Tag: Holloway Prison

A famous jockey fallen on hard times, or a drunken imposter?

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Police constable George Booty of the City force probably spent a considerable amount of his time moving on and arresting drunks. It was part and parcel of any bobby’s job in late Victorian London and anyone refusing to move along or being incapable of doing so was likely to have their collar felt.

John Daly was just such a person.  He was drunk when PC Booty found him and, what was even worse; he appeared to be begging money from passers by. That was an offence in itself and so he was arrested despite his protestations that he was doing no such thing.

As was standard procedure Daly was brought before the local magistrate, in his case this was the Lord Mayor of London at the Mansion House police court. Daly had been very drunk when he’d been picked up the previous evening on Cheapside and while he’d sobered up in the cells he was still quite ‘excitable’ in the dock.

The 66 year – resplendent in a green neck scarf that he flourished dramatically – told the Lord Mayor that he was a ‘respectable man’ and asked for an adjournment so he could bring witnesses who would prove he was not begging at all. ‘I live in Newmarket’, he said, ‘and was going home’.

‘I am a jockey’, Daly continued, ‘and I have won the Derby, Oaks and Grand Prix. I won the Derby in 1867’.

He clearly wasn’t a jockey anymore and I doubt he would be the first (or last) jockey to get drunk or fall on hard times. The chief clerk of the court was skeptical and suggested he could soon find out if the man was telling the truth about winning the Derby.

‘So can I’, interrupted Daly from the dock. ‘I won it, and the horse was owned by Squire Chaplin’.

The Lord Mayor commented that the prisoner was a little too excited but he would like to ‘see him again’ so remanded him for a few days to check his story.

‘Very good’, Daly declared, ‘you will find what I have said is true’.

A week later he was back in court and this time a warder from Holloway goal was summoned to give evidence in the case. Henry Goode told the magistrate that he was very familiar with John Daly and knew him as a regular offender who had been prosecuted in London, Leeds and Sheffield to his knowledge. Daly spluttered his denial but the string of previous convictions was enough for the Lord Mayor. Moreover, the court was told that the real John Daly was currently enjoying his retirement from racing in Austria, where he had a ‘good position’.

As a consequence this ‘John Daly’ was sent to prison for 21 days with hard labour.

The real John Daly had indeed won the Derby and the Oaks in 1867 (a rare ‘double’) riding Hermit in the first and Hippia in the second. He was a famous jockey in his day and Hermit’s owner (who was indeed Henry Chaplin mentioned in court) won a staggering £140,000 backing his mount. Daly himself told reporters that he had made £6,000 from the Derby win.

When he retired he went to Germany (so perhaps Austria is not too far off the mark) where he took up training, winning the German St Leger in 1897 with Geranium. He returned to south London where he died two years before the outbreak of the First World War, on 9 April 1912.

[from The Standard, Saturday, October 14, 1893; The Illustrated Police News, Saturday, October 21, 1893; The Morning Post, Saturday, October 21, 1893]

‘The devil finds work for idle hands to do’: a youngster pays the price for his temptation

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William Barham was only 11 years of age when he stood in the dock at mansion House Police court. His experience is a reminder that attitudes towards children (especially juvenile offenders) have changed enormously in the past 150 years.

William’s father worked in a local market close to Mark Lane as a ‘sampler of corn’. He was well respected having held the post for many years. His lad often went into work with him and was allowed to play and run about the offices at the New Corn Exchange. The beadle had an office there, where the boy was allowed occasionally to wash himself.

On the 8 May William was watching Mr Wise the beadle tie up some bags of silver coin. The temptation  must have been too great because when the beadle left the room William helped himself to one of the bags. Wise spotted the loss on his return and his suspicions immediately fell on young William.

This was compounded by the eleven year-old’s absence and so on the following morning, when he reappeared, he was questioned closely about the missing money (which amounted to £5). William denied all knowledge of it and the matter was handed over to the police. Now William cracked; handling questions from his father and a man he knew was one thing, but being interrogated by police detective, perhaps in a cell nearby clearly unsettled the child.

Accompanied by his father, the beadle and the detective, William took them across the river to ‘an orchard in a retired part of Bermonsdsey’ where he’d buried his loot. They dug up the bag which still contained most of the silver; William had spent 3s 6d but wouldn’t say on what.

At his first appearance in court, soon after the discovery of the theft, William was remanded in custody at the request of his father. Mr Barham said he wanted his son to be placed in a juvenile reformatory, for his own good. The magistrate agreed but sent the child back to a police cell while the arrangements were made. This had taken about a week and now father and son were reunited at the Mansion House, along with the boy’s mother.

Alderman Challis, sitting as magistrate, asked the parents what they wanted to happen to William. They said they were ‘both anxious that some steps should be taken to reclaim their son from the dangerous career on which he had entered’.

Detective Monger explained that his enquiries had established that William had be led on by an older boy, a common trope in juvenile crime.

This other lad had persuaded William to ‘steal anything he could lay his hands on’ and, as a result, ‘he had frequently robbed his father and mother’.

Today William would have been seen as a troubled child, perhaps one that played truant or had been excluded from school. William didn’t go to school in 1860, nor, it seems, did he work. As the proverb suggests, ‘the devil finds work for idle hands to do’.

The alderman agreed that a reformatory school was the best place for William but the law required that he face a spell in prison first. William was sentenced to 14 days in Holloway gaol so that he could face the full consequences of his criminal actions and hopefully learn from it. Thereafter he would be sent to the Home in the East School for the Reformation of Criminal Boys at Bow, for four years. His father was obliged to pay 2sa week towards his keep, the intention being that parents should not evade their responsibilities entirely.

William was led away in tears and ‘for some minutes after was heard shrieking loudly for his father and mother’. It was a harsh system and we can only hope that William emerged in his early teens unscathed by it and perhaps one step removed from the influences that had led him to steal in the first place.

[from The Morning Chronicle, Saturday, May 19, 1860]

The ‘extraordinary life of an ungovernable girl’.

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Silena Salter was by all accounts an ‘extraordinary’ young woman, By the age of 18 she was already a well known character at the Guildhall Police court in the City of London. She had appeared there on no fewer than 19 occasions charged with disorderly conduct but although she was possessed of a ‘violent and uncontrollable temper, that amounts almost to madness’ she was otherwise ‘honest, sober, and virtuous’.

On the 24 April 1866 she had again rung the bell in the vagrant ward at the West London Union workhouse despite promising never to do so again. This was the charge that kept on bringing her before a justice and it seemed the authorities were completely unable to prevent this young woman from misbehaving. One magistrate had refused to even take the case and left it for Alderman Waterloo, to whom she had last made her pledge to behave. He saw her on the 28 April and was joined in court by the governor of the City Prison, Mr Weatherhead.

The governor handed the justice a pamphlet detailing the ‘Sad Story’ of Silena’s life. The girl had been born in Bath, the daughter of a gardener and her mother had died when she was very young. Her father remarried but Silena’s stepmother ‘possessed little, or no, control over her’ and she was ‘left to her own inclinations’.

She went to school and then into service as a domestic but she didn’t take to either of these attempts at improving her character. She ran away, stealing money from her stepmother and came to London in search of a new life. A young man who was sweet on her followed after her but she wanted nothing to do with him. Left alone she ended up homeless on the streets of the capital, wandering from workhouse to workhouse until her ‘refractory’ behaviour earned her a spell in Holloway Prison.

Several times the authorities sent her back home to Bath, but each time she ‘escaped’ and returned to London. This girl was a force of nature and it seemed no one was going to tame her rebellious spirit. A drastic situation called for drastic measures and the authorities in London decided to send her abroad, to America.

On the 29 November 1865 she sailed from Liverpool to New York where ‘hopes were entertained that in another country she would become a better girl’. But ‘such hopes were futile’ the pamphlet observed.

Silena upped sticks and worked her passage back to Britain and to London.

Despite the best efforts of the magistracy, the Poor Law authorities and several well-meaning ‘charitable ladies’ it seemed that the obstinacy of this young woman was such that she was determined not to be ‘saved’ from herself. She was ‘a living witness to the waywardness of the human heart’ and Alderman Waterloo said there was really nothing else he could do for her but to send her to Holloway once more.

He did so ‘not in the expectation that the punishment would do her any good, but I the hope that some of the kind friends who visited the prison might devise some means of reclaiming her’.

Silena was taken down to the cells where she kept up a steady protest by kicking at the doors until the van came to take her to prison. 

[from The Standard , Monday, April 30, 1866]

Two jewel thieves nabbed in Cheapside

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Cheapside in the 1890s

One of the early jobs I had as an adult was working in a jewellers over the busy Christmas period. Being new to the trade my job was to fetch items from inside the large shop windows and bring them to the assistants serving customers on the counter. Jewellers are different from most retail outlets in that customers are not generally allowed to select their purchases without supervision; after all some of the rings, necklaces and watches they sell are extremely valuable.

This makes it more of a challenge for shoplifters and jewel thieves. The crudest method is the smash and grab: literally smashing a jeweller’s window with something heavy (like a hammer or a brick) and snatching as much as they can before running off with it. This is harder to achieve during daylight so its no surprise that jewellers routinely empty their displays at the end of the day’s trading.

The other common method of theft is deception by distraction. This is frequently deployed by shoplifters and involves convincing the shop keeper that you are an honest regular customer and diverting their gaze or attention from your target long enough to palm it or other wise secrete it about your person. This often works best if the thief has an accomplice.

In October 1889 Mary Ann Sinclair and Sarah Pond (or Pend) entered a jewellers shop in Cheapside in the City of London owned by a Mr Carter. They asked the assistant if they could see some wedding rings. Neither of them were particular young ladies (Sinclair was 52 and Pend 39) but presumably they were respectably dressed and caused the assistant no alarm.

He produced a triangular wire tray containing a selection of rings. Mary Ann tried on 2 or 3 of the rings but none fitted; she told the man that they had better bring in their friend (the bride to be presumably) just to be sure. She then asked the assistant to measure her finger and left. Almost as soon as they had gone the assistant realised one of the rings was missing, a diamond band valued at £15 10s (or around £600 in today’s money).

This was not the first theft these two had carried out however. On the 2 October they had performed a similar deception at John James Durant & Son., also on Cheapside and the police were onto them. Soon after they left Carter’s two detectives picked up their trail and followed them to Gutter Lane, just off the main street, where they were arrested. Back at Cloak Lane police station the pair were identified as the women that had stolen another ring from  Durant’s by Albert Chambers by the same ruse. Chambers, who served as the shop’s engraver, told the police that he counted the number of rings on the wire frame  before handing them to his colleague to show the women. This was probably standard practice.

So the police now had good evidence against the women and at the Mansion House Police court they were both committed for trial. At the Old Bailey on 21 October they were tried and convicted of the theft despite their protestations that they knew nothing about it. Pend admitted to having a previous conviction from 1878 when she was known as Mary Margaret M’Cull. Both women were sent down for 15 months at hard labour.

We have no more information about Sinclair but Sarah Pend (or M’Cull) generated a little more detail in the records. The new Digital Panopticon website notes that she was born in Norfolk in 1850 and had great eyes and sandy coloured hair. She was sent to Holloway Prison and released onto the habitual criminals register in January 1891.

[from The Morning Post, Friday, October 11, 1889]

A ‘notorious’ thief’s cross-examination skills backfire at the Guildhall

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Sir Robert Carden by ‘Spy’ (aka Leslie Ward) (Vanity Fair, December 1880)

In yesterday’s post I was able to show that a policeman who stayed in court (when all witnesses had been asked to leave) effectively undermined his own evidence and allowed a magistrate to exercise his discretion in a case he clearly felt slightly uncomfortable about. The newspaper reports of the London Police Courts, anecdotal as they undoubtedly are, can therefore be extremely useful to understanding how the summary process operated in the nineteenth-century capital.

This case, from the Guildhall Police Court in 1859, also reveals the nature of the hearing and, in particular, how the accused’s voice could be heard. In this instance the accused, a young man whom the papers certainly wanted to represent as a ‘bad character’, decided to act as his own defence counsel, cross examining the complainant in court.

As we will see, it probably wasn’t the wisest of strategies.

The complaint was brought by a ‘highly respectable young woman’ named Miss Martha Orange. The young lady in question was walking along Ludgate Street in the City at around 3 o’clock on Sunday afternoon when he realised that a young was at her side. He touched her on the shoulder and startled, she quickly crossed over the road to escape his attentions.

Very soon afterwards he was back and she realised she’d lost her purse. As she turned to confront him he ran off. Calling for others to help her catch him Miss Orange ran off after him. A few streets away he was captured by a policeman (PC Collins 337 City) in London House Yard and taken into custody. The lad had dumped the purse but it was found in the yard by a butcher’s son named Phillips Jeacocks, who handed it in.

The purse had contained quite a lot of money, which is why Miss Orange was aware it had been stolen from her. The prisoner, who gave his name as John Howard, now took it upon himself to challenge the woman’s testimony. In doing so he certainly asserted his rights but the nature of his line of questioning also suggests a familiarity with the legal system. I suspect that this familiarity exposed him as a ‘known’ offender, and he was later described as a member of a notorious local gang of thieves.

Howard started by asking the prosecutor if she had seen her purse in his hands. Miss Orange admitted that she hadn’t.

‘How do you know I took your purse?’ he enquired.

‘Because there was no one else near my pocket’ she replied.

He also cross-examined the butcher’s boy: ‘Will you swear I am the man?’ he demanded. ‘I am most sure you are’, said Phillip Jeacocks.

Having heard from the two principal witnesses the court now listened to the report of the police. Constable Haun (360 City police) declared that he was sure that the prisoner had previous convictions at Guildhall and Mansion House.

‘I was never at either place in my life’ Howard protested.

The arresting officer, PC Collins said he recognised him as someone who had escaped arrest after another man’s pocket had been picked. Now a Met policeman added that Howard belonged to a ‘notorious gang in Golden Lane’. Haun continued his evidence by telling the magistrate, Sir Robert Carden, that Howard had been imprisoned in Holloway and may well have been convicted at Old Bailey. Nowadays a prisoner’s previous convictions would not be revealed in court prior to conviction, but then again in the 1800s a person’s criminal record was not so easy to determine; these were the days before pretty nay kind of forensic science existed.

Unfortunately for Howard (if that was his name) even Sir Robert recognised him. Haun added that several of the lad’s ‘associates’ were in court that day, offering moral support to their chum. At this the magistrate warned the watching public to keep a close eye on their valuables, while he assured them he would make sure that Howard couldn’t pick any pockets for a couple of weeks at least.

This was because he intended to commit the lad for a jury trial where he might expect a severe custodial sentence. Howard twigged this and immediately put in a plea for justice to be served summarily: ‘I would rather you would deal with the case here sir’ he said.

Miss Orange had one last statement to make saying that at the police station Howard had admitted his crime and told her he was driven to it by his mother’s poverty and the need to look after her. He hoped she might forgive him and promised to mend his ways. His attempt to appeal to her good nature didn’t work but was overhead by PC Haun. Whether it was true or a lie he now denied it anyway, perhaps to avoid admitting guilt but maybe also to save face in front of his friends.

Sir Robert commended Miss Orange for the ‘coolness and courage’ she had displayed in apprehending and prosecuting the supposed thief. As for Howard, he turned to him and said: “I shall send you for trial, where you will have the opportunity of convincing a jury of your innocence’.

Howard did appear at the Old Bailey, on the 24 October 1859, indicted for stealing Miss Orange’s purse. Just as he had failed to undermine Miss Orange’s case at Guildhall Howard singularly failed to convince the jury of his innocence either. They found him guilty and when an officer from the Clerkenwell Sessions appeared to confirm that the prisoner had a previous conviction from August 1858 – for larceny for which he received a 12 months prison term) his goose was cooked. The judge at Old Bailey sent him into penal servitude for four years.

[from The Morning Post, Tuesday, September 27, 1859]

A furious driver collides with a lamp post

 

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Stepney Green in the Victorian Period

This is what might be described as a ‘cautionary tale’ for the readers of the Morning Post. William Jarvis was a brickmaker who worked for a contractor named Thomas Morris based at Bow Common. At the end of August 1868 Jarvis was seen driving his horse and cart along Stepney Green in what was described as ‘a furious and reckless manner’.

The offence of ‘furious driving’ was created by statute in 1861 as part of the Offences against the Person Act (1861) from which many of our laws concerning injury to people are derived. The full charge is as follows:

“Whosoever, having the charge of any carriage or vehicle, shall by wanton or furious driving or racing, or other wilful misconduct, or by wilful neglect, do or cause to be done any bodily harm to any person whatsoever, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and being convicted thereof shall be liable, at the discretion of the court, to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding two years …”

People are occasionally caught and prosecuted under this charge and in 2014 a man was brought before the courts in Leicester after colliding with a cyclist. More recently the law was mentioned in regard to the case of Charlie Alliston who is facing a trial for manslaughter after the death of a woman he hit whilst riding a bike which was not fitted with brakes.*

One of the Commercial Gas Company’s inspector witnessed Jarvis hurtling along the street, swerving to avoid pedestrians and other road users before he ran smack into a lamp post on the corner of Hannibal Street. The post was badly damaged – he had ‘knocked it out of the perpendicular’ as the report stated – at a cost of 7s 6d (or around £18 today) the court was told.

When he came to he was arrested by the police. He gave his address as Bow Common but the the police could find no trace of a man under his name there. He later explained that his boss, Mr Morris kept his horses there; perhaps he had no address. Jarvis admitted his fault and apologised, adding that he had been ‘tipsy’ at the time.

Mr Benson the sitting magistrate declared that it was ‘most disgraceful and dangerous’ to be driving ‘through the crowded roads and streets of Stepney on Sunday evening’, Presumably he meant at speed and under the influence of alcohol. He fined 2s 6d for being drunk and a further 7s 6d in damages to pay for the bent and broken lamppost. Jarvis had no money, or at least not the 10s he needed to settle this bill. A failure to pay one’s fines meant a spell in custody and William was marched off to start a 10 day sentence at hard labour in Holloway prison.

He could count himself lucky perhaps; had he hit a person – a child perhaps – instead of a piece of street furniture, he may well have been facing a much longer ‘holiday’ from his brick-making career.

[from The Morning Post, Tuesday, September 01, 1868]

*update: Charlie Alliston was cleared of manslaughter but found guilty of wanton and furious driving. He could face up to two years in prison for the offence.

A fake vicar at Bow Street

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Eyebrows were raised when George Stanley appeared in the dock at Bow Street in May 1877. He didn’t look like your average thief, in fact he closely resembled a vicar, so what was he doing there?

Stanley, an ‘elderly man’ having ‘the appearance of a shabby-genteel clergyman’ was charged with loitering in and around Charing Cross with the intention of stealing from passers-by. Mr Flowers, the Bow Street magistrate, thought he seemed familiar and Sergeant Kerlay of Scotland Yard confirmed that he was a ‘known criminal’, and had been convicted several times before.

The habit of a cleric was a disguise, the sergeant explained, that allowed him to go about the crowds unsuspected. He usually had an accomplice, a woman, and he always carried an umbrella. He held the ‘brolly point down and slightly open, so that when his assistant had stolen something she could drop it in ‘without exciting the slightest suspicion’.

A prison warder from Holloway also testified that Stanley was a former inmate, he knew him well despite his ‘disguise’. The prisoner however, said, in a voice ‘that belied his aspect’ that the whole thing was ‘a pack of lies, and no magistrate should listen to such nonsense’. Mr Flowers clearly disagreed, as he sent him to prison for three months at hard labour.

 

[from The Standard, Monday, May 14, 1877]

Baby trafficking in Victorian London and Kent

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Detective Burgess and detective-sergeant Chide were looking for an infant when they called at a house in Olney Street, Walworth, south London. They had presumably received a tip-off that child was there or that someone in the house knew of its whereabouts. The person they questioned was Mary Boyle, a 30 year-old ‘ironer’ who was known by several other aliases (including Green, Kemp and Campbell).

They arrested Mary and took her back to the station to question her. There she was placed in an identity parade with other women and picked out by the mother of the missing baby, Mrs Mabel Reed. Boyle was then told she would be formally charged with stealing a six week-old male child and £3 in cash ‘by means of a trick’.

Mary vehemently denied the charge. She insisted instead that it had been given to her to adopt. Then where was it, the inspector asked her. ‘I will not tell you if you keep me here for 25 years’, she replied, adding ‘why do you call this stealing?’

The case came up before the Lambeth police magistrate in early May 1893. The police were still looking for the baby and Mary Boyle was still refusing to tell them where it was or admit she had taken it.

Inspector Harvey stated that: ‘You told this lady [Mrs Reed] that you had been confined with a dead baby seven weeks ago, and that you were the wife of a tea merchant at Eastbourne, and that you wanted the child to adopt, so your friends would think it was your own’.  Mary responded by saying that the child was well cared cared by a family in Leicester.

The child remained missing however, al the police had managed to find were its clothes, and a search was ongoing which would now presumably switch to Leicester. One can only imagine the emotional state of the mother. The police asked for, and were granted, a remand so that they could continue their investigation. The magistrate informed Mary that she ‘stood in a very serious position’.

The Leicester Chronicle and the Leicestershire Mercury reported the case on the 13 May, using almost exactly the same text as The Standard, but adding the detail that the police that called on Mary had no warrant, and that initially she had refused to go with them, and that the family the baby was placed in at Leicester was that of a church minister.

The story has a happy ending I am glad to say. The child was found, not in Leicester but in a ditch in ‘a lonely lane’ near Gravesend in Kent. It was taken to the nearby workhouse at Hastings and, because of the widespread press reporting of a missing child, the police were informed. Mabel Reed then traveled to Hastings to identify her son, who was, according to the papers, ‘none the worse for his exposure’.

Having reunited mother and baby the investigation now turned back to Mary Boyle and her initial crime. A few days later the press reported that this was not Mary’s first office; in fact she had already served a prison sentence for abducting children in the past.

On the 21 May, with story making national news, readers were told that Mary had again appeared before at Lambeth Police Court. Mr Sims  led the prosecution on behalf of he Treasury and he stated that he found show that Boyle could be tied to ‘three cases in which the prisoner had obtained children’. He explained how Mrs Reed, now described as a ‘governess’,  had answered the following advertisement placed by  Boyle:

‘We should dearly love to adopt your little darling entirely as our own, and have it registered in our own name, it would have the most loving care, a good Christian home, and every care and attention’.

Mabel Reed met with Mary Boyle and the latter told her that her husband was a wealthy tea merchant and that they would give the child a good life and name it Arthur after her own father. She was desperate it seemed, having (as was stated earlier) lost her own child just seven weeks earlier.

Reed was convinced and so must have had her own problems in keeping her baby (no husband is mentioned so perhaps she was a widow and the child illegitimate?) and accompanied Mary to London Bridge station. There Mary asked her for £3 to buy clothes for the child, which she gave her. She didn’t seem to wonder at why a wealthy merchant’s wife would need to ask her for money for baby clothes for a child she was giving up, however…

The story captured the imagination of the reading public and lots of letters were sent to the press regarding ‘lost’ or ‘adopted’ babies and children. Lloyd’s Weekly then ran a column on the ‘business’ of adoption and baby-stealing, mentioning that several infants had been found ‘in out-of-the-way places near Maidstone’ (which is also in Kent).

Along with the letters received by the press were several at the Olney Street house and other addresses known to have been occupied by Boyle. These apparently came from other distressed mothers (or would-be adoptive mothers) who were using their offspring. One said:

‘How many more times am I to write to you to know what has become of my little Harry?’

Mary’s landlady was also reported to have aired her suspicions about her tenant. When Mary had retried home after a few days without her own child she had enquired what had happened to it. Mary told her that she didn’t want her husband to know about it, ‘so I have put it away where it will be looked after’. The pair had then had a conversation concerning the discovery of a baby’s dead body in the Grand Surrey Canal, which Mary thought was awful, saying ‘if I did such a thing I should never be able to rest for  a minute’.  She also reported that Boyle had hung religious tracts up on her walls, ‘one of which she committed to memory every day’.

The article concluded by saying that Mary was currently in Holloway Prison under  examination by the chief medical officer there, Dr Gilbert.  The police were still investigating and the notion that Mary Boyle was not in full command of her mind was clearly an avenue they were considering.

Mary was brought up at Lambeth again on 23 May; the same story was repeated (so anyone as yet unfamiliar with he case could catch up), and she was again remanded. On this occasion two other young women gave evidence very similar to Mabel Reed’s. One was a servant and said she had met Mary Boyle at Waterloo station and had named over £2 for clothes for her child that was being giving up for adoption. In this case Mary had suggested her husband was a minister in the Band of Hope, a Temperance organisation that worked with young children. The other was told Mary was the wife of a deacon. It was also feared that in these cases the children were dead, and as she left the dock at Lambeth Mary was hissed by the watching gallery.

Victorian Britain had already witnessed several ‘baby farming’ scandals, this case (dubbed the ‘traffic in babies’) seemed poised to shock the public just as deeply.

At the end of the month the press reported that another child had been found alive, in the infirmary at Greenwich. Mary again appeared in court and was one again remanded for further inquiry. It was also reported that Mary Boyle told the police that the two children belong to Ms Kent and Miss White, (the servants that came to lambeth to give obedience on the 23 May), were indeed dead. When she appeared again in early June Reynolds’ Newspaper reported that the court was so crowded with women and children it resembled a nursery. Mary was still being held at Holloway and the case continued.

By July several women had testified to having been ‘conned’ in to giving up their babies by Mary Boyle. As the case against her was focused on the discovery of the child at Gravesend she was eventually tried at the Maidstone Assizes on 14 July 1893. She was convicted of ‘obtaining a number of children by fraud, and afterwards abandoning them’. The judge sent her to prison for 14 years.

[from The Standard, Tuesday, May 09, 1893; Reynolds’s Newspaper, Sunday, May 14, 1893; Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper , Sunday, May 21, 1893; Daily News, Wednesday, May 24, 1893; Daily News, Saturday, July 15, 1893; Issue 14754. British Library Newspapers, Part I: 1800-1900.]

An ex-solider’s debt sheds light on my research query…

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The Shaftesbury Training Ship (or Industrial School)

I spent yesterday in the London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) pouring over one of few surviving registers we have for the London Police Courts. Most of what we can know about the ways these courts operate comes from the pages of the newspapers or the memoirs of a handful of Police magistrates or court visitors. The ledgers in the LMA are fairly dull and a  little confusing to the uninitiated.

One of the cases I noted at Thames was of a young lad of 12 named Bartholomew who was found wandering the streets unable to give a good account of himself. As a vagrant he was rounded up and taken before Mr Saunders. The record seems to say that the magistarte had sent him somewhere until he was 16 but I couldn’t work out where that ‘somewhere’ was from the almost illegible scrawl of the clerk.

However, by chance I solved the problem.

For today’s blog I chose the case of Thomas Seymour, an ex-soldier who drew a pension of 9d a day. Seymour lived with his wife and children at Flood Street, Chelsea but found himself in court at Westminster in February 1881 (the same year that Bartholomew was caught ‘wandering’).

Seymour was summoned to show why ‘he should not be committed to prison in default of paying the sum of £3 12s’ since when bailiffs had seized his goods and chattels they had failed to raise that amount.

The army pensioner owed such a large amount because in October 1879 (some 16 months earlier) he had been ordered to pay 2s 6d a week towards the upkeep of his son. The boy had been sent to an industrial school (so had presumably had his own run in with the law) and then to the ‘Shaftesbury Training Ship‘ until he turned 16.

The Shaftesbury housed around 350 ‘problem’ boys, often those that just would not go to school and preferred to play truant. Perhaps this was why Seymour’s son was sent there. This was also where young Bartholomew went I realised, the Thames’ magistrate’s answer to his wandering aimlessly no doubt.

Seymour complained that he had been out of work ‘for over 12 months’ and his army pension did not give him enough to live on. let alone pay for his estranged son.

Unfortunately for Seymour the evidence presented by the industrial schools officer, Jonathan Lawrence, proved damning. He told the court that Seymour had been:

‘more than once sent to gaol for wife beating, and was a drunken man. He had earned good wages in the employ of the London General Omnibus Company, but had been discharged 12 months ago for drunkenness. His eldest daughter was married, and helped the mother and a boy of 16 worked and brought home 10s. the only other child dependent being one 11 years old. Thus the home was comfortable and the only obstacle to its entire happiness was the presence of a lazy drunkard’.

Ouch.

The magistrate sent Seymour to Holloway Prison (then a mixed establishment) for a month.

I am however grateful to Mr Seymour for providing me with the answer to my tricky palaeographic conundrum.

[from The Morning Post, Tuesday, February 22, 1881]