Tag: Serpentine

Skinny-dipping in the Serpentine: Two brothers end up in hot water as they try to beat the capital’s heatwave.

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I imagine that you, like me, are suffering from this prolonged bout of hot weather. The British trend to grumble whatever the weather of course; it is either too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, rarely ‘just right’. But weather like this is causing problems, from moorland fires and potential crop shortages, to increased levels of pollution and higher mortality rates. Now perhaps, skeptics are waking up to the idea that global warming is a reality and not just scaremongering by environmentalists and climate change experts.

This year is not exceptional however, we’ve had heatwaves before. In 1976 temperatures sored to 35.9C, in 1990 they topped 37C in Cheltenham. There were similar heatwaves when the temperature reached the mid 30s: in July 1933, August 1932, July 1923 and August 1911 but this one may be one of the most sustained.

What do people do when the weather gets so hot? Well in July 1900, at the tail end of Victoria’s reign, two brothers decided to cool off by going for a swim in the Serpentine. However, their actions scandalized the public and so the pair found themselves up before the magistrate at Marlborough Street Police court.

Reginald Ingram, a 32 year-old medical practitioner, and his brother Malcolm (25) lived at the same address in Pimlico. On Tuesday 24 July they were seen swimming in the Serpentine in Hyde Park. Not only was it against the rules of Royal Park to swim or bathe in the lake at that time and place, the men were also stark naked!

Police constable 74D was called to the incident and witnessed the men running ‘about in a nude condition’. He arrested them, secured their clothes, and ferried them to the nearest police station where they were charged.

Both men pleaded guilty to swimming in the lake but said they were unaware that they’d broken the regulations, not realizing that bathing was prohibited in certain areas of the lake. Ignorance of course, is no defense in law and Mr. Denman fined the brothers 40s each for their offence.

I’m a little surprised he didn’t add an extra penalty for indecency, but perhaps that is making assumptions that the late Victorians were more obsessed with decorum than they were. Regardless, their attempt to cool down by skinny dipping in a public park had landed them in hot water.

[from The Standard, Wednesday, July 25, 1900]

Mr Tyrwhitt sends a message

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I am coming to recognise the names of several of the men that served as Police Court magistrates in the second half of the nineteenth century. Some, like Mr Lushington at Thames seemed to have little time for wife beaters or drunks, while others reveal a tender side to their nature when presented with cases of genuine need and despair.

Magistrates had considerable discretion in determining what to do with those brought before them; a ‘rule book’ existed (they might use Richard Burn’s Justice of the Peace and Parish Officer, or Oke’s Magisterial) but within the penalties available for a variety of offences there was considerable room for manoeuvre. Indeed while the prosecutor had the ultimate choice of bringing a case in the first place, the magistrate chose then whether to dismiss a charge, convict summarily, or send the prisoner up to a jury court (where they might expect a much more serious form of punishment).

Over at Marlborough Street, one of the busier police courts in London, Mr Tyrwhitt presided in the late 1860s. In late September 1867 two cases were reported at his court which suggest that he had a low tolerance level for nuisance and repeat offenders.

First up was Alice Smith, a ‘young woman’ who refused to give her address in court. I doubt this endeared her to the justice who may well have assumed she had something to hide or was a ‘down and out’. Alice had been caught picking flowers from a bed near the Serpentine in Hyde Park. PC William Cowell had seen the woman take the flowers but as soon as she saw him she hurriedly dropped them. Alice pleaded with the constable not to take her in and charge her, ‘offering to give him whatever he liked to let her go’.

She was probably intending to sell them for the few pennies she might get. It was a petty offence, hardly a serious crime but the magistrate was in an unforgiving mood. He told Alice that she was:

‘one of those mischievous persons that must be restrained. The business of that court was much increased by people that did mischief in the park’.

He fined her 5s or four days imprisonment and let it be known that in future he would hand down a fine of 40s (a significant amount in 1867) to anyone caught ‘plucking flowers’ belonging to the Board of Works.

Having dealt with such a serious theft of the capital’s flora Tyrwhitt was presented with three juvenile felons. George Vial (17), Frederick Williams (15) and James Brougham (14) had been seen loitering around Piccadilly by a plain clothes detective. Phillip Shrives, of C Division Metropolitan Police, said he had been watching the lads follow railway vans (‘evidently for the purpose of robbing them’) and arrested them.

With no other evidence presented against them another justice might have warned them or considered sending them to a reformatory school, but not Mr Tyrwhitt; he sent them all to prison for three months at hard labour.

And so, in this way, were ‘criminal careers’ created.

[from The Morning Post, Wednesday, September 25, 1867]

p.s I would add that despite what must come across as a rather liberal attitude towards these nineteenth-century offenders I do think we should recognise that for many of those caught up in the justice system, terrible as it could be in the 1800s, a considerable proportion of them had committed an offence that had left behind a victim or victims. On Sunday (yesterday that is) my brother-in-law and sister-in-law’s home was broken into in the early hours while they were away at a family gathering in Manchester.

The thieves broke in through the back patio doors, made a considerable mess as they ransacked all the upstairs room, and stole a small amount of personal and irreplaceable jewellery. The burglary meant I spent half the day waiting for the police and the glass replacement man but it was of course much worse for my in-laws who returned home to find their home violated. Historians of crime need to start to recognise the very real effect of crime on those that were victim to it; as one fellow historian of crime noted to me today:

‘There’s temptation to treat it as colourful history from below with juicy sources and too little recognition that many criminals hurt the poor and vulnerable. Time for the Victim Turn?’

Indecency and rough behaviour spoil the tranquility of London’s Royal Parks

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One of the pleasures of London – as I was reminded by a good friend recently – is simply walking in the parks and taking in the everyday sights. On any day in London you can stroll in the Regent’s, Hyde or Green Park, enjoying an ice cream or a cold drink, and see ‘all sorts and conditions of men’ and women. There will be lycra clad cyclists; city businessmen with their suit jackets over their shoulders; kids rushing around and spooking the waterfowl; sun worshippers soaking up the rays; and elderly couples or sitting on benches reminiscing on life past.

The parks are one of London’s treasures: they are free and provide acres of green space  to counterbalance the emissions of millions of motorised vehicles. They have been places of  pleasure, exercise and, occasionally, political protest, for generations.

Hyde Park was originally a private hunting area acquired as such by Henry VIII in 1536. It first opened to the public in 1637 under Charles I, and in 1665 many Londoners sought sanctuary here from the plague that ravaged London in the reign of Charles II. The Serpentine was created in the 1730s, on the wishes of Queen Caroline, the consort of George II and by the early 1800s the park was used for public celebrations (much as Trafalgar Square was be used in the 20th century).

But London’s parks at night or at dusk offered a different sort of experience for some and caused considerable unease to others. In the 1880s rival gangs of youths from the  Marylebone area aggressively patrolled the boundaries of Regent’s Park searching for unwary members of each other’s ‘crews’, and prostitutes plied their trade in the darker, unlit parts where quick assignations were easy to keep from the prying eyes of the police.

Well, they were usually able to conceal their behaviour and many a policeman would have turned a blind eye to prostitution so long as there wasn’t a standing order to police it, or the people involved were not so blatant as to make it necessary for even the most discriminating of bobbies to intervene.

This seems to be what happened in early July 1869 and the indiscretion of the sex worker involved was compounded by the violent disorder displayed by her potential clients.

Police sergeant Martin (14A) was patrolling in Hyde Park near the Knightsbridge barracks when he saw several men noisy exchanging words (and worse) with a woman. The sergeant observed them and her to be acting ‘indecently’ (although we are not told exactly what this meant), and he moved over towards them to tell them to stop.

Quite sensibly the prostitute quickly made her escape, having no desire to be arrested, but the men decided to pick a fight with the police officer. They ‘made use of indecent language and put themselves in fighting attitude’. In other words they put up their fists as if to box with sergeant Martin.

When Martin attempted to tackle the nearest, a man named Joseph Tucker, he was wrestled to the ground and the other three men started kicking at him as he lay there. Luckily another policeman soon arrived and, with assistance of a passerby, he managed to rescue the sergeant and arrest his assailants.

All four men ended up in court before the Marlborough Street police magistrate the next day, charged with disorderly behaviour and assault. James Hunt, William Yardley, David Hodgman and Tucker represented themselves in court and none offered much by way of a defence, except to say the policeman attacked them first, which seems unlikely.

The man that had helped the stricken officer was there as well to give evidence. Mr Street, who was described as the manager of the Royal Exchange Association (an insurance firm) confirmed the policeman’s testimony and added his disquiet that members of the military, stationed nearby, seemed complicit on ‘setting the mob on the police’. The magistrate expressed his regret that the soldiers weren’t ‘before him’ so he could deal with them too. Several other witnesses came forward to support the police sergeant and insurance man’s evidence.

So it was a fairly straightforward case for Mr Tyrwhitt the magistrate. He handed down fines of 20s to Hunt and Hodgman and 40s  to Yardley, all with alternative custodial sentences if they failed to pay. As for Tucker, who seemed the ringleader and chief protagonist, he was sent to prison at hard labour for a months for the disorderly conduct and ‘two periods of twenty-one days for assaulting the police’. He warned all of them not to appear before him again, or the consequences would be severe.

[from Reynolds’s Newspaper, Sunday, July 4, 1869]