It’s almost Hallowe’en and last year, I launched this Substack with the restless ghost of Lydia Atley. But I don’t actually believe in ghosts. Every day, I work with the stories of people dying in the most horrific, unfair, traumatic ways. If every one of my 1080 Peterborough inquests walked the streets in death, crying for justice, you would not be able to move for the ghosts of the Victorian poor. They would clamour in every office block erected on the site of slums, around every river culverted away, and at every railway crossing.
There is no need for ghost stories this Hallowe’en. Instead, a moment of horror in Sheffield, in the New Year of 1881.
Mary Jane Rowe was born in Cornwall. She married William Sampson in 1850 and moved to Thorne in Yorkshire, to live with his parents. They had four children in five years and then William died. By the time he died, Mary Jane lived in Sheffield and the family was scattered by this premature loss. Mary kept two of her children with her, and sent her daughter to live with her sister-in-law and her eldest to live with her in-laws. She coped with her other two sons in a tiny courtyard house on Little Kelham Street, working as a laundress. They later moved to Cumberland Street, again living in a yard. Charles Henry Sampson was born in the spring of 1852, and only four when his father died. He got a job making metal files as soon as he was old enough, and impregnated Mary Godbehere in the spring of 1869.
Mary was about fifteen months older than Charles, and living with her parents in a court on Porter Street - now demolished, this was in The Moor, close to the Sampsons’ home. It ran diagonally from the corner of Cumberland and Eyre Street up to Furnival Gate. Their relationship was evidently not approved of by someone in the family. Mary was nineteen when the baby - George - was born, Charles only seventeen. No parental permission was forthcoming for their marriage, which took place in the spring of 1873, as soon as Charles turned twenty-one. Mary was well into her second pregnancy by this point.
Now married, they lived with Mary’s parents, Shadrach and Ruth Godbehere, at Porter Street. It’s quite possible they had been living together there prior to their marriage. Four more children were born: Mary Jane in the summer of 1873, Thomas in summer 1875, Sarah Ann in early 1878 and finally, Ruth, born on 27th June 1880 and named after her grandmother who died in mid-1878.
We can assume it was a crowded house, although it appears the Sampsons were happily married, and Charles was fond of his children. Shadrach Godbehere was in his late sixties, ill and unable to work. Three of the children were in school, the youngest two at home. Mary managed the house. Charles worked in a factory on Bailey Lane, stayed at home otherwise, and read copiously. He was a model husband.
Christmas 1880, and one of Mary’s male relatives - a soldier named John - had come to stay.* John had been on active service in the first Boer War, and was full of war stories and bravado. Charles and John went on the razz, as Charles was keen to introduce John to his social circle. Charles wasn’t a drinker, but was impressed by and eager to impress his soldier brother. He didn’t really eat when he was drinking, which amplified the effects of the booze. On New Year’s Eve, he seemed quite mad, running amok in the house and thoroughly overexcited. John took him for a walk which seemed to calm him down. The rum that Mary put in his tea perhaps helped.
But the next day, he became wild again, talking about a “nasty feeling” in his head, and Mary was frightened. She was so frightened that she sent for a doctor. The doctor prescribed a sedative and told Mary that under no circumstances was she to leave Charles alone. He also told her to ask about having Charles sent to an asylum: private doctors could not do this in Ecclesall Bierlow union, it had to be done by the union doctor.
He also told her that a glass of port would do Charles no harm.
So Charles had a glass of port. And some beer.
Mary asked John, and her brother-in-law, Edward Exley, to come and stay in the house to help keep an eye on Charles. On Sunday 2nd January, Charles was once again wildly uncontrollable. He tried to strangle John, and threw him out at 2am, and Mary - in terror of her life - also left and stayed with her neighbour. He spent most of Sunday in a restless and rambling state. Edward Exley left, no longer able to cope. Mary tried twice to see the union doctor about moving him into the workhouse and then the asylum, but he was away at his country residence for the new year and nobody could contact him.
By the evening, Charles was calmer. He agreed to go to bed, as long as Mary went with him. Mary eventually agreed, and at 3am they went to bed. But once more, Charles became wild. She left him in bed, he followed her about promising not to hurt her, while stark naked.
Monday morning rolled around, and we can only imagine the state of tension and terror in the household. There were no emergency services to call and Charles had not committed a crime that any police officer could investigate. At 6am, with the city still in darkness, Charles asked Mary to go and buy him some brandy. He told her
“Fetch me some brandy, do. I can’t live much longer. Fetch me a minister to pray with me.”
There were a few shops close to the courtyard they lived in, and one man was opening up for the day. Mary, hoping a little dilute brandy might calm him down, took an empty bottle and went to get some. As soon as she left, Charles attacked John. Charles was a big man, taller than John, and succeeded in pushing the soldier over, smacking his head against a dresser. Charles knelt on John, and reached away from him to fetch a poker. John, who’d already pushed the door ajar, managed to unbalance Charles, freeing himself. He took his chance, escaped, and went to warn Mary. John genuinely feared that Charles would murder both of them.
So, Charles was alone for the first time in three days, although Shadrach and the children were still in the house, asleep in garrett on the top floor. Baby Ruth was downstairs, asleep in a crib near the fire - it was January after all - and Charles picked up his daughter and smashed her head against the stone hearth, two or three times, killing her instantly.
He then smashed every window in the house with his bare hands and feet, starting at the ground floor and working his way up. By the time he reached the garret, he was bleeding profusely. Shadrach held his hands up for mercy. Charles told him:
“I’ll not hurt you”
and proceeded to feel his children, groping them through the covers and looking underneath their bed. It’s not clear what he was looking for, although he told his eldest son George that:
“You’ll not see that baby again.”
He smashed the windows of the garrett, and went back down. George, who was just about to turn eleven, bravely followed him. Charles rambled at George:
“Look at poor little Ruth asleep”
among other things. But then, he jumped out of the window and ran for it.
George went to pick Ruth up, and found her dead. He did not touch her, but took his surviving siblings to a neighbour’s house. They raised the alarm.
He was a brave boy.
It took twenty minutes to capture Charles, during which time both Mary and John had to hide from him. The officer who eventually stopped him hadn’t heard about the murder. This officer called for a cab to take Charles to the workhouse. Charles was blue with cold, wearing only his trousers and shirt, and his feet and hands were still pouring with blood. He was taken to the padded cell at the asylum, and attempted to escape again. He told the police
“I have murdered my child by dashing her head on the floor. You will find it right if you go to see. Don’t put me in that room [the padded cell] I shall get burned.”
Ruth’s inquest was held the next afternoon at the Globe pub, on the corner on Jessop Street and Porter Street, a few metres from their house. It was suspended almost immediately as Charles was too unwell to attend. He briefly appeared before the magistrates the next morning, but the hearing was adjourned.
Ruth was buried in unconsecrated ground at Sheffield’s general cemetery on the 7th January. She had not been baptised. Her funeral was attended by her mother, siblings and some neighbours, but there was not the same demonstration of grief shown in some of the cases I’ve covered. She was, after all, only a tiny scrap.
On 11th January 1881, the inquest reconvened at the Globe. The first witness was a surgeon who had performed a post-mortem on Ruth a week earlier. He found that she died from extensive blunt-force trauma injuries to her head. He thought she’d been struck two or three times.
The workhouse surgeon testified that Charles had been suffering delirium tremens when admitted on the day of the murder, with the excitable phase wearing off and the depressive phase setting in. He had recovered entirely within twenty-four hours. This surgeon, Lewis Hunt, told the inquest that a characteristic of delirium tremens was a timid paranoia. John told the inquest that he’d been drinking with Charles since December 15th, but the madness had not set in until 1st January. Mary said it was a day earlier. They recounted the waves of calmness, alcohol consumption and absolute chaos of the previous week. Mary told the inquest how hard she had tried to get Mr Willington, the union doctor, to admit her husband, but he was never at home on a Sunday. And of course, by Monday, it was too late.
Nobody saw Charles kill Ruth, but the circumstantial evidence and his own admission were enough for the coroner’s jury to return a verdict of wilful murder. The coroner advised the jury that delirium tremens did not equate to an insanity defence, indeed that most judges thought it aggravated rather than mitigated the charge. Madness from drink was voluntary.
“Drink cannot be made an excuse, nor even a palliation”
The jury agreed their verdict, but wished to add a rider. A rider was like a postscript to an inquest verdict, commonly used to attribute guilt or request safety changes.** They asked that the parties who had charge of Charles on the Sunday be severely censured for not having him taken care of on that day.
The coroner agreed with them, but said he could not include it in the verdict. Wilful murder, with no rider. The next day, 12th January, Charles was taken in front of the magistrates for committal. The same evidence was heard again, and Charles was committed for trial at the forthcoming assize in Leeds. Bail was not sought.
Charles did not have to wait very long for his trial at all, compared to others. The court sat on 31st January 1881, although it was a busy session, with over fifty felony cases to hear. Charles’ trial was held on 4th February. The evidence was relatively brief: John and Charles had been drinking, Charles had suffered delirium tremens for several days, then killed his daughter. The judge told the jury that drunkenness was no excuse for murder, but delirium tremens was different. Delirium tremens was an organic insanity, a disease. The jury retired for moments before returning an insanity verdict.
The judge sentenced Charles to be held at her Majesty’s pleasure, commenting that if this didn’t teach men a lesson of the dangers of drink, he didn’t know what would.
Charles wept as he was led from the dock.
*The sources name him as John Owen or Howen, Mary’s brother. I am not sure of the exact relationship, but I believe he was either Mary’s brother-in-law, or older half-brother.
**At least, this is how I find them used in Peterborough.
The newspapers are coy in their descriptions of Charles’ madness, but reading between the lines, it appears he was extremely sexually violent toward Mary. John Owen told the inquest that Charles had pinned May to the bed and become extremely angry when she refused to go to bed with him. When he threw John out, her protector, Mary left the house. She was reluctant to go to bed with him on the Sunday, and only did when he “promised not to plague her anymore”. He then followed her about the house naked. Ordinarily, Mary and Charles slept in bed with Sarah Ann and Ruth. All this sexual aggression was in the presence of two very young children. In absenting herself from his bed, Mary was not just protecting herself, but her babies.
And yet she took the blame for the murder of her daughter. She had not gone directly to Mr Willington’s country residence to get her husband committed. Instead, she had kept a terrified, sleepless vigil, fearing for her life for four days. The doctor had warned her that Charles might hurt himself, and she was evidently in real fear for own life, but she never seems to have considered that the children might be in danger. Why would she? He loved them.
She was out of her house for five minutes on that Monday morning, and she did not leave Charles alone. In the few moments that John also left the house, Charles killed Ruth.
Did Charles actually suffer from delirium tremens? He had only been drinking for couple of weeks, although in many ways, his suffering was textbook. One thing which struck me while reading through the evidence is that Charles was never permitted to become sober. Every time the alcohol began to leave his body, he was given another drink. A tot of rum, a glass of port, a beer. Alcohol was a medicine in the nineteenth century. It underpinned a great deal of medicines sold and prescribed, and the medicinal tot of brandy was sometimes given in the most medically inappropriate situations, such as postnatal haemorrhage. So it was natural to treat alcohol withdrawal with alcohol. Delirium tremens typically resolves once the sufferer is sober, and Charles was sane and steady in court.
But Charles did not recover. In March 1881, he was admitted to Broadmoor, where he spent almost fifty years, dying there in early 1930. So perhaps it was DTs, but perhaps it was the beginning of a different disease. Or perhaps guilt, grief, or his environment drove him to a genuine insanity.
Mary was left in limbo, unable to remarry, unable to divorce. Her father, Shadrach, was admitted to the workhouse on the day Ruth was killed, suffering from shock. He died there a year later. This left Mary and her four children with very little support. George, the eldest, died in 1893 aged only twenty-three. The others married and had children of their own. Mary died in Sheffield in 1897. She was forty-six.
Ruth Sampson
(1880-1881)