A Young Father, or, Shocking Immorality in the Pentonville Road

Nineteenth-century maid. Image in Robert Brown The Story of Africa and its Explorers (1896) page 344.

On Wednesday the 23^rd of March 1870 regular visitors to the Thames Police Court in Arbour Street in Stepney witnessed the sadly common sight of a young woman bringing a summons for support against the father of her illegitimate child. Like Mr Franklin Lushington, the attending magistrate, they no doubt sat back waiting for the usual story of seduction and betrayal, particularly when the twenty-year old mother explained that her lover was the son of the household where she was employed as a maid of all work.

Domestic service was the main occupation of uneducated working-class girls in the Victorian period. Most were badly paid and overworked, and many found themselves vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Girls as young as twelve might work as live-in maids, and find themselves at the mercy of unscrupulous male employers who assumed a right to both domestic and sexual services. Failure to please an employer could result in summary dismissal, and, if no “character” or reference was forthcoming, a girl would find it difficult to get another job, and might be forced into prostitution.

Up to a point this story illustrates nothing unusual. The girl in question, Jemima Watts, gained nothing from giving satisfaction. Her lover, William Lewis Barrett, suffered no more than a blip in an otherwise successful life and career. But the story is not quite as straightforward as it might seem. Even though the age of consent was twelve, and would remain twelve until 1885, and even though at the time of conception Jemima was eighteen, the disturbing fact is that her lover was not yet fourteen.

AN IMPURE FAMILIARITY
Jemima Watts was born in Limehouse on the 12^th of December 1850. She was the youngest of eight siblings. Her father, a warehouseman, died when she was only two. In 1861 the family he left behind were living at 7 James Street: his widow was a laundress, the daughters worked as a seamstress and vest maker, and the sons were a labourer, a butcher and a sailmaker. But by the time Jemima was fifteen, in 1866, her mother had also died. And it may have been this second death that pushed Jemima into the life of a live-in maid.

Weatherboard houses at the east end of Poplar High Street. Photograph dated 1899. © London Picture Archive

The Barrett family were more comfortable than the Watts. William Barrett came from fairly humble stock as the son of a Spitalfields carpenter, but he had done well for himself as a shoe and bootmaker. In 1861, when he was thirty-one, he was employing three men, three women and three children, and when our story begins in 1869 he had a shop at 213 Poplar High Street, another at 15 New King Street in Deptford, and yet another at 190 Pentonville Road in Islington, where the family lived. The Pentonville Road property had a shop front with a plate glass window on the ground floor, and eight rooms. The household consisted of Barrett, his wife Louisa, who was thirty-three, and three sons. Of these the eldest, William, was about thirteen and a half. William’s brothers Ward and Sydney were nine and four respectively.

One cannot say with certainty when the affair started. But by about March or April 1869 Jemima and William had started sleeping together. Another three months had passed before Mrs Barrett noticed that William was spending a lot of time in the kitchen, and began to suspect what she described as an “impure familiarity” between her son and the maid.

Factories and workshops in New King Street in Deptford. Photograph dated 1894. © London Picture Archive

In court Mrs Barrett related how at some point in the middle of May she had a strange dream about the maid. On waking she got out of bed, and by the light of a candle she went to Jemima’s bedroom, only to see her son climbing in through an open window for some impure familiarities. I have to admit that I do not know the layout of 190 Pentonville Road. But servants often slept in basements—either in the kitchen or next to it—and so William may have climbed in from outside. We may be pretty certain that Jemima would have been immediately dismissed without a reference.

A HANGING OFFENCE
Jemima may not have known that she was expecting: she was only about two months gone. In 1869 the only “test” of pregnancy was cessation of periods, and even that was not always conclusive, as undernourished working-class girls might not have been able to menstruate, or might have had irregular cycles. Nor is it impossible that Jemima did not know how babies were conceived. Even if she did know, she and William might have thought that he was too young to get her pregnant. Contemporary newspaper reports expressed not only disgust but also surprise at William’s youthful virility. “A Young Father—shocking immorality!” fumed one headline. “Juvenile precocity!” expostulated another. “A youthful father at fourteen!” spluttered a third.

Whatever she knew, or however she found out, Jemima gave birth to a daughter, Nellie, on the 28^th of December 1869. (Thus the newspaper reports. The baptismal certificate has the 20^th.) Unlike many young women, Jemima was fortunate in having the support of a married older brother. He was William Thomas Watts, and his wife was Matilda. They lived in the part of Ratcliff that lay above the Commercial Road, and Jemima lodged with them on and off over the next few years. The baby was baptised at St James Church in Ratcliff, and her parents were identified as William Watts, bootmaker, and Jemima Watts.

Little Nellie or little Louise? Neither, sadly. German postcard printed in Saxony.

Now, Matilda took it upon herself to visit Mrs Barrett to discuss her son’s wickedness, and presumably to ask for financial support for little Nellie. When she arrived she found that Mrs Barrett had a new-born of her own, a daughter Louise. William refused to speak to Matilda, and his mother tried to wash her hands of the matter by saying that she could not help it—presumably her son’s behaviour—and that the best thing would be to hang the child. The child that needed to be hanged might have been her errant son, but equally it might have been her innocent granddaughter.

When the direct approach failed to produce results, the Watts decided that either William Barrett or his comfortably-off family must contribute to little Nellie’s upkeep. Hence their appearance at the police court. Jemima gave her evidence, including the detail that Master William regularly made love to her on Sunday evenings. And where were the rest of the family? Could they have gone to church? It was made clear that William had been her first lover, and there was no suggestion that this was not so.

Charles Young, the solicitor for the defence, said that it was useless to make an order against the boy, as he was still at school, and that school was the best place for him to be. The judge, after listening to Jemima’s story, which was corroborated by Mrs Barrett’s evidence, made up his mind that William was indeed the father, and that he must pay one shilling and sixpence a week towards the child’s upkeep, and fourpence costs. As one and six was not exactly a lavish sum of money, Jemima was obliged to carry on working.

Horse-drawn tram passing the old entrance to Brockwell Park in Norwood Road. Photograph dated c.1893. © London Picture Archive

NINE IN ALL
The Barretts were not alone in feeling the impact of the case. A near neighbour, Mr James John Barrett of 130 Pentonville Road, wrote an angry letter to the Clerkenwell Gazette to complain that his confectionary business was suffering. People assumed that he was related to William Lewis Barrett, and he wanted to make it clear that this was not the case.

No doubt to escape this local bad feeling, the Barretts left Pentonville Road, and at the time of the 1871 census they were living in Whitechapel. Rather surprisingly, their maid of all work was another very young girl, a sixteen-year-old by the name of Martha Rawson. One assumes that William was no longer allowed into the kitchen. In any case, he was fully occupied elsewhere. He had been apprenticed to a civil engineer by the name of Thomas S Farrar, and the details of his career—tramways, waterworks in Jamaica, sewage farms in Croydon—afford an interesting view of improvements in the nineteenth-century civil infrastructure.

In 1878 Mr Barrett died, and was buried in Brompton Cemetery. His widow and her younger sons kept the boot and shoemaking business going for a while. In 1887 William married Emily Louisa Coote. He was thirty-one, and she was twenty-four, and they lived most of their married life in Sussex. They had eight children, bringing William’s total output up to nine. I wonder if he ever thought about child number one.

ARE YOU MY AUNT JEMIMA?
And what of this first of William’s many children? Nellie would appear to have been brought up as their daughter by her uncle and aunt. As they had no children of their own, William and Matilda Watts may have been very happy to have “adopted” her. In 1881 they were living in Rotherhithe, and Jemima, who was working as a machinist, was lodging with them. Did Nellie grow up thinking of Jemima as her aunt? And if so, how did this make Jemima feel?

One might think that Jemima finally found happiness when in 1885 she married William Baker, a wheelwright. They lived next door to William and Matilda and Nellie Watts. But any happiness was short-lived, because Jemima died two years later at the age of thirty-six. She was buried in the City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetery. Neither did Nellie make old bones. In the 1891 census she was living with her adoptive parents. She was a paper-folder. She died on the 17^th of December 1892—just before her twenty-third birthday—and was buried in the same cemetery as her mother.

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