The Tin Ticket: The Heroic Journey of Australia's Convict Women (23 page)

Holiday merriment was the last thing on Ludlow’s mind. On the run with her eight-year-old, she lacked the street skills Agnes and Janet had relied on for food and shelter those many nights in Glasgow. With little money in her possession, choices were few. Perhaps they stayed with friends or relatives, moving from place to place every night or two so as not to get caught. Mother and daughter couldn’t stay in one location very long because harboring a fugitive might endanger those who, out of kindness, had provided a temporary safe haven.

For nine days, the pair somehow managed to remain in hiding and elude arrest by London’s bobbies. The widow from the country had lived in the city only nine months and rarely navigated London’s seamy street circus. Options for a bed for the night quickly wore thin. As what little money she had started to run out, Ludlow pondered the prospect of begging on the street in the midst of one of the coldest winters on record.

She was probably searching for a boardinghouse when a bobby wearing an oilskin cape grabbed her by the arm. On Tuesday, December 11, 1838, he delivered the still neatly dressed servant for processing at the Bow Street station house. This was the first stop for prisoners who would be tried in London’s Central Criminal Court, also known as the Old Bailey, for the street on which it is located. Mrs. Tedder was ordered to appear before Judge Baron Parke the week before Christmas. There would be no cooking of the holiday goose this year. For the next six days, she awaited trial in a Newgate holding cell with Arabella as well as dozens of women accused of various crimes.

The following Monday, the seventeenth of December, police officer Richard Lesley ushered mother and child into a packed Central Criminal Court. The wind whistled across the courtroom. Although it was the middle of winter, the windows were wide open because officials feared catching diseases from the prisoners. As the accused approached the bench, jurisprudence seldom smelled sweet. “Juries, counsel and judges chewed on garlic, citrus peel, cardamom and caraway to prevent infection from the prisoners’ breath.”
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Property owners, all men, formed the grand jury that would decide Ludlow’s fate. After swearing them in, Judge Parke rambled on about the common law of England, liberty, and morality under the reign of Her Majesty Queen Victoria. It was the kind of public spectacle that appealed to sordid sensibilities. The court’s galleries were filled with the curious, who paid a small fee to catch a view of the upper-crust jury, but “what they were really waiting for was the thrill of seeing felons in irons stumble up from the gaol and tell their stories.”
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It was all a rather tedious affair until the accused entered the front of the courtroom to stand behind the bar of a raised platform known as “the dock.” Once the court officer motioned the gallery into silence, the sound of light footsteps resonated through the drafty hall. Unless a female spectator attended the session, Ludlow would have been the only woman in the room.

The accused stood alone under a sounding board used to amplify her voice from the prisoner’s dock.
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Herbs lay strewn across the ledge before her as a means of disinfecting whatever the prisoners touched. There were no public defenders, so only the affluent were guaranteed legal counsel.

Mrs. Tedder stepped forward to raise her manacled hand before the clerk, who asked: “How will you be tried?” She replied as she’d been told at the police station: “By God and by my country.”
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As was tradition, a visibly bored Judge Baron Parke inquired, “Have you any witnesses that will speak to your character?” The only answer that might have conveyed a lighter sentence was: “Yes, sir, I have a letter from my vicar speaking to my good character.” Without that, there was no hope for her acquittal. Ludlow was doomed.

The prisoner stood directly before her accuser. Barrister Skinner was the first to rise from the witness box. With well-practiced intonation and outrage, the professional member of the bar testified: “The prisoner was in my service as cook since March last. I missed fourteen forks and eleven silver spoons, on Saturday night, the 1st of December, after the prisoner and her daughter were gone to bed. Her daughter had the charge of the plate, but she had access to it. On the Sunday night her daughter came to me, and said her mother would drive her mad. I went down into the kitchen, and asked the prisoner what was the matter. She [Ludlow] said it was about the plate that was missing. I asked her where it was. She said she had pawned it, but she would get it back on Monday morning. I had said nothing to induce her to confess.”
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When pawnbroker Wentworth took the stand, Ludlow knew she was done for. His testimony was short and damning: “I have a bread basket, pawned on the first of December by the prisoner. This is the duplicate I gave for it. I have also eleven spoons, pawned by her at different times.”
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As Christmas approached, judges were sometimes inspired by the season of giving and imposed lighter sentences. The majority administered “justice” with casual indifference and were not held to consistency in punishment guidelines. Ludlow’s luck had run out. Judge Parke was not inclined to be merciful. Neither was the jury. The Crown demanded efficiency, so trials were conducted at lightning speed. Most sentences were preordained. On average, it took eight and a half minutes to go from accused to condemned.
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Once the evidence was presented, the all-male jury didn’t even bother to leave the courtroom. They huddled together and went through the motions of conferring from their box. In truth, many jurors cared very little about the law and simply followed the foreman’s judgment. Some read newspapers during the proceedings, while others dozed politely, with their chins resting on stiffened shirt collars.

The foreman for the fifth jury announced a swift verdict for Ludlow Tedder: “Guilty. Stealing on the first of December two spoons, value one shilling, and one bread basket, value ten shillings, the goods of Fitzowen Skinner, her master.”
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With a resounding thump of his gavel, Judge Parke pronounced the sentence: “Transported for Ten Years.” Amid the public buzz from the galleries, he took a moment and adjusted the great white wig that fell clumsily over his shoulders. But what was to be done with the child? Perhaps because it was nearly Christmas, Judge Parke informed Ludlow she would be allowed to take Arabella with her. She looked at her little girl and signed her name on the Sessions Papers. At least they would be together.

A Newgate Christmas

British justice was a hodgepodge of haphazard sentencing that thrived on corruption, prejudice, incompetence, and bribery. On the streets, the police were commonly in cahoots with the criminals. A cash payoff or sexual favor often bought a look in the other direction instead of an arrest. Judges were observed giving preferential treatment to the police and the pretty girls on trial. Inside the courtroom, gaolers, clerks, ushers, police sergeants, and barristers greased one another’s palms to get what they wanted. If a policeman didn’t like a certain lawyer, he could have him blacklisted and barred from entry to court. Barristers were busy bribing court clerks, who solicited business for them from the prisoners’ loved ones. Families with no savings were encouraged to pay the lawyer with wedding rings or family heirlooms, which could be pawned. Many attorneys barely understood the law and entered the profession as a way of earning easy money. Onetime barrister Sir William Gilbert, who became a famousnineteenth-century playwright, made this observation about the Central Criminal Court: “There are, among the thieves’ lawyers, men of acute intelligence and honourable repute, and who do their work extremely well; but the majority of them are sneaking, underhand, grovelling practitioners, who are utterly unrecognized by men of good standing.”
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Sir William went on to write: “Probably the first impression on the mind of a man who visits the Old Bailey for the first time is that he never saw so many ugly people collected in any one place before. . . . The jury have a bull-headed look about them that suggests that they have been designedly selected from the most stupid of their class; the reporters are usually dirty, and of evil savour; the understrappers have a bloated, overfed, Bumble-like look about them, which is always a particularly annoying thing to a sensitive mind; and the prisoner, of course, looks (whether guilty or innocent) the most ruffianly of mankind, for he stands in the dock.”
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Dressed in a velvet cape held by gold chains, the Lord Mayor Samuel Wilson was driven to the Old Bailey from his town palace a few blocks away. He attended the court proceedings in his role as chief magistrate for the city, but his primary focus attended to pomp and circumstance. Common thieves like Ludlow were simply another London nuisance to be disposed of in the most expeditious fashion. At three o’clock precisely, the Lord Mayor paused the session and retired to consume a lavish banquet in his private dining room inside the courthouse. Seated on leather chairs around a mahogany table, mayor and judges were served foie gras, turtle soup, haunch of venison, and filet of pheasant.

As his guests relaxed next to the mosaic-tiled fireplace, their feet resting on the sumptuous Turkish carpet, they sipped wine from the Lord Mayor’s private vault and smoked cigars. In less grand settings, jurors, barristers, and witnesses drank heavily in nearby pubs. British writer, lawyer, and chaplain Martin Madan noted that it often took an hour for a judge to bring order to the court when so many returned drunk. In the summer, it was even worse: “The heat of the court, joined to the fumes of the liquor, has laid many an honest juryman into a calm and profound sleep, and sometimes it has been no small trouble for his fellows to jog him into the verdict—even where the wretch’s life has depended on the event!”
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Ludlow’s trial took place late in the day amid this drunken chaos. Such timing undoubtedly worked to her disadvantage. For the judges weighted down by heavy wigs and thick robes, it was just another boring day, as a blur of humanity briefly stood before them. Sleepy from their ample meals, they prepared for the grind of the afternoon session. Beneath the courtroom’s four brass chandeliers, 155 trials took place that day. Ludlow’s was just one of many.

On this December 17, glaring inconsistencies were recorded, typical for the Old Bailey. Depending on the judge, the jury, and who the prisoner might know, people convicted of similar crimes received radically different punishments. Policeman Henry Jones stole a goose. He was pronounced not guilty despite being caught with the bird in his kitchen. Young Benjamin Lambden pleaded hunger for his crime of stealing a sheep: “being determined to have a turnip, or something to eat, but did not get it, and found the sheep. . . .”
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He was punished with ten years’ transport.

Twelve-year-old David Barry stole six knives from a shop. The judge sentenced him to a whipping and one month imprisonment in Newgate. William Singleton, fifteen, was also whipped and confined six days for stealing a few pieces of beef and pork. Stripped to the waist, the boys were flogged up to fifty strokes with a leather whip. Husband and wife Francis and Ellen Morris, both twenty-two, stole a watch from a man who had fallen asleep on a bench. Ellen pleaded not guilty and was set free, but the judge imposed a sentence of ten years’ transport on Francis. He would never see his wife again.

Londoner George Bird picked a handkerchief from the pocket of an ironmonger. Once in custody, he lashed out at the officer who arrested him. Sealing his fate, George’s indictment record was marked by an obelisk (†), indicating “that a prisoner is known to be the associate of bad characters.”
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Guilt by association carried a heavy burden for those on trial. At thirteen, it was his good fortune not to be hanged and instead sentenced to ten years’ transport. Under the “Bloody Code,” earlier judges had sentenced pickpockets to death.

When eighteen-year-old Princess Victoria became Queen of England in 1837, the royal duty of presiding over executions was transferred immediately to the House Secretary for the sole reason that he was a man. She was considered too delicate for the task. By 1838, execution was limited to those who committed murder, arson, or violent crime. Still, every Monday morning a crowd gathered in front of Newgate to watch the spectacle of death. “Publicity was traditionally an essential feature of this punishment, serving to shame the offender and deter others from committing the crime.”
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On the Sunday before execution day, the condemned listened to a long sermon in the prison chapel and gathered around the very coffins that would lower them into the ground. “The Old Bailey, although extremely inconvenient, is beautifully compact. You can be detained there between the time of your committal and your trial—you can be tried there, sentenced there, condemned-celled there, and comfortably hanged and buried there, without having to leave the building, except for the purpose of going on to the scaffold.”
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Most of those tried at the Old Bailey had committed petty theft, adding hundreds daily to the 162,000 convicts ultimately transported to Australia. Detailed records kept by the British government indicate that youthful boys were more likely to be transported for minor crimes than older prisoners who committed similar offenses.
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