Crime City: Manchester's Victorian Underworld (24 page)

In theory the workhouse was to provide a life not better than that enjoyed by the poorest working man. In reality it was a good deal better. By the turn of the century, in 1906, conditions were undeniably good. Nevertheless, the Guardians were against keeping the young in the workhouse. They were convinced that the constant example of shiftless and hopeless adults was bound to harm them. Instead they stressed the importance of ‘moral and physical training that would eradicate the ill effects of their early experiences’. For this reason they built the Swinton Poor Law Industrial Schools, completed in 1844 and much admired by Charles Dickens when he visited in 1850. Among the things that impressed him were the pristine cleanliness of the well-ventilated rooms and the tasteful gardens, play areas and sports fields in the schools’ extensive grounds. Scholars ate fresh vegetables from the schools’ own gardens where older scholars received training and employment.

The school catered for 700 children: ninety-nine orphans, 281 without a father, thirty-three without a mother, 153 deserted and 134 whose parent or parents were in the workhouse.

Asphyxiation

The Swinton Industrial Schools represented the best of poor law provision, its merits lauded by national celebrities such as Charles Dickens and the envy of every union in the country. It is equally clear, however, that events in the Crumpsall Workhouse fuelled the myth of the workhouse as a brutal institution of oppression, the torturer of the poor and unfortunate. The Crumpsall Workhouse outrage took place right at the end of our period. It aroused a great deal of interest, especially among the city’s poor and provoked outrage, indignation and anger. For many the events of that night in October 1900 showed the precariousness of the lives of the poor.

When Francis Southgate, a patient in the workhouse imbecile ward, died in the early hours of October 3, no one was concerned. Certainly, the workhouse doctor, Dr Muir, attached no significance to the matter and scribbled out a death certificate without even looking at the body, attributing death to ‘cardiae syncope and paralysis of the insane’. That same day, however, two inmate helpers who were working on the ward when Southgate died told a different story. They maintained that George Prescott, a night attendant, had wrapped a towel around Southgate’s throat and, using a poker as a tourniquet, strangled him. Once the inmates made this allegation, Dr Muir and an outside doctor examined the corpse. They agreed: the cause of death was ‘asphyxiation due to strangulation’, consistent with the inmates’ account of what they had seen. A subsequent inquiry confirmed their story. It also found that the local lunatic asylum was full. That’s why Francis Southgate and so many others ended up in the workhouse without adequate facilities or trained staff to care for them. Muir resigned his post as resident medical officer.

The case confirmed the worst fears of the city’s poor. Yet for others the real problem with the workhouse was that it was so lax and indulgent that it became a den of vice. These critics maintained that the system served only to ease the movement of professional vagrants around the country and provide training grounds for criminals. Technically, the master could refuse no one admission and therefore there was nothing to stop bad characters mixing with good. The ‘casuals’ were the main problem. One of the principal objectives of the new system was to ensure the free movement of labour and consequently the workhouse provided for those ostensibly searching for work. Casuals were troublesome. Often they refused to do the work required as payment for their accommodation and the masters, fearing violence, were glad to see the back of them. Some masters refused to admit them while others were selective.

Any workhouse master who got a reputation as a soft touch became a magnet for paupers from all over the region. Manchester workhouses had such a reputation. This is why they changed their policy in the 1870s. All masters, not just those in Manchester, regarded the ‘regular moocher’ – the professional vagrant – as the most troublesome. Many were young, fit and capable of work and therefore undeserving of charity. What’s more, they were generally filthy pilferers and opportunists who undermined the good order of the workhouse. Their begging was often thinly disguised intimidation and many of them terrorised people living in isolated cottages.

But their wandering life was possible only in summer. In winter they found their way to the slums and rookeries of Manchester and Salford where many found a corner in one of the many lodging houses or spent the cold months in a cell. Others ended up in the workhouse. The advantage of Manchester and Salford was that even after the tightening up of the 1870s, they were lax in restricting aid to those with ‘settlement’ rights. To prevent casuals from contaminating the other residents, the master accommodated them in a separate building near the perimeter wall, generally for only one night. He searched them on admission and confiscated any money, as only the destitute had a right to food and a bed. Their accommodation was a cell off a long corridor, just big enough for a truckle bed. The master unlocked the cell in the morning and took the tramp to a cell opposite, where he had to break a pile of stones into pieces small enough to pass through the perforations in a grill built into the wall. Only then was he entitled to his breakfast.

The poor Irish, many arriving in Manchester after walking from Liverpool, were less squeamish about the workhouse. By the time they reached the city their hunger had generally consumed any qualms they might once have entertained. For those who found the workhouse intolerable there were private charities, such as the Wood Street mission in the heart of the infamous Deansgate rookery. It provided food and shelter for all who called at its doors, deserving and undeserving alike. This, of course, was not in keeping with the thinking of the Poor Law Guardians. They claimed that the mission, by feeding and sheltering the undeserving, was making the city a haven for the feckless who enjoyed all the benefits of support without having to work or accept an ordered life.

What was worse, according to these critics of indiscriminate charity, it attracted not only the idle and feckless but also the dangerous and violent.

An Epidemic of Wife-beating

Thieves, no matter how devious or prolific, were not the major cause of public concern. That position, then as now, belonged to the violent criminal. And there was an extraordinary amount of violent crime in nineteenth century Manchester. Prostitutes were invariably thieves. In fact, many thieves posed as prostitutes in order to rob their amorous victims. But neither violent crime nor violence was confined to prostitutes.

Violent sports were common. There was no recreation more popular among Lancashire miners than purring, a game that consisted of opponents kicking each other’s shins until one fell to the ground. On several occasions during the 1870s colliers, carried away by the euphoria of success, kicked opponents to death.

Despite this and other examples of the indigenous population’s capacity for violence, many blamed the Irish. This was partly anti-Irish prejudice, partly because the Irish lived in the poorer parts of the city where violence was common. Naturally, people associated the Irish with violence. Certainly, Miller Street, in the centre of Angel’s Meadow, one of the areas where the Irish lived in great numbers, had an appalling reputation for violence. It was there in 1869 that Benjamin Crowshaw and his wife fell on each other in a drunken heap. Crowshaw beat her to death. This case was an exception only in the degree of violence used and the tragic outcome. Drunken brawls between man and wife were common – so much so that the Manchester papers of 1874 talked of an epidemic of wife-beating. In virtually every case drink was a factor.

Angel’s Meadow was by no means the only violent part of the city – simply the most notorious. Violence scarred all the city’s rookeries but certain areas – Long Millgate and Shudehill – were particularly notorious. Yet, given the general prevalence of violence it is surprising that its victims have changed so little in the last 140 years. Those who think that modern criminals and particularly junkies are uniquely degenerate in robbing the elderly and disabled are sadly mistaken. Manchester newspapers of the 1870s differ little from today’s
Manchester Evening News
in their appalled reporting of crimes against the most vulnerable. Most vulnerable of all were drunks, stumbling home along dark streets. They were most frequently victims. Yet they received little sympathy from the public, who felt that anyone who got himself into such a state was asking for trouble.

Attitudes were very different in the 1860s, however, when it seemed that criminals were targeting the most respectable and sober elements of Manchester society.

Striking Terror

For most of the public, most of the time, crime is no more than a background irritant, a dull ache like an arthritic knee. Only when a person becomes a victim does it reach the level of a searing pain. Occasionally, however, the media creates an intermediate state, a scare so widespread, intense and prolonged that everyone feels a murderer is standing at his shoulder. The most famous example of this was the Jack the Ripper scare when for a short time women in the East End went in dread of their lives.

Before that, however, between 1861 and 1864 a garrotting scare swept the country. Suddenly the media was obsessed with street robbers who strangled or choked their victims. The press so inflamed the imagination of the public that a wave of hysteria swept the country. It first hit the headlines in1862 when it started in London. Three years later hysteria gripped the country. There had been an outbreak in Manchester in 1851 but the big scare hit the city in 1865. Such was the fear of garrotting that anti-garrotting societies sprang up around the country. In 1862 the
Weekly Despatch
told a nation avid for details of the latest throttling, ‘The manner in which anti-garrotters armed to the teeth proceed along the streets at night… is calculated to strike terror into the breasts of others as well as the great enemy.’

One garrotter obligingly explained his working practices to the readers of
The Penny Magazine.
He operated with two others. The ‘back stall’ acted as a lookout, the ‘front stall’ approached the victim and occupied his attention while the ‘nasty-man’ crept up behind and throttled him. In reality, many reputed victims of garrotters were nothing of the sort. Seeking to exploit the national obsession with this crime, newspapers often reported attacks in which victims were not choked as if they were examples of garrotting. Their assailants coshed or beat them with knuckle-dusters or pipes, as nineteenth century ‘muggers’ always had. But the garrotting panic made such good press that journalists were loath to ease public fears. At one stage there were so many reported attacks in the city that Mancunians would not venture out at night other than in the best-lit and busiest streets. Even then, they lived in constant fear that at any moment the arm of the garrotter might lock around their neck.

With uncharacteristic decisiveness the courts responded vigorously. In 1865 they hanged more criminals than in any year since the end of the Bloody Code. The Bloody Code was the name given to the English legal system of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. At that time there were no less than 225 offences that carried the death penalty, including stealing goods worth more than a shilling. After 1837, however, execution as a punishment was virtually eliminated except for murder. The Manchester courts also played their part in crushing those who terrorised the city. In July that year, when the worst of the scare was over, James Bent saw several garrotters collapse in court as the judge sentenced them to corporal punishment. The judge in this case, Justice Lush, took full advantage of the 1865 Garrotters’ Act which punished violent street robberies with prison and whipping: twenty-nine strokes of the cat-o-nine-tails for juveniles and fifty strokes of the birch for adults. At the Manchester Assizes that year, Justice Lush sentenced all twenty-three accused to both penal servitude and the cat. Some of the worst he had flogged three times at the beginning of their sentences and others twice. The judge felt, as did many commentators, that prison was no deterrent as many of the convicted had served several prison sentences. Others had returned from transportation.

All the convicted blanched at the prospect of the birch. James Bent believed the decisive action of the courts brought the garrotting outbreak to a sudden end. If so, it was a rare victory for law and order.

The garrotter was among the most detested criminals of the period. He was, however, not the most despicable. Surely that accolade must go to men who did no violence and seemed to be the model of respectability.

9

Conmen

Bloodsuckers

His skeletal features, his corpse-white flesh, his eyes, bright with hunger, were those of a man only one laboured breath away from death. Yet he had no illness. He was simply a victim of one of the many quacks who preyed on Manchester’s neurotics.

Anyone who has ever glanced through an old newspaper from pre-NHS days will immediately notice the many advertisements for patent medicines. Readers sought remedies for ailments affecting every part of the human anatomy, from a flaky scalp to sweaty feet and all points in between. For every ailment there were a dozen potions, pills and embrocations not only guaranteed to ensure an instant return to robust good health but also claiming to bring about a total transformation of the patient’s life. All, of course, at a price.

Until the 1860s the medical miracle worker was largely confined to rural fairs. He declaimed his promises from a podium, in the middle of which sat an old lady who was deaf, blind and lame. During the course of his demonstration he restored her health and vigour. Reputable manufacturers offered some products that were effective and safe by the standards of their day. But many were nothing but harmless placebos. Their only damaging effect was to deprive the credulous buyer of a few shillings.