Birmingham’s Brewery Blacklist

So much of the history of crime focusses upon the interaction between the legal apparatus of the state – the police, the court room, the prison- and the behaviours of those acting outside of social and legal norms. For historians and enthusiasts of crime history alike, it can be refreshing and rewarding in equal measure to take a brief diversion and consider some of the extra-legal methods used to control and counteract offenders and deviants.

An intriguing collection recently released on the genealogy website ancestry.com The Holt Brewery Co. Ltd., Black List at the turn of the century shifts our focus briefly from the capital and ‘second city’ of Victorian England’s thriving empire, to another no less bustling but often historically neglected industrial hub of the country – Birmingham.

The 1902 amendment to the Licencing Act made it an offence for those identified as ‘habitual drunkards’ (those with three or more convictions for habitual drunkenness) to attempt to purchase, or to consume intoxicating liquids.  At the same time, this legislation left licenced premises and individuals liable to prosecution if they served alcohol to such individuals. Documents like the Holt Brewery’s Black list were created by local committees with the help of local authorities to assist publicans and licensed individuals identify and refuse service to local habitual drunkards.

This particular issue, created around the turn of the century contained the records of eighty-three individuals. Despite the abundance of Victorian rhetoric about the values of the fairer sex, thirty seven of these individuals were women. There are a great number of uses for a source such as this, and the information contained within its pages offers a historian a number of avenues of inquiries. The first and most simple of these may at the same time be one of the most interesting. What type of women might find herself upon the pages of a Birmingham brewery’s little black book?

Contrary to what we might expect of Victorian habitual drunkards – all of the women save two were employed – alcohol abuse affecting not just the down and out, but an addiction that could plight the life of regular members of a community. The women worked predominantly as factory workers  (metal polishers, press operators and the like) charwomen, but others worked as street sellers, dressmakers or laundresses.  The women on the brewery’s blacklist are of course all working class – this is not to say that Birmingham was unique in having no middle-class or upper-class women that over-indulged in alcohol, but then, much as now,  working class drunkenness took place in more public locations and spaces, than the middle-class equivalents who’s drunkenness took place more privately.

Eight of the habitual drunkards also worked as prostitutes. These were women who did not obtain their sole living through prostitution, but relied upon the trade as a strategy during  times of financial hardship to supplement their earnings, or as Judith Walkowitz detailed, as a way obtaining money that allowed them to be more active consumers – or quite simply, to provide ‘spending money’, be that on alcohol, entertainments or fashion.  Sarah Henson or Elizabeth Thompson (pictured below) may well have been such individuals.

Overwhelmingly, the women were in their thirties and forties, with only five offenders being over the age of fifty, and just two offenders being twenty-five or under. A real contrast to the modern day perception that it is youth drunkenness that blights towns and cities nation-wide.  Given that the majority of women were of an age where we might  expect them to have a stable domestic setup, it is perhaps surprising that eight of the women could give no place of abode, the reset inhabited either court dwellings, or lodging houses – where they would pay by the night to stay. Less than five of the women were listed as married.

All but ten of the women were listed as having aliases, most used one or two, but a minority had four or five. This is significant only in the link that can be drawn between the use of aliases as a sign of not only repeat convictions, but also perhaps a wider criminal career than just drunkenness. Similarly to this, thirty-one of the women had scars or disfigurements –the most sever of which was Kate Kibble who had lost an eye, or a minority of offenders who had severe scaring or had lost fingers. In general the women had mild facial scarring such as cut marks on the forehead or cheeks, and several had scars from broken noses. Such a predominance of facial scarring amongst the women would suggest that most had been involved in several violent episodes, be this street fighting, or as the victim of attacks.

Only three of the women had tattoos – amongst them the youngest offenders. The most interesting of these was twenty-five year old Alice Tatlow who not only had the initials (of family members of previous paramours) on her hands, but also pictures which may have related to either specific experiences, or more likely gang membership – such as clasped hands, a star, and the Prince of Wales feathers.

However, some were quite ordinary, Like Forty-six year old Mary Bayliss or thirty-nine year old Susannah Booton – who had few scars, no  tattoos, or disfigurements, who somewhere to live, and who worked as a charwomen. In fact, unless you got close enough to inspect many of the women in detail, as they went to work or passed in and out of their lodgings they were unremarkable and in many ways indistinguishable from their law abiding peers – That is until they tried to enter a pub, and that unfortunate page in the brewery’s blacklist reared its ugly head.

No Place for a Lady? Back to the Victorian Penal System

The reforms proposed by Justice Secretary Chris Grayling filled news headlines today. His objective is clear. To make prisons, tougher on inmates, and therefore no longer a ‘reward’ for those who break the law. The reforms that will come into effect later this year are predominantly aimed at male prisoners – the fate and consideration of their female counterparts left for another day. Historian Philip Priestley’s adage that ‘Prison was a man’s world; made for men, by men. Women in prison were seen as somehow anomalous: not foreseen and therefore not legislated for’ seems just as applicable in light of today’s announcement, as it does for the period he writes about – the Victorian. The reforms proposed today will in fact take place in many of the same institutions – and even buildings – created in the nineteenth century to tackle the very same problem ministers argue about today; Those most recognisable bastions of Victorian penal reform – Brixton, Pentonville, and Strangeways to name but a few.

The image of the Victorian convict prison has been enshrined in popular fiction and historical accounts alike. It is no doubt some of these representation that inform many of the ministerial decisions taking place today; A harsh unrelenting system of reform, punishment and self-reflection; An institution that brutalised the body to civilise the mind.

A short historical perspective has perhaps blinded many of us to the fact that when these institutions were created the early part of the Victorian period, the modern penal system (still in place today) was trying to make the experience of criminal justice, and undergoing punishment not more unpleasant for those at its mercy, but less so.

The ‘Bloody Code’ of the eighteenth century is a period in English criminal justice history that is in many ways more notorious than either its nineteenth or twentieth century equivalents. The iconic images of Tyburn’s gallows, of any local pillory, or the chaos of the infamous Newgate gaol help us to vividly imagine a brutal legal system so unlike our own.

The justice dispensed prior to the nineteenth century cared and catered little for the age, gender, or vulnerability of offenders, only for the perceived guilt or innocence of the accused. The corporal and (in some severe instances) capital punishment of children – for what in many cases could be subsistence level crimes  – is the most famed and unsettling legacy of this system. But perhaps more sinister even than that was the social and cultural experience of being incarcerated in a pre Victorian prison such a Negate or the transportation hulks. Gaols such as this acted not as institutions that dispensed punishment and strove to reform offenders, but instead of holding pens – a place to detain criminals until they could be brought before the court, or after their conviction until their sentence – to be whipped, transported or hung for example – could be carried out. These ‘lock-ups’ mixed men women and children together in a series of shared cells. The conditions of these places not only lacked basic hygiene standards, but ultimately left inmates vulnerable to abuse, exploitation and sexual violence. These were institution renowned for corruption, money rather than need determined an inmate’s experience.

Developing Victorian social sensibilities – particularly those concerning gender – saw traditional processes of the legal system come under scrutiny, and the institutions prevalent during ‘the Bloody Code’ give way to those modern penal institutions that still service the justice system today. These institutions aimed not just to punish, but to civilise, humanise, and reform the prisoners within. Whilst Victorian society had labelled women the gentler, weaker sex, and fully acknowledged their inability to withstand the same interactions with the world that men undertook, the prison systems of Victorian England catered little for the difference between male and female prisoners.

Alongside some specialised regimes such as the separate and silent system – where prisoners were discouraged from communicating with one another, so as to encourage self-reflection, and deter the formation of criminal friendships – most prison operated a points and class based system dependent on notions of rights, responsibilities, and privileges, much like the ‘new system’ Chris Grayling is suggesting currently. This system held the key to a prison inmate’s experience – what diet they were permitted, how regularly they were allowed to write letters or receive visits, if and when they were permitted to socialise, what work they carried out, and what money they might receive on leaving prison.

Sarah Jane Swann’s penal record indicating she was in the ‘Star Class’

Sarah Jane Swann’s points record for 1881

Other commonalities of the prison regime were the use of uniform to strip prisoners of their former identity, and long days of laborious work, to punish the body and occupy the mind – for women, examples include fourteen to sixteen hour days in the prison laundry.

Throughout the Victorian period, and well into the twentieth century, debates about Prison regimes, prison reform and the welfare of prisoners raged. With every gain made for better treatment of prisoners, staunch opposition was raised complaining of lessened deterrent for wrongdoers.

Yet the changes that did take place over the period were the real victories of the Victorian prison system.  Developments for female convicts included the education of prisoners, the provision of proper medical care, nurseries that allowed mothers to maintain contact with their children should they give birth in prison, and most importantly, refuges that acted as a stepping stone between incarceration and freedom  - striving to place women in employment once they were released.

It was the facilitation of a life outside of prison, that saw women (and men) most commonly cease to offend. It was by humanising them, not brutalising them, by offering hope, not despair, that prisoners could be turned back into people.

The Victorian prison system was far from perfect. Despite continuous reforms, it cannot have been a pleasant place to be – perhaps that is its appeal as a model for modern government policy.

Instead of looking back to the Victorian ‘golden age’ of penal reform and coveting some of the the worst aspects of this; the uniforms, the hard labour, the points systems, and the restrictive daily routines, perhaps it might be of more use to ministers to consider the wisdom of previous penal reformers and prison philanthropists instead. These individuals and organisations came to understand that it is by improving the quality of life and living for those most desperate and disenfranchised in society – those most likely to offend – that we reduce the rate of crime and most importantly, recidivism. No matter how unpleasant you make the experience of prison, until you improve opportunity and quality of life on the outside, there will always be inmates aplenty to fill the cells.

Are they not women and sisters too?

International women’s day – formally international working women’s day – is the yearly celebration of the political, economic, and social contribution of women over time and around the world. International Women’s day is also a valuable chance to raise awareness of the many challenges still facing women today, and an opportunity to promote a fairer, more equal society.

Should the recognition of women’s contribution, and the fight for equality, start and end with those who stay within the perimeters of the law? Perhaps when we look closer, a large proportion of female offenders both past and present are those most suffering from some of the legacies centuries of entrenched patriarchy have left.

In many contemporary perceptions (as well as some lingering historical accounts of the Victorian period), ‘criminal’ women often constituted their own, separate tier of society. In the minds of many authorities, and Victorian elites, criminal women – be they serious habitual property offenders, or low level public order offenders like prostitutes, or those convicted of drunk and disorderly behaviour – contributed nothing to the running or advancement of society. In fact, women who committed crime were considered in many ways to be worse than their male counterparts, they threatened the highly gendered social order of the period- and even worse, were primarily responsible for the physical and moral degeneration of the nation.

There are of course a small minority of WaywardWomen who fitted very closely to this stereotype. Those women who perhaps chose not to work, and subsisted solely by criminal means, and most particularly those whose violent and disturbing crimes seem to defy all rational explanation, or logic.

However, in stark contrast to these few cases, over three-quarters of the WaywardWomen were employed either before or during the period when offending took place. These women were the factory operatives, shop assistants, domestic servants, barmaids, and general labourers that helped to build and operate modern Britain. They were also the street sellers, laundresses, and piece workers that served the more fortunate in society. For a good number of these women, it was the failure of society to fully recognise these contributions (a problem that remains today) which in many ways determined their offending.

Cecilia Tierney (pictured above) could not earn enough money to feed herself, her elderly mother, and her illegitimate daughter Ellen, she held multiple convictions for theft of small amounts of food.

Most working class women in Victorian England were eligible only for the poorest paying and most menial of jobs in any industry, the best paying and most senior jobs would almost uniformly be held by male workers. Likewise, a failure to properly recognise the separate needs of female employees – provision for childcare being a major example – could also lead to some of the most troubling female offences.

Emily Church (pictured above), killed her eighteen month old daughter when the cost of child care outstripped her wages.

Most importantly, the sexual double standard that permeated most kinds of employment held many female workers to a higher moral and behavioural standard than their male colleagues. This double standard, could see a woman fail to gain a job, and even lose employment depending on the judgement of her ‘respectability’ and ‘reputation.’ Likewise, the number of recidivist women more often than not outnumbered that of recidivist men in this period because regaining respectability after a conviction was far more important, but much more difficult for women then for men.

Jane Colebrook (Pictured above) found it increasingly difficult to find work as a dressmaker after summary convictions for drunk and disorderly behaviour at the age of seventeen. Jane spent the latter years of her life working as a prostitute.

Of course we are right to acknowledge that in the past, as now, personal agency and choice must always play a role in offending. It is also right to acknowledge that not all crimes are a product of inequality, nor that everyone suffering at the hands of inequality will go on to offend.

Yet until we fully address the issue of a sexual double standard by acknowledging the role and contribution of women in every society, until we fully achieve equal rights and opportunities regardless of sex or gender, and until patriarchy rules no more, can we really be surprised if the historical outcomes of inequality – of which crime is just one example -continue to repeat themselves?

Les Miserables

Victor Hugo’s tragic wretch Fantine is perhaps one of the most recognisable representations of the evils of nineteenth century poverty.  Fantine, and the narrative she embodies are at present receiving unparalleled attention, as Hugo’s commentary of poverty, crime, hope, redemption, and sacrifice is once again presented to audiences around the world. The story of this unwed mother and her slow agonising slide into destitution has long fostered pity and outrage from those who read of her plight, or watched it play out on stage.

Victor Hugo’s Fantine

However, this narrative is all too often conceptualised as the extreme exception, a well-meaning and logical exaggeration of life for poor and desperate women in this period. Many of us, unwittingly or not, interpret this character as a cliché that incorporates all the unpleasantness of female existence in one experience, deployed as both a cultural comment and useful plot device. Few dwell on the more troubling truth that thousands of women throughout Europe experienced a sometimes life-long struggle with destitution, desperation, and hopelessness. Many of these women were perhaps less ‘worthy’ than the fresh faced protagonist of Hugo’s tale, and their experiences not the stuff of the stage or screen, yet it is them we should perhaps spare a thought for when we engage with Fantine’s story.

Bridget O’Donnell was born in Ireland in 1842, but like many thousand others, came to Liverpool at the age of just five or six as the ravages of famine swept her country. From almost the time of her arrival in the city, Bridget and her mother Mary were entirely reliant upon state support – of which there was little.

Census Returns of England and Wales, 1851, Class: HO107; Piece: 2177; Folio: 15; Page: 23; GSU roll: 87172-87174. (‘Mendicant’ literally meaning ’beggar’ or ‘reliant on charitable donations’)

By the age of fourteen, Bridget’s mother Mary had died, leaving her entirely alone in the world. Bridget was illiterate, and was poorly equipped for employment in Liverpool’s harsh labour market which saw female employment fall well under the national average. Prejudice against the Irish also disqualified Bridget for most domestic service positions – the city’s primary employment for young women. By the late 1850s, Bridget was undertaking several tactics in an attempt to survive. She worked on and off as a street seller, or ‘hawker’, selling a variety of things including fish and second hand clothes. Street selling was for many a last attempt at legal employment, the wages were menial – just a few pence difference between buying articles, and their subsequent resale value. It was also entirely subject to an individual’s luck on a day’s sales. Few managed to subsist solely through this form of work. Bridget was no exception; she also gained several summary convictions for petty theft of small articles like shawls. Between this period and the early 1860s Bridget also began to work on and off as a prostitute, apparently to supplement her meagre wages.

Although a short term solution to financial problems, living by prostitution brought its own problems. It was not only a highly dangerous occupation (Bridget herself suffered several vicious attacks), but also saw women regularly experience unwanted pregnancies, only adding to the struggle for survival.

Bridget’s illegitimate daughter (named Mary after her mother) was born in 1866, when Bridget was just 24. Sadly, unlike Cossette in Hugo’s novel, Bridget’s daughter was not cared for and protected by a wealthy benefactor, but was instead sent to an industrial school – an institution designed for the care of impoverished, neglected, orphaned, or abandoned children. The two did not meet again. Bridget’s life, and her way of making a living became a law of diminishing returns. Each arrest or term in prison saw her less able to perform regular or legitimate employments. The longer Bridget spent working as a prostitute, the less she was able to charge for her services.

Home Office and Prison Commission: Female Licences; Class: PCOM4; Piece: 69; Item: 5; P: 2.

Unfortunately, because life is not a novel, Bridget O’Donnell’s story like thousands of her peers, did not end happily. Suffering from both syphilis and tuberculosis, Bridget entered Liverpool’s Brownlow Hill Workhouse in her mid- fifties. She died in 1898, and her body was taken to a public grave.

There has been considerable debate over the interpretation of what Victor Hugo meant, when he branded the cast of his novel ‘Les Miserables’ – ‘the poor’, ‘the wretched’, ‘the miserable’, or ‘the victims’? Yet for many of the poorest inhabitants of the nineteenth century city it would appear that such distinctions are not necessary, ‘all of the above’ would surely suffice.

The Thin Blue Line

Much in the same way that many of us have developed two dimensional ideas about victims and villains, the history of crime and punishment has traditionally been presented to us as a story of two sides. The bad who commit crime, and the good who patrol the streets and suppress wrongdoing.

These notions have become particularly entrenched in representations and popular perceptions of the nineteenth century. Whether it be the fictional Sherlock Holmes tackling a cunning cat burglar, or the real life detective Abberline hunting Jack the Ripper through the EastEnd in the 1880s, a simple but persistent narrative tells us that these two groups -offenders and police- could not be further apart be it morally or culturally.

Yet in the harsh streets of Victorian Liverpool, the thin blue line between crime and those who policed it could be very flimsy indeed.

Image: Home Office and Prison Commission: Female Licences; Class: PCOM4; Piece: 56; Item: 18; P: 2.

Irish immigrant Honoria Boyle came to Liverpool in her early teens, and was married to Patrick Glynn, a fellow Irish native then living in the city, at the age of sixteen. Despite his poor and humble background, Patrick had been accepted to the city’s constabulary – most of whom in fact, were drawn from the ranks of the local ‘respectable poor’. Patrick and Honoria lived with their young daughter amongst a community of constables in the west of the city.

However , from at least 1879 Honoria embarked upon a  period of repeat offending. For unknown reasons, she began stealing trinkets, and small sums of money from the person of others. Despite originating from the right side of the legal divide, Honoria’s lifestyle had not been enough to keep her financially or psychologically satisfied.  Honoria’s actions culminated in a five year sentence for stealing an umbrella and a satchel in 1881.

Eventually, towards the end of her prison sentence, Patrick filed for divorce against his wife – a very unusual recourse for working class marital breakdown. Yet it was not Honoria’s repeated legal transgressions that drove Patrick to these extreme means, but his outrage at her suspected adultery with another offender from the area.

Patrick was, in fact, for many years, fairly complicit in his wife’s crimes (although never involved explicitly). There is the distinct possibility that many of her earliest offences were either undiscovered or unprosecuted on Patrick’s account. Despite his duty to uphold law and order in the city, it was only an insult to his masculinity that prompted him to end his personal relationship with an offender.

There were also police constables who went further than standing by and allowing crime to take place. Some officers transgressed the law themselves.

Irish born Sarah Palmer had for the majority of her life in England been firmly in the fold of old offenders, guilty of both property and public disorder offences. When Sarah’s only daughter Mary Ann was born, she too was inducted into a culture of crime. The family lived in the vice ridden north of the city. The particular illegal trade of the Palmer family was shoplifting or nocturnal shop breaking.

In 1878 at the age of eighteen, Mary Ann married local constable William James Newman. Within two years, William had come to realise that the Palmer’s illegal trade in stolen goods was far more lucrative than a meagre policeman’s salary. By 1880 he was helping the family to carry out crimes. Most notably he took a lead role in helping the Palmer’s and their associates break into a lock-up and steal a quantity of footwear worth a large sum of money. For this crime, William, his wife, and his mother in law were all sentenced to penal servitude.

Perhaps even more remarkably, after his sentence expired, William Newman, former policeman and convicted felon was able to take on yet another persona, becoming a somewhat successful ‘insurance agent’, and relocating to the relatively respectable area of Everton.

Although these are only two very brief examples of how the lives of those who upheld the law and those that broke it could be all too closely intertwined, it serves to illustrate a simple but crucial point. Offenders and Police Officers are not two separate types of individual. In the Victorian period, the distinctions between the two groups – of good and bad, right and wrong, just or corrupt – were in many ways artificial. In cities such as Liverpool, offenders and police could live side by side in both deprived and prosperous areas. Police and offenders might know each other socially – and even become involved romantically. Most of all constables and those that they sought could all too easily swap places, when times got hard, or temptation proved too much.

Like so many other areas of crime in the Victorian city, distinctions between ‘them’ and ‘us’ were difficult to make out for many on either side of the law. Unlike the celebrated legal champions of fiction, or the famed police heroes of posterity, regular constables were as capable of committing crimes or being complicit in the wrongdoings of others as any of the perpetrators they dragged into local bridewells.

Casualties of Crime

Although on occasion crime in the Victorian period can range from the bizarre, to the funny, to the outright unbelievable, offending was very seldom (if ever) a happy occurrence with a positive outcome.

There are, as we know, many different kinds of people that suffered from the effects of offending. A history on this topic will initially turn to the immediate victims of crime, those who have been stolen from, or have had violence committed against them. After that, there is an increasing trend to consider how offenders themselves suffered as a by-product of their own mis-deeds.

Yet historically there is very little attention given to the families of those who offended: the elderly parents who ended up in workhouses after losing the financial contribution of their offspring, and perhaps most tragically the young children who were abandoned to grow up in institutions.

Amongst the ranks of the WaywardWomen from Liverpool and London are numerous cases where the biggest victims of a crime was not the gentleman whose pocket watch was stolen, nor even the poverty stricken factory worker who faced three years in prison for the offence. It was in reality the lonely and impoverished children who were left behind.

The children of offenders suffered on two fronts. Firstly, life at home with their convict parents could be irregular. Their place of abode could regularly change, money was sparse, and schooling was all too often non-existent. It was a world where children were often exploited and mistreated. Secondly, in many cases, when a mother went in to prison, unless she had a supportive family network, her child would be taken into an institutions which did not always offer any more in the way of comfort and care.

Katie Donnelly was born in Milbank prison in 1874 whilst her mother Mary Ann Morris was beginning a seven year sentence for theft. Katie’s parents were not married, and her father James had only ever been an infrequent visitor in her mother’s life. Shortly after her birth, Katie was placed with her maternal Grandmother, Catherine Morris. However, elderly and impoverished Catherine was not able to provide the means to support an infant child.

Instead of placing her in an institution close to home, Mary Ann took the decision to place her daughter in a care home in Winchester – on account of it being the same home that a child of a fellow friend an prisoner was lodged in.

When Mary Ann was released in 1877, she made an attempt to reclaim Katie, and to provide a home for her. However, the stigma of her recent imprisonment meant that retreating from a world of petty offending in order to care for her daughter proved too much. When Mary was sentenced to another seven years in prison in 1878, Katie was returned to the care home in Winchester.

In 1884, the following letter was sent to the prison to inform Mary of her daughter’s progress:

Source: Home Office and Prison Commission: Female Licences; Class: PCOM4; Piece: 58; Item: 2; Page:28.

Transcription:

“Reverend Sir,

The reason you have not received a reply to your letter is on account of a mistake in directing, For i was in correspondence with the chaplain of another prison I sent your letter there by mistake. [. . . ] I am glad to say that Kate Donnelly is quite well and getting on nicely. She is a very nice child and I only hope that if her mother ever has anything to do with her again she will treat her better than she did before.

I am Rev sir, your obt. Svt,

E Pumfrey”

Despite Mary being released later that year, she did not reclaim her daughter.

With her father absent, and her grandmother dead, Katie was left to grow up alone in another county. It is unclear whether Katie returned to London as an adult.

Like Katie Donnelly, the majority of children who were institutionalised on account of their mother’s (and often father’s) offending were left unclaimed and un-cared for by their families. They all too often disappear into the unrecoverable depths of working class history.

These children, who turned into young adults fresh out of institutions at the age of eighteen did not fare well in a society that valued family and good connections above almost anything else. Only the lucky few landed positions in domestic service or an apprenticeship. As the children of offenders grew into adulthood, even if they had the resources to change towns, or the savvy to change their name in an effort to escape their convict routes, prospects were rarely glowing.

The fate of Katie Donnelly was by no means a rare one. The need to institutionalise the children of convicts was in fact so common, that special homes were created for the purpose. The example below is just one page of the 1881 census entry for Princess Mary’s Village home in Addlestone, Surrey, which house almost 200 children of convicts.

Source: England and Wales Census 1881: Class: RG11; Piece: 768; Folio: 86; Page: 25; GSU roll: 1341180.

As always, the landscape of the past offers valuable lessons for today. When it comes to crime and those who commit it, twenty-first century commentators are quick to condemn – and to offer a rallying cry of longer sentences, tougher conditions, and less rights for those who transgress the boundaries of law. However, whilst the victims of crime must be defended, and those who commit it must face a penalty, there is a fine line between obtaining justice, and implementing punitive sentences that create more casualties than they safeguard against.

The Fighting Irish

From at least the time of the ‘great hunger’ when tens of thousands of immigrants headed for the port city, the relationship between the Irish and ’native’ Liverpudlians was strained and easily agitated.

Cultural commentators were quick to denounce the Irish as a plight on civilized society, stereotyping them as lazy, drunken, and dangerous. The Irish were blamed for the majority of crime that took place in the city, and Irish communities were certainly policed more heavily than any other. Popular perceptions of the Irish failed to take into account the multitude of hardworking and law abiding Irish families present in Liverpool, and gave prominence to any story which confirmed negative ideas about this community.  Of course, this trend was endemic not just of Liverpool, but most locations in England where a significant proportion of Irish had settled, such as London, Manchester, and York.

Unfortunately, as with any large group of the population, there will always be a small minority who give ample ammunition for the claims others want to make about a national, ethnic, religious or cultural group.  For the Irish in Liverpool, this meant families like the McDermotts: Patrick McDermott – a dock labourer, and his wife Eliza (both from Co. Wicklow), and their children John, Elizabeth, Annie, and Thomas – all born in Liverpool between 1853 and 1860.

The McDermotts, like thousands of their peers lived life in the crowded courts north of the city centre or down by the docks; Paget street, Beacon Street, and Hedley Street.

Life for the McDermott Family was tough. Patrick’s work at the docks was casual, and his wages meagre. His son Thomas worked as a carter, another ‘unskilled’ and poorly paid occupation. Although daughter Ann had managed to acquire one of Liverpool’s rare domestic service positions, in general, Liverpool’s local labour market catered very little for women, both Eliza and Elizabeth were unemployed.

As for many families where money was sparse and living conditions were poor, the overuse of alcohol was rife. Whilst over-indulgence of alcohol was a problem for the whole family (with the exception of Ann who lived and worked away from home), it had the biggest effect on the women of the McDermott family. Drinking and unemployment lent themselves all too easily to anti-social behaviour and violence. By 1871 for example, matriarch Eliza McDermott already carried convictions for drunkenness, malicious damage, and assault. Through modern eyes, this might seem extraordinary, but was sadly common place for a small number of Liverpool’s population living in extreme material and social deprivation.

The McDermott’s chaotic lifestyle came to a head in November of 1881, when their eldest son twenty-eight year old John returned to live with the family after working away in Buenos Aries with the merchant navy.

On Monday the 11^th September 1881, around 8 O’Clock John McDermott returned home to the familiy’s court lodgings in Hedley Street ‘the worse for drink’. As he tried to procure another mug of beer from a jug on the table, his sister Elizabeth moved to stop him. Tempers flared and John began to physically abuse Elizabeth. Their father Patrick attempted to intervene, and Johns attack was turned onto him. John’s mother stepped in to defend her husband and was in turn herself beaten. John retired into the yard of the court where he met with his brother Thomas, also the worse for alcohol. The pair had a trivial dispute over the ownership of a waistcoat that John was wearing and Thomas attacked his brother. John was knocked onto the cobbles of the court floor whilst his brother retreated inside. Eliza and Elizabeth shortly went out to the court and began to beat john with shoes and a rolling pin, Elizabeth reportedly ‘smashed’ John’s head onto the stones of the court floor several times.

Neighbours later testified to this very public display of violence, claiming that after this, Patrick ushered the rest of his family inside, leaving John outside on the floor. A short while later when John tried to regain entry to the house, his brother Thomas again went out and began to beat and kick him.

The Liverpool Mercury reported that as John lay motionless on the floor:

The disturbance between the McDermott’s  lasted an astonishing three hours.

When police were eventually called to the court, John McDermott was found lying dead on the floor. Killed by a brain haemorrhage and covered in multiple cuts and severe bruising. His brother, mother and sister were all arrested and charged with his murder. Eliza and Elizabeth were eventually sentenced to five years in prison, their family unit quickly disintegrated – Patrick died when his wife and daughter were in prison, and Eliza died a few years after release.

Instead of focusing on the personal and cultural tragedy that this case highlighted, the newspapers were quick to condemn the degraded nature of the drinking, brawling Irish:

The example of the McDermott’s in no way confirms the broad and bigoted perception of the Irish population in Victorian Liverpool – any more than the actions of one person represents any group.  Yet at the same time it does provide a useful example of the behaviours and circumstances that helped some of the most derogatory stereotypes flourish. More importantly however, the case of the McDermott family indicates the severe deprivation and difficult circumstances in which excessive drinking and interpersonal violence were able to thrive. It was not ethnicity that caused the McDermotts to act in the way that they did, but instead poverty and social depression. A fact that was (as still is) often ignored in reports and representations of crime and anti-social behaviour, in favour of a two dimensional narrative of bad people and despicable deeds, based on prejudice.

On The Case

In their fascinating exploration of social history, Franca  Iacovetta and Wendy Mitchinson compared the work of a historian constructing a narrative from case studies and official files to that of a private detective working ‘on the case’. Whether the subject be prisoners, paupers, orphans, or soldiers, the historian must dig for evidence when there seems to be none, truth must be sifted from deception in the historical record, and the balance between an official representation and a popular perception must be sought.

Tracing Victorian England’s wayward women is no exception to this.

IMAGE: Home Office and Prison Commission: Female Licences; Class: PCOM4; Piece: 52; Item: 8; p: 2.

Mary Walters, a married, fifty-eight year old convict, was paroled from Milbank prison in 1883. She had been serving a seven year sentence for stealing a gold watch.  She had previously served a twelve month sentence for a similar offence in 1872 – but on that occasion her name had been Mary Edwards. No marriage between a Mary Edwards and a man by the name of Walters, or a Mary Walters to a man named Edwards took place between the two offences, so the alias was not a legal name.

No real clues as to Mary’s background or identity are contained within her file. She writes to no one, there are no notes left by the authority as to the character of her friends and relatives. The only hint of her identity is a name written in a box labelled next of kin. Mary lists a son, Alfred Horrace Whiting, the master of Bromyard  Union Workhouse in Worcestershire.

SOURCE: Home Office and Prison Commission: Female Licences; Class: PCOM4; Piece: 52; Item: 8; p: 1.

No record of a Alfred Horrace Whiting exists. However, clerks and census enumerators are as prone to creating an incorrect record as much as anyone – even today. By searching in the 1881 census for the Bromyard Union Workhouse(the nearest record to Mary’s 1878 conviction) it is possible to see whether Alfred Whiting is a transcription error, or a pure fabrication.

SOURCE: 1881 England and Wales Census: Class: RG11; Piece: 2603; Folio: 121; Page: 1; GSU roll: 1341627.

Bromyard Union was in Herefordshire, not Worcestershire, and its master was not Alfred Whiting, but thirty-eight year old Alfred Whitney. Thus we are able to assume that at some stage Mary’s legal married name was Whitney. Yet initial searches for a Mary Whitney born in1823 prove unsuccessful.

As the 1881 census record is the only link currently available with Mary’s past, the next step must be taken from there. Alfred Horrace Whitney is listed as being born in 1843, in Bridgewater, Somerset.  A single birth record exists to verify those facts.

SOURCE: General Register Office. England and Wales Civil Registration Indexes. London, England: General Register Office.

Although the year is 1842, and the name mistranscribed as Alfred Harris Whitney, without viable alternative, logic dictates that this must be the right record. Logic also dictates that the Whitneys may well have been living in Somerset shortly before his birth, at the time of the first census in 1841.

However, once again – no record for a Mary Whitney in Somerset in 1841 exists. The trail again goes cold.

The only listing of a woman of the right age and right location is a Caroline Whitney – Married to Thomas Whitney – a Surgeon. Although this privileged couple would seem unlikely candidates for the beginnings of a future convict, experience, if nothing else would teach us that it is a possibility.

SOURCE: 1841 England and Wales Census: Class: HO107; Piece: 967; Book: 5; Civil Parish: Bleadon; County: Somerset; Enumeration District: 4; Folio: 12; Page: 18; Line: 23; GSU roll: 474608.

The 1851 census for Caroline Whitney, makes her seem an even more likely candidate as the future Mary Walters. Although the family have moved to St Pancras, London (the Location of Mary Walters future offending), the birth dates and places, connect them with the Whitneys of the 1841 census – there is a match for both Caroline and her husband Thomas (although now working as a chemist) . . .   and even a match for their son Alfred:

SOURCE: 1851 England and Wales Census:Class: HO107; Piece: 1494; Folio: 559; Page: 2; GSU roll: 87824-87825.

There is just one linking document that can ensure fact from coincidence, and that can ensure that the Whitneys are truly the family of Mary Walters, the paroled convict from 1883.

The 1881 census indicated that Alfred Whitney had married a woman named Sarah from Sunderland, the same age as himself. His father, and father’s occupation would be listed on the marriage certificate – if this matches with the information already gathered on the Whitney’s from Bridgewater, the chain of Information will be complete. It will be possible to evidence that Mary Walters, was really Caroline Whitney – wife of a chemist, mother of a workhouse master.

SOURCE:London Metropolitan Archives, Saint Mary, Acton, Register of marriages, DRO/052, Item 020.

Having Confirmed Mary Walters identity as Caroline Whitney, only one question remains. How did a seemingly respectable woman, with a stable family end up serving a seven year sentence of penal servitude for theft?

Further evidence indicates that the answer is a simple one – a plight that we often credit as a scourge of the modern era. Drug addiction. Caroline Whitney/Mary Walters/Mary Edwards was an opium addict.

Her Husband Thomas shared in her affliction and the two had no doubt first gained regular access to the substance through Thomas’s work as a surgeon, and then as a chemist. Unfortunately substance abuse is very rarely conducive to a prosperous career and affluent lifestyle – from the 1860s onwards, both Thomas and Caroline were stealing to fund their habit – both served notable sentences of imprisonment under aliases.

By investigating the case of Mary Walters, rather than taking her information at face value, it has been possible to not only trace her true identity and origins, but also her path into offending. Information that a case file of prison records alone, simply cannot offer.

Little Hell

At the same time as attempting to investigate and reconstruct the life events and relationships that shaped the offending of Victorian women, it can also be vital to construct and understanding of the physical spaces and places in which these life narratives played out. A better insight into the locations of living and offending can really enhance how we consider particular crimes, those who commit them, and why they might do so.

The collection of streets immediately behind Liverpool’s main train station – Lime Street – offer a striking example of this.

The red lines on the above map indicate just some of the street addresses where working class brothels operated in Liverpool during the latter half of the 19^th century.

A strict policing strategy in the earlier part of the century had driven many brothels and sites of vice into the slums in the centre of the city. It was thought by many legal and political commentators that keeping the high concentration of brothels in this area was the only sure way to keep ‘’gay and disreputable characters’’ away from respectable people. It was felt that to scatter ‘’these people’’ out of their present haunts would be an ‘’aggravation of the evil’’. Thus whilst the high concentration of undesirables in these streets was a great source of anxiety to the city’s elite, to a large extent the multitude of problems in the area were left to stagnate.  The area became known to police and magistrates as ‘Little Hell’.

A previous post has already examined the lives of Minnie Wright and her parents who owned several brothels in this area, but there were many other women who ran ‘houses of ill-fame’, such as Winifred Curran and Margaret Gray.

IMAGES: Home Office and Prison Commission: Female Licences; Class: PCOM4; Piece: 71; Item: 3; P: 2. and Home Office and Prison Commission: Female Licences; Class: PCOM4; Piece: 63; Item: 3; P: 2.

This area was also home and workplace to also countless women, both young and old, ‘unfortunates’ working the rooms of these buildings. Some as young as twelve or fourteen – girls like Mary Rawsthorne.

IMAGE: Home Office and Prison Commission: Female Licences; Class: PCOM4; Piece: 50; Item: 1; P: 2.

The relationship between the men and women in these buildings were more often than not extremely exploitative. Many businesses in this area made good profit from the trade of human beings for money. The necessity for this exchange was caused by a mix of destitution, desperation, coercion and cruelty.  Many brothel owners spoke of the prostitutes in their service more like products and commodities, than people.

The maze of streets behind Lime Street station gave the suggestion of not just physical labyrinth, but a cultural one too. The streets in ‘Little Hell’ were busy, noisy, cramped, and confusing. Alongside prostitution, busy areas like this provided excellent cover for those looking to fence stolen goods, or pick up black market wares, in particular those running brothels might also use the chaos and confusion of busy buildings for buying and selling illicit goods. This area also saw a busy trade in the unlicensed sale and consumption of alcohol. Many brothels themselves doubled as makeshift pubs – they catered for both local people and a regular ‘through trade’ of sailors who sought entertainment as they came in and out of the busy port city.

Winifred Curran was one such brothel owner who catered for this clientele; she was regularly prosecuted for the unlicensed sale of liquor.

The unregulated sale of cheap alcohol and the complex interpersonal exchanges between brothel owners, prostitutes, customers and the police also meant that ‘Little Hell’ was the setting of a high number of violent crimes, and even robbery. The contradictory attitudes elite individuals had towards this area of the city made policing the streets, people, and businesses a very difficult task. For the most part, both formal and informal networks of crime and offenders were able to flourish there.

Lastly, although there is no close comparative in modern British housing, it is vital to try and visualise just how stifling the sights, sounds, and smells of this area must have been – and just how difficult, (even unpleasant) life must have been for those living and working there.

Many of the streets and buildings – very similar to those pictured above – were tall, close together, closed, and cramped. Like other areas in Liverpool where crime flourished, overcrowding was rife, sanitation was poor, and privacy was minimal. Those working as prostitutes might share a room with two or three other people. Sailors and other visitors would spill out of overcrowded pubs onto the streets; fights could quickly break out and escalate. The anonymity offered by the bustle and endless maze of streets made people reckless.

The streets and slums of ‘Little Hell’ have long since been demolished, cleared or drastically renovated. All that remains now of some of the most notorious streets in 19^th century Liverpool are the backs of warehouses, or long stay car-parks. Without a tangible reminder of the darker side of the Victorian city, it is all too easy to forget how big of a role habitat and surroundings may have played in determining how people’s lives and offending took shape and developed.

Shoplifting Sisters: Made in Chelsea?

A great number of the crimes carried out in Victorian cities were committed by the poor and the desperate. Some were the resort of the sly, and the opportunistic. Most of these crimes took place in back allies, slum districts, or busy thoroughfares – a far cry from the genteel areas of the city, where it feels as if the affluent had little idea of the horrors and hardships taking place just down the road.

The harsh realities of life for Victorian England’s female offenders can force us to confront and challenge many of the myths and stereotypes left behind by contemporary popular opinion and fiction. However, it is not just the realisation of immense hardships that have this effect. In some rare cases of crime, we are required to accept that female offending could come in the form of the unexpected, the unexplained, and the fanciful. These are narratives that appear to slide off of the pages of a Conan-Doyle novel – straight into real life.

In the late 1850 to mid 1860s, a spate of robberies occurred at several prestigious locations in London’s Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.  Rich silks from the best dressmakers in Hanover Square, fine jewellery from ladies boutiques, trinkets from the houses of the rich and elite, and scarves and gloves from the Burlington Arcade all went missing.

The culprits were not the figures that our pre-existing notions of female crime might lead us to believe. They were not a daring gang of street roughs perpetrating ‘smash and grabs’, nor were the culprits a band of separate but equally skilled thieves who travelled to the West End in search of rich pickings. Those responsible for these crimes were in fact home grown offenders – three “Shoplifting Sisters” from London’s opulent south-west. Emily, Louisa, and Susannah Bishop -or Julia, Ann and Kate Nash as they were also known- were siblings in their mid 20s when they started offending.

Mr Sleigh, a prosecuting lawyer in one of their three convictions from 1859 stated:

“This is not only an unaccountable, but most extraordinary case. The prisoners were the daughters of a most highly respectable person, now dead, who had given them education as ladies, and they were really not only educated, but accomplished women”.

In their many appearances in court, much emphasis was put on the fact that the sisters were under no pressure from want, and that they had no urgent necessities to contend with. Emily Bishop had been a house keeper to a peer of the realm, Louisa Bishop a governess, and Susannah, a lady of leisure.

A fourth Bishop sisters had means enough to found a school, in the hopes that it might keep her errant siblings out of mischief – but it was to no avail. The newspaper reported:

These offences committed by the sisters were not the result of chance opportunity or momentary whim, but a meticulously planned group assault. They had even designed special clothing for the occasion – a pillowcase ‘pocket’ in the inner lining of a dress, with a release mechanism that allowed unwanted booty to be shed onto the pavement in case a swift getaway was required.

Louisa, Emily and Susannah doubtlessly played on the same preconception both we, and their contemporaries had about female offenders. By using their ‘ladies’ education, genteel manner and respectable clothing, they convinced assistants, shop owners, and well-off acquaintances that it was safe to turn a back, or check a store room – leaving the them free to pilfer anything of worth.

Whether their offending began as a way to relieve the monotony of life middle class women often experienced, or if it was a genuine symptom of mental disturbance, the help and respite that the sisters clearly needed was not offered to them.  While after a gruelling three year stretch of penal servitude the Bishops offending did cease temporarily, it seems they were unable to stop outright. Louisa and Emily Bishop resumed their pattern of offending in the late 1870s and early 1880s receiving five years penal servitude, immediately followed by eight years penal servitude in 1883.

Despite the long periods of imprisonment disintegrating their family unit, and penal servitude having a detrimental effect on their health -as this portrait of Louisa from 1880 indicates – the Bishops seemed oblivious to the privilege they had come from and the senselessness of their actions.

Image: Home Office and Prison Commission: Female Licences; Class: PCOM4; Piece: 69; Item: 10; Page: 2.

A large amount remains unknown about the Bishop sisters : the provenance and exact affluence of their background, their motivation for offending, and perhaps most importantly  their ending  -whether they were eventually committed to an asylum, left to perish in a prison or a workhouse, or able to rejoin their family.

Yet their history provides and interesting (if clichéd) maxim that can impart a useful reminder of the nature of female offending – and the pitfalls of its study – as true today as in was in 1858: In our often frantic, and paranoid attempts to profile, avoid, and guard against crime it is all too easy to forget the dangers and futility of judging a book by its cover.