Tag: landlady

The death of a child is always a tragedy, this seems even worse somehow.

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Denmark Hill, Camberwell near the turn of the century.

1888 is a year forever synonymous with brutality and murder. Between August and November that year the papers were to become obsessed with the failure of the police to catch the ‘Whitechapel fiend’, the man that has gone down in history as ‘Jack the Ripper’. 

But the murders of the as yet undiscovered ‘Ripper’ were not the only killings in London that year, even if they were the most ‘newsworthy’.

In late May a man was brought before the sitting magistrate at Lambeth Police court, charged with murdering his infant son. 

William Albert Pierrepoint, a 31 year old hammerman from Camberwell, was accused of killing Sidney Gilbert John Pierrepoint, a child just one year and 10 months old*. 

The tragedy had happened on a Saturday evening as the Pierrepoints were leaving their lodgings at 158 Neate Street, Camberwell. As was often the case when a family left a small crowd had gathered outside. Some would have come to wish the couple and their children well, others to gawp, perhaps some even to revel in their neighbours’ misfortune. William Pierpoint was out of work, and seemingly had been for some time. The late 1880s were hard years for the British economy and the ranks of the out of work and underemployed grew, leading to protest rallies in Trafalgar Square and riots in Pall Mall. In 1888 the word ‘unemployment’ entered the Oxford English dictionary for the first time. 

As the family carried their small collection of personal belongings into the street to pile onto a barrow and made ready to leave, William, already slightly the worse for drink, railed against the world and his landlord. Perhaps because they were behind with the rent the Pierpoints had some of their furniture detained; most significantly their bed.

This was too much for the hammerman who suddenly raised his infant son up high and, with a cry of ‘Patty, Patty, you shall be the victim’, threw it to the ground. 

Stunned by what he’d done William stood there for a moment until the crowd became agitated. As they moved towards him and child a woman was heard to shout: ‘Don’t hurt him; he will have enough to answer for’. William fled and was picked up some time afterwards, even more drunk at the Little Wonder beer house nearby. 

The policeman that arrested him said that he went quietly when confronted with the assault on his child. ‘I had no intention of doing such a thing’, he explained as he was led to the station. Interviewed by Inspector Webb at 11 at night Pierpoint must have realised the enormity of his situation and tried to defend himself. ‘No one saw me do it’, he said, claiming that the ‘child fell off my arm’. 

In court before Mr Biron he said little except to repeat that the child’s death was not intentional. ‘I let the child fall’, he stated in the dock. The magistrate was unconvinced: ‘He did not let if fall, but dashed it to the ground’. William Pierpoint was first remanded and later indicted for murder and sent for trial at the Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey. 

The case came on in July 1888 and there the Pierpoints’ landlady, Sophia Moon, gave the court a bit more context for the events of that fateful evening in May. By the 26 May William owed her 19s 6d, or six weeks’ arrears. She had asked him for this and he told he hadn’t anything to give her. He had piled the family’s belongings into a barrow but told her she could have all the furniture – ‘You can have the b_____ lot’ he said, and apparently said quite a lot more, none of which she was prepared to repeat in a courtroom. 

He threw his key down and stormed off, his youngest child (Gilbert) in his arms. It was soon after this the then that the tragedy occurred. Despite William’s comment to the police there were witnesses that saw him throw his child to the ground. Eliza Howell, a leather dresser’s wife, saw it and later identified William to police at the beer house. Sarah Store also witnessed William’s actions, saying he was ‘dreadfully excited’ and had offered to hold the baby urging William to go and get the bed from upstairs. 

She was insistent that that child had not fallen, William had thrown it down. Others witnessed this and so despite his not guilty plea, his agitated state of mind, and the fact that several testified to his usual good nature towards children, Pierrepoint was convicted of murder. The jury strongly recommended mercy but judge passed sentence of death on him. 

William Pierrepoint did not hang for his son’s murder. On 22 July 1888 Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper reported that a respite had been received at Wandsworth Prison, where he was being held. Justice Hawkins, the trail judge, had added his name to that of the jurors in asking for clemency and it seems as if Pierrepoint’s sentence was then commuted to life imprisonment. 

It’s a very sad story, all arising from the stress that poverty can cause, leaving one child dead, and depriving the other of his father and Mrs Pierrepoint of her husband. And all for the want of 20 shillings, or about £80 today. 

Curiously, but not related, the name Pierrepoint is as associated with hanging as 1888 is with murder; from 1931 to his resignation in 1956, Albert Pierrepoint either assisted or was the lead executioner who hanged between 450-600 persons in his 25-year career. Of these 200 were war criminals executed as a result of the Nazi atrocities in WW2. 

Writing in his autobiography, published in 1974, Pierrepoint reflected on the death penalty (which by then had been suspended): 

… is said to be a deterrent. I cannot agree. There have been murders since the beginning of time, and we shall go on looking for deterrents until the end of time. If death were a deterrent, I might be expected to know. It is I who have faced them last, young lads and girls, working men, grandmothers. I have been amazed to see the courage with which they take that walk into the unknown. It did not deter them then, and it had not deterred them when they committed what they were convicted for. All the men and women whom I have faced at that final moment convince me that in what I have done I have not prevented a single murder.

[From Morning Post, 28 May 1888; Daily News 29 May 1888; Ipswich Journal 31 May 1888; The Standard, 31 May 1888; Reynolds Newspaper 2 June 1888; Lloyds’ Weekly Newspaper 22 July 1888]

*soem reports say that ‘Sidney’ was 2 and half years old.

‘Ring the bell, and put the child on the doorstep’: a young mother is handed a stark ultimatum

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There have been plenty of examples in the pages of this blog of quite stark reminders that the past was ‘a different country’. Periodically today there are news reports of babies being found abandoned. In late January this year for example, a postman found a newborn child on a doorstep in Hackney as he made his rounds. The baby was taken into care and the police ‘appealed to his mother to come forward, assuring her she is not in trouble and will be helped’.

That is invariably the message to mothers who, for whatever reason, feel unable to keep a child they have just given birth to. Come forward, you’re not in any trouble, we are just worried about you.

This was not the way society viewed mothers that abandoned their babies in the nineteenth century however; something clearly illustrated by this cautionary take from 1871.

Elizabeth Fisher was working as a servant when she fell pregnant. She had the child and at first her sister agreed to care for it. Elizabeth’s employer, a Mrs Cruise (of Arthur Road, Brixton), made it abundantly clear that she was not willing for an illegitimate child to be raised under her roof.

Fisher either had to get rid of her baby or leave her service.

That was normal in the 1800s. Servants who got pregnant would often be dismissed and so many hid their pregnancies and then gave away or farmed out their children to relatives or women who they paid to take them in.

This worked for Elizabeth for a while but then in December 1870 her sister explained that she could no longer care for the baby.  With what one imagines was a heavy heart Elizabeth took her baby to the Camberwell workhouse (below right) and asked them to care for it.

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The workhouse refused telling her they were ‘neither a nursery nor a baby-farming establishment, and they could not separate mother and child’. If Elizabeth wanted to place her baby in their care she’d have to admit herself at the same time. Even when Fisher offered to pay a weekly sum for the child’s acre the workhouse authorities turned her away.

She was back to square one.

Her mistress, Mrs Cruise, now suggested she take the child to its father. While Fisher wasn’t married she did know where the father was. Cruise told her to go to Gloucester Terrace, Hyde Park (where the man lived), ‘ring the bell, and put the child on the doorstep for the father to take in’.

So it was that Elizabeth, her sister, and Mrs Cruise set off, taking an omnibus towards Haymarket (where Cruise was going to attend the theatre). The sisters hopped off but seemingly never made it to Gloucester Terrace. The baby was found on a shop doorstep in the Haymarket by a policeman.

It took some time for the police to trace the child back to Elizabeth Fisher who by this time had left Cruise’s employment. The police obtained a summons to bring Fisher, her sister (Mrs Brown,, who lived in Hoxton) and Mrs Cruise to court at Marlborough Street. Mr Tyrwhitt, the sitting Police magistrate, listened carefully to the stories all three women told before reaching his judgment.

Despite her telling her employer to leave the child on a doorstep or leave her employment, the justice exonerated Mrs Cruise. She’d apparently acted ‘only with kindness’ her lawyer had argued, and Mr Tyrwhitt agreed. Nor did he condemn the workhouse for not receiving the child and refusing the mother’s money. The father was not summoned as Elizabeth’s sister did not want to ‘disgrace’ him. Instead he reserved his opprobrium for Elizabeth Fisher. He sent her to prison for 10 days with hard labour.

I doubt she took her child with her and I imagine she would have found it hard to find similar employment thereafter, with the stain of imprisonment added to that of bastard bearing. Elizabeth was ‘ruined’ and yet no fault or responsibility was set at the door of the man that she had conceived her baby boy with.

This was the reality of being poor, female, and a single mother in nineteenth-century London. It may not be easy today, but at least it is unlikely to land you in gaol.

[from Morning Post, Wednesday, 22 February 1871]

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

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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]

‘You answered him back and used your tongue pretty freely’: patriarchal dismissal of domestic abuse

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Here are two cases of domestic abuse from 1875, both handled slightly differently by the magistrates involved, but both revealing of contemporary attitudes.

Daniel Lambert had run his own pub but the business had failed and he’d been forced to sell up and move to a house in Notting Hill where he lived with his wife. It seems he blamed his wife for their misfortune and consoled himself by going out and getting drunk alone.

One evening he returned home after a session at the pub and his wife, Amelia, was standing at the gate, ready to scold him for his drinking. He told her to go inside. She carried on her critique and he threatened to ‘kick her to pieces’ if she didn’t stop. Amelia gave in and went upstairs but Lambert followed and beat her anyway. The couple ended up in court at Hammersmith before Mr Ingham.

Lambert’s barrister (Mr Whitty) argued that his client was provoked by her constant nagging. So ‘you abused him?’ the magistrate asked her, ‘you answered him back’, and ‘used your tongue pretty freely?’

‘No, sir’ she responded. ‘He struck me, pinched me, and kicked me […] I got away from him and called a constable, but he would not take him, as he did not see any blow struck’.

The police were reluctant to interfere in a ‘domestic’ unless they saw clear evidence of violence. This cooper wouldn’t examine her either, because the bruises she had were under her clothes and he said he could not see them without a doctor being present. This drew laughter in the court, as had the justice’s remarks about Amelia using ‘her tongue pretty freely’.

However, despite being ridiculed by a male dominated court Amelia did have one ally, the landlady that ran their house. She told the court that Mrs Lambert was a ‘most sedate woman’ and not the monster that Lambert and his brief wanted to make her out be. Daniel Lambert said she had sold all his goods when the business failed and had threatened to poison him, but there was no evidence for any of this. In the end Mr Ingham ruled that Lambert would have to find tow sureties in £20 each to ensure he behaved himself, for just two months. It was a legal slap on the wrist and reflected the reality that the magistrate thought that Amelia was to blame for her husband’s violence.

On the same the say the newspapers reported another case of domestic violence, this time heard before Mr Cooke at Clerkenwell. On Friday 16 July Mrs Badcock was making breakfast and getting her children ready for school. She picked up a pair of her husband’s trousers and heard money rattling in a pocket. The children had no shoes and Benjamin Badcock was lazy and rleucatnt to go out to work. The family were in poverty and Mrs Badcock suggested that since Ben had boots on his feet he might go out and earn some money so his children had some of theirs.

This sent the 47 year-old causal labourer into a rage and he turned on his wife, hitting her and throwing her onto the bed. She’d been holding a knife while she made breakfast and he seized this and threatened her with it. Fearing that he would kill her the couple’s eldest daughter, Mary Ann (16), rushed between them.

Badcock turned his anger on her now and thumped her in the face several times. When he had gone they left the house and applied for a warrant to bring him before a magistrate. Now, in court, Badcock denied the assault merely claiming he’d ‘slapped’ his daughter’s face for insubordination, as he was entitled to. Mr Cooke didn’t comment on the violence (or at least his comments were not recorded) but he also required Badcock to find two sureties (in this case for £25 each) to keep the peace towards his wife and daughter for six months.

In both cases a man had abused his wife (and daughter in the second example). This was routine, common and often punished similarly at the time. Would the sanction have worked? It is very hard to say but I strongly doubt it. There was an existing culture that tolerated male violence towards females (wives, partners and children) and we have struggled to leave that culture behind. Domestic violence and abuse (for abuse takes many forms, not all of which are physical) is notoriously difficult to quantify. However, there are currently an estimated 2,000,000 victims every year. Over a quarter of women aged 16-59 have reported some form of abuse from partners or other family members, and the figure for male victims runs at around 15%.

So this is not a Victorian problem, it is a very modern issue and while it increasingly affects men as well as women, boys as well as girls, it is predominately a problem related to male anger and male violence. History shows us that ignoring it, or pretending that it is a small isolated group of ‘bad’ people that are responsible, is not going to solve the problem. When we factor in the reality that around 35-45% of all homicide victims are killed by someone close to them then perhaps we see just how serious a social issue this is.

[from The Standard, Monday, July 19, 1875]

Beware the sleepwalking arsonist!

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John Everett Millais, The Somnambulist, 1871

Police constable Dowding (198E) was pounding his beat in the early hours of the morning of July 15th 1878 when he smelt fire. He could hear the ‘crackling noise of something burning’, and rushed over to the rear of 23 Great Coram Street. There he could see that there was pile of burning clothes on top of the conservatory which seemed as if they had been thrown out of a window above.

PC Dowding ‘sprang his rattle’ (these were the days before police were issued with whistles) to call for help and quickly moved to alert the residents in the house. He ran straight upstairs towards the fire and found a room about to be engulfed in flames. Some clothes, the bed sheet and the lower part of the mattress of the bed were all on fire, but there was thankfully no one inside. He looked in the next room and found a 15 year-old girl cowering under a bed quilt.

He grabbed her and escorted her out, asking her what had happened. She told him that a man had entered her room, stayed briefly, then ran out and downstairs. PC Dowding was skeptical; he’d not seen anyone run past him, or run out of the building and he suspected the girl was lying.

He interviewed the landlady, Maria Goodhall who told him the girl’s name was Matilda Hayes and she worked for her as a maid of all work. She’d been with her for four months and ‘was a very good girl’. However, she also suspected that Matilda might have been responsible for the fire. She’d seen the clothes on fire by the bed and thought it likely that the girl had thrown some of the window in panic before being forced back by the flames.

In court at Bow Street Matilda was charged with arson and the source of the fire was found to be a spirit lamp which she kept with her when she went to bed. The lamp had been knocked over and the handle had come off. When Matilda had been found she seemed to be half asleep, as if she’d just woken in a panic. It was also suggested that Matilda and her sister (who often stayed with her) would walk in their sleep. So perhaps this had happened when the girl had been sleepwalking? Mrs Goodhall told the magistrate, Mr Vaughan, that she was sure that Matilda meant no ill will towards her or any of the other residents. It was accident, and nothing more.

Mr Vaughan was probably minded to agree but he decided to remand the serving girl for a week, just to be sure. When she appeared again Mr Vaughan was satisfied she was innocent and discharged her. This drew praise from one newspaper that used the case to write a longish piece on somnambulism and its perils. They also hinted that the young man that supposedly ran out of the girl’s room might have been there as her guest, and it was probably just as well that he was not discovered or it might have damaged her reputation.

[from The Standard, Tuesday, July 16, 1878]

‘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

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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

Dead bodies dumped in a rubbish tip and a pair of Yankee fraudsters escape justice: all in a day’s business for London’s magistracy

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A pair of interesting cases for you this morning both brought before magistrates in London but neither of which ended in a conviction for any crime. Once again this is useful reminder that histories of crime that concentrate on the higher, jury courts of England will inevitably miss those cases which were dismissed much earlier in the criminal justice process.

In May 1847 two well-dressed young men were placed in the dock at Marlborough Street and accused of stealing. Their victim was a young woman named Eliza Williams who claimed to have lost a gold watch and chain and her purse. The crime was pretty standard – pocket picking – but the circumstances made it a little more unusual and, therefore, newsworthy.

Eliza claimed that she had met Robert Brownrigg Tolfrey at a ‘dancing room’ in Great Windmill Street. He’d approached her and asked her to dance. He spoke with a soft American accent and she accepted. Despite being distracted by the music and his attentions she was still aware enough to feel a tug on her watch chain. The chain broke but she quickly rescued it and the watch and place dit safely (she thought) in her pocket.

The couple parted for the next dance and Eliza instinctively checked for her watch – it was gone, as was her purse! Looking around another dancer caught her attention and pointed out Tolfrey and said they’d seen the watch chain hanging out of his pocket as he strode away. Eliza confronted him and although he vigorously denied stealing her property she had him arrested.

In court at Marlborough Street Tolfrey and his friend Robert Berkely Reynolds protested their innocence. A witness for Eliza said he’d seen Tolfrey pass the watch and purse to another man, perhaps named Nicholls, but he couldn’t be sure. There was no real evidence against either man and in this sort of case it was unlikely that the justice would be able to do anything unless previous convictions against them could be shown that would sow doubt in the mid of a jury.

That is why the men’s landlady was called I think.

Mrs Green said the men rented rooms form her at Golden Square off James Street giving their name as Berkley and passing themselves off as brothers recently arrived from America. While they were staying with her tradesmen would arrive and leave goods which soon vanished, suggesting a scam of some sort was being orchestrated there. When Mrs Green asked them to pay their rent they simply walked off leaving ‘nothing behind them except a false spring beard and mustachios’. The pair were clearly up to no good but, on this charge of ‘privately stealing from the person’, Mr Bingham could see no evidence that would stick in court, so he released them.

At Westminster a more disturbing case was heard before Mr Broderip. One of B Division’s police inspectors (named Donegan) was in court to report that ‘considerable excitement’ had been caused amongst the public in Lillington Street when human remains were discovered in a rubbish heap. He’d been called to investigate and had found bones that appeared to belong to a ‘human foot and arm’.

‘There were other bones’, he said, ‘smaller and larger, more advancing to decay, and evidently belonging to other bodies’. He had them collected for examination he explained.

In answer to a question from the magistrate Donegan said he didn’t believe the bones were recent but agreed that they might well come from a nearby medical school. A number of admission cards  from King’s College Hospital had been found amongst the rubbish and this strongly suggested a connected. The bones were probably the remains of persons whose bodies had been used in the teaching of anatomy, as the cadavers of the poor had been used for that purpose since the passing of the Anatomy Act in 1832. The act was supposed to stop the practice of grave robbing which itself had been caused by the shortage of fresh specimens taken from the gallows.

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It was a grisly business and not one the authorities wanted to be given too much publicity. Once dissected the bodies of the poor were supposed to have been buried properly even if no headstone was set to commemorate them. The idea that they might end up in a communal rubbish tip was appalling and, as the magistrate termed it, ‘indecorous’. He instructed Donegan to call upon the board at King’s to make it clear to them that any future occurrences of this sort would not be tolerated.

According to the leading historian of the Anatomy Act of 1832 in the course of the Victorian period some 125,000 corpses were sold in the ‘anatomy trade’.1 Many of those leaving the bodies of their loved ones did so by placing them outside the doors of London’s main teaching hospitals (like King’s or St. Bart’s) knowing that they had no funds to bury them. I regularly visit the local cemetery close to my home, to pay my respects to my wife’s parents, and we usually pass by a solitary stone that commemorates the thousands of people who are buried within the grounds in unmarked graves, because their families could not afford to meet the costs of a funeral.

For every grave carefully tended or left to slowly degrade there are, in small and larger graveyards and cemeteries they length and breadth of the country, hundreds of thousands of burials which are left unmarked. Something to think about when next you visit one perhaps.

[from The Morning Chronicle, Tuesday, May 4, 1847]

1. Elizabeth Hurren, Dying for Victorian Medicine: English anatomy and its trade in the dead poor, c.1834-1929(Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)

If you enjoy this blog series you might be interested in Drew’s jointly authored study of the Whitechapel (or ‘Jack the Ripper’) murders, which is published by Amberley Books on 15 June this year. You can find details here:

The bravery of one young man saves another from a terrible beating at the hands of his father

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Battersea, in Charles Booth’s poverty maps of 1889-90

John Hobart had just got home to the house his mother ran in Gywnn Road, Battersea when she called to him. Eliza Hobart rented rooms to a family who lived upstairs, a father (William Williams) and his young son. Eliza was worried because she’d heard screams from upstairs and it seemed as if Williams was beating his young lad half to death.

‘Go upstairs and stop it’, she shouted to her own lad, who hurried upstairs at once. He reached the Williams’ door and tried it but it was locked. He could hear dreadful noises from within so put his shoulder to the portal and forced it open. As he fell into the room he saw Williams brandishing a heavy rope and raining down blows on his boy. When he saw the intruder Williams let go of his victim and went for Hobart swinging his rope.

Fortunately before he could do any damage a policeman arrived and subdued him, taking him away to the station while the little boy was carried off to the infirmary, bleeding from wounds to his head and face. The rope and a piece of wood was recovered from the room as evidence and the police constable reported that when he examined Williams at the station he noticed blood on his cuffs.

In court at Wandsworth Williams admitted beating the lad with the rope but denied the accusation that he’d hit with a piece of wood. He justified his actions by saying that the boy had played truant from school but had kept the money his father had given him for his fees. The justice, Mr Sheil, remanded Williams in custody while he decided what to do with him.

And that, I’m afraid, is the last we hear of him. If Williams came back to be punished or released by a Police court magistrate the papers didn’t report it. If he was sent for a jury trial or imprisoned or fined, again, we have no record. All we can hope is that his little boy survived and that may be due entirely to the determination of his landlady to interfere and the bravery of her son to intervene.

[from The Standard, Thursday, March 26, 1885]

‘Such things are a disgrace there’: A Dutchman tries to save his father’s shame by dumping his grandchild on the streets of London

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Lower Thames Street in the late 1800s

One of the subjects that continues to fascinate my undergraduate students is infanticide. Almost invariably they approach the topic wanting to understand how a mother could deliberately murder her newborn baby. Looking through the very many cases that came before the Old Bailey they are understandably shocked at the stories of women who cut their infant child’s throat, or smothered it at birth, before dumping the body in the nearest privy.

Without wishing to deny the reality that some mothers did kill their newborn babies I think most historians would agree that this was probably the exception rather than the rule in infanticide cases. Babies died in childbirth much more often in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, before advancements in medical care arrived in the 1900s. Most importantly the women accused were invariably single, poor, young and from the servant class. These young women had fallen pregnant and then had tried to conceal this from their families and employers, for fear of being condemned as immoral and, in the case of servants, being dismissed from service.

Illegitimacy is not an issue in most Western societies today. Very many people choose to live together before they marry and some do not marry at all yet still have children. This has been widely accepted in most communities in Britain since the 1970s if not a little earlier and the word ‘bastard’ has almost lost its original meaning.

However this was far from true in the 1800s, even if – as this case perhaps implies – London was seen as a more progressive city than some in Europe.

In December 1875 Samuel Whiffin was walking towards London Bridge on Lower Thames Street when he noticed a parcel lying near a doorway. As a policeman was approaching from the opposite direction Whiffin called him over and pointed out the package. PC Holly examined it and realized that it contained the body of an infant.

To his relief the baby was alive but very cold, so PC Holly carried it off to the Home for the Houseless Poor. This charity provided ‘nightly shelter and sustenance to the absolutely destitute working- classes, who are suddenly thrown out of employment by inclement weather’.* Having been looked after by the charity the child was next taken to the Homerton Workhouse and the search for its parents began.

Three days later Jans Hans, a Dutch labourer living at 3, Walburgh Street, St George-in-the-East, was brought before Sir Robert Carden at  Mansion House to be examined concerning the abandonment of the child. He was accused along with his sister, who was in St George’s hospital and too ill to attend.

The court heard the evidence of PC Holly as to the finding of the baby and then from a Mrs Plaggenine, a German woman who was landlady to Hans and his sister. Sir Robert was interested in the revelation that the siblings shared a single room in the property, and intimated that this was not normal. Mrs Plaggenine ignored, or did not understand, the magistrate’s question, but the suggestion of incest was left hanging in the air.

The policeman that had arrested Jan Hans questioned him about the child and reported that the man had admitted leaving it in the street on the previous Thursday. Hans told him that he had set the child down then retired to a safe spot where he could watch to see that someone stopped and rescued the baby. He had tried advertising the baby for adoption but had no success.

Hans and his sister were desperate, the Dutchman now explained to the alderman. They were very poor and couldn’t afford to raise a child. His sister had traveled from Holland ‘to be confined’ (to give birth) because the father refused to take responsibility for it. He added that ‘such things were a disgrace there’.

Presumably because Jan lived and worked in London this seemed like a good solution to Hans senior. If he sent his daughter to England she could give birth and the child would be brought up by strangers in a strange country but at least his family’s reputation would be protected. The child had a lucky escape and it is hard to imagine the mental state of Hans’ sister who seems to have been almost entirely left out of the decision-making process. She was ill in hospital while her brother disposed of her baby and the alderman magistrate cast further doubt on her morality by suggesting it was the product of an incestuous relationship.

Jan Hans was remanded in custody so that the courts could decide what to do with him and his sister. If they couldn’t and wouldn’t care for the baby (and no adopted family could be found) then it would grow up in the workhouse like Oliver Twist, perhaps never knowing of it Dutch heritage.

[from The Morning Post, Monday, 20 December, 1875]