Narratives in the courtroom: Female poisoners in mid-nineteenth century England

Introduction

On March 25th 1851 a working-class woman by the name of Sarah Chesham was executed in the town of Chelmsford in Essex for the murder of her husband, Richard Chesham. Her execution was the culmination of a five year campaign by authorities to track and close down a poisoning ring that was allegedly operating in Essex. Other members of this rumoured poisoning ring included Hannah Southgate, a woman from Wix charged with the murder of her first husband (Thomas Ham), and Mary May, a woman executed for the murder of her half-brother (William Constable aka Spratty Watts). From August 1846 to March 1851 the Assize courts and the coroner’s office were working diligently to try not only to convict these women of arsenic poisoning crimes, but also to discover if the men of Essex were under threat of being poisoned by unhappy wives.

This paper argues that the application of theories about women and crime, which have been in regular use in the field of criminology for contemporary crimes in the last 20 years, can be used in conjunction with historical methods to advance criminological understandings about female criminality. This encourages ideas about how criminological methods can be used to advance historical understanding about women, crime and culture during the 19th century. Historians have embraced the possibilities of investigating criminal cases in order to better understand how society responded to violent interpersonal attacks, and how society as a whole influenced the criminal justice system. As Wiener argues:

In [the] repression of violence, law – primarily its criminal side – took a leading role. The law was a complex entity shaped by many players. Legislators, politicians, civil servants, newspaper editors and reporters, amateur and professional magistrates, judges, jurors, lawyers and others all played parts in this broad movement (Wiener, 2004: 14).

History can inform criminological debate about narrative construction, the use of stock stories, and discourses about gender in the courtroom based on criminal cases from over 100 years ago.

Firstly, I will give a brief background to murder trials of women, specifically involving poisoning, during the mid-19th century and the consequences it had for many women who were accused of these crimes. Secondly, I will concentrate on analysing the legal narratives which arose out of the cases of Chesham, May and Southgate in order to illustrate what stock stories were presented, how their femininities were constructed in court, and the resulting narratives created which were used to argue the guilt or innocence of the three women. As this article illustrates there is a long history of the good/bad woman dichotomy in the legal system, one which, as this article presents, has relevance to those practitioners interested in women’s narratives in the courtrooms today.

Women as poisoners

Seventeen women were executed for poisoning crimes between 1843 and 1852. From 1851 through to 1900, however, only 10 other women were found guilty of murder or attempted murder by poison. The start of the 19th century had been one characterised by a willingness to send women to the gallows –177 women were executed between 1800 and 1846. There was a clear and continued drop in the number of women being executed for all manner of murder throughout the 19th century. However, the 1840s and 1850s was the period when the panic surrounding poisons, especially arsenic, and their use for nefarious purposes culminated in the greatest number of executions for poisoning crimes ever witnessed in modern English history. The roles of men and women in English society were also undergoing significant change in the 19th century, as were understandings of sexuality and gender. Tolerant views of passion and sex for both sexes gradually shifted throughout the 19th century to more rigid and prescriptive ideals. The expectation of a woman was to be a moral guardian of her family, creating a loving home environment free of sin. Foyster sums up what it meant to be the ideal woman during the 19th century:

Marriage, and motherhood that was assumed to follow, were goals for middle-class women in a society where spinsterhood and widowhood held so many economic and social uncertainties. But while being a wife signalled adulthood, authority and usually governance over the household, it also required a woman to assume a gender role of subjection and obedience to her husband. The institution of marriage was intended to be the bedrock of the patriarchal ideal where women were subordinated to men, and husbands ruled over and dominated their wives (Foyster, 2005: 9).

In turn, men were also expected to behave in a civilised manner and no longer exhibit behaviour which could be labelled ‘barbaric’ (Wiener, 2004). Where poison was the murder weapon, and where the deaths took place within the domestic sphere that was supposed to remain untainted, there resulted a panic about uncontrolled women wreaking havoc on their families.

Murderous wives, as Robb states, ‘evoked fears of sexual anarchy and decreasing patriarchal authority at the very time when organized feminism was championing married women’s property rights and advocating increased educational, professional and political opportunities for women’ (Robb, 1997: 177). Robb argues that the interest of contemporaries in the poisoning cases ‘suggests deep-seated anxieties about…the viability of marriage’ (Robb, 1997: 176). Many women who used poison were murdering husbands in order to leave or escape their marriages, and most of them entered into new relationships and married again soon after the deaths of their previous spouses (Watson, 2010). Even though these fears over women undermining the institution of marriage by poisoning their husbands were very real, for a majority of women remarrying was the only option for survival in an era when women’s abilities to lead independent lives were severely curtailed.

In total 40 women and 20 men were convicted for killing their spouses with poison during the 19th century in England (Robb, 1997: 176). This number is almost negligible when compared to the 1000 husbands and wives murdered in England between 1830 and 1900, of which cases approximately 90% were men killing their wives (Robb, 1997: 176). According to Bartrip, some ‘500-600 people per year, many of whom were children, were “ascertained to die” by poisoning in England alone’ (Bartip, 1992: 57), though this number included accidental poisonings. Even though during the 1840s there was relatively little difference in the numbers of men and women tried for using poison to murder, there was an intensifying fear of women who were thought to have easy access to arsenic and other poisons (Whorton, 2010). There was also a fear that women were forming ‘poisoning rings’ in which they could share poison recipes (Robb, 1997). There was fear at the thought that men would not be able to protect themselves against wives attempting to murder them (Knelman, 1998; Robb, 1997), and that women were willing to kill their husbands for money (Burney, 2006; Ward, 2005).

The cases of Chesham, May and Southgate were not rarities (see Figure 1). Women as well as men were often fronting court for poisoning crimes in mid-19th century England. What makes the cases of these three Essex women intriguing is that, compared to others of this period, the legal response to these cases was significantly different and more intense. The legal narratives offer insight into how the broader societal concerns about women and crime intersected with the cases of these three women, and the resulting manner in which their femininity was interpreted and depicted.

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Figure 1.

Trials for murder and attempted murder by poison – UK 1839–1849.

The legal narratives in the Chesham case

As Bell and Fox (1996), Birch (1994), and Creed (1996) have noted, when female criminals appear in court and act in a gender appropriate manner the narratives mobilised in court and the subsequent legal outcome enforce the notion that the female criminal’s behaviour in court is the appropriate behaviour for women, and that a woman who kills is either (momentarily) mentally unstable or monstrous.

Chesham appeared before the courts on two separate occasions – once in 1846 when she was accused, charged and acquitted of the murder of her two sons and a male baby unrelated to her; and on another occasion in 1851 when she was accused, charged and found guilty of killing her husband. ¹ According to authorities Chesham had poisoned her sons, James and Joseph, with arsenic, after she had poisoned the illegitimate son, Solomon Taylor, of Clavering’s leading farmer, Thomas Newport. Regarding the death of her husband, Richard, the toxicologist’s verdict was that he had died of tubercular consumption, which may or may not have been hastened by arsenic poisoning. Although arsenic was found in Richard’s remains it was not of significant quantity to have been deadly. However, the coroner was adamant that Chesham must be brought to justice and so she was charged not with murder but poisoning with intent. ²

At Chesham’s first trial, the focus of both the defence’s and prosecution’s narratives was on Chesham’s mothering abilities, and through that her womanhood. The defence, led by Mr. George Bowker, presented an image of Chesham as a kind, caring, good mother who was incapable of killing her own sons, and certainly not the son of another woman. In contrast, the prosecution sought to position Chesham as a bad woman who had been unfaithful to her husband and therefore was the kind of woman who would kill another woman’s child if hired to do so (Essex County Chronicle, March 1847). The inference was that by being a bad woman, Chesham was a bad mother.

The case for the defence and the prosecution rested on how individuals in the community (neighbours, friends, family and the parish priest) in Clavering spoke about Chesham – as a good mother or a bad woman. These competing constructions of her femininity – one which presented her as feminine, the other as monstrous and unfeminine – resulted in Chesham being deemed worthy of sympathy (according to the defence) and less deserving of sympathy (according to the prosecution). Although arsenic had been discovered in the bodies of Chesham’s sons it was not enough evidence to prove that Chesham had been the one to administer it, or even that she had any intention to commit murder. Instead the prosecution focused on Chesham’s femininity. In his opening statement prosecuting counsel stated that ‘it would be his duty to state certain expressions and certain acts on the part of the prisoner at the bar, which would lead to the impression that she had not that kind disposition that ought to exist in the heart of a mother towards her child’ (Essex County Chronicle, March 1847).

Three men were called upon by the prosecution to give their opinion of Chesham as a mother and woman: the vicar George Brookes, Newport, and the surgeon Stephen Hawkes. Chesham’s behaviour following the death of her sons was taken as an indicator of her character, which would have had a bearing on the jury’s verdict. The vicar, George Brookes, remarked ‘when I met Mrs. Chesham after their deaths she seemed very angry for a long time with Thomas Newport and his mother’ (TNA PRO ASSI 36/5). Newport was also called upon to give evidence and he noted that upon telling her that he could no longer employ her son, she ‘appeared angry at first’ (TNA PRO ASSI 36/5). The surgeon Stephen Hawkes who was attending to the children stated that he had suggested to Chesham that an autopsy be performed on the boys but ‘she made no reply…by her manner she did not seem agreeable to it’ (TNA PRO ASSI 36/5). Three of Clavering’s leading men all had negative statements to make about Chesham. Accordingly, the image of Chesham presented by the prosecution was of a disagreeable, angry, and quarrelsome woman.

The prosecution also relied on the evidence of a complete stranger, Lewis Player, a labourer of the Newport family, who based his impression of Chesham on the one occasion he saw her while he was riding past. Player stated that ‘she was making a noise at her little boy that is at home now, I heard her say – you little dog hold your tongue, you ought to be where the others are’ (TNA PRO ASSI 36/5). The surgeon later added that it wasn’t Chesham who was taking care of the sick children but the grandmother: ‘the grandmother was the principal person I saw at each of my visits and seen to take the most interest with the care’ (TNA PRO ASSI 36/5). Thomas Deards, the downstairs neighbour, stated that ‘[she] did not seem to be much put out’ (TNA PRO ASSI 36/5) by the deaths of her sons, and Lydia Newman, an acquaintance of Chesham, stated that ‘I have said I thought perhaps she might do it but I had no evidence for saying so excepting as to what she had said to me about Mr. Newport sending Joseph away’ (TNA PRO ASSI 36/5).

The prosecution had little to rely on in arguing its case. Chesham neither had arsenic, no one in her family had purchased any for her, and her husband and two living sons maintained there never was any arsenic in the house. The prosecution built its case on presenting Chesham’s character as unfeminine, unmaternal. In contrast, the defence argued that Chesham was a kind and caring mother, which resulted in a more sympathetic depiction of her character. Under cross-examination, four of the prosecution’s witnesses attested to this. As Margaret Mynott stated ‘the prisoner…appeared to be a kind mother…and a decent woman in her way of life’ (Essex County Chronicle, March 1847). Deards also stated that following the boys’ deaths ‘I saw Mrs. Chesham have a handkerchief before her eyes and she appeared to be crying a little while’ (Essex County Chronicle, March 1847). By displaying grief Chesham was exhibiting the signs of a respectable wife and mother. Brookes, likewise under cross-examination, admitted that he ‘had seen the manner in which Mrs. Chesham conducted herself toward her children and her conduct appeared to be what it ought to be’ (Essex County Chronicle, March 1847). Mary Pudding, a witness for the defence, also testified that ‘she appeared to be a good mother and is a pretty regular attendant at Church’ (Essex County Chronicle, March 1847). The defence seized upon these statements and insisted that:

…she is spoken well of by one whose evidence you may place confidence, the minister of the parish…and you will hardly believe that the rev.,gentleman would have spoken in the terms he did speak of her if she did not well deserve it … she has been an exemplary mother and attending properly to her religious duties (Essex County Chronicle, March 1847).

This depiction of Chesham mobilised by the defence conformed to the gender norms that circulated in Victorian England: pious, loving of her children, sensitive and well-regarded by her community. The issue of the poison was not material to the evidence against Chesham, rather the legal narratives which were competing for the valid depiction of Chesham centred on her ‘goodness’ or ‘badness’ as a woman. The jury believed the defence’s portrayal of Chesham’s femininity and so she was acquitted. Chesham returned home to Clavering and lived quietly and out of public attention until 1850 when she was again accused of murder – this time of poisoning her husband, Richard.

In September 1850 Richard Chesham passed away after a prolonged illness. The doctor had decided that tubercular consumption was the cause of death; however, because of Chesham’s previous run-ins with the law, the coroner, Charles Carne Lewis, decided that an autopsy was in order. Minute amounts of arsenic were discovered in his stomach, but again not enough to tie Sarah Chesham to the death. Whereas previously Chesham had a defence lawyer, on this occasion she was left to fend for herself in the face of the prosecution. Legally, Chesham was innocent of her children’s deaths; however, it did not prevent the prosecution counsel from requestioning witnesses from five years ago to rehash details from her previous trial. Five of the witnesses for the prosecution – William and Hannah Phillips, James Parker, John Holgate and Newport – were requestioned on the deaths of the two boys rather than on Richard Chesham’s death (TNA PRO ASSI 36/6). The prosecution’s narrative about Richard’s murder was intertwined with that of the first case against Chesham, and sought to highlight how Chesham was a woman shunned by her community. John Holgate commented how ‘she seemed very unhappy [while Richard was ill] and…I told her what a serious case it was [the deaths of her sons] and how she had disgraced herself and everyone disliked her’ (TNA PRO ASSI 36/6). The prosecution was relying on one witness alone to deliver the damning evidence about Chesham’s guilt – Hannah Phillips. Again the prosecution was in a situation where there was no evidence of Chesham ever knowingly feeding arsenic to her husband (although arsenic had been found in a bag of rice, Chesham’s father claimed it was his) (TNA PRO ASSI 36/6). It was Phillips’ information which sought to provide the evidence of Chesham as a wayward and threatening woman. According to the prosecution, Chesham had offered to teach Phillips how to use arsenic in order to get rid of her husband, William (The Examiner, March 8 1851). Due to a lack of defence counsel this was the central narrative circulating in court. The only other narrative, small and insignificant in comparison, was the one by the accused herself.

Chesham mobilised the narrative of the good, industrious wife. According to Chesham, Richard was:

…a good Husband to me. I am sure nobody lived more comfortably together than we did…I did everything for him as far as I could do in every respect. He told Mr. Brooks the Clergyman that I had done my duty towards him in everything…I have got nothing to answer for misusing of him not at all (TNA PRO ASSI 36/6).

In Chesham’s narrative it is Phillips who had approached her asking for advice on how to kill with arsenic; as Chesham argued ‘I can tell the truth as well as Hannah Phillips – Now I will tell you what she came to ask me…She asked me if I had any poison by me that I could give her that she wanted to give it to her Will’ (TNA PRO ASSI 36/6). According to Chesham there were ‘three different times she asked me for poison. I told my poor husband, he told me not to say anything about it, there might be a time to speak about it’ (TNA PRO ASSI 36/6). Here Chesham is utilising the image of the good wife: demure, and following the advice of her husband, not a gossiper, but a woman who is happily married. Her narrative failed to sway the judge and jury. When sentencing Chesham, the judge noted ‘he was afraid this was not the only crime of which she’d been guilty…and although she had escaped from that charge, justice had overtaken her and she now only a short time to live’(Daily News, March 7 1851). The narrative which gained traction in the courtroom was constructed by the prosecution, where Chesham was portrayed not only as a bad wife, but also as a bad mother, neighbour and a woman who was willing to equip women with the knowledge to poison unwanted husbands. In contrast, Mary May’s trial was a site for discussions about femininity within the frame of poverty and the aspirations of the poor to be buried with dignity.

The legal narratives in the May case

In Mary May’s case there was no question about the motive to kill – at least according to the prosecution and judge. On 14^th August 1848 May was executed in Chelmsford; she was the first woman to be executed in Essex in 44 years. According to the prosecution, May had killed her brother, Spratty Watts, for the sum of at least £9 that was payable to May from a Harwich mourner’s club upon Watts’ death. ³ The narrative mobilised by the prosecution inferred that May was a greedy woman, unhappy with her place in the world, and this narrative transposed cultural fears about the crime of infanticide and the criminal use of burial clubs onto a case that did not involve children.

Burial clubs were initiated by philanthropically oriented governments who wished to do something to help the poor in England. As an anonymous letter writer notes, ‘the reason I have most frequently heard assigned for the existence of these clubs is, a great desire felt by the poor of procuring decent internment’ (British Farmer’s Magazine, 1851: 236). This aspiration held by the working-classes and the trial of Mary May became an occasion to respond to threats posed to this aspiration. The main threat to the societal fabric appeared to be infanticide. Several women had been charged prior to (and after) May’s trial for enrolling their, and others’, children into burial clubs, poisoning the children and then receiving the monetary benefits. As Hunt notes ‘so-called burial insurance murders continued to make news through the mid-1850s’ (2006: 77). To try and explain May’s criminality several middle-class men were called by the prosecution.

The witnesses called to testify against May included the Manningtree pharmacist Mr. Hooker, Inspector Raison of the Essex Constabulary, noted toxicologist of the era Alfred Swaine Taylor, William Thompson – a surgeon in Manningtree, and the parish church leader Reverend Wilkins. Only one man was called who knew May closely and was of a similar background to her; her lodger, James Simpson. While May had a defence lawyer, he proved to be ineffectual, trying to position May as the loving sister and respectable woman but without calling additional witnesses to her defence. Thus, the discourse in the courtroom, driven forcefully by the prosecution, was about the greed inherent in women who used poison to kill. When asked what May’s plans were with the money, Simpson noted that:

She said…she should get 10 pounds if she got the money she would get a dress of mourning and bury him respectably and if she had any money to spare she would get a donkey and cart and higgle a little (TNA PRO ASSI 36/6; TNA PRO HO 18/239/37).

Higgling was an occupation akin to a travelling salesman. May’s family were living in poverty – in witness testimony both her husband and son noted that there were rats in the house. May also let one bed out to Simpson in order to receive additional income – a bed that Simpson shared with May’s son. Higgling would have provided this family with an extra income. But that May had decided what she would spend the money on was proof, according to The Times; ‘the motive for the commission of the dreadful crime imputed to her’ (Jul. 25 1848). May’s greed was reproachful, an abomination for a woman who was to be the keeper of the family, not someone who wished to leave the home and travel while selling goods.

The prosecution relied on the testimony of Wilkins, who was of the opinion that May had been disrespectful towards not only her husband, but the parish and his ecclesiastical position. While May’s character was sullied by suggestions of avarice, the irony that the parish priest demanded his share of the burial money was lost on those present in court. May allegedly revealed to Wilkins that her husband did not know that she had entered Watts into a burial club. When it came to collecting the money for Watts’ funeral, Wilkins was adamant that the money belonged to him. Wilkins stated that the only person with a right to have the money was either the parish or May’s husband, Robert. He stated that:

I said ‘but this money doesn’t belong to you it belongs to your husband’…I said it must belong to your husband when she replied ‘My husband knows nothing about it. I put him in myself. I went down to Harwich and put him in’. I then reminded her that the deceased had been buried by the Parish and that the Parish had a claim on the money (TNA PRO ASSI 36/6).

This image of May as a greedy and disrespectful woman mobilised in Wilkins’ statement was seemingly accepted as a universal truth about women who enrolled men into burial clubs. Her refusal to yield to the power of the parish priest as well as her repeated claims, according to Wilkins, that she ought to keep the money cast May outside the acceptable bounds of her gender. The case of the prosecution relied heavily on the feeling of disgust that contemporaries felt about poisoning crimes. It did not matter that May was portrayed by the defence as a trustworthy, kind sister when the image of the poisoner was a greedy and manipulative woman. As the defence lawyer, Mr. Sergeant Jones, noted in his opening statement ‘the very nature of the crime [with] which she is charged was calculated to cause a strong feeling against her, although she might be innocent, because the human mind recoiled’ (Chelmsford Chronicle, Jul. 28 1848). Jones portrayed May as the antithesis of the poisoner; she ‘envinced that grief which a sister would manifest under the sufferings of a brother’ and May was not a woman who would poison her brother for money, because ‘if with this design she committed this [crime] she was as weak as she was wicked’ (Chelmsford Chronicle, Jul. 28 1848). While the prosecution had established a motive, and the defence had argued that May was a loving sister with no reason to harm her brother, the issue of arsenic was again a contentious point. As in Chesham’s trials, no arsenic could be found in May’s abode; no one had sold or bought her any. Without the poison, in order to prove her guilt the prosecution mobilised the image of the destructive woman willing to kill for a paltry sum of money.

Once the motive of burial money was established, in the mind of the public, the jury and the judge May was guilty by association of mass murder and infanticide. However, there were individuals who wished to see May pardoned and were willing to sign petitions to prevent her going to the gallows (see Figure 2). They were less concerned with May’s guilt or innocence, instead the focus of the petitioners was on what message the execution of a woman would send to society at large. In The Times the narrative of the prosecution was furthered. As a letter-writer noted, he was concerned that May’s case was ‘only a portion of the positive murders resulting from the temptations offered by burial clubs’ (Aug. 18 1848). As Reverend Clay stated in a letter to a South Hampshire MP, in which Clay expressed dismay at how burial clubs were used by the poor, May had, in his opinion, suffered from ‘a demoniacal mania [which seems] to have obtained possession of [May’s] mind which had learned nothing in a civilized age but its worse than barbarous depravities and corruptions’ leading to mass murder by poison for burial club money (Clay, 1853: 13). The judge, Baron Pollock, when sentencing May stated:

I must here denounce, as exceedingly mischievous any association that could give you an interest in his death, without his knowing anything about it, and furnish you with the wicked and base means of getting rid of him, that you might obtain that small sum (Ipswich Journal, Jul. 29 1848).

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Figure 2.

National Archives, PRO HO 18/239 – petition for Mary May, original photo.

According to Pollock, May was greedy and driven ‘merely by this sordid love of a small, an exceedingly small sum [to] destroy the life of a near relative, and [doing so] periled your own soul’ (Ipswich Journal, Jul. 29 1848). Even when later asked, in private correspondence, to explain his recommendation to execute May, Pollock stated that ‘the case appeared to be one of most deliberate murder – long planned – and executed with great cruelty to gratify (not revenge) avarice’ (TNA PRO HO 18/239/37). Pollock maintained that May was greedy, wicked and cruel, and a woman who deserved to hang for the murder of her brother, caused by the lure of money from burial clubs. This concern for broader societal issues, burial clubs, mass murder and infanticide (crimes of the poor and working-class) illuminates how the legal narratives were not only about the facts of the crime.

In the final case concerning Hannah Southgate, the legal narratives were concerned with the performance of femininity and how closely Southgate adhered to contemporary ideals of good womanhood.

The case of Hannah Southgate

Hannah Southgate came to the attention of the authorities shortly after May’s execution. Southgate and May had been friends, often dining together at Southgate’s home in Tendring, a small village close to Wix in Essex. On 25^th April 1847 Thomas Ham, Southgate’s first husband, died after a prolonged illness. What had ailed him was a mystery to the witnesses, but small traces of arsenic were found in his body during the autopsy. Even before the trial began Southgate was guilty by association – she was close friends with a convicted poisoner and Southgate’s character was thus tarnished. Compounding this she had married another man, John Southgate, a few weeks after Ham’s death. However, unlike May and Chesham, not only was there large amounts of arsenic found in the household but Southgate was acquitted. As I will illustrate, this acquittal was due to contrasts mobilised, within the defence and prosecution narratives, between the performance of Southgate’s femininity and that of her maid, Phoebe Reed, and various other female witnesses who gave evidence in court. Rather than attempt to reinforce the image of Southgate as a woman of upstanding morals, the defence began a discourse about the morality of the women who were witnesses – by questioning them about their private lives the defence lawyer was able to demonstrate that the trustworthiness of all women in the case was questionable.

The prosecution sought to position Southgate as a fallen woman, a common prostitute, who could conceivably murder her husband in order to marry another man. Although no suggestion was ever made that Southgate had sexual intercourse with men for money, the prosecution laid emphasis on her violent behaviour, her excessive drinking, swearing and transmitting of a sexual disease to her husband in order to have Southgate’s character appear in line with the era’s stereotype of prostitutes. This image would have been recognisable to her contemporaries, and for the prosecution it would not have been difficult to argue that Southgate’s behaviour in and outside of her marriage was undesirable as ‘women [were] posited typically as sex and indeed the very essence of sexual danger in their “contagion” and manipulative ways’ (Gleeson, 2005: 228).

In Reed’s testimony, Southgate was a callous wife when her husband was in pain and sick. As Reed stated, ‘Mrs Ham said to the deceased when he was retching “Dear I wish you wouldn’t retch so – I know you do it on purpose to tease me”’ (TNA PRO ASSI 36/6). Southgate also refused to call for a doctor, stating ‘Dear, I don’t think there is any cause to send for him not now’ (TNA PRO ASSI 36/6). Through the questioning of Reed the prosecution was able to create a comparison between the two women – the caring Reed who was fond of her master, and the callous and cruel wife who did not do her duty by her ill husband. The description of Southgate as an uncaring wife soon shifted to that of a wife glad to see her husband dead. Within hours of Ham’s death Southgate allegedly stated to Reed ‘well poor fellow he’s gone and I’m glad of it – for we never lived happy together for I never liked him and I wished he’d died before…I cannot grieve for him’ (TNA PRO ASSI 36/6). Southgate was, according to Reed, Charlotte Elvish and Mary Ham (acquaintances of Hannah Southgate), never silent about her dislike of her husband.

Southgate had apparently told Mary Ham, Thomas Ham’s mother, that ‘she liked [John] Southgate’s little finger better than she did his (the deceased’s) whole body’ (TNA PRO ASSI 36/6). Her violent temper was also witnessed by Mary Ham; she testified that ‘I saw her [Southgate] beat him seriously [with] the handle of a whip’ (TNA PRO ASSI 36/6). Jane Harvey noted ‘I have often seen and heard the deceased and his wife quarrelling and have heard shrieks of murder come from the house’ (TNA PRO ASSI 36/6). John Peck, who had worked with Ham in the past, stated that ‘[I] know they lived uncomfortably together. I have heard them quarrelling together…she has told me that her late Husband the deceased beat Southgate one night for going to Tendring with her from Wix’ (TNA PRO ASSI 36/6). The relationship was rocky and, rather than being the passive wife, Southgate was aggressive and quarrelsome with her husband. In an era when the beating of a ‘wretched’ wife was acceptable, Southgate’s behaviour was what was inconsistent with acceptable gender norms, not her husband’s. As such the gender stereotypes of the period played a strong role in the questions asked of witnesses, and where the site of the struggle was – for both the prosecution and defence – over the expectations of women, not the behaviour exhibited by men.

Her bad behaviour not only manifested itself in her arguing with her husband but also her drinking and transmitting of sexually transmitted infections to her husband. Both Peck and Reed noted that Southgate had been a drinker. According to Peck, ‘the Prisoner appeared to me to be flushed at this time’ (when describing Ham’s violence against her) and Reed testified that ‘a few weeks after his death she came home one night the worse for drink’ (TNA PRO ASSI 36/6). Not only was she worse for drink but Southgate also asked Reed ‘aren’t you glad your Master’s dead?’ and proceeded in ‘taking up her gown with both hands [and] danced around and said “Whoop!”’ (TNA PRO ASSI 36/6). Apparently, Southgate’s infidelity was well known in the village and Reed noted that ‘Mrs Ham used frequently to stay out all night during her husband’s lifetime and I have heard her husband ask her on her return why she wanted to leave home’ (TNA PRO ASSI 36/6). Reed also included in her testimony that:

Mrs Ham told me some time before he was taken ill that the deceased had had “the foul disease” and that it would kill him in time and said that some put of it was the cause of his death (TNA PRO ASSI 36/6).

Excessive drinking, swearing, poor hygiene and promiscuity were all thought to be habits, along with aggression and violence, associated with the stereotypical fallen woman (Driscoll, 2009; Gleeson, 2005). The image that the prosecution was presenting was of a fallen woman. From a historical perspective, however, what we learn from this deposition is about the life of the working-class and how female passivity and sexual abstinence were not necessarily the norm for women in the mid-19th century, no matter how much Southgate’s femininity was the site of the struggle for the prosecution’s narrative about her ‘bad’ womanhood.

The women who served as witnesses against Southgate were of a similar social background to her: rural working-class women, the wives of farmers, tradesmen or other labourers. The defence narrative shifted the focus from Southgate’s femininity onto establishing that the four main female witnesses against Southgate were not the guardians of morals as presented by the prosecution. The question, according to the defence, was whether the female witnesses were credible. As in the prosecution’s methods in establishing Southgate’s guilt through questioning her credentials to ‘good’ womanhood, so too were the witnesses scrutinised as to whether they adhered to the behaviour expected of decent and morally upstanding women. Tommasson Goodwin argues that throughout history, and even today, ‘male lawyers know that social attitudes, including attitudes about women, operate in the courtroom’ (Tommasson Goodwin, 1998, n.p.). Reed was questioned about her prior sexual encounters, and Elvish’s motives for standing witness against Southgate were explored wherein it was discovered that she was vindictive and bore witness out of ill-will towards Southgate.

When recalled to be examined, Reed mentioned that soon after Ham’s death ‘I was then going away [due to] being in the family way’ (TNA PRO ASSI 36/6). The defence probed further and Reed acknowledged that ‘I have but five children but only one of them is living, two of the children who died were not of my husband’s…two of the children by my husband died in the workhouse’ (TNA PRO ASSI 36/6). Further questioned, Reed admitted that ‘I am now pregnant but not by my husband’ (TNA PRO ASSI 36/6). Reed’s pregnancy with an illegitimate child served to depict her as an unreliable source – she was a woman with lax morals. Instead it was indicative of Reed’s own womanhood. Reed also admitted that ‘one night she [Southgate] turned me out and refused to pay me my wages in consequence of her having missed a Copper kettle which she accused me of stealing’ (TNA PRO ASSI 36/6). Not only was she now an adulterer but also an accused thief. By questioning Reed’s integrity as a woman, the defence was also questioning her credibility as a witness against Southgate. According to Tommasson Goodwin in trial advocacy handbooks, from the 1870s and early 1900s, female witnesses were considered to have ‘a propensity for exaggeration, emotion, evasiveness, facileness and tenacity’ (Tommasson Goodwin, 1998, n.p.).

The defence argued that Charlotte Elvish’s negative testimony against Southgate was not because of Southgate’s alleged behaviour towards Thomas Ham but because Elvish was under notice to leave her lodgings. The defence elicited from Elvish that ‘I am a tenant of John Southgate’s father and am under notice to quit but have not applied to be allowed to remain’ (TNA PRO ASSI 36/6). Elvish owed money and her inability to pay her rent made her story untrustworthy. Jane Harvey likewise found her version of events disputed by the defence because had previously stood trial for stealing potatoes. Her response to the incident was ‘but it turned out well’ (TNA PRO ASSI 36/6). Mary Ham also owed money to the Southgate family. Although as stated by Doody, ‘we can see the power of female witnesses in registering neighbourhood values (or at least appearing to stand for them)’ (Doody, 1994: 299) it was not only the female accused who would have her past and her femininity questioned and probed. There were many witnesses, the majority of them women, claiming that Southgate and Ham lived unhappily, and there was proof that the man she had been carrying on an affair with she had later married. It did not serve to further the defence’s purpose to create the narrative of the loving and caring wife and mother, the ‘good’ woman, where there were statements to the contrary. Reading the legal documents against the grain to discover the narratives of both the prosecution and defence allows us to discover how Victorian standards of femininity were constructed regarding not only the accused but also the female witnesses in the courtroom and the impact this could have on the outcome of the trial.

Narratives in the Essex courtroom: conclusion

Law, as it is traditionally conceived, claims to produce the ‘truth’ according to internal legal principles of objectivity, neutrality and rationality. Duncan points out, however, that though the narratives told in court may make sense they are not likely to be objective, which is at odds with how the legal establishment presents its functions (Duncan, 1989). Feminist legal scholars and criminologists have also noted that the narratives are optimal for research into how femininities are constructed in court (Scheppelle, 1988). As Scheppelle notes, in law ‘stories may diverge…not because one is true and another false, but rather because they are both self-believed descriptions coming from different points of view informed by different background assumptions about how to make sense of events’ (Scheppelle, 1988: 2073). Scheppelle writes this in regard to contemporary legal narratives and storytelling in the courtroom; however, it is equally valid when analysing historical legal narratives and discovering what cultural beliefs and stock stories influenced and informed the creation of those narratives.

Criminologists argue that the manner in which the culture of an era is interpreted plays an important role in the creation, use and interpretation of legal narratives (Morrissey, 2003). Although the law claims to treat male and female accused ‘equally’, contemporary normative gender ideals are still part of the legal narratives of women accused of murder. Within the confines of the courtroom the prosecution and defence narratives about female murderers often contain elements that seek to present the accused as either acting within the confines of ‘good’ womanhood or exhibiting behaviour associated with ‘bad’ womanhood.

Historical methodology can open up the past as a field of study for criminologists as they analyse current criminal justice procedures. As this article has illustrated, the cultural representations of accused women in the courtroom have centred on the creation of narratives concerning whether the accused was a ‘good’ woman exhibiting the necessary character and physical traits to be deemed as worthy of the protection of the law, or a ‘bad’ woman who supposedly transgressed the boundaries not only of the law but of culturally acceptable womanhood. It could very well be argued that these highly gendered responses to female criminals in the 19th-century English courtroom are current to criminological investigations about women and crime in these very same courtrooms today (Kennedy, 1993; Kent, 1999).