Cruel Victorian Justice
How prophetic it was when Charles Dickens penned the much quoted line “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”. England in the 1830’s was finally peaceful after the Napoleonic Wars but it was financially destitute. The Georgian government of the day was levying prohibitive taxes and the country’s workers, who had, for centuries, laboured in numbers, were now being increasingly usurped by the mechanisation of the Industrial Resolution. The gap between the upper and lower classes had never been greater. THOU SHALL NOT STEAL The farmers of the country were gravely distressed and petty crime had increased to an alarming level. Law enforcement and policing had to this time been in the hands of locally appointed watchmen and constables. It wasn't until 1822 when Robert Peel became Home Secretary that the concept of professional policing was debated. It took another seven years - the same year as Thomas Chard’s marriage - for a Parliamentary Act [1] to be passed, unleashing an organised force euphemistically called "peelers or bobbies". They were charged with promoting a rigorous and less discretionary approach to law enforcement. Ten years and five children later, Thomas was to rue his brush with a member of the Devonshire constabulary. Charged with selling two bullocks [2] belonging to Mr Robert Dommett of Venn farm, Churchstanton, Thomas was tried in the Devon Assizes Court [3], Exeter, on the 23rd day of July 1840 and condemned to 10 years at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. At this time the country’s gaols were full to overflowing and prisoners were consigned to the most squalid of accommodations aboard scuttled marine vessels. Anchored in England’s calmest harbours, these hulks were effectively floating graveyards. |
Painting by William B Jenner, 1840.
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HMS Stirling Castle
Launched in 1811, Stirling Castle was a 74-gun third rate ship of the line [4]. It served for 28 years before becoming a prison ship in 1839, wallowing at anchor in Plymouth Harbour. It was here that Thomas Chard, along with 100 other miscreants, found himself at the time of the 1841 census. The hulk remained at anchor until it was broken up in 1861. |
| At the age of 30 Thomas Chard was barely above the average age [5] of 27.4 years, with the youngest being 15 and the oldest 65. For Thomas and many of his fellow inmates fate took a fortuitous turn. The antipodean colonies were desperately seeking labourers – particularly farmers capable of establishing and cultivating the harshest of landscapes. To leave the homeland of England was the price he and many others had to pay for the chance of escaping certain death in the plague infested floating “hell on water”. On the 30 November 1841, Thomas, along with 219 fellow “shipmates”, found himself aboard HMS Somersetshire [6] bound for Van Diemen’s Land. |
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HMS Somersetshire
The Somersetshire made two voyages to Australia, transporting convicts on both occasions. The first voyage arrived in New South Wales on 28th October, 1814 carrying 200 souls [7]. The second [8] with Thomas Chard aboard was an eventful one. Normally a journey of approximately four months, this passage lasted nearly five as time was spent quelling a mutiny of several prisoners. Aided by some soldier guards the mutineers had attempted to take control of the ship and flee to South America [9]. The uprising was suppressed and the perpetrators were put to trial upon the Somersetshire's arrival in Cape Town. As detailed in this Sydney newspaper article of the day, the mutineer's ringleader was sentenced to death and summarily executed whilst the soldier guards were court marshalled and given life sentences – to be transported to their destination as convicts. The Somersetshire arrived in Tasmania on the 30th May 1842. |
| Upon his arrival in Hobart Town, Tasmania, Thomas Chard was allocated accommodation at the Port Arthur penal settlement to complete his remaining 8 years of debt to the British Government. It is quite ironic to contemplate how two Devonshire cows had altered the course of a family’s destiny. A NOT SO ARTFUL DODGER? So it came to pass that, by the autumn of 1840 and a few months before his tenth birthday, James Atkins Chard became the senior male in the family. Had his mother told her children of their father’s fate? One thing is certain. James would have been the only child old enough to understand the predicament within which the family had been placed. His youngest sister Mary had been born in February [10] of the same year and her arrival may well have placed extra pressures on the family’s ability to survive. Did their father’s misdemeanour involving stolen cattle arise from a babies need for milk or perhaps the whole families need for sustenance in general? A year later the 1841 census reveals that the Chards are registered as paupers, with mother Mary labouring on a property at Biscombe. James, endeavouring to contribute to the family welfare, began working as a farm boy for Mr William Spurrell at the neighbouring 350 acre Catchett farm. Sadly this situation lasted barely one year as James also found himself in the hands of the local constabulary – charged with stealing - just like his father before him. For a twelve year old boy whose world had existed within a 3 mile radius; the shame of being manacled in front of his family, friends and neighbours and then suffering the indignity of being herded into a prison cart must have been unimaginable. The 30 mile journey chained to other suspected felons a nightmare. Travelling through parishes he had only heard mention of by his elders, the prison cart trundled, eventually arriving in Exeter. For James two things are certain; the first being the shock of the sight of a big city; the second being the gruesome confines of the Exeter county jail. How long he spent in the city’s holding cells is uncertain but the county courts of the day sat quarterly and records state that he was convicted [2] on January 3rd 1843. It is more than likely that he spent Christmas of 1842 at the pleasure of Her Majesty’s Government. In a statement (given by Mr Spurrell at an earlier date in Taunton) tabled in the Devon Assizes Court [3], the defendant had been accused [2] of “picking said Spurrell's pocket of £1 and some silver". Even though, in summation, the judge described the defendant as “a poor neglected boy” [11], he was convicted of the offence and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and transportation to the colonies [12]. For James Atkins Chard, this was not a particularly palatable outcome, but it was certainly preferable to the gallows. James’ next destination was the Isle of Wight. |
| VICTORIANA – THE FORGOTTEN CRUELTY | ||
| Living conditions all over the United Kingdom, particularly in the first fifty years of the 19th century, were extremely harsh and it must be considered that people’s attitudes and values were very different to those of the present day. The common people struggled to stay alive and had little time or concern for the suffering or misfortune of others. There was scant regard for human dignity. Merchants, landlords and shopkeepers were anxious to increase profits rather than consider the misery of the labourers who toiled in degrading conditions. For all but the landed gentry life was grim. In English cities and towns, residents walked down filthy streets piled high with garbage and horse-droppings. The stench from the many malodorous trades was all-pervading. Men laboured to make an honest living in the slaughterhouses, sewers, cesspits and tanneries. In rural areas women and children toiled as agricultural labourers (not to be confused with farmers who owned the land), underground in the mines or in factories as 'pressed' labour - anything that would avoid them being forced into the ubiquitous workhouse. Although conditions in the larger cities were deplorable, they were far worse in the smaller rural communities where 75% of all children born, died within the first year [13] or so. Hospitals were filthy, evil-smelling places. Medicine had not advanced much beyond the use of leeches, and “bleeding” was still commonly practised. Most of the working-class were illiterate, and their children had no opportunities for education. Schooling – in place of child labour – did not become mandatory until the introduction of the Elementary Education Act in 1870. It was the era of the archetypal “Artful Dodger”, whom Charles Dickens depicted in Oliver Twist. Gangs of scruffy, undernourished, miscreants, some as young as 9 or 10, roamed the streets trying “to pick a pocket or two”. Petty juvenile crime was rife.
In the year James Chard was born, a 12 year old boy had been sentenced to death for stealing goods worth twopence through a crack in a broken window [14]. Eight years later a girl of 9 was hanged for stealing. A 14 year old girl suffered a similar fate for stealing a handkerchief, whilst a boy of 10 lost his life for wrongfully handling a pocket knife. Flogging was also widely practised at this time and was regarded as a minor amusement by passers-by who possibly could have witnessed the hanging of as many as 40 people (including women and children) on any given day. |
References
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