Tag: Horse racing

The case of the missing bridegroom and his distraught newlywed wife

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You have to feel sorry for Mrs Alice Lisle. The ‘petite, fair, blue-eyed, young lady’ appeared at the Bow Street Police Magistrates court in late August 1897 to ask for help. Her husband, she explained, had disappeared.

As she explained to Mr Lushington Alice, then Alice Elizabeth Hunt, had married Edward Montague Balmerino Lisle (33) at St. George’s Church, Bloomsbury (pictured above) on 14 July 1897. He was, she said, a gentleman of ‘independent means’ that she’d met at Bunhill Fields Coffee Tavern near Aldersgate Station (now Barbican underground) where she was working behind the counter. Having ‘paid his attentions’ to her for two months he proposed and they married.

It had been a very happy (if short) marriage. They honeymooned in Windsor, in sight of the castle, and on 11 August he returned in advance to London to settle some financial business.

Alice hadn’t seen him since.

I do wonder at Mr Lisle’s honesty. Apparently he liked to gamble (if not excessively) and his letters to her suggest he spent most of his time at the races. His full name was – slightly unbelievably – Just Henry Edward Montague Elphinstone Balmerino Lisle – and he claimed to have been a pupil at the Marlborough School and to have returned there to look up an old friend shortly after leaving Windsor.

The magistrate could not help much beyond recommending that the newspapers – starting with the Daily Mail (who had a reporter in court that day) – should publicise the case in the hopes that someone knew something. In the meantime, all Alice could do was go back to her lodgings at Hunter Street, Brunswick Square and wait.

That really was the last Alice saw of her bridegroom. Whether he ran away to avoid a previous marriage (bigamy was not uncommon at the time), or to outrun his creditors (debt was equally familiar to many men of his generation), he doesn’t seem to met a sticky end. At least not in 1897 that is. Oddly I did find a mention of man with his name being fished out of the Thames, presumed dead by his own efforts, 30 years later

[from Sheffield Evening Telegraph, 28 August, 1897]

‘The more I look at you the more convinced I am that you are the man that tricked me’

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William Hurley admitted to being a thief.  However, on this occasion, as he stood in the Bow Street dock on 21 November 1898 he strongly denied he had committed the crime for which he’d been charged. He brought in a lawyer to represent him but in the course of his examination he dismissed him and took over his own defense.

His accuser was a Miss Alice Bull who gave her address as Haverstock Hill in northwest London. She had traveled into central London on the train, stopping at Charing Cross where she deposited a black box at the cloakroom. As she was leaving the office a man came running up to her and said:

‘Excuse me; you have just left a black box in the cloak-room, and I have left a Gladstone bag. Unfortunately, you have taken my ticket, and I have got yours’.

He showed her his ticket and suggested they swap. Alice was wary:

‘How am I to know that your story is correct’, she asked.

‘’It’s all correct’, he assured her. ‘If you have any doubt about it, come back to the cloak-room with me’.

Reassured, Alice handed over the ticket and went off to spend the day in the capital. However, when she returned to the station in the evening and produced what she thought was her ticket she was given a brown paper parcel, which contained nothing other than a daily newspaper. Her box, and the watch and chain, three gold brooches, and clothing – valued at around £30 – was nowhere to be seen.

She reported the theft and the police investigated. The box turned up in a railway carriage at Action, lodged under a seat and devoid of its contents. The police did track down and arrest a suspect – William Hurley (23) and Alice picked him out in an identity parade at Old Kent Road police station.

Thomas Jones, the porter at the Charing Cross cloak room having at first failed to identify Hurley was more sure it was him when he saw him at Bow Street Police court. However, since he admitted that since 12,000 parcels were deposited each day at the station (a staggering amount when one thinks about it) there must have been some degree of doubt in his mind.

Alice went on the offensive in court, clearly annoyed that she had been robbed in this way. The only thing that had been found in her box was a ball of string.

‘Is that yours?’ she asked the man in the dock.

The magistrate (Mr Sydney) reminded her that she was not allowed to cross-examine the defendant, but she was not to be put off. When Hurley claimed it was a case of mistaken identity and that he knew who had stolen her property, and it wasn’t him, she said:

‘Why don’t you bring him here so that I might compare you? The more I look at you the more convinced I am that you are the man’.

Hurley, having dismissed his lawyer, again denied the charge, told the court he was a tailor and said he ‘had ten or eleven witnesses that he was at Gatwick Races on the day of the this occurrence, and did not return to London until 10 o’clock that night’.

The justice committed him to take his trial.

[from The Standard, Tuesday, November 22, 1898]

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]

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

The uninvited guest of the Duke of Westminster

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Hugh Lupus Grosvenor, 1st Duke of Westminster 

James Clarke may have simply seeking a place to sleep when he clambered over the gates of Grosvenor House on Park Lane. He’d left clear footprints by the gates and it wasn’t difficult for the special constable on duty in the grounds to find and secure him.  When a large iron rod was found near to where he’d been hiding the policeman suspected that Clarke might have had more criminal activities in mind.

Clarke was arrested and brought up before the Marlborough Street magistrate after a night in a police cell. Clarke said he’d been ‘tramping during the day’ and just thought it looked a decent place to get his head down for the night. He’d picked up the bar on route, and there was nothing suspicious about it.

Perhaps he took it for protection as we know that anyone sleeping rough then (or now) was very vulnerable to being abused, robbed or assaulted. But it was as likely (more so maybe) that Clarke was going to use the bar to break a window or even to threaten or attack one of the residents if he’d got in.

I suppose in some circumstances he might have been given the benefit of the doubt but Grosvenor House was the London home of the 1st Duke of Westminster, Hugh Grosvenor.  The duke was instrumental in developing both the wealth of the Grosvenors and their stud at Eaton Hall in Cheshire. When he died he was believed to be the richest man in England.

So it is hardly surprising that he had a policeman on special duty in the grounds of his house. His family was close friends with the queen and Victoria not only raised him from marquis to duke, she was godmother to his eldest son. I doubt the wandering labourer knew exactly whose grounds he had broken into but the magistrate did. He sent him to prison for a month at hard labour.

The current Duke of Westminster is also a Hugh. A billionaire he also estimated to be the richest man alive under the age of 30, and he has continued the close connection to the royals, being named godfather to Prince George of Cambridge, who is third in line to the throne. Wealth like the Westminsters is rarely diluted and inheritance means that when this duke marries and has children they will be as rich, if not more so, than their predecessors. Meanwhile people like James Clarke are still sleeping rough on the streets and gardens of the modern capital.

[from The Morning Post, Monday, June 04, 1888]

If it looks like ‘easy money’ it probably means you are about to get fleeced: trains, racing and the 3 card trick

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In mid June 1882 a well-dressed man was stood in the dock at Southwark Police court and charged with conspiracy to steal (or rather defraud) from two German visitors to the races. However, Henry Archer was no small time thief and appeared in court represented by his lawyer and ready to vigorously refute the charges laid against him.

There were two supposed victims (unconnected and on separate days) but only one showed up in court. Archer’s brief, Mr Keith Frith, suggested that the absence of one of the complainants was evidence of his client’s innocence, as we shall see.

The case began with the prosecution giving their version of events on the 8 June 1882. Mr Batchelor, from the Treasury Solicitor’s office led the prosecution and stated that on the Thursday in question William Tremel was travelling in the first class carriage from Waterloo to Ascot to watch the horse racing. As he took his seat Archer and two other men joined him. As the train pulled out of Waterloo one of Archer’s companions spread a travel rug over his knees and pulled out a pack of cards. He then proceeded to play the ‘three card trick’ with his friends.

The trio were betting and winning and losing money. Tremel may not (as a foreign visitor) have been familiar with the game and watched intently. Not long afterwards Archer asked him if he wanted to join in and the German was soon hooked and, inevitably (because it was a scam) started to lose.

By the time they got to the end of the journey he had lost between £8 and £10 (which may not sound that much, but represents about £500-£650 in today’s money). Tremel also borrowed another £20 from Archer and gave him and IOU; he had been well and truly fleeced but Archer claimed that he had never been on the train and had never met the German.

At the racetrack the prosecution claimed that Archer had bid his friends farewell and told Herr Tremel that he was off to see his brother, who was ‘Fred Archer the jockey’. Later that day Tremel saw Archer on the racecourse and noticed that he was carrying a book for recording the odds. Mr Frith explained that his client was a respectable individual and a ‘bona fide betting man’. In other words he was a licensed bookmaker on the Ascot and Kempton Park racetracks and argued that he’d done nothing wrong and that Tremel must have been mistaken in identifying him.

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The other victim (Robert Poehl) had stayed away from court because he accepted that he lost a similar amount of money on the train playing at a game of chance at which he’d hoped to profit.

When Archer had been arrested the police found ‘commissions and telegrams from certain noblemen well known on the turf’ and so – Frith argued – it was ‘absurd to bring charges against him’. He produced a witness who gave Archer an alibi and a glowing character reference. Batchelor, prosecuting, said he’d be able to find a witness to shoot down the alibi and asked for a remand so he could bring further evidence against Archer (and possibly track down the other two men). Mr Slade, as magistrate, agreed and bailed Archer in the meantime.

The whole episode reminds me of the racetrack wars of the 1910s and 20s (dramatized by the BBC in the Peaky Blinders series) involving rival gangs led by Billy Kimber, Darby Sabini and Alfred Solomon. There was a legitimate betting industry but it worked in the shady borders between legitimacy and criminality and the two worlds were never very far apart.

People are still being fleeced by the ‘three card trick’ (or ‘find the lady’) mainly because humans continue to believe they can beat the system. You can’t and as every casino owner knows 9and every gamble forgets) the ‘house always wins’.

[from The Standard, Thursday, June 15, 1882]

Fred Archer was a famous jockey in the 1880s, if not the most famous. He won champion jockey no less than 13 times in a row and rode 2,748 winners. Despite his success he had a sad end, taking his own life at the age of just 29 following the death of his wife in childbirth. Fred Archer had one surviving daughter to whom he left a huge fortune worth over £6,000,000 today. He did have two brothers, but neither of them were called Henry, so perhaps our Archer made that up as well.

For a detailed analysis of the racetrack wars see Heather Shore’s London’s Criminal Underworlds, c.1720-1930, which offers an excellent study of networks of crime and the people involved in it.   

A family day out at the races ends in court

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It was a Friday evening in early June 1876 and Henry Stokes and his wife and son were coming home from a day out at the races. As they family rode in their cart along the Balham Road in south London another vehicle – a wagonette – was, unbeknown to the Stokes, careering towards them.

Police constable Hill had seen the wagonette (literally, a small sprung wagon, drawn by one or two horses) and realized it was going too fast. London’s streets were pretty crowded in the nineteenth century and all sorts of users could be found on them. There were tens of thousands of horse drawn carts, coaches, hansoms and carriages, as well as omnibus, trams, pedestrians, horse riders, and the occasional.

PC Hill shouted a warning to the driver of the wagonette to slow down and ‘be more careful’ but he was ignored. Moments later there was a crash as the wagon and two horses collided with the other cart from behind. All three of the family were thrown into the road. Fortunately Mr Stokes and his son only suffered mild bruising but Mrs Stokes was hurt quite badly, and a doctor was summoned.

The copper arrested the other driver who gave his name as Edward Kirk. Kirk was an off duty omnibus driver so really should have known better. At Wandsworth Police Court PC testified that Kirk was doing around 12-14 miles an hour, which may not sound fast by today’s standards but was quite fast for a horse drawn vehicle at the time (most travelled at between 608 miles an hour in the city).

More damning for Kirk was an allegation that he was drunk in charge of the wagonette. Kirk denied this and produced a doctor that supported his statement but the police – in the shape of sergeant Bearman – handed over a medical certificate from a different doctor (presumably one that examined the driver at the police station) which said he was.  Faced with conflicting medical records Mr Bridge (the magistrate) chose to believe the police and fined Kirk £2 (or one month in prison).

He told Henry Stokes that if he wanted compensation for the damage to his cart and, more importantly, to cover the medical expenses incurred by his wife’s injury, he should bring an action in the county court. If he did the whole episode was likely to have been an expensive one for the omnibus driver who may well – given the public nature of the case and its reportage – have lost his job. The fine was not a small one anyway, around £125, or more than a couple of week’s salary for the bus driver, so he may have struggled to find that and have gone to prison instead.

Today, while the driving charge would stand (if there was a policeman anywhere to be found to see the incident) the civil damages would of course be dealt with by an insurance claim. Now of course, the injuries may well be worse since we travel much faster, and Kirk (or rather his insurers) might be facing claims of whiplash injury from Mrs Stokes. He would of course almost certainly have lost his license, and therefore his livelihood as well.

[from The Morning Post, Monday, June 05, 1876]

Outrageous behaviour by “welshers” and “roughs”

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The steam train had opened up Britain and given the Victorians opportunities to visit the seaside and enjoy other leisure pursuits, such as a day at the races. However, this came at a price because the train was a great social leveller, and so long as one had the funds the normal barriers to the mixing of the classes were weakened. Single female travellers were particularly at risk from the unwanted sexual advances of other passengers but, as this case (from the Southwark Police Court) shows, it was hard for anyone to escape bad or boorish behaviour on the railways.

On the 6 February 1879 two publicans  and brothers – Edwin and Walter Cole – had taken the Brighton Railway Company train to  Plumpton to watch the horse racing. When they got back to the station at Plumpton there was a crowd on the platform. Walter (who ran the Latimer Arms in Notting Hill Gate) explained what happened as he and his brother waited for the train:

They ‘were surrounded by a numbers of “welshers” and roughs, who attacked them, and attempted to rob them of their railway tickets and money’.

As they boarded the train the attack continued, and Walter was punched by one man and   had to get help from the guard to restrain him. The guard called Charles Jones, an inspector working for the railway company, who collared the attackers and shepherded them to a carriage at the opposite end of the train where he locked them in.

When the train reached London Bridge Edwin and Walter alighted and were walking towards the exit when two of the men that surrounded them at Plumpton rushed them . One aimed a kick at Walter before he was seized by the station master, a Mr Pierpoint, and Inspector Jones. The assailant, a man named William Butler, was then handed over to the police.

The police seemed reluctant to prosecute at first because there was no obvious injury to either of the Cole brothers. Butler was released and no other members of the group that had caused the trouble in East Sussex were arrested. Walter was determined to press charges however, and applied for a summons to bring Butler to court.

So, a few weeks later, on the 22 February, Butler found himself before Mr Partridge at Southwark having to deny he had anything to do with this ‘outrageous’ behaviour. He said he didn’t go to horse races, didn’t bet on the horses and hadn’t done anything wrong.  The evidence against them was pretty damning and the prosecution witnesses were respectable men and their stories were consistent.

Moreover an ex-detective from P Division appeared in court to inform his worship that the prisoner was a member of a notorious ‘gang of welshers and thieves’ who hung around race courses. They were were know as ‘Dutch Sam’s Gang’. ‘Hooligans’ were to become closely associated with the Southwark and Lambeth area in the 1890s and in 1888 the Pall Mall Gazette ran a feature about the various ‘gangs of London’ all of whom had colourful monickers like ‘Dutch Sam’.

There was laughter in the court as Butler’s affiliation was announced. Whether this came from his ‘chums’ or was a derisory reaction from the general public isn’t clear but Mr Partridge wasn’t in a mood to be amused. Despite the violence being petty and no real damage being done he handed the young man a two month prison sentence at hard labour.

[from The Standard, Monday, February 24, 1879]

p.s the term ‘welsher’ has, it seems, nothing to do with Wales and the Welsh people. According to the OED a ‘welsher’ is a ‘bookmaker who takes bets at horse races but who absconds, or refuses to pay if he loses’. It seems to have come into regular usage in the early 1860s. ‘Roughs’ was commonly used in the early Victorian period for groups of men at political demonstrations that acted aggressively; by the 1870s onwards it seems mostly to have applied to gangs of young men that were increasing seen as a social problem in British cities. Organised crime around British race courses is the subject of the BBC TV drama series Peaky Blinders, which takes the real-life story of the Birmingham gang as its inspiration, weaving in other race course gangsters such as Darby Sabini and Billy Kimber. ‘The inspiration for ‘Dutch Sam’s Gang’ may have been an early professional boxer of the same name who was popular in the 1820s.

A feckless husband and father is brought to book

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Today I start my third year classes at the University of Northampton teaching and working with students on a module entitled ‘Crime and Popular Culture in the late Victorian City’. The City in question is London and we concentrate on the last quarter of the 1800s. In particular the module uses the Whitechapel murders of 1888 as a prism through which to explore crime, poverty, and a variety of other topics, using different sorts of popular culture along the way.

Naturally this aligns quite neatly with this blog that looks at the work of the Victorian Police Courts. As is evident to anyone who regularly dips into these stories, ‘all human life is here’.

Poverty is one of the fundamental defining characteristics of many of those that ended up before a police magistrate in the nineteenth century. Poverty was a prime cause of criminal activity; poverty often went hand-in-hand with alcohol abuse and gambling; poverty and domestic spousal abuse were also strongly interlinked. In addition many (if not most) of those seeking advice from the Police Courts were poor, vulnerable, or elderly.

Poverty and the police courts then, were inseparable.

Walter Crump was described by the court reporter as an ‘able-bodied young man’ when he was examined before the magistrate at Westminster Police court on 11 January 1888. He was brought in by the guardians of the poor at St George’s, Hanover Square, for deserting his wife and children. His absence had left them in poverty and had meant they had turned to the parish for support, meaning their upkeep fell on the ratepayers.

They had been in the Fulham Road workhouse since July when Crump had left them and the parish officials had tried, and failed, to get him to take responsibility for them. They had written to him, the magistrate was told, warning him that a prosecution would follow if he did nothing to help them, but he:

‘took no heed of this, but went to races and hopping [as many Londoners did in the late summer], returning to Westminster and living in lodging houses as a single man’.

Walter denied trying to evade the authorities and said that previously he had been unable to support his family. Now, with some improvement in his condition, he might be able to ‘pay something weekly’.

Mr Eyncourt, the sitting magistrate at Westminster, was unimpressed. He had cost the ratepayers the sum of £30 by neglecting his familial duties (perhaps as much as £1,800 in today’s money). He had only offered to do anything about it when ‘he was in custody’. he added, and it had taken a great deal of time and effort to track him down. As a result he was sent to prison for a month at hard labour, just how useful that was in supporting the family is less clear but I presume it was intended as a message to others.

[from The Standard, Thursday, January 12, 1888]

You can use this site to search for specific crimes or use the Themes link in the menu on the left to look for areas or topics that interest you. If you are interested in a particular court (such as Bow Street or Marylebone) you can also limit your search to one court in particular. Please feel free to comment on anything you read and if something in particular interests you then please get in touch. You can email me at drew.gray@northampton.ac.uk