London's Shadows: The Dark Side of the Victorian City

by Gray, Drew D.

  The more serious offence of GBH was actually two separate offences. Wounding carried a maximum sentence of five years' imprisonment whereas GBH could be punished by life. In January John Haley came before the magistrate at Thames accused of wounding and cutting John Day. The victim alleged that he had been rudely awakened at 1 a.m. by Haley knocking at his door and accusing him of stealing his hat. When Day denied this Haley struck him in the face with a stone and as the pair grappled Day felt a stabbing pain in his side. He could not tell the magistrate what weapon his assailant had used but he was sure it was Haley who had wounded him as there was a light on in the room. The police were called to the house in Devonshire Street and PC Hawell of H division (which covered Whitechapel) found Day with blood on his face and side. Day's wife told the court that three men had come to her house and threatened her husband, demanding he return the missing hat and a local surgeon confirmed that he had treated John's wounds. Mr Lushington was evidently convinced there was a case to answer as he committed Haley for trial."

  If a court believed that there was an intention to kill the victim then a charge of attempted murder could be levelled. These broad definitions of interpersonal violence have to some extent survived into current legislation, the most recent reclassification being in 1998. The number of offenders charged with more serious incidents of violence are small: just 26 men in 1887 compared to 311 for common assault. It is notable that while women were accused of violence they appear in much smaller numbers (just 64). There was a large degree of discretion involved in the prosecution of assault. An assault without a weapon or without an associated attempt to steal was not indictable, but if one was to add one of these things it became much more serious. We should note the comment of the criminal registrar in 1909.

  There is no ... clear rule, and (it maybe said) no uniform practice as to the degree of violence which makes it proper to prosecute an assault as an indictable offence ... Many of the common assaults and still more of the assaults on police constables, now disposed of summarily, amount in reality to malicious wounding, causing grievous bodily harm, or even felonious wounding, and if they were sent for trial, would swell the number of indictable offences against the person.

  Criminal Registrar (1909)34

  Once again the numbers of persons appearing before Lushington and his fellow magistrates is not a clear and certain picture of violence in London in this period. Only a relatively small number of assaults would have resulted in prosecutions: again the involvement of the police would have been partial given the number of beat officers available and many people would have chosen to ignore assaults or respond in kind rather than go to the law. This is particularly true for domestic violence as historians have shown that only a small proportion of women were prepared to take their husbands and partners to court, preferring to suffer in silence or find other ways to try and curb their behaviour. The wife that went to law risked a lot: she could find the family breadwinner locked up, fined or indeed freed to meet his vengeance at a later date. Thus the so-called `dark figure' of unrecorded crime is very evident in cases of assault and domestic assault in particular. Because all of the cases recorded in the first register are brought in by police constables it is difficult to be clear who the victims are in many of these assaults. However, by looking at the second register (of cases brought by summons) the prosecutor is more obvious. The following table gives a brief indication of the nature of assaults prosecuted in this way at Thames.

  Table 7.2 The nature of assault prosecutions at the Thames Police Court by summons, January to December 1887

  The unsurprising result is that most violence was perpetrated by men and more often than not it was women who were the victims. It is also worth noting the large numbers of persons that appear here. If we include the assault cases brought in directly (those listed in the first register) then we can estimate that around 20-24 cases of assault were being dealt with by this court each week in 1887. This is a not inconsiderable amount of petty violence if we remember that many or indeed most assaults did not result in a hearing of any kind. The table also shows that women were not averse to attacking each other even if they seem to have refrained from assaulting their menfolk. This last statistic is slightly problematic: men were much less likely to report an assault on their person by a woman for reasons of pride and notions of masculinity. The 21 cases that do appear are unusual and may well include complaints from elderly males or young boys, possibly servants or employees. One was written up by the court reporter from The Illustrated Police News in September 1887 and serves to remind us that tales of parental cruelty towards children are not new. Jane Sibley of Mile End had married her husband and taken on the responsibility for his 6-year-old son, Alfred, and his two siblings. The family lived on Turner Street in a shared lodging house owned by Henry Eade. Eade had often heard little Alfred cry out or scream and feared that he was being abused by his father and stepmother. One Friday night when Sibley's husband was out, Eade heard Alfred's cries and decided to intervene. He warned Jane that `You had better be careful ... I think you will go too far with the boy. I do not think you fairly treat the boy'. Mrs Sibley protested that she was simply `holloaing more to the boy to frighten him than beating him' When Henry Eade encountered Mr Sibley he told him to sort his wife out saying that, `If this goes on I shall have to stop it' Sibley told him to mind his own business. At this point Eade decided to involve the authorities and alerted a constable. Alfred was examined by a local doctor after the policeman noticed marks on the child's legs, some of which seemed to be burns. Mrs Sibley claimed she had pushed the child and he had fallen against the stove but the policeman was unconvinced. On a more thorough examination Alfred was found to have burns on his legs, thighs and buttocks, as well as bruising to his forehead. Some of these showed signs of systematic abuse over a long period. The court decided that the injuries were not consistent with the child accidently falling against the stove and the boy's 8-year-old brother testified that after Alfred had been caught stealing sweets his stepmother had forced him to sit on the stove as punishment. He struggled and she beat him with a stick - which is how he had sustained the injuries that so alarmed Mr Eade and the constable. Justice Lushington committed Jane Sibley for a jury trial for her cruelty. Violence towards children was endemic in the period and beatings common so it is interesting that in this case the close-knit nature of East End dwellings resulted in a prosecution for cruelty and hopefully saved young Alfred from a more serious fate at the hands of his stepmother.35

  The high proportion of attacks on women by men includes 112 instances that can quite clearly be described as domestic violence or wife beating. In all these cases the parties share the same surname and while this could be coincidental or represent other familial relationships it is more likely that these are wives bringing their husbands to court (or at least obtaining a summons against them). As we noted earlier this was a risky strategy to pursue and it is not surprising that in many of these hearings the case was dismissed because the complainant failed to appear. Several women may have threatened their abusive spouses with a court appearance but have not actually needed to attend to see their spouses punished. By obtaining the summons they achieved a sort of moral victory rather than the pyrrhic one that might have followed had their husbands been fined or even imprisoned by the magistrate. What is clear is that many East End women were prepared to go to law to try and arrest abusive behaviour in the home; sometimes this could have particularly severe and unexpected consequences for the convicted wife beater. In March 1887 a man appeared at the Thames court to ask the magistrate's advice. In January he had been prosecuted by his wife for assaulting her and had been fined £6. Unable to raise the funds he was sent to prison. Meanwhile his wife had sold his home and moved away. The unfortunate husband had also failed to find work on his release from gaol and was not able to comply with a court order to support his estranged wife with l Os a week. What, he asked the court, could they do to help? The answer was stark: what h
is wife had done was perfectly legal and there was nothing the justice could do to help him. The newspaper reported this case perhaps as a salutary warning to others who might be inclined to use violence to resolve domestic issues.36 The figure for domestic violence could indeed be even higher given that many cohabiting couples lived without seeing the need for a formal marriage ceremony, therefore, many of the 109 other cases of male on female violence could be described as domestic.

  Much of this violence received relatively little sanction from the magistracy. On many occasions no prosecutor appeared to back up their complaint (the summons or perhaps the knowledge that their assailant had spent a night or two behind bars was often satisfaction enough) and in others the magistrate dismissed cases for lack of evidence. Offenders could be fined or sentenced to short periods in prison of up to a month, and this was invariably the outcome for individuals who assaulted policemen. More serious cases could be sent for trial if actual or grievous bodily harm could be proven and the court routinely bound parties by recognizance (which required them to enter into a financial bond to ensure their future good behaviour) where it could not resolve the matter by agreement or fines. All of this again reflects what we already know about `common assault': it covered a tremendous range of violent action, much of which was relatively petty. The amount of assault prosecuted at the Thames court does, however, reflect the fact that this was a rough and violent area of the capital and that much of this violence was fuelled by drink. Indeed the correspondent at The Graphic believed that Thames Police Court heard more cases of assault, actual violence, attempted murder and murder than `probably any other court in the

  This was also an area associated with crime and criminality as we have seen throughout this book. The figures in Table 7.1 show that prosecutions for theft and other forms of property crime accounted for just over a quarter of all hearings. As with assault, the number appearing in the police court charged with some form of theft is in no way an accurate record of the extent of pilfering that went on in the period. In her study of the London police courts Jennifer Davis argued that many employers (whether large or small businessmen) would have been reluctant to go to the law in many cases: `Sentiment might prevent some small employers from prosecuting those with whom they worked closely' and we should not discount the fact that those with larger workforces may well have shared similar emotions. Others may simply have not wanted to take the time out of their busy lives to attend court, especially if this meant closing business in order for other employees to testify. After all, employers had the ultimate sanction: they could simply dismiss the thief and refuse to provide them with a reference for future employment. This may well have served as a more severe punishment than anything the court could administer.38

  Individuals were accused of stealing all sorts of property that reflect both their needs and opportunities for theft in this part of London. In many instances the magistrates remanded suspects brought in for a few days while evidence could be gathered or the owner of the property found. The examination and re-examination of suspects had been a feature of the summary courts of the eighteenth century and can in itself be viewed as a disciplinary function operated by the magistracy. Suspected thieves could be arrested and imprisoned for a few days or a week before being released with a caution.39 Minor criminals could be sent to prison for short periods as William Dover was in August 1887: having stolen £1 4s and 6d the 18 year old was sentenced to a month of hard labour. Robert Richards was offered a choice after he was found to have stolen a pewter pint pot from a local pub, either pay a £2 fine or go to gaol for 14 days: he paid the fine. John Farrington's offence was more serious as he had broken into a shop in Spitalfields and had stolen a camera lens valued at 15s; the magistrate ordered that he be fully committed for trial. This case made the pages of Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper which gave the victim's name as Henry Schwero, a music seller, of 1 Fieldgate Street.40 The London press routinely sent reporters to the police courts but given the number of cases heard it had to be something either exceptional or topical for the papers to report it. In March, George Carlton and Henry Cranfield, described as `rough-looking fellows', were convicted of assaulting and robbing a Chinese seaman on the West India Dock Road. The magistrate said it was `an abominable thing that poor inoffensive Chinese could not walk the streets without being assaulted and robbed'. He sentenced the pair to two months' imprisonment with hard labour.41 Not all property crime was as direct as some of those noted above, nor were all the culprits easily identified as members of a criminal class. Charles Lawrence was a veterinary surgeon who was well known in the East End. He pleaded guilty to embezzling money from a firm of iron merchants and, despite them intervening on his behalf, he was sentenced to six months in prison - the maximum sentence the court could

  As we noted earlier the reporting of crime at the police courts can only offer a glimpse into the workings of the summary courts. Reporters would have been necessarily selective about the cases they chose to bring to the attention of their readers. The salacious, the topical and the unusual would have been the staple fare of the court reporter. In the Pall Mall Gazette the police and magistracy had, after the Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park debacles, an implacable critic, and at Thames it would seem that Mr Saunders JP was under scrutiny by the editors and reporters that observed goings on in his courtroom. The inconsistency of justice was highlighted in this report from late 1887: `Mr Saunders of Thames Police Court does not seem to improve in his notion of justice' it declared, before going on to note that the magistrate had fined one offender just 5s for running over a man's leg while `careering round a corner' in charge of a milk van but then sentenced Edward Buckley to 14 days' imprisonment for simply stealing a pane of glass `from a stall outside a shop, despite him making no attempt to escape. Finally the exasperation of the Gazette was complete when `a lad named Costin was charged with the theft of a German sausage. This dreadful offence was too much for Mr. Saunders who committed Costin for trial'.43 Many of those brought before the court were offered the alternative punishment of a fine or a short period of imprisonment. In some of the capital's other police courts, Marlborough Street for example, most defendants chose to pay the few shillings fine. At Thames, according to Robinson of The Graphic, most of those convicted preferred to take their chances inside and `work it off' to use a contemporary expression. `Money is always "tightish" Stepney way, he explained, and `every unfortunate cannot expect a little private benefit - a "friendly lead"; as it is called, a whip round of friends, relations, and acquaintances - to meet the expenses of the very unlucky day which has brought matters to so sorry a pass'

  Robinson's detailed overview of the workings of the London police courts were published over three editions in 1887 and include some wonderful illustrations of the court. We see policemen giving evidence, defendants receiving advice from their solicitors (when they could afford them) and women weeping in the dock, as well as the interior of a Black Maria - the police vehicle that carried offenders to and from the courtroom in East Arbour Street. After offering some delightful vignettes from Bow Street in his second report The Graphic's correspondent concluded by noting that:

  Police cases are not always amusing, however - there are dreary desert wastes, over which the whole staff has to plod, and it is `hard lines' on the student of human nature if he has dropped in when School-Board cases and Gas summons are being stolidly listened to by a sorely-affected stipendiary. Now and then in a School-Board case there is a glimmer of interest, but in a Gas dispute - despite the subject of discussion - there is not the spark of light and life. The reporters slip down from their seats, the clerk of the court yawns ominously, the policemen show signs of utter weariness, visitors, interested in coming cases, drop into fitful slumber. The magistrate sits patient and resigned, the gas collector produces a whole army of defaulters, who file in, one after the other, with the invariable plea that they have not burnt one-half of the quantity of gas charged for. These gentlemen [the Gas collectors] summoned t
o appear are the only beings in Court who betray the slightest amount of excitement over the details - the collector turns over his dropsical note-book and calls therefrom the number of thousands of feet of gas consumed, and the amount due to the company in consequence and the magistrate invariably agrees with him: `judgement with costs' and calls the next case. At length the collector's last dreary statement is heard and his soporific presence is removed.44

  Fortunately for the cub reporter sent to cover proceedings in the police court the opportunity to attend the sittings at the higher court at the Old Bailey presumably followed from a successful initiation at the lower end of the criminal justice system. While the summary courts represent the arena in which most Londoners would have encountered the law and have made their complaints, the Old Bailey was where the most serious (and therefore more newsworthy) crimes were prosecuted and judged.

  THE OLD BAILEY: LONDON'S CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT

  Between January 1850 and December 1899 London's Old Bailey courtroom heard over 52,000 trials for a wide variety of offences as Table 7.3 shows.

  Table 7.3 Trials at the Old Bailey, 1850-1899

  What is immediately apparent is the dominance of crimes against property in the statistics. Theft (which includes the sub category of `violent theft') accounts for 49 per cent of all crime tried at this level of the criminal justice system. If we included forgery and fraud (which come tinder `deception') and coining (dealt with under `Royal offences' as an attack on the currency was considered to be an attack on the monarch) then we can push this figure to 77 per cent. Interpersonal violence accounted for just 12 per cent and as we have seen a large amount of violence came before the summary courts. Trials for sexual offences, (rape, assault with intent to rape and bigamy) constituted around 7 per cent of the business of the court and a variety of miscellaneous offences (conspiracy, returning from transportation, performing an abortion, concealing a birth - to name but a few) made tip the remaining 2 per cent.45 We have already looked at murder in an earlier chapter and other forms of violence and sexual crime cannot be covered in any depth here. Therefore this chapter will concentrate on the key property crimes that concerned the late Victorians. If we take another look at the Old Bailey records it is possible to construct a more detailed table for analysing property crime over the second half of the nineteenth century.