On 9 September 1895, Polly travelled alone to Gloucester to meet a Miss Elizabeth Goulding and her aunt, Mrs Elizabeth Carter. The meeting was to take place in a solicitor’s office. Polly had for some time been exchanging correspondence in response to an advertisement she had come across in the Bristol Times & Mirror.
Wanted a respectable woman who has no children, to take charge of a baby; Apply stating terms to Bristol Times & mirror Office.
Bristol Times & Mirror, 21 August 1895
Elizabeth Goulding was an unmarried domestic servant from Gloucester who had fallen for the charms of a hotel landlord and had given birth to his illegitimate child. Chas Aldridge was a married man, and as such he could not accept the child as his own, or indeed do the honourable thing and marry the mother of his bastard child. The simplest solution was to adopt the child out. For a one-off payment, Chas could absolve himself from all future involvement and in the process save his marriage and his respectability. When a Mrs Palmer answered his advertisement, all seemed set for a swift resolution.
Elizabeth Goulding enlisted the help of her aunt, Mrs Carter. Elizabeth was an orphan, and, in light of her disgrace, Mrs Carter and her husband Cornelius had allowed her to make their house her home. At a pre-arranged time they travelled into Gloucester to the offices of Mr Treasure, taking with them baby Frances Jessie Goulding. Mr Treasure had drawn up an agreement stating that Mary Ann Palmer would agree to take the child from Elizabeth Goulding for the sum of £10 and bring it up as her own. Mrs Palmer had stated that she had no children of her own and that her husband was a well-to-do poultry farmer and pig breeder. Mr Treasure read out the agreement, both parties signed it and the money was paid. Mrs Carter suggested that Elizabeth should accompany Mrs Palmer back to Reading and stay a day or two until the baby had grown used to its new surroundings. It seemed a sensible and thoughtful suggestion, but Mrs Palmer would not oblige, making the excuse that for the time being she and her husband “were in lodgings”.
At the railway station Miss Goulding held her child for one last time while Mrs Palmer purchased a ticket. She had given Mrs Palmer a box of clothes, all lovingly washed and mended. Inside the box were three pinafores, two shirts, two bibs, a napkin, a nightdress, two pairs of socks, a brush and a child’s red wool hat. The box of clothes made it back to Elm Villas, but Frances Jessie Goulding never did.
For some months following the adoption, Polly kept up a correspondence between herself and Miss Goulding. The pining mother made regular enquiries as to the wellbeing of her child. Polly wrote back in enthusiastic and affectionate terms,
I am delighted to tell you that dear baby was as good as gold all the way coming home. I gave her a nice warm bath, fed her and put her to bed at half past eight and we never heard a sound of her until half past four this morning. Then I gave her a little milk and she went to sleep again until eight o’clock. She is so good, she don’t seem to mind one bit. Mr Palmer is delighted with her; I know she will be a regular spoilt child. She has taken to us wonderfully.
Another letter dated 20 September read:
Just a few lines to let you know we received the little slippers alright this morning, and they fit baby nicely. Many thanks for them. Now I must tell you baby is getting on lovely. She is not a bit of trouble now, and she has got so fond of us both – we would not part with her now for the world. She is such a dear little thing. She has another tooth all but through.
Just before Christmas Miss Goulding received what would be her final letter from Caversham,
We have got a nice pelisse for her, and she does like to go out in it. She will soon be able to walk. She will stand up by herself and then she will go down, and when she do she will say “Oh dee”. She can’t say “Oh dear.”
Miss Goulding was told that the Palmers had bought a lovely carriage for baby and were going to Weston-super-Mare for Christmas, then to Wallingford to the wedding of Mr Palmer’s cousin taking “our own dear baby with us”. The letter ended by wishing Miss Goulding and her aunt Mrs Carter a Merry Christmas and at the end was a row of crosses to represent kisses from “baby to all”.
Elizabeth Goulding continued writing her letters to the Palmers, desperate for any news of her daughter; they were all returned marked “Gone away”.
A Lady, married, wishes to adopt a child – girl preferred. Premium required. Full particulars write Times & Mirror Bristol.
Bristol Times & Mirror, 13 September 1895
Toward the end of the family’s stay in Elm Villas the Palmers went out on their own for the day, and brought back with them a tiny female infant no more than two months old. The child had come from Swindon, and they had received it from its mother on the platform of Reading Station along with the usual £10.
The family, now larger than ever, changed its quarters to a house just around the corner in Piggotts Road. This street of tiny, slate-roofed, terraced cottages began at one end with a hardware shop spilling its wares – brushes, brooms, rolls of string – over the narrow pavement, and ended with a screen of trees whose lower branches dipped into the river which ran along the bottom. Number 26 was the size of a doll’s house, the tiny frontage struggling to accommodate two windows and a narrow front door. With four adults and at least four children crammed into the house, it was no wonder that the baby’s bassinet was often left out in the rain, or that Arthur Palmer spent his days sitting on a bench at the county cricket ground. His excursions were noted by the lock-keeper who nodded to him almost daily as he crossed the river, newspaper in hand, his trademark slouch hat perched on his head.
The cottage looked out on to unspoilt meadow land and small orchards. The rising hulk of the newly built mill, severe and utilitarian, sat solidly in this landscape and beckoned many of the occupants of Piggotts Road through its gates in the mornings. The centre of Caversham was just a short walk away with its bustling roads full of florists, butchers, fishmongers, drapers, corn, hay and straw merchants, and the occasional sheep wandering freely between the milk carts and the cyclists. It was a close-knit, hardworking community; a difficult place for anyone to keep themselves to themselves. Nevertheless it was as pleasant a situation as any family could hope to live in: wide-open, healthy spaces, pleasing scenery and fresh, clean air.
On 20 October 1895, a Dr Deane paid a visit to 26 Piggotts Road. The young baby from Swindon, whom the Palmers had fetched only a few weeks before, had died in the house. Only Polly had been present at the death, but in the cramped conditions of Piggotts Road, every occupant was witness to the cold, stiff body which lay in the bassinet in the kitchen. Even young Willie was not spared the scene, stating matter-of-factly, “I saw it dead.”
The Palmers passed the child off as their own, naming her after Arthur’s mother Clara. Their names appear on the death certificate as parents of the deceased, Emma Clara Palmer, and the cause of death is recorded, as so often in the past, as marasmus – “wasting away”. Prior to her death little Emma Clara would have weighed less than 80 per cent of what was considered normal for her age. Her skin would have fallen in folds over wasted and withered muscles; she would have been fretful, irritable and voraciously hungry.
Dr Deane was forced to state that death was due to natural causes; being unable to prove that the child had been denied nourishment. The undertaker at the cemetery in Upper Caversham received hurried instructions from the Palmers for the burial, but as no one attended the funeral, not even the Palmers themselves, the customary service at the graveside was dispensed with.
Highly respectable Married couple, having no family, wish to ADOPT child to bring up entirely as their own. Good country home. Premium required £10.
Western Daily Press, 1 November 1895
It was not long before Polly replaced this child with another. She arrived back in Caversham late one evening with a small boy called Harold. He was almost a year old and she had received him along with £12.
It had been almost three months since little Ikey had been brought back to Caversham. Granny Smith had grown inordinately fond of the child and was often to be found sitting in a chair outside the front door with Ikey nestled in her ample lap. So when Mother announced one morning that she was taking the child back to London, Granny was distraught and ran sobbing down the road to kiss the baby one last time before Mother disappeared around the corner and down toward the river. Ikey was taken away from the house in her white frock with matching cape and hat. Her other clothes and napkins remained locked in a box in Mother’s bedroom. Mother arrived home after dark that night and told Granny that she had met Ikey’s mother on the platform at Paddington, along with another lady who was going to adopt the baby. Ikey had been quite well, she said, and had not been at all bothered by her cutting teeth. Granny never forgave Mother for taking away her dear little Ikey. The children were always taken away, even the baby that Polly had brought from Cardiff, but their bundles of clothes remained behind. Granny was always told that Mother was taking the children back to London; all she knew was that none of them ever came back.
At least seven children had passed through the hands of the Palmers and Mother during their stay in Caversham; only nine-year-old Willie and baby Harold were left when, shortly after Christmas 1895, they chose to move on. Perhaps the neighbours were asking too many awkward questions; perhaps anxious parents were bombarding Mother with letters, threatening to come and see how their little ones were thriving in the country air: perhaps there was a family quarrel. Or maybe it was simply a calculated business decision, and, by moving the short distance over the river to Reading, Mother was crossing the borough boundaries and moving from the jurisdiction of the county of Oxfordshire to the county of Berkshire where she was entirely unknown.
Whatever the reason, the family split at this point: the Palmers went to London with Harold; Mother, Granny and young Willie moved to reading. It wasn’t long, however, before Mother revisited the banks of the Thames and crossed the slippery planks of the Clappers footbridge to dispose of some ghastly packages under cover of darkness.