‘Can I swap this for the coroner’s records over there, please?’ Morton said, nodding his head towards the dumb-waiter.
‘No,’ Miss Latimer replied, eventually. ‘You can put that one down carefully on the Returns Desk, which I will process presently.’
Morton emitted a large sigh, placed the ledger down in the correct place, then stood waiting, whilst she continued staring at the computer screen in front of her.
Several seconds passed, and Morton grew increasingly agitated and began whistling lightly, knowing full well the annoyance that it would have been causing her in return.
Suddenly, she removed her glasses, jumped up and, in an obviously managed eruption, said loudly, ‘Will you kindly desist with that insupportable din!’
Morton could feel the weight of the silent stares from the Reading Room behind him, certain that her outburst had drawn everyone’s attention. He smiled smugly, knowing that only she would have heard his whistling and would now have appeared overbearing to onlookers.
Miss Latimer turned, grabbed the coroner’s records from the dumb-waiter and threw them down on the desk in front of him.
‘Thank you most kindly,’ he said loudly.
Back at his desk, he received several uncertain glances and facial expressions from his fellow researchers, which suggested that they were on his side and that Miss Latimer’s explosion had been taken as ever-so-slightly maniacal.
Just as he turned to the document in front of him, Miss Latimer stood up and called out, ‘We shall be closing in thirty minutes’ time.’
There was no way that he would be able to transcribe everything from the file inside thirty minutes. He would at least make a start and have to pay the extortionate copying fees, if it came to it.
The coroner’s report was on thick grey paper and folded into three. On the front was written: 22nd November 1924. Inquisition taken on view of the body of Louisa Peacock at Hellingly. Verdict – found dead. Suicide by strangulation whilst of unsound mind.
Morton opened the document, which revealed a pleasing quantity of supporting material. He read through the typed legal preamble and Louisa’s basic personal details, which were already known to him. At the bottom of the page were the twelve signatures of the jury. The first insert had been completed by a police constable and was headed POLICE REPORT TO CORONER CONCERNING DEATH.
Full name, occupation & address of deceased: Louisa Peacock, age 22, housewife. Hellingly Asylum, formerly of Holmes Farm, Hailsham. Married. Husband Stephen Peacock of Holmes Farm, Hailsham.
State where and when (day and hour) the deceased died, or was found dying or dead: East Sussex Asylum, Hellingly. 11.45am. 20th November 1924.
Full name and address of any legally qualified Medical Practitioner who has seen the deceased either before or after death: J.B. Taylor, Medical Superintendent, East Sussex Asylum. Both before & after death.
What is the opinion of the Medical Practitioner as to the nature of the illness and cause of the death? Strangulation.
If any known illness of injury existed before death, state, if possible the nature of it and its duration: None.
If negligence or blame is alleged against any party, say to whom and by whom alleged: None.
State the supposed cause of death, if known or suspected and the circumstances relating to it: Patient hung herself and died of strangulation.
Morton copied the entry onto his notepad, then turned to the next inserted sheet, which was a typed letter to the coroner from the Medical Superintendent, J.B. Taylor.
Dear Sir, I enclose statement of particulars of the death of Louisa Peacock. She has been a patient here since June, and the week previous to her admission she attempted suicide on four occasions, having found herself to be with child. She had suffered a series of miscarriages in the past and this is the believed cause of her melancholia. Although she had not attempted suicide since being in the asylum, her mental state had become manic with fear for her unborn child. Soon after 11.30am, the Charge Nurse of her ward notified of deceased’s absence. Search parties were immediately sent out and she was found in Park Woods suspended from the bough of a stem about two feet from the ground. She had taken off her stockings and made a noose of them. I was duly summoned and administered the usual restoratives, and artificial respiration was carried out for forty minutes but life was quite extinct and the patient never breathed after I saw her. Yours faithfully, J.B. Taylor, Medical Superintendent.
Morton stared at the letter, feeling uneasy. The poor woman had been incarcerated in that awful place suffering from depression caused by miscarriages. Things were thankfully different now, but back then Louisa would have been shunned by ashamed family and friends, and taking her own life would only have worsened the situation. Perhaps it was little wonder that Stephen Peacock had never spoken to his son about his first wife.
Once he had copied out the letter, Morton turned to the last document in the file: a series of handwritten witness statements. He looked at the piece of paper, bewildered. He believed that the statements, all copied out in the same appalling handwriting, were among the most illegible that he had ever seen. This was going to take some meticulous deciphering, he realised. But time had run out. Miss Latimer had just risen up from her seat and was preparing to deliver her speech that the archive was about to close. ‘We shall be closing in five minutes’ time,’ she called out.
Her announcement caused a general flurry of activity from the half-a-dozen researchers working until the bitter end. The whirring of the digital microfilm reader rang from the far corner, ledgers were closed and returned to the desk, and chairs tucked under tables.
‘Damn it,’ Morton muttered.
He looked up to see Quiet Brian appearing from the room at the back and hurried over to him with the document. ‘Excuse me, it’s really urgent that I get this photocopied—could it be done now, very quickly? It’s just this one page, here,’ Morton pressed, holding out the inserted sheet of witness statements.
Quiet Brian sighed and glanced over at the clock on the back wall. ‘I shouldn’t really; photocopying is usually done out of hours in the order in which it was received, and then posted out.’
‘Please,’ Morton urged, sensing that, as long as Miss Latimer didn’t get wind of their negotiation, Quiet Brian might well have been about to concede.
‘Alright, just this once,’ he said, with a sly look over at Miss Latimer, who was thankfully engaged in conversation with an elderly lady with hearing difficulties.
‘Brilliant. I’ll just nip down to my locker and get my chequebook.’
‘Just pay next time you’re here,’ he said quietly. ‘Too much paperwork involved. I’ll be back in a moment.’
Morton thanked him and watched, as he went back out through the door from which he had just appeared. Morton casually turned, pretending to look at something on the shelf behind him, but really, he wanted to check what Miss Latimer was doing, hoping that she hadn’t spotted what he was up to; there was absolutely no way on earth that she would have allowed him to jump the photocopying queue and even less chance of her letting him walk out without paying for it to boot. Mercifully, she was still conversing loudly with the elderly woman.
Moments later, Quiet Brian appeared and discreetly handed him the photocopy.
‘Thank you ever so much,’ Morton said, returning to his desk and packing away. Without speaking or making eye-contact, he placed the coroner’s inquest down in front of Miss Latimer and slunk out of the room.
As he gathered his things from his locker, Morton toyed with the idea of walking down Lewes High Street and looking over the witness statements with a large coffee but changed his mind the moment he pulled open the archive door to see the great torrents of rain falling outside. He made a dash for his car and headed home.
His flat was freezing cold when he returned. He put on a sweater, made himself a coffee and sat on his sofa with his laptop open beside him, ready to begin transcribing t
he appallingly written witness statements.
Tracing his finger along the first sentence, he caught the name Peacock and was able to work out that the word in front of it was Stephen. This short paragraph was Stephen’s witness statement. Morton skim-read the text and managed to pull out three coherent words: she, Asylum and several. Using these three words as control words, he began to identify the same letter patterns in the other sentences.
He gradually began developing the sentences on his laptop, adding a word at a time until the majority of Stephen Peacock’s statement had been transcribed.
Stephen Peacock, husband of the deceased, deposed that he last [??] wife a fortnight ago last Wednesday. She had been in[?] the Asylum since June in consequence of attempting to commit suicide. Her condition was due to [??] failed pregnancies.
The next paragraphs, scribed in the same hand came marginally more quickly, though still containing some indecipherable words.
Nurse Chubb stated that she was in charge of the deceased. At the 11.30 ward-check witness noted the presence of the deceased. Deceased was reported missing soon after by a fellow patient. Search parties [??] and deceased was found hanging from a tree by tying[?] her stockings together.
Nurse Casey[??] said she was in the gardens searching for deceased when she heard a patient scream out. Witness went to see what [??] and saw Mrs Peacock hanging from a tree. The body was [??] down as soon as possible. Deceased had taken off her stockings, but had put her shoes on again. Her feet were very close to the ground. Artificial respiration was resorted to, but without any result.
Doctor Taylor, acting as a Medical Superintendent at the Asylum, deposed that deceased had been under his charge since June. She was an anxious woman but [??] lucid in her conversation. Deceased was always worrying about her unborn child, that she would lose [??] she had the others. Her general health was[?] excellent. The height of the branch of the tree from which deceased hung herself would not allow her to take her feet off the ground, and witness thought she must have drawn up her legs or “thrown herself sideways”.
Nurse Casey’s statements puzzled Morton somewhat. That Louisa had removed her stockings and had then bothered—given what she was about to do—to put her shoes back on, was strange, he felt. But then, no, perhaps not, given the state of her mind at the time. Nurse Casey—
He studied her name on the photocopy of the witness statement.
Her name wasn’t Casey at all. It was Carey.
Morton leapt up, hurried to his bedroom, pulled out Stephen Peacock’s second marriage certificate. Emma Carey. Occupation: Nurse.
Chapter Five
He was back at East Sussex Record Office, yet again. Three times in a single week. This, Morton hoped would be a short but informative visit. On his desk were two documents: HE 181/3 – Hellingly Staff Books - Female employees (1920-1938) and HE 116/2 – Hellingly Hospital Visitor Logs (1919-1930). Following his discovery yesterday evening, Morton had promptly phoned Gerald Peacock and asked the occupation of his mother.
‘She was a nurse at St Mary’s Hospital—just around the corner from where we lived. She started there when I went to secondary school and worked there until retirement in the late fifties or early sixties,’ he had answered. ‘Why’s that?’
‘Oh, just making sure I’ve got all the information that I need,’ Morton had replied, not wanting to reveal anything from the job until it was complete.
‘Have you found out about this looney first wife of my father’s, yet?’ Gerald had asked.
‘Getting there,’ Morton had answered, biting his tongue to stop himself from taking umbrage against Gerald’s description of Louisa. ‘And what was your mother like…as a person, I mean?’
Gerald was silent for quite a few seconds: ‘Strict. I think by today’s measures she would be called very hard as a mother, but people were just different back then. Anyway, stop worrying about what my mother got up to; I know about her, it’s this other nutcase that I want to know more about.’
‘Right, goodbye,’ Morton had said, ending the call.
He opened the Female Staff books first, finding that it was a similar ledger to the patients’ admission register, arranged in alphabetical order. He turned to those employees whose surnames began with the letter C. Surprisingly, there were two full pages of staff listed, which Morton meticulously checked. His index finger slid down the list of names, stopping at Carey, Emma. He had been right in his idea that Stephen Peacock’s second wife had been the person to discover his first wife’s death. And it bothered him. A lot.
Before he read the full details of Emma’s employment, he continued checking the other women with a surname beginning with C, just to be certain to eliminate the possibility of there also having been a Nurse Casey. But there was not. He returned to Emma Carey’s entry and copied out the brief details.
Name: Carey, Emma
Date of commencement of employment: 3rd February 1922
Nature of employment: Nurse
Date of termination of employment: 23rd November 1924
Conduct: Very good
Morton focussed on the date on which her employment had ended at the asylum, turning back to his notes, which he had made the day before. Emma had left the asylum the day after the inquest into Louisa’s death. She had given her witness statement, which had been received and questioned neither by the coroner, nor the jury, then had left her job with a very positive appraisal of her two and a half years there. But something just did not feel right to Morton. When he took his research as a whole, there were just too many irregularities. This was not panning out to be a normal genealogical research job, he realised.
Pushing the ledger to one side, Morton picked up the black leather book with EAST SUSSEX COUNTY ASYLUM etched in gold lettering on the front.
Inside, was a simple sign-in-sign-out log of visitors to the asylum, noting the name of the visitor, their time of entry and departure and the name of the patient being visited.
Morton skipped through to 8th June 1924, when Louisa had first arrived at Hellingly. He quickly found Stephen Peacock’s first visit five days later. He noted down the date on his notepad, then found the next visit, precisely one week later. A pattern soon formed: Stephen would visit his wife every Wednesday afternoon from 2pm until 4pm…like clockwork.
He checked every entry and noted down the occasional visit by Joyce Pengelly who, Morton recalled from the wedding announcement, was Louisa’s sister.
In August 1924, Stephen Peacock’s visits doubled to two per week. In September, they increased to four per week, some of them going beyond his usual two-hour stay. By November, there was no observable pattern to his visits; they had been haphazard and taken on a much greater frequency. With just this document in front of him, Morton could only surmise that Louisa’s mental state had deteriorated over the months leading up to her death, which was supported by the Medical Superintendent, who had attested that she had ‘…become manic’ towards the end. But something still didn’t sit quite right with Morton. He looked at the dates of Stephen’s visits once more. The final visit had been on the 18th November—two days before Louisa’s death. But—
Morton looked back over his notes and re-read Stephen’s witness statement, where he had claimed to have last seen his wife ‘…a fortnight ago last Wednesday.’ Not only was it blatantly false, he had actually visited her on five further occasions during the intervening period. Why would he lie? Unless he wasn’t actually lying. Morton couldn’t help but consider a different possibility: that perhaps Stephen Peacock hadn’t been there to see his wife at all, but rather someone else, someone with whom he would marry just three weeks after his wife had died: Emma Carey.
Morton needed some fresh air and space in which to think. He packed up his things, handed the two documents to Quiet Brian and left the archive.
Switching his phone back from silent mode, he saw that he had received a text message from Juliette: Jazz & Gin at the George Hotel in Rye t
omorrow night? J xx.
He replied, as he walked across the carpark to a bench, which overlooked the town: Love Jazz. Love gin. Love Rye xx.
He sat down, just as his phone beeped its announcement of another text message: Is that a yes, then? xx.
He grinned and responded: Yes, it’s a yes! What time? xx.
He held his phone in front of him, waiting for her reply. I’ll pick you up at 7 xx.
Great xx, he answered, pocketing his mobile.
With his notepad on his lap, he took a long breath in and tried to work out what it was, which was bothering him so much. It didn’t take him long. Really, he had known what it was for a few days, but hadn’t wanted to address it: his gut instinct was telling him that Emma Carey had something to do with Louisa Peacock’s death. Yet, he didn’t have one shred of firm evidence to support this theory; nothing but circumstantial evidence pulled from a range of sources.
He needed more proof, but what more was there out there? Gerald Peacock certainly didn’t have the kind of budget that would facilitate several hours’ poring over records, which may or may not contain reference to his father’s first wife.
He remembered seeing a series of maps of the buildings and grounds in 1914 from his Google Images search of the asylum. Opening his laptop, he repeated the same search, easily finding them again. First, he saved a map of the entire grounds and buildings, then he paused to look back over his notes to see specifically where it was that Louisa had been incarcerated: Female wing. First floor. Dorm B. He found a detailed record showing the first floor of the female wing, including Dormitory B, situated ominously close to the padded room.
Having downloaded the two maps, Morton emailed them to himself, so that he had them on his mobile phone, then closed his laptop and hastened to his car.
The Asylum Page 5