Tag: boxing

A routine mugging reveals a Freemason connection

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John Palmer was an ordinary sort of bloke. He gave his occupation as ‘labourer’ (frequently a default term for those appearing before the courts in Victorian London, suggesting he was a casual worker). He certainly wasn’t a rich man, by any stretch of the imagination and, as he walked home one late evening in March 1870, he only had a few shillings in his pocket.

This didn’t stop him falling victim to violence and robbery however. Palmer may have enjoyed a few pints after work, which would have made him more vulnerable to being attacked. He was hardly a prize though, but to James Tyson and John Sadler that didn’t matter. Tyson was a trained boxer – a pugilist to give the contemporary term – and so was well suited to a bit of ‘rough stuff’. Sadler was a betting agent, so also probably quite able to mix it when he needed to.

The pair fell on Palmer as he made his way home; Sadler jumped him, knocking him to the ground before Tyson used his weight to hold him down. They rifled his pockets and extracted 7 shillings and ran off. Palmer reported the incident to a nearby policeman who took descriptions and set a search in motion. The culprits were caught just a few hours later, one of them by a detective.

When Sadler was searched he was found to have quite a haul. The police discovered  a number of pawn tickets (often evidence of theft) all for ‘valuable gold and silver watches’ as well as gold Albert chains and some broken watch-bows. Some of these might be able to be identified but even more significant a find was a gold locket ‘with a ruby heart at the centre’ and a Freemason’s gold medal. The medal was inscribed:

‘The Most Noble Augustus Frederick, Duke of Leinster, Grand Master of the order in Ireland, 3rdJanuary, 1848’.

Augustus Frederick, the Marquess of Kildare (right, below pictured in 1859) was an old man by 1870. Born in the previous century by the time his medal turned up in the pocket of a petty thief in London he was close to 80 years of age and would only live another three. He became head of the Grand Lodge of Ireland in 1813 and apparently kept a tight rein on how all Freemasonary operated on the Emerald Isle. 2911106-09

In court at Marlborough Street the police reported that both James Tyson and John Sadler were well known to them. Mr Mansfield, the sitting Police Court magistrate, was told that there were ‘frequenters of racecourses’ and known to be ‘magsmen’ and ‘welshers’.

Eric Partridge’s 1949 Dictionary of the Underworld defines a ‘magsman’ thus:

‘Swell mobites’; ‘a fashionably dressed swindler’; or ‘fellows who are too cowardly to steal, but prefert o cheat confiding persons by acting upon the cupidity’. It included ‘card-sharpers, confidence tricksters, begging letter writers, and ‘bogus ministers of religion’.

Perhaps by 1870 ‘magsmen’ was being used more broadly to apply to a member of the more fashionably dressed ‘criminal class’. As for ‘welsher’, Partridge lists:

‘passer of counterfeit money’ or (in the USA) an informer.

However the terms were being applied Mr Mansfield was pretty confident that he had two ‘bad eggs’ in his dock and he acquiesced to the police request to remand them in custody while they continued their enquiries.

Whatever results these enquiries yielded we are, sadly, in the dark about. I can find no record of either man in the higher courts in the immediate aftermath of their appearance before Mr Mansfield. This suggests the police’s evidence was thin or that they were able to buy off Palmer as a potential witness against them. They might have argued they’d ‘found’ the items discovered in their possession at the racecourse they ‘frequented’. Who knows, but like so many of the stories of the police courts carried by the London press this one lacks a conclusion.

[from The Pall Mall Gazette, Thursday 31 March 1870]

Today I have started work on my next book, which is a history of these courts, provisionally titled Nether World: Crime and the Police Courts in Victorian London.  My most recent book (Jack and the Thames Torso Murders: A New Ripper), is available on Amazon and the next one in the pipeline, Murder Maps, will be published by Thames & Hudson later this year. I’ll keep you all posted.

Take care of yourselves in these difficult times.

Don’t put your sons on the stage Mr Gamgee, they are too young to box

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William Gamgee wanted his two sons to be able to take up a ‘manly’ sport but before he could let them appear on the stage of the Royal Aquarium in Tothill Street he had to get a magistrate’s permission. It might seem odd to us that such restrictions existed in the late 1800s, after all this was a society that still sent fairly young children to prison, locked them in workhouses, and expected them to work long hours in factories and mills. But, slowly, things were improving.

Gamgee, a hairdresser, appeared before Mr Partridge at Westminster Police court in early December 1889 to make his case.  He brought his lads along, together with the outfits they would wear and the boxing gloves they’d use in the bouts. He was applying for a license under the terms of the Act for the Better Protection of Children for the boys to ‘box nightly in costume’.

To support his case he’d brought along a certificate from ‘a gentleman designating himself as a bone-setter’ who declared that, in his opinion, boxing was beneficial to the general health of boys. He also had a letter from his sons’ schoolmaster confirming that they were regular attendees at school and were making good progress with their studies.

Gamgee said that he would get no financial reward for the boys’ performance and they themselves would not be paid, but would be given gold medals for their efforts. ‘That is all’, he stated.

Mr Partridge wanted to examine the gloves the pair would be using. He wasn’t sure that they wouldn’t hurt them but Gamgee assured them that the boys are never bruised’. ‘They only have three short rounds, and I decide when time is up’, he explained. They’d been training for a year and a half for this opportunity but it wasn’t his intention for them to go on to become pugilists in the future.

The boys seemed to have a different opinion. When asked if they’d rather be boxers or follow their father’s trade of hairdressing they were adamant that they wanted to be fighters. ‘Which is the best “man” of the two?’ asked the magistrate.

‘We are as good as each other’, came the reply, to laughter in court.

The police said that they had examined the boys (‘stripped’) and thought them to be in good health and showing no signs of harm from their training. The inspector didn’t think the gloves would harm them and so all the signs for Gamgee seemed good. So it was probably something of a surprise when Mr Partridge refused to grant his application.

[from The Standard, Thursday, December 05, 1889]

A brawl at the boxing, and bouncers are injured

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The Royal Aquarium, c.1876

Thomas Clayton and Henry Sealey were on the door at the Royal Aquarium to ensure that only paying punters got in to see the show. The show in question was a boxing match and the crowd that night contained some of London’s rowdier inhabitants.

Amongst them was Thomas Pearce, a ‘burly man’ of 29, who looked as if he possessed ‘great physical power’ in the opinion of the police court reporter who saw him stood in the dock at Westminster. Peace had arrived with several of his mates. They’d been drinking and their blood was up, excited to see the pugilists fight.

They forced their way through the crowds and headed for the half-guinea stalls, even though they’d only paid 2s for the cheap seats. When Clayton and Sealey challenged them they were rewarded with a mouthful of abuse and then assaulted.

Clayton, who was an older man not the sort of ‘bouncer’ we’d expect to see today, was punched hard in the face and knocked to the ground. While he was prone the gang closed in, Pearce being the ringleader, and kicked at him. He lost three front teeth and a lot of blood.

Sealey was also badly beaten and ended up, like his colleague, in the Westminster Hospital. Both victims appeared in court swathed in bandages and with very obvious bruising to their faces. Sealey’s right eye was almost closed.

Pearce denied instigating the violence. Instead he claimed his group were picked on when they started cheering one of the boxers, Kendrick, and only retaliated to the violence shown to them. Clayton refuted this but when Mr D’Eyncourt was told that he’d only recently been released from prison after serving a month for assault he remanded him in custody so the police could gather some evidence against him.

The Royal Aquarium had opened in 1876 on Tothill Street, near the Abbey and usually hosted exhibitions and more high-brow entertainment than boxing, such as plays or concerts. However towards the end of the 1880s its reputation had fallen and it became associated with loose morality and even prostitution. It fell into disuse at the turn of the century and was knocked down in 1903.

There have been many boxers named Kendrick but the only one I can find anywhere close to 1889 would be Bob Kendrick who turned professional in 1903 and boxed at various weights until 1917. He hailed from Spitalfields in the East End but whether this was the man that Pearce and his chums had gone to support, or perhaps a relative, I can’t say for sure.

[from The Standard, Wednesday, December 04, 1889]

A bareknuckle fight in the grounds of Ally Pally

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Police constables Rudkin (696Y) and Mitchell (467Y) had got a tip off that an illegal prize fight was happening on their patch, which covered the area around Alexandra Palace in north London. So, on the morning of Sunday 18 November 1883 they hurried off to investigate.

As the officers were coming along a public footpath from Muswell Hill to Mr Cotton’s fields they saw a lot of male heads gathered in a large circle and the sounds of ‘blows and scuffling’. They were close to a railway bridge and some observers had stationed themselves up their to get a better view of proceedings.

This also allowed several people to see the approaching policemen and the cry went up:

‘Look out! here’s the police!’

The crowd scattered in all directions with the two bobbies in pursuit. PC Mitchell saw one of the men that had been fighting and chased him into a field, catching him up and arresting him. His name was William Rearden and he was stripped to waist and wearing only ‘slippers’ on his feet. The other boxer managed to get away so the coppers had to be satisfied with breaking up the fight and the capture of just one of the fighters.

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Rearden could hardly deny being in a fight. He was bleeding from his mouth and ears and there was a large and recent bruise developing on his chest. This was bare-knuckle boxing, not a fight sanctioned by the Queensbury rules.

Rearden was adamant that he’d done nothing wrong. When captured he surrendered immediately and promised to ‘go quietly’ to the police station. He insisted it was just a fight to settle a dispute he had with his adversary, no ‘prize’ was involved. The police had found no evidence of a ‘professional’ fight: no ring, no gloves or seconds and of course, no second fighter was in custody.

In the end the case came before Mr Bodkin at the Highgate Police court. Rearden told the magistrate that he was an ex-soldier who had served in Egypt and South Africa, He’d been decorated for his service and proudly wore his medal ribbons in court.  He was able to produce a certificate of his service and good character and was still on the Army Reserve list.

Moreover, he was in work, as a bricklayer, and he had no record of being in trouble with the law previously. All this counted in his favour and persuaded the justice that a ticking off would suffice. Fighting in public was unlawful Mr Bodkin told him but in light of his record he would merely bind him over to keep the peace for six months. Having agreed to enter into recognizances of £20 Rearden (known as ‘Roberts’ in the Army) was released to his friends.

[from The Standard, Tuesday, November 20, 1883]

Police break up a prize fight in the East End

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The East End of London is synonymous with boxing. I was fortunate enough to be invited to watch a series of bouts at York Hall a few years ago and the place was packed with locals, all knowledgeable about this sport. I’m aware that boxing isn’t everybody’s idea of a sport but when its fair, properly regulated, and boxers are protected, I think it is captivating.

There has been boxing in the East End for centuries, with pugilists drawn from all communities. In the late 1700s for example Daniel Mendoza (or ‘Mendoza the Jew’) held the English heavyweight title. He lived in Bethnal Green for over 30 years. Another son of Bethnal Green was Joe Anderson who rose to be ‘All England’ champion in 1897.

However, while boxing had emerged from bare-knuckle fights there was increasing concern to minimize the violence and reduce the risk to fighters. in 1866 bare-knuckle prize fights were made illegal and the police tasked with closing them down.

In October 1888, when you might have thought the police would have other, more important things, to concern themselves with, Inspector Joseph Capp was on watch outside number 30 East Road (on the City Road) with a number of uniformed constables. He was acting on information that the address, home to a German club called ‘The Morning Star’ was hosting an illegal prize fight.

Capp and his men knocked on the door of the club but no one answered. He tried again, with no more success and so decided to try and gain access to the roof. Inspector Capp managed to climb up onto the roof of the club, via an adjoining house, and tried to peer into the club through a skylight. The glass was cloudy however, and he couldn’t see what was going on below.

He could hear however and he heard the sounds of a crowd, of someone shouting ‘time!’ and then the sounds of blows. These were hard blows, not he thought, ones muffled by the use of gloves. This then was a bare-knuckle prizefight and he instructed his men to surround the club and move in to arrest those involved.

As his officers clambered over walls and forced their way inside there was a rush of people as the audience tried to escape. The police managed to get in however, and found 200-300 people inside. There was a ‘ring made of ropes and stakes in the centre of the hall’, and two boxers squaring up to each other. They were quickly arrested and carted off to the local nick.

At Worship Street Police court Mr Monatgu Williams (the presiding magistrate) was told that the police had found lots of tickets on the floor of the hall. These were for a dancing ball, the ruse that the organizers had chosen to cover their illegal event. A poster outside promised that dancing would start at 8.30 but the only dancing would be around the ring.

The police also seized ‘gloves, towels, ropes, etc’, all evidence that a fight was underway there. Both the men in the dock were bruised and bloodied so by the time the raid had stopped the fight it was clear it had been going on for some time.

One of the pair they’d arrested – Charles Smith, a 20 year-old bookmaker from Whitechapel – was bleeding from his ear and vomiting when he’d been arrested. He had been treated by the divisional surgeon so that he was fit to attend court. Both he and the other fighter, Arthur Wilkinson (a fish fryer from King’s Cross, also 20) were bailed to appear at a later date. A week later both were fully committed for trial.

On 22 November Smith and Wilkinson appeared before a jury at the Middlesex Sessions of the Peace, charged with ‘inflicting grievous bodily harm and conspiring together to commit a breach of the peace by engaging in a prize fight’. The defence was that this was ‘nothing but a glove fight’ but Inspector Capp was sure the noise of blows he’d heard (he had not been able to see the fight of course) were not, he thought, muffled by gloves. Gloves were found but they were still tied to the ring posts, perhaps to be quickly put on had the police not been able to gain access so quickly. A man named Marks, who was described as a ‘commission agent’ claimed he had tied the gloves on the hands of the fighters, so the men’s defense rested on whom the jury believed.

The pair were convicted and initially fined £10 each plus costs but the case was also adjourned for a month while the organization of the fight was investigated. It was estimated that the event had generated taxable profits, which also required an additional fine to be paid. However, there was a desire that neither of the men should be sent to gaol and that the persons responsible for organising the fight (and probably those who profited most from it) should be forced to pay the bulk of the £36 17s that was deemed to be owed in tax.

As a result the enquiries continued, Smith and Wilkinson’s fines were reduced to just £2 each and they were given more time to pay. Wilkinson was still in prison in early January 1889 which suggests he was unable to pay his reduced fine and costs. He was also instructed to keep the peace for six months, which presumably entailed refraining from bare knuckle fighting in the near future.

In 1897 the Queensbury Rules were instigated in an attempt to clean up the sport and bring it respectability. There are still issues with boxing today and boxers are still injured and die, but medical support is much better than it has ever been. Do go to York hall and take in a bout or two, it is a very friendly place and a connection to a long standing local heritage.

[from The Morning Post, Monday, October 22, 1888; Reynolds’s Newspaper, Sunday, October 28, 1888; The Standard, Friday, November 23, 1888]

‘There’s never a policeman here when he is wanted’: criticism of the police is nothing new

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Police Court magistrates didn’t work for the police and often didn’t even support the police, even when they brought accusations against individuals for assaulting them. I think the law is much more likely today to protect officers, even those who, like the case I bring you today, could be said to have acted rashly or at least, might have made better decisions.

Police constable 405T (no name is given sadly) was off duty and had gone to fetch himself a jug of beer to enjoy at home. As he reached his home in Rock Avenue, Fulham one of his neighbours from across the road hailed him.

‘There’s never a policeman here when he is wanted’, cried Mrs Baxter, who may have just been on the end of bit of verbal or even physical abuse from her husband. Frederick Baxter was drunk and he wandered out of his home just in time to see the officer, standing toe-to-toe with his missus, declared: ‘One here’.

Tearing off his shirt Baxter squared up to the policeman and challenged him to fight. The constable carefully took off his hat and coat and put up his fists. Baxter struck first and, despite being the worse for drink, connected powerfully. The policeman reeled backwards sporting a rapidly blackening eye. A small crowd watched as they fought for four or five ‘rounds’ like a couple of prizefighters. Eventually, and possibly because he was coming off much the worst, the PC revealed who he was and told his opponent his was arresting him for assault.

The next morning Baxter was brought from the cells to face an examination before Mr Paget at Hammersmith Police court. Baxter claimed he had no idea that his opponent was a policeman, even though he lived opposite. He said he believed that his wife was being insulted, and perhaps was being propositioned. The officer thought he would have known but he wasn’t in uniform so, in his drunken state, he may not have. Mrs Baxter had no complaint against the office but he had ‘knocked up against her’ so we can see why Baxter might have been angered.

The magistrate reserved his ire for the policeman who he clearly believed had acted inappropriately. He should have declared that he was a police officer straight away, not halfway through a fistfight. ‘He was not entitled to because he was a constable off duty to take the law into his own hands’.

To put it mildly, he concluded, the officer had behaved ‘most injudiciously and in an improper manner’. He discharged the prisoner and recommended that the constable’s conduct should be investigated by his inspector, to see if any disciplinary action was necessary.

This incident happened in early September 1888 and by the end of that autumn the reputation of the metropolitan Police had been dragged through the mud yet again as they failed to catch ‘Jack the Ripper’. This – mostly unfair criticism – was added to deep-rooted working-class dislike of the police for their role as instruments of enforcing moral and economic rules, and as ‘class traitors’ in their own communities.

The 1880s, with Bloody Sunday, the Great Dock Strike, Fenian Terrorism and a serial killer on the loose, was not a happy decade for the ‘boys in blue’.

[from The Morning Post, Thursday, September 06, 1888]

A ‘young hero’ engages in an ‘attaque à outrance’ near Battersea Bridge

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On Sunday afternoon, the 7 October 1860 PC John McGuire of V Division was called to attend an incident in Lindsay Place close to Battersea Bridge.  When he got there he saw a huge crowd of youths, possibly as many as 200, which formed a ring. As he forced his way through the throng he found two young lads, aged about 10, slugging it out in the centre.

He stopped the fight and soon discovered that the boys had been at it for ages, being dragged apart on no less that six occasions already. They seemed very determined to fight and it took all of PC McGuire’s physical and persuasive abilities to get them to stand down and to take them into custody.

Both lads were bailed to appear the following morning at Westminster Police court but only one of them, James Wood, turned up.    The court heard that ‘the mantles of Sayers and Heenan’ had ‘descended upon their shoulders’ and that they had ‘made up their minds to do battle à l’outrance’ (or attack to excess as the expression translates).

The reference to Sayers and Heenan was to what has been termed the world’s first title fight which took place in April 1860. The American champion John Carmel Heenan came to England to fight the British boxer Tom ‘Brighton Titch’ Sayers. Thousands flocked to Farnborough to see the fight that ended in a bloody draw as the police raided the venue. The fight was illegal and no rules on the length of ‘rounds’ applied then. However, the fight prompted questions in Parliament and led to the formation of the ‘Dozen Rules’ by the London Amateur Athletic Club in 1865. These were approved in parliament and were sponsored by John Sholto Douglas, the Marquess of Queensbury.

As for James Wood the magistrate at Westminster, Mr Paynter, asked why the fight had occurred. James explained that he had caught his opponent trying to drown a dog and when he had tried to stop him the pair had agreed to settle it with their fists. It was a noble gesture in the eyes of the press who described him as a ‘young hero’ (perhaps a little tongue in cheek), and Mr Paynter perhaps agreed. However, fighting on a Sunday was against the law and the justice warned him not to engage in it again, and then let him go, his reputation significantly enhanced by his day in court.

The other lad (who remained unnamed) suffered by comparison. The papers suggested that ‘the long arm of the law [was possibly] too strong for his juvenile constitution’.

[from The Morning Post, Tuesday, October 09, 1860]

Like this? You might enjoy these other posts that involve boxing:

Illegal boxing in North East London

‘They fought very severely for little boys’; tragedy in Rotherhithe.

The Marlborough Street magistrate helps Big Ben’s missus deliver a knock-out blow

‘They fought very severely for little boys’; tragedy in Rotherhithe.

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Today’s story picks up on where we left it yesterday, with a young lad of 12 being committed for trial for killing another youth in a fist fight at Rotherhithe. A police inspector from the Thames office was also charged with being an accessory, as he was seen to encourage the boy to strike down his opponent. The trial took place on 10 May 1858 in the Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey.

Martha Warren was the first witness to take the stand. She swore that she saw the fight taking place in Cross Street, Rotherhithe at 1 in the afternoon. There was a ring of boys surrounding the pair, but only three adults were present, one of whom was Henry Hambrook a police inspector although at the time he was on sick leave and was quite close to retiring from the force.

Martha testified that she had heard the policeman utter the words ‘Give it him right and left, and hit him once under the ear, and he won’t want to fight again’, and soon afterwards saw the victim, Thomas Boulton, fall down after William Selless landed just such a blow under his ear. It was clearly a shock to William to see what effect his assault had had on the other boy, and as we saw yesterday he ran all the way home to his mother scared of what would happen next.

Martha was able to identify one of the three men gathered at the scene, his name was John Ventham, and she must have known him as a local man. Under cross examination she was clear that none of the men had tried to separate the lads, instead they watched and encouraged the fight. She heard Hambrook tell Sellers:

‘Keep up to him, young one, and give him right and left’ before whispering something else in his ear. 

When Boulton fell to the floor with a scream Hambrook did nothing to help she added, but simply ‘put up his hand and went away’. Others did come to help, including a woman who rushed over to fetch some water in a tub. The stricken lad was carried off by one of the bystanders, a Mr. Kitchen, but died of his injury.

James Francis also witnessed the fight and heard the policeman offer his advice to Selless. He gave some background to the fight as well, telling the court that the two lads were actually friends and that the quarrel between them had arisen over ‘three buttons’ and an accusation that Selless had failed to look after the other boy’s goat. Boulton had started it and he was, as others had noted, the taller and slightly older of the pair (Boulton was 13, Selless just 12).

The fight was conducted like a boxing match – the pair traded blows and they fought in rounds. Selless had been knocked down early in the conflict, but regained his feet. Perhaps the crucialy part of Francis’ testimony was when he said that ‘they fought very severely for little boys, [but] not so violently as they did when Hambrook came’.

This suggested that the police inspector, who should surely have put a stop to the fight actually chose to escalate it and his actions had a direct impact on the tragedy that happened that day.

The fight seems to have been quite well balanced for the most part, Selless went down twice, his opponent three times, as they squared up to each other. It must have gone on for 15 minutes or more before Selless landed his fatal blow. Thomas Simpson, a local surgeon, who testified that the cause of death was a ruptured blood vessel close to the lad’s ear, examined Boulton. He suspected that the injury was caused by the fall however, not the blow itself. It was an accident born out of the fight, nothing deliberate or malicious.

‘The sudden fall would be quite sufficient to rupture the blood vessel’ he said, ‘considering the excited state the vessels were in—it was what would be called an apoplectic fit—there was not the slightest mark under the ear’.

Simpson then offered Hambrook a character witness saying he was ‘a kindly disposed, humane person’. Several others stepped up to give similar testimonials for the policeman including the officer that arrested him, who added that he was about to be pensioned out of the force on account of his failing health.

The jury were directed to convict both defendants on the strength of the facts given in court and they duly did. Both were recommend to mercy however, and the judge took this into account in sentencing.

He sent Sellers to prison for just three days, accepting that he had no intention to cause the death of his friend. As for Hambrook he also accepted that the man had no desire to encourage the boy to kill and that if he had ‘he should pass a very different sentence’ upon him. However, he was a police officer and his had a duty to uphold the law and keep the peace.

Instead ‘he had incited the boy Sellers [sic] to continue the contest; and there was no doubt that owing to his suggestion the fatal result had taken place’.  He would therefore go to prison with hard labour for three months.

At this Hambrook pleaded for mercy. He was ill, suffering he said from heart disease and wouldn’t cope with hard labour. The judge, Baron Martin, was implacable, there was no way he could reduce the sentence he said and the policeman was taken down.  Hambrook was 52 in 1858 so while not old, he was not young either and he might have expected a hard time in prison (as all coppers can). Moreover his disgrace would have meant the loss of his pension along with his liberty and livelihood. As for William Selless he seems to have stayed out of trouble after this but didn’t live a long life. Records suggest he died in March 1892 at the age of just 46.

This fight between two friends who fell out over something ill defined and certainly trivial ended in tragedy. Thomas Boulton lost his life and a police inspector with many years of good service lost his reputation and his future economic security. As for William Selless we should remember he too was just a child and he would have to live his life forever haunted by the sound of his friend screaming as his blow sent him crashing to the floor.

What a senseless waste of three lives.

[from The Standard, Thursday, May 13, 1858]

‘Oh, mother, have I killed him?’ Manslaughter as two boys go toe-to-toe.

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Greenwich Pier, c.1850

Today’s story will unfold in two parts and starts at the Greenwich Police court in April 1858.

William Sellis, aged just 12, was brought up before Mr Traill charged with causing the death of another boy in a fight. John Thomas Bolton (who was 13) had died following a clash in Wellington Street. What made this tragedy all the more interesting (from a newspaper’s point of view) was that Sellis was not some street urchin but the son of ‘respectable parents’ from Rotherhithe and that a police inspector was also charged as an accessory.

It was not the first hearing in the case and so some of the details were already in the public domain. Inspector Henry Hambrook of the Thames Police was accused of egging Sellis on, and urging him to target his victim:

“Give it him right and left, and hit him once under the ear, and he won’t want to fight again” he was alleged to have told the youngster.

The boys were fighting toe-to-toe as in a prizefight and Bolton was slightly taller. Two more rounds elapsed before Sellis applied the advice the inspector had given him and connected with his opponent just below the ear. According to witnesses Bolton fell to the ground, screamed and curled himself into a defensive ball. Sellis was horrified at what he’d done running home and yelling ‘Oh, mother, have I killed him?’ before going on to the doctors to see how his victim was.

In court the inspector’s lawyer pleaded on behalf of his client, emphasising his long service and the effect that any stain on his character would have on his pension and retirement. He’d served at Thames for 15 or 16 years and was currently off work on sick leave.

None of this cut much ice with the magistrate. Mr Traill said that someone with Hambrook’s knowledge of the law and position in the community should have known better than to encourage such violence.

‘It was a most abominable act’ he said adding that ‘it was the duty of every person to prevent a breach of the peace; and when an officer of the peace, who had been connect with the police’ for such a long time ‘took no steps to prevent such an act, but assisted, he thought it a most shameful proceeding’.

However, Traill didn’t seem inclined to formally commit the policeman as an accessory as he wasn’t sure the evidence of intent was there. Mr Solomon, Hambrook’s lawyer, wanted his client to speak in his own defence but the justice was not inclined to hear him. Solomon pressed his case saying that if only Handbrook could explain he was sure he would be exonerated. Finally Mr Traill agreed, and it proved to be a mistake on the defence’s part.

Hambrook chose to challenge the various witnesses that had already testified to his involvement but each one stuck to their evidence and left the inspector high and dry. The magistrate now committed both the lad and the police inspector to trial for the killing of John Bolton. Hambrook was bailed but Sellis, despite the coroner being happy to allow, was refused bail and taken away to a cell to await his transfer to trial later in the year.

I will look at that trial and its aftermath in tomorrow’s blog.

[from The Standard , Monday, April 26, 1858]