We cannot know exactly what wild possibilities ran through Grace’s mind in the days following Tom’s arrival at Meanley. But we do know that, under extraordinary pressure, ordinary people can do unthinkable things.
In trying to imagine Penny and me in the seemingly hopeless situation that Grace and Isabella were facing, I realize that in our case I would most likely have been the fallen woman and Penny the helpful sister. So maybe the question is, would Penny murder for me?
She and I have already proved that we would willingly raise a sibling’s children if need be. We both did that for Terree without a backward glance. But what about an inconvenient child, a child who came along when we were too young, or too old, or just too tired?
I have confused attitudes toward abortion, and I suspect that Penny does too. I believe I am pro-choice, I certainly would vote that way, but I am not sure I could ever have an abortion myself if I believed I was carrying a normal, healthy fetus. But I can also imagine myself double-dealing with a female relative, hypocritically counselling abortion if I thought that her life would be made more difficult or her choices somehow greatly limited by the birth of a child. Or, more consistently, what about a child whose reappearance, whose very existence, would ruin everything?
Penny is saintly but pragmatic. For all her goodwill and generosity, I have occasionally seen flashes of a person who is fully capable of rationalizing actual bad behaviour or manipulating circumstances. Her how-can-we-get-out-of-this-one face is rarely seen, but it lurks in there behind her self-sacrificing demeanour.
Still, Penny is a genuine Christian, even if only of the Anglican variety. She doesn’t have it in her to abandon a young child or to harm one in any way. Nor do I. So from a present-day perspective, the Whittaker sisters are not really like the Gardner sisters … or are they?
Maybe the Gardner sisters just didn’t have it in them to harm a child, either.
The Biography of a Two-Year-Old
Edward Tindal Atkinson decided that in order best to defend the sisters, he needed to have a sense of the entire life of unfortunate little Thomas Gardner. He needed to be able to convince the jury that while Tom had not received the motherly attention one would have wished for him, reluctant neglect is not the same as murder.
First there was the question of Tom’s birth, and the identity of his father. Tom was given the last name Gardner at his birth, but it seemed no accident that Isabella, in her initial story to the police, had said Tom’s mother’s name was Dockery. He also wondered about Isabella’s choice of the name Stables for the villainous, threatening man in her story.
So Charles Morley was charged with the task of travelling to Dalton-in-Furness and Ulverston to talk to Grace’s family and the women who had taken Thomas into their care.
Before going to Dalton-in-Furness, Mr. Morley reviewed the notes he had taken during his visit to Preston. Isabella had mentioned that a family called Dockery had lived next door to the Gardners on Stafford Street, and that a real man called John Stables had lived in Dalton, although he no longer did. Perhaps he might learn something by pursing those bits of information.
A few difficult and tiring days later, Charles had spoken with or visited most of the people and places that Grace had known and he was more than ready to return home. Not much had been accomplished. He had found the Gardner family too anxious-to-please to be of much help, while the townswomen who had helped to care for Thomas were full of praise for their own efforts but very guarded about anything to do with Grace.
Charles thought it pertinent that no one sought him out with malicious stories about Grace, and that, apart from her obvious lapses, she was generally thought to be a kind and good young woman. Most had a good word to say about Grace’s sister Jane, although there was usually a passing mention of her illegitimate son tucked in amongst the compliments about her skill with needle. Few of those he met could tell him much about Isabella: she was just a girl when she went into service and she had not been back with her parents for long before she had gone off to Meanley with the child.
Charles wrote out his notes while eating his dinner at a table on the grass behind the hotel, the summer’s evening still bright and warm. Often, in working on a case, he was able to see the facts anew when he wrote them out on long sheets of foolscap. He hoped that would work for him now.
An Excerpt from Charles Morley’s Notes:
Events in the Brief Life of the Child Thomas Gardner
Born December 15, 1882 at 9 Stafford Street, Dalton-in-Furness.
Mother Grace Gardner, a domestic servant, then living at 9 Stafford Street.
Dr Alexander Gray, Dalton-in-Furness, both delivered Thomas and told the Coroner that he had seen a child of around 2 years of age at the Gardner’s house in Dalton in April 1885 when he was there attending Mrs Gardner.
Agnes Creary, wife of John Creary, Lower Brook Street, Ulverston, was visited at Whitsuntide 1883 by Grace with a child a few months old. Creary says that Grace told her that the child’s name was James Thomas Gardner and that the father was a man named Dockray.
While the baby was registered only as Thomas Gardner, when leaving the child with Mrs Creary Grace seems to have added a “James” to his name.
A family called Dockery lived next door to the Gardners on Stafford Street. The Dockery boys, James Henry and Thomas Alfred, are reported to have been six and four respectively when Grace’s son was born, while her own brother Thomas was seventeen.
(No obvious clue to paternity in choice of forenames.)
Mrs. Creary kept the child for 27 weeks but Grace failed to send funds on a regular basis so she returned the child to Grace’s father’s home.
Grace Gardner, the child’s mother, was in service at Crosshills during this period.
At Grace’s request, Mrs. Coward of Dalton-in-Furness retrieved Thomas from his grandparents’ home and nursed him from November 1883 to June 1884.
On June 8, 1884, Grace Gardner gave birth to a sibling of Thomas, James Edward Gardner, in Bolton-by-Bowland.
(Why the fondness for the name James?)
Mrs. Jane Gordon succeeded Mrs. Coward in caring for Thomas Gardner in the course of the summer of 1884.
Mrs. Gordon did not receive anything toward the child’s maintenance, so she admitted him to the Ulverston Workhouse. (She did receive some monies in early 1885 from Grace Gardner.)
At some point Grace Gardner asked Dorothy Dockray, an inmate of Ulverston Workhouse with a child of her own, to nurse Thomas Gardner. Grace told Dorothy that the father of the child was William Dockray, a miner. Dorothy declined to care for Grace’s child.
(There had been a William Dockery aged about twenty living at Stafford Street around the time Grace fell pregnant.)
Some time later Thomas was taken out of the workhouse to live again with his Gardner grandparents.
Grace wrote many times to Mrs. Gordon from Meanley, including after her marriage, about the child and the payment for its care. (Supt. Inman offered eight letters as evidence at the inquest.) It appears she sent money in February to pay her debt to Mrs Gordon. Since she had a child the previous June and had started her new job in September that may have been her first opportunity to do so.
Mrs. Gordon saw the child at the Gardner’s in Dalton around February 1885.
In her statement to the police, Isabella said that she had been looking after the child for four months, which would likely mean since January or February.
(This may not be true as much of Isabella’s story was a fabrication.)
Isabella Gardner brought Thomas to Meanley Farm on May 5.
Thomas Gardner was found dead on May 17, 1885.
Extenuating Circumstances
Grace sent letters and money to Mrs. Creary from Crosshills, although she never appears to have sent sufficient funds nor did the funds arrive on a regular basis.
In the summer of 1884, Grace was indisposed in Bolton-by-Bowland, giving birth to James Edward.
Grace went into service at M
eanley farm in September, which was around the time that Mrs. Gordon put the child into the Ulverston Workhouse. Presumably, Grace knew that the child was no longer with Mrs. Gordon, but she still tried to pay her debt.
Grace sent many letters to Mrs. Gordon and she continued to send her money even after she knew that Mrs. Gordon had put Thomas in the workhouse. (Was she hoping to get back into Mrs. Gordon’s good books so that she would look after him again?)
Since Grace was already pregnant again, this time with John’s child, when she and John got married the prospect of telling John about Thomas must have been daunting.
(From where did Grace get the money to send to Mrs. Gordon, especially after her marriage to John?)
A jury might find that last point difficult, Charles mused on his journey back to Leeds. Indeed, so was the whole task of trying to organize the information he had gleaned about the life of Thomas into a compelling story for the defence. How could any reasonable man ignore the fact that Grace had never told her husband of the existence of another illegitimate child, and, even more damning, how could one be convinced that when the sisters found they were unable to commit that child to the workhouse in Clitheroe, he had so conveniently died?
He concluded, before drifting off into a fitful doze, that all of Edward Tindal Atkinson’s considerable skill in defence would be needed in this case.
A Question of Paternity
The fathers, respectively, of Thomas Gardner and James Edward Gardner, villains both, received neither mention nor investigation in the proceedings that followed Thomas’s death.
One is left to wonder: who were those men, and why did the legal system appear to be so indifferent to the fact that Thomas, in particular, had been abandoned by his father before he was even born.
One glimpse of possible paternity is the recollection by Agnes Creary, Thomas’s first nurse, that Grace had told her that the baby’s name was James Thomas Gardner and that his father was a man named Dockery, or Dockray as Agnes seems to have heard it.
It appears that Agnes was not a friend of the Gardner family, or she would likely have known that Dockerys were next-door neighbours of the Gardner’s on Stafford Street.
At the time of Thomas’s conception, the head of the Dockery household, Robert, a miner, was forty-five years old and his oldest son, William, also an iron miner, was twenty. Grace was a comely young woman and either man was a candidate to be father of the next-door neighbours’ bastard grandchild, but, if so, why weren’t they required to take some sort of responsibility?
There are strange inconsistencies to the various stories around Thomas. Grace told Agnes that his name was James Thomas, but the name on Thomas’s birth certificate was just that, Thomas, and Grace gave the name James to her next illegitimate child. Spellings of course varied, as did pronunciation, but the name of Dockrah was used for Thomas when he arrived at Meanley and Isabella talked about Elizabeth Dockray in her statement to P.C. Sutcliffe.
So were the Gardner girls somewhat limited in their imagination, or was one of the Dockery men the father of young Thomas?
One wonders what Grace had told her parents about the child’s father, or if, perish the thought, she had to admit that she was not sure who it was.
As the case progressed from court to court, no one queried Thomas’s paternity. When Agnes Creary mentioned a Dockray in her testimony, no lawyer on either side seems to have followed up and asked Grace if what she had told Agnes was true. No testimony was heard about the man who had used her ill and left her to try to earn money alone for the child’s keep. It appears to have been accepted by all concerned that the child was Grace’s ugly secret and hers alone.
Perhaps the junior lawyer did try to elicit information about Thomas’s paternity to use in defence, and Grace felt obligated to adhere, however dangerously, to whatever story she had already provided to John. Maybe the lawyer then decided that particular story would not bear close examination.
Most likely the cultural mores of the day were such that an illegitimate child was seen as the fault and responsibility of the mother and, unless the man involved was honourable, it was she alone who was expected to bear the burden of her sin.
Out of curiosity, I went searching for information on the most probable father, William Dockery, the young miner who lived next door on Stafford Street.
I looked for him on the 1891 census, thinking to find him somewhere in Cumbria, only to come up empty. I tried 1901 just to make sure I hadn’t missed him. Not found.
It was only after some further search failures that I thought to look amongst the death records. William Dockery had died, I discovered, when he was only twenty-five. His son Thomas, if that is who he was, had only predeceased him by a couple of years.
Another Child Lost
Grace woke up to a terrible pain that started in her womb and encircled her heart. She had given birth twice before, of course. Indeed, one of those previous agonies had led to her present incarceration. But it was too soon for this baby, too soon and the pains were too harsh.
Her moans of anguish aroused the other prisoners who, in turn, shouted for help. It took a long time for anyone to come.
“What’s all this about?” the wardress asked Grace harshly through the grill in the door before noticing the pool of blood that had already spilled from Grace’s pallet onto the floor. Finally stirred to action, she hurried away to get help, returning some minutes later with a strong-looking male guard and unlocked the cell door. By then Grace was writhing with contractions and pain, and awash in blood. Taking in the details of her wretched condition, warders quickly bundled her up and took her to the prison infirmary.
In her cell down the corridor, Isabella was desperate to know what had happened to Grace and where they had taken her. When she found out that Grace had been taken to the infirmary, she begged to be allowed to go and help look after her.
“No healthy prisoners allowed,” was matron’s response, so it was nightfall before one of the wardresses was kind enough to tell her that Grace was still alive, but that the baby had died.
Days later, in broken whispers, Grace told her of the devastating birth of a tiny girl, no bigger than a puppy, who had briefly whimpered and then gasped for air and died. She didn’t know what they had done with the little body, poor little mite born in a prison with no chance for life, but Grace whispered that she had secretly named the baby Victoria, and kissed her goodbye forever.
John thought that he could not feel more frightened and upset and alone, but the news of the dead little girl and his wife’s dangerously weakened state left him sitting, head in hands, for hours by the empty grate at Meanley, tears of misery trickling through his fingers to the slate floor below.
Would he and Grace ever have the chance to share a bed again?
Maggie saw her father when she came down to make breakfast, but she didn’t want to disturb him. She feared to learn whatever bad news had upset him anew.
As John was getting ready to go over to Preston for a visit to the gaol, he told her quietly that Grace was ill and the baby had died. This was the baby that Maggie had hoped to name, the little sister she had hoped for. She had been all set to beg Grace please to name her Jane.
Too late for that now, she thought sadly.
No Chance to “Plead her Stomach”
When they got word that Grace had suffered a stillbirth, Mr. Atkinson and Mr. Morley met briefly to discuss the legal implications of Grace’s sad loss.
Grace was too ill to fully understand her situation, but the legal team were very aware that she had lost more than a baby; she had lost the opportunity to avoid immediate execution. Mr. Atkinson had consoled John with the information that women who were quick with child were not executed, but given a stay. With the latest news, the option for Grace to “plead her belly” was gone, and her fate had been cast into much sharper relief.
They decided not to remind their clients of the implications of this change in Grace’s situation: it had always been a de
licate issue since the extenuating circumstance left Isabella exposed to more serious punishment than her sister.
Mr. Atkinson decided it was still going to be important for him to stress the fact that, at the time of the arrival of Tom at Meanley Farm, Grace was pregnant with the legitimate child of a respectable farmer. He felt that the information, while it could be interpreted in different ways, could be argued by him to demonstrate the extent to which Grace had turned her life around and was therefore unlikely to cause herself new troubles by doing any harm to a child. It would take some skill to make that argument without arousing the issue of how much she had to lose if her relation to Thomas was found out, but he thought he had to take the risk.
Concerning Isabella, Edward and his junior spent some time trying to work out how best to portray her character. She obviously had not fallen into the unfortunate easy ways of her elder sister, at least not yet, and she had a clean record of industry and good behaviour. They agreed she had an air of intelligence, offset somewhat by a sharpish manner. Unfortunately, her maturity was a handicap. In order to deal with Isabella’s original misguided statements to the police they had to find a way to portray her as young and foolish, not experienced and wise.
After lengthy discussion, the legal pair agreed that their best hope for Isabella was to show the jury how frightening the circumstance in which the two women found themselves had been, and how understandable it was that a very young woman in such a situation might make up a wild story. Here again, they hoped the jury would not be too observant, especially regarding the amount of fine detail in Isabella’s statement, which betrayed a lot of careful thought.
The Slaidburn Angel Page 11