Tag: neighbours

Ghostly goings on in Westminster : everybody needs good neighbours.

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The act of going to law was often a last resort, a necessary act to put an end to a problem that had resisted all attempts resolution. While it was sometimes suggested that the poorer classes enjoyed their ‘day in court’ it was equally observed that the middle classes feared the taint by association of appearing before a magistrate.

Mr Henry Payne seems to have been one of those who would rather not have resorted to law, and who was keen to avoid a repeat appearance. The respectable dyer was not in trouble with the police, instead he was the victim of persistent and escalating intimidation. The cause was unknown but the middle aged dyer, who lived in Rochester Row in Westminster, was pretty clear who was the culprit.

He blamed his young well-to-do neighbor, George Champion. For several weeks Mr Payne had been ‘annoyed by mysterious stone throwing’. When he tried to find out who was responsible his neighbour muttered darkly about his house being haunted, and this rumour soon spread amongst the other nearby occupants of Rochester Row.

Payne’s house was sandwiched between Champion’s and that of Mr Cocks, an undertaker. He too had suffered from stones and broken bricks being tossed into his back yard or small items hitting his windows. Both men had complained to the police who sent an officer to keep watch.

Payne had boarded his yard to protect his family from the missiles that sailed over, mostly during the night. His wife and children didn’t dare set foot out there, and poor Henry was going out of his mind with ‘the annoyance’.

Finally, when a large stone broke a skylight in his roof he had enough and opted to take legal action. He applied for a summons to bring Champion before the magistrate at Westminster Police court where he appeared, smartly and fashionably dressed, on the 28 November 1890.

Mr De Rutzen questioned all of those involved. Payne gave his evidence in a rush, clearly perturbed by the whole affair. Inspector Webber for the police, said that his men had seen nothing thrown but had felt one! This brought a moment of levity to the court as everyone imagined the poor policeman being struck by a ‘ghostly’ missile.

In the end, and probably because Mr Payne was reluctant to take it further and since Champion was clearly a member of the wealthier class, the justice opted for a ‘common-sense’ approach. He suggested that so long as the nuisance stopped there was no need to do anything else. Mr Payne was not asking for compensation for the skylight, he just wanted some peace from ‘the ghosts’. Champion walked free from court but with a reminder that if the stone throwing restarted Mr De Rutzen was very open to issuing a second summons, and then the dyer and his neighbours might not be so reasonable.

[from The Standard , Saturday, November 29, 1890]

‘Let me finish mother off, and I will do for you’; a desperate attempt on a defenceless woman.

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Prisoners quarrying at Portland Prison c.1880s

Celia Harrison was having tea with her aunt and her grandmother, Emma Harrison, on 22 July 1895 when there was a knock at the door. It was 6 o’clock the 10 year old recalled and when her grandmother answered the door it was father who stood in the doorway. The visitor (William Harrison) demanded to know if his brother Jack was at home. He wasn’t and the elderly woman seemed nervous and wasn’t inclined to let her son in.

William seemed angry and perhaps a little under the influence of alcohol. Celia heard him say: ‘I mean doing for him when he does come home’ and she saw that he was holding a knife. Celia, in fear, ran out into the garden.

Charles Rattison was a tram driver who lived upstairs from the Harrisons at 6 Salisbury Road, Highgate. Just after 6 o’clock he heard raised voices coming from below. When he heard a cry of ‘murder!’ he leapt up from his chair and rushed downstairs. To his horror he saw Emma Harrison flat on her back on the floor with her son William sitting cross-legged on top of her, slashing at her throat with a knife.

Rattison acted swiftly, wrestling the man off of her. In his rage William, who couldn’t see who his attacker was, growled at him: ‘Are you Jack?’ ‘No’, Rattison replied, ‘I am Charley’. William Harrison now said:

‘Let me finish mother off, and I will do for you’.

Fortunately he didn’t get the opportunity because another neighbour arrived and managed to take the knife from him. Harrison fled before the police could get there but PC Thomas Russant (637Y) caught up with him as he tried to escape. The copper was threatened by the would-be assassin who told him:

‘Where is my bleeding knife; I wish I had a sharp-shooter, I would put some of your lights out’.

On the 23 July Harrison was in court before the North London Police magistrate. Detective Sergeant Godley testified that the victim was too ill to attend but that she was thankfully recovering well in the Great Northern Central Hospital. He added that Emma was the widow of a policeman who had been pensioned off in 1876 after ‘many years service’ to the force. I imagine Y Division viewed this attack as if it was perpetrated against ‘one of their own’.

William Harrison stood impassively as others, including his daughter, gave their evidence. The magistrate remanded him for a week so that his victim had more time to mend in hospital before giving her version of events. This took some time, she was, after all, 68 years of age and so the case didn’t come before a jury until September that year where William Harrison was convicted of causing grievous bodily harm. The jury rejected his plea that he was drunk at the time, not that it was an excuse anyway. Harrison had form as well, having previously been prosecuted for wounding his wife. On that occasion he’d gone down for 11 months. This time the judge sent him away for 7 years of penal servitude.

William Harrison, who was simply described as a labourer, served five years and three months of his sentence, much of it at Portand Prison. He was released on 1 December 1900 at the age of 44. Thereafter he seems to have escaped trouble with the law but whether his wife and family were happy to have him back is less clear.

[from The Standard, Wednesday, July 24, 1895]

Artists models raise an old lady’s hackles in 19th-century Fitzrovia

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Sarah Gibbons was an elderly resident of Charlotte Street, in what is known as Fitzrovia. Today it would be a smart London address, in the 1880s it was less genteel, but an area much frequented by artists. and Bohemians.

Sarah was in dispute with her neighbours across the road who she saw as noisy and disreputable. On the 8th May 1885 things had reached a point where she could stand it no longer and she left her house and crossed the road to number 98. There she was conformed by her nemesis, the much younger Maggie Jennings.

When she saw Sarah the younger woman called inside to her ‘creatures’ (as Sarah later described them in the Marlborough Street Police Court), who came running out into the hallway.

According to Sarah they then assaulted her violently:

Maggie ‘and another woman, rushed out of the room and struck her, scratched her, and tore her bonnet, and it was with difficulty that she stopped herself from going headlong into the the kitchen below’. Sarah told the sitting justice that Jennings and orchestrated the attack, calling on her friends to join in.

Where was the landlord in all this, she was asked. He was present but Sarah had no immediate blame for him in this instance, however she clearly held him responsible for  keeping the sort of house he did. She declared that she would happily have ”jumped him’ if she had been able, drawing laughter from the court.

Miss Jennings’ solicitor denied the facts as presented and said his client had been the victim not the aggressor. The court was told that Miss Jennings was an artist’s model with a ‘good connection’. Indeed, ‘ladies’ went there to have drawing classes and several artists regally called on the women who lived there, in a professional capacity. It may have been the noise these men made that caused Mrs Gibbons such consternation he suggested, but it wasn’t his client or her friends that were to blame.

The landlord also appeared and spoke up for his tenants, describing them as ‘respectable’ models and adding that it was indeed Sarah Gibbons who had landed the first blow in this fight, not Maggie.

This infuriated the old lady even further and throwing up her hands she made to leave the courtroom. ‘Models indeed!’ she exclaimed. ‘Do they take models in the dark?’, suggesting perhaps that while the men did have  professional relationship with the women, it wasn’t one based on the pure practice of ‘art’, but prostitution. This would have opened the landlord up to a possible charge of running a brothel or at least an unruly house and so the magistrate adjourned the hearing to wait for the report of the policeman that had attended to the assault incident.

A couple of days later the court reconvened the case and a police inspector reported that he had visited the property. He, and PC French who had responded to the disturbance on the 8th, both testified that ‘all the inmates were respectable persons’.

Mr Cooke, the magistrate, now turned his attention to Sarah Gibbons. He told that he was going to dismiss the charge because she had no right to have entered the property in the first place. If she wished to bring a complaint then she should have proceeded through the proper channels, and not taken the law into her own hands.

As she opened her mouth to say something the justice shut her up, and said ‘he would not hear any more’. Maggie Jennings was free to go, without a stain on her character and this verdict was met ‘with loud applause’ from those in court.

[from The Morning Post, Monday, May 25, 1885; The Morning Post , Wednesday, May 27, 1885]