Crime City: Manchester's Victorian Underworld by Joseph O'Neill Page B
Authors: Joseph O'Neill
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terror of being left naked in the streets. A variation on this was robbing children of the meals they were taking to a working parent. In certain parts of the city it was quite common for gangs of youths to rob working men of their sandwiches. Additionally, many of those employees who stole from their bosses were young men.
Yet crime was by no means the preserve of the young. Many criminals continued to offend well into their seventies. Perhaps the best example of the habitual, incorrigible criminal of this period was Mary Ann Williamson who, by the 1880s, had racked up 104 convictions for theft, prostitution and drunkenness. Ann Welsh, Ann Davis – who crowned her criminal career by murdering her husband Paul Davis in 1885 – and Annie Kelly also made regular appearances at the police courts, interrupted only by frequent terms of imprisonment. All three were inept offenders, incapable of working for a living. They operated at the bottom of the criminal hierarchy.
At the other extreme were the cracksmen, the elite of Manchester’s criminals.
5
Criminals
Cracksmen
He hurtled down the Victoria Station footbridge and dived over the parapet into the filthy waters of the River Irwell. His pursuers, panting in the warm night air, peered down into the darkness. Bob’s legs disappeared into the tunnel running under Chetham’s School, Walker’s Croft and Hunt’s Bank and emerged where the Irwell meets the Irk, near Moreton Street, Strangeways. It was a feat worthy of any circus acrobat and contributed greatly to Bob Horridge’s mythical status among Manchester cracksmen.
Cracksmen, or burglars, were the aristocracy of the criminal world. They were well dressed and walked with a swagger, envied by the criminal fraternity, loathed by the police who knew that short of catching them in the act they were unlikely to get a conviction. For the best burglars immediately converted their haul into cash and were rarely found with anything to link them to their crimes. Sometimes referred to as ‘attic thieves’ or ‘garret thieves’, a reference to their preferred method of entry, the best specialised in fashionable houses in the most desirable suburbs. The dining hour, between seven and eight in the evening, when family and servants were most likely to be at supper on the ground floor, was when most struck. No such careful timing was needed with empty or closed-up houses, lock-up shops and warehouses. Information about the layout of a target was, however, always valuable as it reduced the considerable risk that was an unavoidable part of even the most carefully planned burglary.
Providing such information was the role of the ‘putter-up’, who watched houses and cultivated servants for details of the domestic routine. A cooperative window-cleaner, glazier, plumber or decorator was likely to have valuable information about the layout of prospective targets. It is hardly surprising that the victims of a burglary invariably suspected servants and tradesmen. No one did more to pollute the image of the domestic servant than the ghoulish Kate Webster. A thief, drunkard and abandoned wife, she had a volcanic temper that erupted into frenzied violence. Having failed as a thief, when she was thirty she turned her hand to domestic service in London. Her unsuspecting employer, Mrs Julia Thomas, was a woman in every respect, the antithesis of her employee. Even Mrs Thomas’s closest friend conceded that she was a stern taskmaster. In fact, she delighted in humiliating servants. Before long, her mistress’s vitriolic tongue lashed Kate into a fever of seething hatred. Yet, though she managed to keep her trembling fists under her apron, Kate’s mask of deference cracked. What Mrs Thomas saw through the split put her in fear of her life.
Terrorised in her own home, she told Kate to get out. The maid implored a few days’ grace: surely Mrs Thomas would not see her on the street? The employer relented – but only two days.
Yet crime was by no means the preserve of the young. Many criminals continued to offend well into their seventies. Perhaps the best example of the habitual, incorrigible criminal of this period was Mary Ann Williamson who, by the 1880s, had racked up 104 convictions for theft, prostitution and drunkenness. Ann Welsh, Ann Davis – who crowned her criminal career by murdering her husband Paul Davis in 1885 – and Annie Kelly also made regular appearances at the police courts, interrupted only by frequent terms of imprisonment. All three were inept offenders, incapable of working for a living. They operated at the bottom of the criminal hierarchy.
At the other extreme were the cracksmen, the elite of Manchester’s criminals.
5
Criminals
Cracksmen
He hurtled down the Victoria Station footbridge and dived over the parapet into the filthy waters of the River Irwell. His pursuers, panting in the warm night air, peered down into the darkness. Bob’s legs disappeared into the tunnel running under Chetham’s School, Walker’s Croft and Hunt’s Bank and emerged where the Irwell meets the Irk, near Moreton Street, Strangeways. It was a feat worthy of any circus acrobat and contributed greatly to Bob Horridge’s mythical status among Manchester cracksmen.
Cracksmen, or burglars, were the aristocracy of the criminal world. They were well dressed and walked with a swagger, envied by the criminal fraternity, loathed by the police who knew that short of catching them in the act they were unlikely to get a conviction. For the best burglars immediately converted their haul into cash and were rarely found with anything to link them to their crimes. Sometimes referred to as ‘attic thieves’ or ‘garret thieves’, a reference to their preferred method of entry, the best specialised in fashionable houses in the most desirable suburbs. The dining hour, between seven and eight in the evening, when family and servants were most likely to be at supper on the ground floor, was when most struck. No such careful timing was needed with empty or closed-up houses, lock-up shops and warehouses. Information about the layout of a target was, however, always valuable as it reduced the considerable risk that was an unavoidable part of even the most carefully planned burglary.
Providing such information was the role of the ‘putter-up’, who watched houses and cultivated servants for details of the domestic routine. A cooperative window-cleaner, glazier, plumber or decorator was likely to have valuable information about the layout of prospective targets. It is hardly surprising that the victims of a burglary invariably suspected servants and tradesmen. No one did more to pollute the image of the domestic servant than the ghoulish Kate Webster. A thief, drunkard and abandoned wife, she had a volcanic temper that erupted into frenzied violence. Having failed as a thief, when she was thirty she turned her hand to domestic service in London. Her unsuspecting employer, Mrs Julia Thomas, was a woman in every respect, the antithesis of her employee. Even Mrs Thomas’s closest friend conceded that she was a stern taskmaster. In fact, she delighted in humiliating servants. Before long, her mistress’s vitriolic tongue lashed Kate into a fever of seething hatred. Yet, though she managed to keep her trembling fists under her apron, Kate’s mask of deference cracked. What Mrs Thomas saw through the split put her in fear of her life.
Terrorised in her own home, she told Kate to get out. The maid implored a few days’ grace: surely Mrs Thomas would not see her on the street? The employer relented – but only two days.
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