Murder is a deliberate act, but it can be extraordinarily easy to cause the death of another by an act of omission. Not calling out a warning, not fetching help to the scene of an accident…or simply not looking after someone who is dependent on you.
I often find babies who die from acts of omission: not being picked up after birth, not having their airways cleared, not tying the cord off. It’s so common that the coroners had a phrase for it - “want of care and attention at birth”. But the death of an adult through an act of omission is rarer. This is one such story, and it’s another one local to me.
This week finds us in Deeping St James, a small village just to the east of Market Deeping, in February 1884.
This story begins, as they always seem to, with a wedding. Alice Smart married John Eliff (or Ayliffe or Eliffe) in Deeping St Nicholas in 1862. She was born in Tallington, and he was from Deeping Fen. They were both twenty-two at their marriage.
As so many labouring families did then, they moved around a bit. They had no surviving children until a daughter was born at Moulton Seas End in 1866. Another daughter followed, born near Holbeach, two years later. By 1872, they were back in Deeping, although they appear to have continued to move between Holbeach Bank and Deeping Fen. They settled at Rotten Row, a row of cottages on Bridge Street, opposite the Horsegate junction.
In 1877, Alice gave birth to her fifth child, Martha. A few months later, she became very ill and lost the ability to walk. According to her husband, she lost the use of her right side. However, the local doctor argued that she had was suffering from rheumatism, and her issue was with her joints rather than any paralysis.
Alice initially sought and recieved medical help. John was only bringing in a couple of shillings a day, when he had work, and Alice stopped sending for her medicine as the money dried up.
Without medicine, Alice became entirely dependent on her husband. Unable to move, unable to get up and downstairs, she began to waste away.
In the middle of 1883, Alice lost the use of left hand, as well the right. A doctor was sent for, and he saw Alice alone. According to John, this doctor told Alice that there was nothing more to be done for her, and she needed more support.
So, John went to the relieving officer. The relieving officer was the person who decided if you got parish relief, and often seems to have set the conditions unilaterally. The relieving officer had the power to grant food, fuel, money and medical orders, as well as arranging workhouse admittance. The relieving officer in Deeping St James told John that, if the family wanted poor relief, they must all go to the workhouse.
John claimed it never occurred to him to see if Alice could go to the workhouse alone, for medical treatment.
From November 1883, Alice became stranded upstairs in the house. She was too weak to be carried downstairs. And perhaps, in a better provisioned house, this would not have been such a hardship, but the Eliff family lived in a diabolical state. The roof had holes in. They had almost no furniture - their bed had become rotten and John had thrown it away and not replaced it. The family - now consisting of two adults, two teenagers and two children - slept on a few guano sacks on the floorboards. They only had one set of clothing each, and this does not seem to have ever been washed.
Alice was stranded upstairs due to her bedsores, which were horrific, deep and undressed. Nobody seems to have cleaned Alice up, and she went to the toilet where she lay. The neighbours dropped in food for her, and the children helped feed her and gave her water. In January 1883, a neighbour applied for a relieving order on Alice’s behalf, without consulting John. The reliving officer came to the house, but doesn’t appear to have ventured upstairs. He gave John an order for four shillings. The inquest implied that John drank the money.
On Saturday 9th February 1884, John went out to look for work. He walked around the fens, and came back at 4:30pm with no job and no money. He had lunch while he was out, but the only food in the house for Alice and the children was a bit of bread and some little cakes. He went to see Alice, and she held out her hand to him. He took it and she died. He didn’t realise she was dead to begin with, he just thought she’d fainted.
An inquest was called. Alice’s body was viewed in situ, an emaciated, wizened, infected, barely human bundle on the floor. The smell in the house was so bad that the jurors held camphor to their noses, and left with relief to sit in the Bell and discuss the horror they’d witnesses.
John’s testimony at inquest was that of a man blind to his wife’s suffering. He did not think she was dying before his eyes, did not think to ask for her to be taken to the workhouse, did not think ‘it had come to that’. But his daughter, Alice, aged fifteen, said that her mother and siblings never had enough to eat, implying their father did.
The doctor who attended her thought her death was inevitable, but it did not have to be so painful and miserable. And so a natural causes verdict was returned. But Mr Selby, coroner for Bourne, had this to say to John Eliff
“I feel it right, on the jury’s behalf and my own, to express to you our abhorrence on your conduct. This is one of the most painful cases of gross neglect that has ever before come under my notice. I have had to give a verdict of manslaughter for less causes, but you have escaped this by your indirect means of wearing away, by slow and cruel neglect, the life of your wife, who, as it was, died by inches under your own eyes, and you would not render even that assistance that which was within your reach ; but with inhuman negligence and indolence, you allowed your wife and mother of your children to pass her last days under an affecting malady on a boarded floor, under none or but wretched covering, and on, not a bed, but on filthy litter that not one of the jury would allow their animals to lie upon. May God help you and give you a heart to feel keenly your guilt and to change you to a better feeling toward your children, whom I trust you will allow to go to the Union, where they will be properly cared for, or that you will, as a father, work for them as it becomes your duty.”
Whose fault was Alice’s painful and prolonged suffering? Her negligent husband, for sure, but Alice lived within a community who knew the family. She had a surviving brother in Tallington, a few miles away. John’s parents were alive and lived in Deeping St Nicholas. None of them appear to have been involved, perhaps too concerned with their own poverty.
The local doctor knew Alice was in a terrible state, and did very little to ameliorate it.
Her neighbours knew how she suffered, and probably did far more than John to keep the children alive. But they stopped short of seeking medical help or Union assistance for Alice until the bitter end, perhaps out of respect for John as head of the house, but also perhaps because Alice did not want to go to the workhouse, away from her children.
It is possible that Alice preferred to be at home, with all its tangible, but manageable horror, to the imagined isolation and constraints of the workhouse.
Alice’s death was discussed by the Board of Guardians, but no charges were raised against John. It’s unclear whether or not he made use of the workhouse for his children, but he was living with the two younger ones on Horsegate in 1891. He remarried in 1896, and died in 1909. It is not known whether he ever managed to develop any empathy.
Alice Eliff
1839-1884