THE LAST GESTURE of kindness made towards Eliza before she was thrown into the legal system of England’s capital city came from the wife of Padstow’s constable.
Shut up in the small fishing port’s lock-up, Eliza’s story was told to the woman by her husband, and the kindly Cornishwoman took her food, soap, towel and a blanket. Then she stayed talking to her for more than an hour, trying to give what comfort she could to the dejected young prisoner.
When the woman had gone Eliza was left to her own thoughts which grew ever gloomier with the passing of the hours. When darkness fell she cried herself into a fitful sleep that was frequently disturbed by a rat, or a mouse – it was too dark inside the lock-up to identify the inquisitive rodent – which scurried back and forth among the beams in the low-ceilinged and windowless room.
Soon after dawn the sympathetic constable’s wife brought Eliza a cooked breakfast, explaining that the London policemen would soon be along to collect her because the steamer travelling between Hayle and Bristol was due to pass by the mouth of the river estuary at eight o’clock and only prospective passengers waiting in a boat out in the bay would be picked up.
‘It’ll be another twelve hours before it reaches Bristol, and there’s no telling when your next meal will be coming, m’dear. Them two policers being men, and from Lunnon at that, will satisfy their own bellies but I doubt if they’ll give much thought for anyone else. You get this down you and I’ll know you’ll be alright for the rest of the day. My Bob’s the constable here and he’s told me your story and why you’re being taken up to that wicked city. You’d think that after what you went through when you were shipwrecked, they’d have better things to do than come all this way just to arrest you. There’s many around here who deserve to be going, but some seem to get away with anything they like. Now you take that young Winnie from Trevone …’
Eliza ate her breakfast in silence while the constable’s kindly wife related the story of ‘Winnie’ who, it seemed, frequented the bars down by the harbour, picking up foreign sailors and as well as satisfying their ‘lustrous’ needs, also succeeded in relieving many of them of their purses as well.
‘I can see you ain’t that kind of maid,’ said the woman as she took the empty plate from Eliza and made her way from the lockup, ‘and I shall tell they two Lunnon policers they ought to be ashamed of themselves coming all the way down here to Cornwall just to take a young girl away to a wicked place where I’m told most of the women are like that Winnie, ’specially as my Bob tells me you’ve spent the last three years taking good care of a preacher and his sister. It’s a pity they folk up Lunnon way don’t have better things to do.’
With this observation, the constable’s wife left the tiny cell and went on her way, grumbling to herself about the shortcomings of ‘they folk from Lunnon.’
No more than ten minutes after the woman’s departure Sergeant Grubb and Constable Wicks came to the lock-up and she was handcuffed and taken through the streets of Padstow, a subject of great interest to those who were abroad at this early hour. Boarding a waiting boat, she and the two London policemen were then rowed out of the estuary to await the Bristol bound steamer.
Once on board the vessel, Eliza shared a cabin with her escort and, in spite of the Padstow woman’s gloomy prediction, was given a meal at noon which proved to be her last meal of the day.
Soon after eight o’clock that evening the steamer berthed at a dock in the very heart of Bristol, where it was surrounded by the noise and bustle of one of the country’s busiest ports.
It was the first city Eliza had been to since leaving London and she found the activity going on about her intimidating, but there was little time to observe it in detail before she was bustled inside a closed police van and driven through the streets to the police headquarters, only a short distance from the docks.
Here she was locked in a large, communal cell which had only dank straw strewn on the floor on which to sleep with no bedding and a couple of wooden buckets to serve as toilets for a number of women, mainly thieves and drunkards, with whom she would be sharing the cell.
There was little sleep for Eliza that night. Not only were many of the women noisy and fractious, but their numbers were frequently supplemented throughout the night hours by a number of complaining prostitutes who had been arrested in the busy port, most having frequented the many dockside bars and inns that catered for sailors from all over the world.
The next morning, Eliza was taken from the cell by the two London policemen and without breakfast and having had no time to wash or otherwise tidy herself, she was driven to the railway station in the same police van that had conveyed her from the police station the previous evening. Here she and her escort boarded a London bound train.
Four hours later, thoroughly depressed by the sight of row upon row of London houses backing on to the railway line, all of which seemed dirty and dreary in comparison to Cornwall, the train arrived at its destination and she was taken in a Hackney carriage to Bow Street police station.
Here Sergeant Grubb managed to obtain a bowl of soup and a hunk of bread for her but she barely had time to finish it before she was hustled before a stony-faced magistrate. After listening to the charges against her and speaking only to ask confirmation of her name, he remanded her in custody to Newgate, ‘In order that further enquiries might be made.’
She was escorted to the prison handcuffed to Sergeant Grubb and on the way asked him how long she was likely to remain in Newgate.
‘I shouldn’t think it’ll be too long,’ was the reply. ‘They’ll need to find the record of your conviction and sentence and have Constable Wicks formally identify you as being Eliza Brooks. Then I’ll give evidence about the manner of your escape from the ship taking you to Australia and your subsequent arrest, then you’ll be sent back to the Old Bailey for a judge to decide on whether you’ll be sent to Australia again for seven years, or whether he’ll add to it because you escaped from custody.’
‘It wasn’t exactly an “escape”,’ Eliza pointed out, close to tears, ‘I was got off the ship by the Mate. If anyone helped me “escape” it was him but you can’t do anything to him because he was drowned, and if it wasn’t for him so would I be. But perhaps it would have been better if I had been.’
‘Now don’t get thinking like that, girl. I know things look bad for you now, but while there’s life there’s hope, and I believe there are a lot of women sent to Australia who settle down and eventually make a good life there for themselves.’
‘I had made a good life for myself, in Cornwall and would have settled down to a good life with a kind husband! Anyway, what you’re saying ain’t what I heard before, when I was on the hulk waiting for a ship to take me out there. According to the women who knew all about transportation it’s hell on the ship going out there and even worse once you’ve arrived.’
‘Well, as you know yourself, you can’t believe everything people tell you, especially the sort of women who are in prison.’
‘You mean the sort of women like me?’
Sergeant Grubb found he had no answer to Eliza’s embittered question and he remained silent.
That night, at home with his wife, soon after his young daughter had gone to bed, Sergeant Grubb spoke to his wife about Eliza, commenting that he felt very sorry for the predicament she was in, having spent the last three years making a good and honest life for herself.
During all the years they had been married, Sergeant Grubb’s wife had never known him to be so visibly moved over any of those he had arrested in the course of his duties.
‘She sounds as though she is a nice girl who has been really hard done by. Isn’t there anything you can do to help her?’
‘I can tell the court how she has spent the past three years and how highly she is praised by everyone who knows her, but that won’t alter the fact that she is under sentence of seven years transportation. The best she can hope for is that the sentence won’t be increased and I can’t guarantee that.’
‘It sounds very hard to me,’ his wife said. ‘It’s a pity she hasn’t got someone to speak up for her. I hate to think of a young girl like our Mary suffering in that way with no father, or anyone else, to speak up for her.’
‘So do I,’ Sergeant Grubb said unhappily. ‘It kept me awake last night worrying about it, but I can’t think of anything I can possibly do to help her.’
Eliza’s plight kept him awake again that night. Lying in bed beside his sleeping wife, he went over the case in his mind, trying desperately hard to think of any way he might possibly be able to help her.