To pre-warn you this is a shocking and upsetting life history that includes rape, institutionalised sexual abuse, and domestic violence.
In 1901 16 year old Honora Shaughnessy shared a dormitory at Nazareth House in Cardiff with 17 year old Elizabeth Keogh. Both were orphans. On the census Honora is listed as 'Deaf and Dumb since childhood' Elizabeth Keogh is listed as 'feeble-minded'.
At the time the nun was writing this information into the census return Elizabeth was already pregnant after being raped and Honora was three years off sharing a similar fate in another institution meant to care for her. This is Honora Shaughnessy's life story.
In 1901 16 year old Honora Shaughnessy shared a dormitory at Nazareth House in Cardiff with 17 year old Elizabeth Keogh. Both were orphans. On the census Honora is listed as 'Deaf and Dumb since childhood' Elizabeth Keogh is listed as 'feeble-minded'.
At the time the nun was writing this information into the census return Elizabeth was already pregnant after being raped and Honora was three years off sharing a similar fate in another institution meant to care for her. This is Honora Shaughnessy's life story.
First let's rewind fifty years and meet Honora Shaughnessy's father.
John Shaughnessy was a total bastard.
John Shaughnessy was a total bastard.
Born in Cardiff in 1857 he grew up in the Cardiff slums, living in the notorious Stanley Street cheek by jowl with hundreds of other Welsh, Irish and English poor. His parents were Irish and over the years the O dropped from their O'Shaughnessy name as they had several children in Cardiff. One young daughter was arrested for stealing coal down the docks, indicating the poverty levels of the family at the time.
However poverty did not excuse the behaviour of their second eldest son John Shaughnessy.
In 1874 John was 17. He was also up in court charged with gang-raping a 17 year old girl with six of his friends, all aged 15-19. Catherine Smart had recently arrived in Cardiff without her parents and had taken up domestic work on Mary Ann Street. They dragged her down a lane on a Sunday evening and at least four took turns raping her while the others held her down. One of the definite rapists was John Shaughnessy. There were witnesses to the attack- a couple who lived behind the lane saw her being held by the young men, she was crying and asking them repeatedly to let her go.
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| The list of the seven rapists. |
Catherine Smart didn't stand a chance in court. She had already had an illegitimate child, which was bad enough in those days, but she was also working in a poor area, didn't scream enough and was not bruised enough afterwards. The jury acquitted all of the boys. The judge addressed them saying 'Although the jury had acquitted them, there had been enough to show that their conduct had been most scandalous, and they ought to be ashamed of themselves for the rest of their lives.'
John did not live in shame for the rest of his life. Aged 19 he was beating up women and got two months hard labour.
Aged 21 John was himself living on Mary Ann Street when he broke several windows of one of his nieghbours then fled town. On his return a few months later he was arguing with a man on Bute Street and when a landlady in her late forties told someone to go fetch a policeman he punched her in the face. He then followed her into the beerhouse and when her 60 year old husband interfered he took off his belt, tried to hit him with it then kicked and punched his head. He got five weeks in prison for this little spree of violence.
Not long after coming out of prison John got drunk again. He smashed a window and when the owner, a heavily pregnant Mrs White, came out of the house and remonstrated with him he threw her to the gound, fell on top of her and punched her in the face. John got four months hard labour.
Aged 22 John was first sent to prison for three months for stealing money from a woman in the Temple Bar Inn on Bute Street. After his release he was then implicated in the assault on a 'coloured seaman' coming out of a brothel on Charlotte Street in Cardiff. This implies he was mixed up in the Cardiff sex trade at the time.
Aged 23 John popped home to see his mother Honora. He asked her for money for drink. When she refused her son he picked up a bucket and swung it at her head, putting a two inch gash in her skull that went down to the bone. John got six months for that and spent 1881 census night in Cardiff Gaol.
Age 26 John was associating with thieves and was arrested on the docks for loitering for the purpose of committing a felony. He got a month in gaol for this.
Sometime before 1885, I don't know when, John Shaughnessy met Ellen Casey from Newtown in Cardiff. Ellen was a bit of a hothead too and had been in trouble with the law for theft, assaults and incidents involving knives and axes. She was not long out of prison for a theft when they married in 1885. Ellen already had a six year old daughter from a previous relationship and a few months after the marraige Honora Shaughnessy, named after John's mother, was born.
Honora was later described as 'feeble minded' and she had speech and possible hearing problems, also being described as 'deaf and dumb since childhood'. Considering Ellen and John's lifestyles it is probably a safe bet that either some sort of foetal alcohol syndrome was involved or Honora had been damaged in the womb by domestic violence.
They went to live on Bute Terrace but a bad batchelor makes for a bad husband. John was arrested in August for being one of the fighters in an illegal prize fight on the Cardiff Road in Newport and was picked up drunk and incapable on Stow Hill Newport.
John then seems to have calmed down for a couple of years, or at least he wasn't caught by the law. His next arrest was in February 1887 for fighting and assaulting a police constable. By this time he was also working as a merchant seaman. John was a fireman- one of the men who shovelled coal non-stop into the steam ship's hungry boilers. At least he was using his strength for something positive other than fighting and beating on women.
At the end of February 1891 John Shaughnessy stepped off the steam ship Bala into Cardiff. He had been on board for just over two months returning from Port Said in Egypt. He picked up his pay from the shipping office and went drinking with a friend. They were found a few hours later literally rolling around Bute Street pissed out of their minds. It was John's 27th appearance before the court but they surprisingly let them go, putting the behaviour down to 'two jolly sailor boys' drunken shennanigans.
John was lucky to have collected his wages from the steam ship as the the Cardiff Board of Guardians had already put in motion plans to serve notice on the ship to retain his wages. They had just missed their chance but John's freedom did not last long.
While John was stoking the fires of the ships and getting drunk on shore his wife Ellen and her two children were literally starving at home. John had left his wife to fend for herself with Mary aged 12 and Honora aged 5. Ellen was also dying from consumption.
The three were removed to the workhouse where Ellen also admitted that as she was dying John had been beating her. Proceedings were taken out on John Shaughnessy by the Board of Guardian's and he was picked up and went to prison for three months. He's found, just like a decade earlier, incarcerated on the night of the 1891 census.
While John was stoking the fires of the ships and getting drunk on shore his wife Ellen and her two children were literally starving at home. John had left his wife to fend for herself with Mary aged 12 and Honora aged 5. Ellen was also dying from consumption.
The three were removed to the workhouse where Ellen also admitted that as she was dying John had been beating her. Proceedings were taken out on John Shaughnessy by the Board of Guardian's and he was picked up and went to prison for three months. He's found, just like a decade earlier, incarcerated on the night of the 1891 census.
Honora and Mary would have been seperated from their mother when they entered the workhouse. It didn't really matter that much as their mother died a couple of months later from her consumption. The girls were now effectively orphans.
The eldest daughter Mary Shaughnessy would have left the workhouse two years later when she was 14. She may have got a position as a domestic servant but Mary ended up in prostitution. She was arrested for running a brothel in Cardiff in 1897 aged just 20 and her 18 year old pimp was arrested in 1899. She died young in 1907.
Father John probably had nothing to do with his children after the death of his wife and their mother. He was living on Helen Street Roath in 1893, another poor slum area, inbetween working on merchant ships. This lovely photo is from the year before in 1892 but the children playing here were not John's, they were still in the workhouse.
On the 10th July 1894 the steam ship Ranzani, registered in Constantinople, left the East Bute Dock in Cardiff. Stoking the boilers down below was John Shaughnessy. Off the coast of Beachy Head the boilers and combustion chambers, which had not been well maintained, exploded:
John Shaughnessy was terribly burnt and suffered in immense pain over the next two days as the ship sailed on. He died on the 6th September off Dunkirk. He was 38.
At some point after 1891 young Honora Shaughnessy was taken out of the workhouse and sent to St John's Institute for Deaf and Dumb children in Boston Spa, Yorkshire. This home was set up in 1870 and took private students as well as children, like Honora, who were sent by Workhouse authorities. Students had to be 'of sound mind and capable of instruction' and free of epilepsy so Honora's special needs could not have been that pronounced.
Here, though surrounded by strangers initially, she would have been taught literacy and numeracy 'under the oral system' which meant all instruction was verbal, there is no evidence that she learnt braille. The troupe of nuns there also taught her housework, laundry work and needlework. Students typically stayed for around 6 years from the age of 7 onwards so Honora was probably sent there in 1892. Amazingly the school is still open today, though it did suffer from an abuse scandal in 2005 based on the appointment of a known paedophile priest who serially abused pupils in the 1970's.
At the end of June 1898 the Board of Guardians received a letter from the deaf and dumb school 'suggesting that Honora should return to Cardiff for a holiday' but, as she had no-one to holiday with, the suggestion was declined.
Honora would have left this school shortly after this letter and aged 15 was sent to live with the nuns at Nazareth House. Nazareth House is a forbidding stone building surrounded with a high wall just north of Cardiff city centre. Inside the nuns looked after many orphaned, destitute and 'feeble-minded' children. The Board of Guardians paid the Roman Catholic organisation to take children out of the workhouse.
Here, though surrounded by strangers initially, she would have been taught literacy and numeracy 'under the oral system' which meant all instruction was verbal, there is no evidence that she learnt braille. The troupe of nuns there also taught her housework, laundry work and needlework. Students typically stayed for around 6 years from the age of 7 onwards so Honora was probably sent there in 1892. Amazingly the school is still open today, though it did suffer from an abuse scandal in 2005 based on the appointment of a known paedophile priest who serially abused pupils in the 1970's.
At the end of June 1898 the Board of Guardians received a letter from the deaf and dumb school 'suggesting that Honora should return to Cardiff for a holiday' but, as she had no-one to holiday with, the suggestion was declined.
Honora would have left this school shortly after this letter and aged 15 was sent to live with the nuns at Nazareth House. Nazareth House is a forbidding stone building surrounded with a high wall just north of Cardiff city centre. Inside the nuns looked after many orphaned, destitute and 'feeble-minded' children. The Board of Guardians paid the Roman Catholic organisation to take children out of the workhouse.
It was here in Nazareth House that Honora Shaughnessy shared a dormitory with Elizabeth Keogh. They are listed next to each other in the 1901 census. Honora is listed as 'Deaf and Dumb since childhood' which is not the case, as we will see later. Elizabeth Keogh is listed as 'feeble-minded'.
17 year old 'feeble-minded' Elizabeth Keogh when this census was taken was in fact pregnant. She had been raped at Nazareth House over Christmas and, when her pregnancy was noticed, she was quickly bundled off to the Glamorgan County Asylum. I will expand on this story further in a book I am writing on the child patients of the Asylum.
Honora was also moved out of Nazareth House shortly after Elizabeth was shifted to the asylum. She was probably moved because she had reached the age of 16. On 13th July 1901 Nazareth House wrote to the Board of Guardians asking for Honora to be removed from their care and, unable to take care of herself and with no family to look after her, she was sent back to the workhouse.
The headline that appeared three years later in the Evening Express of 16th July 1904 is particularly chilling:
19 year old Honora Shaughnessy, 'a female inmate of the workhouse of unsound mind' was pregnant. She was brought before the chairman, the vice-chairman and two other board members to the Board room of the Cardiff Workhouse to explain herself:
'The girl, whose mental feebleness and indistinct speech greatly detracted from the value of her evidence, said that a workman employed at the workhouse was the person who had taken advantage of her. After hearing the statements of the attendants, of another inmate of unsound mind named Norah Pearson, and of the accused, who denied in toto the charge against him, the committee felt that there was no evidence which justified their recommending a prosecution, or even enabling them to express a definite opinion as to the truth of the girl's statement.'
The Chairman did admit that the rapist 'must be one who was within the walls of the workhouse'. The Chairman was also eager to point out that the man under suspicion did not work directly for the workhouse:
'He would like to say the man was not an official. He was merely employed from time to time to do certain repairs, and perhaps it was desirable that the master should be empowered to engage someone else to do such work in future.'
The other members of the board agreed. But read this exchange:
Mr Enoch: Will he be allowed to remain on; he is employed from week to week?
Mrs Mullin: Is he still employed in the building?
The Chairman: He is employed on a job which is partly finished.
Mrs Mullin: I don't think he should be kept any longer here.
The Chairman: It is open to you to say he should not be employed to finish the job.
Mr S Mildon: Which will run out another three weeks.
The report was adopted and so was the recommendation of Mr J. J. Ames, in express terms, that 'when the individual had finished the job he be no longer employed'.
That's right readers, they kept him on working for another three weeks while he finished the job...
He is also not identified in the newspapers at all. He is however identified in the Board's minutes as R. Harris but this name is too common to make any identification of the workman. The only member of the board who seemed incredulous that the man was allowed to work out his three weeks is Annie Mullin who had been on the Board of Guardians for almost ten years.
Honora's baby was born two months after the inquest on the 25th September and was named John Shaughnessy. The workhouse authorities must have checked Honora's admission records and thought her father's name would be a good choice. They may have asked Honora what she wanted to call the baby, though I doubt it.
John Shaughnessy died at 20 days old from 'tuberculosis exhaustion'. The workhouse environment was not conducive to good health and many, many newborns died young at this time. I hope they took her to a funeral but they may very well not have, considering the whole episode was highly embarrassing to them.
John Shaughnessy died at 20 days old from 'tuberculosis exhaustion'. The workhouse environment was not conducive to good health and many, many newborns died young at this time. I hope they took her to a funeral but they may very well not have, considering the whole episode was highly embarrassing to them.
Honora Shaughnessy and her witness Nora Pearson (I like to think they were both friends and looked after each other) were kept in the main workhouse for another decade until September 28th 1914. They were then both moved on the same day to Ely Hospital.
Ely Hospital was first built as an Industrial School for poor and errant children but by 1903 it was re-used by the Board of Guardians as part of the workhouse system to house 'mentally ill, mentally defective and chronic aged and infirm patients.' The site is now occupied by the Aldi store on Cowbridge Road, the fancy stonework on the pedestrian entrance hinting at the site's former use.
Honora, now 29 years old, was an ideal candidate to be housed in Ely Hospital, it was where the Board of Guardians sent people who could be forgotten. The Warrant Officer at Cardiff Workhouse described Honora 'The patient has been an inmate since 1903 of Cardiff Workhouse. She has always been feebleminded, dull and depressed.' She was assessed by two doctors at Ely. The first said 'The patient is very worried and depressed, feels very miserable, refuses to answer most questions put to her.' The second, the Medical Officer at Ely, described her as 'emotional and depressed, bursts into tears on being questioned. It is impossible to extract a rational answer.'
Ely Hospital was first built as an Industrial School for poor and errant children but by 1903 it was re-used by the Board of Guardians as part of the workhouse system to house 'mentally ill, mentally defective and chronic aged and infirm patients.' The site is now occupied by the Aldi store on Cowbridge Road, the fancy stonework on the pedestrian entrance hinting at the site's former use.
Honora, now 29 years old, was an ideal candidate to be housed in Ely Hospital, it was where the Board of Guardians sent people who could be forgotten. The Warrant Officer at Cardiff Workhouse described Honora 'The patient has been an inmate since 1903 of Cardiff Workhouse. She has always been feebleminded, dull and depressed.' She was assessed by two doctors at Ely. The first said 'The patient is very worried and depressed, feels very miserable, refuses to answer most questions put to her.' The second, the Medical Officer at Ely, described her as 'emotional and depressed, bursts into tears on being questioned. It is impossible to extract a rational answer.'
With the formalities over Honora, now known officially as 'Nora', was admitted under the Lunacy Act of 1890 as 'a person of unsound mind.' As she had been 'assessed' at Ely itself she didn't have to travel far to be admitted.
Honora spent 17 years at Ely Hospital until, aged just 46, she was moved over to the 'infirm ward' on September 9th 1931 (Nora Pearson had been moved there six years earlier).
The next evidence for Honora, still officially listed as 'Nora', is from the 1939 census. Sadly it is clear that the authorities at Ely Hospital did not even know her birthday, and they got the year of her birth wrong too, it is 1885 not 1886.
54 year old Honora can't have been too infirm on the infirm ward as she is listed as an 'unpaid domestic' worker, which meant she would have helped on the ward, in the laundry or the kitchens. (a co-incidence here but Charlotte Chorley- also listed above- is one of the Glamorgan Asylum children I am researching - I have two photographs of her and her life story will come out in the upcoming book.)
Honora lived here for another 21 years until she died aged 74 on the 22nd May 1960 from cardiac failure and lymphatic leukemia. Nora Pearson had only died two years earlier in 1958.
The staff at Ely Hospital listed Honora on her death certificate as 'Of no occupation. Spinster daughter of ------- Shaughnessy A Seaman.
As they did not even know Honora's birthdate it is unsurprising that they had also lost the names of her parents. This lack of information is common in death certificates of the long stay patients of Ely Hospital.
We do not know what Honora's later decades were like at Ely Hospital but in 1967 allegations were made by a whistle blower to the News of the World of ill-treatment, abuse and theft from the patients at Ely Hospital. This resulted in a fuller, equally damning report in 1969.
It is highly likely that Honora experienced some abuse and ill-treatment first hand at Ely Hospital. If she did complain, there was no-one to complain to. Even if there was someone who would listen she would not have been believed. Even the 1967 whistleblower, who was a care worker at Ely Hospital, had his character and motives initially questioned in the official report by the medical authorities. Patients like Honora and Nora would not have had a chance. Little had changed since 1904.
The next evidence for Honora, still officially listed as 'Nora', is from the 1939 census. Sadly it is clear that the authorities at Ely Hospital did not even know her birthday, and they got the year of her birth wrong too, it is 1885 not 1886.
54 year old Honora can't have been too infirm on the infirm ward as she is listed as an 'unpaid domestic' worker, which meant she would have helped on the ward, in the laundry or the kitchens. (a co-incidence here but Charlotte Chorley- also listed above- is one of the Glamorgan Asylum children I am researching - I have two photographs of her and her life story will come out in the upcoming book.)
Honora lived here for another 21 years until she died aged 74 on the 22nd May 1960 from cardiac failure and lymphatic leukemia. Nora Pearson had only died two years earlier in 1958.
The staff at Ely Hospital listed Honora on her death certificate as 'Of no occupation. Spinster daughter of ------- Shaughnessy A Seaman.
We do not know what Honora's later decades were like at Ely Hospital but in 1967 allegations were made by a whistle blower to the News of the World of ill-treatment, abuse and theft from the patients at Ely Hospital. This resulted in a fuller, equally damning report in 1969.
It is highly likely that Honora experienced some abuse and ill-treatment first hand at Ely Hospital. If she did complain, there was no-one to complain to. Even if there was someone who would listen she would not have been believed. Even the 1967 whistleblower, who was a care worker at Ely Hospital, had his character and motives initially questioned in the official report by the medical authorities. Patients like Honora and Nora would not have had a chance. Little had changed since 1904.
Acknowledgments:
References can be supplied for all of the above information.
Board of Guardians information is from Glamorgan Record Office UC 2/25 and UC 2/39.
The newspaper images are courtesy of the wonderful National Library of Wales Wales Newspapers Online and can be accessed here: https://newspapers.library.wales/
The photo of Helen Street is copyright National Museum of Wales and prints can be ordered here:
https://museum.wales/shop/item/2291/Helen-Street-Cardiff-1892/
Ely Hospital records are scarce but the admissions register is at Glamorgan Archives DHE 4/15/1. Her admittance papers survive in DHE/4/8/1
The report into Ely Hospital can be seen here https://www.sochealth.co.uk/national-health-service/democracy-involvement-and-accountability-in-health/complaints-regulation-and-enquries/report-of-the-committee-of-inquiry-into-allegations-of-ill-treatment-of-patients-and-other-irregularities-at-the-ely-hospital-cardiff-1969/
