Tag: cab driver

‘Furious driving’ and RTAs: have we lost control of our streets?

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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 most outrageous assault’: more gang violence in Oxford Street

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Most of the gang crime that plagued London in the late 1800s was pretty minor compared with the stabbings and drug related crime experienced by Londoners today. Even so, then, most of the victims were rival gang members. When ordinary members of the public were caught up they were often simply harassed or shoved as they walked home from the theatre or the pub and encountered groups of ‘roughs’ on the streets.

This incident, from December 1889, was within that typology of gang attack but was of a more serious nature, which was probably why it ended up before the magistrate at Marlborough Street.

Herbert Easton was walking home along Oxford Street after a late night out in town. He was heading past Harewood Place where a group of around 20 young men were gathered. As he past them something hit him on the back and he spun round on his heels. He wasn’t drunk but he had been drinking and, possibly emboldened by the ‘Dutch courage’ he demanded to know who was responsible.

He was met by silence and denials and carried on his way.

He was quickly aware that the group was now following him, in a very threatening manner. Before he had time to take evasive action they were on him, knocking him to the ground and kicking and punching at him.  As he tried the lift his umbrella as a makeshift weapons they overpowered him and held him down with it.

Easton struggled to his feet and pushed one of his assailants away. Seeing a cab he hailed it and jumped in side. The driver set off but the lads grabbed hold of the reins and one, George Leonard, tried to clamber into the cab. As Easton fought and grappled with Leonard the driver shouted out for help. A constable was quickly on the scene and fought his way through the throng, blowing his whistle to summons others.

As a number of officers arrived and the gang decided their luck was up, they melted away leaving Leonard in police custody. The police ordered the cabbie to make directly for Marlborough Police station where the young ‘rough’ was charged and thrown in a cell.

Appearing before Mr Hannay he had little to say for himself. The magistrate was much more forthcoming however. He told George Leonard (19) that this was ‘one of the worst street outrages he had ever heard of’ and sent him to prison for two months with hard labour.

[from The Standard, Tuesday, December 10, 1889]

A cab driver hits rock bottom as he plunges into the Thames’ polluted waters.

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Constable William Hanson (103F) was on duty on Waterloo Bridge when a hansom cab pulled up. Nothing unusual in that of course but what followed was.

The driver leapt down from the cab, rushed to the side of the bridge and then, before PC Hanson could react, threw himself over the side. The officer shouted for help as he heard the splash, and charged down the steps to the riverside.

Charles Field’s life must have swirled around him as he plunged into the Thames’ murky waters and poisonous waters. In July and August of that year the pollution in the Thames, always bad, had reached new heights, as raw sewage emptied into the river in unprecedented quantities bring death and disease in its wake. The ‘Great Stink’ closed Parliament and forced the authorities to take action. Eventually new sewers were designed and built and a monument to their creators, Charles Bazalgette, can still be seen on London’s Embankment.

This was all in the future as Charles Field struggled and sank through the filthy waters. Twice he touched the riverbed before rough hands lifted him clear and into a boat. A waterman had been passing under the bridge at just the right moment, heard the splash, and pulled his oars hard to reach the drowning man.

Between them the waterman and the policeman managed to save the cab driver’s life and PC Hanson helped him to Charing Cross Hospital where he remained for the best part of two weeks as he recovered.

Attempting suicide was a crime however, and so, on the 2 November 1858, Charles Field was set in the dock at Bow Street and formally charged. Having heard the circumstances Mr Jardine, London’s most senior magistrate,  asked him to explain himself.

Field was full of regret for his actions and said he never intended to ‘destroy himself’.  For weeks he had suffered with ‘rheumatic gout’ and that had affected his ability to work. Since he couldn’t take his cab out his family suffered, and his wife was ‘afflicted with paralysis’ so she was unable to help either.

It was desperate but with no social security or health service to fall back on there was little Charles could do but carry on. The 50 year-old cut a sad figure in the dock, looking ‘extremely ill’ and clearly at his wits end. He said that on the day he jumped he had finally managed to go out in the cab, things looked like they might start to improve at last.

But then disaster struck. He was so far behind with his rent that his landlord turned them all out on the street and seized his furniture and effects. His brother gave them a room but he had no money for food. Field went out with his cab but had a ‘bad day’, took little money and found himself on Waterloo Bridge facing the prospect of going home empty handed.

Which is why something broke inside him and he decided to take his own life.

The magistrate turned to the police constable and asked him whether all of this was true. It was, PC Hanson confirmed. He had made enquiries and discovered that the defendant’s wife and children were ‘actually starving’. Given this, and Field’s very obvious remorse, Mr Jardine said he would not punish him. He reprimanded him, reminding the cab driver that suicide was a crime as well as a sin, but discharged him. He ordered that Charles Field be given 10s from the poor box ‘for his present relief’ and told him to ‘call again’ if he needed further help.

Charles Field was a working man; he’d probably been a cab driver for many years. Tough work, driving a cab in all weathers, rarely having a day off, putting up with abuse from customers and other road users. His wife was sick, his children hungry, he had a mountain of responsibilities and no means of support. He got no sick leave, no holiday pay, no unemployment benefit if he couldn’t work, no means to get credit to pay his bills. Like many poor Victorian Londoners when the fragile house of cards he had built came tumbling down he and his family were tipped into poverty.

This is why we have a system to help those that need it. Whether it be medical care that is free at the point of need, or state benefits for periods of unemployment or when work is short. This doesn’t always help of course: those working in the so-called ‘gig economy’ are rarely guaranteed pay and self-employed men like Charles Field still suffer by comparison to those of us that enjoy the benefits of sick pay and annual leave allowances.

That is why the rights of workers matter so much, and why our modern British social security system should be a source of pride, not something for politicians and wealthy press barons to sneer at and undermine.

[from The Morning Post, Wednesday, November 03, 1858]

‘I did this in a passion, he struck me first’: self-defence, vitriol, and exile to Australia

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George Day was passing along Lucas Place, Coram Street in the parish of St. Pancras, at about 2 in the morning when a woman hailed him from a house there. Day was in his cab and assumed the woman required a cab. It was pretty clear the house was one of ‘ill-repute’ (in other words a brothel) but George went inside anyway.

Once there the woman demanded that he stand her a drink and have one himself. There was no fare and Day soon realized that he’d been tricked, and started to leave. But the young woman kicked up a fuss and a heated exchange ensued, which was loud enough to be heard Mary Ann Murphy who lived nearby.  She described it as ‘a little bit of a bother’ and heard a woman’s voice say:

‘Don’t let him go, he wants to bilk her’.

‘Bilk’ was underworld slang for cheat, and as Murphy looked in through the open door she saw another woman run towards Day and throw something at him.

This woman was Elizabeth Cleveland she had thrown vitriol (sulphuric acid) in the cabbie’s face. The police arrived and Cleveland was arrested while Day was taken away for treatment.  The case came about before the magistrate at Hatton Garden but it was far too serious to be dealt with there. Cleveland was committed to Newgate and took her trial at the Old Bailey on 17 August 1840.

It may be that Day was economical with the truth that morning. Perhaps he knew it was a brothel and he’d gone in deliberately but then changed his mind. However, having crossed the threshold he was expected to pay something, if only for gawping at the girls that worked there. When he refused a fight broke out and that resulted in Elizabeth choosing the first weapon she could find. She didn’t deny throwing acid but claimed she did not know it was so concentrated; it was used for cleaning brass and was usually diluted. There was also some confusion as to whether it was a liquid or a powder (like lime) that was thrown.

It didn’t affect the outcome:  George Day had lost the sight of one eye completely and the surgeon that testified in court said there was little chance he’d ever regain the use of it. The jury convicted Elizabeth and the judge sentenced her to be transported to Australia for 15 years.

Elizabeth Cleveland had been born in Peterborough in 1787 and so, like many Londoners then and now, was a migrant to the capital. In 1840 she was 53 years of age (considered ‘old’ by one witness). She was finally put on board a ship (the Rajah) and sent to Van Dieman’s Land on 1 April 1841, landing on 19 July that year. Her record reveals that she claimed to have acted in self-defense (‘I did this in a passion, he struck me first’).

It also noted that she was a widow with one living child. Elizabeth could read but not write, she was 5’ 2” high, had brown eyes, greying dark brown hair, and was fresh faced with freckles. She gave her occupation as a cook and laundress, which is probably the role she had played in the brothel, looking after the prostitutes there.

Her instincts were to protect the young women worked with but in this case it had gone terribly wrong with awful consequences for George day and for her.

[from The Morning Chronicle, Monday, July 20, 1840]

A fatality avoided as race goers clash with an ‘honourable member’ on Wimbledon Common

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Richard Sims Donkin MP (c.1895)

On the day of the Epsom Derby 1888 (30 May) Richard Donkin was exercising his horse near Wimbledon Common. Donkin, a Tynesider, had made his wealth in shipping in the north of England and in 1885 he stood for parliament and was elected as the Conservative Party member for the new constituency of Tynemouth.

As he rode along a path that adjoined the common a waggonette approace din the opposite direction. The vehicle, a sort of large open cab capable of carrying several person, was driven by Frank Flint. Flint was carrying several passengers, taking them to the races at Epsom. As they passed Donkin there was jeering from the wagon and Flint raised his whip and struck out at the horse and rider.Unknown

The MP struggled but he was a good horseman and managed to prevent his beat losing it’s footing and sliding into a ditch at the side of the road. Had the animal fallen he feared it might have broken a leg and then have had to be put down. He made enquires and found Flint’s name and had him summoned before the magistrate at Wandsworth Police court.

The prosecution was directed by Donkin’s solicitor, Mr Haynes while Flint was defended by a Mr Hanne. The prosecution case was that this was an assault and a deliberate attempt to unseat the parliamentarian. In defence it was argued that it was all a mistake and an accident. Flint testified that his own horse had shied on seeing the other animal and that he was trying to control it when is whip accidently connected with the MP’s mount.

It was a cab driver’s word against a respected member of parliament and I think we know how those encounters were likely to play out.  For Montague Williams, the sitting magistrate, the issue was not simply who was to blame it was whether this constituted an assault. He consulted the clerk who consulted Justice (James Fitzjames) Stephen’s volume on the criminal law and decided that Flint was guilty of an indirect assault, and fined him £5.

Richard Donkin lived in Wimbledon until his death in 1919 at the age of 82. He served Tynemouth as MP until 1900 but made little impression on parliamentary history. Most of his interventions were concerned with shipping, something he knew a lot about. I’ve no idea what happened to Flint or his unruly passengers but if they had backed Ayeshire, the three year old stallion that won the Derby in May 1888 they might at least have won enough money to pay the hefty fine that Mr Williams handed down.

[from The Morning Post, Wednesday, June 13, 1888]

On June 15 Drew’s new book (co-authored by Andy Wise) is published by Amberley Books. It is a new study of the Whitechapel murders of 1888 which offers up a new suspect, links the ‘Jack the Ripper’ killings to the unsolved ‘Thames Torso’ crimes, and provides the reader with important contextual history of Victorian London. The book is available to order on Amazon here

‘Getting away with it’ in Victorian London: two cautionary tales from Marlborough Street Police court

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Here are two theft charges, heard at the Marlborough Street Police court in 1889, neither of which resulted in convictions or further action. There must have been huge numbers of pre-trial hearings which were resolved at summary level and yet we have very few surviving documentation about this important tier of the criminal justice system. There are a handful of late nineteenth-century minute books for the Thames Police office, a few for Bow Street a little earlier, and then most of what survives is for the early twentieth century.

Which means, unfortunately, that historians of crime are perhaps overly reliant  on the reporting of the summary (magistrate) process by the Victorian press. I say ‘unfortunately’ because the newspapers were, understandably, selective. In each of the daily reports from Thames, Bow Street, Marylebone or the several other metropolitan police courts the editors pick one, perhaps two cases out of dozens that came before them. In a week a police court magistrate would hear hundreds of cases but only a dozen or fewer would be written up for the newspapers’ readership.

Historians of the eighteenth-century justice system are well aware that for some periods of the 1700s the publishers of the Old Bailey Proceedings (which recounted trials that took place at what was to become the Central Criminal Court) often omitted cases which ended in acquittal for fear of demonstrating to offenders that there were successful ways to avoid conviction. One of the purposes in reporting trials of criminals was show that crime did not pay so anything that suggested you could ‘get away with it’ was unhelpful at best.

So I wonder why these two cases were the ones chosen by the editor of the Standard newspaper in April 1889 to represent the business of the Marlborough Street court?

First Clara Newton was accused of stealing £3 and 3s from a man she’d met in Oxford Street. Clara appeared in court dressed fashionably and wearing a red hat with a green feather. One imagines she cut quite a dash, and this might explain the reporter’s interest in her. She described herself as a barmaid, 21 years of age, who lived on the Euston Road. On April 22 1889 she met Captain Torry in the street and he invited her to have a drink with him.

The pair sat in a public house enjoying each other’s company until it was time to leave. Torry (rather ungallantly) ‘declined to see her home’ but did give her the money to take a cab. Now, I wonder whether he was hoping to extend the evening or perhaps even thought Clara was something other than a barmaid. Who knows?

She accepted his offer of a cab and asked to be shown to a waiting room where she could rest comfortably before the cab arrived. The captain told her where to go and was about to leave himself when she asked him to wait in the pub, presumably to ensure that she caught the cab safely. He agreed.

However, some moments afterwards he happened to ‘peep out of the bar door’ and saw her walking quickly away from the pub, and not towards the waiting room. Instinctively he checked his pockets and found his purse was missing. He grabbed his hat and followed afterwards, losing her briefly and having to ask a cab driver where she’d gone.

Torry caught up with her on Hanover Street and handed her over to the police. It was about 12 at night and the constable that took her into custody told Mr Hannay at Marlborough Street that she’d been searched at the station but the captain’s purse was not on her. She did have money – 2 sovereigns and 4s in silver to be exact – but none of the coins matched those that the captain thought he’d lost.

While there was a clear suspicion about Clara there was no real proof and so she was discharged. This result brought a smattering of applause from the court so either her friends were there to support her or the public felt that the captain was a ‘blackguard’ who had got what he deserved.

Next up was John Helmslie Hunt who was charged with trying to defraud a Piccadilly saddler named Garden. Hunt, using the name ‘Captain J.H. Hunt’ and giving an address in Wotton-under-Edge  (in Gloucestershire) had entered the saddler’s workshop in August 1888 and asked to purchase a holster flask. He was given the flask on credit since he appeared genuine and promised to pay the following day.

He never came back however. Not long afterwards inquiries made by Mr Garden ascertained that Hunt had pawned the flask on the Hampstead Road and had then disappeared. In fact he’d traveled to Canada where he’d stayed for several months before returning to London in the spring of 1889. In his absence a warrant had been issued for his arrest and in April the police caught up with him and thus he too was put in the dock before Mr Hannay on the same day as Clara.

It took a while for the magistrate to hear the case against Hunt but in the end he came to the conclusion that there was insufficient evidence to send him for trial. Quite simply he doubted whether a jury would convict him so there was no public interest in sending him to the ‘Bailey. He too was released.

Both cases were unusual or at least ‘interesting’ but both showed that con men and women could defraud the unwary or steal from the distracted. Perhaps that was why the editor of the Standard deemed them suitable material for his daily review of the business of the police courts: they were there to warn his readership to take more care of their property and not to be fooled by people who looked genuine but were anything but.

[from The Standard, Wednesday, April 24, 1889]

If you enjoy this blog series you might be interested in Drew’s jointly authored study of the Whitechapel (or ‘Jack the Ripper’) murders which is published by Amberley Books in June this year. You can find details here:

An elderly lady is sent flying by a drunken cabbie

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Traffic accidents seemed to be fairly common in Victorian London and so to were prosecutions of drivers (particularly hansom cab drivers) for dangerous driving. The most usual outcome was a fine, and occasionally a short spell in prison if the cabbie was unable to pay the fine. However, cab drivers were also prosecuted for being drunk in charge of a cab, especially when they were abusive towards a passenger or a policeman. In this case one driver was arrested after he drove his cab into two women who were walking on the King’s Road, nearly killing one of them. The driver was drunk and ended up before the magistrate at Westminster Police court.

George Thompson stood in the dock as the evidence of his actions was recounted before Mr Mansfield, the sitting magistrate. Emmelie Ullarbane said that she was walking along the King’s Road with her elderly companion Mrs Martha White on the previous evening. As they were crossing the road a cab driven by Thompson hit them, knocking Mrs White to the ground and trampling her. Emmelie was hurt but not too badly.

A policeman came rushing up and asked if they were injured; Mrs White was quite badly hurt so she was taken to be treated by a doctor. Mr. Mansfield asked him if either woman had been drinking, to which the officer – PC Langford (344B) – answered that they had not. That might seem an odd question to have asked but perhaps I can make sense of it later.

Having checked on the injured parties PC Langford set off in pursuit of the driver who hadn’t stopped after the accident. The policeman called to him but was ignored, so he raced along and managed to catch up with the cab. Langford leapt up onto the back of the cab, seized the reins, and stopped the horse. It was obvious to him when he confronted Thompson that the driver had been drinking and was quite incapable.

The policeman arrested Thompson and took him back to the station before heading off to Brompton to visit Mrs White to see how she was. According to the doctor’s report she was in a bad way, her petticoats ‘were torn to pieces by the tramping of the horse’, and she was not yet ‘out of danger’. It must have been a huge shock to an elderly lady and Mansfield remanded Thompson (who had two previous convictions for drunkenness) in custody for a week.

I wondered why the magistrate had enquired as to whether the women were themselves drunk. Two women walking in the early evening on the King’s Road did not necessarily suggest anything unusual. One on her own might have raised eyebrows but given Mrs White was described as being ‘elderly’ we might assume Ms Ullarbane was her companion or servant and so I can’t see anything odd here. Until that is we learn that Mrs Martha White was a ‘West India lady’.

I take this to mean that she was a part of London’s black community in the late 1800s a group rarely mentioned but ever present in the nineteenth-century capital. Perhaps Mansfield was simply expressing contemporary racism and imperialist views in assuming, or merely suggesting, that two black women out and about on a Tuesday evening had been drinking and were, therefore, partly to blame for the accident that had occurred.

This case rumbled on for several months, maybe as a result of the injuries Mrs White received. A jury had held the cab company liable and Martha had been awarded £100 in compensation. Thompson was finally brought back before the Westminster magistrate in August 1869. This time it was Mr Arnold and he declared that he was not going to be influenced by that civil judgment but determine punishment on it merits. He was convinced, he said, that Thompson had been drunk that night but wasn’t sure that had caused the accident. Instead he held Mrs White partly to blame stating that the accident:

‘was caused by the nervousness of the injured lady and her friend, who did not know whether to advance or recede’.

So he imposed a fine of just 10s on Thompson who might have expected worse (especially given his previous convictions for being drunk in charge of a cab). The police were not so sanguine as the magistrate however, and informed his worship that the renewal of the driver’s license had been refused. George Thompson would not be driving a hansom in London again, or not at least in the near future.

[from The Morning Post, Thursday, April 01, 1869; The Morning Post, Wednesday, August 18, 1869]

‘These cabmen always drive furiously’: Lord Rothschild has a lucky escape

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An 1891 caricature of Nathan (‘Natty’) Rothschild by Lockhart Bogle in The Graphic

It seems as if traffic accidents were just as likely to occur in late nineteenth-century London as they are in the modern capital, and that the roads were just as crowded. Moreover the image of the policeman directing the flow of vehicles – one we probably now associate with the 1950s and 60s – may be just as appropriate for the 1890s.

In early March 1890 Nathan, the first Baron de Rothschild, was being driven in brougham coach along Queen Victoria Street in the City. A policeman was holding the traffic and had his arm extended up, palm out to signal this. Lord Rothschild’s driver eased his horses to a halt to wait for the officer’s signal to continue.

Suddenly, and seemingly without warning, the coach was hit from behind by a hansom cab. One of the shafts of the cab broke through the brougham, narrowly missing its occupants. Rothschild was shaken, but unhurt. The baron stepped down from the damaged coach and approached the policeman. He handed him his card and said, possibly angrily:

‘These cabmen always drive furiously. Take my card and give it to the Inspector. It will be all right’.

The incident ended up with the cabbie, James Povey, being summoned before the alderman magistrate at Guildhall Police court where he was charged with ‘driving a hansom cab wantonly’. Povey pleaded ‘not guilty’ and one of his passenger that day, a gentleman named Palmer, was in court to support him.

Mr Palmer testified that the baron and his driver could not possibly have seen what happened as they were facing the wrong way. He said that Povey had tried to stop and it was entirely an accident, not ‘wanton’ or dangerous driving. The alderman agreed and dismissed the summons, adding that a claim for the damage to the brougham could be made in the civil courts. There was no need, Povey’s representative (a Mr Edmonds, solicitor for the Cab Union) explained, as that had already been settled.

Rothschild was an important figure in late nineteenth-century Britain, a banker and the financial backer of Cecil Rhodes, he was a noted philanthropist as well, helping fund housing (in the form of model dwellings) for poor Jews in Spitalfields and Whitechapel.

Rothschild sat in parliament for the Liberals, although he had been a close friend of the Conservative Prime Minster Benjamin Disraeli. By 1896 he was a peer, sitting in the Lords (as he had since 1885) an honour bestowed by that other great Victorian premier, William Gladstone. He then left the Liberals in 1886, joining forces with Joseph Chamberlain’s Liberal Unionists as the Liberal Party split over Home Rule for Ireland. He died in 1915 and the current baron, Jacob, is the 4th to hold the title.

[from The Standard, Wednesday, March 11, 1896]

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]