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chapter 6 133 many middle-claSS Victorians were worried by the squalor, immorality and criminality to be found in the midst of growth and prosperity. There were deep fears that the (ill-defined) ‘dangerous classes’ might sweep away the prosperity and civilization that marked out mid-Victorian society. The denizens of this ‘other’ world were described in demonic, almost apocalyptic terms, but who were the criminals of Huddersfield? What lives did they live? And what light do their lives throw on the nature of the economy and society of this expanding, prosperous mid-Victorian town? Contemporary fears of a criminal class threatening the fabric of society were misplaced. Many crimes were mundane – non-violent thefts – and most criminals were ordinary working-class men and women. In so far as they were habitual criminals, this was a product of economic insecurity and social marginalisation. They tended to be the ‘losers’ in society – the men and women, who for a variety of reasons, often beyond their control, were unable to make a living in a prosperous town that was at the forefront of industrialisation and urbanisation. Crimes of violence exercise a particular fascination. There are many studies of Victorian murderers but the pre-occupation with such criminals, especially when their crime was particularly gruesome, gives as reliable a guide to criminality as an episode of Midsomer Murders or Inspector Morse. Non-violent crimes against property dominated the statistics of serious (indictable) offences tried at assize or quarter sessions and, even among petty offences, assaults were a minority of the cases that were heard by local magistrates. In 1863, for example, exactly 5 per cent of all persons charged
Criminals or Victims?
134 beerhouses, brothels and bobbies with crime in Huddersfield were accused of an indictable offence. There were no cases of murder or manslaughter in the town; no robbery with violence and in the one case of burglary the thief had made off with a few bottles of porter_._^1 Superintendent Hannan, having served for several years in Middlesbrough, repeatedly stressed the absence of serious crime in the town. This is not to say there was none – there were beerhouse brawls that led to fatalities and manslaughter charges on more than one occasion – but these were the exception rather than the rule.^2 The emphasis in this chapter will be upon the less dramatic offences and those who perpetrated them. The men and women who became before the town’s magistrates and who, (on being found guilty) became criminals, defy easy categorization. Even if it were possible to establish accurate crime- specific gender, age and occupational profiles, such generalizations obscure important variations. As other studies have shown, there was no such thing as a criminal class – though there were people who relied heavily upon criminal activities – and there is little evidence of criminality running in families from generation to generation. Persistent offenders were a minority but even among this group heterogeneity is the striking feature. As Godfrey et al ., have argued there was ‘a continually varying cohort of individuals … rather than an easily categorized group of like-minded people capable of undermining the cohesion of society’.^3 John Sutcliffe, ‘The King of Castlegate’, Henry ‘The Burton Slasher’ Wilson and Other Notorious Local Criminals Although the evidence does not indicate the existence of a criminal class in Huddersfield there were a number of individuals, and their coterie of associates, who, while retaining a ‘legitimate’ exterior, were clearly involved in a variety of criminal activities. In the 1840s the most notorious figure in Huddersfield was John Sutcliffe, a Castlegate beerhouse keeper, the self-styled ‘King of Castlegate’.The 1841 census lists him simply as a beer retailer but he had a hand in a variety of illegal activities. His beerhouse achieved notoriety as ‘the rendezvous for thieves and prostitutes of the lowest grade’.^4 It was a centre for coiners, targeting nearby villages, while robberies were planned and some even carried out there, but despite a number of brushes with the parochial constables no charge was brought successfully against him. Such was his success that he was able to
136 beerhouses, brothels and bobbies Sutcliffe’s departure was not an end; rather, it opened the way for others to take over the mantle of most notorious criminal in town. The man who made the strongest claim in the early 1850s was Henry Wilson, also known as ‘the Burton Slasher’ or simply ‘Slasher’. A pugilist with a reputation for violence, who turned beerhouse keeper, he was involved in a variety of criminal activities. His career appeared to be living proof of the validity of local magistrates’ analysis of crime. During his mid-twenties, in a six-year period (1852–57), he appeared in court on some forty occasions. He was fined for being drunk and disorderly on five occasions, for fighting on seven occasions (including a vicious assault on a woman) and for gambling a further four. He was found guilty of seven licensing offences (including permitting gambling (twice) and harbouring prostitutes (three times). He was also found guilty of theft on six occasions, the sums involved varying from 8 s (40p) to £ and four further offences involving dogfighting, while he was also charged with passing bad coin and attempting to bribe or intimidate a jury. To make matters worse he was married to a well-known prostitute, who herself was involved in a number of robberies, and the beerhouse they ran, the Gypsy Queen in Kirkgate, was notorious as a meeting place for known criminals. Not all of his offences were petty. In the winter of 1855/6 he and his wife and associates faced two charges of highway robbery. The first took place in Moldgreen. The victim, Christopher Smith, of Jockey Hall, had been drinking in a number of beerhouses in ‘the bottom of town’ and was followed before being knocked down and robbed of nineteen sovereigns and sixteen shillings (£19-80) by ‘Slasher’ and two other men at the gateway to his house.^9 The second ‘garotte robbery’**^ took place in similar fashion but this time on Kilner Bank. A local butcher, Richard Poppleton, who had been drinking in ‘Slasher’s’ beerhouse, was followed home and robbed of £91 in gold, notes and bills. Wilson and three others were arrested and brought before the town’s magistrates. Identification proved difficult and ultimately only one man, William Pitchforth, stood trial at the York Assizes, where he ** The sensationally-named garotte robberies generally took the form of an attack from behind in which the victim was held round the neck. There were ‘moral panics’ surrounding such attacks – particularly in London in the early 1860s. See G Pearson, Hooligan: A History of Respectable Fears , Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1983, chapter six and Rob Sindall, Street Violence in the Nineteenth Century , Leicester University Press, 1990.
criminals or victims? 137 was found guilty and sentenced to eight years’ penal servitude.^10 Wilson was able to prove his alibi , though not for the first time there was a suspicion that ‘hard-swearing’ [perjury] was involved. ‘Slasher’s’ lifestyle revolved around drinking, gambling and fighting and, while he made some money from the legitimate beer trade, his income was clearly supplemented by earnings from prostitution and theft. He moved within a relatively small circle of like-minded individuals.^11 The same names crop up either as fellow spectators, attending (and gambling on) dogfights and footraces, or as partners in crime. The inter-relationship between these activities is well illustrated by a case from 1855 when Wilson and two others were charged with stealing £15 from Arthur Warburton in the Dolphin beerhouse, Castlegate.^12 Entertained by ‘Butter Moll’, the keeper’s wife, Warburton revealed to her the contents of his purse as he went to purchase cigars. Within minutes Wilson and two colleagues appeared and after some ‘milling practice’ by Wilson, Warburton was knocked into a corner and relieved of two £5 notes and five sovereigns (£5). The three made their way immediately to ‘Malley Pashley’ at Dogley Lane, where they spent the afternoon gambling away the money on a dogfight. Wilson led something of a charmed life in court, managing ‘to elude the penalties of the law’.^13 Nonetheless, he was successfully prosecuted on a number of occasions and it is striking that, more often than not, his fines (which could run to as much as £20 when costs were included) were paid immediately. Furthermore, Wilson had the money to ensure that he (or his wife) was properly represented when the need arose. Nowhere was this more clearly seen than when his ‘paramour’, Sarah Sutcliffe, was charged with stealing a gold watch from James Brook in Hull. Brook, a preacher amongst the New Connexion Wesleyan Methodists, had meet Mrs. ‘Slasher’, as the papers reported it, on a steamboat from Goole to Hull and was aware that she was married and her husband at home in Huddersfield. Nonetheless, he bought her a drink and a meal at a cook shop in Hull before retiring with her to an upstairs room in the Victoria Hotel. Meanwhile,‘Slasher’ took an adjoining room. Brook, claiming no immoral intentions but merely wanting a rest, was duly robbed. Brook later identified Sarah Sutcliffe, who was eventually tried at the quarter sessions, where she was defended by the well-known legal figure of Digby Seymour.^14 ‘Slasher’s’ reign collapsed rapidly and mysteriously soon after. By 1858 he was charged with being a vagrant and found himself facing
criminals or victims? 139 her, she gave him such a beating that he appeared in court some days later with a ‘shockingly disfigured’ face.^23 Not all violent men were beerhouse keepers. Daniel Gillerlane lived off Castlegate in Post Office Yard, and from his late-teens onwards, was involved in a number of vicious assaults. His violence might have been channelled differently had he made a success as a soldier but he absconded from the West Yorkshire Rifles, soon after joining as a twenty-year old in 1855. He resumed his assaults in Huddersfield and increasingly focused his anger on the police.^24 After one particularly vicious attack on Sergeant Kaye, the Leeds Mercury described him as ‘a truculent vagabond’ and the Chronicle as ‘a brutish-looking fellow’ responsible for several ‘savage attacks both on the police and other people’.^25 Also involved in petty theft he was imprisoned in Wakefield for periods ranging from one to eight months, but the theft of a purse in Tierney’s beerhouse brought him a sentence of seven years’ penal servitude.^26 Similarly Andrew Dearnley spent time in and out of Wakefield prison for a variety of assaults, but he was also involved in several incidents of theft.^27 Violence was not confined to the semi-criminal fraternities that men like Gillerlane and Dearnley frequented. George Dyson, on the surface at least, was a moderately successful man, a butcher, living and working in the Shambles; but he was a violent man. On at least eleven occasions between 1859 and 1867 he was found guilty of fighting or committing an assault. On four occasions the fight was with fellow butchers and another involved a lawyer’s clerk, who was bringing Dyson his expenses for a court appearance. His cohabitee was knocked down and kicked insensible in Kirkgate and he also threatened the landlady of the Bull and Mouth Inn with violence, though the threat was never carried out.^28 Dyson did not win every fight. Indeed, so badly was he beaten in 1865 that Superintendent Hannan withdrew the case against him on the grounds that he had been punished enough.^29 Acts of violence were very much a part of mid-century Huddersfield life. Some were unequivocally criminal but others less so. It was commonplace for working-class men (young but also old) to settle disputes with their fists. Although this could lead to a court appearance the ‘offence’ was viewed with ambivalence, unless it was a blatantly unfair fight. Another problematic area was domestic violence. It was commonly held that men had the right to physically chastise their wives, children and (if they had them)
140 beerhouses, brothels and bobbies servants or apprentices. As Victorian masculinity was re-defined in the mid-nineteenth century, such actions were increasingly condemned and prosecuted, though the provisions of the law were often woefully weak in terms of punishment. The town magistrates were increasingly vocal in condemning ‘the disgusting prevalence of the cowardly offence of wife-beating’ though the police were often reluctant to intervene, not least for fear that the fighting couple (and even neighbours) might turn on them.^30 Many cases were brought by the victims themselves, ‘praying for sureties of the peace’, and reveal the often wretched lives led by these women. Many assaults took place after lengthy drinking sessions and over many years, involving beatings and kickings, even strangulation. Furniture was broken, windows smashed and clothes torn, often before the eyes of children and neighbours. The economic insecurity of the women was also very apparent. Elizabeth Haigh, ‘like most wives was unwilling that [her husband Thomas] should go to prison’ but sought an escape from violence via separation and support for her and her children.^31 There was a clear class dimension to the condemnation of domestic violence both nationally and locally, but it was not simply middle- class magistrates and reformers who condemned ‘wife-beating’. When the co-workers of William Horsfall became aware of ‘his habit of severely beating his wife … they burnt him in effigy to show how deeply they execrated his inhuman conduct’.^32 There were other acts
- large-scale and planned thefts, for example – which were clearly criminal, but it is to a different range of offences and offenders that we now turn. Drunks,Whores and Beggars There was a growing demand for ‘order and decorum’ in public spaces but while the emphasis on civilizing the streets says much for largely-elite Victorian values, the cases that came into court also tell much about the lives of overwhelmingly poor, working-class ‘criminals’.^33 Working-class drunkenness was a problem that exercised the minds of many respectable Victorians (working-class as much as middle-class) and Huddersfield, with a strong temperance presence, was no exception. Letter-writers to the local press regularly condemned the extent of inebriety in the town and, in 1867, there was an unpleasant row among the Improvement Commissioners
142 beerhouses, brothels and bobbies window – drink and desperation were a powerful combination.^42 What drove people to excessive drinking is not always clear. There was a culture of heavy-drinking among many working-class men and women for whom it provided an escape, however brief or costly, from the harshness and apparent hopelessness of their lives. However, in some cases there was a more immediate and tangible cause. John Lunn was arrested for being drunk and disorderly in King Street (a second such offence in a matter of days) but it transpired that his son had recently been run-down and killed in Quay Street.^43 Mary Cryan was found drunk and smashing windows in Swan Yard.When she appeared before the magistrates the following day she explained that she had been deserted by her husband and that the windows were in to the house of a local prostitute, Mary Rowe, with whom he was now living. The magistrates thought the ‘circumstances sufficiently mitigatory’ to dismiss the charge.^44 As can be seen from the Cryan case, drunkenness was often associated with disorderly behaviour. Verbal and physical abuse in the streets was a recurrent feature. The involvement of men in acts of violence has been commented on and analysed extensively but less attention has been paid to disruptive women.^45 Irish rows were a regular feature of working-class life in Huddersfield and many involved women rather than men.^46 Many of the women involved were described as prostitutes (though in a number of cases this probably meant that they were cohabiting and not married) and it is clear that there was a significant number of women whose life experiences and lifestyles led them into various forms of criminal behaviour. Reconstructing the lives of these women is difficult given the limited and often biased evidence that survives. However, an analysis of local press coverage combined with the use of census material enables a picture, albeit partial, to be drawn of these women. Prostitution, the great ‘social evil’, was a major concern in the mid-nineteenth century, not least because of the frightening revelations about the prevalence of venereal disease among soldiers and sailors fighting in the Crimean War. Huddersfield was not a designated area under the Contagious Diseases (CD) Acts but there was considerable local concern about the moral and health threats posed by prostitution in the town. Technically, prostitution itself was not an offence but women could be arrested for being ‘lewd and disorderly’, ‘drunk and disorderly’ and for importuning. However, it is clear that the term ‘prostitute’ was used in a subjective
criminals or victims? 143 manner, labelling women who did not conform to mid-Victorian standards of female behaviour. However, matters are confused by the plethora of terms used – ‘fallen woman’, ‘unfortunate’, ‘soiled dove’, ‘member of the frail sisterhood’, ‘nymph of the pavé’ and so forth
- sometimes for the same individual. It is not clear if such terms were interchangeable or reflected some form of hierarchy based on the permanence, or otherwise, of the individual’s involvement in prostitution. Describing a woman as an ‘unfortunate’ or a ‘soiled dove’ suggested a degree of sympathy; calling her a ‘fallen woman’ carried a more explicit moral judgement while using the term ‘nymph of the pav é’ and even ‘frail sisterhood’ implied both a lifestyle choice and an ‘otherness’, apart from respectable society. Our knowledge of Victorian prostitution and prostitutes owes much to Walkowitz’s classic study, which exposes the inadequacies of contemporary explanations of prostitution.^47 Prostitutes, she argues, tended to be heavily drawn from the daughters of the poor; for many, particularly before the CD Acts, it was a temporary phase into and from which young women moved; and the motivation for becoming a prostitute was to be found in lack of skill/education and poverty. More recently, Lee’s work on prostitution in Kent argues for a more complex pattern of behaviour and has stressed the degree of agency exercised by the women involved.^48 To what extent was this the case in Huddersfield?^49 Press accounts were profoundly influenced by contemporary attitudes. Men were portrayed as the innocent victims of immoral temptresses. Many decent men might go into one of these [beer]houses with the best intentions, only to get a glass of beer as numbers of respectable working-men did, without knowing the temptation therein, but the moment they were sat down one of the girls was placed besides him; he was led to ruin and his family to destitution.^50 Accounts of arrests combined titillation and moral shock. Sergeant Townend proved remarkably adept at arresting women ‘in an improper position behind the Cloth Hall’, Detective Partridge caught a couple ‘in an act of prostitution’ while strange sounds led PC Worsnip to the shooting-gallery booth in Lord Street where he found Mary Ann Preston ‘with two men in a shamefully disorderly position’.^51 Even when the women are accorded their names
criminals or victims? 145 was a well-known centre of prostitution but she was very much the exception in Huddersfield.^55 Many of the repeat offenders clearly never escaped a life of prostitution, though there were a number of reported one-time offenders for whom prostitution may have been a short-term expedient. These broad socio-economic characteristics confirm the view that those women for whom prostitution was a longer-term option, were drawn from the poorest strata of society and lived lives of considerable hardship and danger. The complexities of their lives can only be fully appreciated by looking at specific case studies. In February 1861, under the sub-heading, ‘Shocking Death’ the Chronicle carried an account of the coroner’s inquest into the death of Isabella Taylor, aged thirty-nine, and ‘for a long time one of the frail sisterhood’. Her body had been found at the foot of the cellar- kitchen steps of the Croppers’Arms beershop at 7.30 a.m.one Tuesday. In tracing her last steps, it was ascertained that at 1 a.m. that day, she was seen struggling with a farm labourer, James Cotton, who was trying to drag her into the Rose and Crown dram-shop. That was the last time she was seen alive. The coroner’s conclusion was that having no place of abode, and knowing the beerhouse well had wandered there with the intention of going to the water-closet at the bottom of the steps and that she either accidentally fell down, or was pushed down by the iron gate which hangs only on one hinge and falls too heavily.^56 The jury, it should be said, also recommended that ‘the iron gate … should be put in a proper state of repair’. Nothing more was said about the woman but what little is known about her life is instructive. Born in Kendal in 1823, she had come to Huddersfield as a young woman, probably in the late 1840s. In 1851 she was recorded as being single, a lodging house keeper, living in Rosemary Lane. Soon after she was known to be living as man and wife with John Stock, who was fined 5 s (25p) for assaulting her. By 1852 she was described as being ‘of notorious bad character’ and was variously charged and imprisoned for importuning and theft from the person. She was assaulted on at least two occasions by punters as she eked out a livelihood from prostitution and petty theft. In April 1860 she appeared once again at the Wakefield Quarter Sessions charged with the theft of a handkerchief. Unfortunately, the grand jury threw out
146 beerhouses, brothels and bobbies the bill and, instead of being sent to the relative safety of prison, she was free to return to Huddersfield where she met her tragic death.^57 Equally instructive is the case of Elizabeth Long. She had come to Huddersfield from Cumberland (precisely when is unclear) and by 1851 was thirty-four years old, married to a man almost twenty years her senior, with a young child, and living in Spring Street. Three years later, and still married, she was found guilty of ‘being lewd and importuning passers-by on Sunday evening’ but she was discharged early from Wakefield ‘for behaving well in gaol and her extreme destitution’.^58 Later that year she appeared in court, labelled one of the ‘fair and free nymphs of Castlegate’, though the theft charge against her was dismissed. The following year, now described as ‘an impudent looking wretch’ she was sentenced to two months at Wakefield for ‘wandering abroad in Kirkgate … for the purpose of prostitution’.^59 By now ‘a character well-known to the police’, in July 1856 she became the ‘keeper of a house of ill-fame in Castlegate’ and later that year she was sentenced to eight months imprisonment at the Leeds Quarter Sessions for the theft of a sovereign (£1) from a solicitor, Thomas Leadbetter, in a beerhouse in Old Street.^60 In the next two years she appeared in court at least five times on charges of theft from the person. Now in her mid-forties, she was described as ‘a miserable looking dirty woman ... [and] a miserable specimen of depravity’.^61 Apparently still a prostitute (her ‘bully’ rescued her on one occasion) she was trapped in a life of criminality. In October 1861 she was sentenced to four years’ penal servitude for the theft of clothes and, almost immediately on release, stole a shawl from off a washing line. This time her sentence, at the Bradford sessions, was seven years’ penal servitude.^62 She was released on a ticket-of-leave and returned to Huddersfield, living in Duke Street. Her reputation went before her and she was arrested ‘for prowling about at four o’clock in the morning’, though the case was dismissed. Later that year the ‘unfortunate and returned convict’ was found guilty of the theft of 18 s 6 d (92½p) and, at the age of fifty-four, was sentenced to a further ten years’ penal servitude at the Wakefield intermediate sessions.^63 Other lives are even less well documented but the fragments point to very similar conclusions. Mary Ann Hilton was married to an ex- soldier, who was unable to find employment. Their relationship was troubled and she was assaulted by other men as well. ‘So frequently [had she been] committed to Wakefield that she could not tell the number of times.’^64 Like Elizabeth Long, her sentences lengthened
148 beerhouses, brothels and bobbies her living by selling a few needles on the road’, while Mary Ann Reynolds, ‘a miserable looking creature with a child in her arms’ was found guilty of begging from door to door.^74 In hindsight many of these cases appear to be nothing more than the criminalization of poverty but the magistrates could be more sympathetic. Mary Walker, a tramp, arrested at 2 a.m. in the company of two men, having ‘tearfully pleaded her utter desolation and destitution’ was freed on promising to leave town immediately.^75 Similarly, Thomas Kilroy, when charged with begging, received a caution but was allowed 2 s 6 d (12½p) from the charity box once he explained that illness had ‘reduced [him] to absolute want’.^76 Others were less fortunate. Jane Grey and George Berry were sentenced to seven days in Wakefield House of Correction for sleeping in a cart in Brierley’s Yard, King Street; Sarah Jones, a sixty-three-year-old seamstress, to fourteen days for sleeping in the open air, and David Beardsall and Robert Burns, to a month for sleeping in a tenter store in Armitage & Kaye’s Yard in Quay Street.^77 One of the most attractive places for rough sleeping, and therefore the most likely place to be arrested, was the lime kilns at Aspley. In 1861 James Green was given an hour to leave town (the alternative being a month in prison) for sleeping there.^78 It was a risky matter, especially as many rough-sleepers fortified themselves with several drinks. When PC Marsden went to arrest a drunk, ‘sleeping close to the mouth of the Aspley lime kilns’, he was unable to do so immediately because the man’s ‘clothes were too hot to handle’, but less fortunate was David North, a forty-year- old coal-heaver, who died as a result of sleeping too close to the fire.^79 These were men and women who, for a variety of reasons, did not have a permanent place to sleep, nor have the money to find accommodation for the night. As such they were victims of laws that penalised those who were the economic losers in a seemingly prosperous town such as Huddersfield. One final group of ‘criminals’ remains to be considered: suicides and attempted suicides. Again, it is difficult to categorise the people who fall into this group but a number of common themes emerge. Older men were vulnerable. James Dearnley, a weaver living in Northgate, hanged himself, three weeks after the death of his wife, to whom he had been married for thirty-eight years.^80 But Michael Boyle was only twenty-nine when he tried to kill himself in Old Post Office Yard, being ‘very despondent … owing to the faithless conduct of his wife who [had] abandoned him and left
Castlegate Old Cottages, Denton Lane
Spring Street Castle Hill (map)
Marsden Honley, Town Gate
