Tag: Wimbledon

A fatality avoided as race goers clash with an ‘honourable member’ on Wimbledon Common

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Richard Sims Donkin MP (c.1895)

On the day of the Epsom Derby 1888 (30 May) Richard Donkin was exercising his horse near Wimbledon Common. Donkin, a Tynesider, had made his wealth in shipping in the north of England and in 1885 he stood for parliament and was elected as the Conservative Party member for the new constituency of Tynemouth.

As he rode along a path that adjoined the common a waggonette approace din the opposite direction. The vehicle, a sort of large open cab capable of carrying several person, was driven by Frank Flint. Flint was carrying several passengers, taking them to the races at Epsom. As they passed Donkin there was jeering from the wagon and Flint raised his whip and struck out at the horse and rider.Unknown

The MP struggled but he was a good horseman and managed to prevent his beat losing it’s footing and sliding into a ditch at the side of the road. Had the animal fallen he feared it might have broken a leg and then have had to be put down. He made enquires and found Flint’s name and had him summoned before the magistrate at Wandsworth Police court.

The prosecution was directed by Donkin’s solicitor, Mr Haynes while Flint was defended by a Mr Hanne. The prosecution case was that this was an assault and a deliberate attempt to unseat the parliamentarian. In defence it was argued that it was all a mistake and an accident. Flint testified that his own horse had shied on seeing the other animal and that he was trying to control it when is whip accidently connected with the MP’s mount.

It was a cab driver’s word against a respected member of parliament and I think we know how those encounters were likely to play out.  For Montague Williams, the sitting magistrate, the issue was not simply who was to blame it was whether this constituted an assault. He consulted the clerk who consulted Justice (James Fitzjames) Stephen’s volume on the criminal law and decided that Flint was guilty of an indirect assault, and fined him £5.

Richard Donkin lived in Wimbledon until his death in 1919 at the age of 82. He served Tynemouth as MP until 1900 but made little impression on parliamentary history. Most of his interventions were concerned with shipping, something he knew a lot about. I’ve no idea what happened to Flint or his unruly passengers but if they had backed Ayeshire, the three year old stallion that won the Derby in May 1888 they might at least have won enough money to pay the hefty fine that Mr Williams handed down.

[from The Morning Post, Wednesday, June 13, 1888]

On June 15 Drew’s new book (co-authored by Andy Wise) is published by Amberley Books. It is a new study of the Whitechapel murders of 1888 which offers up a new suspect, links the ‘Jack the Ripper’ killings to the unsolved ‘Thames Torso’ crimes, and provides the reader with important contextual history of Victorian London. The book is available to order on Amazon here

‘You are one of Colonel Henderson’s ruffians!’:one of the ‘Devil’s Own’ takes his anger out on the police

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The Albert Embankment under construction in 1869

As two police constables patrolled the Albert Embankment on Saturday evening in May 1879 they heard and then saw a horse and rider approaching. The man was smartly dressed but seemed to be swaying in the saddle as if a little the worse for drink. PC Vaughan (143L) commented to his companion that they should keep an eye on him.

Soon afterwards, as the coppers watched, the equestrian turned off the embankment into Gloucester Street, a dead end street that led only to some dust yards. They followed him into the dimly lit street and saw that a large crowd of dustmen and small boys had gathered around him. He was throwing them silver coins which they were scrambling for the in dirt of the street.

This was a potentially dangerous situation; if the man was drunk it was quite possible, PC Vaughan thought, that he might be hauled off his mount and robbed. The officers moved in through the throng and advised the rider, firmly, to desist and go home. Instead of obeying the constable’s request however, the man growled at him:

‘You are one of Colonel Henderson’s ruffians, I should like to have a turn with him in Belgium, choose our own weapons, and stand six yards apart’.

Sir Edmund Henderson was commissioner of the metropolitan police from 1869 to 1886. He resigned following the embarrassment of the West End (or ‘Pall Mall’) riots of 1886. He had a military background (as did his successor, Charles Warren) and had also served in Australia with a responsibility for the government of convicts before returning to England to run the prison system. henderson2

The police themselves did not enjoy the affection of the public that they do today and this clearly extended beyond the lower working class. The rider was a barrister, William Belt, aged 53, and resident in Bedford Square. As a man of some means and position he had no obvious reason to dislike the police but referring to them as ‘ruffians’ was fairly unambiguous. His comment about ‘six yards’ suggested he was spoiling for a fight  (since it referenced the classic duel) and when he hit PC Vaughan over the head with his riding whip all doubt of his belligerence towards the police was dispelled. I imagine he was cheered by the assembled dustmen but not by the two policemen who grabbed the reins of the horse and pulled him away.

With difficulty, and with Mr Belt refusing to dismount, the two constables escorted their captive to a police station and charged him with being drunk and with assaulting a police officer. Belt gave his name, address and occupation (barrister) and appeared in court at Lambeth before Mr Chance where he denied everything.

He said he had been riding on the Embankment to meet up with his old regiment – the ‘Devil’s Own’ – at Wimbledon. He wasn’t drunk he said, but ill. He had nothing more than ‘two spoonsful of brandy’  that day and despite the fact that – as PC Vaughan reported – he was riding without the use of his stirrups he was entirely in control of his horse. Medical evidence was heard which supported both his and the police’s claim about him being inebriated that night so it was left to Mr Chance to decide the outcome.

The magistrate was pretty clear an assault had taken place, and sure that the police were justified in trying to remove the barrister from a tricky situation where he might have been the victim of crime. But in part because the man had managed to ride so far without the use of his stirrups and because he was, after all, a gentleman, he dismissed the charge of drunkenness. Belt was ordered to pay a fine of £3, which he did, and discharged.

I wondered about the ‘Devil’s Own’ that Belt referred to as his old regiment. During the Napoleonic Wars the Connaught Rangers (88thRegiment of Foot) were nicknamed the ‘Devil’s Own’ and earned a fearsome reputation in the Peninsula. But William Belt was too young to have served in the wars against Napoleon, being born in 1826. There was, however, a volunteer corps of Inns of Court troops that had been formed during the Crimean War – the 23rd Middlesex Rifles – and this may have been the barrister’s regiment.

[from The Standard, Tuesday, May 06, 1879]

If you enjoy this blog series you might be interested in Drew’s jointly authored study of the Whitechapel (or ‘Jack the Ripper’) murders which is published by Amberley Books on 15 June this year. You can find details here

The pillar box thief comes unstuck

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Today I am going to begin a week of posts all drawn from the equivalent week in 1884 (when the calendar matched with ours). For some context in 1884 Great Britain’s empire was at its height, Queen Victoria (who had been Empress of India since 1876) was in the 47th year of her reign. Her husband had died in December 1861, she had survived an assassination attempted two years earlier, then a bad fall at Windsor Castle which prevented her from walking properly for several months. This was compounded by the death of her servant John Brown, whom she mourned quite publicly, stoking rumours that the pair had been having an affair.

In politics Gladstone was in power, the second and longest of his four ministries. Disraeli (Victoria’s favourite) was dead and so the opposition was led by the future Tory PM Lord Salisbury. Socialism was becoming a force to be reckoned with on the European continent and in London on the 4 January 1884 the Fabian Society was founded with its particular brand of gentle democratic socialism. It attracted some of the leading thinkers and writers of the day, including George Bernard Shaw,  H. G. Wells, Annie Besant, Emmeline Pankhurst and Sidney and Beatrice Webb. The future Labour Party PM Ramsey MacDonald was also an early convert.

In January 1884 Gilbert and Sullivan’s eight comic opera, Princess Ida, opened at the Savoy Theatre in London’s West End and on the 18th, with less success, General Charles Gordon set off for Khartoum to quell an uprising in what is now Sudan; he never returned. In the world of sport 1884 saw the establishment of Derby County as a professional football club while in tennis William Renshaw won the Wimbledon men’s singles and Maud Watson beat her sister Lillian in the ladies final.

Over at Westminster Police court, on the morning of January 2, William Henderson was brought up for the second time having been remanded in custody charged ‘with intent to commit a felony’. Henderson, who gave his home address as a house in York Street, had been reported acting suspiciously on several occasions in and around Belgrave Square.

According to these reports Henderson was loitering near a pillar box which was later discovered to have been tampered with. When he’d realized a policeman was watching him he had run away and a letter addressed to ‘a lady in Scotland’ was found discarded by the post box, it was smeared with something sticky.

Henderson was picked up some hours afterwards and when he was searched he was found to have a pair of gloves with the fingers cuts off, also sticky with some sort of adhesive. There were also some hooks made from copper wire and more evidence of glue on his handkerchief.

A search of his lodgings revealed yet more adhesive material and ‘a contrivance for abstracting letters from pillar-boxes’. In addition to the mechanism he’d apparently been using to steal the post was a large collection of letters and stamps. Mr D’Eyncourt remanded him once more so the police investigation could be continued, in the meantime the letter thief (or avid philatelist) was returned to prison to await his fate. If you stick with my posts for the next few days (no fun intended) we may discover what happened to him.

[from The Morning Post, Friday, January 25, 1884]

No mercy at Marlborough Street for a lad down on his luck

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London can be a perilous place for visitors, especially if they don’t keep a close eye on their valuables. Thieves operate in crowded streets and quieter backwaters and victims often don’t realize they have been robbed until it is far too late.

Miss Caroline Coplestone was hardly guilty of taking no notice of what she was doing or where she was but she still fell victim to a desperate criminal. Miss Coplestone, who had come up to town from Wimbledon, was walking on Bond Street in the middle of the day, taking in the diverse array of fashionable items in the shops.

Suddenly, out of nowhere a young lad rushed past her, grabbing her purse from her hand as he did so. It is reminiscent of modern phone robberies; snatched from your hand before you can react and take evasive action.

As the boy ran away Caroline must have yelped and a nearby policeman saw what happened and set off in pursuit of the thief. PC Maidment caught the lad and demanded to know what he had in his pockets.

‘Nothing’, the boy replied, all innocent. On being searched however Miss Coplestone’s purse, complete with the £4 and 9dit contained was found in his jacket pocket. On the following day the lad, policeman and Miss Coplestone appeared at the Marlborough Street Police court for the case to be heard by Mr. Mansfield, the sitting magistrate.

The boy was 15 and his name was William Kelly. He was described as ‘a labourer’ but was out of work and such descriptions are pretty unhelpful anyway; ‘labourer’ was often a default term for any working-class person who did not identify himself or his occupation otherwise.

William pleaded poverty and a lack of employment but it didn’t help him much. He said he was very sorry for what he’d done and that could sometimes help in cases like this. Magistrates liked to hear contrition after all, and some young men could be quite belligerent in the dock. Sadly for William Mr Mansfield wasn’t in the mood for ‘second chances’. He looked at William and saw a thief that needed to be taught a lesson. He sent him to prison for three months at hard labour.

[from The Morning Post, Monday, August 29, 1887]

p.s curiously Coplestone is an unusual surname but one to which I am related. My Coplestones are from Cornwall so I wonder if Caroline was a distant ancestor who moved to the ‘smoke’?

The mysterious case of the butler and the drunken policeman

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At about four in the morning of June 23 1870 Mr Richard Valpy and his family returned to their home in Wimbledon, having spent the evening and night at a party. All seemed well; they were greeted by the butler – Turner – and went to bed.

At about half past five the household was rudely awaken by ‘an extraordinary noise’ , which Richard Valpy attributed at first to a storm. It seemed to have come from the room below (the drawing room) and since there was no storm raging, he went to explore.  As he descended the stairs he heard the sound of someone moving and shouted ‘who’s there?’

His son, Alfred, had also heard the noise, which he described as a ‘tremendous crashing’. When he heard his father’s voice he too rushed towards the drawing room.

When Richard Valpy reached the drawing room he was surprised to see a policeman coming out. He challenged him but the man ran off, and he was only able to take a description and his number (143). Father and son then entered the drawing room where to their shock they found it in a state of absolute chaos.

The ‘tremendous crashing’ noise that Alfred had heard was explained by a pier glass mirror that had come off the wall. It was ‘impaled upon a chair’, and could not possibly have got there on its own. The chandelier and two lamps were broken, as ‘if something had been thrown at them’. Two flower pots, which usually decorated the hallway, were in the fireplace.

There was more.

Several ornaments were knocked over and broken, lamp shades smashed, in total something in the region of £100 worth of damage (around £4,500 today) had been done. One of the windows to the garden was smashed and Richard could see that a cruet set was lying on the lawn. The gardener later brought  him a bottle of wine that he had discovered in the shrubbery.

What or whom had caused all this and why?

Moving on to the dining room the pair found yet more damage. It too was ‘in great confusion’, with three panes of glass broken and family effects ‘strewn about’. They hurried on down to the pantry, where the butler slept. The door was locked but when they were admitted they found the servant intoxicated with several bottles of wine by his bed.

The case came before the sitting magistrate at Wandsworth Police Court, Mr Dayman. From his police number the mysterious constable was produced in court to stand accused with Turner of criminal damage and the theft of ‘expensive wine’. Neither John Turner or PC Alfred Cummings (143V) were supported by defence counsel but the Met were represented in court by superintendent Butt of V Division.

Richard Valpy admitted that he had forgotten to secure the wine cellar before he had left the house that evening, but Turner had ‘no business’ to go down there anyway. In his defence Cummings said he knew nothing of the destruction, and when he was shown it he was as surprised as anyone. He had been seen by the sergeant, he said, on his beat at 3 that morning (it was the sergeant’s duty to check that all men were where they were supposed to be, at the correct time – so they undertook spot checks).

His evidence was slightly undermined by being found, ‘lying in a garden’ fast asleep at half nine in the morning near the Valpy’s home. When he was discovered, by sergeant Casserely (29V), his pockets were stuffed with four bottles of wine, ‘one in each of his trousers pockets, and the others in his tunics pockets’. This caused a ripple of laughter in the courtroom, but one imagines that this was not shared by the superintendent or the magistrate.

As for the butler he too denied, somewhat lamely, any recollection of what had happened. When he was taken to the drawing room he pronounced that it was ‘a perfect phenomenon’, and he was unable to explain it.

PC Cummings was given a good character, as a former dock worker he had not done anything previously to blot his copybook. Turner only added that he was innocent as charged and had merely let the policeman in to ‘share a glass of ale’.

The magistrate committed both of them for trial. Whatever the outcome of that, both men would most likely have lost their previously privileged positions and the certainty of paid employment. What motivated them to get so  drunk and then so destructive must remain a mystery.

[from The Illustrated Police News etc, Saturday, June 25, 1870]