The Wicked Boy (39 page)

The case against Robert and Fox. . .
The prosecution case had been prepared by Frederick Frayling, a clerk in the joint office of the Director of Public Prosecutions and Solicitor to the Treasury. The total cost of the case to the Crown, from its inception on 19 July to its conclusion on 17 September 1895, was £63 10/ 10d – see
Report of the Commissioners of Prisons and the Directors of Convict Prisons 1895–96, for the Year Ended 31 March 1896
, PP, 1896, XLIV, p. 235.

Charles Gill. . .
See obituary in
The Times
, 23 February 1923, and portrait by ‘Spy' in
Vanity Fair,
9 May 1891.

Horace Avory. . .
See entry in
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
and caricature by ‘Spy' in
Vanity Fair,
June 1904.

the Crown had made the fullest possible inquiries into Robert
'
s state of mind. . .
This arrangement dated from 1886, when the offices of the Director of Public Prosecutions and Solicitor to the Treasury were merged, and the Treasury solicitor was required to ensure that any evidence about a prisoner's sanity was placed before the court. See Tony Ward,
Psychiatry and Criminal Responsibility in England 1843–1939
(DPhil thesis, 1996).

In reply to his questions
. . .
The examination of the witnesses is drawn from newspaper reports and the transcript of their testimony in OBSP. In places, a barrister's question has been inferred from his witness's response.

trajectory of degeneration . . .
Bénédict Morel,
Traité des Dégénérescences physiques, intellectuelles
et morales de l
'
espèce humaine
(1857).

‘
Sun
'
. . .
16 September 1895.

Newgate. . .
See Griffiths,
Secrets of the Prison House
; Anon,
The Queen
'
s London
; Priestley,
Victorian Prison Lives
; and the Departmental Committee on Prisons'
Report
and
Minutes of Evidence
, PP, C7702 (1895).

W. T. Stead in 1886. . .
In ‘My First Imprisonment', quoted in Priestley,
Victorian Prison Lives
. Stead was a renowned investigative journalist and crusader against child prostitution. He was a passenger on the
Titanic
in 1912, and died after the ship hit an iceberg.

‘
Saturday Review
'
. . .
21 September 1895.

‘
Spectator
'
. . .
21 September 1895.

a wax worker was offering models. . .
In an advertisement in the
Era,
27 July 1895.

a melodrama about the murder. . .
See
Spectator
, 21 September 1895.

CHAPTER 10: THE BOYS SPRINGING UP AMONGST US

‘
Evening News
'
. . .
17 September 1895.

‘
London Daily News
'
. . .
18 September 1895.

‘
Sun
'
. . .
17 September 1895.

From nine o
'
clock to twelve o
'
clock. . .
For the board school regime, see Anna Davin,
Growing Up
Poor: Home, School and Street 1870–1914
(1986); Hugh B. Philpott,
London at School: The Story of
the School Board, 1870–1904
(1904); and Rose,
The Erosion of Childhood
.

endeavoured to train their young charges not to drop the
‘
h
'
s. . .
See Charles Morley,
Studies in Board Schools
(1897). In
The Soul of London
, Hueffer identified south Essex as the source of the ‘extraordinary and miasmic dialect' of East London. As well as dropping and misplacing aitches, the late-nineteenth-century East Londoner would replace ‘e' for ‘a' in such words as ‘catch', according to White's
London in the Nineteenth Century
, ‘v' for ‘th' in words such as ‘they' or ‘there' and ‘ff' for ‘th' in ‘three' and ‘thank you'. He or she would typically use double negatives (‘I don't know nuffing'), double superlatives (‘more quicker'), pronounce ‘gate' as ‘gite' and ‘Victoria' as ‘Victawia'. Most of the witnesses' dialect in the Coombes case was standardised by the court reporters, but the occasional Cockney idiom slips through, for instance, in Mrs Hayward's phrase ‘on the look' or in an unaltered transcription of Nattie's brief exchange with Robert after the murder: ‘I done it'; ‘You ain't done it.' Some of Robert's penny bloods revelled in the street slang of East London. Cockney Bob in
Cockney Bob
'
s Big Bluff
is full of ripe expostulations: ‘Blow me, but you are a stunner', ‘Oh, drop it, darling', ‘Capital!', ‘Well, I should smile!'

an academic
‘
standard
'
. . .
See William W. Mackenzie,
A Treatise on the Elementary Education Acts,
1870–1891 (with the Acts in an Appendix)
(1892).

‘
oases
'
, as one commentator described them. . .
Masterman,
The Heart of Empire
.

The Coombes boys
'
first school. . .
Details of Robert and Nattie's changes of school are in the Grange Road School Admissions Register 1888–1906, Newham Archives. Robert reached the fourth standard in October 1892, according to this register, and left Grange Road for Stock Street in November 1893. Nattie left in July 1894 to attend the school at Cave Road, which opened that month. For the West Ham board schools, see Powell (ed.),
A History of the County of Essex: Vol. 6
. The National Archives has files on individual schools: Grange Road ED 21/5644; Stock Street ED 21/5679; Cave Road ED 21/5629.

‘
Each school. . .
' In Booth (ed.),
Life and Labour of the People in London, Vol. 1
.

‘
Singularly precocious. . .
' In the 1895 edition of Maudsley's
The Pathology of Mind.
Victorian ideas of precocity are discussed in Shuttleworth,
The Mind of the Child
, and in Nelson,
Precocious Children and Childish Adults
. As well as Little Father Time, Nelson cites the Artful Dodger in
Oliver Twist
(1838) and Jim Hawkins in
Treasure Island
(1883) as literary examples of the precocious child in Victorian England. Their counterpart was the childish man, exemplified by the simple, sweet-hearted Mr Dick in
David Copperfield
(1850) – a figure as benign and innocent as John Fox.

‘
Dictionary of Psychological Medicine
'
. . .
Edition of 1892, ed. Daniel Hack Tuke.

The latest instalment of Thomas Hardy
'
s new novel. . .
The serial ran in twelve instalments under the title
The Simpletons
and then
Hearts Insurgent
in
Harper
'
s New Monthly Magazine
between December 1894 and November 1895; in November it was published as the novel
Jude the Obscure.

Little Time is an old soul. . .
See ‘“Done because we are too menny”: Little Father Time and Child Suicide in Late-Victorian Culture' by Sally Shuttleworth in Phillip Mallett (ed.),
Thomas Hardy:
Texts and Contexts
(2003).

The Thames Iron Works. . .
See Booth (ed.),
Life and Labour of the People in London, Vol. I
; A. J. Arnold,
Iron Shipbuilding on the Thames: An Economic and Business History
(2000); and the National Maritime Museum's illustrated history of the Thames Iron Works at
www.portcities.org.uk/london/server/show/ConNarrative.59/Thames-Ironworks
.

the
‘
Fuji Yama
'
. . .
The ship's construction was described in the
Thames Iron Works Gazette
of 29 June 1895, the edition that also announced the formation of the football club that later became West Ham United. The vessel was launched in September as the
Fuji.

she had withstood years of relative hardship . . .
For the role of boy workers in the family, see Childs,
Labour
'
s Apprentices
, Ellen Ross,
Love and Toil: Motherhood in Outcast
London, 1870–1918
(1993), and Clare Rose, ‘Working Lads in Late-Victorian London' in
Childhood and Child Labour in Industrial England: Diversity and Agency, 1750–1914
(2013).

A couple of decades earlier. . .
For the decline of the apprentice system see Urwick (ed.),
Studies of Boy
Life in our Cities
. In
Manchester Boys: Sketches of Manchester Lads at Work and Play
(1905), C. E. B. Russell observes that the working lad was usually ‘set to some work which only calls for intelligence of the meanest kind. . . At this work he remains for week after week, year after year, his mind dormant, his hands moving with the precision and dullness of a machine.'

Coombes brought home £9 2/-. . .
See NMM: RSS/CL/1895/60015
SS France
.

CHAPTER 11: IT IS ALL OVER NOW

‘
Star
'
. . .
17 September 1895.

‘
Sun
'
. . .
17 September 1895.

Wynn Westcott. . .
In
Suicide: Its History, Literature, Jurisprudence, Causation and Prevention
(1885).

cerebral irritation. . .
In 1892 the
Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease
(vol. 19) reported on research by Dr Jules Simon into children with cerebral irritation. They were often melancholy, mentally unsteady, cruel to animals, oversensitive and capricious, said Simon. Sometimes they experienced epileptoid attacks, sometimes violent localised pains or impulsive movements. He recommended treating the condition with increasing doses of bromide of potassium.

sailed to New York on the SS
‘
England
'
. . .
The
New York Times
of 22 July 1895 reported that the pair sailed on the
England
in 1895; the ship's voyage of January to March tallies with the dates of Robert's absence from school. For dates and crew, see NMM: RSS/CL/1895/29996
SS England
.

The ship was pelted with rain. . .
Details of outward journey from New York
Evening World
of 7 February 1895. The
Western Daily Press
of 15 February 1895 claimed that the Atlantic crossing that month was the worst on record. In the Rudyard Kipling poem ‘Mulholland's Contract', which appeared in the
Pall Mall Gazette
on 6 June 1895, the narrator describes cattle ships as ‘more like Hell than anything else I know'.

The Englands
'
two older sons. . .
See Grange Road School Admissions Register 1888–1906 in Newham Archives.

George Walker had been a prison doctor. . .
For Walker's background and his work at Holloway, see his testimony in the Departmental Committee on Prisons'
Report
and
Minutes of Evidence
, PP, C7702 (1895). For his evidence in other Old Bailey trials see OBSP.

The insanity plea had become increasingly common. . .
See Ward,
Psychiatry and Criminal
Responsibility in England 1843–1939
; Martin J. Wiener, ‘Judges v Jurors: Courtroom Tensions in Murder Trials and the Law of Criminal Responsibility in Nineteenth-Century England' in
Law and History Review
, Autumn 1999; Ruth Harris,
Murders and Madness: Medicine,
Law and Society in the Fin de Siècle
(1989); and Joel Peter Eigen, ‘Diagnosing Homicidal Mania: Forensic Psychiatry and the Purposeless Murder',
Medical History
, October 2010. Both Ward and Eigen discuss the Coombes case.

The
‘
right from wrong
'
test, said Maudsley. . .
At the annual meeting of the British Medical Association on 1 August 1895, published in the
Journal of Mental Science
of October 1895. In 1890, the lunacy
law expert Wood Renton claimed that a ‘silent revolution' had taken place, whereby the ‘knowing right from wrong' test was frequently ignored by judges and juries. See Ward,
Psychiatry and Criminal Responsibility in England 1843–1939
.

‘
The brain is always compressed. . .
'
The Dictionary of Psychological Medicine
(1892) warned that clumsily applied forceps could cause brain damage.

‘
Homicidal mania
'
. . .
See Etienne Esquirol,
Mental Maladies: a Treatise on Insanity
(1845), and Eigen, ‘Diagnosing Homicidal Mania'.

the sole marker of insanity. . .
See, for instance, ‘Insanity of Conduct' by George H. Savage and C. Mercier in the
Journal of Mental Science
, April 1896, which argues that an act of violence can be ‘the one insane symptom'.