Happy New Year! A brief one today, as I’ve been rather busy recovering from Christmas and giving my first in-person public talk for THREE AND A HALF YEARS!
Today’s story illuminates the dreadful misogyny inherent in judging sudden death, especially when the victim transgressed social norms, and the way narratives of death could be shifted and twisted…
Mortimer Thomas Gray married Laura Georgina Killick in 1875, when he was twenty-five and she was twenty-three. They married in London, but Laura was born in Kirby Bellars in Northamptonshire, and probably met Mortimer while working in service.
Mortimer was a broker for the East India Company. The Grays lived in Blackheath, and were highly respectable. They had at least three live-in servants at any time: a nursemaid, cook and housemaid.
Laura had five children in the first eight years of their marriage. In early 1886, a terrible tragedy befell the family. Their daughter Violet, aged six, died suddenly. She was weak, prone to vomiting. But she was also a curious and hungry soul, and was suspected to have drunk some of her father’s medicine. This contained arsenic and iron, and had been prescribed for anaemia. Violet vomited herself to death soon after. An inquest was held, and adjourned to allow for toxicology testing. However, no arsenic was found in her system, and her death was ascribed to typhoid fever, blamed on the poor drainage in Blackheath. The family moved to Kidbrooke after this, and had another daughter in 1889.
Mortimer retired in the 1890s, and took his family to live in Lewisham. They lived on Ivydale Road in March 1901, but had moved to Malyons Road by Christmas. They no longer employed servants, and their children no longer lived with them, even Miriam who was only twelve.
Outwardly, the Grays were the model of the good, middle-class, Victorian family. However, behind closed doors, things were somewhat less respectable. At some point, Laura had become an alcoholic. Her alcoholism was a well-guarded secret: not one the neighbours knew about, although their children did. Laura’s reasons for turning to drink were not altogether clear - perhaps it was boredom. Perhaps it was grief.
Or perhaps it was living with Mortimer, who regularly ‘went for her throat’. Their domestic fights regularly disturbed the neighbours, who complained to their shared landlord.
On 21st December 1901, Mortimer and Laura had a tremendous argument. Laura had been out and bought two bottles of whiskey that morning, and Mortimer wanted to take them away. They argued all day, and allegedly grappled with each other. Around 3pm, Laura went to her bedroom and Mortimer followed her. They struggled on the bed…
…and Laura died.
A doctor was sent for, although it is not clear who sent for him. He found Laura full clothed, and apparently uninjured. Mortimer was unable to speak, and rather than being arrested, was detained and sent to the asylum on 4th January 1902.
The inquest followed after Christmas, and was remarkable. The doctor reported that he had done a post-mortem, but no second doctor was present to confirm his evidence. I suspect the ‘post-mortem’ was superficial. He spoke of her lack of outward injury, the fact she was overweight, and that she died of “excitement and over-exertion acting on a heart weakened by alcoholism and temporary want of food.” In other words, Laura had died naturally, from drink.
Mortimer attended the inquest, but did not speak, as he was deemed too insane to be competent. He had told the doctor what had happened, up to the point of Laura dying, but could not speak about her actual death.
The coroner’s closing statement was awful:
“Deceased was unfortunately addicted to drink which he thought was on the increase among women. If a wife brought spirits home, he thought a husband was within his right in attempting to get them away from her. There had undoubtedly been a struggle but there was nothing to show that the husband had committed any criminal act. It was a pity the husband had not taken advantage of the new Act and had his wife locked up in a home.”
I cannot find the Act which the coroner references here, but the inference is clear: alcoholic women deserve death, or at the bare minimum, incarceration.
Mortimer’s abuse of his wife was glossed over, a deserved chastisement for a drunken woman. His madness seems rather convenient, but other newspaper sources reported that he had suffered hallucinations for years. A post-mortem appears to have been neatly side-stepped, so any internal or brain injuries poor Laura may have suffered went unreported. The coroner, unnamed in the newspapers, had the power to insist on a post-mortem, to question more witnesses about the Grays marriage, and to indict Mortimer for murder or manslaughter regardless of sanity.
He chose not to.
Laura’s death went uninvestigated.
Mortimer may or may not have murdered his wife, but he spent the rest of his life in asylums, at Bexley, Stone and finally, at Cane Hill in Croydon. He died there in 1914.
Laura Georgina Gray
1852-1901