Tag: London Metropolitan Archives

A thief is nabbed at the Tower and a cross-dresser is arrested for dancing: all in a day’s work for Mr Lushington

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Visitors to the Victorian Tower of London Armouries

Two contrasting cases from the Thames Police court today, one of who courts that served the East End and the river from the Tower of London. The first concerned the Tower itself, or rather the collection of arms and armour it displayed there.

The Tower Armouries was always one of my favourite places to visit when I went to the Tower as a boy. Housed in the White Tower (the original Norman keep) the collection of edged weapons, guns and suits and armour fascinated me just as it has so many other visitors before and since. Now it has been removed from the Tower and sent to the north of England to a purpose built museum in Leeds. It’s great there too, but not quite the same.

John Passmore was only a young man when he visited the Tower in 1877. He worked as a labourer and had gone to see the armouries with some mates. As he was coming out he noticed some horse pistols hanging on hooks, easy to reach and not behind bars. Without really knowing why he snatched one and hid it under his jacket.

Several such pistols had gone missing in recent weeks and David Deedy, one of the armories’ attendants, was keeping his eyes peeled for further depredations. Something about John caught his eye, was that a bulge under his jacket, or a smudge of dirt on his lapels? He moved forward, stopped the young man and searched him. John pleased with him not to have him arrested but, given the recent thefts, Deedy was understandably keen to prosecute. John Passmore apologized for his momentary act of recklessness and paid for it with seven days imprisonment at hard labour.

The other reported case that Mr Lushington (who known to be harsh) dealt with that day was distinctly different. John Bumberg was a foreign sailor (his precise nationality was not stated, he was just ‘foreign’) and he was in court for causing a disturbance.

PC George Carpenter (102H) told Mr Lushington that he had been on duty in St George’s Street when he’d heard what sounded like a large crowd up ahead. Hurrying along he discovered that there were about 200 boys and girls gathered around a dancing figure, who was being accompanied by a barrel organ. The dancer was dressed in woman’s clothing but was quite clearly a man. PC Carpenter approached and questioned him, established he was sober (if a little ‘excited’) and then arrested him.

Causing a nuisance and obstructing the streets were both misdemeanors so Carpenter was within his rights but it seems a fairly unnecessary action to take. I think that Mr Lushington   might have agreed because on this occasion he was fairly lenient. Given that Bumberg had been locked up all night he simply told him he had acted ‘foolishly’ and ‘advised him to behave more decently in the future’ before letting him go. The man left the dock carrying ‘a bundle of female wearing apparel in his arms’.

Was John Bumberg a frustrated female impersonator who wanted to be on the stage like the starts of the musical halls?  Was he perhaps a transvestite or cross-dresser? Whatever he was and whatever his motivation for entertaining the children of the East End that night I don’t believe he was doing anybody any harm and I think H Division’s finest might have found more suitable targets for their attention.

In 1881 George Carpenter was still in the force and on 14 May that year he brought Catherine Scannel into the Thames court charged with being drunk and disorderly. She was 46, quite possibly a streetwalker and Mr Lushington sent her to prison for 7 days, mostly likely because she gave the policeman some well-aimed verbal abuse. A week later he was back with another woman, Julia Hayes, who was charged with fighting. This time the magistrate let her off with a warning. PC Carpenter brought in a couple more drunks that May, this was after all, much of the traffic of the police courts, most of which the papers didn’t bother recording. We only of this because a few archival records survive.

[from The Standard, Monday, June 18, 1877]

H Division was, of course, the main police district tasked with catching the Whitechapel murder 11 years after these two defendants appeared before Lushington at Thames.  Drew’s new book (co-authored with Andy Wise) is published by Amberley Books this week. 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 stench was horrible, and seemed as if from burnt bones or flesh’: the Spa Fields scandal of 1845

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Clerkenwell Police court was crowded on the morning of the 25 February 1845 and the magistrate must have quickly realized that local passions were running high. Most of those present either lived or worked in the near vicinity of Exmouth Street, close by the Spa Fields burial ground.

Burials no longer take place in Spa Fields and nowadays the gardens are an inner-city paradise on summer days as visitors eat their lunch, walk their dogs, or sunbathe on the grass. The London Metropolitan Archives is nearby and in Exmouth Market gourmands can enjoy a wide variety of food from the stalls and cafés that trade there.

The crowd in Mr Combe’s courtroom were represented by a pawnbroker and silversmith called Watts. He stepped forward to explain that he and his fellow ratepayers were there to seek an end to ‘practices of an abominable nature’ that had been taken place in the graveyard.

What exactly were these ‘abominable practices’?

The magistrate listened as  Mr Watts told him that while the burial ground was less than two acres in size and was estimated to be able to hold 3,000 bodies. In reality however, in the 50 years of its existence on average some 1,500 internments were taking place annually. In sum then, something like 75,000 people had been buried in a space for 3,000 and more and more burials were taking place, indeed there had recently been 36 in one day the pawnbroker said.

However, while the graveyard was crowded and this would have meant digging into extant graves and disturbing them, ‘not a bone was seen on the surface’. He (Mr Watts) would provide his Worship with evidence that the bodies of interned persons were routinely being dug up and burned to make room for fresh burials. Moreover many of those coffins removed were new, the wood ‘was fresh’ he added, and witnesses had seen human body parts hacked off by diggers.

The desecration of graves was one thing but the root of the complaint was actually the effect that this practice had on local people and their businesses. According to Watts:

‘The stench proceeding from what was called the “bone-house” in the graveyard was so intolerable that many of the residents in Exmouth–street, which abutted on the place, had been obliged to leave it altogether’.

Surely, the magistrate asked him, a prosecution could be brought against the parochial authorities that had responsibility for the place? Mr Watts said that the parish of St James’ was well aware of what was happening but were doing nothing to stop it.

‘The custom is’ he explained, ‘to disinter the bodies after they have been three or four days buried, chop them up, and burn them in this bone-house’.

Then he should certainly bring a charge against them Mr Combe advised. The clerk to the local Board of Poor Law Guardians was less sure however; since the burial ground was not subject to rates he didn’t think the parochial authorities could be held liable for it. The magistrate said that if the Guardians couldn’t interfere the matter should go to the Poor Law Commissioners and, if they didn’t not help, he would apply directly to the Homes Secretary (who, in February 1845, was Sir James Graham – a politician who, by his own admission, is only remembered by history as ‘the man who opened the letters of the Italians’ in the Mazzini case).

Police Inspector Penny (G Division) testified that he had visited the bone house after being presented with a petition signed by 150 locals.

He found ‘a large quantity of coffins, broken up and some of them burning…the smell was shocking, intolerable. There were coffins of every size there, children’s and men’s’.

The court heard from Reuben Room, a former gravedigger who’d left two year’s previously after ‘a dispute’. He said he’d often been asked to disinter bodies after a couple of days to make room for fresh burials. John Walters, who kept the Clerkenwell fire engine, gave evidence that he had twice had to attend fires at the bone house. He had found it hard to gain admission (suggesting that the authorities there were not keen for people to see what was going on inside) but when he had he’d seen ‘as many coffins as three men could convey, and a great deal of pitch was fastened to the chimney’ [i.e. blackening it], resulting from the burning of coffins.

The smell, he agreed, was ‘horrible, and seemed as if from burnt bones or flesh’. A large crowd had gathered that night and were ready to pull the place to the ground.

More witnesses came forward to testify to the horror of the bone house and the ‘abominable practices’ carried out there. Catherine Murphy, who lived in a house which overlooked the graveyard had seen grave diggers chop up a body with their shovels, and had intervened to admonish them when one of the men had lifted the ‘upper part of a corpse by the hair of the head’.

‘Oh, you villain’, she cried, ‘to treat the corpse so!’

Mr Combe  again advised Mr Watts and his fellow petitioners to make a full statement of their complaint to the board of guardians so that they could take action against whomsoever was to blame. Satisfied with this, the crowd emptied out of the courtroom.

Even by early 1800s the pressure on London’s graveyards was acute. The small parish burial grounds simply were not designed to cope with the huge numbers of burials that a rapidly growing population required. The local authorities recognised that larger cemeteries needed to be laid out so that room could be found for new internments. In 1824 a campaign began to build large municipal cemeteries on the edge of London, away from crowded housing and the danger of disease.

From 1837 to 1841 Parliament agreed to ‘the building of seven commercial cemeteries’ at Kensal Green, West Norwood, Highgate, Nunhead, Abney Park, Brompton and Tower Hamlets. By mid century (not long after the horror of Spa Fields) these were already filling up.* Acts in the 1850s caused most of the old seventeenth century burial grounds to be formally closed, some of these are now public gardens.

So the next time you take a stroll in Spa Fields enjoying your lunch or coffee, and taking in the antics of the local canines, you might try to imagine what this place smelled like when the bone house’s fires were in full operation.

[from The Morning Chronicle, Wednesday, February 26, 1845]

*Weinrebb & Hibbert, The London Encyclopædia (p.129)

for other posts about the problems of London’s dead see:

Knocked down in the street a week before her wedding.

A grave legal dispute in Essex

No ‘soft soap’ from Mr Lushington as he fines a company for exploiting its workers

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Messrs. Paton and Charles, soap manufactures, were summoned before Mr Lushington at Thames Police Court accused of breaking the terms of the Factory Act.

There were several acts to restrict working hours and try to improve conditions in the workplace in the 1800s, from early efforts in 1833 (mainly aimed at the cotton industry in the north) to later reforms after the extension of the franchise in 1867. Most of this was targeted at preventing the exploitation of children under 14 and was tied up with new arguments about the nature of childhood and the value of education.

It is probably fair to say that while the acts were well-meant they were (at first anyway) pretty toothless. An economic downturn in the 1870s also led some to argue that legislation had gone too far and that Britain was becoming uncompetitive internationally  because of restrictions imposed on employers – now where have we heard that before (or since)?

Paton & Charles’ soap manufactory operated out of premises in Brewhouse Lane,  Wapping , close to the river. Records at the London Metropolitan Archives suggest they had been trading in Wapping (at 148 Wapping High Street) since at least 1867 and there is a Post Office entry for them as early as 1843 at the same address, so they were a well established firm by 1881 when their representatives appeared in court. They may well have moved in 1880 to the Brewhouse Lane site, a year before this case emerged.

Mr Lushington was told that the firm employed ‘around 80 hands’ , both girls and boys as well as adults. Four young women were in court to testify that they had been asked to work longer than a ten hour day, working ‘until ten o’clock at night, instead of six in the evening, which was the normal time of leaving off’. They cited two dates (15th and 22nd of June) when this had occurred but the suggestion was it was more common than this. Someone (presumably an inspector) had found them at work at seven in the previous week, hence the summons.

The girls were employed in the perfume department where they worked under the direction of Alfred Smith. It seems it was Smith who was directly responsible for getting them to work overly long hours against the stipulation of the Factory Acts. He was not in court however, and Lushington felt the responsibility was wider than this. He determined that the ‘firm had [not] used due diligence to enforce the carrying out of the provisions of the Act ‘ and fined them £8 and 16s (or around £400 today).

[from The Standard, Friday, July 22, 1881]

A Stabbing on the High Seas (and other tales from Thames Police Court)

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This week I am going to take a slightly different approach to my selection of cases. Instead of taking them from across a range of Police Courts I am going to concentrate on just one, the Thames Police Court, which was one of two courts serving the East End of London*. I am also going to stick to one year, 1881 (a year when there are also manuscript records for Thames**). Hopefully then, I will be able to chart the business of Thames Police court from Saturday 11 June 1881 to Friday 17 June.

There are two cases reported from Saturday’s sitting, the first concerned a man named George Braithwaite who was accused of assaulting Elizabeth Grub, a ‘young woman’ living on the Isle of Dogs. She was too ill to attend court and the magistrate remanded Braithwaite in custody for a week to ‘see how the complainant progressed’.

The second concerned a ‘stabbing on the high seas’. Tobias Rosenfelt was brought up in Thames on a charge of ‘unlawfully wounding Harry Price, chief steward on board the steamship “Libra”.’ The Libra was one of the vessels run by the General Steam Navigation Company between London and Hamburg. The company (formed in 1824) carried both passengers and cargo across the Channel and North Sea, and later (after 1882) began operations in the Mediterranean. The Libra was launched in 1869 but sank in 1889 following a collision at sea.

According to the report of the case in 1881 Rosenfelt, a 29 year-old horse dealer who lived in Whitechapel (in Half Moon Passage), was on board the Libra on May 1st as it steamed towards Hamburg. He was in boisterous mood and entered the saloon, calling loudly for a bottle of lemonade. When Price, the ship’s steward, asked him to be  little more restrained Rosenfelt gave him a mouthful of abuse.

Price then asked him to leave but he refused. When the steward attempted to throw him out of the saloon he was attacked. He took a knife (or ‘some other sharp instrument’) from his pocket and aimed it at the steward’s chest. Price put up his hands to defend himself and was stabbed in his palm. Rosenfelt fled with the steward in pursuit. When he reached the middle of the ship Price caught up with him but Rosenfelt snatched hold of a ‘camp chair’ and bashed Price over the head with it.

Presumably at some point the horse dealer was arrested or detained onboard and returned to England to face the music in June. At the hearing the prosecutor told Mr Lushington (the Thames magistrate) that Rosenfelt had previously been charged with manslaughter in Hamburg, and wounding, and was clearly a ‘dangerous man’. The magistrate remanded him in custody to see if more evidence emerged. We can see if he reappeared later that week.

[from The Illustrated Police News etc , Saturday, June 11, 1881]

*the other was Worship Street in Shoreditch

**held by the London Metropolitan Archives (LMA)

A native of Merthyr is berated at Bow Street

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Merthyr Tydfil in the mid 1800s

I have been writing about the London Police courts for nearly a year, looking at a different case every day. Additionally I have also spent several weeks in the London Metropolitan Archive near Farringdon which holds the official records of these summary courts. Sadly very little archival material survives; at Bow Street, for example, there are only records from the 1890s onwards – most of the earlier material being lost or destroyed).

The best kept records are the the two sets of registers for Thames Police Court, which run from 1881 and cover the late summer and autumn of 1888 when ‘Jack the Riper’ terrorised the East End. The registers contain useful information for the historian: names of defendants, their ages, gender, the offence with which they were charged, the police officer that brought the to court, and the complainant (if that wasn’t the policeman). We also have an outcome; the adjudication of the sitting magistrate.

I spoke at the Ripperologist’s 21st birthday conference in Algdate last year, where I outlined the functions of the police courts and the role they performed; hopefully later this year I will be ready to provide a more detailed analysis based on the research I have been doing.

At this stage in my research I have almost completed a detailed analysis of the registers at Thames for 1881 and can begin to share some of my findings. It will probably come as no surprise to historians of crime and professionals working in policing, social work or probation, to read that many of those brought into Thames were charged with an alcohol related offence. This might be drunk and disorderly, drunk and using obscene language, drunk and assaulting a policeman, or many other combinations – all involving some form of drunkenness with disorderly behaviour.

These were also the cases that mostly came up first in the registers, so I am imagining that the cells were cleared of those held overnight before the ‘day charges’ or the ‘remands’ (usually more serious offences) were brought in.

The registers provide us with plenty of information. For example, in the 1881 register for the 16 March there are 9 people charge with some variety of disorderly behaviour (one as ‘incapable’, three with violence) 8 of whom are women and one man, William Ethridge. The justice, Mr Saunders, either fined them or sent them to prison for a short period of hard labour. Those fined either paid or risked being incarcerated like the others.

However, despite this information we don’t know the circumstances or detail of their crimes, for that we can only hope to find them in the newspapers, which reported selective cases more descriptively. So today’s case is one of those common drink related ones; a man brought before the courts for being drunk and disorderly.

Timothy McCarthy was a migrant worker. He had travelled from his native Merthyr Tydvil [sic] in Wales in search of work. He told the Bow Street magistrate that there was no work at home and no poor relief either; ‘it was no use stopping there’.

However, it wasn’t that much better in London but he had met with some of his fellow countrymen, who, like him, were out of work, and they had some ‘jollification’. The result was that he was arrested for being drunk on the streets. Fortunately he was bailed rather than being locked up and set at liberty. Unfortunately he chose to carry on drinking as soon as he was liberated.

The magistrate was unimpressed to have him back in court. He turned to the Welshman and said: ‘I know something of Merthyr, and if you were charged with drunkenness there you would be fined 10s costs plus the penalty imposed on you for the offence’.

McCarthy admitted that this was true.

The magistarte admonished him for replaying the ‘indulgence’ of the court in releasing him by offending straight away adding, ‘indeed, you are hardly sober now’. He continued:

 ‘To me it is a matter of wonderment always that you men who say you cannot get work can invariably find the means of getting drunk’. A presumably shamefaced McCarthy meekly responded that ‘it is friends as treat us’, before he was instructed to pay a 3s fine or go to prison for 3 days.

[from The Morning Post, Tuesday, March 12, 1878]