Abortion becomes a criminal offence- 24 June 1803

Laws that criminalize abortion are of relatively recent origin in British history and this is the story of the first one, the Malicious Stabbings or Shooting Act, 1803 (‘Lord Ellenborough’s Act’)

The original purpose of the law was to protect people who had already been born from the rising tide of intra-personal violence in the late Georgian period. The 1803 Law was a rambling piece of legislation in two large paragraphs which was mainly designed to protect people from being attacked and assaulted with weapons, even if death did not result, or even if there was no intention to kill. The unborn child was added to the list of those protected. So, although not specifically an act against abortion, it had major consequences.

An examination of the law after 1803 shows that it was not often used on women trying to control their fertility, which were by definition private event. It was mostly used when men fell out and wounded each other with knives and cutlasses, or when drunken individuals waved their guns or knives in the streets. Those who wished to intimidate people with violence before robbing them would have to think twice, although in reality the death sentence was hardly ever applied. In a society where murder, attempted murder and writing an anonymous letter threatening murder all carried the same death penalty, there had to be a degree of leniency. On average one person (out of c100 executions a year) was executed for cutting and maiming in the late Georgian period. In 1804, the establishments token victim was Hugh Evans, aged 19, who was found guilty of maiming Elizabeth Parker and slashing her face until she was unrecognisable. He was one of a gang of three who had intimidated Palmer and her boyfriend with a “What are you nosing at?’.

The new act construed this particular cruel act as attempted murder, and he was hanged outside Horsemonger Road goal on 2nd March. Hanging next to him was David Rose, convicted of bestiality and the like Evans, the only person that year hanged for the capital crime. Examples had to be made

The unborn were also protected from attempted murder as well, and the spirit of the new Act remained part of British Law until 1967.Before 1803 there were no laws criminalising a deliberate termination before the ‘quickening’ of the child in the womb, and procuring an abortion afterwards was a relatively minor civil misdemeanour. The case below came before Lord Justice Kenyon in 1801. It was an allegation that somebody had procured an abortion. The Judge pointed out that this was a civil matter and asked why he was being asked to comment on it in a criminal tribunal.

What did it mean to be ‘quick with child’ in the eighteenth century? Part of the definition was practical there was a quickening if the baby could be physically felt by the mother. There is a wide range of ages for this, but in the Regency period, doctors put the period at around 16 to 20 weeks. Blackstone’s Law Commentaries made the point ‘life begins in condition of law as soon as the infant stirs in the mother’s womb’.

This most common Georgian view was that ensoulment, and the creation of the human, happened at quickening and not conception. This was an ancient belief that predated Christianity, and the church tended not to contradict it. It had the unintended consequence of allowing women to control their fertility in the first months after a suspected pregnancy. Although details can never be explicit, it seems that women had always controlled their fertility in the period before quickening, both at home and in the commercial market using herbs and the wisdom of other women to reinstate their period.  It was not a crime at all before 1803. This was a practical application of the law- if there was no proof of a foetus in the womb, and then there could be no victim of a crime.

When the human was created, they had rights- for example they could not be executed in the womb if the mother had committed a crime. This was ‘pleading the belly’, and it was a regular but not common aspect of judicial proceedings in the late Georgian period, and of course this continued after the severe tightening up of the law in 1803.

It moved the point of  human status from quickening to conception, and a new felony was created from something that was not formally illegal
Anybody who…(the bold parts are mine)

wilfully and maliciously administer to, or cause to be administered to, or taken by any woman, any medicines, drug, or other substance or thing whatsoever, or shall use or employ or cause or procure to be used or employed any instrument or other means whatsoever, with intent thereby to cause the miscarriage of any woman not being, or not being proved to be, quick with child at the time of administering such things…shall be and are hereby declared to be guilty of felony, and shall be liable to be fined, imprisoned, set in and upon the pillory, publicly or privately whipped, or to suffer one or more of the said punishments, or to be transported beyond the seas for any term not exceeding fourteen years…

The Roman Catholic Church did not formally declare that life began at conception until 1869- but English statute law did this more than sixty years earlier.

In the inexorable logic of the bloody code, the new penalty for organising or abetting an abortion post ‘quickening’ had to be death. . A more severe tariff  was needed to differentiate it from the newly created crime.

Some women were convicted under this law. The 1803 Act raised the bar of proof against a women who was thought to have killed her child at birth. The prosecution now had to prove that it was born alive rather than the women prove it was born dead. Any slight doubt would acquit the defendant of infanticide, so a new crime of concealment of birth was introduced with a tariff of two years imprisonment. The case below is from 1808;

Ellenborough’s Law almost was particularly difficult for powerless females, such as domestic servants, who did not have the support network to do something about their pregnancy at an earlier time. I have written about another example, that of Mary Fordham, here.

There were other cases. In 1809 Thomas Newton was found guilty of poisoning Elizabeth Turner in order to prompt a miscarriage and was given three years in prison and a fine of £100. The judge made it plain that it would have been the death penalty if she had been quick with child. Oddly, he was spared transportation because Elizabeth had cooperated with him and survived the attack.

Please consider my three books on the Georgian and Victorian Era

The Dark Days of Georgian Britain– a political and social history of the Regency. More details here

Passengers – a social history of Britain 1780-1840 told through travel, transport, roads and hospitality. More details here

Radical Victorians– nineteen radical Victorian men and women who dared to think differently. More details here 

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Child Stealing in the Regency

There were three broad reasons to steal a child in the Regency. The first was to rob it of its clothes, and then leave the naked child somewhere where it could be found. The second, much less common than the first, was for a grief stricken family to take a child in exchange for a child that had died. The third was to steal a child for criminal reasons- for abuse, for sale on to a chimney sweep or similar child based trade, or as an accessory for a beggar in order to elicit more money through pity.

Until 1814, only stealing a child’s clothes was a crime. High quality children’s clothes had a solid second hand resale  value and could be sold with no questions asked. Most children were stolen from outside their house; a smaller number were stolen from prams; some were taken as they were doing errands for their parents.
If there was a traditional form of child abduction, it went something like this: this is from January 1810:

Most children were near their home when abducted. The main method of decoy was to offer them a treat (money, sweets, or fruit) and then take the child was far enough from home to commit the robbery with ease. On most occasions, all clothes would be taken and child left with nothing. Occasionally they were abandoned somewhere dangerous such as underneath a  bridge at the mercy of the tide, but most of the time they were left in a place that would allow them to be found, but not that quickly. The child was stripped naked; the rug might have been a concession to the fact that it was the middle of winter, rugs are a common reference in the newspapers when kidnapped children were found.

The vast majority of child stealing was done by women, who were more likely to gain the trust of the child quickly. Ana King, age 19 described her method:

The mob opted for instant justice here, although they need not have worried too much. There were witnesses that saw the clothes being stolen. Ana King, like another robber in the newspaper Frances Dunkerley, ‘ a strong and stout young women’ was found guilty and was transported to Australia. In Frances’s case, the crime was of stealing a child’s frock worth a shilling.

Child abduction was not a crime until 1814. If you were in possession of a child which  you had no rights to, then that was not in itself a crime. Theft of property had to be proved and, if  that could not be done, then the accused went free. If nobody had witnessed the theft, then the only way to convict is on the evidence of the second hand clothes dealer, who may have kept some records and may have known the person who was fencing the clothes- but these people were very rare.
The mob often got involved in child stealing cases, providing instant justice to the robber, knowing that it was far from certain that the courts would do it.Throwing them into a stinking pond, ditch or cesspit seemed to be favourite. Some child robbers were found guilty, but discharged, as was William Yeats in Oxford in 1814- the only man I found in my research.
The most famous child stealing case was that of Thomas Dellow. The story is told very well by Naomi Clifford .
On 18 November, three-year-old Thomas Dellow was stolen from his parents’ green-grocers shop St. Martins Lane, Upper Thames Street. A kindly lady had come in and bought some apples, one of which she gave to him. She asked the boy’s sister to direct her to a pastry shop where she would buy a treat for them. Their mother, being distracted with customers, did not object. At the pastry shop the woman promptly took up the boy and disappeared with him.

https://www.naomiclifford.com/child-stealing-thomas-dellow/

The distraught parents found him three months later in Gosport, Hampshire When the women, Harriet Magnes, was questioned in London about the events, her story was that she had found the boy in London and taken it home; her husband having said that she would love her more if she presented him with a boy, a request that he took literally. She claimed to have given birth to the child when her husband was at sea.

When their infamy spread through Gosport and Portsmouth, Mr Magnes became so embarrassed with the fuss that-the newspaper reported – he asked the magistrates for a divorce from his wife, which seemed eminently unreasonable, as his unrealistic expectations  caused the problem in the first place.

Harriet had looked after the children moderately well- the newspaper reported a bit sniffily that their house was as  clean and comfortable as you could expect from an artisan. No crime had been committed, despite the anguish of the child’s parents, made worse by the fact that Thomas did not recognise them when they were reunited.

This changed in 1814, when stealing a child less than ten years was made a felony, punishable with seven years transportation. The act exempted any actions by fathers who wished to remove their legitimate or illegitimate children from their mothers. They were still allowed to do this by any means necessary-this new law was deliberately written to avoid giving any new rights to women.

New, severe punishments started to appear in 1815 when the new Act was enforced. In January, Sarah Stone was convicted for abducting a child of the poor women Catherine Kremer, who used her child to ‘ excite compassion’ as she begged in St Paul’s churchyard. Despite her wretched condition, Catherine spent weeks looking for her child and finally tracked her down to a ship that was just leaving the country. In reality, it was Sarah Stone who left the country on her own. She was sentenced to transportation to Botany Bay on 28 January 1815. On the same day, two twelve year old boys , Jones and Tidley, were given the same punishment for stealing handkerchiefs. They were in an organised gang of twenty or so boys, which in the eyes of the besieged property owners made it a far worse crime than theft by individuals.

References
Naomi Clifford
https://www.naomiclifford.com/child-stripping-and-child-stealing-in-the-regency/

 

If you enjoyed this, please consider my book (above) either to buy or to recommend to a library. All new material.

A short description from the publisher here 

A chapter-by-chapter breakdown here 

Gin Shops in the Regency; some stories about the ‘blue ruin’

The Gin Shop ‘Every street is their tap room’

In January 1816, Worcester businessman Mr S Cohen drank himself to death. He was visiting Mr Moncks, an Evesham Hatter in the afternoon and their business went well, and some personal longstanding disagreements were settled. Mr Cohen was overjoyed and accepted the invitation to stay overnight. He was so overjoyed that he drank ‘cider, brandy, gin, wine and ale rather freely’-with his breakfast. The men then travelled back to Worcester, with Mr Cohen driving the gig. It was to be a fatal breakfast, not because of drunk driving but because Cohen fell asleep, was put in the back of the gig and was later found dead.

This was a bad thing. It was, in the words of the newspaper, a ‘melancholy incident’. But it was not a threat to public order, the productivity of the nation or a danger to morals. However, the drinking of the poor was a different matter.

Alcohol consumption was increasing during the Regency.The fact that it  were taxable meant that consumption levels were known. High taxes and depressed wages meant that the poor migrated even more to  cheaper porter, gin and the gin shop. When poor people drank more, the establishment were not happy. In 1816, the Morning Chronicle used alcohol to prove that wages, in London anyway, were too high. It went like this; alcohol was increasing in price but consumption was rising- especially gin and beer which are ‘never considered as superfluous indulgences by the higher orders’. So the reason why Londoners were able to drink so much was their high wages, which if lowered, would lead to less drinking. As a start, the Hampshire Chronicle suggested a little bit of Sabbatarianism would do the poor good; the gin shops ‘lighted up to attract notice’, should be shut on that day.

What was a Gin shop? It was not a Gin Palace of the 1840s, but a stripped down public house. They were growing in number in the Regency, responding to the demand for cheap alcohol. They would strip out all the fixtures, fittings and features of the public house -the bar, the tap room, the newspapers, the food service and even the seats, in order to save money and offer cheaper gin and beer. Owners who wanted a gin shop but could not bear the magistrates scrutiny, would get a pub licence and sell gin, with a mouldering and undrinkable barrel of porter beer in the back room to keep the authorities happy.

In 1816, concerned Surrey magistrates commissioned a report on the rapid increase in Gin shops. Surrey magistrates were worried about the damage done by these shops on the lower orders and increasing the ‘middling sort’. In the regency, Surrey was a larger area than today, including the areas of Lambeth and Southwark; there was a lot of drinking going on in Surrey and the magistrates were alarmed enough to investigate the reason for the increase in gin shops.

It was certainly true that it was not difficult to obtain a licence to sell ‘ardent spirits’ and selling them kept the poor in work. One of the arguments against restricting the licences was that it would create destitution that would have to be solved with local ratepayer’s money rather than by the poor drinking themselves to insolvency. Magistrates suggested that it might be useful to try to nudge the poor to beer by only giving a license to places that sold a large amount of beer compared to gin and who allowed not drinking in private with just a large public bar. One of the magistrates suggested that the beer was just as likely to do harm – especially if it were purchased in a gin shop.

The Gin shop, said the Chester Courant in 1816, was up there with the Pawn Shop and the Lottery Office as a way that the poor were keeping themselves poor. The pawn shop may seem out of place of the three, as your need property to pawn, but the conservative Courant made it clear that pawn shops were a temptation to steal an employer’s belonging and to turn them into cash.

So, Gin shops were not the same as public houses; pubs mostly sold beer on the premises while gin shops were much more likely to be takeaways. Police constables would be on the lookout for places with two main entrances –one would be a takeout door – as a sign that they were selling gin only.

The vast majority of unskilled urban workers were paid their wages on a Saturday night; shops and pubs were open and money would be spent on alcohol. Their pockets were still reasonable full on the Sabbath, and this was a problem for the authorities.

One report – The Police in the Metropolis in August 1816, noted that in a ninety period between half six and eight o’clock, 105 people were seen entering and leaving an establishment in Holborn, perhaps made worse by the fact that this was a Sunday morning, not the afternoon, and that most of them were women. For many commentators the profane language was just as bad as the drinking

This also meant that Gin shops could encourage vice and drunkenness without being easily spotted by the magistrates as a house of ill repute. By operating takeaway only, the corruption of gin is spread to all of the streets and houses nearby. This is from 1817

The owners of such places believed, implausibly, that they contributed to family life. This is from a later Victorian publication, the Gin Shop, but the argument is the same;

No one is allowed to sit down and therefore not likely to tipple away the money that may be wanted at home for the support of the family. No tap rooms are provided, no tables, no benches, no indulgences to tempt men to remain away from their families

Not many people believed this, often not even the people who said it. The opposite argument was more compelling. Consumption would increase, as prices were about 25% lower than alcohol bought in public houses, but the grim truth, more or less universally acknowledged, was that people bought more instead of saving money. It was also common to send children to the ‘bottle and jug’ to collect the alcohol and moralists pointed out that the youngsters would be traumatized by what they saw, and then, in the fullness of time, be inured to it, which was worse.

The comment, from a temperance society, is dated 1835 but could easily be twenty years earlier;

We see children in the street…. sent by parents to a gin shop and the same as when a child goes to a baker’s shop.You see them picking the bread as they go home, you see them tasting the spirits from which they imbibe the habit, and, if they get a halfpenny or a penny given to them afterwards it goes for the getting of spirits the habit being so engendered by the practice
Have you any recollection of the youngest age which yon have ever seen persons drink?
I have seen them drink I should say at five and six months old……….

If you share my interest in the ordinary people of Regency Britain,  you may be interested in this. Please recommend to a library if you live in the UK.

 

Publisher’s details

Introducing “The Dark Days of Georgian Britain”

YouTube review- three minutes

Introducing “The Dark Days of Georgian Britain”

Three minute review of the book here
The blog contains different material to the book; if you like the blog you will like the book.

 In 2014 I retired from teaching History at the relatively young age of 55 and wanted to continue my interest in the subject. In the autumn of that year I attended a WEA ( Workers’ Educational Association)  course on great law cases in British History. This was the work of a remarkable tutor called Peter Blood who made it look effortless. One week the subject was Crim. Con.( adultery)  cases from late Georgian England. The era of the Regency attracted me immensely I was hooked. Although always a history enthusiast, the late Georgian period had passed me by- until that point.

I started a blog on WordPress ( hi!)  and regarded it as a  lovely hobby, with a bit of third-party validation as people read my blog.  Two of the blogs-adultery and bodysnatching felt like they were chapters of a social history of Regency England. I did nothing for a year, except read about the Regency and write about it. After that year, my wife suggested  that I send my work to a publisher.

Much to my surprise it was accepted.  I had found one of those elusive gaps in the market that people look for when they are trying to make a success of any venture.  I am just sorry I waited a year. If you are in the same situation as me and you are wavering; I suggest that you do it. What can you lose?

The blog contains different material to the book; if you like the blog you will like the book. If you want a copy of the book, try here.

The book is biased in favour of the poor, and is an attempt to seek out their stories. This is difficult; newspapers are by definition “establishment”. However, there is a radical press at the time of the Regency and there is the skill of “reading between the lines” of the more traditional media.  You cannot talk about the poor without referencing the rich, so their selfish behaviour runs through the book. Here are the main chapters

THE DARK DAYS OF GEORGIAN BRITAIN

Chapter 1- The Darkness Years

This is an overview of the problems of the period 1811-1820. It was a time of austerity, climate change and poverty, with all the major institutions of the government being rotten and in need of reform. Sound familiar?

Chapter 2- The Poor Weavers

This chapter looks at examples of real people – Thomas Holden of Bolton; the Luddites and their refusal to accept that they should starve to death as industrialisation and the new attitudes of employers made their life miserable. Sound familiar ?

Chapter 3- Making Life Worse

The Tory government made life worse for the poor after 1815 because of their political beliefs. This chapter deals with the rich avoiding income tax, high prices for bread and scandalous National Lottery which took money from the poor and gave it to the rich. We meet MP William ” Billy Biscuit” Curtis, who made a fortune for himself but tried to cut benefits for the poor.

Chapter 4-Why People Rioted

This deals with the rioting of 1816. Some of it was old style rioting that had been common for centuries…but there were new developments.

Chapter 5- Bread and Potatoes

Three thousand words on bread and potatoes? Remember that was a large proportion of the diet of the poor…and it is an interesting story. You will be amazed at how much bread people ate, and how many ways you could justify other people not eating much.

Chapter 6-The Poor Law

The British had a quite a generous benefit system before the Poor Law was made harsher in 1834 – that’s the Poor Law people study at school. The system is explained here, with lots of examples of the poor suffering. One family are evicted by having their roof removed and their house flooded with excrement…and yes, the landlord did get away with it!

Chapter 7- Cold Charity

The rich loved to help the poor…but with huge strings attached. I remain unimpressed throughout this chapter.. hence the title ! You will see William Wilberforce in a new light when you read what he thought was acceptable treatment of Britain’s war heroes.

Chapter 8- Old Corruption- The General Election, 1818

The 1818 General Election is covered in some detail the corruption the collusion, the rioting, the bribery and the intimidation.  And it was regarded at the time as a better than average election.

Chapter 9- All About The Money

This chapter shows that in order to achieve anything in the  Regency you needed money. Most things were for sale- parishes, army ranks, seats in parliament, everything. You will met a lot of rich people who took taxpayers money for imaginary jobs.

Chapter 10- The Disgusting Prince Regent?

What were the main personal failings of the Prince Regent? Its all in this chapter, which therefore has to be quite long . He also represented a rotten system. He did not know the meaning of money, as it all came from the poor taxpayer. When he died in 1830, they found £10,000 hidden in pockets and notebooks, money that he had simply forgotten about. That’s the same amount of money Mr Darcy had for a year, and he was a rich man!

Chapter 11- Arthur Thistlewood- The Gentlemen Revolutionary

Arthur was born a minor gentlemen  and ended up being hanged for trying to assassinate the cabinet. This chapter tells the story of him and his revolutionary friends in the Regency. He may have planned to parade the streets of London with the Home Secretary’s ‘s head in a bag, but you may still like him, albeit  as a very flawed human being.

Chapter 12- The New Revolt of the Peasants

In 1817, the poor tried new ways of overthrowing their oppressors, that scared the establishment more because they were “political” riots. So the punishments were more severe.

Chapter 13-Who Killed Joseph Lees?

Joseph Lees died after being beaten up at the mass meeting at St Peter’s Field ( Peterloo). However the government were able to prove “otherwise”. This chapter looks at the victims of Peterloo, how they were treated by the government that was not going to take responsibility for the poor or the actions of their own soldiers.

Chapter 14-The Women of Peterloo

What’s more frightening that a radical? A women radical! Despite the difficulty in finding evidence, here we have the story of Alice Kitchen,  Nancy Prestwick and Mary Fildes and others This is my favourite chapter of the book.

Chapter 15- The Freeborn Englishmen?

Britain was freer than most, but in the Regency that was put under great strain. People were imprisoned without trial. We meet William Ogden , 74, manacled in goal without charge for months with a 30 pound weight. His crime- wanting a reform of Parliament.

Chapter 16-The Punishment Didn’t Fit the Crime

This is a well-known regency topic. In my version, real people suffer at the hands of a floundering system that was at the end of its time. Reform did come- just not then. We meet Horace Cotton, who worked at Newgate with those condemned to die. He was a real charmer.

Chapter 17- Retribution

Fancy a trip to Newgate or a Prison hulk? We meet the poor in prison, including one man in gaol for stealing a cucumber.

Chapter 18- Child Labour

Traditionally, this is mostly about textile factories, but there were other, possibly worse jobs. Chimney Sweeping for example, and coal mining. However, people’s attitudes to child labour may surprise you.

Chapter 19- Currency Crisis

The Regency government did little to help people, but when the money and coinage went into crisis, they were happy to get things done. Never have banknotes and old coins been made so interesting!

Chapter 20- Adultery

If your wife  had sex with another man, you could go to court and claim compensation. The amount of money depended on how posh you were and how many salacious details you could provide. The newspapers loved it, and so will you.

Chapter 21- Regency Body Snatchers

It was not against the law to steal dead bodies from their graves, as long as you left behind their shroud and personal belongings. That’s why its called body snatching, not grave robbery. Lots of people made a living from it, and some of the best examples are in this chapter.

Chapter 22- Being Irish

The Irish were treated as second class citizens both in Britain and in Ireland. There are lots of examples here, and the prejudice has not gone away. The chapter features the famous brewery flood of 1814, when the press lied about the behaviour and hardly any money was raised for the victims, but the government reimbursed the brewery for their loss…

Chapter 23- A Rash and Melancholy Act?

This is about suicide- how traditional harsh attitudes to suicide where changing into something more humane, but it was still more sympathetic to the rich than the poor.

PS If the English Civil War is more to your taste, try here