Tag: Henry Fielding

A deserter has a change of heart after Isandlwana

(c) National Army Museum; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

A police constable was on his beat one evening in the Borough, Southwark, when a man came up to him and asked to be arrested. It was a fairly unusual request and so the officer asked him what he’d done.

‘Take me to the station-house’, the man replied, ‘and I’ll tell you’.

The pair set off and when they reached the police station the man gave his name as George Gwilliam, aged 33. He said that wanted to surrender his liberty as a deserter from the Queen’s colours. Desertion was an offence that was prosecuted by the military courts and rewards were payable to those that brought in or gave evidence against absconders.

First of all, however, the desk sergeant had to establish whether Gwilliam was telling the truth. Fortunately all deserters reported to the police were listed in the Police Gazette (formally known as the Hue and Cry) which had been published in London since 1772. It had been the brainchild of Sir John Fielding, one of the Fielding brothers who had founded the Bow Street ‘runners’ in the mid 1750s.

While the Gazette fell under the editorial control of the Bow Street office it was a ‘national’ paper, printed by and for the Home Office. By 1879 (when Gwilliam handed himself in at Southwark) it was still being edited by John Alexander, Bow Street’s chief clerk. It finally passed over to the Met in 1883.

The sergeant at Southwark nick was able to trace George Gwilliam finding that he was listed as having deserted from the 6th Dragoons on 16 June 1874, meaning he’d been AWOL for four years and eight months. So why hand himself in now? The story Gwilliam gave was that he’d heard the regiment were being posted to Africa and he wanted to join them.

The Southwark magistrate, Mr Partridge, was willing to indulge him and so told the officer of the court to notify the dragoons and have George transferred to the house of the correction in the meantime until he was required by his regiment.

The 6th(Iniskilling) Dragoons were one of the most celebrated cavalry units in the British Army, famously involved in the charge of Union Brigade at Waterloo and that of the Heavy Brigade at Balaclava (rather than the ill-fated charge of the Light Brigade in the same battle). The regiment saw action in South Africa in the ‘Boer War’ but Gwilliam would have probably have been too old by then, since he was 33 in 1879. In 1879 it was deployed to fight in what became known as the Anglo-Zulu war and, if he went, that is where our reformed deserter would have seen service.

Gwilliam may have been reacting to the heavy defeat of British forces at Isandlwana (on 22 January 1879) and the heroic defensive action at Rorke’s Drift (22-23/1/1879) where no fewer than 11 Victoria Crosses were won. The British eventually won the war and the conflict has spawned two movies, the best of which is Zulu (1964) featuring a young Michael Caine.

[from The Standard, Thursday, February 13, 1879]

The workhouse girl who failed to take her opportunities and took the silver instead

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Yesterday we celebrated 100 years of women over 30 having the vote in England. Britain wasn’t the first nation to give women the vote however, that was New Zealand in 1893. In 1893 in England women were still firmly viewed as second-class citizens.

Many young working-class women found work in London as domestic servants. One such woman was Harriett Sabin, a 17 year-old who found herself before the North London Police court in February 1893, charged with theft.

Harriett had been hired in December 1891 to work at a house in Clissold Road. She had got the position through the Metropolitan Association for Befriending Young Servants (MABYS) which had been formed in 1874 by Henrietta Barnet and Jane Nassau Senior. MABYS helped young women who had grown up in workhouses to find work in the homes of the better off and by 1890 the charity had over 1,000 volunteers throughout the capital.

It soon became evident that Harriett wasn’t suited to the position she been found however. She had arrived with ‘an indifferent character’ but ‘had pleaded for a chance’. Sadly her opportunity didn’t last very long though and she was given notice to quit at the end of a month. While employment hadn’t worked out Harriett was determined she would get something out of the experience.

On the penultimate day of December 1891, while the family were at dinner, Harriett got hold of a key and absconded through a side gate with a number of articles belonging to the house and staff that worked there. A search was made and it was found that the following items were missing:

‘a silver teapot, a gold bracelet, two gold brooches, a gold ring, a case of dessert knives and forks, and an umbrella’.

Another servant also reported that she had lost some items and suspicion inevitably fell on the girl from the workhouse. A warrant was issued to arrest her but she was nowhere to be found. Harriett had disappeared and nothing was heard about her until she surfaced in December 1893 in Northampton where ‘she was in custody for a similar offence’.

The police investigation, led by Detective-sergeant Bowers, had traced several of the stolen items to a pawnbrokers in Wood Green. In court the magistrate was at pains to point out that the pawnbroker was also at fault here. In the eighteenth century pawnbrokers were heavily criticised by commentators like Henry Fielding (the novelist and Bow Street magistrate) for allowing thieves a mechanism for laundering stolen goods. In this case a silver watch had been accepted even though it was engraved with the name of the owner – Mr Attree, Harriet’s former employer.

Many of the goods were produced in court for members of household (the Attrees and their staff) to swear to. The pawnbroker’s assistant, John Smith, was also there (n doubt shuffling uncomfortably under the magistrate’s glare).

DS Bowers had traveled the 60 miles north to question Harriett and reported that she had been convicted of theft there, and sent to prison for two months (which helps to explain why she had seemingly ‘disappeared’). Since she was now before Mr Ware and Mr Lane (the two sitting justices at North London) that sentence must have been completed. They decided that since she was clearly ‘a bad girl’ she would  to prison for a further three months.

The system was harsh. Harriett, a workhouse girl from a pauper background, had been given an opportunity to carve out a better life for herself, albeit as someone else’s drudge. She didn’t take it, or couldn’t adapt to it, and we don’t entirely know why. As a result she ended up exchanging one closed institution (the poor house) for another (the prison).

She was just 17 when she appeared before the magistrates at North London Police Court, and would be nearly 20 by the time she would be released from gaol. In effect her life was already ruined. I can only imagine what the future held for her but with a set of previous convictions and no character references to support her, that future must have seemed bleak to her.

[from The Standard, Tuesday, February 07, 1893]