Tag: chief clerk

Jack the Ripper appears in court at last

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In late October 1888 a man appeared in court at the Guildhall after admitting to multiple murders. The fact that the magistrate let him go probably tells us quite a bit about the furor that surrounded the so-called ‘Jack the Ripper’ killings that autumn.

By the time Benjamin Graham was brought up before the alderman justice for the second time the unknown killer had struck at least four times and maybe more. Graham had admitted to the crimes and had been escorted to Snow Hill police station by a concerned member of the public. His confessor reported that he’d declared that:

‘he was the murderer of the women in Whitechapel, and that he supposed he must suffer for it with a bit of rope’.

At his first summary hearing he was remanded in custody so enquiries could be made into his mental health. Graham had been examined and the chief clerk at the Guildhall, Mr Saville, now furnished the magistrate with his report. According to the medical man there was nothing wrong with Graham’s mind except that he ‘suffered from excessive drinking’. He was hardly alone in that in late nineteenth-century London, but not all of the capitals inebriates were running off their mouths claiming to be Jack the Ripper.

The alderman was furious, even more so because he really couldn’t see what crime Graham had committed. He told him he would gladly give ‘some punishment for his behaviour, which gave the police no end of trouble’. But since he could not (perhaps at this time there was no such offence as ‘wasting police time”) he simply discharged him with a flea in his ear.

With all the false leads and spurious letters and notes that the police had to take seriously, the last thing they needed was an idiot like Benjamin Graham.

[from The Standard, Friday, October 26, 1888]

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 on Amazon

 

‘You are a disgrace to human nature’: the meanness of the Poor Law exposed

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The Police Courts were places where people could bring their grievances on all manner of things in the 1800s. It is easy to get the impression that their main purpose was to deal with crime – petty and serious. However, this view is often reinforced by the newspapers’ selection of cases to bring to the attention of their readers: they often chose the outrageous, amusing, shocking, and heart ringing stories as well as regular examples of cases which reminded the public that working class men were brutal, that theft was common, and fraud to be avoided by the wary.

When Ellen Potts came to the Guildhall Police court to ask for Alderman Moon’s help it gave the court reporter of The Morning Post the perfect opportunity to expose an old chestnut: the misuse of authority by a lowly public servant. It helped that Ellen was pretty (‘a good-looking girl’ of ‘about 18 years of age’) and the public servant had a reputation locally for meanness.  Immediately then there was a melodramatic backstory that readers could relate to with a villain and a young heroine that needed saving.

Miss Potts told the court that she had been thrown out of her home after a row with her mother (‘over a shawl’). With nowhere to go that night Ellen knocked on the door of the West London Union workhouse at St Bride’s on Shoe Lane. The relieving officer, Mr Miller, refused her entry however, on the grounds that her mother took in lodgers at her house on Cloth Lane and so was perfectly capable of supporting her daughter.

Alderman Moon was angry with the officer whose only (and sustained) defense was to say he was only following orders. He quickly established that Mrs Potts was receiving poor relief herself and that Miller knew this.

‘Then how can she support her daughter?’ the magistrate demanded to know.

‘You have discretionary power, and I think it is a most cruel act of a man to refuse shelter to a girl under such circumstances, and your conduct is most disgraceful’.

When Miller tried once more to say it that Ellen was her mothers responsibility Alderman Moon cut him off.

‘Don’t talk to me about the mother. You may be a good badger for the guardians, but at the same time a disgrace to human nature. No wonder, when females  are thus cruelly refused an asylum, so many should become prostitutes for the sake of obtaining that relief for which the ratepayers are rated so heavily. There are constant complaints of your hard-hearted conduct, which is a disgrace to your nature’.

This brought cries of ‘hear, hear’ from all sections of the courtroom and Miller must have looked up miserably from the dock, as he continued to say that he was only doing what he’d been told to do by his employers.

The chief clerk whispered to the alderman that Miller was liable to a hefty fine for his actions. The magistrate told Miller that he was going to levy that penalty, £5, for disobeying the general rule that ‘relief shall be given to all person in urgent distress’. After one more forlorn attempt to shift responsibility from himself to the guardians the relieving officer finally work up to what was required of him.

‘Is it your wish she be taken into the house?’ he asked the alderman. ‘If so I will do it willingly’.

‘It is so’, Alderman Moon told him. ‘There’s an end of the case’.

So Miller avoided a fine and Ellen was admitted to the workhouse so she didn’t have to walk the streets and risk falling into an even worse fate.  Arguably the real villains here were the Poor Law Guardians that set the rules that Miller was expected to enforce, and Mrs Potts who was prepared to let her teenage daughter take her chances on the streets. At least this mini melodrama ended happily.

[from The Morning Post, Friday, August 10, 1849]

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 on Amazon here

A ‘flasher’ in the theatre is exposed

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Mr Hope was enjoying a night out at the theatre with his wife in early January 1842 when  his attention was caught by a young man in a nearby box. He was ‘fashionably dressed’ and appeared to be a little the worse for drink. This was not an uncommon sight at the Haymarket (or any other) Theatre, but Mr Hope felt there was something about the way that the young gentleman behaved that concerned him.

As he watched from the comfort of his private box he noticed that the other man seemed to be focused on a couple in a nearby box. When the man in that box rose and left briefly, the young man stood up, opened his trousers and ‘indecently exposed his person’. The poor woman had been ‘flashed’ and wasn’t sure what to do. Mr Hope reacted quickly, moving over and into her box and taking her hand to lead her back to the safety of his own. Leaving her in the reassuring company of his wife, he went in search of a policeman.

Having found one he returned to the box and explained to the woman’s husband exactly what had happened. The culprit – Thomas Sale Pennington – was pointed out and the constable asked him to come along quietly and without disturbing the other theatregoers or the performance. Pennington refused and suffered the indignity of being dragged from the venue by his collar before being frog marched to a police station.

On the following day Pennington was stood in the dock at Marlborough Street and charged with ‘an unparalleled act of indecency’. Whilst he didn’t deny exposing himself the young man did try to excuse himself on account of being drunk. Pennington said he had no recollection of the couple concerned and could hardly remember what he was supposed to have done. He also said he’d been a student at Oxford for the past four years and could provide plenty of character witnesses who would testify on his behalf.

If he thought this would go down well with Mr Maltby the magistrate he was sadly mistaken. The only issue for the justice was in establishing his guilt. For the victim and her husband (who were not named in the newspaper report, no doubt to save their blushes) the most important thing was in protecting her from having to relive the incident.  Mr Hope pleaded that his evidence and that of the lady’s husband were sufficient to save the lady from taking the stand but the magistrate and his chief clerk said she would have to answer a few questions.

Having satisfied himself that Pennington was guilty as charged and that his drinking did not mitigate his actions Mr Maltby turned to him. The justice told him that he was guilty of ‘committing a willful and intentional insult’. The public, he continued, ‘must be protected from such disgusting conduct’ and he sent him to prison for three months ‘as a rogue and vagabond’. He gave him leave to appeal to the Sessions but since there he might have been handed an even longer sentence had a jury convicted him, I doubt he took that up.

[from The Morning Chronicle, Thursday, 6 January, 1842]

A ‘grossly profligate young blackguard’ at Bromley

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All this week at my university we are running a series of events designed at raising awareness of issues surrounding sexual assault, harassment and consent. It is the third year running such activities have happened and this time I’m pleased to be aligning my second year teaching with it, by giving  special lecture and linked seminar workshop on the prosecution of rape in the 18th and 19th centuries.

One of the issues that any study of sexual assault in the past (and indeed the present) highlights is the difficulty survivors have in bringing their abusers to court and gaining any sort of justice. This remains an extremely difficult thing to do today and Time Magazine’s collective award of their Person of the Year 2017 to the ‘silence braekers’ reflects the courage of the women and men who have come forward to speak out.

Sexual assault and harassment takes many forms of course. Take this case for example, from December 1864. Amelia Harrison, a married woman who lived in Nelson Street, Bromley, was crossing the fields near her home at 10 at night when she was attacked.

A young lad rushed up to her from behind, raised her skirts and grabbed her ‘in a grossly indecent manner’. In the witness box at Thames Police Court Mrs Harrison was naturally reticent to go into much detail but Mr Paget pressed her. Reluctantly she ‘described the infamous outrage committed upon her , and said the prisoner hurt her’. She then told the court she was five months pregnant.

We don’t know exactly what happened but clearly some form of sexual assault had been committed. The lad in the dock, a ‘rough-looking boy’ named George Thomas wasn’t yet 15 years of age and cut a sorry figure. At first he denied doing anything and counter claimed saying Mrs Harrison had hit him and cut his lip.

He may have sustained an injury but it was soon clear that it must have come as  result of her resistance to his assault. Given the prisoner’s detail and the seriousness of the charge Mr Paget said he would have to formally commit him to a jury trial at the Sessions.

At this Thomas broke down and started to sob. He called for his mother, admitted his crime, and ‘begged forgiveness’. The magistrate paused and consulted with his chief clerk. He was minded, he said, to send Thomas for trial but decided in the end to punish him summarily. The prisoner was ‘a grossly profligate young blackguard’, he said, ‘and must be punished for laying his hands on a woman so indecently’. He would go to prison for two months at hard labour.

[from The Morning Post, Wednesday, December 07, 1864}

A snake trader charms the Mansion House

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The summary courts of the capital didn’t always deal with crime or antisocial behaviour; some of those that came before so did so for advice or to ask for help. One such person, named, was a traveler from the Caribbean, who appeared before the Chief Clerk at Mansion House in some distress.

The unnamed visitor, described by the press reports as a ‘respectable-looking young negro’, said he had arrived in London from his native Demerara via a circuitous route. He told  Mr Oke, the clerk that he had left Demerara (in what was then British Guiana and is now Guyana) in an attempt to make some money.

Whilst ‘out in the woods’ in Demerara he ‘had discovered a nest of boa-constrictors that had only just been hatched, and having heard that such objects were of value in foreign countries, he carefully secured his prize… and resolved to take the “little strangers” to the Zoological Gardens at Moscow, where he was told he would be paid a good price for them’.

It seems that there was nothing deemed wrong in the young man’s actions, the Victorians hadn’t yet determined that trading in live exotic animals was cruel. The RSPCA (who are concerned about such a trade in snakes today) had been in existence for around 50 years by 1873 (when this application came before the Mansion House Police Court) but perhaps they were busy enough dealing with cruelty to domestic animals.

Unfortunately for the adventurous snake dealer things didn’t go quite to plan however. He made his way to Hamburg where he was supposed to make a connection to take him on to Russia but the boas fell sick. Despite ‘all his endeavours’ the ‘young “boas” all died’.

With nothing to trade and most of his money gone the lad used the rest of his funds to get himself to England and the capital where he now asked for the Empire’s help to secure a boat back home. He had found ship at the West India dock that was prepared to carry him back to Guiana in return from him working his passage but he had no clothes. He asked the court therefore, if he might have some money from the poor box to purchase the necessary clothes for the voyage.

Mr Oke sent an assistant to check his story and, having ascertained that he was telling the truth, agreed to help. He was given a small sum and ‘left the court apparently highly delighted with the result of his application’.

There is a footnote to this story: Mr George Colwell OKe (1821-1874) served as the Chief Clerk to the magistrates in the City from 1864 onwards having started as a clerk in 1855. He was widely respected for his knowledge of the criminal law and assisted many aldermen and lord mayors in their decision making. Moreover, as a result of his deep understanding of statue law and practice Oke produced several volumes on the subject.

The best selling and most well-known of these was his Synopsis of Summary Convictions,(1858) which ran to 8 volumes and was popularly known as Oke’s Magisterial. You can find this online and while it is hardly an exciting read, it is invaluable to historians in understanding the legal structure under which all Police Court business was conducted. Oke rarely appears in the pages of the newspapers so it is nice to see such an influential figure pop up and act in a charitable way, demonstrating the alternative function of these central summary courts.

[from The Morning Post, Thursday, October 23, 1873]

A drunk explains how ‘Going native’ in New Zealand saved his life

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When a man named Burns appeared before the Union Hall Police magistrate on a  charge of being drunk and disorderly, he caused quite a stir. Burns (his first name was not recorded by the court reporter) declared himself as English, and he spoke perfect English, but his appearance was that of Maori warrior.

His face was tattooed in the Maori fashion so that he resembled ‘a New Zealand chief’. How had he come to allow himself to ‘be so disfigured’, the Chief Clerk wanted to know. Well, he replied, ‘it was better than being eaten’. With that dramatic start Burns then gave a brief account of his life and travels, and of what had brought him to London in July 1835.

In 1829 Burns was a sailor on a ship that ran into trouble and was wrecked off the New Zealand coast. He and six others made it to shore but everyone of his companions were killed by the natives. For some reason however, Burns’ life was saved on the intervention of one of their captors and he quickly adopted the local ‘manners and customs’ in order to survive, with, he added, one exception. He refused to eat ‘the bodies of the enemies of his tribe slain in war’.

There were contemporary reports that the Maoris practised cannibalism up until the early 1800s so Burns may have witnessed this. He may also have been playing on popular representations of the savage for effect.

Having settled into the community, he continued, he was soon adopted as a chief. In order to take up this new position he ‘was compelled to undergo the painful operation of tattooing, which was performed with such skill that it is now impossible to distinguish his visage from that of a native’.

As a senior member of the tribe he also learned to master the Maori war canoe and this led to his escape. One day, when he and several other canoes were patrolling along the coast looking for enemies, he spotted a western ship in the distance. He tricked the others into canoeing  off in one direction before turning his own canoe towards the sailing vessel and paddling hard. He quickly got himself out of reach of his former companion’s spears and made it to the ship. The crew helped him on board but it took him some time to convince the Spanish captain that he was indeed and Englishman and not the Maori warrior he appeared to be.

Eventually the Spanish ship had dropped him off in England and he had made his way to London where he now intended to exhibit himself at the Surrey Zoological Gardens. He told the justice at Union Hall that he would be dressed in the ‘costume of New Zealander, and [would] display his dexterity in the management of the canoe, and perform other feats which he had acquired during his six years residence amongst them’.

The magistrate declared that he could not deprive the public of such an entertainment and dismissed the charge against him.

The early 1800s were a time of war for the Maori peoples. Much of this was bloody internal fighting as the rival tribes acquired and used Western guns on each other. ‘Tens of thousands’ died in the so-called ‘musket wars’ of the 1810s, 20s and 30s, at just the time Burns was shipwrecked. Western weaponry was not the only killer however: disease also took its toll of the native population.

From the 1840s onwards tribal rivalry was expressed less in warfare and more in economics but by then New Zealand was increasingly being dominated by European interests. After the purchase of land at Auckland in 1840 the European population grew steadily, and many Maoris left. By 1858 there were more white faces than Maori ones. British policy was to acquire land the Maori deemed worthless or ‘wasteland’, and while there was continued fighting between the Maori settlers and the newer European colonists for most of the rest of the century, there was only ever going to be one final victor.

[from The Morning Chronicle, Thursday, July 23, 1835]