Tag: Lavender Hill

‘I did it!’ A young servant confesses to being the Lavender Hill poisoner

220px-Alice_par_John_Tenniel_27

The watching public at Wandsworth Police court witnessed an unusually dramatic case on 23 August 1886. Emily Parry, an 18 year-old domestic servant, was placed in the dock and charged with attempted murder. The girl was an unlikely murderer and what made the matter all the more sensational was that she confessed in full.

Inspector Lusk explained that on the previous Saturday Miss Parry had walked into Battersea Police Station and told the desk sergeant she wished to make a confession in the ‘poisoning case’.  She was referring to the attempted poisoning of Mrs Rose Darling at Lavender Hill in February that year. At the time another servant – Alice Tharby – had been accused and Emily had even given evidence at the pre-trial hearing. The case was thrown out by the Grand Jury and Alice was released but she had been out of work ever since and was living with her mother.

Now Emily admitted that she had put poison in Mrs Darling’s tea and milk because she had fallen out with Alice and wanted to get her ‘into a row’ (into trouble in other words). She’d used laudanum and chloroform that she’d found in the pantry; fortunately Mrs Darling quickly realized that the tea was ‘bad’ and hadn’t drunk too much. She was ill was several days but no serious damage was done. Alice tasted the milk and was ‘a little sick’ as a result.

At Battersea police station Emily declared: ‘I did it; I put the poison in the teapot’. She then made a full statement that was read out before Mr Bennett at Wandsworth.

I, Emily Parry, formerly Vass, understanding the probable serious consequences of what I am about to do, desire to make the following statement:—

On 26th February last I was in service at Dr. Bayfield’s, Soames Villa, Lavender Hill. My fellow-servant, Alice Tharby, and I quarrelled on that day. The same afternoon Alice made some tea for Mrs. Darling, Mrs. Bayfield’s mother, who was staying in the house, which she placed on the dining-room table. She then went upstairs. I was in the scullery at that time, and wishing to spite Alice I determined to put some poison into the teapot, thinking that blame would fall on her. I did not think of what might happen to other persons. I ran from the scullery and took the teapot off the dining-room table out to the surgery. I poured something from several bottles into it, one of which was labelled ‘laudanum, poison,’ and then put the teapot back on the table in the dining-room. I went to the pantry, took the jug of milk into the surgery and put some chloroform into it, and replaced it in the pantry. It only took me about five minutes to do all this. I had no thought or intention of poisoning any one; my only idea was to get Alice into a row. When Alice was locked up I was afraid to tell the truth. I have often since half made up my mind to make this statement, but could not find courage to do it until to-day. I make this statement to clear all blame from Alice Tharby and to ease my own mind.”

She’d given her statement through floods of tears, mindful of what might happen to her but also probably relieved to finally tell someone the truth. It was a straightforward decision for the magistrate: he committed her to take her trial at the Old Bailey and she appeared there in October. This time a chemist was called to examine two bottles which contained samples of the tea and milk that been given to Mrs Darling. He confirmed that there were traces of laudanum and chloroform present. Rose Darling, Alice Tharby and the surgeon that treated Rose all gave brief evidence in court but Emily said nothing.

The jury found her guilty on her confession and the other evidence and the judge sent her to prison for three months at hard labour.

[from The Standard, Tuesday, August 24, 1886]

A birching in Wandsworth as a killer opens his file in Whitechapel

emmasmith

On 9 am on 4 April Emma Smith died in the London Hospital on Whitechapel Road. At 45 years of age Emma was just like most of the victims of the man, known only as ‘Jack the Ripper,’ who traumatized the community of the East End in the summer and autumn of that year. Although we know very little about Emma Smith it is believed that she lived in George Street, Spitalfields, that she was a mother but estranged from her family, drank frequently, and lived by prostitution.

On the night of the 2 April she was attacked by a group of men, beaten badly, and left for dead. One of the gang shoved a blunt instrument up into her vagina and it was this injury that brought about her death two days later.

Emma’s is the first name in the Metropolitan Police file containing what scant records exist of the so-called Whitechapel Murders of 1888-91, but few experts today believe that she was killed by the ‘ripper’. Instead Emma’s murder is more likely to have been the work of a gang of ‘roughs’ or ‘bullies’, such as the Nichol Gang, who attempted to control petty crime and vice in the area.

Emma’s murder hardly troubled the newspapers in April 1888; the murder of an ‘unfortunate’ wasn’t newsworthy until it became the only story in town by September that year. The Standard didn’t even report on the ‘doings’ of the Thames or Worship Street Police courts that day, only carrying stories from Hammersmith, Westminster, West Ham, Wandsworth and the two City of London courts: Guildhall and Mansion House.

It was the case at Wandsworth that caught my eye today. Harry Lucas and Thomas Wise, two teenage tearaways, had been remanded for a few days accused of robbing a small girl in Lavender Hill. Rose Calver had been sent out to run an errand for her mother when she ran into the two lads on Grayshott Road. They asked her where she was going and when they saw the money in her hand made a grab for it. To her credit little Rose struggled with them but they were too strong for her and threw her to ground.

They were captured soon afterwards and Rose identified them. In court they were asked their age and said they were 17. Mr Williams was skeptical:

‘You are no more seventeen than I am’, he told Lucas.

‘Yes he is sir’, interjected his mother, ‘he was seventeen yesterday’.

The magistrate said he was loath to send them to prison and dealt with them under the Juvenile Offenders Act (that of 1847 or 1850) which might have allowed him to send them to a reformatory school, but certainly gave him the power to remove them from the adult justice system if he deemed them to be under the age of 16. Perhaps they were, perhaps Williams was simply bending the rules to give them a second chance. Maybe he simply wanted to avoid the cost of institutional care. He discharged Lucas and ordered that Wise receive six strokes of the birch from a police sergeant.

[from The Standard, Thursday, April 05, 1888]

As the ‘Ripper’ strikes in Whitechapel a wannabe Charlie Peace is nabbed in Clapham.

mary_ann_nichols_body_bucks_row

The 31stAugust 1888 is etched on the memory of anyone familiar with the biggest crime news story of that year. It was at about 3.45 that morning that PC John Neil (97J) found the body of Mary Ann (‘Polly’) Nichols lying dead in near the entrance to a stable yard in Buck’s Row. Her throat had been cut and (although the constable could not have known this at the time) her abdomen had been ripped open. Polly Nichols is largely accepted to have been the first victim of the killer most commonly named ‘Jack the Ripper’.

Personally I think it quite unlikely that Mary Ann Nichols was the first of the murderer’s victims and, in a new study I hope to publish early next year, myself and a colleague will reveal the person we think responsible for Polly’s, and another dozen or more, murders and assaults.  But that, as they say, is a story for another day, so let us return to late August 1888 and see what was troubling the police court reporter at The Standard that day.

While he didn’t garner many column inches (and nothing that compared to the Whitechapel murderer later that autumn) John Terroad did reckon himself some kind of ‘super villain’.

220px-Charlie_Peace_executionPerhaps likening himself to the infamous Charlie Peace – the self-styled ‘king of the lags’ – Terroad claimed to  have committed over 120 burglaries in London in his short career. Given he was only 23 years of age in 1888 this was some résumé, but on this occasion he’d been caught.

[Right: Charles Peace and his executioner, William Marwood, in Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors]

Up before the ‘beak’ at Wandsworth he was charged with entering the house of Mr Harry Bishop in Manor Street, Clapham, as well as that of a Mr Williams in Putney Common, and Edward James’ home in Ilchester Gardens, Lavender Hill. An older accomplice (Frederick Merce, 45) was also charged with aiding and abetting in the Clapham break-in. Both men were committed for trial. They pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey and were sent to prison for ten months each at hard labour.

Charles Peace was hanged for the murder of Arthur Dyson at Leeds in February 1879, a decade before the ‘Ripper’ eclipsed him as the most famous criminal of the nineteenth century.

[from The Standard (London, England), Friday, August 31, 1888]