Nymph of the pavé

Victorian Peterborough was an exciting place to live as industry arrived and the population mushroomed, but not everyone was benefitting from it. Women could not earn the same wages as men, or work in the same employment, so those without friends or family to support them were destined for the workhouse or had to top up their meagre wages by other means, including stealing and sex work. Reading like something from a Dickens novel, the lives of two sisters from Eye were quite extraordinary.

Growing Up in Eye
The Tingey family lived in the small village of Eye, to the east of Peterborough. Elijah Tingey was the head of the household and was married to Ann Roberts, who was 12 years his junior. They married at St Matthew’s church, Eye, in 1838 when Ann was only 20, and lived close to Elijah’s family. Eye was distinctly rural at the time, so it is no surprise that Elijah was identified as an agricultural labourer in the 1841 census. His small wages supported himself and Ann, along with baby George and his mother Mary, who was widowed and living with them. Three children followed George: Mary was born in 1842, Susan in 1844, and William in 1847.

Eye would have been a wonderful place to raise children at the time. The village was small and neither the railway nor commercial brick yards had arrived yet. The main sign of industry was the huge windmill that dominated the skyline for miles. The community was small and would have come together around the school, pubs, and churches. What was most exciting for the community at that time was that St Matthew’s Church was being rebuilt. The former building was past its prime and the Tingey’s would have watched in awe as the roofs and tower were constructed high above them. William’s birth was also exceedingly well-timed, and he was one of the first babies to be christened in the new building.

However, tragedy struck, and Ann died only nine months after William’s birth, being buried in the churchyard. This spelt disaster for Elijah who was left to raise four children on his own. He persevered, moving the family north to the tiny hamlet of Eye Green and hiring a housekeeper. Amazingly, all of the children were recorded as staying in school at this time. We would expect George, who was 12 by the 1851, census to have been working with his father to bring in much needed money, but he was at school in the village with his siblings. It is clear that Elijah wanted the best for his children and the school was a happy place for them.

This didn’t last though. Elijah became ill and without a support system he had no choice but to enter Peterborough Workhouse with his children. The workhouse was on Thorpe Road, near to the prison and set back from the road behind a long garden. By 1854 George’s name had been entered into the workhouse punishment book (now kept at Peterborough Archives) for absconding with his friend Thomas. The following year Elijah died leaving his four children to the mercy of the workhouse guardians. Unlike many of the people who died in the workhouse he was not buried in a pauper’s grave. He was returned instead to Eye and was, we can presume, buried with Ann in a shared grave.

The children were separated in the workhouse. George was housed in the men’s ward; William in the boys’; and Mary Ann and Susan in the girls’. The sisters formed an incredibly tight bond in that situation, one that would see them remain close for the rest of their lives.

Escape from the Workhouse
George left as soon as he was old enough, finding himself work in Raunds, south of Thrapston. He worked as an agricultural labourer, just as his father had done, and fell in love with Ann Saunders of Kimbolton. They married on Boxing Day 1859, not because it was romantic to marry at Christmas, but because it was one of the only holidays people would get in the year and there was a much better chance that family and friends could share their day with them. There was a really good chance that George wanted his siblings to be there and it’s possible that Mary Ann, who was 17 by then, made it to the wedding, but Susan and William did not.

What Susan did do was to make an audacious attempt to escape the workhouse on 29th December with two friends. The issue for the guardians wasn’t so much their escape but the fact they had escaped in workhouse clothing, which was theft. Two days later Susan was convicted of stealing workhouse clothing and sent to Peterborough Gaol for one month. As bad as the start to her year sounds, it was going to get much worse.

Mary Ann had already left the workhouse and had found herself work at the Slaters’ Arms beer house as a servant. The Slater’s Arms was on St Leonard’s Street, close to the common muckhill, which was part of Newtown and is now lost under carparks and Bourges Boulevard. Notably, it was very close to Peterborough North station and a short walk from the workhouse. It was run by Mary Ann Smith and her husband John, who was also working
as an agricultural labourer. Mrs Smith was a rather shrewd businesswoman and was earning money by renting out a house in the yard to a family and taking in lots of lodgers (12 in the 1861 census). Mary Ann might have appeared to be a servant to the casual punters in the Slaters’ Arms, but she was also working as a prostitute whilst living on the premises. It also appears that Mary Ann was being kept in a form of debt bondage (or was paid very badly) because she regularly had to sell her dress to a local pawnbroker to buy the things she needed, buying it back when she had enough money saved.

It certainly wasn’t just misfortune that led Mary Ann to the Slaters’ Arms. It was a well-known practice for brothel keepers to recruit friendless orphans from workhouses, encouraging them to live in their houses once they left the institution. Mrs Smith knew how to recruit girls who were desperate or naïve and trap them into enslaved sex work and Mary Ann was one of many girls who found their way to the Slaters’ Arms. A prostitute in debt bondage would almost immediately find herself in debt to her landlady, often before she’d even started to work. She would be forced to pay for her board and lodging, and for any drinks she consumed in the pub. She would also have given some of her income to her landlady too, meaning it was often impossible to escape from her keepers. A huge number of Victorian girls started working as servants in pubs and inns thinking they were taking honest work, only to find themselves trapped and without a route of escape.

The enslavement of girls in her house wasn’t Mary Smith’s only form of income from friendless young women. She was also involved in the forced migration of girls for sex work – what we might call trafficking today. For trafficked prostitutes the cost of the transport used to migrate them was often another debt they had to pay off too. When you add in the isolation of living in a new town without support, they were completely helpless. Mother Hainsworth was Mrs Smith’s Stamford counterpart, and she ran the Marquis of Granby on High Street St Martin’s with her husband. Their inn, on the Great North Road, was described as a ‘den of iniquity’ in
the local papers and was well-known for immoral behaviour. Mother Hainsworth would regularly travel to Peterborough to persuade girls, including those at the Slaters’ Arms, to travel with her to work at her inn in Stamford. One of these girls was Susan Tingey.

Susan had moved to the Marquis of Granby by March 1860 and had probably only been there for a few weeks. Just like her sister, she found herself living in debt bondage under the landlady’s rule. Susan was only 15, but the age of consent in 1860 was 13, so anything she did was entirely legal – it has never been illegal to work as a prostitute. She was confined to the inn except when she was entertaining and, probably worst of all for Susan, she was unable to see her sister.

Murder!
The reason we know all of these details is because of a murder that took place nearby and was carried out by a regular visitor to the Marquis of Granby. Henry Corby also lived on High Street St Martin’s. He was a master carpenter who had a taste for drink and gambling and found himself in debt. He attempted to burgle his wealthy neighbour Elizabeth Pulley, but it went wrong, resulting in her death, a death he staged to look like an accident.

The police were initially convinced her death was a tragic accident, so Corby felt able to sell the many items he had stolen from her house without suspicion. He used the money to pay off his debts and have a little spree. One of the places he went on that spree was the Slaters’ Arms, where he spent some time with Mary Ann, asking her to run away with him to London. He returned a few days later but Mary Ann had different plans – she wanted to see Susan. So Henry paid for Mary Ann’s dress at the pawnbrokers and for her ticket to return to Stamford with him.

At the Marquis he provided a huge joint of beef for the people there to share and gave Susan some boots (stolen from Miss Pulley). He also paid for them to visit the fair in Stamford.

The police caught up with Corby after he made a number of mistakes, and he was locked in Stamford Gaol. A short trial began in Stamford to ascertain if he should be tried for murder at Northampton County Gaol and two of the women who gave evidence were Mary Ann and Susan. Before the trial was concluded, however, Henry ended his life in Stamford Gaol, leaving a note apologising for his behaviour and warning his children to lead better lives than he had.

Mother Hainsworth and her husband were fined for running a brothel and Mr Hainsworth was told to keep his house in better order. Nobody was tried for trafficking because it wasn’t an offence. Nor was at an offence to keep women in debt bondage in their homes. Not until the White Slave Trade scandal of the 1880s would the law change to better protect young, friendless women from the evil intentions of unscrupulous individuals, and the age of consent was raised to 16.

Mrs Smith does not appear to have been charged with anything following the Corby case, but she was found guilty of running a brothel the following year. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12 months of hard labour.

Forced migration for sexual exploitation was not unusual in the Victorian period. There were countless stories of young women being moved both around the country and internationally to meet the demands of exploitative brothel keepers. The majority of these were to big cities and ports, but as the Henry Corby case exposed, it also occurred in smaller towns across short distances.

Back to Peterborough
Mary Ann and Susan returned to Peterborough. It is exceedingly likely that they were living together on Bruff’s Row, Eastfield Road. At this point Eastfield was still very rural with very few houses built. Their closest neighbours were on Burton’s Row (now on the corner of Cavendish Street) which was a notorious location for thieves and ne’er-do-wells.

The 1861 census shows Susan was lodging at number 3 with two other women, and a small family. It is unusual to find a woman labelled as a prostitute in the occupation section of the census (but there were some labelled as night walkers on Wellington Street a few years later!) and are usually described as lace makers, seamstresses, or other poorly paid piece work. Indeed, they may well have been engaged in that work, but it paid so badly that they had to supplement it very heavily. Susan was labelled as a lacemaker and another lodger, Sarah Jane, was a shoe binder.

Mary Ann wasn’t living with Susan on the night of the census because she was in London. She had gone to visit George Sculthorpe and had taken his four-year-old niece Lizzie with her. Love had obviously blossomed in the year since the Corby scandal and Mary Ann was obviously close enough with the Sculthorpes to be trusted to take little Lizzie on the train from Peterborough North to Kings Cross.

George was from Peterborough, but he had moved to London in search of work. He was only listed as a labourer in the census but by the time of George and Mary’s wedding in Marylebone in November 1861 he gave his occupation as an excavator. He was almost certainly excavating the first underground line in London, which was a very short walk from
his residence above a milk shop on Manning Street.

Mary was visibly pregnant at the time of her marriage to George and possibly in a desperate situation. At their wedding they both declared they were ‘of full age’ – over 21 – but the census only a few months earlier stated Mary was only 20 and George was 19! Their eldest child, Eliza, was christened in St John’s Peterborough in March 1862, which would have been very welcome affair for the family and friends who probably missed their London wedding, especially Susan.

Nymphs of the Pavé
1863 wasn’t a great year for Susan and she found herself involved in three criminal cases. In the first one Susan was labelled as a ‘nymph of the pavé’ (a polite term for prostitutes working the streets) along with Louisa Tooley and Elizabeth Teat. Susan and Louisa had been in a fight with Elizabeth, who had called the police. The judge was not impressed by their pointless quarrelling and fined Susan and Louisa.

Three months later Susan and Mary Ann were together on Narrow Street (now the leafy part of Bridge Street) where they fought another, unnamed, prostitute. For this they received heavy fines. It’s possible that Mary Ann was in Peterborough to encourage Susan to leave the city and move down to London with her, but Susan had some loose ends to tie up first.

In November Susan ended her relationship with a fishmonger called Duffield in a most spectacular way. Whilst he was away from the home they shared, she sold the entire contents
of the house for £6 and left the city! Duffield, who had a wife and family back in Hull, was incensed and demanded that Cockerill, Susan’s pawnbroker, paid him back for his property, which he refused. A jury agreed that he should be paid back, but no charges were ever placed on Susan’s shoulders.

Susan appears to have used that money to travel down to London and was probably there for the birth of Mary Ann’s son George. She was also much closer to a friend she had made in the workhouse, Elizabeth Drake. Susan and Elizabeth, known as Lizzie, were briefly in the workhouse together and it’s possible they survived the harsh realities of life in there by singing. Lizzie was a hugely talented singer and had also headed down to London with her family in the 1860s to work in the Music Halls. That was where Susan headed too, and with a lot of money in her pocket, and the ability to sing, she too ended up on stage in the Music Halls in London and around the UK.

Mary Ann’s life continued with the duties of a wife and mother, never finding her name in the papers again. Susan, however, had a taste for fame, and her life was about to get even more interesting…

Exploring the Lives of Victorian Prostitutes is available locally at Walkers in Stamford, Peterborough Museum and Waterstones, and available online at Amazon and from Pen and Sword direct.

All maps reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland https://maps.nls.uk/