Tag: Shepherds Bush

Robbed by a neighbour; an everyday hazard for London’s many tenants

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This was probably a fairly typical property crime: the theft of a lodger’s property by another person living in the same house. Many Londoners lived cheek by jowl with others in the 1800s in lodging houses that had little privacy or security. Individuals would share landings or rooms and sometimes (in the poorest homes) even a bed, so these Victorians often knew their neighbours intimately.

Frederick Hart lived as a lodger in the home of Mrs Clough in Shepherds Bush. The shop assistant wore a watch a chain on special occasions and kept it safe (or so he thought) in a locked box in his bedroom. He had worn in on Sunday 16 August 1886, perhaps to church or to for some occasion on his day off, and when he got home he careful locked it away.

On the following Tuesday (the 18th) he noticed that the box had been interfered with and the lock forced open. There had been a crude attempt to refasten the box and when he opened it to his horror he found that his Albert chain* was missing.

Fred’s suspicions immediately fell on Mrs Clough’s daughter, Florence. He questioned her and she told him she knew where it was. When he pressed her she admitted taking it and pledging it at a pawnbrokers. Fred summoned a policeman to whom Florence admitted both the crime and tearing up the pawn ticket. This would make it hard for the young man to get his watch chain back but it is was not the most worst thing about her crime.

Mr Paget, the magistrate at Hammersmith, told her that ‘breaking open a box was a serious matter’. It wasn’t as if Hart had been careless and had left his valuables lying around for anyone to steal. He had gone to the trouble of locking them away but she had still violated his privacy and stolen from him.

Florence Clough was given a good character reference by her mother, who told Mr Paget that she always helped her. ‘And robbed the lodgers’ quipped the magistrate, clearly in no mood to be lenient. He sent Florence to prison (most likely to Westminster house of correction where most summarily convicted women were sent in the 1880s).

Her sentence was three months at hard labour. She was 15 years old.

[from Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, Sunday, August 22, 1886]

*meaning it had a bar at one end for attaching to a buttonhole.

The curious (and confusing) case of the dog in the Shepherd’s Bush pub

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In January 1876 George Leeds paid Thomas Stevens £10 for a white fox terrier. He named the dog ‘Norman’ and asked no questions about its pedigree, or how Stevens had come by it.

In fact Stevens had acquired the dog by chance, or rather the dog had acquired him. Stevens had been in the Swakeley Hotel, a pub on Goldhawk Road at Shepherd’s Bush, when he noticed a dog running around the place. It followed him home and he had kept it for several weeks, renaming it ‘Tiger’,  before selling it to Mr Leeds. In the meantime he said he notified the police that he had found a missing dog, but nothing had come of it.

However, the dog was not Stevens’ to sell, it already had an owner, a Mr Alfred Larmuth. Alfred Larmuth had been looking for his pet since he had lost it, in October 1875. Larmuth and the dog, who he called ‘Prince’, had been in the Swakeley when the dog had disappeared. He had called out for it but couldn’t find it.

Presumably his search was eventually successful because, perhaps with the help of the police, he had tracked down his dog (or seen it with Leeds in the street) and he took out a summons to bring it (and George Leeds) to court.

The magistrate in the Hammersmith Police Court now had a complicated issue of ownership to adjudicate on. George Leeds was summoned for ‘detaining’ Larmuth’s dog. Thomas Stevens appeared to give evidence, but was not charged with theft. Just whom did the dog belong to, and was it the same dog anyway?

While the magistrate decided ‘Prince’, ‘Tiger’, or ‘Norman’, sat quietly in court waiting to find out who would be taking him home. It was quickly decided that regardless of the different names it had bene given, it was the same terrier Mt Larmuth had lost back in October.

In the end the magistrate, Mr Ingham, determined that no crime had been committed but Alfred Larmuth was not the legal owner. If he had bought ‘Prince’ in Leadenhall Market he would have ‘had an indefeasible right to it’, but instead he had bought it privately, which conferred no legal protection.

Nor was Stevens the owner; after all he had just found ‘Tiger’ in a pub. Which left Leeds in possession. The magistrate did say that the complainant (Larmuth) had a right to ask Stevens for the £10 (since the dog was not his, but Larmuth’s, to sell).

Confused? Me too!

All that is clear here is that the dog that was once Prince, then Tiger was to spend (hopefully) its remaining days as Norman, and it went home with George Leeds, who had the summons against him dismissed.

[from The Morning Post, Thursday, June 01, 1876]

The ‘stupid, obstinate, and unreasonable’ man on the Notting Hill omnibus.

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William Rogers was a gentleman who lived in Shepherd’s Bush in the London suburbs and as such, he was as far from being the usual sort of occupant of a police court dock as one could get. Yet in April 1899 he found himself before the magistrate at the West London Police court charged with fare dodging.

The General Omnibus Company had applied for (and obtained) a summons and in court were able to prove that Rogers had been traveling on a ‘bus from Notting Hill Gate to Uxbridge Road Station, and had paid the penny fare.

However, ‘because the omnibus stopped  a yard or so from the bridge that crosses the railway he refused to get out, and travelled on to Shepherd’s-bush’. At this point the conductor asked him to pay the balance of the fare owing, another penny, which he refused.

Mr Rogers cut a frustrated figure in court. He thought it ‘contemptible’ that the Company had brought the matter to court for such a trifling amount and said the vehicle had not ‘pulled up at the ordinary stooping point’. He had waited inside for the driver to move it to the station only for it to continue to Shepherd’s Bush. Since he had not had the opportunity to alight, he wasn’t prepared to pay the excess fare.

The GEO had employed a solicitor to contest the case, presumably on the grounds that establishing precedent was as important as recovering a penny fare. Their solicitor pointed out that ‘there was no obligation on the part of the Company to stop their omnibus at any particular place’. If Mr Rogers had made a request the driver would have complied with it, but he hadn’t.

Mr Lane, the sitting justice at West London agreed.

He told Rogers that there ‘was nothing in law or reason, saying that the Company need not do more than carry a passenger to the station. It did not matter a button where the omnibus was stopped. He ordered the Defendant to pay the penny fare, with two guineas costs, and described his conduct as stupid, obstinate, and unreasonable’.

[from The Standard, Wednesday, April 26, 1899]

Jerry-building and brick-burning: public nuisances in early Edwardian London

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Something a little different this morning. I have noted before that the Police Courts of London were not simply concerned with the everyday crimes we might expect (thieving, petty violence and fraud for example), They also served their communities as forums for relegating everyday life. Paupers came here asking for help, or to be punished for their refusal to work; members of the working and lower middle-class came to seek the magistrates’ legal advice on all manner of things from desertion to unpaid wages; and these courts performed many of the functions we now associate with public health boards, consumer protection agencies, or small claims courts.

Early in the reign of King Edward VII (r.1901-1910) Mr Finnis, a clerk (the archetypal lower middle-class professional of Edwardian England*) appeared at the West London Police Court (situated in Hammersmith) to bring a case of jerry-building against Charles Marsh.

Jerry-building was the practice of erecting cheap and poorly built properties for working classes families. The phrase had been in existence since the 1860s and has nothing to do with Germany or Germans. It may be derived from the slang word Jerrycummumble which meant: “To shake, towzle, or tumble about.”**

Finnis worked for the Chiswick Local Board and he complained that Marsh had been ordered to pull down a building ‘that had been erected contrary to the bye-laws’. Marsh didn’t appear in person but sent along his solicitor who told the court that his client was attempting to comply with the order.

He asked for some of the fines that had been levied to be remitted as part of the building (indeed buildings as it seems there were three in total) had already been demolished. Finnis was unmoved, he had sent letters (threatening ones) but had received no reply. He said he would abide by the magistrate’s decision but would not consent to ant reduction in the penalties unilaterally. The justice, Mr Curtis Bennett, said he had no power to lift the fines unless the Board agreed, so the case effectively reached an impasse; either the buildings were taken down or the fines paid and the buildings made good.

Mr Bennett’s next hearing was not about ‘crime’ either. This time he was asked to adjudicate on a case of nuisance. A Mr Augustus Bird was adamant that he had the right to burn bricks at his property in Shepherds Bush. Burning bricks is essential to their strength and durability so this was a case of local manufacturing coming up against the concerns of local residents; the clash of industry with the needs of a growing domestic population in West London.

Bird had been fined £50 for his persistence in burning bricks and causing a  nuisance to locals. He maintained (through his legal representative) that he had every right to do so and asked for the fines to be waived. The magistrate sided with the authorities in upholding the ban on brick-burning but said he would accept a compromise: so long as Mr Bird ceased his noxious activities he would reduced the fine for his previous offence to just £10.

Both these cases reflect the pressure on space that late Victorian and early Edwardian London faced as its population grew and the city expanded. London was not an industrial town (as Manchester was for example), it had grown over the centuries and swallowed up the surrounding countryside and its villages. Inevitably tensions would occur as the demands of industry came into conflict with the desires of residents to live in clean and quiet neighborhoods. When tensions did arise they were often played out in the police magistrates courtroom.

* For example Mr Pooter in The diary of a Nobody by Grossmith & Grossmith

** see http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/211600.html