VICTORIAN WORKHOUSES: THE MEDICAL OFFICER

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I really enjoyed the first episode of the BBC’s new series of A House Through Time, presented by historian David Olusoga. Ravensworth Terrace in Newcastle is a beautiful Georgian house and the researchers and producers have done an amazing job in uncovering the stories of the people who lived there. I was particularly interested in the surgeon/doctor Nicholas Hardcastle, who was also the medical officer at Newcastle Union Workhouse. His competence was called into question several times; the first complaint about the non-treatment of children with ‘the itch’ (scabies) was made not long after his appointment in 1854. A more serious charge was made against him in 1887 when his treatment of scarlet fever patients was criticised; this led to Nicholas’s resignation as the workhouse medical officer but did not adversely affect his career in private practice or his other role as gaol surgeon.

When I researched Life in the Victorian and Edwardian Workhouse and Tracing Your Medical Ancestors: A Guide for Family Historians, I discovered that complaints about workhouse medical officers and those who looked after the poor in the various districts were fairly common. These men were publicly accountable and whenever there was an alleged case of neglect or incompetence, the guardians of the relevant poor law union undertook an investigation to uncover the truth. As it was a matter of interest to the ratepayers, local newspapers reported on the inquiries. You can read about cases in your area by searching The British Newspaper Archive.

Applicants for the post of workhouse medical officer and district medical officer needed a diploma or degree as a surgeon from a Royal College or University in England, Scotland or Ireland. In addition, they needed a degree in medicine or a diploma or licence of the Royal Physicians of London or a certificate to practice as an apothecary from the Society of Apothecaries of London. They could also apply if they had been in practice as an apothecary on 1 August 1815 or if they had a warrant or commission as surgeon or assistant-surgeon in Her Majesty’s Navy, Her Majesty’s Army or the Honourable East India Company prior to 1 August 1826.

People Queuing at St Marylebone Workhouse, circa 190. (Credit: Wellcome Collection)

The main duty of the workhouse medical officer was to medically examine the paupers as they were admitted to the receiving ward. If any paupers were found to be ill, he had to direct the master to send them to the sick ward; the medical officer would then oversee their treatment. He also had to decide if those of unsound mind were fit to stay in the workhouse, or whether they were too dangerous to themselves and others, and therefore should be sent to a lunatic asylum. In addition to these duties, workhouse medical officers had to issue medical certificates for every sick pauper, record the death of anyone who died in the institution and keep meticulous records regarding the dietary of sick paupers

The district medical officer also had very specific duties. He was to ‘attend duly and punctually upon all poor persons requiring medical attendance within the District of the Union assigned to him, and according to his agreement to supply the requisite medicines to such persons…’ It was important that he only attended paupers ‘with a written or printed order of the Guardians, or of a Relieving Officer of the Union, or of an Overseer.’ Like the workhouse medical officer, he also had to keep meticulous records for the guardians of the medical relief he had provided and make sure he informed the relieving officer of ‘any poor person whom he may attend without an order’.

Throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, the guardians of poor law unions relied on the workhouse medical officers to supply drugs for the inmates from their own salaries. This was an extremely contentious issue and medical officers often recommended extras like food and beer to provide nourishment for the sick paupers under their care. As these extras were part of the workhouse diet, they did not have to be funded from the medical officers’ own pockets.

Old Men’s Ward in a Workhouse (Credit: Wellcome Collection)

The main problem faced by medical officers for poor law unions was that they undertook their roles alongside their private practice and other posts in public service. Yet their duties were seemingly never-ending, leading to many cases of alleged neglect. For my books, I looked at the career of John McNab Ballenden who was born in Stromness, Orkney in 1813. The Medical Register records that he became a Licentiate of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow in 1847. He obtained his MD from the University of St Andrews in 1850 and became a Licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries in London in the same year.

It’s not known why John chose to settle in Staffordshire but he commenced general practice in Sedgley and raised a family there. The Medical Directory states that he had a number of additional appointments. He was a member of the Hunterian Society, a Poor Law Medical Officer, a Police Surgeon, a Certifying Factory Surgeon and a Medical Referee for the London & Liverpool Assurance Society. As a police surgeon, John was regularly called upon to offer his professional opinion about suspicious deaths and to carry out post-mortems, the results of which were reported in local newspapers.

John’s long association with the Dudley Poor Law Union began in November 1859 when he was appointed Medical Officer for the Upper Sedgley District (also known as No. 1 District). He had the difficult task of visiting paupers in their homes to administer medical relief across a wide, geographical area, at the same time as attending to patients from his own practice.

In April 1877, it was alleged that John had neglected his duties by ‘not having given proper Medical Attention to…Mary Edwards during her confinement’ and that she died as a result. The guardians suspended him while investigations were carried out. An inquest into Mary Edwards’ death confirmed she ‘died from exhaustion, consequent upon the weak state of the Heart, the laceration of the peritoneum and Vagina consequent on the cross-birth and protracted Labour’. 

John McNab Ballenden wrote to the guardians explaining his actions:

‘I prescribed some opium Pills, and gave a Saline mixture with Tartrate of Antimony, and left the case in charge of a midwife, to whom I gave the necessary directions, and told her if any alteration took place, to send for me again. Having had a very extensive midwifery practice extending over many years and amounting to about 9000 Patients, the case presented no difficulty to me, it was one requiring time, and medicine to allay irritation and help natural relaxation… During my evening Surgery hours I had been told that another Doctor was attending Mrs Edwards…’

If he had returned to attend to Mary Edwards, John had intended to carry out a craniotomy procedure, something he termed ‘breaking up the child’. He explained: ‘I would not when it is necessary hesitate to sacrifice the child to save the Mother…Any man of experience with common sense would say in such a case, use every means to increase the natural dilation and diminish the bulk of the object to be passed through’.

The guardians were satisfied with his explanation for not attending Mary Edwards a second time and his suspension was removed. He continued as the district medical officer for the First Sedgley District until 1894 when he resigned due to ill-health and infirmity, dying the following year. In his obituary, the guardians of the Dudley Union Workhouse described him as the ‘oldest officer of the union who discharged his duties very satisfactorily’.

Obituary for John McNab Ballenden, 1895 (Dudley Herald)

This will be my last post for a few weeks as I take a break over Easter. I will return to Victorian England in early May – see you then!

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VICTORIAN BOARD SCHOOLS: EDUCATING THE MASSES

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Like most things in Victorian society, the type of education children received depended very much upon the social class they belonged to. While sons of the wealthy were educated at public schools, their daughters were taught at home for a limited period by a governess. For parents who could afford it, there were ‘dame’ schools usually run by a mistress in her own home who took in a number of children. This service was similar to child-minding and children attending often learned very little, in many cases being left to their own devices.

Working-class children probably learned more at Sunday schools which were first introduced in the 1780s. For children who worked during the week, these schools provided the only education they received in literacy, numeracy and instruction in the Bible. 

There were also ‘ragged’ schools providing free education specifically for the poorest children and orphans. First introduced in 1818, these developed quickly after the Ragged School Union was formed in 1844. From 1833, children working in factories were to be provided with two hours of schooling each day, although this was not always adhered to. This was extended to three hours a day from 1844.

The Lambeth Ragged School, 1846 (Source: Library of Congress)

Education was also provided in industrial schools for vulnerable children, who were at risk of becoming criminal offenders, especially after 1857. In addition, child inmates in workhouses were given schooling to help them escape from the cycle of poverty.

Before the landmark Elementary Education Act of 1870, most schools for ordinary children were provided by religious organisations. The largest was the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor set up by the Anglican Church in 1811. It founded National Schools to teach poor children reading, writing, arithmetic and religion. By 1860, it owned around 90 per cent of all public elementary schools in Britain, catering for about three-quarters of pupils.

Another organisation – the British and Foreign Schools Society – was founded in 1814 and established British Schools on behalf of the Non-conformist churches. There were also other denominations running schools such as the Catholic Poor School Committee and the Wesleyan Methodist Education Committee. All these schools were established through public subscriptions, not through rates. They usually charged a few pence per week per child.

From 1833, the government started providing supplementary grants for schools; it was a condition of receiving a grant that annual inspections were undertaken. The standard of education varied enormously across the country, partly because the National and British Schools used variations of the monitorial system. Under this method, there was just one teacher in charge with ‘monitors’ drawn from the older pupils, who taught groups of between eight and twenty younger ones. This meant that very few children were taught by a qualified teacher. Huge numbers were not being educated at all because there was an insufficient number of places, especially in the cities. In Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool, less than a fifth of children were receiving an adequate education. It was impossible for the religious organisations to open sufficient schools because of the ever increasing population.

Waiting for Free Meals (from Living London, 1901)

In 1870, the Elementary Education Act was passed to address the issue. Under the new legislation, school places were to be provided for all children aged between five and 12 in a school run by a qualified headteacher. To achieve this, the voluntary religious organisations were given six months to increase their provision. After that time, in districts where they were unable or unwilling to fill the gaps, ‘School Boards’ made up of elected members were set up. They had the power to build and control board schools in their district which were to be non-sectarian and paid for by rates.

Education provided in these schools was not free and the fees varied between one and four pence a week. However, school boards could waive fees for parents who were genuinely too poor to pay. For many parents, sending their child to school meant the loss of an income for the family, so attendance continued to be sporadic especially at certain times of the year such as harvest or the hop-picking season.

In the new board schools, the use of pupil-teachers was the preferred teaching method. Under this system, older boys and girls over the age of 13 were apprenticed as pupil-teachers to assist in class and after five years, they could become teachers themselves following further training.

What was it like for a child to attend a board school? The day usually ran from 9am to 12 noon, followed by a break for two hours when most children went home for a meal. The afternoon session started at 2pm and finished between 4 and 5pm, depending on the season. In addition to reading, writing, arithmetic and some religious instruction, other activities might include singing, physical training in the form of drill exercises or the ‘object lesson’, which was especially useful for teaching science. Classes were large and more than 100 children could be taught in one room.

Paper and ink were expensive so most work was done on slates. Daisy Cowper attended school in Liverpool in the 1890s. She recalled: “One horrid thing about those days was the use of slates…it was disgusting to see them being cleaned by spitting and rubbing with a slate-rag; if no slate-rag was to hand, the bare wrist would serve!” *

Afternoon Assembly (from Living London, 1901)

Between 1862 and 1897, children were subjected to the ‘payment by results’ system. This was brought in to raise standards and schools could lose part of their grants if insufficient children attained the expected grades in the three Rs. They also needed to show a satisfactory level of attendance. Schools were tested annually by a government inspector, which was stressful for both teachers and pupils.

Originally introduced under the Revised Code of Regulations in 1862 and revised again in 1872, there were six Standards of Education relating to reading, writing and arithmetic through which children were meant to progress. For example, in Standard III, pupils were expected to read a short paragraph from a more advanced reading book, write a sentence slowly dictated once by a few words at a time from the same book, and to carry out long division and compound rules relating to money.

Children could not, for instance, be promoted to Standard IV if they failed to pass the criteria for Standard III. Many children left school without having attained Standard VI, which is unsurprising given the problems associated with sporadic attendance. The Standards roughly corresponded to ages between seven and 12.

Charles Cooper attended Walton School in the West Riding of Yorkshire in the 1870s and 1880s:

“It was a cruel system…Children were not regarded as mentally deficient. The idea was that every child could do the work if he tried hard enough. And he was made to try by threat of punishment. For reading, the same books were used year after year until they were ready to fall to pieces…For writing, Copy Books were used and the correct holding of the pen was insisted upon…Blots and finger marks were punishable by cane…In arithmetic the addition and subtraction of simple figures came first and more difficult examples were gradually introduced…this type of work included boys and girls, but in the afternoons when the girls were sewing, the boys would work from cards.” *

‘Payment by results’ placed undue emphasis on the three Rs at the expense of everything else. It was watered down slightly from 1871 when grants could be awarded for passes in ‘specific’ subjects in higher Standards including history, geography and geometry. From 1875, these grants were extended to passes in ‘class’ subjects across the Standards such as history, geography, grammar and needlework for girls.

Charles Cooper’s school “consisted of one large room, with no partition or classrooms, in which upwards of a hundred boys and girls were taught in Standards 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 by the Head Master and two Pupil Teachers, in mixed classes…Opposite the school, across the road, was a laundry used for training poor and needy girls…A part of the laundry was used by the Infants. Here the Infants and Standard 1 were taught by a Mistress, assisted by a girl from the Orphanage.”

Discipline was harsh in Victorian schools and the cane was regularly used to punish even slight misdemeanours. Daisy Cowper remembered a headmistress who “would bring her beastly cane on the palms, one on each hand, with such a full-arm action and sickening thwack that I was terrified that the hand would drop off at the wrist, and lie there, cut off, on the floor! I could easily have been sick!” *

Playtime (from Living London, 1901)

The Elementary Education Act was particularly successful in London where between 1870 and 1902, over 400 new board schools were opened. However, nationally, by the end of the nineteenth century, more children still attended denominational schools than board schools. In 1895, there were 2.4 million at voluntary schools and 1.9 million at board schools.

Education was still not compulsory so sporadic attendance remained an issue. Nor was it free, so it was difficult for poor families to send their children to school. It was not until 1880 that education was made compulsory for children up to the age of 10; the school leaving age was raised to 11 in 1893 and to 12 in 1899. The ‘school penny’ was finally abolished in 1891, making education free for all who attended public elementary schools.

*Extracts from the memoirs of Daisy Cowper and Charles Cooper can be found in John Burnett’s Destiny Obscure (see the Books & Resources page).

VICTORIAN HOSPITALS: DEADLY INFECTIONS

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Victorian England was a dangerous place to live, especially in the bustling towns and cities. There was a potential accident around every corner, for instance, being run over by a cart or falling from a horse, or being burned or scalded at home when clothing caught fire or a pot of boiling water was knocked over.

In the 1840s, with the increasing amount of building work going on in urban areas, the number of accidents rose. Railways, docks and collieries were also extremely hazardous. In the mills and factories, workers could easily lose a limb or be killed if they became caught up in unfenced machinery. Injuries were also prevalent in manual occupations. A labourer could sustain a crushed hand or finger after carrying (and dropping) a heavy load; the same risk applied to a waggoner unloading goods from a cart.

Anyone injured in a serious accident would be taken to the nearest general hospital for surgical treatment, but that wasn’t necessarily a good thing before the 1880s. That’s because a 35% post-operative death rate was usual at this time. For an operation such as amputation at the thigh, this death rate was as high as 65%. ‘Hospital diseases’ such as hospital gangrene, erysipelas (also known as St Anthony’s Fire) and pyaemia were deadly killers.

The Mellish Ward at The London, 1901

In 1861, 42% of deaths after amputations at Guy’s Hospital in London were a direct result of pyaemia. The name of the disease literally means ‘pus in the blood’, it being a form of blood poisoning caused by the spread of pus-forming bacteria in the bloodstream. The infection could spread rapidly in a hospital ward as miasmatic material could infect one patient while their emanations could infect other patients in the ward. The disease had a very distinct ‘sweet’ smell.

Erysipelas, an infection that caused red patches on the skin, and hospital gangrene were an ever present threat to patients in the 1860s and 1870s. Nathaniel Paine Blaker, a surgeon at the Sussex County Hospital recalled that in the autumn of 1864,

“these diseases raged to such an extent that fourteen or fifteen patients, and also the head nurse, died in the male accident-ward in one week. The disease usually came on suddenly [in] …a patient with a wound…apparently going on well [who] was reported to have a rigor. This was followed by fever (there were no clinical thermo-meters in those days), restlessness, loss of appetite and perhaps vomiting. In a short time the parts round the wound became red, hot and swelled, and in a few hours gangrene commenced in a small spot and spread rapidly…”

A seemingly insignificant event could result in death from pyaemia. On a Saturday night in March 1864, George Milton, a fifty-two-year old domestic servant from Glasgow, ‘had his thumb seized by a drunken man who bent it back till it forced the lower end of the second phalanx through the skin & caused compound dislocation of it’. George was admitted to Glasgow’s Royal Infirmary and the House Surgeon ‘took off [the] lower end of bone of phalanx & replaced it’. By 14 March, erysipelas of the forearm had set in and two weeks later, the unit joint was affected with George’s general health suffering. The whole of his left forearm was put up in a poultice. On 30 March, it was decided to amputate the limb below the elbow joint under the influence of chloroform.  Although George ‘appeared to rally a little after the operation [he] took rigor several times during the day and sank, complaining of stiffness & pain of his joints, his breath [had] a faint odour resembling that in pyaemia’.  George died on 4 April, just over a month after his thumb had been injured.

The surgical building (the Lister Ward) at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary before demolition, 1924. Credit: Wellcome Collection

Given the high death rates after operations (which through word of mouth and newspapers patients would have been aware of), it’s no wonder that hospital registers record a significant number of patients refusing treatment and leaving voluntarily. Frederick Treves, a surgeon at The London recalled the surgical wards in the 1870s:

“The poor had a terror of it, which was not unjustified, and many an hour I spent merely trying to persuade patients to come in for treatment.  Operation results were not encouraging and the general public knew it.  I remember the whole of Talbot [ward] being decimated by hospital gangrene.  Every man died with the exception of two who fled the building.  There was only one sponge in the ward and with that deadly instrument the nurse… washed every wound in the evening using, not only the same sponge, but the same basin and the same water!…Maggots in a wound were regarded as part of the normal fauna of a hospital ward and called for no particular comment.”

Hospitals tried a wide variety of methods to address the increasing mortality rates. They included white-washing walls, removing privies from wards, separating medical and surgical patients, building new wards to allow more cubic space per patient, instigating new ventilation systems, and trying to prevent contaminated air entering the wards. Beds and wards were also disinfected with chemicals such as carbolic acid. 

Wounds had been treated with wine and vinegar acting as antiseptics for centuries and various post-operative and post-accident dressings were used to assist the healing process, including nitric acid, arsenic and tincture of iodine. Unfortunately, no-one yet understood the link between germs and infections, or that the surgical staff themselves could be the source. Surgeons and their assistants operated in blood-spattered street clothes with unsterile wooden-handled instruments, without changing between patients or using face masks or gloves.

Joseph Lister put forward his theory of antisepsis while working as a surgeon at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary. He concurred with Louis Pasteur’s argument that germs were airborne, carried on dust particles, and that they could be removed from the air by filtration, heat or other means. After hearing of the effectiveness of carbolic acid in disinfecting sewage in Carlisle, Lister decided to use the chemical as a filter between the air and open wounds. 

On 12 August 1865, Lister undertook his first trial of carbolic acid on eleven-year-old James Greenlees, whose left leg had been run over by a cart. Lister dressed a compound fracture of the tibia with lint soaked in linseed oil and carbolic acid, and kept the dressing in place for four days. The wound healed perfectly and James walked out of the hospital six weeks later.

In 1867, Lister wrote about his antiseptic methods and the germ theory in the Lancet but most surgeons saw antisepsis simply as a new type of wound dressing which involved carbolic acid, and they only adopted parts of it. Other surgeons, such as George Callender at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, developed their own effective means of combating sepsis which were less time-consuming and cumbersome. Many still believed that infections occurred spontaneously in wounds, not through bacteria.

Use of the Lister carbolic spray in antiseptic surgery, 1882. Credit: Wellcome Collection

By 1871, Lister had introduced the carbolic acid spray and gauze elements to his method. However, it was not widely used until the late 1870s and it did not kill air-borne micro-organisms. Although Lister religiously used his antisepsis techniques, he did not scrub his hands, simply rinsing them in carbolic solution, and he operated in his street clothes. 

Lister’s antiseptic theories were more widely accepted after 1877 when he became Professor of Clinical Surgery at King’s College, London. He continued to adapt his methods, abandoning the cumbersome spray in 1887, and by the 1890s, cleanliness and the germ theory became part and parcel of the practice of asepsis to exclude germs from wards and operating theatres.

The bacteria which caused surgical infections were identified by the 1880s and it was now known that they could be destroyed with antiseptics like carbolic. Hospitals strove for absolute cleanliness to prevent infections and crucially, this included medical and surgical instruments. As early as 1874, Louis Pasteur had suggested placing medical instruments in boiling water and passing them through a flame to sterilise them. In 1881, Robert Koch advocated the heat sterilisation of instruments but this method was not widely used until the 1890s. 

Hugh Lett, a medical student at The London in 1896 described the procedures undertaken before surgery:

“Instruments and ligatures were boiled and placed in a tray of carbolic lotion, and before long on a sterile towel, and handed to the surgeon…Rubber gloves were still unknown, the preparation of the surgeon’s hands [were] therefore formidable; prolonged scrubbing with soap and Lysol, followed by soaking in carbolic lotion, and finally immersion for some minutes in a solution of biniodide of mercury in spirit.  Further, during the operation the surgeon frequently dipped his hands into a solution of carbolic.”

By the 1890s, hospitals were no longer feared by the public. The new antiseptic and aseptic techniques, and a better understanding of how deadly hospital diseases were transmitted, led to a significant reduction in post-operative death rates. 

VICTORIAN FOOD: POISONOUS BATH BUNS

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Buying food today is a straightforward process. Products are made under strict hygiene standards, the ingredients are usually clearly labelled and the origin of the product is named. In Victorian England, it was far more hazardous. The problem was that nothing was as it seemed because almost every kind of food was adulterated in some way.

From bread, pickled fruits and vegetables through to sweets, cakes, cheese and butter – they were all adulterated. This meant that foods were being bulked up with other additives to increase the shopkeepers’ profit margins. Every time the Victorians went shopping, they were being sold adulterated food. Even worse, this could pose serious risks to their health.

Potatoes, ground bones, plaster of Paris, lime and pipe-clay were often added to bread, as was sulphate of copper and alum. Alum was used in the dyeing and tanning industry, and it increased the weight of bread and added whiteness. Although it wasn’t poisonous in itself, it caused severe indigestion and constipation.

‘The Great Lozenge Maker’ from Punch (1858

Even more deadly were the poisons that were routinely added to sweets and other confectionery to make them more colourful and attractive. Chromate of lead created a deep yellow but caused lead poisoning; the more times it was ingested, the more serious the results. Red sulphuret of mercury (vermilion) produced a bright orange-red hue but was known to be a dangerous poison, while green sweets were usually coloured with verdigris (copper acetate) which was a highly poisonous salt.

In 1858, the use of poisons as additives in sweets became headline news. In Bradford, twenty people died and more than 200 others became ill after eating sweets that had been accidentally laced with arsenic during the making process, instead of harmless ‘daft’ (usually plaster of Paris).

A year later, another less well-known poisoning scandal hit the headlines. I wrote briefly about the case of the poisonous Bath buns a few years ago for the British Newspaper Archive blog. But the story is worth re-telling in greater detail. In December 1859, six boys from a boarding school in Clifton, near Bristol bought some Bath buns from the shop of a confectioner named Farr. Within half an hour of eating them, they fell violently ill ‘with a horrible sickness and other symptoms of irritant poison’. The quick thinking of a doctor in using emetics to empty their stomachs meant that five of the boys soon recovered.

A confectioner’s shop in Spalding, Lincolnshire (circa 1907)

But for one of the boys, the poisoning almost proved fatal. He had been greedier than the others and had eaten three of the buns. He remained ‘writhing in agony for a number of hours and fell into a state of collapse’. Luckily, he eventually recovered. The schoolboys were not the only people affected by this batch of Bath buns. A publican called May also bought some for himself and his brother, and they ‘likewise suffered horrid tortures’ for nine hours. When he got better, May complained to the magistrates but as he had not been poisoned outright, there was no case to answer. Had he died, a manslaughter case might have been brought.

Preliminary investigations revealed that Farr regularly coloured the buns with chromate of lead without being aware of its dangers, and at first it was supposed that this time he had carelessly used too much. However, when the buns were analysed by Doctor Frederick Griffin of the Bristol School of Chemistry, it was discovered that the colouring matter was, in fact, yellow sulphide of arsenic in the proportion of six grains to each bun. It turned out that in this instance, the druggist had mistakenly supplied Farr with sulphide of arsenic, a much more deadly poison than the slower-acting chromate of lead. No action was taken against the confectioner or the druggist because the poisoning was accidental.

Doctor Griffin wrote to The Times, arguing that ‘many of the obscure chronic and dyspeptic complaints now so prevalent are due to the systematic adulteration of articles of food with unwholesome or slowly poisonous materials’. This was probably also the reason for the large numbers of adverts in Victorian newspapers offering indigestion remedies.

Dr Jenner’s Absorbent Powder for Indigestion Heartburn and Acidity (Credit: Science Museum, London)

In 1868, the Pharmacy Act was passed, after which only qualified pharmacists and druggists could sell poisons and dangerous drugs. Unfortunately, until 1875, there still remained very little control over the food and drink sold to the public. Although the first Act for Preventing the Adulteration of Articles of Food or Drink was passed in 1860, it had very little effect. In 1872, an amended Adulteration of Food, Drink and Drugs Act came into force, which included the mandatory appointment of public analysts. A second select committee was set up and its findings formed the basis of the Sale of Food and Drugs Act (1875).

Under this legislation, inspectors had the power to sample food and drugs, and to test them for adulteration. There was a further amendment to the Act in 1879, followed by the Margarine Act (1887) and finally, the Food Adulteration Act (1899). From the late 1880s and early 1890s, there were an increasing number of prosecutions for food adulteration, as reported in the local and national newspapers. This was the beginning of the trading standards legislation we take for granted today.

THE VICTORIAN HORSE-DRAWN OMNIBUS

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For the Victorian middle classes living in towns and cities, the preferred method of transport to commute to work or to go shopping was the omnibus (or ‘bus for short).  Inside, there was usually room for five people on each side, and there was straw on the floor to keep the passengers’ feet warm and dry. But this quickly got wet and dirty, and it also harboured fleas. Although the seats were covered in blue velvet, they were definitely not luxurious. The omnibuses were notoriously stuffy and poorly ventilated inside, with no air except when the door was opened. 

Inside the omnibus, passengers were tightly wedged in and there was a painful jolt every time the vehicle stopped. Sitting so close together made omnibuses a magnet for pickpockets and there was also a very serious risk of catching an infectious disease.

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‘Any Gentleman Oblige a Lady?’ from Cassell’s Family Magazine (1885)
 
For these reasons, men preferred to sit on the knifeboard of the omnibus, located on the roof. There were small ledges on which to step to reach the ‘knifeboard’, a raised partition along the middle with seats on each side. It was rare for women to venture up there as it was so difficult to get on and off wearing a cumbersome skirt or crinoline.

If you’re interested in Victorian social history, the memoirs of Molly Hughes (M V Hughes) are well worth seeking out (see Books and Resources). In A London Child of the 1870s (1934), she describes a secret adventure with her brothers in which she went on the mysterious roof of an omnibus for the first time:

‘If I had been asked to a royal ball I couldn’t have been more excited… Dym went up first, then hung down and pointed out the tiny ledges on which I had to put my feet, stretching out his hands to pull me up, while Barnholt fetched up the rear in case I slipped. On the top was what they called the knifeboard…How people stuck on to them I couldn’t imagine. But the boys had other designs: they scrambled down on to the seat in front, by the driver, and got me there too… I was safely tucked in between him and Dym, with Barnholt on his other side.

How powerful the horse looked from this point of view, how jolly to hear the chucklings and whoas, and to see the whip flourished about, but only gently touching the horse. “I never whips old Rosy,” the driver told me. “She’s been with me six years and knows what I want. I use the whip like chatting to her.” …Barnholt, as look-out man, kept calling my attention to things in the shops, and to people doing mysterious jobs in first-floor windows. One room was a nursery, where a boy was riding on a rocking-horse, and in one garden we passed there was a swing with a boy going very high.

We feared to go the whole length of our twopenny ride in case we should be late for tea, so we asked the driver to pull up for us. In my haste to show him how well I could get off by jumping down to Dym in front, I fell right into the muddy street. But no harm was done, and the boys picked me up, and we ran home as fast as we could and slipped in at the back door.’

‘Omnibus Driver’ from Living London (1901)
The knifeboard design was replaced by the ‘garden seat’ omnibus in the 1880s, which had a curved staircase at the rear leading to the top deck. This made it easier for both sexes to access the roof as there was a central gangway, with benches facing the way the passengers were going. There were also ‘decency’ or ‘modesty’ boards on the top deck to give some protection from the weather and to prevent people passing from seeing the ladies’ ankles!

‘London Bridge Station Yard’ from Living London (1901)

 

 

 

VICTORIAN SERVANTS SPEAK OUT

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After a lengthy break, I’m relaunching my A Visitor’s Guide to Victorian England blog on a more responsive platform. Hopefully, it will make the content easier to navigate and search, and be more reader-friendly.

To mark International Women’s Day, this post is about the unsung heroes of Victorian society, without whom the wealthy and middle classes could not manage their daily lives: domestic servants. The rich rarely had issues attracting and retaining staff since working in gentlemen’s service was considered the pinnacle of a servant’s career. However, for smaller households employing just one or two servants, it was a very different matter.

Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, the newspapers were full of complaints about the ‘servant problem’ – the apparent inability of employers to obtain and keep good servants. Countless opinions were offered as to the cause and the remedy, including that given by Mrs Panton in From Kitchen to Garret: Hints to Young Householders (1888). In her manual, she offered what appears to be common sense advice but it was contrary to the way many mistresses viewed their servants: ‘If we treat our maids just as we treat ourselves we shall find our trouble almost disappear. I invariably leave my maids a good deal to themselves about their work; and once they know what has to be done, I find it is done without my constantly being after them…’

‘Morning Wear’ in Cassell’s Household Guide

Part of the ‘servant problem’ was attributed to the increasingly wide range of employment opportunities for working-class girls who had traditionally gone into domestic service. Jobs in shops and factories were more attractive because of the fixed working hours, whereas servants were at the beck and call of their mistresses at all hours of the day. After 1880, working-class girls were educated for longer and to a higher standard. The most intelligent could now aspire to enter the professions of teaching and nursing, while clerical work offered further opportunities away from domestic service.

This increase in literacy among servants led many to air their grievances by writing to their local newspapers; this was one of the few ways they could express themselves publicly. While researching my book Servants’ Stories, I came across an exchange of letters on the British Newspaper Archive. They were sent to the Western Mail in November and December 1892. The first letter was a request from ‘A Servant’ of Swansea for ‘protection against tyrannous mistresses’:

Will you insert a servant’s complaints of the way in which the majority of that much-abused class are treated? No one seems to heed our long hours or our holidays, which are (like angels’ visits) few and far between. There seems no other class working at a greater disadvantage. For instance, no servant can expect a situation who had not got a good reference and a long one from where she last lived. It often happens she has been living with unprincipled people, who think not half so much of their servants as they do of their dumb animals. What is it to them if the girl does not get a situation? She has offended them in some way or other. Perhaps she had had more than her share of work, bad food, and other things too numerous to mention, and she has spoken too plainly to please them. That, of course, is considered impertinent, for, according to many mistresses’ opinion, a servant is a being made expressly for them, and she has no rights whatever, and she is told she need not expect a character. What are servants to do under these circumstances? They may be out of a situation for months – perhaps something worse. Do the mistresses think we have no spirit, and that we must bear quietly the petty tyranny they have it in their power to use in a hundred ways? My two last situations have happened to be places where it is impossible for servants to live, I being the sixth servant in three months, and yet we have nothing and no one to warn us of places of this sort. I think it is a serious matter that our character (I may say our livelihood) is at the mercy of such people. Why cannot something be done to benefit servants as well as other working classes? Servants ought to know what kind of places they are going into, as well as the character of the people they are to live with.

Maid of all work (Living London)

In the days that followed, other maids wrote to the Western Mail listing their own problems with their employers. ‘A Poor Servant in Pembrokeshire’ added:

I am only grieved to say that we servants are worse treated than pet animals. They are studied with fresh air every day, but we do not need it once a week even. Are we allowed sufficient time to eat the food we get, which would not be often given to their pets? When we enter into an engagement with a lady we are asked if we can obtain a good character. Should there be a little spot, “Oh you won’t suit me.” Should the lady’s character be inquired into as closely as the servant’s, I wonder which would prove the most just. You are asked if you are honest. Is it needed where everything is locked. You are expected to be clean. Can you be clean in some ‘houses’ where you have a piece of soap locked from you?

Lack of trust between mistress and maid was a constant source of frustration and anger. Employers also wrote in to have their say during this discussion. ‘A Mistress’ of Park-place, Cardiff commented:

I do not doubt that among servants, like every other class, there are some who are badly treated, but … what of the gross carelessness and wicked wastefulness of servants, and what of their growing antipathy to doing the ordinary work of a household? Servants, nowadays, are not to be compared to the honest and industrious worker of a few years ago, and their grievances are entirely of their own making.

This letter provoked an impassioned reply from to ‘A Servant’ of Newport:

I have heard many say that modern servants are not like the old-fashioned ones, but mistresses of the present day are very different from what they were then. Mistresses used to respect their servants and were looked up to in return, but such mistresses now are few and far between. There are so many ‘ladies’ who have been domestics themselves that we cannot expect them to make good mistresses. I should think that to have a good place we should have a kind mistress. This is the chief thing; then the girl would find it a pleasure to be industrious.

‘In a Servants’ Registry Office’ (Living London)

A butler with 17 years’ experience wrote:

I respectfully contend that servants are far more honest now than they were years ago, when many of them had little or no wages more than their food. No, servants are not what they were years ago. They, like other branches of the community, have improved with the times, and are still improving. But why is it they meet with so little encouragement from their employers? Hundreds of societies are formed, recreation-rooms built, and everything conceivable is done for the improvement of the clerk, artisan, mechanic, &c. Mistresses subscribe liberally to any of these, but no helping hand is held out to the poor being who is unlucky enough to bear the insignificant designation of “servant”… I am happy to say from experience that there are some few mistresses who take an interest in their servants, and do all they possibly can to encourage them to be thrifty &c, and improve themselves, not only by giving them good advice, but with kind, substantial help. But while employers continue to treat servants as machines, expecting all and giving as little as possible in return (for it is not solely a question of wages), there will be a difficulty in obtaining good servants.

Finally, came the hopes of ‘A Cardiff Girl’:

Would you kindly allow me a small space in your valuable paper to refer to the proposed servants’ union. I am sorry to see that such a few girls of this town have taken the matter up. Why do not some of them come forward with pluck and energy and stand out one with the other until they get a union like the shop assistants and have a half-holiday once a week, with some part of the day on Sunday, instead of being penned in like prisoners once a fortnight? I am sure we deserve it, I sincerely hope, now the girls have made a stir that it will not result in a failure like the last.

Unfortunately, the various servants’ trade unions had little effect on improving the working conditions of those in domestic service. It was difficult to recruit members because the contract between servant and employer was a private one, and maids ran the risk of being blacklisted if they were discovered to be members of a union.

This exchange of letters in the Western Mail continued for weeks, indicating the depth of feeling on both sides. The ‘servant problem’ continued well into the twentieth century when a trend developed of maids becoming ‘daily helps’ or char-women, which meant they had fixed hours and were able to return home at the end of the day.

VICTORIAN CRIME: MURDER IN THE SUBURBS

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Today, I’m very happy to be hosting a guest post by Angela Buckley, who specialises in writing about Victorian true crime. Read on for the shocking story of the murder of PC Nicholas Cock in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, one of Manchester’s suburbs, back in 1876.

MURDER IN THE SUBURBS

Chorlton-cum-Hardy is a suburb of Manchester, four and a half miles south-west of the city centre, now characterised by small shops, street cafés and delicatessens. Originally a rural village, the tranquil farming community was surrounded by fields and meadows, and nursery gardens. By the end of the nineteenth century, Chorlton had begun to develop into a more distinct suburb of the industrialised metropolis of Manchester. Factory owners and businesspeople moved out to the township’s leafy streets to escape the dirt and noise of the textile mills and factories. They built attractive red-brick villas with walled gardens, on tree-lined avenues, travelling into the city by the omnibus service or twice-daily packet boats on the canal. Crime was low, compared to the dangerous streets of the city centre, making it: ‘one of the most respectable suburbs of Manchester…covered by villa residences of some considerable pretension’ (Manchester Courier, 27 November 1876).

The quiet suburb of Chorlton-cum-Hardy (copyright free)

In the quiet township of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, there were occasional burglaries and robberies, yet many of the criminal activities were still rural in nature, such as poaching and theft of farm animals. In the early 1880s, there were two murders, one of a young woman on her way home from the market, which was never solved, and another resulting from a drunken argument, which had an uncanny link with shocking events some 30 years later. 

In May 1847, market gardener Francis Deakin was drinking in a beerhouse with his friend George Leach, whose wife owned the establishment. An afternoon of beer and rum led to an argument between the couple, and when George started to hurl insults his wife, Francis stepped in to defend her. Enraged, George ran into the kitchen and grabbed a carving knife, meeting Francis in the passage. Shouting, ‘I’ll have no man interfering with me and my wife,’ he lunged at Francis and stabbed him. George was immediately sorry for what he had done and expressed the desperate hope that he had not killed his friend, but Francis Deakin died from his wounds. George Leach was convicted of aggravated manslaughter and transported for life.

Francis’s wife, Martha, was left alone with six children, ranging from 15 years to a few days old. Helped by her family, she took over the management of their market garden business and supported her children until her death, 11 years later at the age of 46. The younger members of the Deakin family were left in the care of 16-year-old Francis junior, who looked after his brother and two sisters, whilst assuming responsibility for the market garden. Francis married in 1864 and had one son before his wife died. By the mid-1870s, he had become a prosperous nurseryman and was re-married with three more children. He lived at Firs Farm, which would become the focus of another murder, after the prime suspects were arrested on his property.

PC Cock was murdered at the junction of West Point, Chorlton-cum-Hardy (copyright free)

On 1 August 1876, 21-year-old PC Nicholas Cock was walking his beat at midnight, from the township of Chorlton towards the junction of West Point where three main thoroughfares joined, when he met a law student on his way home, and a colleague. The three men stopped for a chat at the junction and, after a few minutes, went their separate ways. Shortly after, two shots rang back out in the dark. The student and PC Beanland ran back to West Point to find PC Cock lying on the ground – he had been shot in the chest.


PC Nicholas Cock of the Lancashire Constabulary (copyright free)


As soon as he heard of his officer’s death, Superintendent James Bent knew exactly who the culprits were. He proceeded immediately to the farm of Francis Deakin and apprehended the three Habron brothers, who worked in his nursery garden. Superintendent Bent’s investigation led to a murder conviction and ended with a startling twist and an astonishing confession by a notorious burglar, which finally revealed the truth of this heinous crime.

A big thank you to Angela for writing such an interesting post, packed with Victorian period detail. Was anyone in your family tree a victim of violent crime? Please do get in touch if you have a story to tell about your Victorian ancestors.

Angela writes about Victorian crime and you can find out more about her work on her website http://victorian-supersleuth.com.

Who Killed Constable Cock? by Angela Buckley is out now in ebook and paperback via Amazon and other online retail outlets. Angela is also the author of Amelia Dyer and the Baby Farm Murders and The Real Sherlock Holmes (Pen and Sword). 
 

Who Killed Constable Cock? by Angela Buckley

VICTORIAN FASHION: WHAT TO WEAR IN JUNE (1885)

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Last week, many of us in the UK were sweltering in temperatures of more than 30 degrees C – very unusual for a British summer! In our house, we coped by throwing open all the windows, staying out of the sun at the hottest time of the day, and eating copious amounts of ice cream. In the 21st century, we’re lucky to have technology like air-conditioning and electric fans, and to be able to wear fewer clothes when it’s hot.

But spare a thought for the Victorians, especially women and young girls, for whom removing layers in hot weather just wasn’t an option. One of my favourite Victorian periodicals is the Cassell’s Family Magazine which is full of interesting articles on subjects as random as the benefits of Turkish bathing, how to cook potatoes and what should be in the family medicine chest. A regular column was ‘Chit-Chat on Dress by Our Paris Correspondent’ which advised young ladies and women how to dress fashionably, month by month. ‘What to Wear in June’ certainly doesn’t mention dressing in fewer layers.

She describes June as “that delightful time of year when nature is seen at its very best, there is every encouragement to dress well. The sun shows up all defects, and you must don your freshest attire.” This was in the days before deodorant and easy-to-wash clothes, although the readers of Cassell’s Family Magazine would probably have had a maid to do their washing or it would have been sent out to a laundry to be cleaned.

The following illustration shows the stylish indoor costumes suitable for June:

Indoor Costumes – What to Wear in June (Cassell’s Family Magazine, 1885)

The women are wearing polonaises (the dresses themselves) made with paniers (side hoops). The Paris correspondent noted that they were as popular as walking dresses because “they are both convenient and economical wear, for it is not imperative they should always match the skirt the accompany.” They were worn “drawn away below the waist in front, curtain fashion, while at the back the drapery is arranged to look as bouffant as possible.” It was important that the flounced skirt had either ruche or kilting at the edge. No concessions to possible heat here!

Outdoor costumes involved even more items of clothing, including gloves, hats and parasols:

Outdoor Costumes – What to Wear in June (Cassell’s Family Magazine, 1885)

These elegant dresses were ‘washing costumes’ made of sateens and cambrics that were easier to wash than fabrics like silk. The dresses had “demi-long sleeves sewn in high at the shoulders, bunchy paniers, and rich embroideries”. The two dresses for adults on the right were “equipped for travelling in soft, light woollens, of which there is an ample choice this summer in both Paris and London.”

The column did offer a small amount of warm weather advice: “Some wonderful parasols are now keeping off the slow-coming summer sun; some have row upon row of red lace, some have stripes of moire and satin, some are of crocheted straw, but the prettiest are large and entirely white, with fall upon fall of lace.”

The writer also advised that for country wear, “small-spotted gauze veils are very much in vogue, and for travelling we could not do better than copy our American cousins, who tie a gauze veil entirely over the hat or bonnet, so that all dust is excluded.”

You can see beautiful Victorian dresses like this at the Fashion Museum in Bath and the V & A in London.

VICTORIAN CHILDCARE: BABY FARMING

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Today, I’m delighted to be hosting a guest post by the fabulous Angela Buckley, who specialises in writing about Victorian crime. Angela tells us the sad story of the infant victims of Amelia Dyer, the notorious baby farmer; many of their mothers were domestic servants who had no choice but to entrust their children to the care of women like Dyer.

Victorian Childcare: Baby Farming

Life was particularly harsh for single mothers in the nineteenth century. Young women who fell pregnant outside wedlock lost their homes and jobs, and were shunned by society. Domestic servants were amongst the most vulnerable and their plight was brought to light by a series of dreadful discoveries in the river Thames at Caversham, in the spring of 1896.

On 30 March, a bargeman was towing a boat of ballast upriver and, as he approached Caversham Weir near Reading, he spotted a brown paper parcel in the water. He and his mate hooked the package to take a closer look. Once on the towpath, they cut through layers of newspaper and flannel to expose a tiny human foot and part of a leg. When the police opened the parcel fully at the mortuary, they found the body of a baby girl, aged between six months and a year. She had been strangled by a piece of white tape tied around her neck and knotted under her ear. A faint name and address on the sodden parcel led the officers to Amelia Dyer, a local baby farmer. A letter found at her home suggested that the child recovered from the river might have been Helena Fry, daughter of Mary Fry, a domestic servant.

Amelia Dyer (With thanks to Thames Valley Police Museum)

Victorian servants who had illegitimate children were usually dismissed from their post, despite the fact that they may have been sexually exploited by a member of their employer’s family. Encumbered with an infant, they may not have been able to return home and they would not have found another position. Their choices were limited – there was no state assistance and they often ended up in the workhouse, where they were separated from their child. The only other viable option, if they could afford it, was to place the child with a baby farmer.

Baby farmers, who were usually women, advertised in the local newspapers for children to adopt for a fee, either a weekly payment of about five shillings, or a one-off premium of around £10, which was a large proportion of a domestic servant’s annual wage. Transactions were organised by letter, and once the mother was satisfied that her baby would be taken care of, she handed over the child to the baby farmer, with the money, and often never saw them again.

Newspaper advertisements placed by baby farmers (With thanks to Thames Valley Police Museum)

The reality for farmed-out children was bleak. Although there were some reputable baby farmers, many of them were unscrupulous practitioners who neglected the infants in their charge, drugging them with opiates, such as Godfrey’s Cordial, and starving them to death. The high infant mortality rate at the time masked the deaths of these poor mites. The practice was unregulated and completely legal.

When the body of baby Helena Fry was found in the Thames in 1896, the police investigated Amelia Dyer, who had been running her baby farming business for some 30 years. Many of the parents who had entrusted their children to her were in domestic service. The bodies of at least six children were discovered in the Thames at Caversham Weir, one of whom was Frances Jesse Goulding, illegitimate daughter of Elizabeth Goulding, who worked as a servant in a public house in Gloucester. The baby’s father was a married man and so Elizabeth made the heartbreaking decision to give her child up for adoption. When she saw an advertisement in the paper, she arranged with Amelia Dyer’s daughter, Mary Ann Palmer, to have baby Frances adopted. She met Palmer on Gloucester station and paid her £10 to take the child, who was later identified by a lock of her hair, after her body was found in the river.

On 22 May 1896, Amelia Dyer was convicted of the wilful murder of baby Doris Marmon, whose body was found in the Thames in a carpet bag together with another child, Harry Simmons. Three weeks later Dyer went to the gallows. Following her execution, legislation was introduced to protect children like Frances Jesse Goulding and the other infants who perished at the hands of the notorious Victorian baby farmer.


A big thank you to Angela for writing such a fascinating, yet poignant post. Please get in touch if baby farming has cropped up in your family tree or if you have a story to tell about your Victorian servant ancestors.

Angela writes about Victorian crime and you can find out more about her work  on her website www.angelabuckleywriter.com or on her Facebook page, Victorian Supersleuth

Amelia Dyer and the Baby Farm Murders by Angela Buckley is available in ebook and paperback via Amazon and other online retail outlets. Angela is also the author of The Real Sherlock Holmes (Pen and Sword).



DAY 12: 12 DAYS OF VICTORIAN CHRISTMAS CARDS

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We’ve reached the last day of 12 Days of Victorian Christmas cards! The final card I’d like to share with you has a design of some naughty kittens in bed:

Copyright Michelle Higgs

The verse says:

While laurel boughs and berries red,
Glow bright on every side.
Oh, be their freshness o’er thee shed
And cheer your Holly-tide!

All that remains for me to do is to wish you and yours a happy Christmas and a wonderful New Year!