'Swaggering Gait': Pimps of Victorian Cardiff

'Has a swaggering gait, blotched face and dimpled chin' so reads the description of Lemuel Anderson, a bully of Charlotte Street in 1850. This post looks at the role of the bully, or pimp, in Cardiff from 1839-1851.
Lemuel was typical of the Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane bully (the older term for pimp). He was a 21 year old, born in Bristol where he had already been flogged in gaol as a child. As a teenager he had several minor scrapes with the law linked with his poverty, including washing naked in the canal feeder and stealing a goose and a bucket.

Early teenage crime was a feature of most bullies lives. Lemuel was also involved in petty crime with other young men on Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane. In 1849 he was out breaking lamps with his brother, James Loynes (who had grown up in a brothel) and Dan Ryan (who went on to be a bully and a thief for the next fifteen years).
When these lads were rounded up and put into the police cells they turned on the police station windows: 

1849 December 22nd Cardiff Merthyr Guardian p.4.

In 1851 Lemuel was the bully of Mary Ann Powell, a prostitute from Newport. He had her name tattooed on his arm and she had his name tattooed on hers. These young lovers both robbed a man at the notorious Noah's Ark brothel by hitting him over the head with a poker while he slept:

1850 August 8th Cardiff Merthyr Guardian p.2.

They both got hefty transportation sentences for this attack.
The bully was a staple figure on Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane. They were tough men with a propensity for violence like 19 year old Daniel Beddoe:

1849 September 8th Cardiff Merthyr Guardian p.4.

The worst bullies were not linked to a single prostitute and instead terrorised any woman who had earned money like John Thomas:

1847 March 27th Cardiff Merthyr Guardian p.2.

Ann Anthony, the woman he kicked and threw the pint glass at was pregnant.
Many of the bullies of Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane were also boatmen on the Glamorganshire Canal that went past Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane. See my separate post about the criminal uses of the canal here. The dual tasks of boatman and bully seemed to suit these men- I suppose the odd hours they did on the boats meant they could bully when they were not barging.

1846 October 10th Cardiff Merthyr Guardian p.3.

The bully also mirrored the prostitutes in terms of age and longevity of service in the role, most lasting a few years, generally from 18-25 years of age, before they either moved into less stressful and more settled occupations (one of them became a fishmonger!) or were imprisoned for long terms (such as Punch who died on a prison hulk in 1854).
There are exceptions to this rule such as William Bennett was still bullying on Whitmore Lane in 1848 at the age of 43. Like Lemuel usually the bullies were partnered with specific prostitutes and lived with them:

1856 March 15th Cardiff Merthyr Guardian p.8.

The bully was not always just a delinquent however. Some bullies had relationships with prostitutes that lasted many years and some gravitated towards more of a gangster role.
Davey Rees and Ann Green first worked together in the China slum of Merthyr Tydfil in 1851. They came to Cardiff soon after and ran The Cornish Arms at 38 Charlotte Street, staying together until 1856. This was a step-up from the bully/prostitute role as Davey and Ann could now get rent money from the other girls in the house, have a base to fence stolen goods and also sell beer. A similar arrangement existed with Harry Kickup and Rachel Holiday who ran The King's Head at 30 Charlotte Street. Rachel had been a prostitute for years and their relationship, though starting as a bully/prostitute role, lasted for eleven years until she died.

The bullies were often the primary thieves in the partnership, the woman brought in the victim so the bully could steal their money and valuables. Here a man picks up 17 year old Kesiah Jones from the doorway of Mrs Prothero's brothel in 1839 and they go 'to talk' down the street. In the shadows there's a surprise waiting in the form of Liverpool Dick:

1839 March 9th Cardiff Merthyr Guardian p.2. 'Maria' Jones is an error.

Richard Edwards alias 'Liverpool Dick' got 15 years transportation for this theft, Kesiah was released. This was what usually ended the bullies career-  they stole the money so they did the time.
The bully shadowed the girls on the streets and inside the brothels and beerhouses. Here Frank Clark helps one of his girls Ann Lewis take a purse from a ship master in 1851:

1851 October 25th Cardiff Merthyr Guardian p.2.

The bully would also intimidate the victim after the theft like here where Mary Tremain and Catherine Atkins alias 'Kitty Pig Eyes' robbed a mark:

1849 November 2nd The Principality p.5.

The beerhouses and brothels on Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane often had resident bullies that were hired by the landlady or brothel keeper- they did all of the above jobs for all the women in the house, sort of a bouncer role. Bill Jones is house bully here at the Noah's Ark on Charlotte Street in 1851:

HO107/2455 F537 p.26

William Evans was house bully at Cora Clark's brothel on Whitmore Lane in 1851 and one of her girls was Kitty Pig's Eyes (also see above):

HO107/2455 F257 p.2.

Mary Prothero's brothel has her grandson James Loynes (erroneously written as Thomas Loynes here) as her bully:


HO107/2455 F267 p.23.

Where the brothel owners were men, as in the case of the brothers Bill and Ned Llewellyn, they also acted as bully for the women in their house.

1846 August 8th Cardiff Merthyr Guardian p.2.

Ned would stand outside his brothel door smoking and keeping an eye out for his women most nights, or patrol the streets looking out for them. When he saw they were in trouble- it didn't matter if the girls were getting aggro from drunken seamen or being taken in by the police- he'd pounce:

1851 August 2nd Cardiff Merthyr Guardian p.3.

This was by no means the rule however and some brothels such as Mary Wright's (The Quiet Brothel), which was in business for over 15 years, is never recorded as having a bully. Not all of the prostitutes kept bullies either, they often worked for themselves or from the safety of an established brothel but the bully was often hard to avoid:

1850 October 5th Cardiff Merthyr Guardian p.3.

Given the bullies propensity for extreme violence it is worth pointing out that only two people died from bully assaults, in 1847 and 1851. Of course there were plenty more broken bones, popped out eyeballs, cracked ribs and bruises but cholera, smallpox, consumption and other diseases linked with poverty were the main killers on Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane. You were more in danger from the water and the air around you than you were from any bully.

The life stories of Ned Llewellyn, Davey Rees, Ann Green, Kitty Pigs Eyes, Kesiah Jones, Cora Clark, and Mrs Prothero are all in my upcoming book Notorious, about thirty years on these two streets. To read about the book see here.

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

Jenny Piano: Nymph and Brothel Keeper

The mark of Jenny Piano in 1853.

For those new to this blog it follows the lives of the inhabitants of two streets in Victorian Cardiff. Charlotte Street is now under the Marriott hotel by Cardiff central library and Whitmore Lane is now Custom House Street- turn right out of Cardiff central train station (where the Golden Cross pub still stands).

Jenny Piano was the nickname of Jane Roberts, a prostitute who worked in Cardiff and Merthyr, during the 1850's and 1860's. She's one woman that hasn't made it into my book 'Notorious' in full but her life story is typical of the Victorian sex-workers that spent most of their working lives on Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane. The background to these streets can be found here.

Jenny's own story starts in the China slum of Merthyr. China was already a well established area for brothels by the 1850's, a 'sink hole of iniquity'. On the 1851 census she is a 'dress-maker' and living with her 14 year old sister Sarah and a boatman. One of the oft-ignored aspects of the history of the Glamorganshire Canal, which ran direct from China to Whitmore Lane, was the habit of the boatmen to also be pimps, or bullies.

Jenny had already been working China for two years, in 1848 she takes a mark for five shillings after meeting him in a notorious pub:

She got off this charge but was caught again in 1850 stealing handkerchiefs with her bully Oliver. He got seven years transportation but Jenny was lucky and only got a month in prison.

It didn't put her off stealing from clients however as in August she was back in court:

Jenny moved to Charlotte Street in Cardiff after 1851 and was working in very notorious beerhouse and brothel 'The Cornish Arms' when she was picked up drunk and incapable by the gas works at the end of Whitmore Lane in March 1853.
She was working in The Cornish Arms when the landlady and madam Mrs Barnes died in June 1853, she was probably at her bedside when she died as she recorded her death. Jenny then moved to another brothel on Charlotte Street in the next few months where she charged a fellow prostitute with stealing her shawl from a chair.

She continued to work on Charlotte Street keeping her nose clean until she got into a fight with another prostitute Ann Moore alias 'Carrots' in June 1857:

Jenny wasn't long out of that month stretch before she was picked up for robbing a watch from a mark in August 1857.

Then it starts getting confusing as another prostitute, five years younger and also called Jane Roberts, alias 'Kitty', started to work on the Lane too. It could be either of these two Jane's that was picked up for fighting with fellow prostitutes in January and August 1858, I've got a feeling it was the younger Jane.

In October 1858 Jenny Piano was definitely running the brothel next door to The Ship Hotel at the canal end of Charlotte Street where she assisted in stripping a client of his watch and cash:

Jane Shoreland and the men were released but poor Jenny got nine months for her part in the robbery, the first two days of each month in solitary confinement.

Luckily (for me as a researcher) while Jenny is in gaol for this the other Jane Roberts got sent down for four years for a Charlotte Street brothel theft herself so she's out of the picture!

Jenny Piano didn't get reformed by her stay in gaol and in July 1860 she's up for another robbery again with John Maloney. John was one of the men involved in the 1858 robbery and her bully:

The 1861 census sees Jenny running a brothel at 16 Whitmore Lane, three doors down from Mary the Cripple's beerhouse. She'd obviously buried the hatchet with Carrots as Ann Moore is working in her brothel:



Jenny's brothel next to The Ship Hotel marked in blue, 16 Whitmore Lane marked in yellow, GRO

On the census Jenny has a one-eyed bully, William Williams, living with them. William was a boatman from Merthyr with a long history on Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane.

Her girls, Hannah Davies and Ann Moore, were experienced prostitutes. Hannah had been working on Charlotte Street and the Lane since 1853 and like Jenny was from Merthyr:

1855 October 13th CMG p.5.

Ann Moore alias 'Carrots' had been working on Charlotte Street since 1854 and was very active as these two reports from 1856 show:

1856 February 2nd Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian, p.6.

1856 November 15th CMG p.8.

In fact Ann Moore had only been out of gaol for a fortnight when the census was taken as she'd been send down for a month on the 22nd March 1861 for assaulting a man:

1861 March 2nd CMG p.8.

Jenny Piano's brothel, with three women and a bully, was typical of the set up on Whitmore Lane at this time.
And guess who is living next door to Jane Roberts' brothel at 15 Whitmore Lane? John Maloney. He's running a lodging house and has a two year old 'daughter' listed with him called Elizabeth Davies, he's either romantically linked with Hannah Davies or is just looking after her child.

After 1861 Jenny Piano was put into the brothel at 31 Charlotte Street by Irish Meg in January 1863- see my previous blog post about 31 Charlotte Street.

1863 January 31t CMG p.6.

A little while later Jenny Piano marries John Maloney in March 1863 and after this there's no mention of her.
Jenny died in January 1870 aged 36. She is buried at Cathays Cemetary. By 1871 her husband John Maloney is living at 15 Charlotte Street with a new girl Ellen.

What we can infer from these records is that Jenny was an experienced working girl who was generally sober- it's these women that were successful at running the brothels on Charlotte Street and The Lane.
Her main crime is of theft from her customers, which was a perk of the job, and she was obviously quite good at this having avoided any long prison sentences throughout her fifteen years of active work.

Why was Jane Roberts called Jenny Piano? There's the obvious need to differentiate herself from the other Jane 'Kitty' Roberts and I think the nickname comes from her ability to play the piano well in the beerhouses of Charlotte Street (many employed fiddlers and even harpists).


References available 

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

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.