The running of the place was overseen by a Board of Guardians who met every Wednesday, a report of which weekly meeting would be published the following day in the Chronicle.
The Oldham Union Workhouse, where Elizabeth Berry took up employment in 1886. Photograph, c. 1900.
The report of the meeting of 14 July, two days before Elizabeth Berry’s arrival in the place, gives a typical picture of the institution. With twenty officers present it was reported that in the previous week there were 847 souls resident – these in addition to the paid staff, the manager, the guards, the porters, the nurses, and so on. The pauper inmates, as they were known, were made up of 315 adult males, 276 adult females, 129 boys, 97 girls, 30 infants. Of the adults there were 42 men and 52 women in the imbecile wards. There had been one birth, and three deaths. Nineteen souls had been admitted during the week, and 23 had been discharged. The Guardians’ report also noted the number of vagrants who had come to the workhouse in search of succour, a total of 218 men, women and children. These would have been fed and watered and sent on their way. The institution was also the regular recipient of various charitable donations from certain members of the public; in this case it was reported by the Master that ‘Mr Asa Binns Kershaw of Greenacres Road had forwarded a parcel of copies of the “Quiver” and “Cassell’s Magazine”.’ He also mentioned that Mr Hargreaves, of High Street, and the scholars of the Friends’ Meeting House, in Greaves Street, ‘came and practised the children for the Whitsuntide hymns’. The thanks of the board were ordered to be forwarded to the parties named.
This, then, was the Oldham Union Workhouse, the setting for Elizabeth Berry’s last period of employment, and scene of the death of her only surviving child.
Regardless of her personal feelings about the place, there can be no doubt that in her new position Mrs Berry had improved her lot. She held the most responsible senior post and enjoyed very comfortable living quarters. Workhouse Master Mr Lawson, who described her as ‘a most extraordinary woman, possessed of more than ordinary intelligence’, later remarked that she occupied ‘the nicest and cosiest sitting-room about the premises’. ‘The room contained a marble mantelpiece, and the hearth was tiled,’ he said, ‘which couldn’t be said of any other room occupied by an official. In addition she had a bevy of inmates to serve her both in her professional capacity and in a personal one. She was considered very clever at her business, and the workhouse officials had the highest opinion of her abilities.’ As for her general conduct, he remarked, in something of an understatement, that ‘at times she became somewhat excited’.
Lawson was certainly correct in describing her as an extraordinary woman. And she very quickly let it be known that she was no run-of-the-mill workhouse infirmary nurse. Immediately on assuming her post she surprised the Guardians with the announcement that she had taken up the study of physiology, and wished to pursue it further by taking a course of lectures that were being given in Manchester. Her reasons for this could bear some examination. She surely didn’t believe that the lectures could enhance her work as a nurse, so it is more than likely that her reason for wanting to take the course was the opportunity that she thought it might offer – that of meeting, on a regular, weekly basis, eligible men – young doctors in training, as likely as not. Unfortunately for her dreams, however, she couldn’t be spared; the lectures were given on Wednesdays, at the same time that her attendance was required at the weekly meetings at the workhouse. In an effort to assuage her disappointment and accommodate her, the Guardians arranged for their new nurse to be given the loan of some books on the subject. It soon became clear, though, that it was not expertise in physiology that she was after, for her supposed enthusiasm was seen to evaporate as quickly as it was born. As was reported to one of the men from the Chronicle, ‘…she was not a great student, for her inclinations in that direction were just as changeable as her temper’.
Whatever disappointment she felt at being denied attendance at the lectures, it is clear that she regarded her engagement at the workhouse as a mere step in the process of bettering herself, to which end she remained intent on procuring a good second marriage. By no means put off by her scandalous failure with the Royton cleric, she had continued over the years, whenever possible, to make the acquaintance of divers promising men. While employed at the Burton-on-Trent workhouse she was said to have ‘captivated a medical gentleman’, confiding to friends that she several times visited him in Torquay. Unfortunately for her, however, the affair ended with no satisfactory conclusion. Undaunted, she was soon to embark on another romantic liaison. The Oldham News was later to report that while employed at the Oldham workhouse she frequently travelled to Derby, where she had ‘secured a lover, a gentleman of means, a widower with an only son’. Judging by contemporary accounts, this appeared to be a most promising liaison and Mrs Berry set great store by it, daring to see in it, eventually, the realization of her dreams. To her great disappointment, however, when it came to the crunch, the gentleman would not commit, telling her that he was reluctant to remarry until his son came of age. Whether this was the truth we shall never know. It is doubtful; it rather appears that the man was having second thoughts about the affair. In any case, and tragically for Mrs Berry’s hopes and ambitions in the matter, word came to her that the gentlemen had died.
This must have been a considerable blow to her, but she did not give up. From her Oldham workhouse residence she resumed her quest, whenever an opportunity arose going in her finery to various social functions such as parties and balls. One such outing, which she would later have reason most vividly to recall, was to a policemen’s ball in the town that summer where she met a certain gentleman who, at her invitation, joined her in a dance. They got on well, and in the course of their conversation she told him something of herself and her work. Whether he in turn mentioned that he was married, or spoke of his occupation, we do not know. As for the latter, perhaps due to its unusual nature – which we shall come to later on – he was reluctant to reveal too much, though she would most certainly learn of it before long. At the end of the evening they shared a cab and a train compartment on their ways home, and when their journeys diverged said their goodbyes, not expecting to meet again. Their meeting, though, was not to be their last. The man with whom the gay young widow flirted and chatted and invited to join her in the ‘mazy’ dance was soon to come into her life again, and in the most dramatic circumstances.
For all her personal comforts within the workhouse, Elizabeth Berry can have found little pleasure or contentment in the place. And going by reports of her behaviour with fellow staff members, she was not by any means an easy woman to befriend. The building itself offered no amusements or diversions, and she was likely to have spent much of her free time alone in her sitting room, reading.
By all accounts she was a voracious reader, with a love of romantic novels and poetry, added to which, through the plethora of newspapers available, she would have kept abreast of happenings in the world. That year of 1886 saw its share of upheavals on the international scene, while in Great Britain there was great political change, there being two governments within a year – Gladstone leading the Liberals to power in February, and then being replaced by the Conservatives under Salisbury in August.
Away from the political scene there were happenings of a more scandalous nature making the headlines, among them several sensational murder trials. In April, Mrs Adelaide Bartlett had stood trial in London accused of poisoning her husband with chloroform. Lucky for her, she was acquitted. Not so fortunate was forty-two-year-old Mary Ann Britland, of Ashton-under-Lyne. A factory worker by day and barmaid by night, that July she was in the dock charged with the murder of her neighbour’s wife, through poisoning by strychnine, though it was accepted that she had also poisoned her husband and her nineteen-year-old daughter. At the conclusion of her trial she was found guilty and soon afterwards hanged. One of the witnesses at her trial was Dr Thomas Harris, a Manchester medical expert. He was a man whom Mrs
Berry herself was soon to encounter. Fortunately she could not see into the future, and it is safe to say that she would have read the reports on the murder trials with nothing more than interest, and probably, like other readers, a certain amount of enjoyment.
As observed, Mr Lawson, the Workhouse Master, in remarking that Elizabeth Berry at times ‘became somewhat excited’ was not exaggerating. On the contrary, he was putting it mildly. And if the bizarre events that had surrounded her arrival at the start of her employment had rung no warning bells he would soon have real cause to wonder if the Guardians and the medical officer had done the right thing in electing her. On her part, bearing in mind her claim that she initially refused the post when it was offered, and then, after accepting it, wrote to the Master declining it yet again, it is clear that she cannot have entered into her new employment with any great enthusiasm. The fact is that, less than happy with her situation at the start, it was downhill for her from then on.
Her growing dissatisfaction and discontent with her lot was swiftly to become apparent to everyone around her, with the Guardians soon being informed that the behaviour of their newly engaged infirmary nurse was giving cause for concern. Making her mark in the most negative and extraordinary way, to the general surprise and growing alarm, Nurse Berry was soon found to be ‘not the kind, motherly person that was expected and desired’ – as the Chronicle put it – but to be regarded by employees and inmates alike as not only difficult and demanding but possessed of a most fearsome and violent temper. Later, when her time at the workhouse was over, several of those associated with the place came forward to report on their experiences with her. All her patients, it was said, had come to be in dread of her – and not only her patients, but also many of those with whom she worked. In particular, her treatment of the women who acted as her servants was frequently violent. Indeed, it was said that when the least crossed she would not hesitate to throw a bottle or a boot at anyone whom she considered had offended her. If such reports on her behaviour appear perhaps a little extreme, they were not in fact untypical. And as the weeks passed, the instances of her shocking behaviour increased in number and in their intensity.
Today, observing her most marked personality disorder, she would be regarded by many as a psychopath or sociopath. There can be no doubt that she was finding her continuing situation in life a massive disappointment, and in all probability was beginning to despair of finding any solution to her chronic problem. Possessed as she was of high intelligence and huge ambition, she had nevertheless made no advance whatsoever, either professionally or in her personal life. In her years as a nurse she had gone from one workhouse post to another, always seeking improvement and betterment, but with no single engagement bringing her any acceptable degree of satisfaction. And, vitally, her overarching aim, to find security in a satisfactory marriage, had so far, for all her efforts, come to nothing. Her affair with the businessman in Derby having ended with the reporting of his death, she could see, at thirty-three years of age, and with a child still to support, her chances fading by the day, and nothing before her but long years of soul-destroying work in a workhouse infirmary.
With her dissatisfaction growing, matters came to a head with a most extraordinary incident that took place early in December.
As has been observed, things had not been going smoothly following her arrival in the place, and according to Mrs Berry her problems were all due to Dr Patterson. He it was, of course, as the workhouse’s medical officer, who had overall control and sway over the medical staff and situation in the place, and it wasn’t long before he and his new infirmary nurse were in disagreement.
The Home Office file on Mrs Berry’s case reveals a copy of a lengthy letter she wrote on 10 March the following year to Dr John Kershaw, of Sedgely Park, Prestwich. As stated earlier, Dr Kershaw was acquainted with her from earlier years, and his relationship with her would sustain until the end. She had in him, there is no doubt, a true friend.
In her letter to the doctor, she would speak of several conflicts with Dr Patterson, arising, she claimed, from her refusal to carry out some of his requests – one of them to teach midwifery to nurse Lydia Evett. Citing one particular incident, when she had declined to carry out an instruction from the Governor himself, she wrote that Patterson told her that he would have had her suspended for her refusal. ‘I felt more pained than I could express,’ she wrote, ‘and I said, “Dr Patterson, I could not have thought you capable of anything so base and treacherous,” and he laughed – a laugh which as I have thought of since has made me shudder, and he said, “You don’t know what I could be capable of.”’ In view of Elizabeth Berry’s acknowledged mendaciousness one might wonder if a large pinch of salt might be taken along with her words, but whatever the actuality, early in December there occurred an event that became not only the subject of much gossip, but was also to be reported in the press. Mrs Berry too was later to give her own account of it.
In her letter to Dr Kershaw she writes of the incident, saying:
I was ill myself with an attack of bronchitis. Dr Patterson prescribed for me. After taking the medicine I had great pain in my head and could not sleep. This sleeplessness continued for three days when he said he would give me a good big draught. Within an hour of taking it I was insane. He again visited same day and gave me chloroform, as he afterwards told Mrs Sanderson would have killed seven strong men. He remained with me the greater part of that night and when he left Mr Fletcher and Mr Minnihan were left in charge.
Others on the scene told a different story of Mrs Berry being ‘insane’, and a rather more shocking story it was. According to contemporary reports, the dramatic events were brought on by a violent quarrel that erupted between Mrs Berry and another of the senior female employees, most likely to have been Lydia Evett. For Mrs Berry the incident proved to be dynamic. It may be that with her frustration and dissatisfaction near the surface, the quarrel was the catalyst for the horror that was to come. Whatever the case, it set in motion a chain of events that was to end in death.
The Chronicle reported on the incident under the heading EXTRAORDINARY BEHAVIOUR AT THE WORKHOUSE. We do not know who was the editor’s informant. The account may have come from more than one witness, one of whom was almost certainly Dr Patterson, but whoever the source, it was said to describe a scene ‘which will not soon be forgot by those who witnessed it’ when, in the female infirmary:
… Mrs Berry went into one of the wards where the patients were, and began to slap the poor people on the face as they lay bedfast, while some of those she ill-used by shaking them. The servants under her were naturally much afraid, and called in assistance. It was plainly seen that the woman was suffering from some nervous or brain excitement, and so strange did her conduct become that Dr Patterson was sent for. On his arrival she had become much worse, and it was an extremely difficult matter to conjecture what had come over the nurse. After much toiling with her she became a little quieter, but threatened to kill the first person that came near her, and kept continually calling for a knife so that she could cut their throats. She was walked about in the hope that she would become tired, and after a time was so much improved as to be left by herself. All was not over, however, for in the night she had to be held down by two women, who had the greatest difficulty in performing that unwelcome duty. The next day when she was somewhat better, a draught was given to her with the instructions that she was to take half of it then, and the other half when she went to bed. She did not, however, do that, but took the whole of it at once, and on one of the servants going into her room she flung the glass at her as soon as she got inside. The attack left her as quickly almost as it came on, and when she woke from a sleep, and found a number of persons who had been attending her in her room, she became very indignant and wanted to know what they were doing there. When questioned she would not answer a single word and not to this day do those who witnessed the affair know what caused the strange attack. During the brief spell of madness she broke severa
l ornaments, and managed to lock herself in the surgery, the door of which had to be broken open.
Mrs Berry’s behaviour was nothing if not alarming, and Dr Patterson gave it that she was suffering from a fever due to ‘congestion of the brain’.
There was then, it seems, some relative calm for a brief period during which, on 13 December, her sister-in-law Ann Sanderson came to the workhouse for a short visit, bringing with her the young Edith Annie to see her mother. They stayed over until the 15th.
The visit brought no peace for Mrs Berry, however, and as Christmas approached she went on to exhibit more of her brain fever ‘indispositions’, the outcome of which was that at her request Dr Patterson urged the governor to allow her a few days away from her duties. The Board of Guardians only reluctantly consented, one of them remarking that she had been seen ‘knocking about’ and that there appeared to be not much the matter with her. Be that as it may, she was given a few days’ leave, and so it was that on the morning of Monday 27 December, she left the place. First, it is said – and obviously feeling much improved – she went to a wedding to which she had been invited, and immediately afterwards made her way to Miles Platting and the home of her in-laws, Ann and John Sanderson.
It was there, during her brief stay, that she arranged to bring Edith back again to Oldham for a little holiday, this time extending an invitation to one of Edith’s friends, Beatrice Hall, to come along with her for company. And so it was that on 29 December a much-excited Edith and friend Beatrice, in the charge of Mrs Berry, set off by horse-drawn tram to Oldham. They arrived at the workhouse at 6.15.
There Must Be Evil Page 6