Tag: Mr Barstow

A mother’s grief as her son’s rejection condemns her to the workhouse

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Having just formally committed William Herbert to the Old Bailey to face trial for murder the Clerkenwell magistrate then had to deal with a string of applications from impoverished petitioners who needed help.

One of these was an elderly widow who said that her son had abandoned her. She wanted to know if Mr Barstow (the magistrate) could compel her son to support her?

The justice asked her to explain the situation, which she did. Her son had recently married, and that had been the start of ‘her troubles’ because at almost the same time her husband had died. Except that he wasn’t actually her husband. In common with many working-class couple in the 1800s they hadn’t officially married.

But no one knew this, not even her children, so it must have come as something of a shock to the young man when his new wife (‘through her inquisitiveness’) found out and told him. Up until then the widow had been allowing her son ‘to have what part of the house he pleased’ and he had agreed to pay her 2s 6d a week in maintenance.

However, as soon as he discovered the family secret he changed; he called her a ‘fallen woman, a woman of sin’ and refused to have anything more to do with her. She didn’t complain or censure him but simply reminded her son that he ‘had been brought up respectably’ and she hoped he would at least continue to pay her the weekly allowance.

He refused outright and (and here was the clue to his change of heart) told her that ‘his wife ashamed of her past conduct, and would not allow him to do anything for her’.

‘In fact’, he continued, ‘he had got orders from his wife not to speak to her’.

She had come to terms with his rejection of her but she needed that money which was why she had come to see the magistrate for his help. Unfortunately Mr Barstow told her that there was nothing he could do for her; ‘an illegitimate son was not bound to keep his mother’. With that the ‘poor woman, who seemed much affected’ left the court probably knowing that her next port of call must be the parish workhouse.

[from The Morning Post, Monday, November 15, 1880]

Dangerous dogs or well loved pets? Two magistrates, two very different interpretations of the law.’

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The law is, of course, open to interpretation. In the 1880s the law concerning the control of pet dogs was, seemingly, as a clear as mud and so we can see that two magistrates chose to apply it in two different ways.

At Lambeth Mr Biron was in the chair on 8 June 1886. The clerk produced a string of dog owners were charged, by the treasury, with failing to keep their dogs under control. For the magistrate the law depended on how one interpreted the word ‘control’.

In a number of cases dogs had been found by police, wandering 20-30 yards from their owners or their owner’s home. If the dogs were muzzled, not on a lead, or no one appeared to be in control of them, more often than not a policeman would take their collars and take them back to the station. In those instances, if they had a name on the collar the owner was summoned to collect them.

In several of the cases brought before him Mr Biron dismissed the charge. If, for example, the owner said that the dog had just been let out in the morning (to do its ‘business’ one supposes) and was within 20 yards of the house then that was ‘under control’. In another case the owner said his animal was ‘within call’ and the justice accepted that. Indeed he accepted most explanations for why dogs were not on leads or muzzled and only one case, where a dog had bitten a child, did he find strongly against the owner who was penalised with a 10s fine.

In this case though the owner had already been warned about the behaviour of his beast so perhaps that was more about demonstrating that the law had to be obeyed than anything else. The courts were quite strict on those that ignored instructions previously handed down by the magistracy.

Overall Mr Biron declared that it was ‘doubtless right to take dogs unmuzzled and without owners to the station, but when animals were within a few yards of the owner or his premises he could not see much good sense in it’.

North of the river at Clerkenwell Mr Bartsow took a different line on ‘dangerous’ dogs. John Adams was brought before him charged with not keeping his good ‘under proper control’ contrary to police regulations. Adams said that the dog was walking a yards ahead of him and that ‘some magistrates held this to be “under proper control”.’

Mr Barstow told him that ‘he could be bound by the decisions of other magistrates’ and fined him 5s. If it was off the leash and without a muzzle, it wasn’t under control. I suspect the newspapers focused on this because it was a law that was commonly interpreted differently, something that must have been confusing for dog owners and policemen alike.

[from The Standard, Wednesday, June 09, 1886]

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

‘He has been in the habit of knocking me about’, until one day he went too far.

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This is one of those frustrating cases where you really feel you should be able to find out more than you can about it. On Thursday 12 April 1883 a 45 year-old labourer named Thomas Ward was brought up before Mr Barstow for the second time, having previously been remanded in custody for an assault.

His victim was a widow, Mrs Elizabeth Wynn, who had been living with Ward as his housekeeper for the past year. Ward was evidently a violent man and was partial to knocking the poor woman about when he was drunk. Nothing about this would have surprised the late Victorian magistracy since domestic violence was endemic in working-class communities in the 1800s. It was probably more widespread in middle class homes than society was prepared to recognize but genteel ‘ladies’ were more accustomed to covering up the signs of it and more invested in keeping their husbands’ dirty secrets.

The assault had taken place on the 5 April and Elizabeth had been taken to St Bartholomew’s Hospital to be treated for her injuries. It quickly became apparent that she wasn’t going to recover from the beating she’d sustained so the police secured a dying deposition which makes for difficult reading:

‘Yesterday afternoon I was at our street door, and knocked several times. The prisoner would not open it, but at last he did, and struck me on the nose and mouth with his fist. I was covered with blood, and do not remember any more. I feel very sore in the stomach, and I am black all over from falling. He was sober. He has been in the habit of knocking me about, and I have been in Highgate Infirmary with fractured ribs, which he did. I stayed away on that night because he swore he would do for me’.  

Elizabeth died on the morning of the 6 April.

The magistrate remanded Ward for another week but that is where he seems to disappear from history. I find no trace of a murder or manslaughter trial at the Old Bailey involving either Ward or Elizabeth Wynn, nor any entry in the Digital Panopticon.

The newspapers are equally silent on whether Ward was ever formally prosecuted for the killing of his housekeeper.  That leads me to suspect that the police had insufficient evidence to press charges and that, if anything, all Ward got was a short prison sentence for the assault, and I suspect that was unlikely as well (or he would have been recorded as being inside on the DP site). As ever, if someone else can enlighten me I’d be grateful (after all today is my birthday).

[from The Standard, Friday, April 13, 1883]