Historic Child Abuse: The Long View

Beechwood Children’s Home, Nottingham

This month, we have two special blogs tackling the often difficult subject of the abuse of paupers in the workhouse. Today, Dr Carol Beardmore discusses the physical and mental abuse of pauper children in the context of recent inquiries into historical abuse… 

On the 31^st of July this year, the Independent Inquiry for Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) published its report into historical abuse in residential and foster care homes across Nottinghamshire. All in all, 350 people gave evidence to the inquiry: the largest group in a single investigation that the IICSA has considered to date. It concluded that the abuse of children was widespread across the county during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. It also concluded that victims were consistently failed by successive Nottinghamshire councils and by its Police force. Professor Alexis Jay who chairs the inquiry stated: ‘For decades, children who were in the care of the Nottinghamshire councils suffered appalling sexual and physical abuse, inflicted by those who should have nurtured and protected them’. She argued that, despite decades of evidence and any number of reviews which highlighted the problems of abuse, the council failed to learn the lessons from, or act on, those problems. From the late 1970s to the present some 16 residential staff and 10 foster carers have been convicted of the sexual abuse of the children in their care in Nottinghamshire. The hearings held by IICSA examined three key areas of interest: Beechwood Children’s home in Mapperley; foster care across the county; and harmful sexual behaviour between children in care. Beechwood came under particular scrutiny. It had at various times been an approved school, an observation centre, a remand home and a community home. Its reputation as a place where criminal and troubled children lived continued long after this function had ceased. The standard of care was described as ‘appalling’, with children being dragged across the room by their hair, stripped naked to stop them leaving, and forced to fight each other. One former resident stated: ‘It was a big place…a horrible place…there was nothing in there that was soft or homely’. This investigation took place, of course, against the backdrop of similar inquiries into historic abuse in Rochdale and Lambeth.

It has been argued that, in fact, Nottinghamshire is little different to any other county in Britain, and that the c.1000 allegations which have been made by more than 400 individuals simply demonstrates the extent of the problem overall. One thing is for certain: for those of us working on ITOW, stories of the abuse of children across the age range are all too familiar. Child sexual abuse is often a difficult crime to pin down in the nineteenth century because of the deep historical context. For example, the age of consent was only raised to 16 (from 13) in 1885. So, while we undoubtedly see cases of young girls becoming pregnant or being potentially abused prior to this, they were frequently of age in legal terms, and thus no crime was deemed to have been committed and little was written about them.

Unfortunately, cases of physical and mental abuse abound in MH12, however, and the voices of the children themselves are often heard (as in the Nottinghamshire inquiry) through  witness statements or depositions. For a child in the workhouse, just as at institutions like Beechwood, coming forward took great courage – especially knowing that the perpetrator was likely to remain in post when the investigator’s left, to continue the cycle of abuse.

There were those who advocated on these abused children’s behalf, though. Often, complaints were made by adults, including other workhouse inmates. For example an inmate of the Newcastle-under-Lyme workhouse wrote to the Poor Law Commissioners in 1870 stating that ‘one of the boys here ran off last week to tell one of the guardians about the master treating him cruelly and got his hands cut to pieces with a cane when he got back’. At Newport, in May 1871, the central poor law authorities received a complaint to the effect that the workhouse school master had cruelly treated eight-year-old William Mahoney. At the inquiry which followed, Mahoney stated that:

Mr Bennett hit me in the face, knocked me down, and kicked me in the ribs, and then took me to the Greenhouse, and again beat me there. My nose bled much – He made me wash my nose in the water that came from the dung heap.

At the subsequent inquiry, other children lined up to give testimony on his behalf. John Palmer, who was 15, said ‘I saw Mr Bennett take hold of Mahoney & strike him with his fist … I was 10 yards off’. Mahoney’s thirteen year old sister on hearing of the attack on her brother absconded from the workhouse: this in itself was a considerable act of rebellion. Her treatment on her return, however, was indicative of the abusive nature in the workhouse as she was taken to the ‘bottom bed room’ and locked up by the Governess. Miss Hughes the Industrial Trainer then took her clothes and the child was kept in a state of nakedness for five days.

Hackney Workhouse Union School

So far, the evidence from MH12 suggests that staff were rarely punished for their abusive treatment of children in the workhouse, with many simply being allowed to resign; but punishments did occur. Ella Gillespie, a nurse to the Hackney Union School, was accused of cruel and inhuman treatment towards the children in her care and prosecuted in 1894. Her catalogue of abuse verged on physical and mental torture and incorporated beatings, burning the children’s skin, withdrawal of food and water and the systematic disruption of the children’s sleep by forcing them to undertake nightly exercises. The evidence suggests that, much like Beechwood, this regime of abuse had been allowed to continue for many years. At the inquiry and trial that ensued, further incidents of her behaviour emerged which included banging heads against the walls, making children kneel on hot water pipes and whipping them while naked with stinging nettles.

Many of those who have followed the recent spate of harrowing IICSA inquiries have wondered just how the perpetrators were allowed to get away with it for so long. Though far from optimistic, the evidence from MH12 suggests that, in fact, such appalling treatment has been a systemic problem for Britain’s institutions for much much longer even than these investigations suggest. Highlighting the deep roots of historic child abuse, and calling out the failures of the constituted authorities to deal with it in the longue durée, may help us to create a climate of true reparation, and to look to a future where such things are simply not allowed to happen again.

 

Cold Hearts and Red Tape: Public Opinion and the New Poor Law

What did contemporaries really think about the New Poor Law? It may seem a strange question given what we know about early protests against its adoption, about the resentment that was directed towards workhouses (those ‘Pauper Bastilles’), and about the many accounts of scandals and maladministration that litter the mid-Victorian press. But excavating the real feelings of contemporaries towards the poor law system overall is a surprisingly tricky business. On the one hand, it is hardly controversial to suggest that tales of workhouse cruelty, sexual predation and the incompetence of officials fed a growing appetite for sensationalism in the mid-Victorian press, and provided a rich vein of ‘scandals’ that newspapers and periodicals were only too happy to mine. On the other, shifting sentiment towards, but also among, the poor meant that pauperism, however blameless, carried a heavy burden of shame in Victorian England, so that paupers themselves rarely voiced their feelings in open forums.

It is also becoming clear in our work on letters written by, and on behalf of, paupers to the central authorities in London that even these were highly strategic documents. Just as under the Old Poor Law (and, often, in common with those sensational accounts in the papers) paupers rarely, if ever, passed judgement on the poor law or the workhouse system per se, instead concentrating their energies on specific instances of malpractice, maladministration and the contravention of rules and regulations. This means that their attitudes to the overarching framework of poor law policy – and those of the public at large – tend to get lost in the thicket of comment and condemnation relating to its day-to-day practice and administration.

Occasionally, however, we do find examples in MH12 of individuals who were prepared to cut through the detail and shine a light on the principles that underpinned the New Poor Law, and Isaac Ironside’s letters from Sheffield are a fine example of this. Ironside could hardly be described as an ordinary member of the public; in fact, he was in possession of a very large and sharp-bladed axe which he ground to considerable effect in mid-Victorian Yorkshire. He was a Chartist and Owenite socialist and, by the 1850s, he had risen to a position of considerable influence on Sheffield City Council. He was instrumental in establishing Sheffield’s Mechanics’ Institute and its Hall of Science, the first of its kind in England. Nonetheless, when Ironside wrote to the Poor Law Board on behalf of William Hodgson of Barnsley, he did so as a private citizen and an advocate for a poor man who found himself in a difficult, though far from uncommon, situation.

Hodgson was a widower who had been left with six children and suffered considerable ill health. His youngest child, an infant, was being cared for by Hodgson’s sister who received two shillings a week in financial support from her parish. Between March and May 1850, however, Ironside was moved to write three letters on their behalf because the Board of Guardians had stopped the child’s relief, and his aunt – Emma Mitchell – was unable to continue his care without it. She and Hodgson found themselves in an impossible situation, wanting to do their best for the child but lacking the means to do so. Ironside’s first letter was a polite enquiry, asking whether the Board could use its influence to get the child’s relief reinstated. His second was a response to the replies of both the Board and the local guardians, in which he assured them again that neither Hodgson nor his sister were able to provide for the child without assistance, and explained that Mitchell was now looking after two of her brother’s children, because their father had taken a turn for the worse.

But it is Ironside’s third letter that really catches the eye. By this time his patience with the local and national administrators had run out. He had witnessed first-hand the obfuscation and pettifoggery of the local Board of Guardians and the high-handed unwillingness of the Poor Law Commissioners to hold them to account, and he had also seen the devastating impact their actions had had on Hodgson and his family. Not a man to mince his words, Ironside’s final letter is a masterpiece of passionate polemic and it gives us a brief insight into how the ‘system’ of the New Poor Law was viewed – by some sections of mid-Victorian society, at least.  It also has a surprising resonance for the welfare politics of our own era, and in its clarity of thought and expression it deserves to be quoted in full.

My Lords & Gentlemen,

I duly received yours of the 23^rd ult in reply to mine of the 18^th ult. Poor Mrs Mitchell comes to me and I am forced to see that “hope deferred maketh the heart sick”! She wept bitterly this morning, and said she feared her brother would not live many days and then, said she, “he will be out of their way; they will have finished him”. She heard a few days ago that he was very ill; unattended except by his poor neighbours who were in his house expecting his death. She has 2 of his children as I have before informed you and she still provides [for] herself and them and struggles, but it is very hard.

You may not be aware that I hate the centralizing tendency of the legislation with a most perfect hatred. I do not believe in Malthus nor do I wish to see the poor people starved to death by law. This case is not likely to lessen my hatred. If I could see any thing like moral responsibility on behalf of the central authorities, I should be inclined to view centralization with more favour. But there is nothing of the kind. Stump orators make perfect laws, and legal responsibility is all that is ever thought of. For instance you have acted legally, I suppose, in this case, Lorimer [a local poor law official] would no doubt say the same, ditto the Board of Guardians at Barnsley etc. My first letter to Lorimer [was] on the 18^th Jany. My first to you was on the 1^st of March, the poor wretch starving all the time – more than 16 weeks. You breakfast every morning and transact your business with the perfect consciousness that you will also dine in due course. Not so the poor who have not sufficient interest to get an appeal to you. Those who have discover what a task they undertake. Carlyle is not far wrong in his description of what has to be done in Downing St.

Good Heavens how I shudder at the cold hearted official red tapism which governs this country.

Paupers, Politics and the Power of the Pen

In this strange period of plebiscites and referenda, the air is thick with the cries of professional lobbyists and consultancy firms keen to leverage influence with politicians and take advantage of unprecedented uncertainty. According to Public Affairs News (an industry website) Indyref was a ‘lobbyist’s dream’; and The Conversation (an academic discussion forum) points out that Brexit has shifted the centre of gravity for British lobbyists away from Brussels and back towards London. All this, it is claimed, has created a bonanza for the ‘big beasts’ of political influence who prowl Holyrood and Westminster Green on behalf of their powerful clients in business and industry. Yet it is a curious irony that the ‘people’s vote’ should have led to a situation where the people themselves feel increasingly marginalised from the negotiations going on in their name. So what about those ordinary citizens who aren’t part of the billion-pound lobbying industry? How do they make their voices heard above the cacophony of political noise?

This is something that has been preoccupying us at ITOW recently. The deeper we dig into the correspondence that circulated between paupers and the Poor Law Commissioners at Whitehall during the nineteenth century, the clearer it becomes that the complaints and appeals for redress sometimes built, over time and through many letters, into something like a deliberate campaign for change in the way that the commissioners’ rules and regulations were being applied locally. Thomas Gould, who appeared in last October’s blog (see ‘Holding Power to Account, Pauper-Style’), was one such campaigner, writing ten letters and almost 11,000 words of complaint between August 1853 and October 1859. John Rutherford was another, writing four letters and 5,000 words in a flurry of activity at the end of 1885. Like other examples of ‘pauper lobbyists’ who wrote from the workhouse, these writers complained that they suffered greatly for their campaigning activities, being subject to reprisals and persecution at the hands of the workhouse officers; and both also complained of the unwillingness (or perhaps the inability) of the Poor Law Commissioners to force local officers to mend their ways.

There was another outlet for paupers to voice their concerns and frustrations when they felt their complaints had fallen on deaf ears in Whitehall, however. That outlet was the ‘court of public opinion’, and there were those who made very good use of it. John Rutherford, for example, published an important first-person account of his experiences in the Poplar workhouse while he was still a pauper. It was titled Indoor Paupers, by ‘One of Them’, and was recently republished by Peter Higginbotham, of workhouses.org.uk fame. Rutherford’s was a vivid account of quotidian life inside the workhouse, but it was also a powerful indictment of the workhouse regime, where paupers were ‘not esteemed as human beings…but as creatures of a far inferior order’. His solution to the abuses he observed was that Boards of Guardians (who oversaw relief of the poor locally) should be drawn from a much wider section of society, and in particular that they should contain ‘a fair proportion of working men’. He reasoned that ‘men who have relatives and former comrades in the house would undoubtedly keep a sharp eye on abuses likely to pain their friends’, and went on to state that ‘Guardians of this stamp would extinguish at once the insolence of Jacks in office, and the corruption and depredation’ of other officials.

Of course, Rutherford was not the first to publicise the deficiencies, and even the cruelties, of the Victorian workhouse. By the 1880s, he was adding to a long tradition of pamphleteers, journalists and fiction writers who sought to influence the ‘court of public opinion’, the most famous of whom was, of course, Charles Dickens. But as a pauper himself, he was uniquely placed to make his observations, and through his letters and his short published book, it is possible to see the mechanics of popular influence at work in the context of the New Poor Law.

Rutherford began his correspondence to the commissioners by minutely detailing the abuses he had encountered as an inmate. In his second letter, he again urged the Local Government Board to investigate, still believing them to be ignorant of the true state of Poplar workhouse. In his third letter, his impatience was starting to show, and he wrote that ‘the longer such charges remain univestigated the more favourable…the situation for the accused’. By the time of his fourth and final letter, Rutherford had become totally disillusioned with the Poor Law Commissioners as a channel for redress, and had decided that if his allegations were ‘unworthy of the notice of your Honourable Board until forced upon it by Public Opinion, I shall not trouble you again’ (MH 12/7698). Instead, he appealed directly to the public through his book – and, even though it is highly unlikely that either his published or unpublished work had any direct influence on local poor law policy, it is intriguing to note that his suggestion of widening the franchise for elected guardians was something that came to pass only a decade or so after his exposé was published.

Indeed, it is becoming increasingly clear in our work that Rutherford and Thomas Gould were at one end of a scale of paupers and others who, collectively, did have an influence on the trajectory of workhouse policy in the later years of the New Poor Law. They did so through the many thousands of letters they sent to the commissioners, and through appeals to the wider ‘court of public opinion’ in the press. In these turbulent times when political influence has been so successfully professionalised, and the levers of power seem ever more remote from ordinary citizens, it’s worth bearing in mind that if workhouse paupers could make those levers move, however slowly, in the right direction, then surely there is hope for the rest of us.