“Oh Mary, I’m so cold”

The ward maid, Emma Costello, gave testimony to the accused’s cruelty and heartlessness to Louey, the deceased.  Under questioning by the prosecutor, Mr. Poland, she described how the accused had left Louey in a cold bath on the morning of the 5th July after having dragged and kicked the patient down the hall to the bathroom.  At about a quarter past ten, Miss Costello described finding Louey alone, cold and shivering in the bath which had only sufficient water to cover Louey’s legs and hips.  Louey was trying to get out of the bath but couldn’t, she had no strength.  “Oh Mary, I’m so cold”, she moaned said Miss Costello on inquiring where Louey’s nurse was.  The nurse was nowhere to be seen.  The picture of the accused was set for all to see: she was cruel and heartless.

Miss Costello was a maid on St. Mary’s ward.  The Sister in charge of the ward was known as “Sister Mary”, and the nurses and maids were known as “Mary”.  Their identities were subsumed into the functioning of the ward.  Similarly, the patients were known by the number of their bed.  Louey was in bed number two, hence she was referred to as “No. 2”.  The ward setting was rather impersonal and business-like. Continue reading →

Alone in the Dock

There, in front of the prisoner as she was brought up from the cells to the court room dock, were Messrs. Poland and Montagu Williams for the prosecution. At the lawyers’ table with them were Sir John Holker and Mr. Mead, her defence team. It was very crowded in the learned pit as the hospital’s Treasurer and its Governors were represented by Mr. Baggalley and his team; and the medical staff, not to be outdone, were represented separately by Sir Hardinge Gifford.

Looking up, the prisoner saw the reporters packed into the public gallery. The newspaper industry had expanded rapidly as massive new technology had shifted the printing process to a scale unimaginable only a few years earlier.

The public loved its news, especially crime, and the many Dailies and Weeklies carried much detail of the Old Bailey trials. News from the premier publication The Times of London was syndicated to the local provincial papers who reprinted the stories the next day helped by their rapid transit in the ever-expanding railways.

Continue reading →

The Courtroom

The charge of ‘Felonious Killing and Slaying’ was so serious that the trial had to be heard at London’s Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey.

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The Old Bailey is located just outside the former western wall of the City of London which follows the line of the original fortified wall or “bailey”. In the 19th century, it was located close to Newgate Prison to allow the prisoners to be brought to the courtroom easily.

The courtroom’s design emphasised the contest between the accused and the rest of the court. The accused stood at “the bar” (or in the “dock”) directly facing the witness box where prosecution and defence witnesses testified. The jurors sat in stalls to the right of the defendant, and the clerks, lawyers and note-takers (who wrote up the proceedings) sat at a mahogany semi-circular table below the Judges’ bench.

The accused would have climbed the stairs from the holding cell below the dock to face the court when called. The lavish provision for the Judges and their servants contrasted dramatically with the prisoners’ quarters in the basement.

Fee-paying spectators sat in a gallery behind and above the jurors. It was all very cramped, noisy, dark and airless.

The Judge

Judge Henry Hawkins presided. “Mr. Justice” Hawkins was 63 years old at the time of the trial and had been a judge on the Queen’s Bench Criminal Division for the previous four years.

Born in Hertfordshire, he trained at Middle Temple Inn and was called to the bar in 1843 and took silk (became Queen’s Counsel, QC) in 1858.

He specialised in murder cases and was renowned, rather unfairly, as “Hanging Hawkins” for he was known to be lenient in some cases. For example, in “the Penge Case”, he carefully teased out the parameters of murder and manslaughter, and ill-treatment and intentional neglect – issues of great importance in our trial.

He was small and of slender build and sensitive to criticism. He loved horse-racing, and indeed, he was a member of the Jockey Club. He was made a peer in 1899 and sat in the House of Lords as Baron Brampton of Brampton in Huntingdonshire.

The Prosecutor

Mr., later Sir, Harry Bodkin Poland was 51 years old at the time of the trial. He was born and raised in London and he trained at Inner Temple Inn. He was called to the bar in 1851, and became a bencher at the Inn in 1879, and took silk in 1888.

Although much experienced in common law work, he followed his uncle, Sir William Henry Bodkin to the criminal bar at the Old Bailey. He shared his Chambers with his friend Hardinge Gifford who became the Lord Chancellor in 1885.

He was a quiet and unimpassioned man who was successful with juries because of his forensic skills with minute details. He cultivated his studious look with his old-fashioned garb and black skull cap.

The Defender

Mr., later Sir, John Holker was 52 years old at the time of the trial. He was born and raised in Bury in Lancashire where he was expected to enter the Church. Instead, he was articled to a local solicitor.

His preference for the law led him to move to London to train as a lawyer in Gray’s Inn. He was called to the bar in 1854 and took silk in 1866. He too was a bencher at the Inn and although he was perceived to be persuasive and shrewd, he was known as “Sleepy Jack Holker” by his fellow barristers when he moved back to Manchester where he got little work.

He was a tall, plain, lumbering Lancashire man who had no ingenuity or eloquence. He was known to be dull and honest.

He became a politician. He was twice elected in 1874 and 1880 as a conservative member for Preston, and he was knighted and made Solicitor General by Disraeli in 1874, and then Attorney General in 1875. When the Government under Lord Beaconsfield fell in 1880, Sir John returned to private practice and took our case.

The Weather

The summer of that year was cold, wet and dull. Despite it being June, fog hung around most mornings and it rained for 21 days in July.

The British Medical Journal published articles on the ‘Great Cold’ and the dense fog, driven by westerly winds, which caused many respiratory deaths.

August was warmer and drier but dull – it was always cloudy and the limited sunshine was only sufficient to burn off the fog to a haze.

On the first day of the trial in that August, it was very cold at 46⁰F and a light fog added to the gloomy atmosphere.

The First Day of the Trial

The accused nurse was brought up from cells to the dock. Mr. Poland rose for the prosecution and called the deceased’s husband, Mr. Morgan, as the first witness.

Mr. Morgan gave his name and address and details about his recently dead wife. She was nearly 27 years old and they had been married for nine years. He gave the details of his encounter with the accused and his tragic wife’s end. She was well and chirpy for the first six weeks and then he found her altered and very bruised on her arm and chest.

“The accused said my wife, Louey, was hysterical and it was a bad case”. Mr. Morgan said that they did not want anything to do with the accused as Louey was afraid of her.

On the day of Louey’s death, Mr. Morgan was sent for. The accused had been dismissed, and Louey died at five minutes past 11pm. “She never rallied no more” said Mr. Morgan.

Come back next time to hear about Mr. Holker’s cross-examination of Louey’s husband . . . . .

“Mr. Treasurer” — the Real Power

Hospitals and care for the poor in the 19th Century were provided by charitable institutions which were supported by generous benefactors. The rich paid for their own doctors and care at home. It was all very rudimentary.

By the late 19th Century, London was teeming with people who were jammed into overcrowded, filthy and insanitary conditions. Those in work were often injured in the course of their work. Poverty drove many women and children to prostitution and disease.

Drunkenness and malnourishment were rife. Consequently, the demand for bigger hospitals and more care, and more funds, escalated year on year. It was getting out of control. This placed great burdens on the benefactors so those in charge of local hospitals held fund-raising events, flag days, and vied with each other to have the patronage of members of “Society”, titled and connected people, and above all, wealthy people.

As the funds flowed in, and their disbursements became more complicated, hospitals found themselves in need of more than a lowly clerk or local churchman to administer the monies. Continue reading →

Lawyers, the Model Profession

Lawyers in 19th Century London were members of one of the four prestigious Inns of Court: Gray’s Inn, Lincoln’s Inn, Middle and Inner Temple Inns.  The Inns were places of education, training and development, and residence, for lawyers, which could trace their history back to mediaeval times.  They flourished as places of learning, enjoyed much royal patronage, and provided many scholarly lawyers to serve in the great Offices of State, especially under the Tudor Kings and Queens.

 

The College of Physicians, formed under King Henry VIII, not surprisingly, modelled itself on these colleges of lawyers, and adopted their training methods: “see & do” under the supervision of a qualified lawyer with whom you worked and dined in “family” groups known as chambers.  For the medics, these training and dining groups were known as “firms”.

By the late 19th Century, the Inns and their members, called barristers, were well-established, and the lawyers were recognised as professional men.

The Inns were located to the west of the City of London clustered around the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand, and in close walking distance to Newgate Prison and the Old Bailey Courthouse where our trial took place. Continue reading →

From Quacks to Professional Men

From ancient times, quackery, prayers, and traditional poultices and herbalism, were the medics’ tools of trade alongside crude surgery and bleeding.

Then came the Enlightenment when anatomy, science and an understanding of how the body works changed everything.  By the early 1800s, a substantial body of knowledge had started to develop which required medical practitioners to train and learn in organised schools with experienced teachers.

The Teaching Hospital and the concept of Lecturers were born.  And so it was at Queen’s.

It had distinguished the function of caring and treating from teaching and training by recognising and building a separate, but on-site, Medical School with its own Dean.  It was not a separate entity in law – its finances and administration were very much part of Queen’s, and its benefactors.  The administrator, known as the Treasurer, was all important but the medics started to get organised.

At the same time, the law changed.  The state recognised the desirability of having an authorised body to ensure that medical practitioners were suitably qualified, and had passed their exams, thus the Royal College of Physicians (instigated under King Henry VIII) was boosted and became that body. Continue reading →

Life in the Late 19th Century

19th Century London was grey and drab, and very grim for all but the lucky, and the wealthy. Open sewers and poor drainage, filthy streets and houses, dung piles, and lack of ventilation and fresh air, formed London’s insanitary living conditions.

The resulting stench was added to by the ubiquitous pong of rotting bodies as disposal of the dead became more difficult, especially with the capital’s burgeoning population.

Cleanliness was a problem. Indeed, for “the great unwashed” bodily dirt was a point of pride as it showed you were an honest worker. Disease was the result. Cholera, typhus, smallpox, tuberculosis and leprosy all took their toll. Fog and smoke exacerbated people’s pitiful living conditions. Life was very hard for most. Continue reading →

“Quick.  Quick.  We’ll be late” Laura cried breathlessly as she tried to hold on to her hat as she and Jeanie, her best friend, ran across London Bridge to catch the omnibus from the north side stop, to travel west along Cheapside to the Bailey.  They didn’t want to be late for the first day of the trial of their friend and colleague, Katy McNiel.

It was a fine summer’s day in the late 1800s and Katy was to be tried for the manslaughter of one of her patients at London’s famous Queen’s Hospital.

Cheapside was one of the main west-east roads across the north bank of the Thames in London.  The road was a crush everywhere with horse drawn taxis, private carriages and omnibuses jostling for space on the all too inadequate road. 

Pedestrians were often pushed to the sides of the filthy streets by the traffic where they tried to avoid the ubiquitous horse dung that was left from the moment it had dropped on the road until it was collected by the night sweepers. In the heat of the day, the stench was overpowering in this part of east London. 

And the dust and filth, and the over crowding – life in the city was all very unpleasant.

Continue reading →