1875 saw Spalding in the national press, with questions in Parliament and interventions from the home secretary in what became known as The Geranium Scandal. This is in an in depth examination of this event.
In 1875 the magistrate the Rev. Edward Moore sentenced a 13 year old girl to 14 days gaol followed by four years reformatory for the crime of stealing a single geranium. This sentence caused outrage locally and across the country.
A few days before July 6th 1875 the 13 year old was purportedly, “visiting her aunt, an old lady who resides in an almshouse on the outskirts of Spalding, and on her way home she had fallen in love with a bright red geranium, all one blaze of vermillion blossom, and temptingly adjacent to the highway. She seems to have plucked from the plant one solitary spike of flowers – a piece of what is familiarly known as a button hole.”
At least that is what is repeated many times in almost poetic language by many City newspapers across the land in July 1875. However, in common with today’s news media the story was more complex than it appeared. To understand it you have to look at the key individuals, politics, religion and public sentiment of the time.
I will start with a simple timeline of events:
Before 6th July 1875 – Sarah Chandler picks a geranium from the garden of Mr John Cotton.
Mrs Cotton (John’s wife) speaks to Sarah’s headmistress in the hope of invoking some appropriate challenge to Sarah’s behaviour. The headmistress advises her to speak to the Rev. Edward Moore to seek her exclusion from an upcoming children’s feast.
Mrs Cotton speaks to the Rev. Edward Moore and he advises her to make a formal complaint against Sarah Chandler in order that she can be placed before the Magistrates the following Tuesday. Mrs. Cotton, bowing to his influence obeys.
Alarmed, Sarah Chandler’s mother offers Mrs Cotton two schillings compensation. She states that it is now in the hands of the Rev Moore. So Mrs Chandler approaches him and he refuses to allow compensation stating the girl must appear before the Bench.
6th July 1875 – Sarah Chandler appears before the Spalding Magistrates chaired by the Rev. Edward Moore, accompanied by the Rev. J.T. Dove (both Church of England), A Ball Esq. T Harrison Esq. and C S Taylor Esq. She is sentenced to 14 days imprisonment to be followed by four years internment in a reformatory. Whilst in prisonSarah Chandler claims to have swallowed a needle. When Dr. Vise arrives she admits she has made this up.
8th July 1875 – a distraught Mrs Chandler approaches the Baptist Minister Rev. J.C. Jones to explain what has happened to her daughter and appeals for his help. The Rev. Jones approaches the Conservative politician, albeit with Liberal leanings, Charles Thomas Ritchie MP for Tower Hamlets for help. Mr Ritchie tables a question for the Home Secretary for 13th July and this is awaited with interest by the press throughout the country.
13th July 1875 – Mr Ritchie asks the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether his attention has been directed to a report of the case of Sarah Chandler of Spalding, Lincolnshire and the resulting sentence.
13th July 1875 – the offices of the Spalding Free Press receive a telegram reporting the statement of the Home Secretary it is printed off into slips and distributed throughout the town. A crowd celebrates throughout the town after forming aggressively outside the Rev Moore’s home. He tries to address them without success. Celebrations continue well past midnight.
14th July 1875 – The telegram authorising the release of Sarah Chandler is received by the prison just before 8 o’clock in the morning. Sarah Chandler is released and paraded in celebration. She is greeted by her parents, but significantly also by local gardener “Crocus Billy” (Edward Wellband) who lifts her onto a cart upon which he is next to her hugging and lifting her up to the crowd.
That evening The Rev. Moore addresses a local meeting of the Odd Fellows to the Loyal Welland Lodge with many members of the audience wearing geraniums in their lapels. He takes full responsibility for the decision over his fellow magistrates and defends his position using the example of a young man thanking him for sending him to reformatory.
15th July 1875 – The Rev. J.C. Jones holds a large and enthusiastic meeting at the Corn Exchange in the evening to thank both Mr. Ritchie and the Home Secretary for their part in the release of Sarah Chandler. The Rev. Jones carefully relates the facts as he understands them, this showing the Rev. Moore in a poor light. He then goes further to refute the Rev. Moore’s account of a cobbler’s son “thanking” him for being sent to reformatory and the young man in question had complained at being made a scape goat to protect his bad decision.
After 16th July 1875 – The Rev. Moore comes out fighting openly accusing the Home Secretary of being two-faced and criticising him for not referring the Sarah Chandler case to the Lord Chancellor. Much public noise and debate is seen in the press.
25th July 1875 – the Home Office releases its final comment on the matter with an indication that there was a private conversation with the Lord Chancellor and the Rev. Moore’s actions were viewed as an error of judgement and they otherwise supported him.
September 1875 – Mr Justice Field visits the Lindsey prison and finds Edmund Johnson imprisoned for three years without prospect of remission. He views the sentence as disproportionate and unfair and appeals to the Home Secretary to release Edmund Johnson. The Home Secretary grants the request. The original sentence was given by the Rev. Moore.
16th November 1875 – Sarah Ann Chandler mother of Sarah Chandler has her gang licence rejected upon renewal by the magistrate the Rev. Edward Moore on grounds of denied adultery between her and fellow gang master Mr. Kitchen. It is clear her husband Thomas Chandler is abusive and she pleads that her gang work is needed for her to provide for her six children. This falls on the deaf ears of the magistrate.
26th January 1876 – Local bank clerk Mr. Hayes spots Sarah Chandler stealing a jacket from the shop of Mr. Tharratt. She is charged and held on remand by the Rev. E Moore. At the same hearing Edward Wellband (alias Crocus Billy) is charged with receiving stolen goods, but released on bail.
1st February 1876 – The trial of Sarah Chandler the bench of Magistrates comprises: Re. Edward Moore (chairman), Rev. J.T. Dove, A. Ball Esq. Robert Everard Esq. G. Prest Esq. Rev. E.L. Bennett and Rev. J.R. Jackson. – She is found guilty and given a sentence of 14 days prison followed by four years reformatory.
14th February 1876 – Mr. Bates, the Governor of the House of Correction removes Sarah Chandler to the Reformatory School at Doncaster.
29th February 1876 – Edward Wellband (alias “CrocusBilly”) is accused of stealing stockings worth 8d. from James Atkin Gibson whilst partaking in another transaction at the Spalding draper. As he was on bail he is detained pending trial.
6th April 1876 – Edward Wellband is found guilty of receiving stolen goods and sentenced to six months hard labour. He is acquitted of stealing the stockings by the Jury.
15th February 1878 – a group of four girls at the Doncaster Reformatory riot and abscond breaking windows and cause wilful damage. Once caught they are presented before Lord Auckland who sentences Sarah to three month’s imprisonment. She rtorts, “I can do it.”
28th April 1885 – Whilst in the Employ of Mrs East at The Crane Inn in Spalding Sarah Chandler attempts to take her life. She is remanded to Lincoln prison for a week for the crime of trying to commit suicide. The magistrate is Canon Moore. He advises her he will use his influence to get her a position out of town.
6th July 1886 – Sarah Chandler is now in the workhouse and having refused to do a task of work she subsequently attempts suicide by swallowing iodine. She survives and appears before the magistrate and is sentenced to 14 days with hard labour for attempted suicide.
22nd March 1887 – the Master of the workhouse in Spalding reports Sarah Chandler has twice been punished with solitary confinement and bread and water for insolence to him.
21st January 1889 – Sarah Chandler is brought up alongside Ellen Turner in front of the magistrate for disorderly conduct in the Spalding Union workhouse. Sarah was accused of refusing to do washing work, because she expresses regret she is discharged. However, Ellen Turner, whos “crime” was making a noise is sentenced to 14 days imprisonment. Ellen is blind!
24th March 1893 – Sarah Chandler now works as a servant in The Barge beer house. She is assaulted by Robert Peacock who is fined 7s. 6d. but not having the money is sent to prison for 14 days.
18th August 1893 – Sarah Chandler is fines 1s. for using obscene language in Spalding on 1st August.
21st August 1900 – Sarah Chandler is described as housekeeper for the landlord of the Barge Inn. She is witness to a case of threatening behaviour by Isaac Leadbeater.
September 1902 – Sarah Chandler is fined 5s. for abstracting water from a tap belonging to Spalding Urban District Council – the tap is in a public location.
Sadly the landlord of The Barge commits suicide. I trace little of Sarah Chandler, but understand she subsequently worked as a house keeper in Thorney and then reportedly in Bexhill on Sea where she died in the 1930’s. I have found no first hand evidence of this.
The Original Case:
The Spalding Petty Sessions of July 6th 1875 was a regular affair for Spalding and the earliest report of it can be found locally in the Stamford Mercury reported factually without emotive language. This report is a list of minor offences mostly relating to straying livestock, but the list of more serious offences starts with Sarah Chandler and gives us an insight into the society and poverty of the time.
“Sarah Chandler of Spalding, for damaging a geranium was sentenced to 14 days imprisonment and four years confinement in a reformatory. Robt. Chapman of Gedney Hill, journeyman baker, was charged by his master William Laws, with stealing 3 quartern loaves[1] of bread in June last. Sentenced to 6 months hard labour. Thos. McKenna, a tramp, was sentenced to 14 days imprisonment for begging at Surfleet on the 5th inst.”[2]
If you look both before and after those dates you see matter-of-fact reporting of such sentences that were disproportionate and a by-product of poverty, but you see little outcry.
The outcry only starts to be seen in newspapers away from the local area by Saturday 10th July with such headline comments as, “Infamous if True”, “A Severe Sentence”. There is also great emphasis on the bench of magistrates being comprised of two clergy and three laymen – I will relate the relevance of this later as I look at the politics and religion of the issue.
By the 16th July, with the case now famous across the country and with passions running high and much embellishment in reports we see perhaps the most neutral report from the Lincolnshire Chronicle which was far enough from the action to not be embroiled in local politics and bias and close enough to ascertain truth:
“…..Consequently we have also made various enquiries and ascertain that the girl appeared with her mother before the magistrates who were then on the Bench viz. the Revs. E. Moore and J.T. Dove and Dr. Ball, Mr Harrison and Mrs Sunderland Taylor having left, and upon the clerk, Mr. Maples, reading the charge laid down by Mrs. Cotton, the owner, the girl at once admitted plucking the flower, and pleaded guilty, consequently the evidence was not gone into. The Chairman thereupon asked the mother the girl’s character and the mother answered that, ‘she was a troublesome, bad girl and beyond her and her husband’s control.’ The magistrates consulted together, and the Chairman remarked that the girl had been a very irregular attendant at school, and very troublesome when there, and suggested to the mother whether it would not be best to send the girl to a reformatory. The mother did not offer any opposition; she at first said she hoped not. But apparently afterwards gave way and repeated her statement that she was a bad girl; and ultimately, after more conversation and consultation, the Magistrates decided to send the girl to a reformatory , the Clerk reminding them that a short imprisonment must be imposed for her as this county does not possess one; an imprisonment of 14 days was passed for that purpose, and she was taken to the gaol.
It is no secret that since she has been there she has been both troublesome and mischievous…………It is untrue as reported in the Pall Mall Gazetter, that the girl went to see an aunt in the Almshouses. She has no relation whatever there, but on a Sunday afternoon left her companion in Church Street, and went in the garden for no occasion whatever; she first looked in upon a Mrs. Ruxby, who asked her what she wanted, and then went further down past two more houses, and quickly plucking the only bloom from a double geranium plant just under the window belonging to an inmate named Cotton, ran out of the garden and down the street. Mrs Cotton detected her in the act, and she and other inmates, who have more than once previously also detected and warned her, went to the Rev. Edward Moore on the following morning, and a summons was granted. We find the girl has a bad character for mischief and for vindictiveness to her younger sisters, and to other children in the street; that she has only attended school about 100 times in the past year, and only four times during the past quarter. The above are the result of enquiries we have made and there may be other facts unknown to us.”[3]
On the afternoon of Sarah Chandler’s release on 14th July 1875 the Rev. Edward Moore finds himself addressing a meeting of the Odd Fellows of the Loyal Welland Lodge, many of them wearing geranium button-holes. He finds himself largely supported with a toast both to him and the “Bishop and Clergy”. He responds with the following speech which is, inmy opinion, a fine piece of political oration:
“The clergy don’t pretend to be what I dare say you are all aware of – free from faults: we all have our faults and all make our mistakes, including the best of us. I cannot but allude to the circumstances of last night and this morning. For nearly 20 years I have been an active magistrate, as you are aware, as well as a clergyman in this district. During 15 years of that time almost the whole of the magisterial duties have devolved upon me, and it so has happened that for nearly 15 years I have had to pass judgements of all sorts to the extent of about 500 a year. Now, if out of these I have made occasionally a mistake even in the judgement of those who, perhaps are not so well aware of the circumstances as myself, I trust that those mistakes may be overlooked and condoned; and I defy anyone to prove that I, or any other magistrate who sat with me, had the slightest personal feeling whatever in this case. If we hace erred I take the whole responsibility upon myself for the rest of the Bench who were with me on that occasion accepted from me statements that I made, and which in all probability, induced them to agree with me in the sentence that we passed. I thought the child we had to deal with would be better prepared and provided for in life in the reformatory than in Spalding. I have very great reason for thinking so and I think some of you will agree with me when I tell you that in this town of Spalding there have been two already sent there and who have returned from a reformatory school – it is not a prison, as some people suppose, but it is a boarding school, where the children are well cared for, and taught how to conduct themselves. They have returned – the first I sent – was the first person to call upon me and thank me for sending him there. The sympathy of parents is right and natural and I am sorry to have wounded it at all; but I thought and still think, that this child would be far better provided for than at home, which is about the worst place I know for her perculiar temperament. She requires very extraordinary treatment – not cruel or unkind treatment; and I am told she had been unkindly treated. Under all these circumstances I felt that I was justified in taking the course that I have done. It has been reported to a superior authority, and my judgement is over-ruled. I quitre concur in that judgement that has over-ruled me, looking at it from their point of view, for they could not know all the circumstances. The child has returned to her home. I hope it will be for her benefit; but I very much question it. I shall not, because of this sudden obullition in the town, shrink from doing my duty so long as I and others think that I can do it. I am quite ready to resign my position when the neighbourhood, or the town, or the Bench itself can find a man who will do the duty better. I have other pursuits with which I could occupy my time and allow me time for bed, and which hitherto I have spent in transacting business for other people, and not for myself. I expect that ultimately I shall have the approval of those who are my judges. If I do wrong I am not afraid or ashamed of being found fault with, for I believe it does any man good to have his faults pointed out. I am sure we did the best for the child, and I believe still it would be; but I submit to the judgement of the Secretary of State though I don’t quite concur in it.”[4]
In contrast to Rev. Edward Moore’s speech to the Oddfellows the following evening on Thursday 15th July saw the Rev. J.C. Jones chair a lively meeting in the Corn Exchange, Spalding , “who in the course of a long speech remarked that he was anxious to show why he felt so deep an interest in this little Sarah Chandler, and also to remove some misapprehension which existed as to the facts of the case; and he wanted them further to pass two resolutions – thanking Mr. Ritchie for introducing the matter to the House of Commons (cheers), and the Home Secretary for his prompt and energetic dealing with the case (loud cheers). The expression of the town had already been given in some form by the symbol of the geranium blossom, and in other ways, though he, personally, had no engagement of the band or the getting up of the crowds that paraded the street on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. At the same time, what he declined to do himself he justly appreciated in others, for that was the only way a certain class had of expressing their opinion on the question. He would, however, tell them why he took the matter up. On Thursday evening in last week the mother of Sarah Chandler came to him and said, ‘Mr. Jones, can’t something be done for my poor daughter?’ ‘Why, what’s the matter’, he asked in reply for he knew nothing of the woman before. She then told him that her daughter had been sent to prison for a fortnight and to a reformatory for four years for plucking a blossom off a geranium plane (Shame!). He tried at first to reason with the woman, but at last she said to him, ‘What would you think Mr. Jones, if one of your daughters was torn away from you in this way?’ Well now he need not explain to any mother or father there that such language as that struck at once a chord in his heart, and long be the day, he would add, when he should be deaf and dumb to an appeal like that. It might be called weakness or sentiment; well if the world was to be regulated by dry mathematical propositions, or simply by logical ayllogisms, or by the folios of dry law, if the feeling of a mother’s heart or a father’s sympathies were to be dried up, then this would become a poor, miserable, shrivelled world indeed. (Loud cheers). However, it was not for him to allow feeling to guide him simply, and he asked the mother very minutely the circumstances of the case. He took her statements down in writing, and would now give them to the meeting. The geranium belonged to a Mrs Cotton, and he made it his business in the company of his friend Mr. Stableforth, to see her; and she with artless simplicity, at once said, ‘Gentlemen, I will tell you all about it.’ She then said she had noticed her flowers were being taken away from time to time, and she thought to herself if she only knew which girl took them she would tell her schoolmistress. She eventually found the flowers were plucked by Sarah Chandler, and she went therefore to the schoolmistress and told her she must try and prevent her scholars plucking the flowers. The mistress said, ‘You had better tell Mr. Moore, for he won’t allow her to go to the school feast, and that will be the greatest punishment she can have.’ Mrs. Cotton at first declined, but was afterwards persuaded to do so, and went to see Mr. Moore and told him the circumstances. He said, ‘You must take out a summons for the girl.’ She said, ‘I would rather not’; but Mr. Moore said, ‘Yes, you must’; and still she hesitated. However, Mr. Moore then said, ‘If you don’t take out a simmons for her you need not expect any more favours from me.’ (Hear, hear and hisses). Now that was Mrs. Cotton’s own statement; and she accordingly obtained a summons and took it to Mr. Moore for his signature. She then said, ‘I hope you won’t punish the girl too much’, but he replied, ‘You must leave that with me.’ (Expressions of strong feeling in the meeting) The summons was taken to the mother on the Monday night, and the policeman said, ‘Where’s Sarah Chaner?’ The mother said, ‘Oh dear, what has she been doing now? She’s more trouble to me than all my children.’ She went on the following morning to Mrs. Cotton’s, and as the geranium was valued at a shilling in the summons offered her a couple of shillings to pay for the damage, but Mrs. Cotton very correctly said it was then out of her power to do anything. She then went to Mr. Moore saying, ‘ If you please sir, I have come about this girl of mine.’ ‘Well what about the child?’ ‘ Why as to the flower she plucked.’ Mr. Moore said, ‘It will have to go to the Bench.’ ‘Can’t I make it up?’ said the mother. The magistrate said ‘No.’ The mother urged, ‘I am quite willing to pay for the flower,’ but Mr. Moore said, ‘Paying for the flower won’t punish the child. She’s done the deed and will have to be punished for it.’ Mr. Moore then went in and shut the door. Now he (Mr. Jones) asked the mother whether she ever wished the child to be removed to a reformatory, and she said, ‘Certainly not.’ Mr. Jones then went on as some length to show that the neighbours were of the opinion that the girl’s character generally was as good as that of children of her age; and in doing this he mentioned the names of parties he had seen and talked to on the subject, and it appeared that the child was allowed to play with the children in the street, and had on one occasion found a book, the owner of which she could not discover, and which she took voluntarily to the police-station and gave it into the hands of the superintendent; and this, he urged, showed that the girl at all events had some honesty about her. Now, he continued, they would have observed that Mr. Moore on the previous day was present at a meeting of the Oddfellows of the town, and he there made some remarks that he (Mr. Jones) must, with all due deference to that gentleman, introduce to the meeting, ‘If we have erred,’ said Mr. Moore, ‘I take the whole responsibility upon myself, for the rest of the Bench who were with me on that occasion accepted from me the statements which I made, and which, in all probability, induced them to agree with me in the sentence which we passed.’ Previously he had said for fifteen years nearly all the magisterial duties had devolved upon him – and if so no wonder that he had made a mistake – but where were the other magistrates? Were they men? Had they brains? Why, that remark certainly tended to relieve Mr. Moore of a great deal of the blame, inasmuch as the whole onus of the manner appeared on his own showing, to rest upon him. He gave him credit for having no personal feeling in the matter, but there were some remarks about reformatories that were fallacious, and which he (Mr. Jones) thought deserved a little explaination; Mr. Moore described them as ‘boarding schools’ , not prisons, and he said that two childrenhe had sent there were the first to thank him for sending them, mentioning particularly, a cobbler’s son in the town. Now, that very person, without the slightest solicitation or expectation on his part, called upon him that very afternoon and gave him some matters of information of a very important character. He was not at liberty to mention his name, as it might appear in the London papers, and do him an injury in his important post as a Captain of a vessel, but this person that Mr. Moore referred to – the cobbler’s son – told him (Mr. Jones) that he had never thanked Mr. Moore for sending him to a reformatory (Loud cheers). Now he did not wish to say for one moment that Mr. Moore told falsehoods – (laughter) – he would not intimate that at all – (loud laughter) – he assured them that he was most earnestly serious when he said that – but he believed on this point Mr. Moore was thoroughly mistaken. This young man had never thanked Mr. Moore for sending him to a reformatory; on the other hand he blamed Mr. Moore to this day for sending him there. (Loud applause). He had thanked Mr. Moore for some things, but altogether apart from the reformatory. Well he asked him, ‘In what capacity?’ The young man said it was in connection with his education at the Moulton Grammar School. He was employed as a teacher in the reformatory, but he said most distinctly he never learned anything good there, although it might have done him a great deal of harm, for he was associated with the lowest scum of London – thieves, pickpockets, and prigs (Loud cheers). Was that a boarding school? (Laughter). He justly complained that Mr. Moore should make a scapegoat of him in this manner, in order to get out of his own troubles. (Loud cheers) Having next referred to Mr. Moore’s aspersion on the character of the parents of Sarah Chandler, and shown there was no ground for any such imputation, Mr. Jones said, in reference to Mr. Moore’s appeal for somebody to lend a hand in picking him up now that he was down, that he was quite willing to hold forward that hand. (Cheers and hisses) He repudiated that hissing; he declined to kick a man when he was down and he was not going to abuse Mr. Moore, and he would do anything to uphold the dignity of the magisterial bench with Mr. Moore as chairman of that bench. (cheers) At the same time he thought the sentence an infamous and monstrous one, but he believed, nevertheless, it was an error of judgement. The Rev. Gentleman concluded with these words:
Let us who are parents of children train up our children in the way they should go. May God ever defend the right. May Spalding ever flourish, and rise higher and higher through the power of One who is nobler and better than magistrates or princes. May our sons be as plants grown up in their youth, and our daughters polished after the similitude of palaces. (Loud applause)
The Chairman then submitted two resolutions thanking very cordially Mr. Ritchie and Mr. Cross, the Home Secretary, and they were carried with acclamation – At the close a subscription was started in order to give the child a good education, and over £5 was handed in.”
Politics Religion and Class
To understand the conflicts in the Sarah Chandler case you have to consider three significant intertwining factors: politics, religion and class. These were intertwined in both the local and the national debate and outcry about the case.
Industrialization had enabled those not owning land to improve their lot. There was an increase in trades and skills. Being a rural area Spalding was influenced by an old feudal structure dominated by land owners and they sought to maintain their power and structure by controlling and maintaining the dominance of key institutions of religion, government and law.
Sarah Chandler’s mother was a gang-master and as such was regarded very lowly, perhaps even as an underclass. Women doing such work were regarded as having very low morals with drunkenness, bad language, prostitution and lewd behaviour all attributed to female gangs. Mr. E. Storr of the Spalding Union said that girls and women working on the land, “grow so uncouth, and their character is bad.” You repeatedly see people judged on their character, or even pre-judged and such assessments were often based on their class and religious practises.
Within politics you have Liberals and Conservatives dominating. But, like today, within these parties were people with sympathies towards their opposition and you would see far more switching of parties than today especially from Tory to Liberal as many Conservatives held liberal and reformist views.
The often held contempt for working class people is illustrated in the Spectator[5] that whilst condemning Edward Moore’s sentence illustrates its unsurprising views thus: “Magistrates……… occasionally do very unjust things…..but invariably do them for some reason patent on the face of the proceedings. The victim is either a labourer who has the insolence to think he is a free man, and has praised the Labourers Union in public; or a tramp suspected of lucifer matches; or a poacher who is also a bad character.” The Spectator condemned the sentence on the grounds that the child could have excited no “class hostility or affect the price of labour.”
Religion was a key power and there was very much a pecking order. The Stuart rebellions 130 years prior had increased mistrust of Catholics and non-conformist religion. The Church of England was at the top of this pecking order. Anglo Catholics were accepted (Gladstone), but what were termed “Papal” Catholics were treated with suspicion, as were many Jews and moves were made to exclude them. Non-conformist protestants such as Methodists, Baptists, United Reform, were regarded as a potential threat to the gentry as they had become favoured by and champions of the working class. This was not helped by the non-conformist religions not recognising the King as head of the Church, they only recognised Jesus as head of the church. The French Revolution had seen the Catholic Church loose dominance, power and property in France and this had created a similar fear in Britain. The Home Rule movement in Ireland had some popular support from Presbyterian Church in both England and Ireland. This created a fear in the gentry as they clung to wealth and power through nepotism and cronyism. Indeed, perhaps Edward Moore was the epitome of this succeeding his father as Vicar of Spalding and his great uncle the Rev. Walter Maurice Johnson. Yet such power bases helped build the town and improve schooling, sanitation, water supply, drainage, gas works and transport. However, the wielding of this power as a tool of moral improvement and a protection of the interests of the Church dominated.
In contrast to the great power of Edward Moore’s Church of England were the growing non-conformist religions that were often champions of the working class and highly supported by upwardly mobile middle class tradesmen and shop-keepers. Education was increasing the ability to read. Reading gave knowledge, and knowledge creates power. The newer churches were very good at promoting reading and ensuring their church pamphlets were able to be read.
This threat was recognised locally and was countered in the publishing of the South Holland Magazine that was founded in April 1869 to provide propaganda for the Church of England. This desire is described in its opening pages:
“Every clergyman must feel the difficulty of ensuring amongst his parishioners the circulation of wholesome and profitable reading, in the place of the worthless, and in many cases mischievous periodicals, which so generally find their way into the homes of our working people and into the hands of the young. It was ascertained a few years ago that the number of papers and periodicals of an objectionable character was as under:-
Papers 17,942,000
Sixty pernicious periodicals 10,400,000
Of the worst class 520,000
Infidel and similar publications 13,344,200
TOTAL 42,206,200
This constitutes a great extent the Sunday reading of the working classes; it cannot be doubted that it is most desirable to endeavour to supersede such reading by something of a better kind. This is the main object in undertaking the South Holland Magazine. Through our Schools, District Visitors and Clergy it is hoped that a large number will find their way each month into the houses of the labouring classes, and to improve their tastes and to call forward their interest in the work of the Church.”
The ability to read was increasing the freedoms of the working class in a small way – increased freedom of information. The railway opening in Spalding in 1848 opened up the speed of information with daily London papers reaching the town promptly. I consider it quite likely that the Geranium Scandal possibly would not have exploded in the time prior to the railway being in Spalding. The telegraph followed the railway soon after and by 1870 was potentially a connection between Spalding and the rest of the British Empire. News could travel fast.
The desire by landed gentry and industrialists to control printed news was great and from that we see an increased growth in provincial and local independent newspapers such as the Spalding Free Press that increasingly became guardians of freedom by reporting faults and excesses and the failings of tyrants. Yet many of those that abuse power were also used that power to improve towns and make things work.
The battle lines that we see develop between working class represented by non-conformist clergy and landed gentry Conservatives mutually supporting a powerful Church of England clergy were echoed throughout the country. There was massive concern that clergymen were abusing their power and positions as magistrates and creating inherent unfairness in the system of justice. The Penny Illustrated Paper of 1875 addressed this issue with an artists illustration showing the contrast between the treatment of a wife-beating ruffian and the imprisoned Sarah Chandler entitled “Punishment for Brutes and Children.”
“If we are to believe our paradoxical Premier it is to the anomalies in the British Constitution that England owes her greatness. Similarly, Mr. Disraeli would, it is to be presumed defend on the same grounds the anomalies in our system of law administration. One of the most conspicuous of these anomalies – the lightness with which wife-beating ruffians are treated compared with the severity with which reverend magistrates often punish children for the most venial offences is the subject of an illustration by our artist.”[6]
There was a national outrage against clerical magistrates, many of whom were regarded as pluralists with high value clerical livings combined with various other positions paid and unpaid to entrench their power.
Such abuses by magistrates had been seen in print before, not least in Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist where we see Oliver sentenced to three months hard labour despite no evidence and the fact he is innocent. The magistrate, Mr. Fang is not interested in the concept that Oliver may be innocent. But these fictional words of Dickens travelled much slower in 1830 than the press of 1875 that was distributed by rail.
It is in this tone that the Derry News describes the clerical magistrates of Spalding: “ The Spalding administration of justice read more like a raw-and-bloody bones nursery romance to frighten children than a solemn vindication of the law as administered by Christian clergymen.”
The movement against clergymen being magistrates was developing before the Sarah Chandler case and this event added fuel to that movement’s cause. “…clergymen acquire the habit of measuring every small sin by a severer strand of morality than ordinary mortals.”[7]
These abuses by clerical magistrates were being seen and criticised throughout the country and many examples were given with perhaps one of the most disturbing being the case of Annie Devine in Morpeth as described here:
“Scarcely has the case of Sarah Chandler, sentenced for four years imprisonment by the Rev. Mr. Moore, for plucking a geranium, ceased to be written about, when we have the case of Annie Devine, which, in some respects is even worse. Annie Devine, a girl of seventeen years old, was brought before the county magistrates at Morpeth, charged with having left the service of her master, James Patterson, without cause or lawful excuse. The defendant was hired as a servant for six months by the plaintiff, at a wage of £10. She left at the end of nine weeks without assigning a cause; and Patterson asked that Devine might be fined. The magistrate, who as usual comprised a clergyman, the Rev. Edward Lawson, of Longhurst Hall, and two officers, Colonel Mitford, of Mitford Castle, and Colonel Atkinson, of Angerton Hall, asked the defendant what she had to say for herself; and her reply was brief, but so much to the point that it ought to have told more than the most fervid eloquence of the most skilful professional advocate. Her master had removed her bed into his room, and sought to compel her to undress before him. That this was done with an object may be gathered by the remark which he had made respecting her to a servant lad. Rather than submit to an outrage on her modesty, which in all probability, be followed by her ruin, the girl left this man’s service. This statement was not denied by the plaintiff, and it was so far accepted by the three magistrates that they refused to inflict a special fine upon her, but mulcted[8] her of the wages due her – about £3 10s. These men, appointed to administer justice, one of them a professional minister of religion and guardian of morals, actually fined this girl seventy shillings because she would not consent to a scandalous outrage. The thing seems almost incredible; but after Sarah Chandler’s case anything is credible of county magistrates; and in very shame at the thought of such ‘justice’ as this we ask how much longer this state of things is going to continue? Remember, we do not charge these Morpeth magistrates any more than we charge the Spalding magistrates with perpetrating an act of injustice, knowing it to be such. We say is that they really cannot distinguish what is just. It is not that they sin against right, but they are blind and dark.”[9]
Just before the Sarah Chandler case the resignation of Mr. J.C. Cox as Commission of the Peace in Derbyshire on public grounds had caused much debate about the role of unpaid magistrates as in his letter of resignation he had stated, “….there is a deep and widespread distrust of petty-sessional justice among the working classes and that the manner in which the law is administered by unpaid magistrates has made him cease to consider it an honour to hold the office in question.”
It is against this background that the issue is presented in Parliament in the form of a question from Charles Ritchie, MP for Tower Hamlets to the Home Secretary, Richard Assheton Cross. Hansard can be a little dry as it omits the reaction of Parliament which is better illustrated in the newspapers of the time:
“Mr. Ritchie asked the Home Secretary whether his attention had been directed to the report of the case of Sarah Chandler, of Spalding, Lincolnshire, aged 13 years, who, on a visit to her aunt at the Almshouses in the town had plucked a flower from a geranium for which she was charged at the Petty Sessions at Spalding on Tuesday and sentenced to fourteen days imprisonment and four years in a reformatory, and whether , if the facts of the case were as reported, he proposed to take any steps in the matter.
Mr. Cross believed there were some small inaccuracies in the question, but he was sorry to say that the facts stated in it were substantially true. The only steps he thought he could possibly take in the matter were simply to dismiss the girl from custody – (cheers) – and to write to the magistrates entirely disapproving of the sentence which they had passed on the girl (cheers).
Sir. F. Perkins asked if it was true that there were two clergymen presiding on the bench when this unjust sentence was passed.
Mr. Cross – I know there was one – (here, here) – but I really cannot say if there were more.”[10]
The Home Secretary was further pressed to name the magistrates in Parliamentary questions on 16th July 1875.
This was becoming an ever increasing battle for the preservation of clerical magistrates that Canon Edward Moore was decreed to have put in disrepute, although it is clear, he was not alone in the courts. The ability for clerical magistrates to influence Christian morality and values in local courts was at stake. Equally government did not wish to incur the cost of professional stipendiary magistrates throughout the Kingdom replacing these local volunteers. The pressure for the Home Secretary to dismiss Cannon Moore from the Bench risked an expensive cascade. On 19th July Mr. E. Power, asked for Major O’Gor-Man whether the Home Secretary would recommend to the Lord Chancellor the dismissal of the Reverend Mr. Moore, hence we see a “fudging” response from the Home Secretary worthy of the dexterity of the fictional “Yes Minister”:
“MR. ASSHETON CROSS: Sir, I have received a letter from the Rev. Mr. Moore, taking on himself the blame of the judgement in this particular case, and stating that he had persuaded his brother magistrates to take the course they did. I think it is right that this should be stated on behalf of the other magistrates, and also on behalf of Mr. Moore. I have already expressed to the House, and to the magistrates themselves, my sense of dissatisfaction at what has occurred, and I do not think, from the letter which I sent, the offence is likely to be repeated. The hon. Gentleman must know that the dismissal of magistrates rests entirely with the Lord Chancellor, not with me, and the Lord Chancellor certainly would not take any action without the fullest inquiry into the conduct of the magistrates. All I can say is I believe the gentleman in question has been in the Commission of the Peace for a great number of years, and, so far as I can trace, no complaint whatever has reached the Home Office on the subject.”[11]
This accounts for the Home Secretary avoiding asking the Lord Chancellor the direct question about whether he should have Canon Moore dismissed, but rather a “quiet word” is had in the corridors of Parliament as illustrated in this last letter from the Home Secretary on 23rd July:
‘ The following letter addressed by Mr. Secretary Cross to the Rev. E. Moore J.P. on 23rd July last terminates the correspondence.
- “With reference to your letter appealing to me for advice under the circumstances consequent upon my reply to Mr. Ritchie’s question, I have to state that I cannot at all agree in the view which you have taken that the sentence you pronounced was for the child’s immediate and ultimate advantage; it was not certainly for the public good. From enquiries made by me in the office, I find that you have long acted as a magistrate, and that no question has been raised at the Home Office as to your decisions; I did not, therefore, feel it my duty formally to represent the case to the Lord Chancellor, but in private conversation he quite agrees with me that it was an error of judgement, and a very grave error of judgement, though given in good faith and with the best intentions. I have, therefore, nothing to add further, feeling strongly that the order for the immediate release of the girl, and the letter stating that the Secretary of State felt bound to interfere, were in themselves a severe rebuke, and that no case of the kind will occur again.”
This letter prompted one last question in Parliament on the subject on 28th July 1875:
“MR R. POWER asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if his attention has been called to the Reverend Canon Moore’s speech as reported in the Spalding Free Press in which paper he is reported to have stated – ‘That he had to defend himself against the House of Commons, who were misled by the representation from the Home Secretary that he had denounced us; that he had in some measure or other conveyed to the magistrates of this bench his disapproval of their sentence. The only communication we have had from the Home Secretary was rather ‘complimentary than otherwise, and was simply in effect that he felt bound to reverse the sentence.’ And if there is any objection to lay upon the Table the Correspondence between the Home Secretary abd the Reverend Canon Moore? MR ASSHETON CROSS: Sir, as a magistrate of long-standing, if I had sentenced a person to four years imprisonment and received a communication from the Secretary of State for the Home Department stating that he felt bound to peremptorily reverse the decision, I should have accepted such a communication as being a severe rebuke rather than as – ‘rather complimentary than otherwise,’ and I cannot think that the rev. gentleman showed by the letter which he wrote to the Home Office that he felt it as a rebuke in the sense that the same thing should not occur again. I have no objection to lay the Correspondence on the Table.”[12]
Parliament may have had a final response but the public outrage of harsh dealings of clerical magistrates continued and examples of their tyranny published, such as 8 year old Robert Gordon Pardy sentenced by the Rev. G.R. Gray of Alcaster bench of magistrates to one month’s imprisonment and five years reformatory for putting small pebbles on a railway line, “to hear them go ‘smudge’ as the train ran over them.”[13]
Going back in time you can see repeated similar sentences from the bench at Spalding chaired by the Rev. E. Moore, such as the boy imprisoned for fourteen days followed by three years reformatory for stealing a bottle of lemonade.
Mr. Moore and his colleagues had many more victims. On 14th February 1864 “The Reverend E. Moore chairman of the Spalding magistrates, and well-know pluralist, finds a little boy named Buffham brought before him for punishment. A Spalding grocer rolled an empty tobacco cask into the streets. The just-short-coated felon was at hand. He watched his opportunity, and deliberately scraped some tobacco dust out of the cask and made off with it, selling the misgotten result for one half-penny! For this offence Buffham was removed from the nursery into the awful presence of the Spalding magistrates, presided over by the Rev. Moore. In vain did Buffham’s counsel plead that his little client had done no more than children are in the habit of doing when they see empty sugar casks in the street. The reverend pluralist and chairman of the bench was not to be moved from the performance of his duty by the artful tongue of the advocate. Buffham must go to prison for one month.”[14]
Just weeks before the Sarah Chandler case was the following: “Another case is that of a respectable servant girl whose mistress had mislaid some silver, and charged her with having stolen it. The girl denied it, and very foolishly left her situation, leaving her boxes behind her; and started to go to her mother, living in the neighbourhood of Whittlesey. A policeman was sent after her, and brought her back to Crowland; where she was searched, but no money found. Two or three photos of the family, which the girl said she had found in the waste basket, and had put in her pocket to show a friend, without any felonious intent, were, however, in her possession. Notwithstanding this defence, and the money only found to be mislaid, and a most excellent character, the poor girl was considered deserving of six weeks imprisonment in Spalding gaol, which accordingly she has undergone, and only lately been liberated.”
Thus we see the Rev. Moore in robustly defending his own actions and position saw himself as defending the whole clerical magistrates of England against a critical onslaught and he came out fighting. At the same time he was defending a strict moralistic conservatism over a more liberal, generous one held by many in Parliament.
Of course, adults were also prone to the miscarriage of justice as in the case of Edmund Johnson where the consecutive nature of three one year sentences doled out by the Rev. E. Moore denied Edmund Johnson any chance of remission. Indeed, after two year’s detention the Rev. Moore was approached by Lindsey prison and denied to even consider an early release on the grounds of the man’s character. This injustice was discovered by visiting judge Mr Justice Field who sought to correct it in September 1875:
“At the last assizes for the county of Lincoln Mr. Justice Field visited the new Lindsey prison, and found a prisoner there named Edmund Johnson who had been tried at Spalding quarter sessions (of which the Rev. Edward Moore was chairman) held two years ago, and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment on three separate indictments (to all of which he pleaded guilty), a year for each, the second year to commence on the termination of the first year, and the third on the expiration of the second, thus making three consecutive years’ imprisonment. This being an unusually severe punishment to issue from a quarter sessions, and it being in some respects equal to five years’ penal servitude, as in the latter there is the prospect of remission on good behaviour, the man’s case was made known to the Home Secretary, who, having inquired into all the circumstances, laid them before Her Majesty, and the result was that an order for the prisoner’s release was received by the governor of the prison, with the sign manual of the Queen herself. – By a special arrangement long-term prisoners are received into the new Lindsey prison from the Holland division.”[15]
Unfortunately, in the same way that Sarah Chandler’s subsequent offence of shoplifting vindicated the Rev. Edward Moore and his colleagues so did Edmund Johnson who in the April following his release found himself before the Spalding bench pleading guilty to three charges of fowl stealing for which he was given a seven year sentence followed by five years police supervision.
That people re-offended vindicated the Rev. Edward Moore and his colleagues. Yet, I am mindful of a quote from the journalist and author Colin MacInnes in 1971, “All criminal trials are about society, not just the case.”
The ability to continue their use of magisterial power was possibly assisted by the location of Spalding in the Fens of Lincolnshire. This area was considered such an ague-laden shit-hole that it was extremely difficult to get barristers to attend Lincoln Crown Court, so a concession was created for solicitors to stand in the shoes of barristers at Lincoln. The last solicitor that I am aware of taking advantage of such a right was Spalding solicitor Malcolm Charlesworth of Maples when his client’s barrister failed to arrive on time.
Commentators, Satire and Comedy of the Geranium Scandal
As comedians do today, in 1875, there were many sharp-witted people prepared to hold a mirror to a society that enabled the imprisonment of Sarah Chandler by clerical tyrants and their allies. Some of this was in the form of criticism in poetic language, others were more direct in their satire and comedy.
The Morning Advertiser’s commentator was very poetically sarcastic in his prose criticising the Spalding Bench: “May their names be ennobled and their praises recorded by the entire Press throughout this Merrie England of School Board renown. May their appetite and digestion never fail, and their dreams be visited by tiny forms of children clad in white, holding each a scarlet geranium flower in small transparent hands as a token of forgiveness and love! We imagine, but we may be wrong, that these fine dispensers of justice on a provincial bench, two of them Churchmen, and one especially a man of maturity in rood benefices, and naturally of good works, in common thankfulness for those mundane mercies, must have done other noble deeds, trotting home from visiting a pauper relative in an alms house, should have had a month at least in gaol. Their mercy only condemned her to two weeks. Whose Christian thoughtfulness suggested the four years training in a reformatory, we know not; but Churchmen and laymen, squire and parson, they seem all to have agreed, and by the time the peculative Sarah Chandler is lose again in road or fields the old aunt in the alms houses will possibly have said her last prayer and invoked her last blessing upon the laws of a God-fearing country and the heads of the five merciful village inquisitors who nipped this little sinfulness in the bud, to blossom, perhaps, hereafter in full-grown sin, or to be reformed as heaven may dispose, and not the charity of magistrates and men. It is evident that there is a good deal that wants reforming in our social system besides Sarah Chandler, 13, gaol bird – what that may be we leave, in all humility, for Parliament and the British public to decide.”
The Daily News took a Disney-like tone by referencing children’s stories and literature of the time:” Of course the Home Secretary has ordered the liberation of the girl, and has written to the magistrates to express his disapproval of the extraordinary frolic in which rural justice choose to indulge itself. The story, clear to all childhood, of the merchant doomed to death because he plucked a rose, and only ransomed by the betrothal of his daughter Beauty to the loathy Beast, seemed reasonable in its award of penalty when compared with the true tale of the girl and the geranium. When the youth in ‘Arabian Nights’ is ordered to be imprisoned because he has forgotten to put pepper in the cream tart, the reader is happy knowing that the whole affair is only a joke, and that, instead of being impaled, the young man is to be introduced to loving and long lost parents. When the girl in Le Sage’s tale is sent by her father to be immured for life in a convent, because she let fall from a window a flower which a gallant stranger picked up, we are obliged to make allowance for Castillian notions of feminine propriety, and for the suspicious look of the circumstances. But it passes all possibility that outside the limits of fable-land and romance, amid modern conditions which are supposed to make up for being commonplace by being reasonable, such a case of Sarah Chandler should be endured and sanctioned by authority. We never supposed that if the facts were as reported Mr. Cross would be likely to look over so grotesque a perversion of justice. It would really seem, from this case, that in the minds of some not uneducated persons the idea of a reformatory is that of a convenient institution established by the State in which little girls and boys, who are at all troublesome to their relatives or neighbours, are to be locked up until they grow to years of discretion. A state combination of Bastile and a kindergarten is apparently what the magistrates in this case believed the reformatory to be. The ‘Autocrat of the breakfast Table’ declares in a burst of simulated spleen that every boy ought to be kept in a barrel and fed through the bung. This or something very like it appears to have been in grim earnest the idea with regard to poor Sarah Chandler; but we are glad the Home Secretary has shown that such is not the principle recognised by law or society in England.”
As shows of support were given to the Rev. Moore the Sporting Times had the following comment:
“A number of people in Spalding have signed a memorial expressing confidence in the Rev. Mr. Moore, believing that he has discharged his duties with strict impartiality. After Sarah Chandler this is in our opinion the very reason why he should be dismissed from the bench. If he is ‘impartial’ we can only say that ‘partiality’ is to be encouraged.”
The London Serio-Comic Journal, otherwise known as “Judy” was less subtle with its word-play:
“That deep-dyed miscreant, Miss Sarah Chandler, who plucked a geranium down at Spalding, and was sentenced to six months hard labour and thirty-six blows with a cat (I may be a little wrong about the details), has been liberated, and the magistrate gently chided. It is said that justice is no MOORE down Spalding way.”
The magazine Fun wanted to know, “If Geranium Moore intends to behave better for the Fuchsia?”
At the same time Fun published the following ditty:
VICARIOUS VINDICATION
Yes, I am the Vicar of Bray –
That is, I’m the Vicar of Spalding:
And maybe some people will say
I’ve got into water that’s scalding.
But if you’ll just think for a while,
You’ll find that I’m not an unfair man;
I but acted in the clerical style
And ne’re wished for regard as a rare man.
For I’m sure that our sentence was awfully mild,
When compared with the sin of that bad little child.
Yes I am an asinine judge –
At least, I’ve been called quite so lately –
And if I’ve a pluralist grudge
I don’t let it bother me greatly.
Now surely your verdicts too hard
On one who’s a Churchman and pious
We must have the people’s regard –
Or the boys in the street will defy us!
And I cannot help thinking by this and by that
Far too much has been mad of a common folk’s brat.
The Rev. Moore and Sarah Chandler appear to have been subject of many a minstrel’s comic song. For example the Staffordshire Advertiser of 2nd August 1875 advertised the following:
“Today, at 3, Tonight at 8, THE MOORE & BURGESS MINSTRELS will introduce the following NEW SONGS which have been written and composed expressly for Messrs. Moore and Burgess: New War Song, ‘Glory or the Grave’; New Ballad, ‘Nellie’s Reply’; New Song , ‘The Piquet’; New Comic Songs, entitled ‘The Buckles on her Shoes’ and the ‘Instrumental Band’; New Operatic Selection from Masaniello; and an entirely new apropos Comic Song, entitled ‘Sarah Chandler or a Doleful Ditty of Spalding.’”
In Eastleigh the Green-Back Minstrels gave a somewhat questionable performance when you look at their supposedly humorous song titles: “I’m the nigger that always laughs”, “Darkie Tinker” and “Sarah Chandler” in what was described as an “Ethiopian” performance in the Hampshire Independent.
By November 5th the Rev. E. Moore was the subject of seasonal entertainment in the Capital as described in this letter by Robert Wright of Camden Town, London to the Boston Guardian:
“Sir – on the 5th November, I was walking down the Westminster-bridge road, and there I saw a Guy made to represent the Rev. E. Moore, Rector of Spalding, and little Sarah Chandler. She was in a supplicating position at the feet of the reverence. The Guy was attired in a costly clerical suit. There was such a stern look on the Rev. gentleman’s face that poor Sarah’s supplications were in vain. The Guy was in a large van drawn by two powerful horses and I can tell you sir, that it caused a great deal of amusement and merriment. There was a card affixed to the Guy with the following inscription: ‘ This guy will be publicly burnt tomorrow evening.’ – Yours truly Robert Wright.”
Of course by the following year Sarah had re-offended and the removal of her to the reformatory at Doncaster prompted the following satirical poem:
LAY OF A FALLEN IDOL
Oh! Where oh! Where, are my summer-day friends?
No wagonette comes for me;
No telegram swift the King’s X sends,
Oh where can the Queen’s “Cross” be?
Has The Gaily ventured no burning lie
Since the cost of that “Hastings” defeat?
Is the Free Press ratting, and eating dirt pie,
And proclaiming “the Idol’s clay feet”?
Oh! Gallant Ritchie, who “rescue” cried,
And, Rupert-like, dashed on my foes;
Who rose in the House, and the law defied,
Can you turn a deaf ear to my woes?
I wait for the martial music grand:
For the banners and the flowers fair;
Oh! Where is my friend, the trusty Wellband?
Does he wait “ as hostage” elsewhere?
A guileless lamb, I sport no more
On “Free Church” pastures green;
With mendacious Baptists sit con amore,
Or drive round the town with Maclean.
Oh! Police! So ready my faults to mark;
My virtues you could not see.
No Leaper should make “a leap in the dark”;
That was how you “fell foul” of me.
Oh “Baptist” haste! Send round the hat,
And gather the L.S.D.;
Bid Governor Bates unbar the gates,
And set your “protege” free;
I will sit at your feet in meekness meet,
Whilst you “rehabilitate” me.
S.A.C. Her mark – X
February 2nd 1876
Such satire wit and comedy could be worthy of some of the greats of our time (not in the least Mark Steel). But this was not a comedy, but a drama, and I will end by looking at some of the key members of the cast.
The Cast of Players in the Drama of The Great Geranium Scandal.
Sarah Ann Chandler
Sarah’s Mum – confusingly of the same names.
Thomas Chandler
Mr Kitchen the gangmaster.
“Crocus Billy” – Edward Wellband
Mrs. Cotton
Governor Bates
The non-clerical magistrates A. Ball Esq. T Harrison Esq. C.S. Taylor Esq.
The Rev J.T. Dove
The Rev. J.C. Jones
The Rev. Mr. Canon Edward Moore.
The Politicians:
Charles Ritchie MP for Tower Hamlets
Richard Assheton Cross – Home Secretary
Sarah Chandler – Sarah was the eldest daughter of Sarah Ann Chandler and Thomas Chandler. She was the eldest of five children at the time of her trial. Her mother was a gang-master – that is, she was licenced to have women and children working under her in the fields surrounding Spalding. At age 13 it is likely she would have done work with her mother. Her father was most possibly a labourer and was abusive to her mother. At the time of her subsequent trial for shop-lifting she was the eldest of six children. The following gives some insight:
It is clear from her mother’s admission that Sarah Chandler was a naughty girl. She admits that and describes both her and her husband having little control of her behaviour. Her mother admits to checking her things for items that don’t belong to her. Her attendance at school is patchy and is recorded by Mr.Maples clerk to the court’s letter to the home office of the 10th July 1875, “I have to observe that out of 125 attendances the child ought to have given during the last quarter at the National School she has only been four times; and out of 428 times she should have attended school last year, she was there only 110 times.” She is described as “mentally deficient”, but also as winning awards at school. The Rev. J. C. Jones refers to her finding a book and handing it in at the Police station. At the same time she was capable of great mischief. She could bully her younger siblings, but was allowed to play in the street with neighbouring children. Another account reveals her parading around the school playground with her skirts over her head. It is clear that she had interfered with flowers at the alms houses before, had no relative there, and the geranium that was stolen was stolen was a full 20 yards inside the courtyard behind iron railings that would have had to have been accessed through on e of the two gates onto the site. The flower was not accidentally hanging over a public footpath, but it was only a flower.
Any parent that has experience of a teenager entering puberty may have some sympathy with Sarah’s parents. Add to this that the girl was the eldest of five, most likely in a very small house, and her mother was pregnant, most likely by an abusive husband, you can understand why Sarah might “play up”. She might seek attention from wherever it was available.
Today she would undoubtedly be viewed as a vulnerable person. Would she have been diagnosed with ADHD or as being autistic in modern times? It is a fact that what we experience negatively, and even the absence of good things in our lives can scar a person. Whilst on remand for the geranium cas she claimed to have swallowed a needle. Upon seeing Dr. Vise’s surgical tools she swears that she lied, but such a claim did give her attention. She gained further attention at the trial and at her subsequent release when she was paraded through the town as a heroine on the back of a wagonette accompanied by her parents, but also by 60 year old “Crocus Billy” who keeps hugging her and lifting her up to the crowd and kissing her. Was this an inappropriate relationship or just exuberance?
The attention Sarah received was not just local, her name was raised in Parliament and published throughout the British Empire and abroad from Delhi to New York. How much she was aware of the furore outside of Spalding cannot be known, but even within the town she had been subject of many public meetings and had forced the powerful Rev. Canon Edward Moore to go on the offensive.
By the start of 1876 much of the furore would have died down. But Sarah Chandler re-ignited it on 26th January when she is spotted stealing a jacket from a local shop. Whilst on remand she broke a number of windows in the gaol and applied physical force to resist the governor of the gaol. The subsequent trial focused on her behaviour, but was also about vindicating the Rev. Edward Moore’s prior sentence:
“THE CASE OF SARAH CHANDLER
The case of Sarah Ann Chandler, of Spalding, was then brought on, and as may be expected, there was a large and interested audience to witness the trial. During the many hours which the above cases had occupied, the gallery had been crowded with spectators, and they manifested the greatest sympathy with the child who had but a few months previously been a ‘heroine’ amongst them.
MR PERCIVAL appeared to watch the case, instructed by her father, and a few of her friends. The prosecution was conducted in the ordinary manner.
Upon the case being called on,
MR PERCIVAL rose and said: - In this case of Sarah Chandler, sir, I have most respectfully to make an application to the Bench, and I will at once shortly state what it is. I am instructed by the father, and some highly respectable parties here, whom I myself have personally seen - and jointly with the father, have instructed me to apply that this case may stand remanded. I will at once say why, and I am sure I will not attempt to say one word that will be offensive in any way to any party. As I said before, this girl has still some parties, and respectable parties too, in the town who feel an interest in her, and they are anxious if possible to make some arrangement whereby the father and mother being consenting parties, this girl may be entirely removed from her present abode, and from her parents in every shape or way. And there is no doubt if it can eventually be acceded to, this girl can be placed for a considerable length of time where she would be compelled to stay: and they would bind themselves to keep her there, with a view to her reformation. The parties whom I represent have no doubt that if a remand be granted they would be in a position on a future occasion to make a proposition, and to bind themselves to carry out the course I have adopted. I need hardly say that it is a course that is constantly adopted in the Courts in London and the neighbourhood, where many of these institutions, such as Miss Stride’s [16]and others of a similar character, exist, and where they take parties, binding themselves to keep them totally away from their parents and friends for a considerable length of time. I do, therefore, most respectfully ask this Court to accede to the application for a remand. The girl has not been in custody quite a week, and these negotiations, of course, take some little time in carrying out, and I therefore ask that at any rate on this occasion there may be a remand granted.
THE REV. E. L. BENNETT: I think that application which has just been made by certain parties for the purpose of reforming the person who is shortly to come before the Court, is exactly met by what is provided by the law, viz: reformatories. If she is found guilty on the evidence, the law at once provides the very means that the learned advocate had been pleading for. I don’t think it is advisable to pay any attention to that application. It would be like compromising a felony if you were to accede it.
The Chairman[17]: I don’t scruple to express my own opinion that this case ought to be dealt with as any ordinary case.
The Rev. J. R. Jackson: I think we are all of that opinion.
The case was then proceeded with, Mr. Maples, the clerk, reading over the depositions in the ordinary way.
Mr. John Tharratt said he was a draper residing at 7 Hall Street, Spalding and on Wednesday the 26th January last, at six o’clock, he was away from his shop, but on being sent for about that time he found Mr. Hayes the witness, and the prisoner in the shop, with his assistants. Mr. Hayes told him he had seen the prisoner take a jacket from the doorway, and the jacket then produced was shown to him. He knew it to be his property; the ticket showing his private mark was upon it, and he now identified it. Mr. Hayes gave him particulars of the case, and the prisoner asked him to excuse her, and said she would never do it again. He told her he should send her home and call and see her father, and ask him to give her a good thrashing. He had seen the same jacket about two o’clock in the afternoon; he noticed it and knew it again, and it had not been sold that he was aware of. He left the jacket on the counter, hiss assistants, Miss Pratt and Miss Cocks being in charge of it. In about a quarter of an hour Superintendant leaper came in and he had some conversation with him, and he took possession of the same jacket, and now produced it. – Cross-examined by Mr. Percival: You had let her go? – Yes. Was not that you might go to her father and tell him to give her a good thrashing? – Yes. Are you now the prosecutor? No. – Are you summoned as a witness? Yes.
Mr.John Eady Hayes said he was an accountant in the Stamford and Boston Bank, at Spalding. On the 26th January, a few minutes to six, he was going down Hall Place, and noticed a little girl looking into Mr. Tharratt’s window. On looking round, he noticed she was looking about in a manner that attracted his attention. He did not then know who she was. He crossed and stood watching in a shop doorway. He saw her walk as far as the passage on Mr. Lever’s side; she then turned and walked back, catching a jacket apparently from off the framework of the window. He crossed to pass her, but could not tell who she was, and she went in the direction of Mr. Kingston’s office. He spoke to the under boots at the White Hart, informing him, and looked for a policeman; not finding one, he followed the girl as far as Mr. Beale’s shop, and caught hold of her, saying he wanted her. He kept her arms together until they reached Mr. Tharratt’s shop, and he then lifted her arms and the jacket fell out on the floor. He handed it to the witness, Miss Pratt, and asked her to send for Mr. Tharratt, who was not in. He waited about a quarter of an hour, and when he arrived, explained the matter to him, asking if he intended to prosecute. He said he did not. The girl said she didn’t care if he didn’t send for a policeman. The witness then left the shop, and shortly afterwards saw the girl going away alone.
Miss Jennie Pratt said she was an assistant in the witness Mr. Tharratt’s shop. On the 26th January, at a quarter to six Mr.Hayes came in and made an enquiry, and shortly afterward brought in Sarah Chandler, the prisoner. She had a black rough cloth jacket under her arm, and she knew it to be Mr. Tharratt’s property. The same ticket was still upon it and she recognised the trade mark. She sent a message to Mr. Tharratt, and the prisoner asked if she had sent for a policeman. Mr. Tharratt came, and she showed him the jacket. She had seen it hanging in the shop doorway during the afternoon. She was in the shop the whole afternoon, and it was not sold. Mr. Tharratt spoke to her, and let her go, telling her he should see her father. The witness, Miss Cocks, was at the same counter. She was in the shop when Superintendant Leaper came in about six o’clock. Miss Cocks handed him the same jacket, and he now produced it. – By the Rev. J.R.Jackson: She had not noticed the child at the shop window.
Miss Agnes Cocks said she was an apprentice at Mr. Tharratt’s shop, and on the 26th January, at a quarter to six Mr. Hayes brought the prisoner in. She had a rough cloth jacket on her arm. Miss Pratt took it and Mr. Tharratt was sent for. She saw the jacket with the ticket upon it. When Mr. Tharratt came he spoke to Mr. Hayes and the prisoner, and then let the prisoner go, saying he should see her father. Superintendent Leaper came in, and asked for the jacket and handed it to him. He now produced it.
Supt. Leaper said he was superintendent of county police stationed at Spalding, and a few minutes after six o’clock on Wednesday night from information received he went immediately to Mr. Tharratt’s shop, and spoke to Mr. Tharratt, and asked Miss Cocks to hand him the jacket. He gave instructions to P.C. Clark and about half-past seven he brought the prisoner in custody in the police station. He asked her if she understood what she was charged with. She said, “Yes, this jacket I have got on is the best I have,” and added that Mr. Tharratt had forgiven her. He retained possession of the jacket and now produced it.
P.C. Clark said he was a county police constable at Spalding, and on 26th January from information received he went in search of the prisoner and at half-past-seven met her at her father’s house, and told her he should apprehend her on the charge of stealing the jacket. She didn’t make any reply, but on the way to the station she said, “I hope Mr. Tharratt will look over it this time.” He cautioned her, and she then said, “ Well, this is the only jacket I have got for home days and work-a-days, it is getting very shabby, and I thought I should like a better one for Sundays.” She was taken before a magistrate and remanded.
The charge being read over to the prisoner that on the 26th January, in Spalding, being of the age of 13 years, she took and carried away one cloth girl’s jacket to the value of 5s. 6d., the goods and chattels of Mr. John Tharratt, she was asked to plead, and she after some hesitation, pleaded guilty, though her father, who stood near, questioned it.
MR. PERCIVAL then briefly addressed the Court on behalf of the prisoner. He said: I am requested on behalf of the father to make a few statements with regard to this girl. It seems that her mother, shortly before her confinement with this girl, suffered most seriously from a terrible attack of fever, and about eight month afterwards the child had a fever of similar character; and from that time there has been to a certain extent a great difference in the child. In point of fact, at certain times, she has been sharp and “calm” enough, but at other times she has hardly known what she was about. On one occasion, and twice on the next day, she stripped herself stark naked and ran into the river. Again, she would go occasionally, after having had her meals, to the swill-tub, and pick out pieces of fat or grease to eat. She had been latterly sent to the British School on the week day, and also to a Sunday School on the Sunday, and miss Pulford, the mistress at the British School, on being asked what her opinion was, only yesterday said, “Well, I call her only slightly half-witted,” and I think that properly expresses her condition. Now that being the state of affairs I do ask that as the child has never been subjected to any term of imprisonment, he believed he was right in saying as…
THE CHAIRMAN: I think you are wrong.
MR PERCIVAL: As a term of imprisonment –
THE CHAIRMAN: Oh yes; she was sentenced to 14 days imprisonment, and she was discharged in the course of that time.
MR PERCIVAL: She has never yet had what some people have – the punishment of a term of imprisonment to see what effect that would have upon her; and I venture respectfully to submit that that may be a course which may be attended with beneficial results on her, during a period of incarceration in the House of Correction, where she would have the valuable services of a chaplain. I do venture to ask this may not be considered as an extraordinary one, but that this may be dealt with as an ordinary person who is sent for a similar offence to a term of imprisonment.
The Bench retired to consider the sentence and on returning into court,
The CHAIRMAN said: Sarah Chandler, you have pleaded guilty to this matter and I suppose you are well advised in doing so. The appeal that was made on your behalf from your friends coincides with the Secretary of State’s opinion, and the result we have come with regard to it. I wrote to him letting him know you were in custody, and asking him to be kind enough to send somebody down professionally and officially, so that the proceedings were in due order. He declined to do this, and says it is a case that should not be dealt with otherwise than the ordinary way. I think that most people will be of the same opinion. With regard to the remarks that have been made on your ability to take care of yourself, to a certain extent I am prepared to say I agree with them; but I am also prepared to say that your home is the very worst place that you can be sent to. Your mother has told us that she cannot control you; your father and mother have been here within the last six months telling us tales one against the other of a most discreditable character; and under these circumstances I think the home in which you have been brought up has been detrimental to you. I regret exceedingly that you have not had the opportunity within the last six months that was offered you on the former occasion of going into a reformatory. Friends who could not possibly understand the circumstances and certainly understood nothing about the reformatory or they would not have taken the steps they did, by ested themselves in your behalf, thinking they were doing you a good service, but I am sure they have done you injury. I am satisfied they have done the public great deal of injury, which it will take a little time to rectify. Those who have been principally interested in the case on the former occasion to obtain your release regret the steps very much now that they took. I have every reason to think so, and I don’t think any of them, if they knew now the circumstances, would otherwise than manfully express their regret that they took the proceedings they did take. A term of imprisonment is necessary to be pronounced, which will of course be brief, but it is necessary that you be imprisoned for a short time to enable the officials to take inquiries where you should be sent to, and who will undertake the charge of you – for I am sure it is a heavy charge devolving upon someone in trying to reform you. I believe there is a certain deficiency in your character. I said before yours was a peculiar temperament, though I did not wish to put stronger terms in the first instance. I have made enquiries at all the schools in the neighbourhood here. You have been at three schools under my superintendence, and I find the same character given you by the pupil teachers and at the Free Church School, as it is called; at the school, and at the British school, and at the Free school you bear the same character – troublesome to a degree, and , as your mother says, difficult to control. Among other things your habits are of a very depraved, vicious , and dirty character. I have it on very good information that only recently, in one of the school yards when the children were assembled at that Sunday school you made it your business to pull up your cloths and march about the yard, exposing your persons for such a length of time that a cottager thought it necessary to take off his belt and give you a good strapping. That is the character you have acquired. You are guilty of many other petty offences which I don’t want to bring up, but there are circumstances that it is necessary to allude to. Since you have been in jail you have been so troublesome that they scarcely know how to manage you. You have assaulted the warden and mistress, and resisted the governor, and in every way shown yourself difficult to control. You claimed to have swallowed a needle, and acted it so well that you actually imposed upon the governor and matron, who sent for a medical man to come and extract the same from your throat; and not until he threatened to cut your throat to get it out did you admit that you hadn’t swallowed a needle at all – and I understand you called God Almighty to witness that you had. It shows that you are capable – and yet to a certain extent I know you are deficient, not having proper control of yourself. Again, this time since you have been in jail you have broken a door and windows in it – showing yourself to be very vicious. The Governor is here, and I believe had to put you in solitary confinement –
Mr. Bates: I had, sir.
The Chairman: That shows you have not been under good control and guidance. You will now be sent where you will be properly instructed and guided – put as you have been asked to do by your own friends. The sentence of the Court is that you be imprisoned in the House of Correction for 14 days, and at expiration of that time, sent to reformatory for four years.[18]
Reformatories of the 1870’s were a desperate measure to help and reform neglected and homeless children. By 1861 magistrates were empowered to send the following to reformatory:
- Any child apparently under 14 begging or receiving alms (birth registration began in 1875)
- Any child apparently under 14 with no obvious home or in the company of thieves
- Any child apparently under 12 committing an offence punishable by imprisonment.
- Any child under 14 whose parents declare they are beyond their control.
Most reformatories were run by Church of England people who regarded the institutions as a tool of moral reform. They were viewed as schools and run as prisons in most cases.
In February 1878 we see Sarah in a group of four girls rioting in the Doncaster Reformatory, breaking windows, causing damage and absconding. When sentenced to three months imprisonment by the judge she retorts, “I can do it.”
April 1885 sees Sarah Chandler working in the Crane Inn in the centre of Spalding. Here she is a victim of her own notoriety and is extremely miserable leading her to attempt suicide by taking laudanum. Canon Moore sentences her to one week in Lincoln prison for the crime of attempted suicide.
Once out of prison, having lost her job she landed in the Spalding Union workhouse where she was effectively institutionalised. In July 1886 she refused to do work in the workhouse and subsequently attempted suicide by swallowing iodine. She was sentenced to 14 days hard labour for this offence.
Her continued life in the workhouse was problematic with reports of her being punished with solitary confinement and bread and water for insolence. In January 1889 Sarah Chandler is brought up before Spalding magistrates alongside fellow workhouse inmate Ellen Turner for disorderly conduct. Sarah had refused to do washing work, but because she expressed regret to the bench she was discharged. Ellen Turner’s disorderly conduct was “making a noise”. She claimed she was singing. She was sentenced to 14 days imprisonment. Such a sentence is all the more incredible when you consider the fact that Ellen was born blind!
By 1893 Sarah Chandler is working as a servant at The Barge beer house at the Eastern end of Spalding when she is assaulted by a drunken Robert Peacock, a local labourer. In his defence he said that two drunken women were in the pub teasing Sarah Chandler and when he entered said, “Now Sarah here’s Jack the Ripper.” When Sarah refused to serve him he hit her and brandished a knife. He was fined 7s.6d. and costs, but not having the money was gaoled for 14 days. The nature of the insult possibly implies other behaviour. The penalty is in contrast to Sarah’s experience at the hands of the Spalding magistrates.
In August 1893 Sarah was fined 1s. by the Rev. J.R.Jackson and Rev. J.T.Dove for using obscene language in Commercial Road, Spalding. This was provoked by a neighbour kicking her cat. It is clear from the details of the case that some of her neighbours were “brow beating” her about the geranium case and were trying to bully her out of her position at The Barge where she admitted she liked to live and work. The low fine, a little below a week’s wage for her, possibly reflected this. As we enter the twentieth century we see Sarah Chandler described as a housekeeper at The Barge in August 1900 as she is in court as a witness to a case of threatening behaviour by Isaac Leadbeater. Two year’s late in 1902 she is fined 5s. for taking water from a tap belonging to Spalding Urban District Council – the tap is in a public location.
Sadly the landlord of The Barge committed suicide and I lose documentary trace of her wearabouts. However, I understand she was a housekeeper in Thorney and then later in Bexhill On Sea where she died in the 1930’s.
Sarah Chandler is undoubtedly a tragic figure. We can only guess what abuses she suffered. The notoriety she acquired at such a young age added to her woes. We like to think that we have improved with time, but, despite our greater understanding of psychology and behaviour, plus our improved welfare systems it is possible to walk into any prison in Britain today and encounter similar people that have been institutionalised and, in a more perfect world, should not be there.
Sarah Ann Chandler (nee Maltby – Sarah’s mother). Sarah Ann Maltby married Thomas Chandler on 23rd September 1861 in Spalding where she lived. By 1876 they had six children of which Sarah was the oldest.
Sarah Ann Chandler was a gang-master licenced under the 1867 Gangs Act working with another gang-master called Mr. Kitchen. This law was significant in that it laid down strict rules on Agricultural work. Women and children could not be employed by a male gang-master. No gang could be mixed women and men. Children had to be over the age of eight. All gang-masters had to be licensed by the local magistrates every six months, with the magistrates being satisfied that the applicant was of good character. In 1867 Edward Stanhope produced a report for a Royal Commission into agricultural labour of women and children. It is clear that gang labour was a necessary evil, but that it was felt to morally ruin women making them too coarse to enter service or to have the skills of being a wife. It was also considered a source of prostitution and drunkenness.
In November 1875 Mr. Kitchen and Sarah Ann Chandler found themselves having their licenses declined as gang-masters. The reasons behind this give an insight into her personal life as the Rev. Moore got Superintendent Leaper to enquire into the truthfulness and otherwise of matters that had been brought to his attention i.e. the rumour of adultery between Mr Kitchen and Mrs Chandler:
Superintendent Leaper said within the last six months, Thomas Chandler and Sarah Ann Chandler had been to his office. Mrs. Chandler complained that her husband had turned her out of the house frequently all night, and that she had to sleep on the door-steps or where she could, and he behaved very cruelly to her. He asked Mr. Chandler what was the cause of it, and he replied she neglected him and his children and was committing adultery with Kitchen. He enquired how he knew that, and he replied that it was the talk of everybody. She then charged him with committing adultery with other women. Witness advised them to be quiet and go home. Chandler had spoken to him before that, and complained of his wife neglecting her home and going with other men. Last Saturday night he sent for Chandler and told him if he wished to part Kitchen and his wife he had better go up that day (Tuesday). He said if he had no work he would be there, but there was nothing of the sort going on then, and his wife was a great deal better. Mrs Chandler had just told witnesses that her husband was a very jealous sort of man, and was even jealous of him (witness). He wished it to be understood, though, that there was no foundation for his jealousy in the witness’s case. Inspector Ward was present when they both went to him first. Kitchen and Mrs Chandler had been in the habit of having gang licenses and going out to work together, and he had heard a great deal of talk about them, although he had seen nothing wrong himself.
Kitchen, in a most emphatic manner, denied all knowledge of the offence imputed to him by the superintendent. The parties, he said, who had lodged the complaints , had been boys he had discharged from his service for misconduct. They were a gipsy party, and he could prove the whole matter to be false. Mrs Chandler also flatly contradicted what her husband had told the superintendent , and said it all arose out of his jealous disposition. He never made these charges except he was in drink. Often when she had been hard at work all day, her husband had gone home drunk, and had not earned a half-penny. Superintendent Leaper said he believed the statement as to Chandler’s drunken habits was correct. Mrs Chandler further stated that she had six children to support, and she must do something for that purpose.
The Chairman advised Mrs. Chandler, in the face of these facts, to withdraw her application for a licence, and go to some other work. It was an easy matter for her to find some other work equally advantageous and much more creditable. Chandler persisted that her husband would not let her go charring, and she must do something for a living. That being so, she saw no other occupation open to her but that she now sought. The Chairman intimated that she would be pursuing by far the better course by accepting his advice. With this the matter ended.
Just before the rising of the Court, Kitchen again appeared, and asked the magistrates whether they still refused to grant him a licence. The Chairman replied that he had asserted his ability to disprove the charges that had been broughtagainst him, and unless he did that, his licence would certainly not be granted. But if he proved to the satisfaction of the Bench that the statements made about his conduct were unfounded, then they would consider the propriety of renewing his licence.[19]
Thus we see Canon Moore using his magisterial powers to enforce a clerical morality in black and white terms, whereas reality is often in shades of grey.
I have found little about Thomas Chandler other than his marriage and the description of his behaviour in this instance.
James Kitchen – found himself falling foul of the Rev. Moore as his gang licence was not renewed alongside Mrs. Chandler’s. Gangs were strongly disapproved of, but equally recognised as essential for local agriculture to function. The 1967 employment commission by Edward Stanhope recognised how poor the education of rural children was, especially in the fens and marshes of Lincolnshire. Edward Moore recognised this and was very much against the use of women and children in agriculture largely on grounds of it ruining their moral character. He preferred that women and children’s work should be confined to allotments or small-holdings of cottagers or churning butter.
The Royal Commission resulted in the 1873 Agricultural Childrens’ Act which was a fudge with regards to education. The Act only permitted children to work in Agriculture above the age of 8 subject to parental confirmation that they had attended school a certain number of times in the preceding 12 months; that is, 250 times for children aged eight to ten and 150 times for children over the age of ten. The Agricultural Gangs Act 1867 already mentioned ensured women and children were in separate gangs to adult men. The non-renewal of Sarah Ann Chandler’s gang-master licence would not just affect her, but those women and children working in that gang. James Kitchen, when he lost his licence lost his ability to employ others, and even when it was eventually renewed he could not legally employ boys or women without a licenced female gang-master working alongside him.
October 1876 saw James kitchen breaking this law:
James Kitchen , labourer of Spalding was summoned for employing females in the same gang with males on the 4th October. The offence was poved by P.C. Briggs, who said the gangs were on the farm of Mr. Laming, and there were working in the field together ten boys, three girls, and a married woman. A second charge was preferred against Kitchen of employing two lads under the age prescribed by section 6 of the Agricultural Childrens’ Act. The constable said he saw boys (Taylor and Smith) with Kitchen, and he asked the latter whether he had a certificate from school for the boys, and he replied that he had not. The Bench fined defendant 1s. each boy and girl, and costs in the case of the gang, and 10s. and costs for employing the boys under age - £2 15s. 6d. in all, and his licences to be endorsed.[20]
It has to be noted that the policeman asked for a certificate of attendance from the school – this was a local enforcement stipulated by local magistrates as the Act only required parental confirmation, but as many parents would be illiterate it was possibly pragmatic. Also note that Mr. Kitchen only has his licence endorsed meaning he could still operate within the law, but if it was endorsed a second time his licence and ability to renew would be lost.
“Crocus Billy” Edward Wellband – was a notorious local character well before the geranium scandal that propelled even his name across the country as the “charioteer” in the geranium demonstration as Sarah Chandler was released from Spalding gaol. The 60 year old is described as lifting her up to the crowds, hugging and kissing her as he drove her around town in a wagonette accompanied by her parents. Reading this behaviour I felt uncomfortable about the relationship between Crocus Billy and the young Sarah Chandler.
Edward Wellband is described in directories of the time as a “Gardener”. This was a broad term at the time and would possibly be described today as a market gardener, grower, or horticulturist. He lived in Water Lane with his wife Ellen and owned a patch of land somewhere in a triangle formed by the then intersecting railway lines of the great Northern and March lines neither of which survive today. He successfully grew and sold fruit and vegetables and became one of the pioneers of the early bulb industry, initially buying, cultivating and selling snowdrops and snowdrop bulbs before moving on to crocus bulbs for which he obtained the nick-name “Crocus Billy”.
He appears to be a well known local character and a respected trader of bulbs. I have found an account of him racing horses on nearby Cowbit Wash and of his wife Ellen fined 1s. for preventing a workman from the Town Improvement Commissioners from laying pavement outside their home.
In 1876, William Skeef, the porter for the local iron-monger and foundry owner Mr. Jennings stole various items including seven yards of roofing felt, one pound of nails, a pound of solder, two garden spades, 1 pound of gunpowder and a dozen shotgun cartridges. The spades, gunpowder and cartridges he sold on to Edward Wellband who was prosecuted for receiving stolen goods. Whilst awaiting trial he was also accused of stealing a pair of socks from a drapers shop. He was acquitted of this later charge by the jury, but found guilty of receiving the stolen goods and sentenced to six months imprisonment with hard labour. Needless to say, the chairman of the bench was the Rev. Edward Moore. It is important to note that at these same quarter sessions we see Edward Johnson, mentioned earlier for being released by the Home Secretary after it was discovered Edward Moore had over-reached on his sentencing, is convicted of fowl stealing. It is as if these two convictions combined with the trial of Sarah Chandler for shoplifting were fortuitously timed to vindicate the clerical magistrate.
When released from prison Edward Wellband continued his business and is seen trading both snowdrops and crocus.
Mrs. Cotton – lived with her husband in the Gamlyn Alms houses that had been rebuilt in Church Street, Spalding in1843-4 as a quad of 17 houses for the accommodation of up to 34 people. Whilst in this case Mr. & Mrs Cotton were married, not all occupants of the alms houses were either married or of the opposite sex as it was deemed appropriate and beneficial for the alms houses to be occupied by two people for maximum public benefit as morality allowed. By 1856 the occupancy level was reduced deliberately to 24 in the 17 houses in Church Street to enable the single occupancy and the weekly payment for inmates was increased from 3s.6d. to 5s. a week. These residences were managed by the Town Husbands, trustees who were a mixture at that time of professionals and businessmen. Canon Moore became a trustee somewhat later.
It is clear from Mrs. Cotton’s approach to the school mistress that she never intended the theft of her geranium to escalate to the bench and the Rev. Edward Moore intimidated her into pressing the charge. The senior Town Husband at the time was Mr. Maples who was also clerk to the court and as such would be under the influence of Canon Moore. Note Mrs. Cotton takes out the summons on behalf of her husband for in 1875 as a married woman all her property was deemed subordinate to her husband with this only improving with the Married Women’s Property Rights Act in 1882.
Governor Bates – Henry Bates was appointed governor of Spalding House of Correction in November 1850 replacing the previous governor Mr. King who was sacked.
The Inspector of Prisons report of 1849 of the Spalding House of Correction highlighted how the prison was being mis-managed. Prisoners who had not been convicted, held on remand, were performing hard labour contrary to the law. Despite ample room for individual occupancy the only three female prisoners in the gaol were sharing a cell against regulation. There were clear indications that Mr. King was “feathering his own nest” for both himself, his family and his cronies who were all living well off the prison. It was the norm for these small prisons to acquire coal, food and provisions on a six month or twelve month openly tendered contract. This was not the case with the Spalding prison and it had substantially more costs per head than neighbouring gaols in the county. The governor was well known for entertaining his local cronies at the prison’s expense in an ale house run by his sister, but in the view of many, owned by him. Even bricks for a new school room were sourced from the brickyard land owned by his friend Mr Laming, who whilst serving a term as clerk of works in 1850 ensured the road to his land down Clay Lake was much improved whilst the town centre roads were in poor repair. Repairs and maintenance of the prison were far exceeding the cost of inmates. The local Free Press and its readers’ letters were forcefully challenging this behaviour.
What made this worse was that the accounts of the prison were signed off by the local magistrates with accusations of nepotism as Maurice Johnson and William Moore (Edward’s father) were of the same family. They were severely criticised for building the grand magistrates court adjacent to the prison as many circuit judges were dismayed to see the grand nature of the building. Ratepayers were outraged and the local Free Press sought to hold the magistrates to account. By November 1850 local outrage was great as ratepayers were paying more for the town’s improvements. The magistrates held a meeting with Mr. King in camera and sacked him with no public information published, but a private report was issued to the Secretary of State. The secrecy behind this created much local disapproval.
In contrast to his predecessor Henry Bates appears to be greatly respected. Prior to coming to Spalding in 1850 he had run Boston House of Correction in a more challenging environment of a busier town subject to many more crimes. Upon arriving in Spalding he had the task of reforming the House of Correction and running it correctly.
It has to be understood that the inmates of the House of Correction were not steeped in crime and the Inspector of Prisons deemed them as victims of poverty:
“Vagrants and sheep-stealers form the majority of the prisoners. These men are generally the victims of circumstances. Vagrancy in nine cases out of ten is the result of poverty – the want of employment and other causes which do not suppose any predisposition to crime on the part of the offender .These are men who might be arrested in their career of criminality. Vagrancy is only a crime by law – not a crime of itself according to any code of morality which has yet been enunciated. The vagrants then are criminals made by our unfortunate state of society.”
The Inspector of Prisons saw the chaplain and the school master in the prison as key to breaking this cycle and one of Governor Bate’s tasks was to establish this.
Henry Bates inherited a prison that was poorly and illegally run with financial impropriety. As such he was under great scrutiny from visiting Justices who expected to see improvements. This he achieved and his longevity in the role holds much to his ability to manage it competently to the satisfaction of magistrates, inspectors and a critical public.
Henry Bates left the role in 1883 and married Helen Nelson on 26th March 1883. The House of Correction closed in 1884 with all prisoners sent to Lincoln prison on 1st March 1884.
The non-clerical Magistrates:
Mr T. Harrison was a local land owner and farmer. I have found little information other than him having holdings in the parish of Weston.
Charles Sunderland Taylor – was landed gentry with considerable assets in the parish of Gedney. He can be most frequently found as chairman at Holbeach Petty Sessions.
Dr Ancell Ball – was an accomplished surgeon that lived in Church Street, Spalding and had retired from a professional partnership based in Lincoln. I feel that there is one particular issue that illustrates his character, a person, in my view, who felt entitled by his position and wealth.
This one issue annoyed many Spaldonians and the exception shown to Dr Ball in Church Street fuelled much criticism. It is perhaps a very English thing that favouritism and unfairness rankle more than anything with ordinary people.
The installation of pedestrian pavements was a significant issue in the town of Spalding in the 1870’s. It was significant because many houses and shops had there doors open outwards onto the road. So the installation of paving required the alteration of door jams, hinges and the rehanging of doors so that they opened inwards. 1871 sees Dr. Ball being made an exception and allowed to retain a strip of asphalt outside his front door. This attracted repeated ongoing criticism in the local press.
Mr, Crampton worked for the Improvement Commissioners in this task and if he was obstructed he would report to the Commissioners who would issue a complaint to the local magistrate who would issue a fine in the first instance as we have seen with Crocus Billy’s wife. However, not so with Dr. Ball. In 1874 Mr. Crampton went to pave the area of asphalt only to be challenged by Dr. Ball who blocked his work. So, Mr. Crampton reported to the Commissioners and they instructed him to proceed. Poor Mr. Crampton was caught in the cross-fire of this as follows:
The instructions then given were , in effect, to proceed with the work by force; and accordingly on the following Tuesday he and his men commences to pull up the asphalt. Dr. Ball, Mr. Calthrop (his legal advisor), and a little army of men at once rushed from their hiding places, and forcibly ejected the intruders, and , by whose antiquarian research we know not, an old Act of Parliament was “raked up” and Crompton was apprehended and committed for trial. At a hearing before the Grand Jury, the bill was at once thrown out, and for a time the matter was disposed of.[21]
This whole issue was subsequently put before the Queen’s Bench in London to resolve. Having proven that Dr. Ball had enclosed the area since 1829 it ruled in his favour. This issue was resolved with Dr. Ball in 1877 when the compromise was the relocation of his boot-scrapper. I believe this speaks for the arrogance and and entitled nature of Dr. Ball.
The Rev. J.T. Dove – Born in 1822 he became a clergyman in 1845, initially a curate at Swaton, near Billingborough Lincolnshire, before becoming a curate at Spalding in 1849 under Dr. William Moore until 1851. He then became curate of Christ Church, Marylebone for ten years followed by being appointed Vicar of Cowbit in 1862. He was married with two sons and three daughters. He was, in many ways, Edward Moore’s side-kick on the Bench, but he was independently minded being of a wider experience than Edward Moore. He took few public offices compared to many clergymen of that era with his magisterial duties and his 20 year chairmanship of the Spalding Board of Guardians being the primary two public offices he was dedicated to serving.
He was well regarded as Vicar of Cowbit. He became Chair of the South Holland Bench of magistrates in 1900. It is with amusement that upon his death the local press noted, “ he was a most regular attendant at the Petty Sessions held at Spalding, and whilst his deafness, which was his only apparent physical infirmity, naturally militated against him taking the fullest interest in all the business brought before the Court, his decisions were never harsh, and if they erred at all it was on the side of leniency, and were always delivered with a word or two of good advice for the future to all who appeared before him.”[22]
However, this sentimental prose, possibly not wishing to speak ill of the dead, was utter drivel as illustrated by his malicious prosecution in the 1880’s. At that time Mr. Dove was well known as the tricycling cleric riding a three-wheeled bike. In common with many clerics of the era he had farming interests and in October 1883 incurred a fine, “for obstructing the road by leaving his skeleton steed thereon while he proceeded to superintend certain farming operations.” He is described as “thirsting for revenge” and seeing the local baker’s cart, Mr. Oscar D’Alcorn of .Cleaving his cart for five minutes with no person in charge of it whilst he delivered bread. The magistrates dismissed the case as “Mr. D’Alcon was using his vehicle for the purpose of his trade in the delivery of goods while the reverend gentleman merely used the bloodless tricycle to transport his person from place to place.”
The Reverend J. C. Jones – He was the son of a Baptist preacher born in Castle Donnington near Derby on 7th July 1823. He studied at the University of Glasgow. In 1846 he was recruited by Thomas Sharman, a shoemaker and one of the deacons of Spalding Baptist Church after he saw him preach at Long Sutton. He first preached in Spalding in January 1847 where he remained in post until his retirement in 1913.
He was a more polished orator than the Canon Moore and reading his articles you see quality structured arguments often written with humility in that he cleverly entertained the concept that he might be wrong whilst arguing why he was correct. He was a fearless and strong challenger of the Church of England and the stranglehold he felt it had on the institutions and structures of established society. In April 1874 he held a public meeting in the Corn Exchange calling for the disestablishment of the Church of England. In this speech he used anti-semitic imagery to criticise the Conservative Disraeli. Thus he is seen as a polar opposite to the Conservative Canon Moore and he offered to meet his opponents in public debate rather than seek to control an audience.
Thus we see the Sarah Chandler affair feed into his beliefs and ideals. Yet, the Rev. J.C. Jones did not court popularity for its sake. He opposed the Boer War and preached against it. On the 20th May 1900 lively celebrations took place in Spalding upon the relief of Mafeking and a hostile crowd gathered in front of his house throwing rocks, fireworks and even lighting a bonfire on his front garden. Aged 77 he sat quietly smoking throughout it all and had to be restrained by his family from going out to confront the mob.
Thus we see that the Rev. J.C. Jones had a strength of character equal to that of the Rev. Canon Edward Moore.
The Rev. Canon Edward Moore – was so much part of the establishment of Spalding that it may be said that like a stick of rock if you cut through him you would find “Spalding” written throughout his core. However, he would possibly view it that if you cut through Spalding in the 1870’s you would find “Canon Edward Moore” stamped throughout its centre.
Edward Moore was the third son of the Rev. Dr. William Moore, Vicar of Spalding and Anne Elizabeth. She was the only daughter of Rev. Maurice Johnson of Ayscoughfee Hall, and Vicar of Spalding. Thus Edward Moore was part of a dynasty that ruled Spalding with a parochial, clerical hand drenched in the nepotism, cronyism and class of the age. When he succeeded his father as Vicar of Spalding he entered into one of the richest ecclestiastical livings in the country worth the equivalent of £160,000 annual income in 2024’s value[23].
The following letter to the editor of the Stamford Mercury of January 1842 gives a good impression of a money-grabbing cleric:
"Sir - I was surprised at seeing a paragraph in the newspaper of the 14th. inst. stating that during the illness of the Incumbent of Crowland, the Rev. Edw. Moore had been assisting the duties of Crowland Church. No one will discommend Mr. Moore for this generous conduct; but I wish to know why we have not had divine service performed twice every Sunday at our Chapel in Whaplode Drove for the last three years, according to a contract entered into by Mr. Moore with the Feoffees under the penalty of £3000! Perhaps Mr. Moore may have forgotten this bond; but he does not forget to take the £400 per annum as the price of his ministration. Unfortunately, our Chapel will only hold half the people in Whaplode Drove at one time; therefore, if we have only one service in a week, half of us must wait a fortnight for a little spiritual instruction. Is this right? Is this honest?
Yours OBSERVER Whaplode Drove Jan 18 1842."
In December 1876 a detailed profile was published about Canon Edward Moore and I give the following rather romantic extracts:
In appearance, Canon Moore is rather above the average height dark in complexion and walks like one who had been under military training. His eyes are dark, rather piercing, but have withal a not unkindly and honest expression. His nose is straight and pre-eminent, surmounting a mouth indicating great firmness, and the whole facial expression denotes to be a man of iron will. Divested of his clerical garb, a stranger meeting him would conclude that he is a man whose life has been spent in camps and active military service. Judging from his appearance, he is a man who would have been at home in a tented field, or heading his company in the fierce onslaught – a man who would have rejoiced to head the Light Brigade in its world-renowned charge. With a well knit and well proportioned frame, his black locks now more than slightly tinged with gray, he stands before you a man of resolute in will, ready to command, and prepared to face any danger, or perform any service, to which Duty calls. In his younger days, and even now, he would be no easy antagonist with whom to grapple. He would hit right out from his shoulders, and deliver his blows with precision and force. His strength might fail him, but his courage would never forsake him.
Whatever he might do he would neither show the white feather, nor throw up the sponge. We are not insinuating that Canon Moore is a muscular Christian. We are merely speaking of what his well-known qualities – qualities which no Christian is surely the worse for possessing. Bravery is a virtue to which man everywhere, and in ever stage of civilisation, does homage. The most arrant coward will sing in praise of courage. From the days of Homer till now, men have rejoiced to crown their heroes with honour, and hold their names in rememberance. And well is it that it is so. For the world’s rough work needs brave and resolute men to do it. Men feeble in energy, weak in will, craven in heart, not the men to battle with the evils of the age in which they live, or help the world in its onward march………..
…………Canon Moore is not a famous preacher. He has not devoted much attention to the art of elocution. Nor is he a profound or severely logical thinker. He makes no pretention to the possession of elocutionary or ratiocinative power…….
……..A strong vein of common sensepervades his pulpit utterences.
What he believes to be true he utters, however unpalatable it may be to himself or his hearers. His moral courage is as great as his physical…..
……In politics Mr. Moore is a Conservative and supports by his vote and influence what is now called the Constitutional party, but he takes no part in the public discussion of party politics…
…..Though he loves power, to him the trimmer and the sycophant are simply detestable. Honest and ingenuous himself, he likes the same qualities of character in others…….. he has many who admire him, and not a few who, though they cannot help admiring, yet dislike him. He is not one of those men whom everyone loves. He is too honest, genuine and out-spoken to be universally popular.[24]
Thus we see Canon Moore described aged 64. The description appears very Trumpian in its nature. Yet referring back to his speech to the Old Fellows where he dined with men wearing geranium sprigs he showed great courage to stand by his conviction and challenge those ridiculing him.
The following piece from 1889 does show an element of humour and self-deprecation though:
Canon Moore, the late Vicar of Spalding , says a contemporary, sed to tell a good story against himself. In his capacity as Magistrate he was once visiting the County Gaol, and expatiated to a friend who was with him the virtues of the tread-mill. Warming with his theme, he declared that he often wished he had one at home to give him the gentle exercise he required, but was too lazy to take except under compulsion; and to remove the friend’s scepticism he asked the warder to give him a turn. Round went the mill, the Canon declaring that the movement was delightful; but after about two minutes of it he had had quite enough, and called the warder to stop the mill. To his horror the warder answered, “Very sorry, sir, I can’t; It’s timed to go fifteen minutes, and it won’t stop before.”[25]
The Politicians:
Mr Charles Ritchie MP for Tower Hamlets – first gained this position as one of two MPs for Tower Hamlets in 1874 as a Conservative MP. It is telling that in the Conservative pact with Liberal Unionists in 1888 when Charles Ritchie formed the London County Council against the will of many Conservatives they tended to regard him as a Liberal Unionist despite his party membership to the contrary. Charles Ritchie came from a Scottish family that prospered under the East India Company and developed a successful jute-spinning and manufacturing business. Charles Ritchie originally encountered J.C. Jones in Glasgow.
It is highly likely Charles had similar non-conformist religion to the Rev. Jones. His questioning of the sentence in Parliament was much praised, but as Sarah Chandler committed a further offence he was accused of meddling in business that he knew nothing about to the embarrassment of the Conservative party.
Richard Assheton Cross MP – Home Secretary
Richard Assheton Cross was born in near Preston in 1823. Educated at Rugby and graduated from Cambridge University in 1846. He was an accomplished lawyer and banker and served as Home Secretary twice. He was a classic Conservative MP of the age. After his political career in Parliament closed having served for nearly 30 years he entered the House of Lords. He also became a director of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway where he was renowned for uttering his favourite phrase that had served him throughout business and politics, “Where is the money coming from?”
He was a shrewd political player and Canon Moore would have been no match for him.
Matthew 7.1 “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”
It is very easy when you look back in time to judge those in the past. It is very easy for those outside of a situation to judge those within that circumstance. We see this every day in modern times in social media and in the past, as we have seen, in newspapers.
I always feel the author and journalist Colin McInnes summed it up well when he wrote, “All criminal trials are about society.” This could not be truer of the geranium scandal and the subsequent cases.
In my opinion the two key people in the case were the Rev. J.C. Jones and Canon Edward Moore. They represented political, religious, ideological and class rivalry of the times. They could both be classed as reformers as these were times of reformation of towns and cities throughout the country. How these reforms were viewed and achieved was in many different styles that often mirrored religious and political differences and especially the difference between a growing middle-class and the landed gentry.
Most of the Church and landed gentry were Conservatives who viewed themselves as a better class of person by virtue of their wealth and status and therefore deserving of the power to enforce their will. At the same time they saw that authority as a responsibility to lead and mould people to their moral, religious and political ideals. They knew best. You see this in the much heralded social reformer Octavia Hill born in Wisbech in 1838. She was an Anglican and a fierce social reformer that worked to better the conditions of the working class. It is telling that her view of working class people is that they were “too ignorant to better themselves”, but she understood that landlords were too greedy to fulfil their obligations to provide decent housing. So, she set up housing schemes for the working class. Rents were collected weekly in person by a female rent collector which enabled the condition and habitation of the houses to be monitored so that any maintenance or breaches occupancy could be dealt with. Whilst this was successful she was a ruthless landlord as a tenant was evicted despite paying rent on time because his house was over-occupied and his children were not being sent to school. The more socialist leaning reformer of the time, Gertrude Bell, called Octavia Hill a “despot”.
In a similar way Canon Edward Moore was a ruthless enforcer using his power to improve society in Spalding as he saw fit. This is seen in how he set up allotments as a means to reduce the use of children and women on the land as described in Canon Moore’s evidential report to the Royal Commission of Employment of Young Persons and Women in Agriculture in 1867:
“The advantages to the poor are that they can grow their own vegetables and feed a pig. It employs their leisure hours, keeps them out of idle company and beer shops, gives them an interest in their Sunday walk, makes them thoughtful in the cultivation of their gardens and is profitable to them. They teach their children also to work on the land. I do not allow my tenants to work on their allotments on Sundays, except to gather vegetables before 9am, nor on Good Fridays, Ascension Day, nor Christmas Day, nor when they can obtain work elsewhere, nor do I allow the children to work on the allotments during school hours.”
Thus you see a form of social engineering using wealth and power.
The growing middle class of businessmen and non-conformist religious people tended to be more liberal. They tended to view people on a more equal basis and not form a loft view looking down. Indeed, this is possibly ingrained in the structure of non-conformist Christianity where lay preachers are greatly valued and as such had great connection and following from the working classes. This is seen throughout the Spalding area by the number of rural chapels.
Thus we see a great circle of judgement by politicians, religious people, journalists and even ourselves looking at the past. At the bottom of this well of judgement was poor Sarah Chandler.
[1] At that time a quartern loaf was four inches cube of bread. It was made larger over time as bread became a lower cost compared to wages.
[2] Stamford Mercury 6th July 1875
[3] Lincolnshire Chronicle 18.7.1875
[4] Lloyds Weekly London Newspaper 18th July 1875
[5] Lets face it this third rate so-called Conservative rag still pedals as much shit today
[6] The Penny Illustrated Paper 24th July 1875
[7] Birmingham Daily Mail 13th July 1875
[8] Another word for fined
[9] The Bee Hive 14th August 1875
[10] Eastern Daily Press 14th July 1875 and Hansard 13th July 1875 vol.255 cc.1379-80
[11] Hansard 19th July 1875
[12] Laying Correspondance on the Table was the means of making it public to all Members of the House
[13] Londonderry Journal 6/8/1875
[14] Lloyds Weekly London Newspaper 18/7/1875
[15] Stamford Mercury September 1875
[16] Miis Stride’s Homes for Destitute Girls and fallen Women were three homes in London formed by Miss Stride. It is hard to assess whether these establishments were genuine or not and they became mired in accusations of holding debauched parties and of prostitution and the homes kept moving. The early Charity Commission (the Charity Organisations Society) made repeated investigations and accusations against her that she refuted.
[17] Rev. J.T. Dove
[18] Lincolnshire Free Press Feb. 8th 1876
[19] Sleaford Gazette 27th November 1875
[20] Lincolnshire Free Press 24th October 1876
[21] Lincolnshire Free Press June 9th 1874
[22] Lincolnshire Free Press November 10th 1906
[23] At the time of writing a similar income to that paid to Kier Starmer for being Prime Minister!
[24] Lincolnshire Free Press 5th December 1876
[25] Horncastle News 1st June 1889
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