Many of our blog stories have recalled the hardship and pain caused by the tough living conditions among Victorian working people in Kilburn and Willesden, where illness, poverty and poor housing were the norm for many streets. For some people, the festive season over Christmas made little difference to their lives and may even have made matters worse.
James and Ellen Doggrell
In December 1893 (George) James and Ellen (Eleanor) Doggrell were at 10 Steele Road off Acton Lane, close to the Grand Union Canal. They had no children and rented a single room on the ground floor of the small terrace house which has since been demolished.
James was born in 1858 in Bath, Somerset. His father George was an agricultural labourer and he had moved his family to Acton by 1881, to a district generally referred to as ‘Lower Place’. It’s hard to imagine Willesden or Acton and Harlesden as rural neighborhoods, with country lanes and fields divided by hedges or ditches. But that was the case in the 1880s and 90s before widescale-building got underway, although a canal and several railway lines had already crossed the district on their way to central London. So, George was still working on the land, as a cowman, and living in a farm cottage. Much of the contemporary agriculture round London was devoted to pasture, feeding herds of cattle en route to market, or used as dairy farms.
In 1881, James was living and working near his parents, as a general servant and potman at the Grand Junction Arms, a pub that still stands by the bridge carrying Acton Lane over the Canal. These neighbourhoods often felt like no-man’s-land, on the fringes of London and at a distance from police protection, as eloquently reported by The Morning Leader:
‘Lower Place is a neglected little hamlet, a mile and a half from Willesden Junction, lying amid a stretch of open country by the side of the canal and its dwellers are the helots (slaves) of our civilization – the men and women who work to keep this London of ours fairly sweet and clean. The women work in the laundries around; the men are labourers employed by the large dust contractors who have premises in the vicinity and a few are brickmakers. They live two and three families in one house’.
Ellen’s parents were Ann and Henry Hutt, and he too was an agricultural worker living and working in Acton as a herdsman. James Doggrell married Ellen in 1890, the ceremony taking place at St Jude’s church in Lancefield Street, Kensal Green (since demolished). At the time they were both living at 119 Albert Street off Salusbury Road, south of the main railway line to Birmingham. Their marriage certificate records her as a widow employed as a laundress while he was then working as a carman. She signed the document, and he made his mark.
Christmas 1893
Ellen’s parents later described the Doggrell marriage as an unhappy one, blighted by indolence, arguments, and drink. By late 1893, James and Ellen had lived at No.10 Steele Road for about a year. Early on the morning of 27 December, the police were called to the house where they found the couple in their room, lying on the floor with their throats cut. A large butcher’s knife lay beside them. Ellen was by the bed, James was part in and part out of the door. Ellen was dead, but due to a less severe wound and prompt action on the part of Inspector Holton, who wound a sheet round James’ neck, his life was saved, and he was taken to the nearby Willesden Cottage Hospital. James told Mrs Bell and the police that Ellen had cut her throat and when he saw her, he cut his.
Illustration of the scene
Christmas had dawned on an estranged couple. James quit his job the week before and left the marital home a few days before the 25th but didn’t go far, moving in with his mother and brother at No.11 Steele Road. Having spent the day with her mother, Ellen went to the Grand Junction Arms on Boxing Day evening with several friends, including Emma Gregory who lived in the next road. Unknown to Ellen, James had returned to No.10 in her absence, broken open their door and gone to bed. Ellen returned from the pub around 11.30pm.
.jpg)
The Inquest
At the inquest on Friday 29th, her mother told the Coroner’s court that that it was ‘an old story’ for Ellen to declare she wanted to part from James but she had been more than usually adamant about this on the Tuesday, saying she intended to keep James out of No.10. Initially it seemed Ellen didn’t mind James being in the house when she returned from the Grand Junction Arms, but a lodger on the ground floor next to the Doggrell’s room, said he had heard Ellen trying to refuse James entry, ‘You shan’t come in here you ***’, then an argument and the sound of breaking crockery. There were further disturbances during the night.
Emma Gregory was called to give evidence about Ellen’s state of mind and said she had little money and was low in spirits. Unable to work for some time now, she was in pain, suffering from a uterine disease or growth. Her father later confirmed Ellen had been attending hospital for a year.
Despite what the Hutts had said, Mrs Bell claimed Doggrell was not a drunk nor was Ellen; earlier she said Ellen had never threatened suicide to her or complained about her husband.
James did not appear at the inquest. The divisional police surgeon, Dr John Burns Gibson, told the court that James’ wound did not sever any large blood vessels, hence his survival even a few hours after the event, but Ellen’s was a very deep and damaging wound. Doctor Gibson concluded by saying he was unable to say if Ellen’s death was suicide or murder.
The jury returned an open verdict, adding that the evidence was not sufficiently conclusive:
‘Death from shock from a wound in the throat but the jury are unable to state how the wound was inflicted’. Despite James’ statement that Ellen had cut her throat and he then cut his, some press reports speculated the reverse was the case, that Ellen had cut James’s throat and then committed suicide.
The Funeral
In dismal snowy weather on the afternoon of Tuesday 5 January, Ellen was buried at Willesden New Cemetery at the expense of the parish authorities. The weather and the fact there had been some confusion over the date, with rumours that the funeral happened the previous day, led to just a handful of mourners at the grave side.
James Doggrell
The reason for James’ absence from the Coroner’s court was not only his throat injury, but the fact he was diagnosed after being admitted to hospital, with flu and typhoid. He also had a head wound, saying Ellen had hit him with the coal tongs. He appeared in Harlesden Magistrates Court in February, where a doctor at the Willesden Cottage Hospital said James had been suffering from acute mania at the time his throat was cut, presumably due to his fever. He was remanded and when he was again brought up before the magistrates, James was charged with Ellen’s murder and with attempting to commit suicide. At the time, suicide was a crime.
The Old Bailey trial
In March James was committed for trial when he denied murder but admitted attempting suicide. The case was heard at the Old Bailey on 2 April. Several witnesses who had given evidence before the magistrates appeared again, including Ellen’s parents, Emma Gregory and the divisional police surgeon. As before, a picture emerged of a couple sometimes estranged or the worse for drink, maybe quarrelling but struggling to cope with illness on a low, erratic income.
Medical opinion was all important in determining the outcome of this trial. James had said that Ellen had fallen asleep in a chair. Then he saw her cut her throat and he had called for Mrs Bell before cutting his own throat. But the two doctors who gave evidence disagreed with James’ version of events, and it looked as if James would be found guilty and face the death penalty.
Dr Gibson told the Judge that a postmortem of Ellen’s wound revealed a deep cut, extending from her windpipe backwards for about four and a half inches to near the spine, with a fine shallow cut on the right. He described the movement of the knife as from behind, forward and down and that it began ‘with something like a stab’. He said Ellen was not in a chair, rather she was lying as found when the wound was inflicted, as there was no blood on her front. He was now definite in his conclusions: ‘I do not think the facts I observed are compatible with suicide, I exclude altogether the possibility of suicide, I have always been of that opinion’. He did, however, agree that James had cut his own throat.
Dr Thomas Stevenson, Lecturer on Medical Jurisprudence at Guy’s Hospital, was in broad agreement with Gibson. ‘Taking into consideration the position of the woman, I should not expect her to fall backwards on the floor if she was sitting in the chair. I think it is highly improbable that the wound was self-inflicted’.
The verdict
Despite the doctors’ joint opinion, after only a 10-minute absence, the jury found James not guilty of Ellen’s murder, but guilty of attempting to commit suicide. The Judge took into consideration that James had been in prison for some time and sentenced him to a further six weeks in Pentonville.
Why did the jury decide in James’ favour? It seems likely they were influenced by the fact Dr Gibson had previously said Ellen might have committed suicide. Also, by the testimony from friends and family that Ellen was ill and depressed, she had tried to separate from James on several occasions and attempted to turn her husband away from No.10. As for James’ statements that Ellen was seated when she died, the jury may have decided this was a delusion caused by fever or his head wound.
We have failed to find James Doggrell after his release from prison. There is an online report in a family tree of his death in 1920 in Harlesden, but we cannot verify that. However, he may have changed his name, so the death would not registered under Doggrell. It wasn’t that hard to adopt a new identity at the time.
As a reporter in the Willesden Chronicle later wrote: ‘there is a peculiar sadness in tragedies of this sort, resulting from domestic trouble’.
Comments
Post a Comment