Mary The Cripple: Victorian Badass

Mary The Cripple: Victorian Badass

'Lost the use of her legs walks on her hands, not read, labourer.' 

So reads the description of Mary the Cripple from her 1834 prison record.

[Note: I know the word 'cripple' is now quite an offensive term, it is used here in a historical context and it is how Mary was widely known in her community by her peers.]
These blogposts are part of a series exploring offshoots from a book 'Notorious: Charlotte Street and 'The Lane' about two criminal streets in Victorian Cardiff.

To me Mary The Cripple is an absolute unsung legend of Welsh history. Mary's disability was probably one she had since birth, possibly poliomyelitis, and it meant she had withered legs and could not walk. She's described as either crawling on the floor or using a wheelchair or carriage to get around. Despite being a disabled woman living in the early Victorian period she managed to carve out for herself a forty year career as the head of a small criminal empire first in Newport and then in Cardiff. Her first arrest is recorded in 1834. A year later she got sent down for keeping a brothel and she was still procuring girls in Cardiff in 1876, 41 years later.

Mary was not alone. She was the central figure of a large family. I know she is the central figure as the other members of the family are often described in relation to her. Her husband John Yarwood is 'Jack the Cripple' 'The Adonis of the Celebrated Mary the Cripple' or 'husband of the more notorious Mary the Cripple', her daughter Elizabeth is 'Bets the Cripple', her daughter Ann 'The Young Cripple'.

1841 March 13 Monmouthshire Merlin p.3.

Mary the Cripple was born into the life in 1808. Her mother Ann Hughes kept a brothel in Newport where her sister Catherine, aka 'Long Kit' or 'Katty' worked in the 1830's. Mary's given name was Mary Hughes but the name that later struck fear into many was her married surname of Yarwood. 'The Yarwoods' became an entity, a family gang, a tangible thing. If you were in law enforcement or up to no good in Newport in the 1830's-1850's or Cardiff from 1854 onward you would know the name very well.

1862 December 20th Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian p.3.

Our story begins in 1834 as Mary and John Yarwood are both imprisoned for 12 months for keeping a brothel, though Mary was kindly let off the 'hard labour' part of the sentence. She was just 27, he was 24.

The Yarwoods lived in Friar's Fields in Newport, a really shitty slum that was rife with poverty and crime. The only winners in Friar's Fields were the landowners, who got good rents from the densely populated houses, and criminals. Mary the Cripple survived off three main income sources: fencing stolen goods, brothel keeping and running a beerhouse (brothel) called The Three Jolly Boatmen.
Mary soon became notorious in the press. To them she was a 'disgusting creature', 'a crippled and depraved wretch'. She gave birth in the police station cells in 1839:

1839 March 9th Monmouthshire Merlin p.3.

Mary was no shrinking violet. In 1840 Mrs Mary Walford, herself from a thieving family, went to see Mary the Cripple after she had 'lent' her some items. Mary was not forthcoming with the goods and she set her sister Long Kit onto her like a guard dog. At court Mrs Walford describes:

"I axed Mary the Cripple for the bedstead wot I lent her, when she blows me up like fun, and calls her great sister Katty to wop me. So I ups with a stone, and shies 'in at Mary's big head, for I was in a boiling passion. With that out flew Katty, and pitched into me quite a rum 'in. First she pitches into me with a rig'lar knock-me-down, and down I goes.  Well, sur, after I had been wopped about just as if I warn't a woman, the strapping big hussy stops a bit, and then Mary the Cripple sings out "Go it Katty, a good 'in, and I'll pay costs!" Well, her sister wopped me till I was almost blind."

A year later and John Yarwood is passing off stolen iron to the Walfords and gets another year in gaol. In 1842 Mary and her sister Long Kit are arrested for encouraging two sailors to fight outside their brothel in front of a crowd. When her sailor was losing the fight Mary the Cripple was overheard shouting "Damn your eyes, Kate, hit him over the head with the candlestick!' When Mary was called up to court she had a solicitor with her, a very rare occurrence for the poor in this time. He first tried to get her off the charge as it said she was 'standing' at her door but that didn't wash. This is how they describe her court experience:

1842 October 8th Monmouthshire Merlin p.3.

Mary the Cripple, the 'blue-eyed hag' was obviously doing well for herself to be able to pay a £3 12 shilling fine straight away, roughly that was three months rent for a house. After she paid up Mary verbally abused the courts, police and the lawyers as she slinked off.

Mary didn't like the courts or the press and they didn't like her in return. Their efforts to 'drive this horrid pest from the town' failed considerably.

At the end of 1843 under the headline 'A Monstrous Family' Mary, her husband, her sister and her daughter Elizabeth Yarwood were all in court for stealing and receiving a stolen snuff box. Mary the Cripple was allowed bail- as she was pregnant at the time and they didn't want her giving birth in the cells for a second time! Her sister got three months for her part in the theft but Mary and John got off the charge.

In 1844 Mary the Cripple tried to get her competitors in the receiving stolen goods game, the Walfords, put away for theft. She got a boy to steal some iron and tell the police the Walfords had put him up to it, unfortunately it was found out Mary had coached the boy and the Walfords were released. The police then tried to charge the Yarwoods again for keeping a disorderly house but they shook off the charge and were released.

Mary kept making money. When she was called to court in August 1844 this time she arrived in her carriage with her entourage:

1844 August 31st Monmouthshire Merlin p.3.

Mary and John Yarwood eventually got round to marrying in late 1845 but the love with John could not last. in the summer of 1846 John raided another beerhouse in Newport with a small gang and also stole metal from a factory. As the police were about to dig up the stolen metal John Yarwood scarpered, went missing and the police couldn't find him. The press put this down to Mary's 'acumen and long experience.' John was missing for over a week until he was found cowering inside a house and arrested.
In the cells he pretended to be insane. Mary the Cripple hired doctors and solicitors to go and see the 'patient' but the ruse didn't work. John got 14 years transportation for burglary and was on his way to Millbank prison in London 8 days later and then to Van Diemen's Land on the cutely named ship 'Pestonjee Bomanjee'.

Mary's daughter Ann Yarwood, known as 'Little Cripple', started to get into trouble that same year. At 12 years old she was in court on a trivial charge:

1846 July 11th Monmouthshire Merlin

While John was pretending to be mad in gaol Mary took over the running of the beerhouse, she was called to court for allowing drinking there on a Sunday morning. One of the witnesses was particularly pissed off with Mary as she found her husband drinking in there with 'other married man and girls of ill-fame'. Mary got a fine and continued running the family business, receiving stolen goods, robbing and assaulting men at her brothel and keeping the beerhouse open all hours.
Her eldest daughter Elizabeth Yarwood aka 'Bets the Cripple' helped her out although the mother-daughter relationship could be strained at times. In May 1847 Mary charged her own daughter with breaking her furniture after a drunken tantrum. Bets the Cripple tried to hang herself in the police station cell but her mother didn't appear to charge her in the morning. Elizabeth was working hard as a prostitute all through this time:

1847 July 24

Mary the Cripple's brothel continued to bring home the honey. In March 1848 a ship's master was robbed of twenty sovereigns there and though he tried to follow the girl out he was blocked by two heavies. The money was never recovered. Twenty sovereigns was a massive sum, worth about £15,000 in wages today, and that was in one night. The money would have been shared out according to roughly agreed cuts between Mary as the brothel owner, the woman who stole it and the bullies in the house.

Mary was soon rich enough from these thefts, the majority of which weren't reported, to buy her own properties. This meant however that she was now a property owner and so she had to pay her poor rates to fund the sick and the destitute of the parish. Mary clearly believed that charity began at home because in 1848 Mary had refused to pay the Poor Rate Collector. When he had tried to collect the money Mary was so threatening and abusive that he had written 'Unrecoverable' next to her name in the book.

In 1848 Ann Yarwood, by now 15 years old, was also prostituting herself at her mothers house. In July, dressed in her 'tawdry finery' and heavily made-up, she was proving as formidable as her mother:

1848 July 22 Monmouthshire Merlin

In December Ann was arrested for stealing five sovereigns from a ship's captain. Her mother called her solicitor down and Ann was released.

In November 1848 Mary was caught red handed receiving money from one of her brothel bullies. She was denied bail and got a twelve month sentence in gaol, to hooting and shouts of approval at the court. Her bully Jacob Smith who stole it got a ten year transportation sentence. It was up to her sister Catherine and her daughter Ann to keep things running now.

The family kept things going well for Mary. In March 1849 two men who had gone to Mary's brothel on Saturday emerged Sunday morning minus the bread they had bought for their families, some of their clothes and all of their money. Ann Yarwood and her aunt Catherine aka 'Long Kit' were with Manchester Moll in August 1849 drinking at the British Queen beerhouse. They noticed that the barmaid, who had been tasked with washing some of Mary the Cripple's pawned goods, had the audacity to wear one of the dresses herself. They went up to her and demanded it back. When she refused they knocked her into a ditch and ripped the dress off her body, taking her money while they were at it. They got one month in gaol for the assault.

Mary's oldest sons had also joined the fray in the summer of 1850. Thomas and John stole a load of toys from Newport fair and were both imprisoned for two weeks and whipped. Thomas was 14 and John was 13.

Ann Yarwood continued thieving from shops and her clients through 1850, getting various periods in gaol. 

Meanwhile Mary was out of gaol and managed to net £45 from a dupe in her brothel in October 1850. This brothel theft is the first time that her 10 year old daughter Catherine Yarwood was involved in a recorded crime, though what she did was unclear. The police raided Mary and shut down her beerhouse but the victim wouldn't appear to prosecute, he was either ashamed or threatened, so Mary the Cripple and the Yarwoods pocketed the equivalent of over £30,000 and opened back up.

Around 1851 Mary Yarwood got together with William 'Bill' Thomas. Times were good for Mary and the Yarwoods. Excess was the order of the day. On census night 1851 both John, aged 14, and Ann Yarwood, aged 18, were sleeping it off in the Police Station. Ann Yarwood was arrested for being drunk and disorderly in August 1851 and was so pissed she was taken to the station on a stretcher. She leapt out of it halfway there and dislocated her leg.

Men kept coming to Mary's brothel and losing their money and possessions which were then sold on. Her daughters continued working the streets and getting drunk and leary in public.
In the early 1850's a change was in the wind for the Yarwoods. Elizabeth and Ann Yarwood had been going to Cardiff to work now and again, robbing sailors and drunks there in the quickly expanding port. They were attracted to Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane, dens of vice and thievery much like their home patch of Friar's Fields.


In the Spring of 1854, perhaps because they were getting too infamous in Newport, all of the Yarwoods decamped en masse from Friar's Fields and moved into Charlotte Street in Cardiff. 

Cardiff 1851 'Farmer's Arms' marked in Yellow, Cardiff Central Station is bottom left.

A vacancy for vice had arisen and Mary and the Yarwoods filled it full with their expertise. In their new home town of Cardiff Mary the Cripple's family committed countless sins over the next fifty years.

The book 'Notorious: Cardiff' will deal with Mary's life in Cardiff in detail. More about the project can be found here.

There is an article on Mary the Cripple by the late Tony Jukes which deals with her Newport days.

All newspaper images are courtesy of the excellent Welsh Newspapers Online site run by the National Library of Wales.
This article in its current form is copyright Anthony Rhys 2017.

Four Tattooed Cardiff Prostitutes of the 1850's

Tattoos of Ann Owens, 1853.

Four of the prostitutes who worked on Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane were definitely tattooed. I've found this out from prison and transportation records when the women received long sentences.

Three were transported to Van Diemen's Land in 1850 and 1851 and one served very long prison sentences in 1853 and 1856. What they reveal is that they were not tattooed with pictures but with the people they regarded as important in their lives.

This blog contains offshoots from my research into Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane in Cardiff, two very bad streets for my book 'Notorious'. See my earlier blog posts for an overview.

Maria 'Merry' Meyrick.

Maria Meyrick was a Cardiff girl who started her life of prostitution in the Friar's Fields slum of Newport. Her transportation description gives her tattoos as follows:

Maria Meyrick's convict description from the Anna Maria, 1851

She has six sets of initials, three on the lower right arm and three on the lower left arm.

Initial tattoos are extremely common from this time and it seems most who were tattooed first had their initials done, I suspect this was done among the sailing community for identification of their body if found drowned.

Maria's tattoos can be divided into family on the right and partners on the left.

Right Arm:

JC: Unknown

MM: Maria Meyrick

DM: Her mother Dianne Meyrick

Maria was in contact with her mother until she was transported. The JC may be another relation or a lover but I can't find any evidence if that is so.

Left Arm:

GJ: This is George Jenkins, a boyfriend from Friar's Fields- see below.

RW: I don't know this one.

AD: This is Alec the Devil, aka Alexander Thomas- see below.

Of course you would have to ask Maria Meyrick for definite if these deductions are correct, but they fit the people that she was hanging around with in the years leading up to her transportation sentence. Here's the backing up evidence:

GJ is definitely George Jenkins. Why so definite? well, for a start there's documentary evidence that they were a couple in Newport:

George Jenkins assaulted Maria Meyrick very badly and was sentenced to fifteen years penal servitude for it in August 1845. By December he was on his way to Australia and he died there ten years later. If Maria Meyrick regretted having his initials tattooed on her arm, George Jenkins probably did as well, on his right arm he had his own initials, and on his left arm he had MM.

RW: I've not been able to find any likely candidates for RW. 

AD: Alexander Thomas was with Maria Meyrick on the night of the 1847 murder in Whitmore Lane. His nickname was Alec the Devil, and I think she was in a relationship with him. He was transported for fifteen years for his main part in the murder (he kicked a middle aged man to death by rupturing his groin and bowels). Maria got 18 months in Cardiff Gaol, which is possibly where she got the tattoo.

Maria herself was sentenced to 7 years transportation in December 1850 for another brothel robbery. She travelled on the Anna Maria to Van Diemen's Land in October 1851.

Mary Ann Powhill

Mary Ann was transported with Merry Meyrick on the Anna Maria in October 1851. She was another Whitmore Lane prostitute. Interestingly her sister had been transported over ten years earlier in 1839 for a prostitute theft from Whitmore Lane as well.

Mary Ann's tattoos are thus:

She has MP LA inside her lower left arm and TW MAP on the upper right arm.

One arm is easy to interpret- The LA is for Lemuel Anderson, a bully of Whitmore Lane who started his criminal career stealing ducks in 1848. Read more about Lemuel and the bullies here.

Mary Ann and Lemuel were arrested together in 1851 when they hit a man over the head with a poker while he slept in a brothel- they netted over £15 so they hot footed it to Newport to spend the money- one of the gang was so drunk when they arrested her they couldn't bring her back to Cardiff until she sobered up the next day.

After this robbery Mary Ann Powhill got seven years along with Lemuel Anderson, though Lemuel stayed in this country as it seems only women were needed in the new world.

I've also got Lemuel's tattoos from his conviction records- and he had MA.POWELL LEM ANDERSON tattooed on himself too with a heart on the right arm and LA MAP on his left arm. He also has lots of pictures, which the women seemed to avoid.

Mary Ann Powell's other initials- TW MAP on her right arm are intriguing. I can't find any likely partner reference for TW. There is a Mary Powell on the 1841 census as a servant to Thomas Wedlake, a coal merchant and councillor in her home town of Newport- though her age is a bit out. I can't find any reference to Mary's mother and father Andrew on the census so perhaps this was her father figure? He died in 1843 and perhaps then she turned to prostitution?

Bridget Kelly, Alias Sancta Maria, Sandy Maria & Saucy Maria.

We've already met Bridget Kelly above, she was part of the Whitmore Lane murder in 1847 and got an 18 month sentence along with Maria Meyrick. When she stole seven pairs of stockings from a street hawker in 1849 she was sentenced to be transported for seven years. She went to Van Diemen's Land on the Aurora which left on April 22 1851.

Bridget Kelly Aurora ship listing April 1851

I don't have the original document for her tattoos but she was described like this:

On her right arm is JB. It's not hard to work out who this is as the 1841 census shows:

Bridget Kelly was a prostitute in the notorious Friar's Fields area of Newport from 1839-1844 and James Bevan is living with her as her bully.

Ann Owens, Alias 'Little Punch'.

Ann Owens started her life of prostitution and theft in Swansea when she was aged just 12. She went to prison for long sentences twice, once in 1853 and again in 1857. This is lucky (for us) as it allows us to see how her tattoos changed over that three year period.

Ann Owen's description from Swansea Gaol, April 8th 1853.

In 1853 she has JL and JAMES LOYN on her right arm. This is James Loynes/Lyons/Lion, grandson of the brothel owner Mrs Prothero where Ann Owens worked in the 1850's. James Loynes worked there as a bully and they courted a little while in early 1851. They enjoyed beating up the neighbours.

James Loynes didn't return the favour, his only tattoo is his own initials!

James Loynes description from Cardiff Gaol, 1851

Ann's relationship with James Loynes didn't last long as he was going out with another girl from the brothel a few months later when he was imprisoned for life for killing a sailor in his step-fathers pub. 

On Ann's left arm is CO, very probably her sister Catherine Owens, also a prostitute who worked in the same brothel as Ann.

1852 May 15th

The MK initial is a bit more awkward to research but I think it's either Michael Keefe or Michael Kelly, both itinerant Irish labourers around at the time (Bridget Kelly above had a brother called Michael).

Ann Owens was released from Brixton on license on March 10th 1856. By August of the same year she had re-offended. Ann had gone to the notorious China area of Merthyr Tydfil and committed a brothel theft there. She got a ten year sentence this time so her tattoos were described again: 

Ann Owen's description from Swansea Gaol, 24th March 1857

Considering James Loynes had a child with another woman it seems that Ann has tried to get rid of James Loyn from her body as the transcriber writes 'James Lloyd' instead of 'Loyn' and the JL has now turned into an EE- for Edward Evans that she has in full on the left arm. Edward Evans was a boatman in Merthyr Tydfil who, funnily enough, was in court on the same day that Ann got her ten year sentence. He had stolen some mutton with a group of boatmen and got a year in Swansea Gaol. Boatmen were often also bullies, the canal led from China down to Whitmore Lane and the boatmen mixed in the beerhouses and brothels at either end. In the five months that she was free in Merthyr Ann must have had a relationship with him.

Edward Evans Oct 18th 1856

John Cody, tattooed on Ann's right arm, is not hard to find, he committed a brothel robbery in July 1856 and got a year in prison for it. It is another case of a bully for a boyfriend for Ann.

The 'Angelina' tattoo is the most poignant of them all. Ann gave birth to Angelina Owens in Millbank prison and Angelina died a year later. 

This very small three women case study shows that the prostitutes recorded the names of the people that were important to them on their bodies. In the case of Ann Owens and Angelina her tattoo was probably the only thing she had to remember her by.

Since writing this blog I've read the great book 'Convict Tattooes' by Simon Barnard (Text Publishing Australia, 2016). With the convicts that he studied he came to the same conclusion- 90% of his tattooed women had initials or names as their tattooes. Though I'd disagree with the scholar he quotes as saying that initials on prostitutes were often of their clients, and ones on men were often of prostitutes they frequented. As this article proves it was much more nuanced than that- the men and women were partners and lovers not just clients.  

References available. 

Article is copyright Anthony Rhys 2017.

A Cardiff Brothel: The History of 31 Charlotte Street

Cardiff, Late 1830's Source: Glamorgan Record Office

The Victorian brothels of Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane no longer form part of Cardiff's remembered history. They are long gone and forgotten. This is the story of one of those brothels at 31 Charlotte Street. It was the scene of sex (obviously), drugging, violence, burning, intrigue and theft.

Number 31 Charlotte Street was built circa 1838, it's marked on the map above with the yellow dot. It was a spacious town terrace with a parlour and a kitchen downstairs, three bedrooms and an attic room upstairs with possibly a smaller house or outbuildings in the garden. It was built for a working clientele in a steadily expanding Cardiff before a massive population explosion turned it into something else. See my earlier post for a short history of the notorious isle of villainy that was Charlotte Street.

The house next door was up for sale in 1843

If you walked out the front door of number 31 in 1861 and took a right turn you'd find The King's Head Tavern next door, The Irishman's Glory next door to that, the Dinas Arms next door to that and finally the Caledonian Tavern. If you turned left there were four residential houses then The Excavators Arms, The Pembrokeshire Arms, a lodging house and then you'd run out of street after The Red Lion.

Being surrounded by beerhouses meant it was a good site for a brothel. The girls would meet their marks either out on the street or in the beerhouses and, if required, take them back to number 31. As we'll see there was the 'owner', who rented the house from the real owner, and took 'bed money' from the four or so working girls renting beds there. There were also sometimes bullies at the house (now we'd call them pimps) who 'protected' the girls, assisted in robberies and kept any violent clients in check.

Don't think of 31 as a hedonistic Victorian boudoir with drapery, fancy red wallpaper, chaise longues and decanters of whisky on thin legged tables. This was still a very poor area so it's more a warm fire, floorboards, a table, straw filled mattresses on wooden beds, rag rugs, candles and woollen blankets. The toilet was a shared one in the lane out the back and there's no running water, that's what the beer is there for. Oh, and I should mention that there's also a family sleeping in the downstairs rooms and the outhouse and they share the rent, kitchen and toilet. In 1861 a Mr and Mrs Thomas and their four young children lived in number 31 with Mr Thomas making and mending shoes on the premises as well. This arrangement was not unusual as space became a premium.

31 was one of many, many brothels on Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane and it has a rich history. I'll take you through what I know about it and remember this is one of the quieter, higher end brothels on Charlotte Street!

At the 1841 census number 31 is lived in by a three families. It only comes into the records as a brothel from 1851 onwards. It probably was one before this but early records rarely record house numbers.

1850 map, Glamorgan Record Office

In 1851, when the above map is dated, William Hoskins and his wife Sarah live there. The giveaway is the four female 'spinster' lodgers living with them all aged 20-25, one from Ireland and three from the south of Wales.

1851 31 Charlotte Street.

Now William and his wife Sarah seem to have been a working couple but the house is being used as a brothel or, a better description, a lodging house for prostitutes. Margaret McCarthy or 'Carroty Meg' was the brothel manager on and off for the next three years. Jane Atkins from Chepstow had been working on the next street Whitmore Lane since she was 14. Interestingly there are no bullies living at the brothel. We also know who owned the house, which we'll get to in a bit.

The prostitute lodged wherever they wanted to, and, as they paid by the night or week, the large prostitute population was highly mobile and constantly shifting. The census is just a snap shot of who slept there on the night of March 30th. 

To illustrate this within four months in July 1851 a Emma Hiscock is lodging there, a 'gaudily' dressed prostitute who hit a man in the face with a brick when he tried to assault her:

Here Mrs Elizabeth Burridge is named as the 'landlady' of 31 at this time. She was the owner of the brothel as well as being landlady of The Gloucester Arms, three doors down at 28 Charlotte Street. There are still four working women in the house. The rental of 5 shillings a week for a room is quite high but they were guaranteed a room of their own when most other working class people were sharing beds and floors. I'd say the two girls sharing the room for 1 shilling each had the smallest of the three bedrooms upstairs or the garret room. Mr and Mrs Hoskins would have had the downstairs rooms. Mrs Burridge's profit would have come from getting 12 shillings rent from the girls alone and another 4 or 5 from the couple, normal house rent at this time was 7 shillings a week.

By November 1851 there's another two new girls at number 31; Sarah Austin and Mary Lawson aka 'The Grenadier'. They take a valley boy for £8.

Mary Lawson was nicknamed 'The Grenadier' due to her height and build. Six months ago she was working in Mrs Prothero's brothel about 60 yards away, which shows how much the women swapped and changed accommodation to suit themselves.

The Gloucester Arms link continues with this from August 1852. It shows the close symbiotic links between the brothels and the beerhouses as jugs of beer were taken into the brothels for the clients at all hours of the night, for inflated prices of course. When the coppers this time caught Catherine Jones (aka Kitty Pig's Eyes) taking a jug of beer over red handed the owners came up with the excuse they were taking beer to the wake of the recently deceased John Widdle who, as far as I can make out, never existed!:

In July 1854 the prostitute Ellen Slack used violence against a client at number 31, whether for robbery or personal protection is unknown.

Ellen Slack July 14 1854

The Burridge's property was up for sale in July 1854 after Mrs Burridge died at the end of 1853. This is when Mrs Caroline King of The Ship Hotel at 1 Charlotte Street bought it. She kept Carroty Meg on as the brothel manager. 

In December 1854 31 Charlotte Street was the scene of a prostitute robbery where Margaret McCarthy aka Carroty Meg and Eliza Collins robbed 'a tall, powerful Irishman named John Donovan' of two sovereigns and eight shillings. He went there after meeting the two girls and they sent out for a quart of beer or two- to the Ship Hotel of course for that important price mark up. He said there were three or four other girls in the house and two men. The girls took his money from his pocket and then the two men knocked him down, kicked him and 'kilt' him. When the police came they found McCarthy 'concealed at the back of the house in a back kitchen' and when they brought her into the house she tried to pass the purse on to Eliza. Margaret got six month in prison, Eliza got four years and was sent to Brixton Prison, 'on receiving sentence she fell to the floor of the dock and was carried out of court in hysterics.'

When Carroty Meg was released in the summer of 1855 she didn't go back to 31 Charlotte Street, instead going to work at Mary the Cripple's brothel at 37 Charlotte Street. She joined her friend Eliza Collins in Brixton Prison by the end of the year. 

In August 1855 it seems Mary Mayor was running, or at least working at 31. She was on the doorstep at half eleven at night, presumably drumming up trade, when a sailor assaulted her saying he was 'Boss of the Shanter'. Elizabeth Davies, a witness, was probably another girl in the house and it seems that sailor James was known to the girls though I don't know him from any other records as a bully. It is interesting that the Bench here sought to 'protect the unfortunate inmates' of the brothels in this case.

By October 1855 Mary Jones, who may be the same as Mary Mayor, was keeping number 31 and one of the girls and two bullies there managed to steal £3 10 shillings, a sizeable sum, from a John Yondall of St Bride's. No charges seem to have been brought in this case and as Mary Jones is such a common name it is hard to identify her in other occurrences. 

Margaret Sullivan aka 'Irish Meg' is based at number 31 in September 1856. Her and Jane Allen spot a recent arrival off a ship who is loaded with money (which he cleverly hides in his cap) and they make his acquaintance. They then waylay him into Polly Allen's (Jane's sister) brothel on Charlotte Street and as he goes up the stairs Irish Meg snatches his cap off his head and runs back to her brothel at number 31. Her extremely violent bully Thomas John stops him following her by grabbing his throat and pushing him against a wall. The three girls are picked up by the police later on but the sailor has drank so much he makes no sense and they're released, netting £4 between them.
Interestingly Irish Meg marries her bully a month later when she's living at 24 Charlotte Street, like I said the whole street was the women's domain and she'll be back involved soon enough.

It wasn't just physical violence that the women used against clients at number 31. The more subtle approach of drugging their drinks was also adopted, the women were very familiar with what the chemists sold and they could drug with a range of opiates freely available over the counter. In January 1857 Ann Casey takes down her mark in this way and robs £9 16 shillings from a ship's master, a huge amount of money. 

1857 is the first mention of bullies living at number 31. Henry Davies lodged at number 31 with the prostitute Mary Williams and another bully George Nind alias 'Dusty'. In May Henry committed a highway robbery on a man at Cardiff train station, he hit him once and crushed one of his eyeballs inside its socket. Henry got a death sentence as he was out of prison on a ticket of leave, it was commuted to life of course.

Roll onto the start of August 1858 and Elizabeth 'Lizzie' Davies is doing her thing and getting 12 shillings from 'a fool':

Lizzie Davies is on a roll. At the end of August she's in the Farmers Arms at number 37 doing a group robbery of a dupe. Watches and handkerchiefs were fenced at the Farmers Arms so they wouldn't have to walk far to sell them on:

In December 1858 one of the women of number 31 was assaulted by a labourer and he got seven days inside.

In February 1859 Dan Ryan is bullying at 31 Charlotte Street when he is arrested for fraudulently enlisting in the 'India Military Forces'. This was a scam as he was already enrolled with the Naval Coast Guard and presumably could not have done both. Dan Ryan is a very notorious bully of Charlotte Street and is one of the people in my book.

In March 1859 Lizzie Davies is still at number 31, which means she worked there for at least 7 months. She got two months hard labour for robbing a ring worth 7 shillings from a shop.

The bully George Nind is also still living at 31 Charlotte Street in June 1859. He goes fishing on the river Taff with George Nethway, landlord of the Irishman's Glory at 29 Charlotte Street. As they dragged a net along the river he fell into a deep pool and drowned.  

In November 1859 we are back to more conventional stories of robbery at number 31:

Sailors formed part of the brothel's clientele but local men are also well represented. In June 1860 another young man loses his money at number 31, again he gets a lot of sympathy in the press:

Theft was an important part of the prostitutes income in these times. For a little risk they could make serious money and not all the thefts were recorded, the mark often too ashamed or intimidated to complain. In August 1860 there are two more robberies in the same week, netting the girls around 50 shillings.

In September 1860 a Cardiff man John Phillips was enjoying number 31 on a Sunday night when he was robbed of 2 shillings and sixpence, he made out at first that two militia men had attacked him but really he was robbed by the girls.

In October 1860 the brothel was used by two girls who stole a watch in The King's Head beerhouse next door. Here Susan and Hannah have Richard Davies as their 'crimp', a not often used alternative name for a bully.

I think this article from January 1861 sums up the opinions of the police and the newspapers, it was a 'serve them right' attitude a lot of the time, the will to investigate and prosecute in these robbery cases was very low at times. There was also little willingness to shut down the brothels, although by this time the moral panic had begun and church groups were getting more vocal in their opposition and also bringing private prosecutions against the worst offenders. 31 Charlotte Street was well under their radar for the moment.

In March 1861 Ellen Leary, who is probably the partner of the bully John Leary's (see below), gets three months for stealing ten shillings at number 31. The men could hide their money in their boots but that was one of the first places the girls looked. Why she confessed is unknown.

On Monday April 1st 1861 Mary Ann Leyshon, a 17 year old prostitute who hadn't been working on the streets for long, came home after a night of working. She fell asleep in front of the fire and at five in the morning her clothes caught fire. She was burnt horrifically on her legs, thighs and back and languished in the workhouse infirmary until she finally died on the 12th April. No inquest was held. 

1861 Mary Ann Leyshon burnt

Incredibly on April 2nd, the day after Mary Ann Leyshon set herself on fire, it was business as usual at number 31 and Margaret John alias 'Irish Meg' stole a whooping £33 from a man in ten minutes and walked away from court a free woman, even when he identifies her.

On the evening of April 7th 1861, while Mary Ann Leyshon suffered in the workhouse and Irish Meg celebrated her windfall, a census taker knocked on the door of number 31. He recorded the inhabitants as Anne Owens aged 23, Mary Lichton age 17, Ann Lewen age 19, Ellen Hall age 21, Margaret Hanvey age 30, all prostitutes, and the bullies John Leary and William Gregory. The five prostitutes were all from the south of Wales: Swansea, Merthyr, Carmarthen, Llantrisant and Monmouthshire. The bullies from Cardiff and Swansea. Welsh was probably spoken among the women as much as English. They are all aged 23 and under apart from Margaret. Margaret Hanvey had been abandoned by her husband and as a depressing aside she dropped dead three years later in total destitution at Number 13 Charlotte Street. Even more depressingly her four year old son fell into a saucepan of boiling water two years after that and was scalded to death, also at Number 13.



1861 number 31 Charlotte Street

Somehow in September 1861 Ellen Hall and her bully William Gregory pulled off another huge £33 pound theft from a cattle dealer at number 31 Charlotte Street, a massive amount of money that would have almost bought a house on Charlotte Street.



The owner of the brothel Mrs Caroline King died on Tuesday 7th February 1862. By November 1862 the big guns came out. 31 Charlotte Street was then run by Mary the Cripple's daughter Ann Yarwood, aka Annie the Cripple. Mary Yarwood, her 'husband' Bill Thomas and her four children first ran a large criminal network in Newport before moving to Charlotte Street in 1854 to run many beerhouses and brothels. Annie evades prosecution by saying she rented it from someone else. A common defence in brothel charges was to muddy the waters as much as possible, making it unsure who actually rented it.

These two reports appeared in the same paper on the same day on different pages, which is very unusual. It turns out that Annie Yarwood, vilified in the press for years for running brothels and being corrupt and morally repugnant, was actually renting the house from Emma Davies who rented it from Mr William Stanley.

One report says Emma was imprisoned, another that the charges against Annie Yarwood were dropped and Emma wasn't imprisoned. What's key here is Mr William Stanley.

Mr William Stanley, now 74 years old, builder of Stanley Street and owner of many houses on Charlotte Street was a 'respectable ratepayer'. He has been on the Board of Guardians for the Union and has stood for office in Cardiff council. He has possibly been the house owner for a long time and would have received all the rent from Mrs Burridge, Mrs King and now Annie Yarwood, pretending that they 'owned' the house. He made a tidy profit from prostitution in Charlotte Street.

Mr William Stanley has a long history of being a vile man however. The Stanley Street that he built and owned was the cause of the death of many poor people from Cholera. In the June outbreak of 1849 for example 16 people died in tiny Stanley Street, the most in any other street was 6. He also neglected to disinfect number 13 Charlotte Street, where my relatives were living at the time, after three cholera deaths in the house. He just emptied them out for a few days then moved them back in. He also had unknown ties to Jack Matthews, one of Cardiff's biggest gangsters. His son was also a Customs Officer, a post open to massive abuse in the hands of the wrong person.

Stranger still is the report below. The prostitute Emma Davies, who you can see above was imprisoned for running the brothel at number 31 in November 1862 somehow managed to steal two brooches from 74 year old Mr Stanley and got nine months in prison in February 1863. How would she have got that close to him to do this? Was he having a taste of her wares at the time and was she getting revenge?

The police did eventually catch up with Annie Yarwood. She was given three weeks to leave on December 12th 1862. Here is the police report from the various visits to number 31. I give a transcription below as the handwriting can be hard to read:

"Police Sergeant William Rollins: On Friday the 5th December I visited 31 Charlotte Street kept by Ann Yarwood. I found three prostitutes in bed- one other in bed with a man upstairs, the other two prostitutes sitting downstairs by the fire. I went again Sunday morning found two girls upstairs and downstairs David Rees and dependent in bed. A man said in his hearing that he had given the girl five shillings to pay the mistress. I went again Tuesday last and found two prostitutes in bed and one man and woman in bed. Went again at a quarter to two last Wednesday morning, there had been a robbery there that night, and the man went with me and said in defendants presence that he had paid her a shilling for the bed. She did not deny it. Defendant always appears to me to act in the management of the house. Adjourned for three weeks."

Annie Yarwood does take a back seat after this but by January 17th 1863 number 31 continues making money as before, a ships captain loses a lot of money and the unnamed suspect hides in a toilet to escape detection.

Two weeks later the law goes after the keepers of number 31 again, this time Jemima Davies and Margaret John (Irish Meg) are brought in but it is Jemima who takes the rap.

The brothel's card is very much marked though and when Irish Meg takes over on the Thursday she gets charged with keeping number 31 on the Friday 30th January 1863, only running it for one night!

The sergeant obviously catches the brothel at the changeover- and this is interesting to see how the brothel operated in this regard. Irish Meg is removing some women that she doesn't want in the house and allowing another, Jenny Piano, in.

At the same time in January 1863 I have the only known example of how the girls were procured to the Charlotte Street brothels. Ellen Madden meets a girl who has newly arrived in Cardiff after she is refused entry to The Servant's Home. She takes her first to 31 Charlotte Street presumably to engage her in the prostitute life:

In March 1865 a Mary and John Higgins were living at 31 Charlotte Street. It was still continuing as a brothel as they paid £25 sureties for Jack Matthews, a notorious brothel and beerhouse keeper at number 34, when he was charged with abusing a policeman. By this time it is likely that Jack Matthews was taking the rents from 31 Charlotte Street.
After this the brothel itself is not named specifically in any robberies or disturbances though.

The brothels were contracting at this time as the town council tightened up their policing so number 31 was probably one of the first to be abandoned at the expense of the more established and 'hardcore' brothels and those either in beerhouses or physically attached to them.

On April 5th 1865 my Nan's grandfather, who was living next door at number 32, was baptised, so I hope it was quiet by then so they all got some sleep!

By 1871 it had reverted to being a 'normal' house, better housing conditions meant there were only two couples living there.

Number 31 1871 census, a quiet respectable house.

The final end for number 31 as a house came when it was knocked down in 1878 after the passing of the 1875 Cardiff Improvement Act which meant obliterating the majority of the housing in Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane.

So there we are, a Cardiff brothel that ran for at least 15 years in the same modest terraced house.

References available

Maps are from Glamorgan Record Office and are reproduced in part. Newpaper images are from the excellent Welsh Newspapers Online site run by the National Library of Wales.


Article as a whole is copyright Mr Anthony Rhys April 2020