Tag: Shooter’s Hill

A dead baby found by a nurse in Woolwich: A mother is accused

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There are few crimes that generate so much emotion as the killing of a child. Every year at least one of my students is likely to come forward to suggest doing a dissertation or small research project on infanticide. It is an act so awful that we struggle to understand which makes it, seemingly at least, all the more fascinating.

Very many women, most of them young, the vast majority unmarried, were accused of killing their babies or children in the Victorian era. For most I believe, killing was never their intention; the infant died because of problems at birth or poverty and neglect soon afterwards.  The image of the ‘evil’ mother is almost certainly a myth.

Jane Ward was just such a mother. In November 1860 Jane appeared before Mr Maude at Woolwich Police court accused of causing the death of newborn baby girl. She was remanded for a week after which she was sent for trial at the Old Bailey.

Matilda Wyatt was a nurse working at the Royal Military Academy by Woolwich Common. As she walked in the garden of the army medical school she saw something on the ground, close by the road. As she bent down she realized that it was the body of a baby wrapped in calico, and horrified, she took it to the police.

The police made some enquiries and this led them to the home of Jane Ward’s father, a dairyman in Shooter’s Hill. PC Turner (61R) made a search of the house and found one of Jane’s dresses with a square of fabric cut from it, a square that matched the piece of calico exactly.

A Blackheath surgeon, Mr Tyler, performed a post mortem on the dead child. He checked the lungs (an increasingly outdated method of determining whether a baby had been stillborn or not) and judged it had been born alive. This suggested that Jane must have killed it, deliberately or otherwise. A second doctor examined Jane and confirmed that she had recently given birth. The evidence against her seemed conclusive.

Jane admitted that the baby was hers but denied its murder.

At the Old Bailey later that year Jane was charged, not with infanticide but the less serious charge of concealing a birth. This carried a maximum two-year prison sentence. In the event Jane was acquitted but no details are given beyond establishing that she had a defense barrister arguing her case in court. Sadly then we have no idea of the circumstances that explain what happened to Jane’s baby or why she left it in the academy grounds. All we can say is that it must have been as traumatic for her as it was for the poor nurse who discovered it.

[from The Morning Chronicle, Friday, November 23, 1860]

A ‘have a go hero’ is fined for his trouble

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It took quite a long time for Arthur Joyce to be brought before the magistrate at Woolwich Police Court. On the night of the 25 July the confectioner, who had a business at Shooter’s Hill in south-east London, was in bed when he heard a scream of ‘murder’ outside his window. When these were followed by several more he leapt out of bed, pulled on some clothes, grabbed his revolver and headed out into the street.

He soon saw a man ‘savagely beating a woman’ and shouted to him to stop. When the man turned his anger on Joyce the tradesman fired his pistol five times in the air to, as he later explained, ‘to attract the attention of the police’.

Immediately after the incident Joyce was brought before the nearest police court but any charges against him (for firing a gun) were dismissed by the magistrate. Presumably on that occasion his worship felt this vigilante act, while not exactly legal, was appropriate and in pursuit of a higher goal.

However, Joyce had no license for his revolver and this was an offence which came under the jurisdiction of the Inland Revenue in 1888. As a result a summons was issued for the confectioner to appear again and on 29 September 1888 he was up before Mr Fenwick at Woolwich.

The prosecution was brought by the Commissioners of the Inland Revenue in the person of a Mr Power who called Joyce’s neighbour, Frederick Hoare, to testify. He had seen Joyce running excitedly up the street, blood coming from a wound he had received from the wife beater. In defence Joyce’s lawyer told the court that his client was a ‘respectable tradesman’ and ‘could not be expected to take out a license for a revolver which was intended solely for protection in his own house’.

Mr Power was sympathetic to the confectioner’s situation but pressed his case; there had been a number of similar incidents he said, and several complaints, so he must insist on a fine. I rather suspect that while the magistrate agreed to the legal truth of the matter he also felt that Joyce had acted with honourable intent. He fined him 1s with 2s costs, possibly the minimum he could so that ‘justice’ could be done without unduly penalising the actions of a ‘have a go hero’.

We should remember that this was London in 1888 in the midst of ‘autumn of terror’ when the Whitechapel murderer killed at least five women in the streets of East London. One of the debated ‘facts’ of the ‘Ripper’ case is that no one seems to have heard anything as the killer struck and it has been said that cries of ‘murder!’ were so common that nobody would have reacted anyway. Well, perhaps Arthur Joyce, had he lived in Whitechapel, might have bothered.

[from The Morning Post, Monday, October 01, 1888]