Tag: Royal Arsenal

‘If you attempt to go to work today, I will tear you to pieces’. Dark threats of eviction at the Arsenal

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This is a case of conflicting versions of ‘the truth’, which has probably been lost somewhere in between.

On 25 November 1888 four people appeared at Woolwich Police court in South East London. John and Ellen Moore had been summoned for threats that they were alleged to have made towards George and Charlotte Tuffnell, from whom they rented an upstairs room in their house.

George Tuffnell explained that he and his wife lived at 2 Stanley Villas in Bullfields, Woolwich and that he worked at the Royal Arsenal. As he was leaving for work at 9 o’clock on Saturday morning John Moore confronted him.

‘If you attempt to go to work today’, he warned him, ‘I will tear you to pieces’.

Mr Marsham, the incumbent magistrate, wanted to know why on earth Moore would say such a thing, what had Tuffnell done – if anything – to provoke that reaction?

‘Well, you shall judge for yourself sir’, Tuffnell continued, ‘when I tell you what happened on the previous night’.

He went on to describe how he and his wife had returned home at 11.30 on the Friday night with the determination to evict their lodgers. We don’t know why, they didn’t say, but very few if any protections were in place for tenants in the 1880s and so while the Moores might have been behind with their rent, their landlords might simply have taken against them for no good reason.

Either way, Tuffnell loudly turned to Charlotte and declared, ‘Are the lodgers in?’, adding, ‘I mean to have them out’.

At this the Moores, who’d overheard (as I’m sure they were meant’) came rushing downstairs ‘like a couple of tigers in their nightshirts’. This dramatic description brought laughter from the court but covered the fact that a family was about to be turned out in the cold just a month before Christmas.

Tuffnell presented the altercation as one that threatened his wife and family: ‘Our three children were in a bedroom upstairs’, he said, ‘frightened out of their wits’, and he and his wife couldn’t get to them.

One wonders why they had gone out and left them in the first place if they cared so much.

John Moore presented an alternative version of the situation. He said he and his wife were ‘decent people, while the Tuffnell family were given to strife and mischief’. On Friday night he and Ellen were asleep in bed when they were rudely awakened by someone banging on their door.  Tuffnell was ‘raving and roaring like a caged animal’ and ‘battering the staircase with a hammer to emphasise his threats and imprecations’.

He and Ellen got up and opened the door and asked him to keep quite until morning when they would answer his requests for them to leave. At this Tuffnell said:

‘What did you say [to me]?’

‘I said, “Go in, Looney!”’ Moore admitted (and once more Mr Masham’s courtroom collapsed into laughter).

The magistrate turned to Moore and demanded to know if he nad his wife had vacated their rooms. ‘Not yet’, Moore told him. ‘We are going next week’. In that case, the justice replied, ‘I will adjourn the case until Thursday, and if you have left the house you need not appear again’.

Regardless of the truth of that’s night’s events it seems evident that the couples did not get on and so it was probably best that they went their separate ways.

[from The Standard, Monday, November 26, 1888]

‘The people in this part of the world are not acquainted with the Manchester language’: a stowaway at the Royal Arsenal.

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PC Monaghan was on patrol at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich in the early hours of the morning on Tuesday 21 April 1880. As the constable entered the canon cartridge factory site he thought he heard something and went to investigate. The area was restricted since, being ‘devoted to the manufacture and storage of explosives’ it was one ‘of the most dangerous areas of the Arsenal’. Even the workforce at the Arsenal was not permitted inside without a special order but somehow someone had got in.

The arsenal’s store was about two miles from any inhabited buildings but it was accessible from the river, and this is how a man had gained entry and was now hiding inside. PC Monaghan secured him and asked him his business there. The man told him his name was William Smith and that lived at an address in Kennington and was a blacksmith by trade. He ‘was quite sober’ but could not give a satisfactory explanation for being there.

The policeman took his prisoner back to the station where he was formally charged with ‘being in the Royal Arsenal for a felonious purpose’. The police took the details he’d given them and visited an address at Park Street, off the Kennington Road. The address appeared to be a false one however, as no one knew of him there. Later that day William Smith (if that was indeed his name) was presented at Woolwich Police Court before the sitting magistrate, Mr. Balguy.

Smith explained, ‘in a provincial accent’ that he had come down from Manchester looking for work at the arsenal, but he’d got lost. Why had he given a false address to the inspector at the station house then? Smith insisted he hadn’t but the inspector testified that the address he’d heard was ‘on Kennington Lane’. Perhaps it was the prisoner’s accent that was causing the problem Mr. Balguy suggested:

‘Perhaps you did not understand him? The people in this part of the world are not acquainted with the Manchester language’, adding that he would remand him overnight so more enquiries could be made.

Smith doesn’t reappear in the newspaper gleanings over the next few days so perhaps he was able to verify his address or was simply sent to prison as a vagrant, perhaps even despatched back to the North West. The Royal Arsenal employed workers from all over Britain and when these men weren’t building the armaments to defend the Empire they enjoyed a relaxed a game of football from time to time. In September 1886 they played ‘one or two games’ as Dial Square Cricket Club. In January 1887 they played their first game (against Erith) as the Royal Arsenal and the rest, as they say, is history.

[from The Standard (London, England), Wednesday, April 21, 1880]

If you want to know more about Arsenal’s history there is no better place to go than the AISA Arsenal History Society’s website, run by Tony Attwood. As I write this the news has emerged that the modern Arsenal Football Club, now based in North London since it moved there in 1913 (but still called ‘Woolwich’ Arsenal) have decided that this season will be the last under Arsene Wenger’s management. I am a season ticket holder at Arsenal and this is a sad day but also an exciting one. I’m sure he reads this blog so I’d like to say thank you and all the very best for whatever you do next Arsene, you will be a very hard act to follow.

 

A ‘murderous affray’ at the Arsenal

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Sometimes the newspaper ‘headlines’ above a story have a tendency to exaggerate. Now I’m sure that comes as no surprise to anyone reading the modern newspapers. But they presence of sensational headings in reports from the Police Courts suggest to me that the late nineteenth-century press was still evolving ways in which to present news to their readers. Newspapers had reacted to the rise of the serialised novel, and of ever more ‘sensational’ theatre productions, the ‘penny dreadful’ and other cheap prints that competed for the Victorian public’s attention and hard earned cash.

In an article entitled ‘the murderous affray at Woolwich Barracks’ The Standard reported a fight between three members of the Royal Artillery and  a civilian working at the barracks. The case came up before the Woolwich Police Court magistrate and ultimately ended in a  trial at the Old Bailey. No one was badly hurt and all parties were eventually acquitted of any crime.

Two gunners, Francis Murphy and William Dewdney, were attacked by Jeremiah Maher (a fellow gunner) at the barracks. Maher was deep in conversation with William Baldwin who worked there but was not a soldier. A quarrel broke, possibly because Murphy and Dewdney were both a little the worse for drink. and Maher took down and drew a sword. In the resulting skirmish both gunners were stabbed and ended up in hospital, although none of their wounds were deemed life threatening.

The magistrate quickly dismissed Baldwin as he was clearly just an innocent bystander, he’d taken no part in the assault. The wounds, whilst not likely to result in serious long term injury, were at first considered ‘dangerous’ however and so Maher was remanded and later committed for trial.

The only evidence presented in defence of Maher came from Baldwin who supported his allegation that the two gunners had started the row and he was only acting in self-defence. Apparently Baldwin had heard the pair say: ‘Don’t stab them; but shoot them’. The case was no clearer in the report from the Old Bailey a week later. There Maher was found not guilty after a handful of persons gave evidence, most of which would seemingly have supported the case for the prosecution. The surgeon, for example, didn’t think the wounds the men had sustained were commensurate with self-defence.

It didn’t matter because Maher was given a good character but someone unnamed by the court reporter, and walked free. In the end then, it was a much less ‘murderous’ affair than the paper suggested. A few years later they could all have simply taken their aggression out on the football pitch, watching the Woolwich works’ team, the Royal Arsenal.

[from The Standard, Thursday, January 08, 1880]

You can use this site to search for specific crimes or use the Themes link in the menu on the left to look for areas or topics that interest you. If you are interested in a particular court (such as Bow Street or Marylebone) you can also limit your search to one court in particular. Please feel free to comment on anything you read and if something in particular interests you then please get in touch. You can email me at drew.gray@northampton.ac.uk

A morbid request for a reward reminds London of the Princess Alice disaster

 

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For those of you following this blog regularly and especially this week I hope you can see that I have tried to follow the ‘doings’ of the Thames Police Court for a whole week. Due the selective reporting of the courts however, this has not proved possible. I had hoped to be able to follow a couple of remanded cases, to see them reappear with some conclusion reached, but sadly this hasn’t happened. It all helps me understand though, just how selective the reportage was and suggest readers were more interested in a variety of ‘titbits’ about the courts than they were in finding out exactly what occurs in each court on a regular basis.

Historical research is always problematic and we can learn from what we can’t find almost as much as we learn from what we do. There is also the unexpected gobbets of information that the newspapers offer, that can open up new avenues for research and understanding, there were two of these today.

On the 66th anniversary of Wellington’s victory at Waterloo the Standard newspaper chose to concentrate on two cases from the Woolwich Police Court. In the first a ‘reputed lunatic’, James Peacock, was sent for trial by jury for allegedly stealing rockets from the Royal Arsenal.

The other case concerned a boy who had summoned the overseers of the poor at Woolwich for non-payment of a reward he was due. The reward was for recovering a dead body from the Thames and this linked the police courts to a tragedy that had occurred three years earlier, in September 1878.

On the evening of the 3 September the Princess Alice, a pleasure steamer loaded with passengers, was passing the shore at Tipcock Point, North Woolwich, when it collided with another vessel, a collier barge, the Bywell Castle. The Alice went down in just four minutes, dragging its terrified passengers into the polluted river. Over 650 people, men , women and children, drowned in the river and the loss of life was shocking.

The tragedy lasted long in local and national memory and must have impacted Londoners in particular. Liz Stride, one of the victims of ‘Jack the Ripper’ even claimed she had lost her husband on the Princess Alice, a claim that doesn’t seem to have much substance.  Stride might have been trying to get some charitable relief following the disaster, as several institutions, including the Lord Mayor’s Mansion House Fund, paid out to victims’ families.

Appearing in Woolwich on behalf of the Overseers of the poor, Mr Moore a relieving officer, said that the Overseers or the Guardians were normally quite happy to pay out for the recovery of bodies from the river. The boy also had a certificate from a coroner saying he was entitled to the money, so that seemed settled, but it wasn’t.

Mr Moore  told the court that a recent ruling at the Court of Queen’s Bench that in the case of the Princess Alice there was no actual law that gave authority for the paying of rewards. The Thames, he explained, was not included as part of “the sea”, which was what the original reward referred to. The magistrate, Mr Marsham grumbled that he couldn’t see how the two were not connected; after all the Thames was a tidal river which seemed to bring it within the act. Nevertheless he was bound to abide by the superior courts’ ruling and he dismissed the summons.

However, apparently the case was being discussed in parliament he was told, and so the lad (not named in the report) was advised to hang onto his certificate in the hope that the situation was eventually resolved to his benefit.

[from The Standard, Saturday, June 18, 1881]

As this was the 66th anniversary of Waterloo several papers mentioned the battle. The Daily News dedicated a small column to 200th anniversary of the Scots Greys, the ‘oldest dragoon corps’ in the British Army.  The ‘Greys’ had served with distinction in the Crimea at the battle of Balaclava, where they ‘tore through the Russians as acrobats go through a paper hoop’ (as the reporter described it). Their charge at Waterloo, which was more brave than effectual (if military historians are to be believed), was forever immortalised in Lady Elizabeth Butler’s Scotland Forever which was painted in 1881, to celebrate the anniversary. 

[from Daily News, Saturday, June 18, 1881]

A ‘suspicious person’ at Woolwich, but ‘not clever enough’ to be a terrorist.

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In the 1880s Woolwich was home to the Royal Arsenal, as it had been since the 17th century (and in fact earlier as there had been used for gun storage from the mid 1500s). After 1886 it was also home to what was to become one of London’s most successful football clubs, Arsenal FC.

Given that artillery and shells were manufactured at Woolwich in the 1800s the site was an important one for the Victorian military, but also a target for the enemies of the state. Security, then, as now, was an issue of national importance and the Victorian state was concerned about internal threats just as much as it was about  those posed by rival imperial powers.

In the 1880s there were  a series of terrorist incidents in London, all part of a long running campaign by Irish nationalists in the cause of independence. It is a subject I have looked at as part of my research into late Victorian London and I drew heavily on the capital’s newspapers and the work of K. M. Short, whose study of Fenian terrorism remains the most comprehensive one out there, despite its age.

So, given the background, we might expect the authorities at Woolwich to be on the look out for potential terrorists, and in April 1881 they thought they might have caught one.

Two constables from the Arsenal were patrolling by the river front when they saw a man rowing up and down, seemingly watching the shoreline. It was particularly suspicious because this was at just after one o’clock int he morning and they could not see what legitimate purpose he had for being there so late (or early). At three he was still there so they called to him and asked him what he was about.

He replied that he was lost and was it possible for him to land. The constables directed him to a pier, and when he docked and climbed the steps they arrested him. The police were called and they questioned him. It was soon discovered that the boat he was in had been stolen from an MP who lived at North Woolwich, Mr (later Sir) Thomas Brassey the member for Hastings.

The man’s name was Michael Sullivan and his peculiar behaviour and Irish background raised concerns that he was a Fenian bent on mischief at the Arsenal. However, when Inspector McElligot was called to give evidence he ‘repudiated any supposition that Fenianism had anything to do with the case, and complained that the most extravagant and unfounded rumours had been circulated’.

The magistrate agreed, he commented: ‘I agree with you that he is not a Fenian. I doesn’t look clever enough’, which was met with much laughter in the Woolwich Police Court, before his worship (Mr Balgey) sent him to prison for a for a month at hard labour.

1884 saw a number of terrorist outrages in London. A bomb was placed at Victoria Railway Station and other London termini, and a fairly inept attempt to blow up London Bridge resulted in the death of the bombers. In May 1884 two boys kicking an abandoned briefcase attracted the attention of a policeman who found they were playing with a case containing dynamite, fuses and a detonator! These incidents followed attacks in 1882 (at the Lord Mayor’s residence, Mansion House) and at the offices of The Times newspaper in 1883. In January 1885 the Houses of Parliament were targeted  along with he Tower of London, and the new underground railway was also subject to a bomb attack, as the Hammersmith train left Aldgate station.

There were few deaths and nothing like the serious level of injury that modern terrorists have inflicted recently, but it still reminded Victorian society that as long as Britain insisted on claiming Ireland as a colony Victoria’s subjects would not be safe in their homes or their streets. It also contributed to wider prejudice and the stereotyping of Irish immigrants in London and elsewhere, something that we see repeated in the demonisation of moslems today.

[from The Morning Post, Wednesday, April 20, 1881]

A tragic accident at the door of the Police Court

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HMS Warrior at Woolwich

Rachel Scott was 13 years of age and was walking in the street outside the Worship Street Police Court one afternoon in April 1841. At the same time a heavily laden cart belonging to the G Wells carrier firm from Hackney and Homerton was making its slow and steady progress towards the City Road.

The driver, Samuel Banks, called out to the girl but she seemed not to hear him. For whatever reason Banks was unable to stop or shift direction and the cart ran over the girl. An officer of the police court rushed to pick her up and Rachel was taken to her parents’ home at 22 Worship Street.

The surgeon that examined Rachel could only ‘proscribe lotions’ and warn that ‘serious effects might ensue’. The magistrate bailed the driver to appear again in three days, and at that point Banks and young Rachel disappear from history. The paper reported that the landlord of the house where Rachel lived with her family had experienced his own tragedy recently when a part of the cellar collapsed on his daughter, who was crushed to death.

In fact the Morning Post was full of ‘bad’ news that Saturday morning. At Islington a woman (the wife of a clergyman)  had been found face down on her bed, quite dead with a  small medicine bottle close by. In another report an inquest was held at University Hospital in Bedford Square into the death of a patient who had burned to death in a  private room.

The largest space was given over, however, to a story of four convicts from the convict ship Warrior, moored in the dock at Woolwich, who had apparently died of influenza. The four were taken to the dead house at the Royal Arsenal where they were examined by the coroner. Influenza was ‘very prevalent’ in the town and had affected the Justicia prison hulk as well as Warrior. The two ships were crowded, Warrior had twice as many convicts on board as it normally did and this was given as a potential cause of the spread of the epidemic. However, the verdict of the coroner’s court was not that overcrowding or poor sanitary conditions had led to the mens’ deaths but that they had died ‘by the visitation of God’.

The men were Edward Sheffield, from Hertford who was just 18 and under sentence of transportation for seven years; Michael Westal from Liverpool (also facing seven years); Samuel Medlam (29) from Warwick and David Owen, another teenager, who died 12 days after being admitted to the hospital at Woolwich.

It is a reminder to those of you researching your family trees that a sentence of transportation did not always mean that your ancestor made the long sea journey to Australia. Many died en route, and some, like the four men listed here, never left England. Warrior  had been a receiving ship until 1840, meaning that she served as a new home for sailors who had been recruited (or were ‘pressed’ – i.e forcibly recruited) into the Navy. In 1840 she started a new life as a prison hulk (a floating prison). Conditions on the hulks (like Justicia) were awful, worse men than prisons. Convicts were not supposed to stay there for the duration of their sentences, but just until a fleet sailed for Australia. Some. however, as we have seen, never made it that far.

[from The Morning Post, Saturday, April 17, 1841]

Too lazy to go (back) to the Arsenal

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On the 3rd January 1877 two ‘young men’ appeared at Marylebone Police Court in front of Mr D’Eyncourt, the sitting magistrate. There they freely confessed to being deserters from the Royal Artillery.

The pair were stationed at Woolwich Arsenal, in south east London. They had been walking in Bayswater earlier that morning when they had stopped a passing policeman and had given themselves up.

The PC (from X Division) was convinced the soldiers were shamming and instead of deserting he suggested they were just ‘too lazy to walk to Woolwich’. He searched them and the ‘informations’ about deserters but could find nothing that suggested they had absconded or were not simply on leave.

The pair laughed about it in court, saying they were tired and hungry and hadn’t eaten in 24 hours. The magistrate, perhaps frustrated that they had broken no civil law, was forced to issue an order for them to be transported to the barracks at Woolwich to be dealt with ‘by the military authorities’. One imagines they might have got short shrift from their sergeant but little else.

Perhaps when they got back (and finished whatever menial task the sergeant set for them) they enjoyed a kick-about football match with their colleagues and local workers. After all the barracks was close to the armaments factory which had existed since the late 17th century. In 1886 the workers formed themselves into a football team and began to compete with rival squads. Eventually, from small beginnings, there emerged the professional club side that still delight (and frustrate) their supporters at a new venue, in North London.

[from The Morning Post, Thursday, January 04, 1877]