There Must Be Evil

by Bernard Taylor

  Speaking of the episode to the Chronicle’s man fifteen years later, Finley remarked, ‘Lizzie informed on me, and it ended my married life for a bit.’

  And there was more disappointment in store. On his release from prison, he sent a woman to the house to fetch his clothes, only to learn that they had been pawned – for twenty-eight shillings.

  He made no attempt to mend the situation but went on his way, leaving Mary Ann and Elizabeth there alone.

  The sordid circumstances surrounding the early break-up of the Finleys’ marriage, marked by Elizabeth’s betrayal of her stepfather to the authorities, demonstrate, if nothing else, a ruthlessness and singleness of purpose in Elizabeth’s character. They were characteristics that would become apparent on several occasions in her life.

  4

  Another Marriage, and a Death

  So, there it was – five weeks into Mary Ann’s marriage and she and Elizabeth were alone again. It was not a situation that would last, though, for soon Elizabeth herself would be spreading her wings and building a life of her own. It was not long after William Finley’s departure that she met the young man who was to become her husband.

  Thomas Berry was born in Salford in 1847. It appears that his parents might have died while he was still young, for the 1861 census reveals him, at the age of fourteen, along with his three sisters – Ann, aged sixteen; Jane, nine, and Elizabeth, seven – to be lodging with their uncle and aunt and five cousins at 22 Sycamore Street, Manchester.

  Ten years on, and he is lodging with his sister Ann, who has since married and is living with her husband John Sanderson, a machine printer, in Saville Street, Newton. The couple have a year-old son, Herbert. Also lodging with them is younger sister Jane. While she is working at the mill as a silk weaver, Thomas has left mill-work for employment with the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company.

  It was somewhere about this time that Thomas and Elizabeth met, and the two were subsequently married on 7 June 1873, their wedding taking place at the Parish Church of St Stephen Hulme, Lancaster. Their marriage certificate shows Thomas – described by an acquaintance as ‘a very decent sort of fellow, a little pale-looking, and quiet’ – as twenty-six years of age, his occupation that of ‘iron turner’, and living in City Road, Manchester. His bride, Elizabeth, is shown as nineteen, living at 30 Park Lane, Royton. Somewhat surprisingly, her father is not denoted as ‘deceased’ but is shown as having an occupation – that of ‘maker up’. There is no mention of an occupation for Elizabeth; in all probability she quit her employment at the mill shortly before the day of her wedding. She would never return to such work.

  At the time of their marriage Thomas’s occupation with the railway company was based at Manchester’s Victoria Station and for some months he commuted daily between Manchester and Royton, where he had moved in with Elizabeth and her mother, and where the following year, on 9 March, almost nine months to the day, the Berrys’ first child was born, a son whom they named Harold.

  It is reported that the doctor who attended Mrs Berry at her son’s birth was one Dr John Kershaw, who was in practice at Royton. He was to feature in her story again years later and, as will be seen, would become her greatest support and champion. She was going to need all the help that she could get.

  In the matter of the situation of the newly married Mr and Mrs Berry, it has, of course, ever been common practice for many young newly-weds to live for a time with the parents of one spouse or the other. But while it might work for a great many brides, it did not suit the young Elizabeth, and she was very soon showing her eagerness to move on and improve her situation. Added to this, her desire to be mistress in her own home, was the fact that she and her mother did not get on – a situation which Mrs Finley bitterly regretted.

  The parting of the ways for Elizabeth and her mother came soon after baby Harold’s birth, with the Berry family moving out of Park Lane and renting a house at 45 Saville Street. It was there, a year later, on 29 April 1875, that Elizabeth gave birth to a daughter. On the new baby’s birth certificate she is given the name Annie, with the added information that she is ‘Edith Annie on certificate of naming’. Throughout her short life she would be known formally as Edith, and by family and friends as Annie. Mrs Berry herself, so records show, would sometimes refer to her as Eda.

  By the time of the new baby’s birth Thomas had gained promotion at the railway company, and was now working as a railway carriage examiner. Said an acquaintance: ‘He was one of those fellows who go about with a long-handled hammer testing the wheels of the carriages at Victoria Station,’ adding, ‘Of course, he wouldn’t have had a very large wage, but he kept respectable on what he had.’

  Regardless of Thomas keeping ‘respectable’, however, Elizabeth was not content. Not only had her relationship with her mother further deteriorated, but she was also on less than good terms with her Saville Street neighbours. She was noted for her reticence, it was reported, and for the little acquaintanceship she had with them. As a journalist for the Chronicle later wrote, following her trial:

  This want of familiarity on her part was put down to pride – to the belief that she deemed herself better than they – and consequently the feeling between them was not the kindest. All the residents… say that she was a proud, haughty woman, who dressed beyond her station, held little or no intercourse with her neighbours, but strode along the street ‘as if they were nobody, and she was everybody and for all the world as if the whole street was her own property’.

  This, it would appear, was usually the way wherever Elizabeth was to live, and it is safe to say that she probably wouldn’t have cared tuppence for any neighbours’ opinions of her. In her high ambitions and aspirations they would have played no part.

  Whether her over-arching aspirations also encompassed being mother to a growing number of children, however, is extremely doubtful, and it is most unlikely that she would have been pleased to find, towards the end of 1876, that she was once again pregnant.

  On 13 June 1877, two years after the arrival of Edith Annie, Elizabeth gave birth to her third child.

  Whatever the young Mrs Berry’s feelings at this time, to many an outsider she would have appeared to be in an enviable position. She had three handsome children, an agreeable home, no need to work outside the home, and a hard-working young husband. As for Thomas himself, observations from individuals who had known him were invariably positive. He would be described by William Finley as ‘a steady, honest-looking gentleman’, by another who knew him as ‘a kind and affectionate husband, one who, in order to gratify his wife’s inordinate vanity, stinted himself of the ordinary requirements of life, so that they might keep up appearances beyond their means…’ and by yet another as ‘…a superior man for his position, deeply wrapped up in his wife, whose every wish he ministered to, and who denied himself many comforts to minister to her pride’.

  There is no doubt that with his devotion to his wife and children, Thomas strove to provide for them a good home, and due to his diligence they lived in relative comfort and appeared to have every reason to be content. As becomes ever more clear, however, contentment was never to be a notable factor in Elizabeth’s life, and if such ever did show its face it was not for long. Certainly any outward appearance of happiness was shaken that autumn, for tragedy came. Sadly, the new baby did not survive infancy. After a short illness, on 26 October, at the age of four months, the babe was dead. The cause of death, Mrs Berry announced to her relatives, was ‘teething’.

  The sad and sudden death of the Berrys’ youngest child will be examined further along in this book, but for the present it is sufficient to say that very soon after the funeral the bereaved mother was showing dissatisfaction with their home at Saville Street, and was set on moving again. This time they went to the nearby locality of Newton where they rented a house at 13 Jackson Street. Superior to their previous home, it caused a few raised eyebrows among neighbours as they wondered how it could be afforded on the modest income of a
railway carriage wheel-tapper.

  What Thomas himself felt about their domestic situation we cannot know. Was he happy in his marriage? As observers remarked on the controlling character of Elizabeth’s nature, and Thomas’s readiness to work long hours to provide her with her wants, it is hard to escape the conclusion that it was a marriage in which, as the old saying goes, it was the wife who wore the trousers.

  Whatever the state of their marriage, it was to end in tragedy. In the summer of 1881 Thomas fell gravely ill, and on 16 July he died. He was thirty-four years old. Present at his death was Elizabeth, who, two days later, registered his sad demise. He was buried in Harpurhey Cemetery beside his late infant child.

  Thomas’s death was later to give rise to some comment in the vicinity, and even at the time of its happening his young widow caused outrage when, the very day following his death, she set about making arrangements to sell the household furniture. When a relative commented on what he termed her ‘undue haste’, she protested, ‘You know I’m not now in a position to keep on the house and pay the rent.’

  Notwithstanding the negative light in which she was viewed at the time by her neighbours and some members of her family, there was nevertheless truth in her response. The simple fact was that at the age of twenty-seven she was a widow with two small children to raise on her own, and without an income. But she was not to be defeated. On the contrary; she was determined to find a way and, at the same time, to make for herself a better life.

  5

  Old Ambitions, New Beginnings

  Thomas Berry’s weekly wage from the railway company would not have been great, and with children, and a wife with expensive tastes, it is unlikely that he would have been able to put anything by for a rainy day. And now, for his widow, that rainy day had arrived. Thomas’s death did not leave Elizabeth completely destitute, however. He had been insured, and on his death she collected £18 4s. from the Rational Sick and Burial Society, and a further £60 from the Prudential Society. £1 in that year, 1881, would be equal to about £110 today in 2015, so she had in her purse something in the region of £8,500. To this would be added whatever she was able to realize from the sale of the furniture and Thomas’s effects, his clothes, his watch and chain, his razor and other personal belongings. While in all it made up a decent sum, however, it was not a fortune, and it was certainly not enough to keep a family of three for long. The young Mrs Berry had no choice, then, but to provide a living for them on her own. While her husband had been alive there had been no need for her to find employment outside the home, but her situation now was different.

  In the present day our welfare benefits ensure that no single mother with children will have to sleep on the streets. Not so in earlier times. Before our government’s largesse provided round-the-clock care and financial assistance from the cradle to the grave, individuals could rely on the state for very little. For some without paid employment there might have been a few shillings coming through the parish’s poor relief, but otherwise the only real barrier against starvation was to join the many thousands of paupers who crowded into the workhouses that were scattered throughout the land.

  Britain’s citizens were expected to take responsibility for their lives, and for the young widow Elizabeth Berry things were no different. The options open to a woman such as she, and in the position in which she found herself, were few. She could expect no financial help from her impecunious mother, and her only experience in the workplace came from her time in the mills, and while such work was available to her still, it would have brought insufficient financial reward. Further, it would have seen her condemned to such unremitting graft for years to come, and while she could have survived in such a situation – thousands did, and she was strong – it was a move that she would never have considered. That earlier part of her life was over for good.

  So, with mill work out of the picture, what, then, was she to do?

  The best of all solutions to her problems was, of course, to remarry, and it very swiftly became apparent to those around her that this was her aim – and not simply to remarry, but to remarry soon, and, more importantly, to remarry well. Not for her some lowly clerk, or weaver in a mill – or even some railway carriage wheel-tapper. As she was to demonstrate, her aims were considerably higher.

  A good marriage, then, was her aim, but in the meantime she had to find a means of providing for herself and her children. She must, therefore, find employment without delay – and ideally employment that offered a promise of some security until her ultimate goal was achieved.

  Eschewing any kind of mill work, she cast around for something more promising. And it seemed that she had found it in a newspaper advertisement for a resident housekeeper/general servant to a local medical practitioner. He was Dr David Shaw, a bachelor, thirty-four years of age, living on the Oldham Road in nearby Newton. His housekeeper, it appeared, was departing his employ, so leaving him in need of a replacement, and to Elizabeth Berry’s great pleasure her application was successful and she was offered the post. However, in order to take up the situation she would first have to deal with the inconvenient presence of her two small children. To put it plainly, seven-year-old Harold and five-year-old Edith Annie were an encumbrance. But it was one that could be dealt with.

  Nearby in Miles Platting lived Elizabeth’s sister-in-law, Ann Sanderson, with her husband John. As noted, Ann was the sister of Thomas, Elizabeth’s late husband. The Sandersons were now living at 68 Albion Street with their sons Herbert and Arthur, while lodging with them still was Ann’s sister Jane, still working as a silk-weaver in one of the mills.

  It was to her sister-in-law Ann that Elizabeth turned for help. Without wasting any time she made her way to Albion Street where, after some discussion, it was arranged that for the foreseeable future Harold and Edith would go to live with their aunt and uncle and attend school with their two cousins. The agreement reached was that Elizabeth would pay her in-laws six shillings a week for the children’s keep, along with any extra that might be required for clothing. In addition she would pay their school fees, which ran to 3d. a week for each child. She was also committed to paying a weekly premium of 2d. to an insurance company on policies she had taken out on the children’s lives. At that time this arrangement was a common one, whereby a parent would pay a small weekly sum to insure the life of a child, the premiums collected by the insurance company’s agent who would call from door to door. Paying into these ‘burial clubs’ would, if nothing else, realize in the event of the child’s death at least enough to pay for an inexpensive funeral.

  So, that summer, with all arrangements in place, the children were delivered to their aunt and uncle, leaving their mother free to begin her work as housekeeper to Dr Shaw. And it seems likely that she saw in her promised employment with the doctor the possibility of a relationship that was something quite different from that of master and servant. She did not, of course, see herself as being nothing more than a paid housekeeper for the rest of her life, and in her wish for a new husband the young, unmarried doctor might well have seemed perfectly cast in the role.

  So much for her ambitions. Unfortunately for her, things did not work out as she had hoped. We shall never know what transpired, but whatever it was she so displeased the young doctor that she was quickly dismissed, departing his company on the very day of her arrival. A correspondent to the Chronicle later wrote that the doctor ‘found something out and would not even allow her to bring her box’. What could it have been that so swiftly turned him against her? Did she make some inappropriate gesture or come out with some ill-chosen words? Bearing in mind her determination to acquire a new husband, it seems highly probable that she might have been rather over-familiar, and perhaps dropped some not-so-subtle hint that she was after more than steady employment, and was perhaps ready to be more than a mere servant to him.

  How she accounted to others for her dismissal can only be guessed at, but that evening she was back in Albion Street knocking at the Sandersons�
� door, and there she would remain until she made the next move in her career.

  Following her rebuff by Dr Shaw, Elizabeth turned her thoughts of employment away from domestic service and decided to do something that might hold more in the way of promise and security. She announced her intention to become a nurse, and to this end she went to the Manchester Royal Infirmary and enrolled for the necessary course of training, the £20 fee for her tuition coming from her late husband’s insurance settlement. The course would take about six months, after which time, when she had passed her examinations, she could set about finding worthwhile employment in her new career – and at the same time continue to look for a new husband. It was surely not beyond the bounds of possibility that once she had qualified she could perhaps find a post caring for some wealthy widower, or land a position working alongside some eligible doctor or other professional gentleman of promise.

  Elizabeth’s efforts to remarry might strike some in today’s society as rather strangely desperate, but in those times marriage was the goal of almost all young women. In Georgian and Victorian times the world was very much a man’s world. Professions and careers in all walks of life were dominated by men. Such a situation still exists today in certain professions, such as engineering, architecture and the military, but in other professions the scene has changed. We read that more females than males are making careers in medicine today, and that female GPs outnumber male. In earlier times, however, a woman who wanted any kind of medical career could not realistically consider anything higher than nursing. It was not until 1876 that women were allowed to become doctors, and even then only a handful took up the opportunity and studied medicine at university – a situation that lasted until well after the Second World War. In general, the women of yesterday simply did not have careers. They were usually expected only to marry and be good wives and mothers. Men were the breadwinners, and as Jane Austen succinctly put it, marriage was ‘the best preventer against want’. Without marriage or legal paid employment, a great many young women turned, in their desperation, to prostitution, leaving their home towns for the cities – notably London, which metropolis in mid-Victorian times is said to have boasted upwards of 60,000 prostitutes (one for every twenty men, went the reckoning).