearfully’, he added. Mary kept up a stream of the most unpleasant language, so disgusting that several onlookers complained to him about it.

Eventually  she fell heavily and a man rushed up to save the child and a police sergeant arrived to help  PC Mansfield take her to the police station. Once there she rewarded him with more abuse and landed a blow on his face, blackening his eye and impairing his sight.

The next day they appeared in court before Mr Paget, the magistrate, who asked the constable what had become of the child.

‘It was taken to the workhouse’, the policeman replied.

‘How old is it?’ the magistrate asked him.

‘Four months old’.

‘It is eight months old’, piped up Mary from the dock.

Mr Paget declared that nothing was more disgraceful than seeing a mother so drunk in public. Didn’t she have a husband at home he enquired.

‘No sir, my husband died seven years ago’, came the reply. So her baby was illegitimate and presumably the product of new relationship or a casual encounter, and no father was present in court. Drunk, riotous and promiscuous the magistrate was probably thinking, a suitable object not for pity but for condemnation.

In reality of course Mary’s life became that much more difficult when her husband had passed away. She would have lost the main bread winner and her partner. It is likely she already had children so they would have added to her problems. Perhaps this explains her descent into alcoholism.

She told him that she couldn’t remember what had happened the previous day, so drunk had she been. She had been inside the workhouse, and therefore destitute as no one went inside iff they could possibly help it.

‘I was there long enough’ she explained, and ‘I was half starved’ and ‘discharged myself. I took a drop [of alcohol] and lost myself’.

So in her version of events  she had been so malnourished in the ‘house’ that a small amount of drink (probably gin) had affected her much more than it would normally. It was probably an exaggeration of the truth but it did her no good. Instead of opting to find her some help in the form of money, food and shelter Mr Paget sent her to prison for a month at hard labour.

She had merely swapped one uncaring institution for another. As for the child, well as a ‘suckling’ Mr Paget decided it needed to stay with its mother, so off to goal it went as well.

This was an oft repeated story in Victorian London. Children were growing up affected by alcoholism, grinding poverty, homelessness, and sometimes, prison. No wonder reformers demanded change and some turned to ‘extreme’ politics (like socialism or anarchism). Men like Paget had comfortable lives and sat in judgement for the most part on those that scraped by.

Can we, hand on heart, say that 150 years later everything is so much better? Yes, of course to an extent we have provided a much better safety net for Mary M’Grath and her baby. But have we really tackled the root causes of her poverty? No, I don’t think we have  and while we pursue a form of economics and politics that allows some people to live in epic luxury while others sleep rough on the streets I don’t think we can sit in judgement of our ancestors either.

Winter is coming.

[from The Morning Post, Wednesday, November 01, 1865]

A policeman brought to book – for assaulting an ‘unfortunate’

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Springtime in St James’ Park, London, c.1849

By the end of the 19th century most of the cases brought before the Police magistrates of the capital were initiated by the police themselves. This seems to have developed gradually from the 1830s as the ‘new police’ grew into their role after 1829. In the 1700s prosecution had been victim-led and, while this persisted throughout the 1800s, the presence of the ‘boys in the blue’ on the streets inevitably led to them prosecuting in court those they had arrested on their beats.

Maria Fenton was one of those arrested and charged in court on the word of a policeman. But in her case there was some doubt and it led to the copper himself having to answer some awkward questions about his professional conduct.

In March 1849 Maria was walking in St James’ Park, near Buckingham Palace when she was stopped by two policemen. In was very early in the morning, ‘before day break’ she told the sitting justice at Bow Street; she’d had a drink but swore she wasn’t drunk.

The press reporter described as an ‘unfortunate girl’ – Victorian code for a young prostitute. The police would have assumed that Maria was a prostitute, for what other reason would a working-class woman have to be wandering around the park in the early hours of a cold March morning?

One of the policemen, PC Pike (A224), told the court that he had arrested her because she was ‘creating a disturbance and [was] using disgusting language’. When he had given his testimony however, his inspector came forward to say that another officer, PC Whitty (A210) wished to speak on behalf of the defendant. Whitty told the Bow Street court that it was Pike who was in wrong, not the girl and so the magistrate turned the case on its head. Pike left the court and returned some short time afterwards, dressed in civilian clothes and was placed in the dock accused of assaulting  Maria and falsely arresting her.

Maria now gave her account. She accused Pike of swearing at her; called her a ‘b___h’ and pushing her over onto the ground in the park. When he pulled herself to her feet he sent her tumbling gain, but she got a good look at him and took a note of his number. Pike then called her ‘a hag’ and threatened to ‘lock her up’. When she continued to argue with him he took her into custody and ‘dragged her to the station’.

Back at the police station Whitty told Pike that if this came to court he would speak the truth, in favour of the girl. Pike replied that he ‘was a bl___y fool, and that if the sergeant got to hear of it they should all get into a row’. He corroborated Maria’s evidence in front of the magistrate and added that she had said nothing at all until his colleague had picked on her.

Not surprisingly Pike defended himself and said he would never have arrested the girl if she hadn’t been making such a noise, ‘screaming and making a disturbance’. Yes, he admitted, he had called her ‘a drunken beast’ but that was the extent of his ‘abuse’ of her. He called two other policemen, A226 and A229, both of whom backed his account, not Whitty’s. They said they had heard ‘the woman creating a great disturbance, using awful language, and attempting to escape from Pike, who was taking her to the station-house’.

The magistrate had now heard both sides, with supporting evidence from police officers and he had a hard decision to make. Should he believe PC Pike and the two other policemen, or should he listen to PC Whitty and the word of a young woman who by her own testimony was clearly not ‘respectable’?

In the end he did what we might not have expected him to do; he sided with PC Whitty and the girl. However, he chose to apply some leniency to Pike who had been with A Division for six months. He told Pike that legislation (unspecified here) allowed him to impose a prison sentence, but he had no need to take such drastic action. He could instead impose a fine of up to £10 and he set this at £5 (or a month’s imprisonment). The report doesn’t state which option Pike (whom I imagine was unlikely to have been able to continue in the force – at least not at A Division) chose.

I suspect this was a very rare example of police misconduct (as the justice described it) being dealt with publicly. But in 1849 the ‘new’ police were still very new and were the subject of debate and no little criticism. Perhaps the capital’s most senior magistrate (at Bow Street) was minded to take account of this prevailing attitude and nip bad police behaviour in the bud whenever he could.

[from Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, Sunday, March 4, 1849]