In the Census of 1881, the Six Cottages Were Occupied As Follows
WINDOVER STREET IN 1881
The six cottages in Windover Street were described as ‘brick and tiled cottage tenements’. Each cottage had a front sitting room, and a kitchen with range, copper, sink and tap, and pantry. On the bedroom floor there were three rooms, one with a fireplace. Outside there was W.C. in a walled yard.[1] They were let to weekly tenants at five shillings a week.[2]
In the census of 1881, the six cottages were occupied as follows:
Number 1Elizabeth Cowdery29HeadFarm labourer
Her three children, her sister-in-law and a lodger.
Number 2Edward Smith23HeadLabourer
Sarah Smith23Wife
George Smith 1Son
Edward Rogers44LodgerSawyer
Ann Rogers43Lodger
Number 3James Hazel 60HeadBill Poster
Mary Hazel55Wife
Elizabeth Richards24Daughter
George Richards25Son-in-lawRag Sorter
Harry Richards 7Grandson
Number 4Job Rawlings44 HeadAsh Collector
Esther Rawlings36Wife
Henry Rawlings18SonAsh Collector
Four other sons and daughters. They named one of their daughters, Freedom. They probably regretted this, once she reached puberty.
Number 5Charles Stocker26HeadLabourer
Sarah Stocker29Wife
Robert Stocker 8Son
William Phillips21LodgerLabourer
Number 6Charles Hardy32HeadLabourer
Jane Hardy31Wife
Frances Hardy16DaughterGeneral Servant
Charles Hardy11Son
Alfred Hardy 9Son
Robert Moore23LodgerCarter
Mary Ann Snell20LodgerMachinist
Number OneElizabeth was married to Thomas Cowdery, who doesn’t appear to have been at home on the night of the census, and doesn’t appear to have been anywhere else either. Thomas was a Massagainian, the group that disrupted the Salvation Army in Basingstoke. In September 1881 he was imprisoned for ‘violent behaviour’ towards the Salvation Army.[3]
It is likely that Elizabeth was the Eliza Cowdery who convicted of being drunk and incapable in charge of a perambulator and a baby in Chapel Street in June 1884, as there is no one with a similar name and Elizabeth had given birth earlier that year. Sergeant Trodd told the court that she had been convicted of similar offences six times before, but the last was in 1879. Rather than pay the fine she opted to spend seven days in Winchester Gaol with hard labour.[4]
Number TwoIn 1880 Edward Rogers was charged with non-payment of maintenance towards the upkeep of his daughter, Elizabeth, in the Surrey Girls’ Reformatory School at Clapham.[5] On 22 March 1881 Ann Rogers and her son and daughter, William and Sarah, were arrested for being drunk and disorderly. In connection with a temperance meeting hosted in Basingstoke that week, a teetotal band was playing music in the Market Place. Or they were until the Rogers family turned up at started swearing at them. When William started ‘brandishing a stick in a threatening manner’, the bandsmen picked up their instruments and ran, taking refuge in the Corn Exchange.[6] In November 1882, Ann Rogers was fined 10s for stealing swedes. Superintendent Hibbert told the magistrates that the Rogers family were ‘a drunken lot’.[7]
Number ThreeDespite stiff opposition from other contenders, George Richards can claim the title of Town Drunk. His career appears to have started in August 1875, when he appeared before the town magistrates on two separate occasions that month for being drunk and disorderly.[8] He was still at it in 1885, and possibly for many years thereafter. When he spent a weekend in the cells in August 1885, Superintendent Hibberd discovered a bottle of brandy that his wife had smuggled in for him.[9]
In July 1880 he was charged with being drunk and riotous in Church Street, assaulting Superintendent Hibberd, and breaking the windows of the police cells. Hibberd told the magistrates that, while leading him though the passage to the cells,
‘… he laid hold of my arm with his teeth, and held on while we got him down the passage, till a piece of my coat sleeve came out, All this time he made use of the most disgusting language. We had to take his boots away. He had not been long in the cell before I heard the smashing of glass’.[10]
On another occasion, it appears that some misguided soul had given George a ticket for a temperance meeting held in the Corn Exchange on 24 April 1882 in the hope that he might benefit by attending. He arrived drunk, and after being refused admission, he insisted on being let into the room. The police were called, and had great difficulty taking him to the Police Station. He bit the Superintendent’s arm, and kicked PC Hurst severely. He was sentenced to one month’s imprisonment with hard labour.[11]
Number FourHenry Rawlings took an active part in the Massagainian disturbances, and was involved a fracas in the Royal Exchange on 28 May 1881 that was said to have been caused by Frances Jones and culminated in Henry and some others pushing P.C. Simpson round the bar.[12] Frances Jones was the bearer of the Massagainian, Ernest Fitzgerald’s, illegitimate daughter. She and Ernest entertained the Magistrates Court by exchanging insults when Ernest was summoned for non-payment of maintenance.[13]
In June 1881 Henry was fined five shillings for driving a cart full of ashes whilst fast asleep.[14] On the night of Tuesday, 6 December 1881, P C Hurst was called to the Rose in Brook Street where he found Henry and his mother, both of whom were drunk. Esther was using ‘the most indecent language’. She refused to leave the pub and ‘threatened to smash my bloody head’. After some time I got them up Church Street into Windover Street and into their house.[15]
On the night of Saturday 22 December 1883 Superintendent Hibberd went to the Anchor:
‘and found it in a most disorderly state. There were several men in the tap-room, among them Henry Rawlings, who was very drunk and stripped. His face was covered in blood, and the rooms and tables were strewed with beer and broken glass. The door leading into the passage had its glass panel smashed, and the broken glass lay on the floor. Mrs Thorne said Rawlings had broken the glass door’.[16]
When her husband died in 1882, Emily Thorne took over from him the licence of the Anchor in London Street.[17] This was a mistake as she was often drunk and incapable of controlling the customers. Superintendent Hibberd said that she took in the very worst of characters, people who were refused admittance at the lodging-house, and allowed them to get drunk.[18]
The elusive Frances Jones also gave her address as Windover Street in 1881, although she does not appear in the census (or, indeed any other census until she is recorded as living in a tent in Farleigh Wallop in 1901). As Frances had an illegitimate child in Baughurst in 1875, and Esther and Henry Rawlings were born in Baughurst (Job Rawlings was born in Tadley), it is likely from the Baughurst connection that she was living at number four.
Number FiveCharles Stocker was Ernest Fitzgerald’s poaching companion on at least two occasions, in 1878 and 1882.[19] His lodger, William Phillips, was one of the group that threatened to throw Captain Jordan of the Salvation Army into the River Loddon.[20] He was also involved in the fracas in the Royal Exchange (see Number Four above).[21] In 1885 he was imprisoned for two months with hard labour for poaching at Carpenter’s Down and returning the next day to beat up the gamekeeper.[22]
Number SixIn January 1880, Sergeant Waldren arrested Mary Ann Snell for being drunk and disorderly in Wote Street. Under the headline, A DANGEROUS WOMAN, the Hants and Berks Gazette reported:
‘On being taken into custody Mary Ann used her utmost endeavours to escape from the hands of the police, by kicking and biting and the other little aggressive practices resorted to by pugilistic women … In the scuffle this virago managed to bite a piece out of Waldren’s trousers, besides doing damage to other articles of his clothing’.[23]
In July that year, Sergeant Waldren was called to the Rose Inn to evict a drunk and disorderly woman who was refusing to leave. When he arrived, he found it was his old friend, Mary Ann. He asked her to leave to no effect, and had to forcibly eject her. ‘She then made use of very filthy language, and the more he persuaded her to go away, the more she abused him.’[24] The following month Charles Hyde of North Waltham charged her with stealing three half sovereigns from him. Hyde said he met Mary Ann at the Railway Arms on Wednesday evening (11 August). They went for a walk together. He was ‘a little the worse for liquor’ and dropped off to sleep. When he awoke, he found himself lying by a cart, and his money was missing. He walked back to town and met PC Trodd. They brought Mary Ann to the police station at about three in the morning. The superintendent’s wife, Mrs Hibberd, searched her, and found a shilling, a key, and a halfpenny. Mary Ann told Superintendent Hibberd that another young gentleman had given her the shilling. Sergeant Waldren searched her lodgings and found the half sovereigns in a shoe under the sofa.[25]
On Saturday, 1 January 1881 Mary Ann Snell, Robert Moore and Ernest Fitzgerald were charged with fighting in the taproom of the Ship. Accounts differ but one version is that the row started when Ernest Fitzgerald went into the Ship hawking nuts where Mary Ann and Robert Moore were drinking. When Fitzgerald asked Mary Ann whether she wanted to buy some nuts, she kicked him in the leg. There was an exchange of insults between Mary Ann and Fitzgerald, which came to blows, with Robert Moore taking Mary Ann’s part. PC Trodd was called to evict them from the pub, and found that all three were very disorderly and “the language was very bad indeed.” After he got them out, PC Trodd was talking to Fitzgerald in the Market Place. He told the court,
‘The woman Snell rushed at [Fitzgerald] and said, “If I could get at you I’d tear you to pieces”. Fitzgerald said, “Let me get at that bitch and you go away”. Snell picked up a stone and threw it down where I was standing. Moore rushed at Fitzgerald to strike him, and a regular melee took place. They were all drunk. It was sometime before I could restore order.’
The magistrates dismissed the case against Moore, but fined Mary Ann and Fitzgerald.[26]
In the second quarter of 1881 Mary Ann and Robert Moore were married.
On the night of Saturday 17 May 1884 at about 11 o’clock, P.C. Notton was on duty in London Street when he heard the sounds of a row near the Bell inn. He saw Mary Ann Moore quarrelling with several men, surrounded by a group of about 50 people who had stopped to enjoy the free entertainment. P.C. Notton said to her, ‘Take my tip, get on home quietly like a good woman before you get into trouble’. She replied, telling him in quite explicit terms where he could stick his tip. When Mr Cannon, the London Street butcher, tried to persuade her to go home, she told him in similarly explicit terms where he could stick his ‘bloody dead mutton’. Thomas Taphouse tried to calm things down by trying to persuade the man she was arguing with to go away. She rewarded his intervention by calling him ‘a little sod’, hitting him in the eye and kicking him in the privates. When the case came to court, the Chairman of the magistrates told her that there was no doubt that she was a very evil, wicked woman, and the only way they could punish her sufficiently was by sending her to Winchester for seven days hard labour for using obscene language, and a further seven days hard labour for the assault on Thomas Taphouse. According to the newspaper, ‘Defendant was removed from the Court in a very excited condition’.[27]
In the 1891 census, Robert and Mary Ann were living in one of the cottages at Brown’s farm, Heckfield, where Robert was employed as a carter. I don’t know where they were in 1901. In 1911 they were living at The Lodge, Yateley Hall, where Robert was described as a ‘Houseman on Farm’. I think they then moved to somewhere within the Staines registration district. A Mary A Moore’s death was registered there in 1918 aged 58, as was a Robert Moore in 1926, aged 69. It appears that they didn’t have any children, which was probably just as well.
[1] HRO, 10M57/SP262.
[2] HRO, 10M57/SP187.
[3] Hants and Berks Gazette, September 10, 1881.
[4] Hants and Berks Gazette, June 21, 1884.
[5] Hants and Berks Gazette, September 4, 1880.
[6] Hants and Berks Gazette, April 2, 1881.
[7] Hants and Berks Gazette, November 25, 1882
[8] Reading Mercury, August 7, and August 28, 1875.
[9] Hants and Berks Gazette, August 15, 1885.
[10] Hants and Berks Gazette, July 10, 1880.
[11] Hants and Berks Gazette, April 29, 1882.
[12] Hants and Berks Gazette, June 11, 1881.
[13] Hants and Berks Gazette, November 5, 1881.
[14] Hants and Berks Gazette, June 11, 1881.
[15] Hants and Berks Gazette, December 17, 1881.
[16] Hants and Berks Gazette, January 5, 1884.
[17] Hants and Berks Gazette, February 11, 1881.
[18] Hants and Berks Gazette, January 5, 1884.
[19] Hants and Berks Gazette, December 14, 1878 and November 11, 1882.
[20] Hants and Berks Gazette, April 9, 1881.
[21] Hants and Berks Gazette, June 11, 1881.
[22] Hants and Berks Gazette, September 5, 1885.
[23] Hants and Berks Gazette, January 3, 1880.
[24] Hants and Berks Gazette, July 17, 1880.
[25] Hants and Berks Gazette, August 14, 1880.
[26] Hants and Berks Gazette, January 8, 1881.
[27] HRO, 77M82/XP4; Hants and Berks Gazette, May 31, 1884.