Unchristian Charity ~ by Janet Cameron

A narrow lane in Brighton - Photo by Gareth Cameron

The Brighton Guardian of 20 May 1863 reported the case of Dinah Mitchell, described by the paper as 'a miserable-looking woman'. Dinah was charged before the Mayor, Mr. Biggs, at the Brighton Borough Court, with begging. Mr. Bridger-Stent was sworn, and said that during the morning, at about quarter to nine, the Rev. Mr. Coombe at Compton Terrace, summoned him.

Dinah Mitchell Begs for Relief

The prisoner had come to the door and sent in word that she wanted relief. Mr. Coombe replied that he could not relieve her, and so the prisoner became very abusive and refused to go away. The impatient clergyman tried to persuade her to leave, but she remained violent and used bad language.

She forced her way into the house and sat down in the chair, saying she would see them to hell fire before she would go. She was there for about a quarter hour and then the constable was summoned and the prisoner taken in charge. The Court was informed Dinah Mitchell had been a great nuisance for some time.

Mr. Biggs told her she would have to go to prison with hard labour for one month. The prisoner said she was a very happy woman, as she would get something to eat now.

This sad reply apparently provoked great amusement in Court.

A Cruel and Irresponsible Mother who Did her Duty by the Law

Much Victorian crime was committed by those too poor to fend for themselves and children were harshly dealt with by an unforgiving system of justice.

A strange case of maternal betrayal was reported in the Chatham News in 1870. To our modern minds, this seems an appalling case of child abuse, yet this mother was actually considered to be entirely within her rights by the rigid Victorian Police Court at Chatham. Chatham was, at that time, a sleazy area, rife with villains, drunks and prostitution.

At eleven years old, at Chatham, on 30 July, 1870, little Elizabeth Bruce appeared in court charged with stealing a pair of trousers and an old skirt, valued at 1s.6d. Her accuser was - her own mother - also called Elizabeth Bruce. The young prisoner pleaded guilty and it is easy to imagine her fear and sense of bewilderment at being betrayed by the one person who should protect her.

What happened to Elizabeth was not at all unusual in Victorian Britain.

Condemnation of a Mother

Mrs. Bruce said she was a widow who lived in The Brook (at that time, a seedy, sleazy part of Chatham) and she had left for work the previous Saturday, leaving her children at home, the eldest being the prisoner. The youngest child was just four years old, so naturally, Elizabeth was left in charge of the other children. Mrs. Bruce returned home about 3.30pm and soon missed the items of clothing. She asked her eldest daughter where they were and Elizabeth said she didn't know.

So the mother demanded an answer from the younger sister, who told her the prisoner had given the things to her to sell, so she took them to Mr. Boatman's, a second-hand clothes dealer. The wife, Mrs. Sarah Boatman, told the magistrate that on Saturday, she bought the articles produced in court from the younger sister, Emma Bruce, who said her mother had sent her on the errand.

A Little Girl of "Bad Character"

Mrs. Boatman was soundly admonished by the court for not making further enquiries about the provenance of the goods. "If there was no receiver," she was told, "there would be no thieves." The magistrate went on to say that if she ever gave such facilities again to children in the future, she would be in trouble herself.

As for the prisoner, the magistrate said he was sorry to hear so bad a character of her and he wouldn't be doing his duty if she wasn't severely punished. The little girl was sentenced to seven months hard labour, and afterwards, a Reformatory for five years. The sentence of hard labour meant actual imprisonment with a punishing work regime in terrible conditions. Most children sentenced to hard labour were then sent on to Reformatories where conditions were equally bad, an outrageously harsh punishment for a small impoverished child.

Adapted from Murder & Crime, Medway, Janet Cameron, Tempus Publishing, 2008
Chatham News, 30 July, 1870.

Copyright Janet Cameron
Published on Suite.101, January 2011.

Crime and Punishment in Georgian / Victorian Britain

Rochester City Old Postcard

Punishment often did not fit the crime in 18th/19th century Britain.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, capital punishment in the UK was a fact of life for a range of serious and petty crimes, including theft. Sometimes, the sentence was reduced to transportation or imprisonment.

Thirty-seven prisoners condemned at Maidstone's Spring Assizes in 1802 had been guilty of sheep-stealing, burglary, highway robbery and murder. Four of these were hanged at Shooters Hill, fifteen at Penenden Heath and the remainder were reprieved. Three young men were hanged for arson at Penenden Heath in 1830. The following year, a scaffold erected at the new Maidstone Prison made Penenden Heath redundant.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, children and young adults were severely sentenced for crimes such as murder, property crimes, highway robbery and arson. Michael and Ann Hammond, brother and sister, were the youngest children to be executed in Britain. They were just seven and eleven years old, and they were hanged at Kings Lynn in Norfolk in the East of England on 18 September, 1708. Their terrible crime? It was theft! It was reported that it thundered after the execution, and Anthony Smyth, the hangman, died two weeks later.

Saved in the Final Hour - a Felon Tells How it Felt

John Smith was hanged at Tyburn on 25 December 1705, but he did not die, and after fifteen minutes the crowd shouted for him to be cut down. He was taken to a house of safety, where he shortly recovered, and he was able to describe his experience. This is what he said, and no doubt others have experienced the same, although few survive to tell the tale.

"When I was turned off I was, for some time, sensible of a very great pain occasioned by the weight of my body and felt my spirits in strange commotion, violently pressing upwards. Having forced their way to my head, I saw a great blaze or glaring light that seemed to go out of my eyes in a flash and then I lost all sense of pain. After I was cut down, I began to come to myself and the blood and spirits forcing themselves into their former channels put me by a prickling and shooting into such intolerable pain that I could have wished those hanged who had cut me down."

The Bodysnatchers

In 1540, Henry VIII ruled that surgeons would be allowed four bodies each of executed criminals per year. Medical schools at this time were desperate for bodies so that their surgeons could dissect them to learn about anatomy and improve their skills. Prior to 1832, unless the court had ordered otherwise, the criminal's body was usually given up to family or friends. After 1834, it was decided that the bodies of the executed belonged to the crown.

Making an Example - the Gibbet

Before 1834, the horrible practice of gibbeting or hanging in chains could be ordered by the courts to make an example to others. After hanging, the prisoners were stripped and dipped in tar. Once it had cooled, they would be placed in an iron cage which was riveted together and hung from the gallows, or sometimes from a specially-built gibbet erected in a prominent place like a crossroads or the top of a hill. This gruesome sight acted as a warning. Sometimes the bodies remained until they decomposed or were eaten by birds.The criminals most likely to be ordered to be gibbeted were highwaymen, murderers or pirates.

On 29 May 1868, Parliament passed the Capital Punishment within Prisons Bill, ending public hanging in Britain. All future executions would take place within the walls of prisons. On 26 May 1868, Michael Barrett, who had tried to blow up Clerkenwell Prison, was executed, and this was the very last public execution. His crime had killed four passers-by and a number of people were injured in the explosion. Three of his accomplices were acquitted before Barrett died in front of a crowd of 2000.

The End of a Barbaric Spectacle 

The first private hanging was carried out at Maidstone Prison two months later on a Dover railway porter who murdered a stationmaster at Dover Priory.

Hanging was finally abolished in the 1960s.

Murder & Crime, Medway, Janet Cameron, Tempus Publishing, 2008
.Murder in Kent, Philip MacDougall, Robert Hale, 1989.
capitalpunishment.org
Published on Suite101.com 20 December 2010.

Premeditated Murder in South East England's Medway Towns by Janet Cameron

River Medway, Copyright Janet Cameron

A cold-blooded crime of patricide occurred in a small village in Medway in the early 1800s. Resourceful Rev. Jordan was determined to find the murderer.

Sometimes, in spite of every effort, certain crimes of the past remain unsolved although sometimes police and neighbours had a pretty good idea of who might be responsible. Here’s a horrible crime from the Medway area of South-East England, for which no one was ever convicted.

This murder was never solved by traditional methods, although a feisty Reverend did his best to put matters right after the investigations of the professionals had failed. The murder happened in Hoo St. Werburgh right under the Rev. Richard Jordan’s nose, on Sunday 11 December, 1808. A parishioner, William White, was shot dead while sitting at his living room fire at Cockham Farm. William White, who died instantly, was the owner-occupier of the farm.


A Premeditated Murder

It was clearly a carefully premeditated plan, since, during the hours of darkness, the murderer had set up a hurdle as a gun-rest in the garden of the farmhouse, so that he was able to shoot straight through the scullery window. It was thought the murderer was a man with local knowledge, since he knew William White would be sitting right there on his own. By choosing the Sunday evening, the murderer ensured that no domestic servants would be around to bear witness against him. Also, he positioned his gun on the hurdle exactly at 8.00pm, so that the sound of gunfire was obliterated by the customary volley of shots from the convict prison hulks lying nearby on the River Medway.

After the deed, the murderer disappeared into the darkness with the murder weapon, to hide it in a barn where it was found some time later. William’s corpse was discovered within a matter of minutes by his children. It must have been heartbreaking to see them crying over their dead father.


The Chief Murder Suspect

George White, the eldest son who, it was claimed, had designs on the farm, was suspected, especially as he’d been heard threatening his father. However, the 24 year-old explained to the Bow Street Runners that he had an alibi and couldn’t possibly have done it. He had been in Hoo Village between 7.45pm and 8.15pm, which was at least a mile from the farmhouse. Apparently everyone believed him, and the Bow Street Runners who had hurried to Hoo to make their investigations, admitted defeat and decided not to pursue their questioning. An open verdict was recorded by the Rochester coroner.


But Rev. Jordan wasn’t going to let it go and, convinced that George White was the murderer, determined to break the unmarried, eldest son’s alibi. On the 26 January, Jordan preached a fiery sermon and then he placed a book in the vestry and demanded each male parishioner enter his name and a statement of where he was at 8.00pm on 11 December – and this entry was to be witnessed by another person. Then Jordan presented a broadsheet requesting information about any strangers in the area at the time. The next item on the agenda was questioning the villagers and this began on March 9. Jordan was thorough.


The Suspect Makes a Public Statement

On March 26, Jordan told George White to call a vestry meeting in order to clear himself of suspicion for the murder of his father. On Easter Monday, 3 April, after a dinner for forty at the Bells Inn followed by a meeting to settle Parish accounts, Jordan insisted on George White making a public statement. He quickly proved that George had left the farmhouse at 6.50pm to walk to Hoo but he did not turn back to fetch a handkerchief from his bedroom as he claimed. Instead, he’d gone into the garden and set the scene for murder. If he’d had had a handkerchief at the time of his father’s death, he would have wiped his eyes with that instead of with the back of his hand.

Rev. Jordan was also able to prove George had not bought a bag of nuts at the village shop at 7.45pm because the vicar had found a witness who saw him cracking and eating them at 7.40pm. Also, George claimed to be standing at the Bells pub when the hulks’ guns were fired, but in fact, that had taken place fifteen minutes earlier.
Further, he had not arrived at the vicarage until 8.20 and, as the vicar’s housekeeper claimed, his breathing was laboured when he got to the vicarage door. George had had ample time to carry out the murder of his father and then double back to the village.


The Murderer who Got Away

But George White never went to trial. Knowing he was beaten, he emigrated to Australia, saving himself from arrest but also losing his inheritance.


Adapted from Medway Murder and Crime, Janet Cameron, Tempus Publishing, 2008.
Originally published on Suite 101, 16 December, 2010.