Cardiff Scandal: The Life of Honora Shaughnessy.

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.

First let's rewind fifty years and meet Honora Shaughnessy's father.

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. 

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. 

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.

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.

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.' 

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.

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/

The Short Life of Dolly Kelly

This is Dorothy Kelly, known to her friends as Dolly. She is 23 in this photograph. It is in the same style as small passport sized photographs that were popular in the Edwardian era. Note the lovely heart dangling from a choker. 

We start Dolly's story at the very start of the 20th century when she's 18. She was working as a waitress in The Philharmonic Restaurant on St Mary Street, Cardiff. 

Dorothy worked there alongside 9 other young waitresses and barmaids and a male cook and porter. 

The Philharmonic was, and still is, a large public house on one of Cardiff's main streets. It served food, held boxing matches, ping pong competitions, luncheons and also had a shooting range. The staff would have lived either in the top rooms seen in this 1890 photo, or probably rooms on the opposite side at the back. 

Copyright Cardiff Public Libraries.

We don't know if Dolly enjoyed or hated her job. It must have been something of an adventure living in the centre of a bustling Cardiff with a host of young women of the same age. 

Dorothy's life took her away from waiting on customers. Four years later, for reasons we will never know, she had 6 convictions to her name, was a 'well-known character' and was trashing her mother's house. 

After breaking one of her mother's chairs on a policeman Dotty picked up her seventh conviction.

Two months after this Dolly was working in a brothel on Cowbridge Road in Cardiff and using an alias of 'Mrs Munro' as she 'rented a room' from a Mr and Mrs Cheen.

Brothels in Edwardian Cardiff that were away from the dock area were often 'pop ups'. Someone would rent a house, take in some women, and when the neighbours complained or the police got suspicious it would shut down and move somewhere else. Dolly seemed to work here with another girl called Dotty Evans. 

When Dolly became ill she went to Cardiff infirmary for a few weeks to recover. On her return to the brothel Dolly found that not only had the owners been jailed for brothel keeping but the woman they had left in charge- Dotty- had also got herself jailed. 

Dolly blagged a neighbour who let her into the empty house. She found the keys on the kitchen table and another young prostitute called Rose Saunders joined her. They lived there for a fortnight until bailiffs came knocking about rent arrears and took some of the furniture to pay for it.
Dolly and Rose soon left in a cab and took a train to London Paddington. With her was a large trunk that she had stolen from the brothel. It contained the Gibby's possessions and when Dolly got to London she seemed to forget about it and it stayed gathering dust in a cloak room at the station. 

In January the next year the trunk and then Dorothy were tracked down and she was taken back to Cardiff by the police. The photograph at the start of this article was taken and the newspapers reported the strange headline 'Story of a Trunk'

Story of a Trunk, Remarkable charge at Cardiff, Case against Paddington Girl Breaks Down.

The Gibby's didn't get much sympathy in the court. Their brothel had been robbed while they were in prison for keeping it in the first place and Dorothy was set free. 

Not all of Dolly's court appearances appear in the newspapers. By the early 1900's they had stopped reporting every court case, choosing only to cherry pick the most interesting, so we don't know the full history of what Dolly was being arrested for. What is clear is that to her contemporaries she was notorious.

Proof of this comes in a paternity court case held a month after the trunk incident. A young woman called Isabelle was suing a young man called Sam claiming he was the father of their child (they had had sex in a cave in Penarth and on Llandaff Fields). As the young man's solicitor tried to fling as much mud as possible at Isabelle, one of his questions to her was 

'Were some of your friends woman of ill-fame? Dorothy Kelly?' 

In court Dolly's very reputation was used as a slander.  

Dolly Kelly returned to London in the months after her court case. She didn't live to see out the end of the year.

Written in the margin of the police photographic register of 1906 is the horrible note:

'Found drowned at foreshore of River Thames at Lambeth on 22nd November 1906.'

I ordered her death certificate, which is listed under 'Dolly Kelly' but it did not give much more information. 

There was an inquest on the 26th November but I have found no reports of this in the newspapers. Her address is given as unknown and she is of 'no occupation'. The only other piece of information on the certificate is the exact location that Dolly's body was found- Nelson's Wharf, Lambeth. 

I think her body was either identified by someone with only a fleeting acquaintance with her, someone who only knew her as 'Dolly Kelly', or she had something on her body that identified her name, like a letter from her mother. 

The Lambeth police must have spread the name around other police departments to find out who she was and of course the Cardiff police were well aware of Dolly's existence. 

Her drowning could be an accident, a suicide or a murder. The only thing we are certain of is the sad ending of a young woman.

As a postscript Dotty Evans, the young woman who had shared the brothel with Dolly, attempted suicide in the Canton Police Station in July of the same year. She had been arrested for being very drunk and disorderly and assaulting a policeman. In the cells she tied a garter around her neck and fell unconscious. She was only revived 20 minutes after she was discovered and in court the next day said 'Yes, I'll do it again if I get the chance, I am tired of my life.'

Dolly's Prisoner Details can be found at Glamorgan Record Office DCONC/3/2/1
Newpaper images are from Welsh Newspapers Online from National Library of Wales.
Image of Philharmonic Restaurant is copyright Cardiff Libraries. 

The Twelve Day Death of Eliza Lewis

This one is perhaps one of the darkest stories I have come across in my research and it involved two Charlotte Street women.

First we have to go back to 1863 when a house was found ablaze in the morning:

The arsonist was found to be a girl called Elizabeth Tregall and she was brought before the court on the Saturday:

Elizabeth would spend the next two nights in a cell at the police station on St Mary Street. She was back in court on the Monday:

So they let her off an arson charge but she got three months hard labour for vagrancy, probably in  Cardiff Gaol. 

However the original Police Court records of this case paint a different picture. Elizabeth Tregall only looked 15 years old because she was emaciated and malnourished. She was actually in her early twenties. PC Surcombe states:

"She has no employment, she said her husband was at sea" 

Also Sergeant Glass states:

"I have known prisoner 5 or 6 months. She is married but her husband has left her and she has been on the town . She has no home and nowhere to sleep. I see her wonder round the streets every night."(This description means she was homeless rather than working as a prostitute)

While in Cardiff Gaol Eliza would have met Adeliade Paine, Annie Yarwood and Mary Murphy, all experienced brothel keepers from Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane who were also there at this time. Also there was Sue Walker, in for smashing the windows of her old brothel on Charlotte Street and Catherine Mitchell, a prostitute in for stopping men and using foul language.  

So if Elizabeth wasn't familiar with prostitution in Cardiff before gaol she certainly would have known all about it by the time she left. 

Cut to a year later and an Elizabeth Lewis (bear with me on the name) is up for soliciting on Bute Street:

"Three sailors were coming up. Prisoner caught hold of one between the legs and behaved in a very disorderly way."

Then next year our Elizabeth resurfaces as Eliza on Charlotte Street in April 1865:

It reads:

"At 12:30 on Sat night saw prisoner drunk in Charlotte St. She was hollering and shouting- she is a prostitute. 7 days Hard Labour"

So Eliza was back in gaol. She was picked up again the next month:

"Last night at one o'clock saw defendant in Nelson Street drunk and behaving in a very riotous manner using obscene language. She is a prostitute. Cautioned."

Things then came to a dramatic conclusion in February 1866 and is evidence of the name change:

The other newspaper report gives more information but not the alias:

See my other blog post on the Glamorganshire Canal for more background on how common this was. This lock on the junction canal still exists today.

The body they had pulled from the canal was badly decomposed and so Elizabeth Lewis/Tregall was pronounced dead at the inquest and a death certificate was issued for her. She was hurriedly buried at Cathays Cemetary. 

The thing is the body wasn't Eliza. For twelve days Eliza Lewis was walking dead and buried on the streets of Cardiff.

Ten days later the lock gates on the junction canal were not shutting properly. The workman overseeing the lock used his grappling hooks to remove the blockage. He pulled up the mutilated corpse of a baby girl. The sixth month old was wearing clothes from Cardiff Workhouse:

This led to enquiries being made at the workhouse and soon enough the mistake was realised.

The woman's body wasn't Eliza but Mary Wheelan who had taken her daughter Catherine out of the workhouse on Sunday to go to chapel. Mary had possibly slit her baby's throat before she hugged her daughter and jumped into the canal. I think the doctor is sparing the dead mother here in his sudden change of mind about the cut- is it not doubtful that two huge lock gates could make a clean cut from ear to ear of a six month old baby?

Mary Wheelan herself had probably worked as a prostitute on Charlotte Street as she was assaulted there by a bully in June 1865, two months before she gave birth to Catherine in the workhouse. 

Of course it is possible she fell in by accident, the Junction Canal ran under Bute Street, but it seems probable this was a suicide.

Why she committed suicide and murdered her child we will never know but post-natal depression, desperation and despair must have lain at the root of the cause.

Interestingly it seems that the deaths of Mary and Catherine were not registered officially, even though Eliza's incorrect death was. The Burial Register at Cathays was also not altered so the grave is still named as Elizabeth Lewis, there is no indication her daughters body was buried with her. Surely this is the result of some highly insensitive bureaucratic oversight after the inquest. 

As for Eliza Lewis being dead did not stop her:

That is from the July after she was recorded as dead in February.

In November of the same year Eliza was stripping clothes lines along Bute Street:

Eliza was sentenced to a year in gaol for this offence. 

There the trail goes cold for Eliza. I can't be sure when she died or if she remarried as the name Elizabeth Lewis is so common, she certainly did not carry on as Elizabeth Tregall. 

References
Fire: Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian 29th May 1863 p.8.
Saturday Court and Monday court are the same reference.
Police Court is Glamorgan Record Office PSCBO/1/39 Elizabeth Tregall 23rd May 1863. The other women in Cardiff gaol are also from this record in May and June 1863. I can find no record of any Tregall living in Cardiff in this time, or any marriage between a Tregall and an Elizabeth either, though it is highly likely they are from Cornwall.
Catching hold of sailors is PSCBO/1/42 Elizabeth Lewis 4th June 1864
Prostitution charges PSCBO/1/44 Eliza Lewis 24th April and 17th May 1865.
Inquest on Eliza Lewis MM 10 February 1866 p.8. and Cardiff Times 9 February 1866 p.5. Death Certificate is March quarter 1866 Cardiff 11a 164. Cathays Cemetary plot K929.
Mary Wheelan inquest Cardiff Times 23 February 1866 p.5. Her daughter is Catherine Wheelan see birth Cardiff Sept Quart 11a 259.
Mary Wheelan on Charlotte Street is Cardiff Times 9 June 1865 p.7. and PSCBO/1/45 Thomas Davies 7th June 1865. Strangely Thomas Davies alias Clark was sentenced to a year imprisonment at the New Year Assizes in 1866 for theft of meat from Bute Street- he could be the bully that Eliza Tregall was supposedly bereaving when it was thought she had committed suicide.
Eliza tea can theft: CT 20 July 1866 p.8.
Eliza clothes theft: CT 2 November 1866 p.6. and trial CT 12 January 1867 p.8

Mary No-Nose: Cardiff Prostitute Nicknames

Cranky & Bristol Ann have a fight in 1841.

Nicknames were common throughout Wales as lots of people had the same first names or surnames. For the same reason they were also used a lot among the criminal fraternity, although perhaps their use also hid real names from the ears of authority. This post looks at the nicknames of Cardiff prostitutes working on Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane in the 1840's to the 1860's.
There's no doubt they were in common use among the inhabitants as they are often recounted in witness statements. They were definitely not given by officials or outsiders. They were used so much that people would be unaware of their real names, like this example from 1847 on Whitmore Lane:

Geography

Many of the nicknames just identified the women by where they came from:

Kitty Pen Bont: Catherine Williams was from Bridgend (Penybont). She's the earliest reference to a working girl and was arrested at Mr Barnes pub in 1833 after stealing a watch from a punter with her bully.

Chepstow Mary: Eliza Davies worked on Charlotte Street in 1841.

Swansea Sue: Living on King Street, Swansea in 1841, Susan Davies moved to work on Charlotte Street and the Lane in 1848. In 1851 she was working in Ned Llewellyn's brothel on Whitmore Lane:

She worked as a prostitute until the early 1860's.

Welsh Kate: Also sometimes 'Welsh Kit'. Catherine Thomas worked on Whitmore Lane from 1841 to 1846. She hung around with Catherine Atkins- see below- so the nickname was handy to differentiate between the two Catherines, although Catherine Atkins was Welsh too!

Welsh Meg: Though not sure why Louisa Winstone was called Meg but she was obviously Welsh! Active on Whitmore Lane in 1852. 

The Great Westerns: I think this is a geographical reference. Mary Williams and Eliza Thomas were the Great Westerns in 1842.
Irish Kate: Charlotte Thompson in an unusually late reference to a nickname in 1871.
Irish Mary Ann: Mary Ann Hill in 1842. 

Irish Joanna: Joanna Mahoney worked the Lane from 1842 to 1844.

Irish Meg: Margaret Sullivan/John worked on Charlotte Street and the Lane for at least 23 years from 1851 until 1874. Not to be confused with Irish Mag who was Margaret Keyhole. At times Meg was a very successful thief:

She's one of the people in my Notorious book.

Bristol Ann: Ann Daniels worked on Whitmore Lane 1841-4.
Bristol Annie: Ann Daw stabbed a sailor she was co-habiting with in 1861 on Frederica Street.

Bristol Eliza: See the blogpost 'The Whore and the Mayoress' to read about Bristol Eliza.

Blackwood: Blackwood is a town in the county of Caerphilly. Ann Thomas worked the Lane from around 1846-7 and she was friends with Catherine Atkins (see below).

Abergavenny Poll: Hannah Goodwin, from Abergavenny, was active 1850-8 until she got seven years for a brothel theft and ended up in Brixton prison. She flitted between Cardiff and the China slum in Merthyr.

Ann Pendarren: From either Penderyn near Merthyr Tydfil or Penydarren in Merthyr Tydfil Ann Llewellyn hit it big at the lodging house of William Pimm in 1861:

Plymouth Eliza: I've not traced her real name, nickname is only known from a police court witness statement from January 1848.

Plymouth Ann: Mary Ann Jones ran a brothel for many years on Mill Lane and dies in April 1853.
Bristol Lizzy: Again, not traced her real name, one mention in a police report from The Royal Standard pub on Bute Street in 1859. Not the same as Bristol Eliza above as she died in 1851.
English Mary: Not many of the prostitutes were English so Mary stood out in this way. Evidence again comes from The Royal Standard Police report. It could be Mary Ann Huntley or Mary Ann Bailey for example, there's a few to choose from who were picked up from this time.
Nailsey Poll: Nailsea is a town southwest of Bristol. Real name unknown as it's in a list of prostitutes found in a Bute Street pub in 1861.

Physical Descriptions

Big Jane: Jane Thomas worked on Whitmore Lane in 1841 and was in the China slum in Merthyr by 1847. She wasn't too big to be threatened with the stocks in 1841:

Mary Fat: Mary Jones worked on Whitmore Lane in 1844-1846.
Betsey Bounce: I assume this is a physical characteristic, it could also refer to stealing. She assaulted Jane Thomas, probably 'Jane Fine-Talk' in 1842 with another prostitute and her real name is not given.

Mary the Cripple: Though always a brothel keeper rather than a prostitute Mary the Cripple was disabled since birth and started off in Newport. Read more about her Newport life here. Her sister Catherine Hughes was known as 'Long Kit' or 'Katty', her daughter Elizabeth Jenkins was known as 'Bets the Cripple', 'Betty Yarwood' and 'Cripple Junior' and her other daughter Ann Yarwood was 'The Young Cripple', though the name is not reported after she moved to Cardiff in 1853.

Rosy: Ann Lucas who came to Cardiff from Bideford in 1852 was rosy. 

Kitty Pigs Eyes: Catherine Atkins from Cardiff had this rather unfortunate nickname. She worked from 1844 to 1853. Here she is ashaming policemen. Kitty is one of my Notorious people.

Sarah Nips: Sarah Clarke was a prostitute working in the China area of Merthyr until the autumn of 1849 when she came to Charlotte Street. She stayed working in the sex-trade there for the next twenty years, running brothels and pubs. She was running the brothel that Kitty Pigs' Eyes was working in by 1851. Her nickname was not reported in the papers in Cardiff so she perhaps left it behind in Merthyr (though there were very close links between China and Whitmore Lane). The Nips nickname could be sexual or from 'nipper' a term for someone small.

Curley: Probably refers to the hair of Sophia Evans, active in 1852. 

Gummy: or Gummay was the nickname of Eliza Cartwright active in both China and Whitmore Lane 1847-1853. 

Carrots: The probably ginger-haired Ann Moore started prostitution in Newport in 1852 when she was aged just 14. She moved to Charlotte Street at the start of 1854 and was working in Jenny Piano's brothel at 16 Whitmore Lane in 1861. You can read more about her on the blog about Jenny Piano.

Little Jenny: She was listed as one of the women in The Argyle Rooms on Bute Road in 1861. 

Characteristics

Cranky: Mary Rees was obviously a bit moody! She worked on Whitmore Lane in 1841-8.
Mary No-Nose: Maybe Cranky had an accident as Mary No-Nose was a Mary Rees too in 1842.
Betsy Fine-Talk: Elizabeth Lewis obviously had the gift of the gab in 1842.
Jane Fine-Talk: Jane Thomas also had the gift of the gab in 1842.

Miss Molly Crankey: Mary Brewer was also moody in the early 1840's!
Mrs Fillpots: Maria Meyrick moved to Charlotte Street from the Friar's Fields area of Newport in 1845 after she was severely assaulted by her pimp. Mrs Fillpots was a character in a 1837 comedy play 'Women's Whims' which may have been shown at Newport. Mrs Fillpots is the landlady of a pub in the play. It obviously refers to Maria's heavy drinking.

The Grenadier: Mary Lawson was from Cheshire and tall and heavily built, Grenadiers in the army had to be tall- hence the nickname. She worked Whitmore Lane from 1846 until 1856 and appears in the book.

The Little Punch: Ann Owens was five foot and a half inch tall. She also had a mean punch by the sounds of it. She started her life in prostitution aged just 12 in Swansea and moved to Charlotte Street and the Lane in 1850. in 1851 she was working for Mrs Prothero in her brothel along with the Grenadier:

More about The Little Punch can be found in my blog about prostitute tattoes here.
Nicknames were sometimes reported in official prison records, like in Millbank Prison in 1865 where Ann Morgan is alias Owens alias Punch:

Random

Cockatoo: Mary Ann Jones was a prostitute and brothel keeper who started in Newport in 1843 and moved to Charlotte Street in 1851. She worked there until she got a 14 year sentence for theft. God only knows how she got the nickname of Cockatoo, perhaps a sexual reference.

Jenny Piano: Jane Roberts was active on Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane 1848 until 1864. There's a blog post about her life here. I think the most obvious reason for the nickname is she played the piano in the pubs.

Topsy: The nickname of Gwenllian Hughes, active around 1853 on Charlotte Street. I'm not sure why!

All for Love: Eliza Thomas was obviously committed to her job in 1847.

Sancta Maria: This is the only example I have of a woman's nickname changing over time. In Newport Bridget Kelly worked the Friar's Fields area from 1839 and was known as Sancta Maria, I thought she was an Irish Roman Catholic but she was a Protestant, so I'm unsure of why the nickname stuck.  When she moved to Cardiff in 1846 she became known as Sandy Maria and then Saucy Maria, references to her hair colour and her occupation! 

The historian is chained by their sources. It's a sad fact for this book that the Newport and Merthyr press were more likely to give nicknames in their newspaper reports of criminal trials than the Cardiff press. Cardiff was slow to report it's court cases and there are hundreds of newspapers from the 1840's that give a paragraph of court cases from places like Neath, Merthyr and Swansea but nothing at all from Cardiff. The reporting of nicknames was more common in the 1840's, declined through the 1850's and was rare in the 1860's. Newport papers in the 1840's obviously sent a reporter to the courts who often gave highly descriptive reports of it's criminals and their speech, like this one of 'Mrs Fillpots' from 1843:

I love the 'And thank ye, sir' at the end.
Sandy Maria, Kitty Pigs' Eyes, Irish Meg, The Little Punch, Mary the Cripple, Mrs Fillpots, Sarah Nips and The Grenadier are all main people in my upcoming book 'Notorious:Cardiff' about thirty years on Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane 1841-1870.

References available. 
Article is copyright Anthony Rhys 2017.

The Whore and the Mayoress: The Death of Bristol Eliza.

The Golden Cross: Whitmore Lane on the left c.1890. Image National Library of Wales.

The Whore and the Mayoress: The Death of Bristol Eliza

I am currently writing a book on Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane in Cardiff, two streets notorious for prostitution, drink, violence and theft. From 1840-1870 it was a community unique in Cardiff's history and one that is currently quite unknown. See my earlier post on the general background of the book for more information on the growing art and narrative history project.

One of the most interesting events in my research so far has been the case of Eliza Wells. This is the text from my book.

Monday April 15th 1850

Merry Meyrick is woken up at Ann Llewellyn’s brothel. She gets the message that Bristol Eliza wants her because she is dying. Eliza used to be a servant from Bristol and worked on the Lane with Merry when she came to Cardiff. For the last three years she’s been going in and out of the workhouse with her injuries, big open sores on her legs that she got from a bully kicking three years ago. Wounds that just won’t heal. Syphilis has ravaged her body, there are weeping sores on her hands and feet, massive lesions and growths all over. To dull the pain Eliza’s been taking an ounce of laudanum a day for years, Merry often gets the laudanum for her and she takes half an ounce at a time from a small phial and then a drop of water. Recently it's got so bad that if she tries to speak or move too much she’s soon asleep.  

Merry walks down Whitmore Lane to Mrs Prothero’s brothel where Eliza has been lodging for years. Eliza is in a very bad state, weak, haggard and withered. She looks about 50 years old but has only lived 23 short years. She quietly tells Merry that she is dying and that she has seen it coming in her dreams. Merry doesn’t really know what to say so she talks to her of praying to God for solace. They say a prayer together and sit for a while. In the afternoon Eliza says she wants someone to read the bible to her. Merry can read and write a little but she knows her words will be slow and stumbling so Mrs Prothero sends for one of the few well educated people that they have had contact with. 

Mrs Vachell, the mayoress, who knows the girls from the courts and the streets comes within the half hour. She reads to Eliza and prays with her. Eliza asks to be turned from one side to another to ease the pain on her sore body and then she dies. When they try to move her body for the coroner blood gushes out of her mouth and nostrils. The inquest says that she died by the visitation of God.

So why does this sad event interest me so much? It gives an extremely rare behind the scenes insight into the human relationships of the many brothels on Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane. It is also  evidence of the camaraderie and community that I hoped existed in this much maligned community. Here's some background information on the main people:

Mrs Prothero ran a brothel on Whitmore Lane from at least 1839 until her death aged 84 in 1857. It was in a commanding position at number 44 Whitmore Lane, right next door to the Custom House where the sailors were paid their wages. It also operated in conjunction with a pub on Charlotte Street that was called 'The Navigators Arms' 1841-1849, 'The Lame Chicken' up until 1851 and then 'Noah's Ark' until 1855. This notorious beer house was run by Mrs Prothero's daughter and son-in-law and it supplied drunken customers for the brothel and also out of hours beer.

Mrs Prothero's brothel or 'lodging house' at 44 Whitmore Lane, 1851. All five women listed were active prostitutes, 'girls of ill fame' has been written down by the census taker then later crossed out.

Merry Meyrick is Maria Meyrick, a Cardiff born girl who turned to prostitution in the Friar's Fields area of Newport around 1841 at the age of 19.  She returned to Cardiff in 1845 after she was severely beaten by her bully and almost killed. At first Maria worked mainly out of the Gloucester Arms beerhouse at 28 Charlotte Street but like most other girls she moved from pub to pub and brothel to brothel. She could be vicious and was an accessory in the murder of a man in 1847 when she assaulted his landlady Peggy the Sweep for bringing a light out to her own door. She was transported to Van Dieman's Land in 1851 for a brothel theft at the Noah's Ark. (Her nickname Merry comes from a report in a Hobart newspaper- Maria liked to wear pink dresses.)

1841 census record for Eliza Wells, aged 15.

Maria Meyrick showed another side of her character though with Bristol Eliza (place name nicknames were common in these streets, Liverpool Dick, Swansea Dan, Swansea Sue and Gloucester Bill were all living on Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane). Eliza Wells was indeed from Bristol and was a house servant for a skilled working class family on Lawrence Hill in 1841. When she moved to Cardiff is unknown as she seemed to stay out of trouble with the authorities but by February 1847 she was very unwell. She entered the Cardiff Union Workhouse as a destitute prostitute and with 'wounds on legs'. She seems to have admitted herself voluntarily for medical help for short periods and discharged herself on the 16th February, 15th April and 24th July 1847. 

Cardiff Union Workhouse admissions register 1847 listing Eliza Wells

The inquest says that the wounds on her legs were originally caused by kicks from a bully (pimp). There was endemic violence towards prostitutes from their bullies right through the Victorian era and kicking was as popular as punching. Why the wounds did not heal though is due to the syphilis she had contracted. The inquest does not say this explicitly, preferring to call it 'the disease to which unfortunate women are peculiarly liable' and 'a certain disease'. Eliza was obviously in the latter stages of syphilis and her body would have been a mass of painful sores. She would have also probably suffered from growths around her vagina and anus, hair loss, swollen glands, tiredness, headaches and joint pains. As she worsened further she would have had vision and heart problems, numbness, loss of co-ordination and she died from either a laudanum overdose, meningitis, strokes or dementia like symptoms as her brain rotted.

The inquest also says that laudanum, a flavoured medicine of 10% opium and 90% alcohol, was easily accessible from the chemist and that it was low cost and commonly used by the prostitutes. It was a cheaper way of getting wasted than alcohol and was also an effective pain reliever. Laudanum misuse was a massively under reported problem in Cardiff and I have only come across one other reference to it in this time period when Ann Llewellyn, who Maria Meyrick was lodging with, took an overdose in January 1857. This was probably a suicide attempt as she was about to be given a four year sentence for a robbery.

What interests me with all this information is that Mrs Prothero, Maria Meyrick and others obviously took care of Eliza Wells over a three year period. I think a common assumption with a case like this is that Eliza would have been forced out of the brothel as she was no longer economically viable and would have died in the workhouse. The opposite seems true here however as she died in bed surrounded by friends. There was no way she could have paid any rent or bought laudanum by her own means especially in the latter years or months of her life yet this is what happened. The relevant records for the workhouse do not survive for this period but I doubt if she was a candidate for outdoor relief from the Poor Law authorities so what we have is a brothel owner and a working prostitute looking after one of their own and caring for them.

The mayoresses' involvement is also interesting. Mrs Vachell probably came into contact with Mrs Prothero and her girls either through the police courts and magistrates or through some civic charitable cause, although I have found no charity involvement recorded this early- all of the 'homes for fallen women' and church work seemed to have started in the 1860's. I find it very consoling that a 'lady of the pave' could go out on a Monday morning to the mayors house and ask her to come and read to a dying syphilitic. 

Eliza Wells was buried April 17th 1850 at St Mary the Virgin Cardiff aged 23 and I like to think that her funeral was well attended by her friends. I am glad that she was looked after. 

St Mary the Virgin Church Burial Record for Eliza Wells, 1850.

References available. 

Article in it's current form is copyright Anthony Rhys 2017.