Olde London Punishments

by David Brandon

  At the beginning of the nineteenth century, children were not required to go to school but, by 1899, all children up to the age of twelve officially had the opportunity of going to school. Education depended on how wealthy families were. Rich children could be educated at home by a private tutor or governess; boys were sent to boarding schools such as Eton or Harrow. The sons of middle-class families attended grammar schools or private academies. The only schools available for poor children were charity and Church schools or ‘dame’ schools set up by unqualified teachers in their own homes. Ragged schools were introduced in the 1840s.

  In 1854 Reformatory Schools were set up for offenders under sixteen years old. These were very tough places, with stiff discipline enforced by frequent beatings. Young people were sent there for long sentences – usually several years. The schools provided industrial training for juvenile offenders. In 1886 John Tarry appeared before the Old Bailey for assaulting a thirteen year-old girl. His punishment was seven days’ imprisonment, eight strokes with a birch rod and two years in a reformatory school.

  Punishment in the Workplace

  The extent and regularity of severe and brutal punishment in workplaces, particularly small workshops that employed young children, cannot be exaggerated.

  In 1685 Ann Hollis from the City of London was indicted for killing her apprentice, fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Preswick, with a rod of birch. Hollis took the girl upstairs and, with the help of two other girls, held Elizabeth on the bed whilst she whipped her on the ‘back, belly, shoulders and legs’ so much that she passed out. Elizabeth died shortly after. Hollis said that she only whipped her a few times for ‘lying’ and ‘being lazy’. Elizabeth was a ‘sickly girl’ who, it was concluded, had died of a consumption. Clearly this proved to be a fortunate decision for Hollis, who was acquitted.

  The Old Bailey from the Viaduct public house.

  A particularly evil employer was the infamous Sarah Metyard and her daughter, Sarah Morgan Metyard. Metyard senior employed young girls from parish workhouses to work as milliners. In 1758, thirteen-year-old Anne Naylor was subjected to dreadful cruelty. Anne and her sister were apprenticed as milliners to Sarah Metyard along with five other young girls (all of whom had come from workhouses). Anne was described as being of ‘a sickly disposition’ and therefore found the work difficult; she could not keep up with the other girls. This singled her out and made her the object of the fury of the Metyards. They punished Anne with such barbarity and repeated acts of cruelty that she decided to flee. Unfortunately, however, she did not get far: she was brought back, confined in an upstairs room and fed with little more than bread and water. For such a sickly child this could only weaken her further. Nonetheless, she seized another chance to escape – but was again returned. Poor Anne was thrown back into her prison, where she awaited the fury of the Metyards. As the old woman held her down the daughter began to beat Anne savagely with a broom handle. They then tied her hands behind her and fastened her to door, where she remained for three days without food or water. The other apprentices were not allowed to go anywhere near the room on pain of punishment. Alone, bruised, exhausted and starved, her speech failed her. By the fourth day she was dead.

  Despite the dire warnings, some of the other girls saw her body tied with cord and hanging from the door. They cried out to the sadistic women to help Anne. The daughter ran upstairs and proceeded to hit the dead girl with a shoe. It was apparent that there was no sign of life and pathetic attempts were made at reviving her. One of the young apprentices, Philadelphia Dowley, acted as a witness four years later at the trial of the Metyards at the Old Bailey (July 1762). When asked why Anne tried to run away she replied, ‘because she was... so ill. She used to be beat with a walking stick and hearth brooms by the mother, and go without her victuals’. Another witness, Richard Rooker, had been a lodger at Metyard’s house. He told of the grisly attempt to conceal the crime, the revelation of other murders and how Metyard’s daughter had told him with great reluctance what happened. There was a reluctance to announce the death and bury Anne as it would be clear from the state of her body that she had starved to death. Instead, Anne’s body was carried upstairs into the garret and locked up in a box, where it was kept for upwards of two months until it ‘putrefied, and maggots came from her’. The Metyards cut the body into pieces and then burned one of the hands in a fire. They then proceeded to dump the remains of the body near Charterhouse Street. The remains were discovered by a nightwatchman, who reported it to the ‘constable of the night’.

  Four years had passed since Anne’s murder and it seemed that she would be denied justice. However, the continual arguments between Metyard senior and her daughter resulted in frequent beatings for young Sarah Metyard, who wrote a letter to the overseers of Tottenham parish informing them about the whole affair and exposing her mother as a murderer. Both mother and daughter were subsequently arrested and indicted for the wilful murder of Anne and her eight-year-old sister, Mary Naylor. Both mother and daughter were executed at Tyburn and then taken to the Surgeon’s Hall for dissection.

  Cock Lane, near to where Anne Naylor’s remains were dumped.

  Another notorious case of physical abuse of servants in the eighteenth century concerned one Elizabeth Brownrigg. Yet again the unfortunate victims were orphaned young girls. Elizabeth Brownrigg was married to James Brownrigg, a plumber who, after spending seven years in Greenwich, came to London and took a house in Flower-de-Luce Court, Fleet Street. Elizabeth, a midwife, was appointed to look after women in the poorhouse run by the parish of St Dunstan-in-the-West. On one particular occasion, she had received three apprentices who she took into her own house where they did domestic service in order to learn a trade. Mary Mitchell was one of the apprentices appointed in 1765, and Mary Jones from the Foundling Hospital soon followed her. Jones quickly fell victim to Brownrigg’s own brand of punishment: she was made to lie across two chairs in the kitchen while Brownrigg whipped her with such ferocity that she was ‘obliged to desist through mere weariness’. Brownrigg would then throw water on her victim and often thrust her head into a pail of water. Poor Mary Jones had no one she could turn to. Her suffering was unimaginable.

  Eventually she managed to escape, and found her way back to the Foundling Hospital where she told of her beatings. A surgeon examined her and found her wounds to be of a ‘most alarming nature’. A solicitor wrote on behalf of the governors to Elizabeth Brownrigg’s husband, James, threatening prosecution. Typically, the letter was completely ignored and the governors did not follow up the case. Unfortunately Mary Mitchell, who was still in the service of Brownrigg, was subjected to similar cruelty over the period of a year. She too managed to escape – but ran into the younger son of the Brownrigg’s (they had sixteen children) during her flight and she was forced back into the house where her suffering intensified.

  Tragically another girl with an infirmity, Mary Clifford, joined the Brownrigg household. She was frequently tied up naked and beaten with a hearth broom, a horsewhip or a cane. In addition, she was made to sleep in a coal cellar and was almost starved to death. She became so desperate with hunger that she broke into a cupboard for food – and paid a terrible price. For a whole day she was repeatedly beaten with the butt-end of a whip. A jack-chain was put around her neck and tied to the yard door: it was pulled as tight as possible without actually strangling the girl.

  Another sadistic punishment that Brownrigg inflicted on the girls was to tie them to a hook in the timber beam and horsewhip them. Eventually Mary Clifford told of her treatment to a French lady who was staying in the house. When the woman confronted Brownrigg with this, she flew at Mary Clifford with a pair of scissors and cut her tongue in two places. Finally, when Mary Clifford’s stepmother went to visit her on 12 July 1767, the tyranny of the Brownriggs came to an end. The stepmother was refused entry by one of the servants, who had been instructed to deny that the girl was there. The stepmother was not satisfied and persuaded Brownrigg’s next-door nei
ghbour to post one of his servants, William Clipson, to watch the Brownrigg’s house and yard. Clipson saw a badly beaten and half-starved girl in the yard and reported it to the overseer of St Dunstan’s, who went to the house and demanded that the Brownriggs produce Mary, which they did after an altercation. Mary Clifford was eventually found locked in a cupboard. Her stepmother described her as being in:

  The sadistic Elizabeth Brownrigg flogging a servant girl.

  a sad condition, her face was swelled as big as two, her mouth was so swelled she could not shut it, and she was cut all under her throat, as if it had been with a cane, she could not speak; all her shoulders had sores all in one, she had two bits of rags upon them.

  After much suffering over too long a period, the parish authorities finally took some action: James Brownrigg was arrested, although his wife and elder son escaped with a gold watch and a purse of money. Both Mary Jones and Mary Clifford were taken to St Bartholomew’s Hospital where Mary Clifford died a few days later. A landlord later informed on Elizabeth Brownrigg and her son, and they were duly arrested and kept in Newgate Prison. In her defence Brownrigg stated that, ‘I did give her several lashes, but with no design of killing her; the fall of the saucepan with the handle against her neck, occasioned her face and neck to swell; I poulticed her neck three times, and bathed the place, and put three plaisters to her shoulders’. However, Mr Young, the surgeon, disputed that Mary’s neck injury could have been caused by a saucepan handle.

  Elizabeth’s Browning’s skeleton.

  Anatomy Theatre, Surgeon’s Hall.

  When Brownrigg went to Tyburn to be executed the mob were outraged and vented their anger by pelting her with anything they could get their hands on. After her execution her body was cut down and taken to Surgeon’s Hall where, after dissection, it was hung for people to see.

  Elizabeth Wigenton of Ratcliff was hanged in September 1681 for a similar murder. Wigenton, a coat maker, had taken thirteen-year-old Elizabeth Houlton as an apprentice. One day Wigenton fetched one John Sadler to hold the girl, who was tied up and flogged with ‘a bundle of rods so unmercifully, that the blood ran down like rain till the girl fainted away and died soon after’. Both Wigenton and Sadler were convicted of the murder and condemned to hang.

  Caning apprentices was not uncommon. In the absence of a universal educational system, prior to the nineteenth century apprenticeships were the ways in which young boys acquired a craft. Many apprentices came into London from elsewhere and were often introduced to a harsh regime. It was not surprising that there was a high drop-out rate. In the London Livery Co., an apprentice was subject to the company’s discipline, as well as to the daily supervision of his master; offences against his master were punished by whippings administered in the company hall. In 1630 the Spectacle Makers’ Ordinances stated that:

  ...if any Apprentice shall misbehave himself towards his Master or Mistress... Or be any Drunkard haunter of Taverns, Ale Houses, Bowling Alleys or other lewd and suspected Places of evil Company... he shall be brought to the Hall of the said Company... and there these or such like notorious faults justly proved against him before the Court of Assistants... (he) shall be stripped from the middle upwards and there be whipped...

  The practice continued centuries later. In 1848 John Harding was indicted at the Old Bailey for cutting and wounding his apprentice, Edward Jobling, who said that Harding had grabbed him by the collar and struck him many times with a cane. Jobling said that ‘he beat me a great deal of good, I felt the blood immediately he had caned me; I felt it with my hand, looked at it about five minutes after – when he went up stairs, I undid my clothes, and saw the blood’.

  Karl Marx (1818-1883) saw the cruelty and exploitation in the system of parish workhouses farming children out to work, often to cruel employers. He wrote that:

  The small and nimble fingers of little children being by very far the most in request, the custom instantly sprang up of procuring apprentices from the different parish workhouses of London... Many, many thousands of these little, hapless creatures were sent down into the north, being from the age of 7 to the age of 13 or 14 years old. The custom was for the master to clothe his apprentices and to feed and lodge them in an ‘apprentice house’ near the factor... Cruelty was, of course, the consequence... they were flogged, fettered and tortured in the most exquisite refinement of cruelty... they were in many cases starved to the bone while flogged to their work and... even in some instances... were driven to commit suicide.

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  Pleasurable Punishments

  Seeking punishment for pleasure has a long history. Brothels catered for every perversion and kept a ready stock of instruments such as rods, whips and even more sophisticated devices. In the late eighteenth century flagellation was advertised and sought after, particularly by those who could afford the more expensive treatment. In Bloomsbury, Mary Wilson promoted her practice and women through the publication The Exhibition of Female Flagellants, boasting the best whippers in town. In Covent Garden, Mrs Collett’s establishment was frequented, not surprisingly, by the Prince Regent.

  The nineteenth century witnessed a proliferation of literature relating to flagellation, such as The Exhibition of Female Flagellants (1860), The New Ladies’ Tickler (1866), Romance of Chastisement by George Stock (1870), and its sequel the Quintessence of Birch Discipline (1883), With Rod and Bum, Or Sport in the West End of London by Ophelia Cox (1898) and Lady Bumtickler’s Revels (1872).

  Theresa Berkeley was a well-known dominatrix and a brothel owner in the West End during the mid-nineteenth century. She ran brothels first in Soho and then in Charlotte Street. Her specialty was flagellation and she was notable as the inventor of the ‘Berkeley Horse’, a notorious machine used to flog gentlemen. Henry Spencer Ashbee (1834-1900), a book collector of pornography, described her repertoire:

  Her instruments of torture were more numerous than those of any other governess. Her supply of birch was extensive, and kept in water, so that it was always green and pliant: she had shafts with a dozen whip thongs on each of them; a dozen different sizes of cat-o’-nine-tails, some with needle points worked into them; various kinds of thin bending canes; leather straps like coach traces; battledoors, made of thick sole-leather, with inch nails run through to docket, and currycomb tough hides rendered callous by many years flagellation. Holly brushes, furze brushes; a prickly evergreen, called butcher’s bush; and during the summer, a glass and China vases, filled with a constant supply of green nettles, with which she often restored the dead to life. Thus, at her shop, whoever went with plenty of money, could be birched, whipped, fustigated, scourged, needle-pricked, half-hung, holly-brushed, furze-brushed, butcher-brushed, stinging-nettled, curry-combed, phlebotomized [act of opening a vein by incision or puncture to remove blood as a therapeutic treatment], and tortured till he had a belly full.

  ‘Pleasures of the Whip’ by Aubrey Beardsley.

  Theresa’s instruments of pleasure were much sought after by the aristocracy and the rich. In her famous Soho brothel the reception rooms were garishly decorated. In one of the rooms, the ‘Skeleton Room’, a skeleton could be made to step out of a closet with the aid of machinery. Henry Mayhew described some of the bizarre rooms and her elaborate theatrical sets:

  ...rooms were fitted with springs, traps and other contrivances, so as to present no appearance other than an ordinary room, until the machinery was set in motion. In one room, in which a wretched girl might be introduced, on her drawing a curtain as she would be desired, a skeleton, grinning horribly, was precipitated forward, and caught the terrified creature, in his, to all appearances, bony arms. In another chamber the lights grew dim, and then seemed to gradually to go out. In a little time some candles, apparently self-ingnited, revealed to a horror stricken woman, a black coffin, on the lid of which might be seen, in brass letters, ANNE, or whatever name it had ascertained the poor wretch was known by. A sofa, in another part of the mansion, was made to descend into some place of utter darknes
s; or, it was alleged, into a room which was a store of soot or ashes.

  Berkeley also enjoyed having a certain amount of torture inflicted on her by her clients – for the right price. She employed women who were prepared to take any number of lashes provided the flogger forked out enough.

  The West End was well placed to provide brothels for rich patrons who would happily pay for the additional erotic and painful pleasures. Henry Spencer Ashbee wrote that very sumptuously fitted-up establishments, exclusively devoted to the administration of the birch, were not uncommon in London... It would be easy to form a very lengthy list of these female flagellants, but I shall restrict myself to mention a few only. Mrs. Collett was a noted whipper, and George IV is known to have visited her; she had an establishment in Tavistock Court, Covent Garden, whence she removed to the neighbourhood of Portland Place... Then came Mrs. James, who had... a house at No. 7 Carlisle Street, Soho. There were also Mrs. Emma Lee, real name Richardson, of No. 50 Margaret Street, Regent Street... But the queen of her profession was undoubtedly Mrs. Theresa Berkley... she was a perfect mistress of her art, understood how to satisfy her clients, and was, moreover, a thorough woman of business, for she amassed during her career a considerable sum of money. When she died in September 1836 she had made ten thousand pounds during the years she had been a governess.

  Whipping was a common punishment and meted out to offenders irrespective of age and gender. For example, in 1679 four eight year-old boys were tried for stealing forty-eight bottles of ale from Francis Wheeler in St Martins. All of them confessed and were immediately taken out of the court and whipped. Likewise, twelve year-old Susanna Saunders was found guilty of stealing a hood and a pair of laced ruffles in 1684, for which she was publicly whipped. However, there was a thin line between those who meted out whippings as a genuine punishment and the secret pleasure some floggers derived from it. Such practices were all too common in certain institutions. In 1907 two sixteen-year-old boys, John Courtman and Albert Ingleton, who appeared at the Old Bailey for stealing a bicycle, were considered to be ‘too old to be flogged’ and were each given a four-month prison sentence.