Dr Arthur Fuller was called to the Old Bailey to testify about a fatal accident he attended on Maida Vale, around midday on Sunday, September 26, 1909. He said:
‘Birdseye was lying on his back in the roadway, quite dead. The injuries were consistent with the man having been run over by a motor bus’.
At the inquest, the driver of the bus, Sidney John Hughes was charged with manslaughter, ‘the killing and slaying’ of 59-year-old William Birdseye and bailed pending trial at the Old Bailey.
The Victim and the life of a costermonger
William was born and bred a Londoner. He lived at several addresses in St Marylebone and by the time he was 28, was working for himself as a costermonger, along with two younger brothers. Costermongers were a common sight on London streets. Their wares included fruit, meat, fish and vegetables sold from a basket or more commonly, a barrow pushed by hand or harnessed to a donkey. William Birdseye sold periwinkles and shrimps from a hand barrow.
Earlier, journalist Henry Mayhew had devoted pages in his mammoth work ‘London Labour and London Poor’ (1851) to the lives of costermongers. He interviewed them and described where they lived, with their distinctive language and their costume. He included tricks of the trade, such as hiding bad fish among the fresh, or filling baskets up with leaves, with only a thin layer of fruit on top.
It was a precarious and generally not very lucrative living. Not surprisingly, costermongers occupied rooms in some of the poorer districts of London, including the streets stretching from Lisson Grove to Edgware Road (an area that has experienced widescale redevelopment). Birdseye lived here at various addresses in Nightingale, Salisbury and Little Church Streets. In 1898, Nightingale Street was described as the worst in the district; the police recorded constant drunken rows, ‘the women worse than the men, costers’ barrows about’. While Little Church Street was ‘not so rough as Nightingale Street’ it had been a ‘great haunt’ of prostitutes. ‘For this reason, it was known to the youth of the neighbourhood as ‘Little Jampot Street’. Salisbury Street was lined with poor-quality shops.
The Funeral
William Birdseye was buried in Paddington Old Cemetery on Willesden Lane. A local newspaper reported:
‘The deceased was well known in Kilburn, where his stall was pitched for a great many years, and a large number of costermongers from Marylebone, Paddington, Kilburn, and Notting Hill attended the last rites. The funeral car was drawn by four horses, and three mourning carriages carried the mourners to the grave. The floral tributes were beautiful’.
William left £5 to his married daughter Alice Griffiths.
The Old Bailey Trial
The trial took place on October 16th. Alice told the court that her father lived with her and her husband at 6 Salisbury Street. It was his habit to wheel his barrow up the Edgware Road to his pitch outside The Bell public house where he’d been trading for around 20 years. The accident occurred between Elgin Grove and Sunderland Avenue where the road was wide and at the time, virtually traffic free. Several witnesses were called who had seen William on his way to Kilburn, pushing his barrow on the left-hand side of the road. The fact his barrow was hit by a bus and William was killed was undeniable, but how did it happen? Was Willam or his barrow hit first and did he turn into the path of the bus? Was he not concentrating or perhaps he was deaf and unable to hear the bus?
Alice was adamant her father was in very good health: ‘there was nothing wrong with his hearing or sight’. Coachman William Cox saw the bus send the barrow flying and believed the bus had hit the barrow’s wheel. After the impact the bus mounted the pavement and knocked down a lamppost before stopping. The barrow did not turn into the path of the bus; equally the bus didn’t skid nor swerve into the path of the barrow. Robert Ashton who was on the top deck of another bus going towards Marble Arch, said the bus had passed Birdseye before it hit the barrow.
This was contradicted by evidence given by a 16-year-old errand boy.
‘A motor bus was coming on; I did not see it until it came up behind the barrow and hit the man in the back. I am sure the man was going straight on and had not pulled (swerved) into the road’. When cross examined, the boy was adamant, ‘the bus did not first hit the barrow; it hit the man in the back’.
Henry Gilbert, the bus conductor, testified the bus was being driven with care and at a reasonable speed but didn’t see the accident. He heard ‘the rattling of the winkles as if marbles were being thrown on the pavement’ just before the bus left the road and hit the lamppost.
The medical evidence from Dr Fuller who had attended the scene of the accident described the multiple and horrific injuries that Birdseye sustained.
‘The spinal column was fractured and divided at the back of the neck; the heart was ruptured in every chamber, the lungs were broken and pierced by the ribs every one of which was broken and crushed. The liver was ruptured, and the covering of the brain was broken’.
Dr Fuller told the court that in his opinion Birdseye had first been hit and knocked down by the bus, after which the wheels passed over his body.
The driver of the bus was not called by the prosecution, but his statement was read out by Inspector Frank Pike and contradicted the other witnesses on several counts.
The son of a cab driver, 22-year-old Sidney John Hughes was fully qualified but had only recently started driving a motor bus for the London General Omnibus Company. The family had rented elsewhere in the neighbourhood but at the time of the crash, Sidney was living with his parents at 100 Glengall Road in Kilburn. When questioned soon after the accident, he said he thought the bus skidded into the barrow but did not run over Birdseye, who must have hit his head on the pavement. In his formal statement to the police, Sidney said he would have easily passed by Birdseye and his barrow, but for the fact William pulled out in front of the bus. Sidney took his right hand off the steering wheel to ring the bell to alert him, but the coster seemed to hear neither the bell nor the noise of the engine and continued turning out into the road. Sidney applied the foot brake, but the bus hit the barrow and Birdseye. Then the bus turned towards the pavement. Sidney believed the force of the impact knocked the wheel out of his hands. Previously he had mentioned ‘losing control’ of the bus; in his statement he said the collision impact would have locked the steering gear and that ‘momentarily he lost control’.
1905 LGOC omnibus
The Verdict
The police told the court that Sidney had ‘an unblemished character’ and in case there was any doubt, he had been ‘completely sober’ at the time of the accident. This closed the prosecution’s case, but as Sidney Hughes was called to the witness box to give his account of what happened, the jury stopped the trial, saying they did not want to hear any more evidence. The Foreman said, ‘we think the accused is not guilty’, and Sidney was duly discharged.
In 1911 Sidney was still living with his family in Glengall Road, no longer a bus driver but working as a motor engineer for a taxicab company.
Barrow boys in Kilburn in the 1950s
Today, street trading remains a feature of Kilburn life.
Comments
Post a Comment