Jane Austen's England

by Roy Adkins,Lesley Adkins

  Thomas Simmons was a former servant of the house and had been courting Elizabeth, but he had an uncontrollable temper and was judged unstable. She was persuaded to break off the relationship, and Simmons was dismissed. Now he was seeking revenge and attacking anyone in his path:

  with his knife he stabbed her [Mrs. Hummerstone] in the jugular artery, and pulling the knife forward, laid open her throat on the left side. She ran forward…but fell, and rose no more. The murderer pursued his sanguinary purpose, and rushing into the parlour, raised and brandished his bloody knife, swearing a dreadful oath, that ‘he would give it to them all’. Mrs. Warner was the person next to him, and without giving her time to rise from the chair, he gave her so many stabs about her neck and breast that she fell from her chair, covered with streams of blood, and expired.55

  Several others were injured in the confusion, and Elizabeth was again targeted: ‘she struggled with him, caught at the knife, and was severely wounded in the hand and arm. The knife fell in the struggle. She, however, got out at the back door, and made her way into the street, where, by her screams of murder, she alarmed the neighbourhood.’56 Simmons fled and tried to hide, but was arrested, covered in blood.

  When the trial took place at Hertford Assizes, the counsel for the prosecution ‘intreated them [the jury] to dismiss from their minds all they had heard elsewhere, and attend only to the evidence’.57 The jury found Simmons guilty, and the young man was hanged three days later, on Monday 7 March 1808. It was suggested that he suffered from hallucinations.

  In this instance, murder had definitely been committed, but the circumstances of death were not always so clear, as little forensic investigation of sudden deaths was carried out. Some murders certainly went undetected, and in April 1808 Nelly Weeton told a friend about a suicide case at Upholland in Lancashire that seemed more like murder:

  an old woman…quite a cripple, was found hung in about two hours after her husband (who was a good deal younger) had left her to go to his work. She was suspended from the tester [canopy over a bed] at the foot of the bed. From her being such a cripple, the neighbours say she could not possibly have done it herself, and her husband, who has been known to have used her ill, is strongly suspected to have done it. But no proof can be brought.58

  Suicide or ‘self-murder’ was a crime because it was considered blasphemy by the Church and it robbed the king of a subject. The archaic legal term was felo de se (Latin for ‘felon of oneself’). Although insanity was technically no defence, coroners’ juries often found that a suicide was ‘not of a sound mind’, because if a suicide was judged sane, his property was forfeited. Anyone assisting a suicide was tried for murder, but one problem for the law was how to punish the corpse for the crime. All that could be done was to deny burial in consecrated ground. In 1790, the year before his own death, the Methodist preacher John Wesley expressed his thoughts:

  there is no country in Europe, or perhaps in the habitable world, where the horrid crime of self-murder is so common as it is in England!…we have laws against it, and officers with juries are appointed to inquire into every fact of the kind. And these are to give their verdict upon oath, whether the self-murderer was sane or insane. If he is brought in insane, he is excused, and the law does not affect him. By this means it is totally eluded, for the juries constantly bring him in insane…let a law be made and rigorously executed, that the body of every self-murderer, lord or peasant, shall be hanged in chains, and the English fury [the high suicide rate] will cease at once.59

  Few agreed with Wesley, and some thought that eradicating the gloomy preaching of the Methodists would be more effective in decreasing the number of suicides.

  Spending money on criminals was unpopular, which ruled out imprisonment as the main method of punishment. Prisons were largely for those awaiting trial, transportation or execution, but debt could lead to people ending up in prison (gaol) for a long time, because usually the only way a creditor had of recovering money was to have the debtor imprisoned until he paid up. Since many individuals had no money to pay debts, they might be confined for lengthy periods, and being held in a debtors’ prison was itself costly.

  The stupidity of such punishment was obvious to Benjamin Silliman: ‘There is a great number of debtors confined in Newgate and the adjoining prisons, and most of them are immured for small sums, and have little hope of escaping, because they are miserably poor.’60 Such was the case with the Devon County debtors’ prison, called Sheriff’s Ward, in the St Thomas suburb of Exeter, which the penal reformer John Howard visited: ‘In 1779 one debtor, on attachment from the court of chancery, had continued here from May 1758…but at my last visit he was dead. Here is still an older prisoner, Grace Hooper, whose warrant of commitment is dated 30th of November 1741.’61 Grace had been a prisoner there for over forty years. Howard noted Exeter’s table of charges:

  A TABLE of the RATES and FEES allowed to be taken by the Keeper of the Sheriff’s Ward for the County of Devon. £. s. d.

  For the commitment fee of every prisoner for debt, damages, and contempts though it be on several actions or processes only 0 13 4

  To the turnkey 0 1 0

  For every liberate 0 2 0

  For the use of a bed in a single room for one person by the week 0 3 0

  The use of a room where there are two or more beds and two lodge in a bed each person 0 1 3

  The use of the common room if the keeper finds bedding each person by the week 0 1 0

  If the prisoner finds bedding nothing62

  A debtor could usually pay for extras by arrangement with the prison-keeper. Charges varied between prisons, but there were always some compulsory fees, such as for beds, because many prisons were privately run businesses.

  Houses of correction, or ‘bridewells’, were for punishing minor offenders who had been given short sentences of imprisonment by Justices of the Peace. Most were put to hard labour during their sentence. The original Bridewell was a combined prison and poorhouse converted from one of Henry VIII’s London palaces. By the eighteenth century the term was used loosely for a local prison for minor offenders, for a workhouse or for a combination of both. During his penal reform work, Howard inspected England’s county gaols, but was unimpressed by the County Bridewell at Winchester in Hampshire:

  The four rooms are too close, and the court (which is not paved, 37 feet 5 inches, by 13 feet 10) is too small for the prisoners, who are commonly numerous; especially at quarter sessions, when they are brought hither from the other bridewells. There is only one day-room (26 feet by 20 feet 4 inches) for men and women…At my visit in 1779, there were four young women, and in 1782 five, among the prisoners…This prison has been fatal to vast numbers.63

  Many houses of correction kept inmates crammed together, provided poor food and dire sanitation and often had no source of water within the building. Disease always threatened, and typhus, often called ‘gaol fever’, was a frequent killer. It was probably the cause of so many deaths at Winchester.

  In this period when England was often at war, another Winchester prison housed foreign prisoners-of-war, one of many such prisons for those men (mainly ordinary soldiers and sailors) who were considered unlikely to honour their word not to escape.64 From time to time Jane Austen must have witnessed them being marched from ports to their place of imprisonment, especially as prisoners-of-war were at Southampton where she lived from 1806 to 1809. William Darter described some he saw in Reading: ‘One day, about the year 1813, I saw a long line of French prisoners escorted down London Street to the “Saracen’s Head” stables, where they were put with clean straw to lie down upon; they were formed three or four deep, and presented a very miserable appearance, their clothes being in rags, and shoes nearly worn out.’65

  In numerous ‘parole towns’, captured officers who gave their word of honour (parole d’honneur) not to try to escape were allowed freedom within the limits of the town. One parole town was Odiham in Hampshire, 10 miles nor
th of Chawton where Jane Austen later lived, and another was Alresford, about 12 miles to the south. She almost certainly saw and may even have met foreign officers on parole in such places. They tried to live as normal lives as possible, were often accepted by the gentry and sometimes married and settled in England.

  Hundreds of prisoners-of-war of lower rank were confined aboard prison hulks – redundant naval ships with their masts removed, which were converted into floating prisons and moored in rivers and creeks. These hulks had initially been sanctioned for housing convicted criminals (‘convicts’) by a law passed in 1776 when the American War of Independence stopped the transportation of convicts to the former colonies. When convicts began being sent to Australia, the hulks were also used to hold prisoners-of-war.

  Transportation to America had begun in the seventeenth century. This was the punishment given to Alice Walker when she was tried at the Old Bailey on 9 September 1772 for stealing from Thomas Atkins two days earlier. She was accused of taking a canvas bag and some money, worth more than £24 in all. ‘I did not rob him at all;’ she said in her defence, ‘he took me to Bartholomew fair, and asked me to drink; he asked me to go to the Inn, I went with him; then he asked me to go down into the country with him, and gave me the money to buy some wearing apparel. I did not confess I took the money, he gave it me.’66 The jury found Alice guilty of theft (grand larceny). She was sentenced to transportation and sailed for America in the Justitia, landing at Rappahannock, Virginia, in March 1773.67 Like her fellow convicts, she was sold as an indentured servant – effectively a slave – to plantation owners looking for labour. The local newspaper, the Virginia Gazette, carried advertisements of such sales:

  JUST ARRIVED in RAPPAHANNOCK, The GOOD INTENT, Captain CLODD, With FORTY HEALTHY INDENTED SERVANTS, among whom are many TRADESMEN, particularly shoemakers, a cooper, a tailor, a carpenter and joiner, a blacksmith and farrier, some good clerks, a surgeon, several country labourers, some fine boys, many good sempstresses, mantuamakers, house women &c. &c. The sale will commence at Leedstown on Tuesday the 3rd of August; and, if required, a reasonable credit will be allowed, on giving bond and approved security.68

  Alice was purchased by two prominent members of the colony, Sampson and George Matthews, but after only a few weeks she made a bid for freedom. The same newspaper carried a notice of the reward offered for her recapture:

  TEN POUNDS REWARD. RUN away, last night [May 1773]…English convict servants, viz. JOHN EATON, by trade a shipcarpenter, about 23 years of age, and 5 feet 3 or 4 inches high; had on, and took with him, a blue broadcloth coat and breeches, a Damascus waistcoat, a pair of ticken trousers, worsted stockings, three striped cotton shirts, one oznabrig [coarse linen] over shirt, a felt hat, and a pair of old shoes. ALICE EATON, alias WALKER (who goes for the said John Eaton’s wife) a low, well set woman, about 20 years of age, and has sandy coloured hair; had on a brown stuff gown, a red stuff petticoat, and four red silk handkerchiefs…Whoever secures the above servants in any gaol, so that we may get them, shall receive FIVE POUNDS, and if brought to Mr. Sampson Matthews, in Richmond, the above reward. SAMPSON & GEORGE MATTHEWS. All masters of vessels are hereby forwarned from carrying either of the said servants out of the colony.69

  Despite this warning, Alice did manage to sail back to England, but was then recognised and rearrested. This time the offence was returning from transportation before the end of her sentence. She was found guilty and sentenced to death, but the jury recommended mercy. In July 1774 her sentence was changed to fourteen years’ transportation.70

  People could be punished with transportation for extremely minor crimes, such as Robert Jones, a pickpocket who was sentenced in May 1774 to seven years’ transportation for stealing a linen handkerchief.71 The following January, Elizabeth Smith received the same sentence, this time for stealing twelve pounds of sugar valued at four shillings.72 After the American War of Independence started, over ten years elapsed before convicts began to be transported to Australia, and the first fleet of ships sailed for Botany Bay on 13 May 1787. Between then and 1810 over twelve thousand convicts were sent to Australia. Several ships, often carrying over a thousand convicts between them, sailed every year until 1868.73 Transportation was considered a deterrent to crime and usefully removed many criminals from England, but it was not without expense. To reduce costs the Government passed the responsibility for transportation to private contractors, and it was their cost-cutting that caused many of the hardships suffered by the convicts during their voyage to Australia.

  Because of the reluctance to use imprisonment as punishment, anyone convicted of crimes not sufficiently serious to warrant the death sentence or transportation might well receive corporal punishment such as the pillory or whipping. The pillory was intended to expose offenders to public shame and ridicule. It had a wooden frame, usually on a raised platform or scaffolding, and the culprit stood with head and hands placed through openings in a tightly secured, two-part hinged wooden board. If offenders were lucky, they were pelted with soft missiles such as eggs, something Darter witnessed:

  About the year 1811 or 1812 I was standing with my father near the Mercury Office [in Reading], when a man was placed in the pillory, which stood in a central part of the Market Place, for some offence; and the people threw eggs at him, many missing. I saw Mr. Moody, the coach proprietor, bring two baskets of eggs…and he threw so well that the poor fellow, whose head and arms were fixed, was literally covered with yolks of eggs and other matter, and to complete the affair he was bespattered with refuse from Hiscock’s slaughter house. I don’t know what his offence was.74

  If the crowd was particularly hostile, they would throw all manner of missiles, including stones, causing serious injury or even death. It was this unpredictable nature of the pillory as a form of punishment that led to it being used only for minor offences or as an additional penalty for a serious crime.

  For other crimes culprits might be publicly whipped, sometimes from where the crime had been committed to where they lived, or over some other specified distance. They were tied to the back of a cart and made to walk, as Darter described:

  A man of the labouring class, living on the west side of Silver Street [in Reading], in one of those old houses which have overhanging eaves…had been out of work for some time and in want of food. In passing up Castle Street he stole a loaf of bread from the shop of a baker of the name of Turner. He was apprehended, tried and sentenced…to be publicly whipped at the cart’s tail from the Grey Friars Prison to his cottage in Silver Street. He was stripped to his waist, and he had to walk behind a horse and cart with his hands so tied that he could not alter his position.75

  Darter was so appalled that the memory of the scene never faded:

  When the crowd arrived opposite our house, I ran to see the cause of it. I then witnessed a shocking sight…There was not a portion of this poor fellow’s back that was not literally cut into shreds; his sufferings were dreadful, and with the blood running down, it presented a dreadful and sickening sight. I merely followed at a distance to see where they took him…In point of fact, the poor fellow, for merely stealing a loaf, was whipped to death, for he never left his room alive; therefore, for this trifling offence, this man was punished to a greater extent than would have happened had he committed murder.76

  Desperation drove many to crime, anything from stealing a loaf of bread to murder. In December 1775, the same month Jane Austen was born, her local newspaper reported the execution of an unmarried mother who had killed her newborn son in London:

  Sarah Reynolds was executed at Tyburn…for the murder of her bastard child. The unhappy convict wept bitterly, and was very intent on her devotions. The fate of this unhappy woman naturally gives rise to the following reflections: What a false pride is that which can induce a woman to murder her own infant, rather than submit to a temporary disgrace? What punishment is due to a man who willfully debauches a poor girl, and then refuses to make her the only reparation in his power by mar
riage?77

  Sarah had given birth to a healthy boy, strangled him with a handkerchief and dumped his body in ‘a ditch or gully-hole by Broad Street, Mary-le-bon’,78 a watercourse probably located north of Oxford Street.79 She was tried for infanticide, found guilty and ordered ‘to be executed…and her body to be afterwards dissected and anatomized’.80 With the death penalty intended as a deterrent, executions were performed in public, usually by hanging. A noose was put around the condemned person’s neck, and the rope was either hauled up or, more often, the cart or other support was removed to leave the victim hanging. Strangulation was usually the cause of death, but some fell so violently that they broke their necks.

  Sarah was hanged at Tyburn, which was London’s public place of execution, but because the final journey of prisoners from Newgate prison to Tyburn became such a carnival, not the sober warning the authorities desired, executions were later moved to Newgate. The first ones took place there on 9 December 1783, when nine men and one woman were executed on a temporary scaffold.81 A different method of execution was introduced as well – a noose was placed round the neck of each prisoner, and they were then dropped through a trapdoor. One Oxford newspaper, in a lengthy account of the new location, commented:

  The unhappy Criminals themselves acknowledged the Propriety of the Change, and professed themselves happy in not being, as usual, dragged through the Streets from Newgate to Tyburn. A Bell tolled all the Time of the Ceremony, and produced a wonderful Effect upon the Prisoners [in Newgate] who survived their more unfortunate Fellows. The Spectators who attended appeared much impressed by the solemnity of the Ceremony.82