Tag: Debt

A mason stares poverty in the face, and gets little sympathy from the bench

cache_2412705026

There was very little Mr Horace Smith could do for the man came to ask for help at his police court in Dalston in December 1889. The man – who said he was a monumental mason (and therefore cut and inscribed gravestones and the like) – was in debt.

More specifically he was behind on the rent for his workshop, owing his landlord £4 10s (which is approximately £370 in today’s money, but would have amounted to a fortnight’s pay for a skilled tradesman like him).

His landlord, however, had sent in the bailiffs to seize goods (his headstones, most of which were already inscribed) to the value of £30, so way over the cost of the debt. The mason wanted the magistrate’s help in fighting the order, which he thought excessive.

Mr Smith agreed it was excessive but said he could order the return of the goods if the debt was settled. The mason didn’t have the money and didn’t believe that the goods taken could be sold at auction either. After all, he said, ‘nobody will give much for tombstones with inscriptions’.

The justice agreed but could offer no more help. If the man wanted damages for excessive distress he would have to go to the County Court, and that would probably mean settling the debt first, and cost him time and money, which he didn’t have. It was a vicious circle: to pay his rent the mason needed his stone and tools back, work was slow at the moment and now his landlord had undermined him.

Mr Smith had limited sympathy:

‘The moral of it all is that you should pay your rent, and people should not take premises which they cannot pay for’.

And with that, he dismissed the case.

[from The Standard, Monday, December 09, 1889]

‘Oh nonsense, I scarcely touched you’: a gentle nudge out of the door

Paternoster_Row_London

It can’t have been much fun being a solicitor’s clerk in the Victorian period. In fact I doubt its that much fun now but at least you probably aren’t as exposed to causal violence as Albert Jones was in 1886.

He was sent out to serve a writ and demand for money on a publisher and arrived at Messrs Eyre Bros at 4 in the afternoon of the 18 October. The writ was made out against a Mr G Butcher and Albert duly served it at his office in Paternoster Square, close by St Paul’s Cathedral.

Mr Butcher was not amused. Having asked a series of questions about the writ (which seems to have been part of a long running legal dispute) he said:

‘Can you convey a message to Mr. Kelly?’

Albert replied that he could but said he had been instructed by his superior to tell Butcher that ‘if he had anything to say he had better see him in person’.

‘Does Mr. Kelly expect me to pay this?’ Butcher asked.

Having been told that he did the publisher went on to say:

‘’He wont get a halfpenny of it, and tell him from me that if ever there was a liar in the world he is one’.

As Albert turned to leave, placing his hat back on his head, Butcher kicked him sharply in the rear, propelling him forwards and out of the door. This prompted the clerk (or perhaps his employer) to press charges for assault, and so Butcher found himself up before an alderman at the Guildhall Police court.

‘Did the kick hurt you?’ Jones was asked.

‘It did hurt for a few moments’, the clerk replied.

‘Oh nonsense, I scarcely touched you’, came the response from the dock. ‘I simply put my foot up to assist you getting out of the office a little faster’.

With laughter ringing out in court Butcher might have enjoyed this small victory had the magistrate not then handed him a fine of 40s.

[from The Standard, Wednesday, November 17, 1886]

‘Let them starve’. Little sympathy as parochial officialdom is set in the dock

zCA6Ucg.jpg

‘Joseph Carney, a street vendor or “costermonger”, sells fresh herring from a barrow in a street market near Seven Dials’.1

The summary courts of the capital could sometimes side with the ‘little man’ against authority, especially when that ‘authority’ was seen to be officious and heavy handed. This was certainly the case in October 1888 when a costermonger known only as Nathan, brought a summons against a servant of the vestry.

The magistrate – Montagu Williams – listened as Nathan outlined his complaint. He sold goods from a barrow and on Sunday morning he had left it briefly unattended while went to settle a debt to a local publican. On his return the barrow had gone and he soon learned that it had been impounded by John Dowling, a street keeper working for Bethnal Green parish.

Nathan went to the parish greenyard, where all impounded vehicles and animals were taken, but he was told he would have to wait until the next morning to retrieve it. The next day he went but since Dowling was not there he was now instructed to come back on Thursday.

This meant he would be unable to trade for three days.

‘My children will starve’, he complained.

‘Well let them starve’, was the reply from one of the men that worked there.

On Thursday he saw Dowling who now refused to release the barrow until a 5s fee had been paid. Nathan didn’t have 5s so he offered 3 and a half. He was told to go away and find the balance. Meanwhile he couldn’t work.

The vestry was represented at Worship Street by Mr Voss, the clerk. He defended Dowling and the right of the vestry to impound barrows after 11am on a Sunday (when they were no longer allowed to trade). He had little or no sympathy for Nathan and his family nor for another complainant who appeared to support the costermonger. Mary Donovan said she had also had her barrow impounded by Dowling and was unable to pay the fee to get it back. As a consequence she’d fallen behind with the rent and her landlord had sent in the bailiffs to get her ‘bits o’ things’.

‘What do you have to say to that?’ Mr Williams demanded of Voss.

The clerk stuck to his script.

‘This man, Sir, was acting under his orders. The vestry makes certain regulations’.

The justice felt that these were extremely bad regulations and, what is more, they were being applied without care or understanding for the lives of the people they affected. Nathan told him he had threated to go to law but the street keeper had dismissed this saying he ‘did not care for the magistrate, for he had bigger people behind him’ who would support his actions.

Mr Williams now demonstrated exactly who had authority in the district by admonishing the clerk and the street cleaner, and demanding that the barrows be returned ‘instantly’, and without further costs to either party. The war between the costers and the vestry would, no doubt, rumble on and on, just as tensions between these sorts of street traders and the police did. But on this occasion at least, we can raise a glass to the victory of the little man (and woman).

[from The Standard, Tuesday, October 23, 1888]

  1. from: https://mickhartley.typepad.com/blog/2012/03/little-mic-mac-gosling.html

A ‘very hard and cruel case’ as a mother nearly loses everything

11

The very last case heard at Guildhall Police court on 19 September 1864 was a tragic one, and one that might have been written by the capital’s greatest narrator, Charles Dickens.

Mrs Samuel Smith came to ask the magistrate’s help in a dispute she was having with a firm of ship owners. In January she had placed an advert in the newspapers looking for an apprenticeship for her son, who ‘wanted to go to sea’. A Mr Edward West, who ran a company of shipbuilders and said he knew a firm that was prepared to take on young master Smith, for a fee, answered that advert.

The fee (or premium) he required was quite high at £20 and more than Mrs Smith could afford in one go. Her husband was an invalid and unable to work so the family’s funds were limited. Nevertheless she offered to pay in two instalments and Lang & Co. (West’s firm) said they would accept £11 up front with £10 in the form of a ‘note of hand’ (an obligation to pay later in other words).

This was all agreed and the lad left London and sailed off to start his new life and career with the firm of Powell & Co, shipowners, where Mr. West had secured an apprenticeship for him.

Then tragedy struck. The ship ran into a storm and was wrecked with the loss of everyone on board, including Mrs Smith’s boy.

This was not the end of her troubles however; Mr West (or rather Powell & Co.) still demanded the balance of the premium, and had signaled their intention to sue Mrs Smith for it. Thus, she had come to the Guildhall to ask for advice.

Alderman Hale sent for Mr West who explained that the issue was between Mrs Smith and Mr Powell, he was simply an intermediary in all of this. He had brokered the deal, so Powell owed him the money, and Mrs Smith owed Powell. He wasn’t budging despite agreeing with the alderman declaring that it was ‘ a most harsh and cruel proceeding’.

Mrs Smith said she was prepared to pay the £10 she owed but not the costs that had subsequently been incurred by the issuing of a writ. She was in danger of losing her furniture and other possession as the debt mounted and the bailiffs circled. She needed this to end here before her debts spiraled.  The magistrate thought this fair and said she had suffered enough, it was, he added, a ‘very hard and cruel case’. This probably forced West to accept the woman’s offer and the money was paid there and then.

This case was harsh and cruel and quite Dickensian. I can quite imagine the great story teller sitting in court and creating a pen portrait of the avaricious Mr West and pale and weeping figure of Mrs Smith.

[from The Morning Post, Tuesday, September 20, 1864]

‘So after getting all you could out of him, you walked off with someone else?’: Love, music and discord in Lambeth

victorian1

The path of true love does not always run smoothly, and when things go wrong love can quickly turn to animosity. James Gray had been courting Georgina Hastings for three years, bringing her gifts and acting as a security for some of her purchases.

One of these was a pianoforte that she needed for her music lessons. Officially Georgina’s music tutor was guarantor for the piano but in reality it was understood that it was Gray that had undertaken to keep up repayments should Georgina miss any. She worked as a concert singer and she was a very attractive young woman, both of which meant that she was not short of admirers.

At some point her love for James cooled and someone else replaced him in her affections. When he found out James took his rejection badly.

After an evening’s work at the theatre Georgina came home around midnight to her rooms at 22 Lambeth Square to find the piano and several items of her clothing missing. She spoke to her landlady (Ellen Hare) and discovered that James had been round and cleared them out. Hare had given him the key after he convinced her that the property was his to take away. Georgina went to the police to get warrant for Gray’s arrest and on 1 August 1854 the couple were reunited in Lambeth Police court.

Gray was represented in court by a lawyer, Mr Wontner, who was to go on to serve as a police court magistrate later in the century. He established that Miss Hastings did not own the piano and that Gray was her de facto guarantor. He also prompted her to agree that the couple were to be married before she had ‘kicked him off for another lover’.

‘I don’t know what you mean by kicking him off’, Georgina replied, ‘but I suppose I had a right to change my mind if I thought proper’.

‘Yes, undoubtedly’, responded the lawyer, ‘but my client is a mason, and would have made you a good husband; and after three year’s courtship, I think it was quite time your loves were cemented’.

By now there was widespread chuckling in the court, though at who’s expense it is hard to judge. Georgina was unmoved, ‘that may be your opinion’ she said (it clearly wasn’t hers).

Mr Wonter continued, outlining the sums of money (amounting to around £100) that James had given his lover either in cash or presents over the three years of their relationship. Georgian challenged this admitting only that Gray had provided her with ‘five, ten, and sometimes fifteen shillings a week’. Even taking the mid point of these figures (7’6d) that still works out at close to £100 over three years so Wontner was not that much far of the mark.

And then, he told her, ‘after getting all you could out of him, you walked off with someone else?’

Georgina ‘did not condescend to answer this question’.

In summing up his client’s defense Mr Wontner told the magistrate (Mr Norton) that his client had removed ‘the property on finding he had been jilted and cut by Miss Hastings, and under the perfect conviction that it belonged to him’. Mr Norton, while he might have sympathized with Gray could not see any justification for taking the lady’s clothing. The lawyer conceded this and said his client was prepared to return the clothes and the piano, so long as he was no longer expected to act as security for it.

The magistrate agreed, and having removed the felonious elements of the charge this became a simple dispute over property. That being settled he was happy to discharge James Gray, who walked away to lick his wounds and find a new lover. Miss Hastings was free to return to her singing and her piano lessons but her reputation had undoubtedly suffered for having her love life publicized in the newspapers.

[from The Morning Post, Wednesday, August 02, 1854]

‘Mother Needham in the dock’ : sex and exploitation in mid Victorian London

AN00337090_001_l

If you are familiar with William Hogarth’s engravings for the Harlot’s Progress (1732) then you might remember the story of Mary ‘Moll’ Hackabout. Moll arrives in London on the coach (see Hogarth’s image above) in the hope of finding work as a dressmaker or a servant in a quality household. Instead she meets Mother Needham, a notorious procuress, who tricks young women like Moll into prostitution.

While this is very much an eighteenth-century trope there is little doubt that procuresses continued to operate in the Victorian age. Indeed, there is very little difference between the actions of Mother Needham in the 1730s and the people traffickers and grooming gangs of our century. Where there is money to be made by the exploitation of girls and young women for sex you will find people prepared to take advantage.

In 1855 Anne Alice Hudson was placed in the dock at Westminster Police court and charged with assault. In reality assault was the least of Hudson’s crimes for she was a nineteenth-century procuress. Her victim was Ann Prior, a 20 year-old woman who possessed ‘considerable personal attractions’. As we can see the Morning Post’s reporter was not above objectifying the poor girl in the witness stand that morning.

Ann explained that a few years earlier she had come to London from Nottingham with the intention of finding work as a servant. She had met Hudson back in Nottingham, by chance house said, and the older woman had promised her work if she came south. However, once she arrived in the capital it quickly became apparent that she would working in a much less respectable industry than she had planned. Hudson installed her in a brothel and sent her out to walk the streets as a prostitute. Her pay was limited and Hudson extracted her rent, food and the cost of her clothes from any small amount she did earn. As a result Ann Prior was almost constantly in debt to the other woman.

This was deliberate of course; by taking control of her earnings and providing everything for her Hudson had trapped Ann in a cycle of dependency that required her to sell herself to keep up her payments. When she decided she couldn’t cope any longer and ran away, Hudson came after her. It was this that provoked the assault charge.

In July 1855 Hudson tracked Ann down to her digs at 40 Walton Street, near Knightsbridge*. The old woman demanded the immediate repayment of the debt she claimed Ann owed and when this was refused she became violent, hitting her and scratching the younger woman’s neck. In court Hudson claimed Ann had robbed her of some silver plate but could bring no evidence to prove this.

Her own defense lawyer tried to undermine Ann’s testimony but the magistrate was clearly on the side of the young girl. ‘She was anxious to reclaim herself’, he said admiringly, and abandon the wretched life she had been leading for two years’. Hudson had no right to any money as far as he could see and certainly no right to go to Prior’s lodgings and demand it with menaces.

He fined Hudson £5 and said if she failed to pay up he would send her to prison for months instead. Regardless he ordered her to find two sureties to the value of £20 each to keep the peace towards the complainant for a year. It was hefty sentence and reflected Mr Arnold’s clear contempt for the ‘wretched-looking old hag’ in the dock before him.

Did this prosecution allow Ann Prior to ‘reclaim her life’ and find respectability after two years of prostituting herself? The odds are against it of course, but with luck and if she had escaped disease or pregnancy, then maybe she might have found a pathway out of it. Let’s hope so at least.

[from The Morning Post, Wednesday, July 11, 1855]

* in 1975 the IRA bombed Walton’s Restaurant on this street, killing two people and injuring several others. The IRA unit were nicknamed the Balcombe Street Gang.

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

‘Such a state of things is not permitted in any town in Europe. The sooner a stop was put to such places the better’: Soho in 1888

History_The_Market_Image2

Berwick Street market in the 1950s or 60s.

Much of the housing would’ve been there in the late 1800s

Madame Akker Huber ran a lively club in Soho, ostensibly for members only. Le Cercle des Etrangers (or Circle of Strangers) was situated in Berwick Street and seems to have attracted a mixed clientele, especially from London’s multinational immigrant community.

One such person was Nestor Lacrois who enjoyed the hospitality of the club but didn’t always have the funds to pay for it. On the evening of 19 May 1888 Nestor was at the bar of the club pleading with Madame Huber to lend him some money so he could carry on enjoying himself.

Madame Huber was disinclined to help however. Lacrois already owed her money and wasn’t at all forthcoming about when that debt would be settled. Her refusal only enraged him; he picked up a glass and threw it at her. As she evaded the missile he tried again, then swept several glasses from the bar, smashing on the floor before storming out.

It took a while (and possibly some failed attempts at reconciliation or recompense) but in June Madame Huber obtained a summons against Lacrois and she and him appeared together at Marlborough Street Police court. Lacrois was accused of the criminal damage, assault and challenging her to a fight when drunk. Lacrois counter-sued, claiming that the landlady had smashed a glass in his face, drawing blood.

Apparently ‘five or six fights occurred in the club’ that night and Mr Newton listened with mounting alarm to the description of the club as a chaotic, drunken and disorderly venue. Several women were produced who claimed they could come and go as they pleased without being members and it was alleged that drinking continued late into the small hours.  In the end he declared that he didn’t believe any of the witnesses before him in the case between Huber and Lacrois and dismissed the summonses.

As for the club itself: ‘such a state of things is not permitted in any town in Europe. The sooner a stop was put to such places the better’.

One imagines the local police and licensing officers took note.

[from Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, Sunday, June 10, 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

‘Never was there such a bad season for cabs’: A case of non payment requires a magisterial solution

cabadvert

William Capon had sold his hansom cab and horse to William Crouch because he needed the money, being unable to earn a living from cabbing. Crouch had agreed to pay for the cab in installments but by March 1835 Capon had hardly received more than a ‘farthing’ of the £30 owed to him. In desperation he issued a notice that his goods had been stolen and offered a reward for information about it.

George Hooper saw the notice and later saw the cab parked a cab rank in the City of London. He approached the driver, asked to be taken to the Green Yard where he called for the cab and horse to be impounded. The Green yard had been the City’s pound for centuries and it was here that loose animals – often beasts from Smithfield Market – were taken , to be retrieved on payment of a penalty fee. So it worked very much like a modern car pound.

The cab driver, Crouch, was arrested and taken before Alderman Pirie at Mansion House and Capon came to court to give evidence. The alderman magistrate, having heard the circumstances of the  sale of the cab and the lack of money paid so far confronted Crouch as he stood in the dock:

‘Why don’t you pay this poor man?’

‘It’s all right, sir’, said Crouch, ‘There’s an agreement in writing about the business. I’m sure to pay him’.

‘I’m sure you will never pay him; you don’t go the right way about it’, countered the justice, clearly appalled at the man’s attitude to debt.

‘I would have paid him’ Crouch answered, ‘but there’s been no business doing lately. The right time’s a coming on now, and he shall have his money’. Adding, ‘he [Capon] promised me further time, on account of the badness of the season. Never was a such a season for cabs’, he declared.

March 1835 may well have been a ‘bad season’ for cab drivers but, in the magistrate’s opinion, that didn’t give him the right to cheat (as he put it) the other man out of his money. He ordered the cab driver to return the vehicle and horse forthwith in return for any money he’d already paid over. In court Crouch agreed, but very reluctantly, but when he got outside he reneged on this and refused, citing the written agreement he had with Capon.

Alderman Pirie  was on weak ground legally; it wasn’t really a case of theft, and no jury would ever convict Crouch. Yet he wanted to do something and so he insisted that the cab and horse be handed over from the Green Yard to Capon and not to Crouch. If the latter wished to pursue his claim to the hansom he would have to take it up with the magistrate directly via the law, and not with Capon. This decision, controversial as it was, went down extremely well with everyone in court (William Crouch excepted  one assumes).

[from The Morning Chronicle, Friday, March 27, 1835]

The tables are turned on a gentleman whose pockets are empty

12493822-victorian-london-hansom-cab

A refusal to pay a cab fare was a common enough reason to find a person in court in the nineteenth century. Cab drivers were quite vulnerable to being short-changed or simply to customers that claimed not to have any money. Given that many of their clients were wealthy this was sometimes just a temporary inconvenience as the driver could take an address and visit the following day to be paid. Not everyone that looked wealthy was of course and appearances could be deceptive.

Captain E. W. Pearce was a gentleman and would have been admitted into society as such. Yet he was also a gentleman who was in considerable debt, a situation that seemed not to bother him over much as he continued to live on credit, presumably hoping that his creditors would never catch up with him.

In February 1838 the captain was in court at Bow Street to prosecute a cab driver who he said had ‘created a disturbance in the street’. In reality however, it was Pearce’s refusal (or inability) to pay the driver that had resulted in the altercation and the arrival of a crowd of people.

As the report noted:

The Captain ‘had hired the cab for the purpose of making a few visits, and when done with it he found on searching the pockets of his inexpressibles to the furthest corner that he had nothing to pay the fare’.

The driver wasn’t at all happy with this and an argument ensured. This drew a crowd and, feeling threatened, Captain Pearce flagged a nearby policeman and had the cabbie arrested. At Bow Street Sir Frederick Roe sided with the cab driver, telling the captain that he should have paid the man. He released the cab driver after dismissing the charge but this wasn’t enough for the driver who was still out of pocket for an afternoon’s work.

Well, Sir Frederick said, you should summon him for the non-payment of the fare.

‘I can’t summon him, your worship. No one knows where he lives. He owes everyone’.

Captain Pearce then refused to give his address but said if the driver gave him his he would make sure he received his money within a week. The cabbie grumbled that he’d rather have the captain’s address, so he could summon him. At this, and ‘finding the tables turned’ the military man beat a hasty retreat and the reporter noted that ‘when he again tries to hire a cab to pay his visits he will carry his purse about with him probably’.

Probably indeed.

[from The Morning Post, Monday, February 19, 1838]