Before her arrest, Ellen Penketh did not sit it out mutely above the corner shop at Poyser Street, waiting for the policeman’s knock at the door. She moved fast to try to set things right. What happened after her eviction from Erddig was told in court by Mr Davies, elderly clerk of solicitors James & James.12 It is fascinating for the glimpse it gives us of her background (all fear, mistrust and accusation), and the unique chance to hear her faint voice. The day she left Erddig Ellen bumped into, or sought out, old Mr Davies and told him what had happened. ‘He was rather interested in the matter,’ the court was told, ‘because he knew Miss Penketh, and he was also a tenant on Mr Yorke’s estate.’ Belonging to Erddig clearly inspired a kind of group loyalty–among tenants as well as servants.
Ellen begged him to go with her to Manchester to see her family and ask what they might do to help. ‘She said she was rather afraid of facing her people herself.’ Mr Davies was a friend and he thought of her reputation, for she was kept company that evening by one Mr Wright, a storekeeper for the Corporation Electricity Department and a keen sympathiser in her plight (later to offer £50 bail). Mr Davies suggested she spend the night with his own daughter, Mrs Woollam, before journeying together to the train station the next day.
I imagine this incongruous couple boarding the train for Chester and thence to Manchester: an elderly legal clerk, a terrified domestic servant. At Manchester station they board a double-decker electric tram bound for the western industrial suburb of Pendleton and its slums, and the shop of Mrs Penketh. ‘Go and see thy old mistress, Mrs Armitage,’ says Ellen’s mother. ‘She knows you wouldn’t be plutcherin owt, God help us. She’ll see thi’ right.’ So they walk, Mr Davies and Ellen Penketh, along the dirty road to more prosperous streets and hence to Chaseley Field–but the big house has now become Pendleton High School for Girls, a place of chalk dust and algebra. ‘Mrs Armitage has gone,’ says the housekeeper, ‘long gone. No, we don’t know where.’
Ellen is desperate; this was her last hope. She walks back home in tears–who else is there left to help her? ‘Your father,’ says her mother. ‘See what he can do to keep you out of trouble. Tell him you’ll happen go to gaol if not.’ And so Mr Davies, his confidence ebbing, takes the train west with Ellen the next day to Liverpool, to seek out Thomas Penketh the wheelwright. Ellen hangs back, nervous of her father’s reaction. ‘I dare na’,’ she says. ‘You talk to him first. Then I’ll come in.’
Thomas is immediately suspicious. Here’s this man of the law, coming on behalf of his feckless daughter. ‘I’m not going to sign any paper,’ he says, backing off.
‘I have no paper for you to sign,’ says the mild Mr Davies, who later reconstructs the scene in court. ‘Miss Penketh wants to know if you can do anything for her, as her father.’
Mr Davies explains that if a sum of £200 (£11,500) could be raised, then proceedings against his daughter might be dropped.
‘You might as well ask me to raise a million pounds,’ says Thomas Penketh. ‘I shall do nothing. She’s already tried to rob me of ten pounds.’
Ellen is in the doorway, nervous. ‘Won’t you help me, Father?’
‘No, not in the least,’ he replies.
On entering Shrewsbury Gaol, prisoners pass beneath a keep-like portcullis that separates them from the world outside; in particular from the neighbouring train station and all its bustle of departure. It is a Victorian gaol, known then and now as ‘the Dana’ after the medieval lock-up it came to replace. Today it has a reputation as one of Britain’s most overcrowded prisons. In 1907 it still had a gibbet for hangings. Ellen had not yet been convicted and her stay was short, but her treatment would have been no different to any other woman arriving in handcuffs. Female prisoners were met by a wardress, taken into a room and demanded their particulars, all entered in a ledger known as the ‘female nominal roll’. Today this massive tome is kept by Shropshire Archives–and there I found her committal, written over two pages in copperplate ink:
Number 115: Name, Ellen Penketh
Date & place of committal: 20.9.07 Wrexham Co.
Offence: fraudulent use of cheques to the value of £210 12s. 1d. (larceny as servant)
Committed to Denbighshire Assizes Ruthin Prison
Education: 3
Age, height and colour of hair: 37; 5ft; brn.
Occupation: Cook
Religion and place of birth: C of E; Rainford
No previous convictions.
Ellen was then told to undress, was relieved of hairpins and any jewellery and marched to a grimy bath of hot water. From this she was dressed in coarse prison garb and led to a numbered cell, not unlike a small pantry in a country house, where she was given a coloured, numbered medal to wear. The door clanged shut. No further instructions were given to ‘first-nighters’ such as Ellen.13 Instead, a printed tract on the wall listed the punishments for crimes such as ‘Not folding a bed in the proper manner. Not folding up clothes in the proper manner. Not washing feet twice a week, prior to using water to clean the cell.’
It had come to this: the worst. Ellen Penketh had one week to wait for her court hearing at Wrexham and possible release, but how optimistic was she? She had written a desperate apology to Mr Yorke, but here he was, still pressing charges. She would at least have a chance to put her side of the story to impartial ears, but the money was–apparently–gone. Every day, every hour, every minute of that week, her mind must have worked over the details of what had happened. The tangled knots. The half-truths. The muddle well meant, but now gone poisonous. The missing sovereigns. There was also, perhaps, a mounting sense of fury.
‘After all our kindness to her’, the outraged Louisa had written in her diary. But what of the many kindnesses of Ellen Penketh? All done in the line of duty, maybe, but delivered sincerely nonetheless. It was as if she had never existed in their lives; never cooked Louisa a Charlotte russe, never taken little Phil to see the chickens and collect the eggs, never collaborated with her mistress in each triumphant bout of entertaining. If you were a titled or upper-class lady and you ended up in prison–as so many well-heeled suffragettes resorting to violent tactics now did–you were set free pretty smartly, thanks to your connections. But if you were unknown and friendless, you would end up getting prosecuted and thrown in gaol. Ellen Penketh was probably under no illusions as to what would happen next.
‘This was a terrible day’, wrote Louisa on Thursday, 26 September. ‘At 10 we went off in the carriage to appear in the Courts against Mrs Penketh.’ Wrexham Magistrate’s Court dealt with dozens of small cases monthly, and its judgements were in keeping with the times. Crimes that autumn ranged from the theft of thirty-four rabbit skins (for which one boy of 13 got seven days in Shrewsbury Gaol followed by four years in a reformatory, his 12-year-old accomplice six strokes with a birch rod); to the theft of chickens (two months’ imprisonment and hard labour); to the theft of two pairs of corduroy trousers and a waistcoat from the Workhouse (seven days’ imprisonment). Ellen Penketh was collected at dawn from Shrewsbury Gaol by a police officer, driven by horse and closed carriage the thirty miles to the courthouse on Wrexham’s Regent Street and led to the dock. Here, standing between two warders, she faced her employers once again.
But to surprised muttering, Mr Churton (acting for James & James) announced to the magistrate that in the light of Mrs Penketh’s ‘very repentant letter’, and the fact that she had been in prison now seven days, Mr Yorke wished to apply to Their Worships for consent to withdraw the prosecution. Mr Yorke believed the prisoner ‘had been led away by some person whom he need not mention, and who practically had been at the bottom of the whole mischief’. There was murmured consultation on the bench, then, ‘Silence,’ called the Chairman. ‘Pray silence in court.’
An expectant hush: the blood sings in Ellen Penketh’s ears. Louisa looks mutely at her gloved hands, clutched together. The Chairman clears his throat. ‘While appreciating Mr Yorke’s kindness and goodness of heart,’ he pronounces, ‘we are of the opinion that, in duty to the public, the case should be proceeded with. Please to call the first witness.’
Louisa was to find herself in the dock giving evidence while Ellen Penketh sat and listened. The tables were spectacularly turned–and Erddig’s informal accounts-keeping system was laid bare. ‘Prisoner was housekeeper in her employ for five years all but two months. It was part of her duty to keep a rough book containing tradesmen’s accounts,’ began Mr Churton. He went on to list the cheques cashed by Mrs Penketh and the accounts left unpaid with tradesmen. It looked, on the surface, baldly incriminating. Then it was the turn of Mr Downes Powell, defending. Finally, we come to the nub of Ellen’s predicament:
‘Did the prisoner ever tell you when you interviewed her that she had kept some of the accounts back?’
‘Yes,’ answered Louisa.
‘Did she tell you why?’
‘She said she did this because she did not wish the bills to appear too high.’
‘Had you been grumbling at her?’
‘Yes, for her extravagance.’
Extravagance. This was a sin to Louisa, curate’s daughter–yet her conscience was troubled and guilty. To avoid her mistress’s anger, Ellen Penketh had deliberately begun to lower the accounts, suppressing bills with a nod here and a pleading word there, among her very understanding suppliers, who perhaps couldn’t resist the charm of Erddig’s personable cook-housekeeper. She would, she told them, make it up over the next few months.
This was fine, if messy, until Ellen Penketh apparently lost a large sum of money.
‘Did she then tell you how she had lost it?’ asked Mr Downes Powell.
‘She said she found her bag open, and that she had lost a hundred and thirty pounds,’ responded Louisa (this is around £7,500 in today’s money).
‘Did she say where?’
‘No…She said that [it was] after she had cashed the cheque for two hundred pounds, and was on the way home.’
‘Did you not ask her why she had not told you about the loss?’
‘Yes.’
‘What was her reply?’
‘That she was afraid to let me know.’
If this was true, it was entirely plausible that a servant would be terrified of confessing to such an enormous loss. Ellen Penketh was then forced to try to pay back the amounts owing to suppliers out of her own meagre savings: accounts that had been suppressed over twelve months by a total of £142 19s 7d (around £8,200 today). This was clearly impossible on a salary of £45 a year.
‘Do you know that when she left Erddig she had no money?’ the barrister persisted.
‘Yes,’ replied Louisa, ever more faintly. She would not look at the prisoner.
‘And that the servants made a collection for her in the house?’
‘Yes.’
‘Now, during the time she has been in your service,’ he asked, ‘have you noticed her dressing extravagantly or making a big show or anything of that sort?’
‘No.’
And now came that technique beloved of all barristers: a meaningful pause.
Mr Bevis, manager to grocers Messrs Dutton & Co., was called to the witness box. The teetotal Philip Yorke suspected that Mrs Penketh had abused an account for wines and spirits in his name–in other words, that she was not only a thief but a drunkard too. This was swiftly demolished in court, with proof that the sum owing on this account–£27 18s 7 1/2d (around £1,600 today)–was a reasonable bill for the cook of a busy country-house kitchen. Next came Woollam the butcher and Pritchard the draper, each with stories of Mrs Penketh’s attempts to pay back the money owed, followed by two cashiers from the National and Provincial Bank. Then it was the turn of Erddig’s agent, Mr Capper. He pointed out that Mrs Penketh’s story about losing the money after leaving the bank ‘couldn’t be very true, or it would have been heard about in the town’. When Mrs Yorke asked the accused why she hadn’t mentioned the loss before, Capper informed the court, Mrs Penketh answered that she ‘had often wanted to do so, but had not the courage’.
What had seemed a straightforward, even banal case (servant steals money) was, it turned out, not at all straightforward. It touched on incendiary issues in the relationship between mistress and servant, even between the upper and lower classes. There was a suggestion of bullying, and real fear. There was collusion between suppliers and cook-housekeeper: a favoured relationship which finally went awry. There was the peculiar matter of the gold sovereigns disappearing from the bag, which did not quite ring true, and the suggestion that someone else had ‘been at the bottom of the whole mischief’–yet the ‘destitute’ Mrs Penketh was clearly not spending the money on herself. And there was the odd retraction of punishment from Squire Yorke, who managed suddenly to transform his vendetta into an act of mercy.
After a brief retirement, the magistrates returned to the court. They had considered the case, said the Chairman. It was to go for trial to the Assizes. Bail was offered on a surety of £100, which, to applause, Mr Yorke agreed to provide, presumably through gritted teeth (it is around £5,700 in today’s money). For him, this was the worst-case scenario.
‘She is at large’, wrote Louisa the next day.
As soon as she was released from Wrexham Magistrate’s Court Ellen Penketh travelled by train back to Manchester, to her mother’s shop, where she was compelled to stay until the trial. But to Louisa, the genie was out of the bottle. That day Mr Wootton the butler delivered to Mr Yorke his copy of the Wrexham Advertiser with a more than usually mask-like face. The paper served Wrexham and all its surrounding towns as far as Chester and Ruthin, and was much read by the middle classes. On that day, stories ranged from the Welsh-language movement gaining momentum, to Stoke-on-Trent workhouse paupers refusing to eat their Monday mutton broth, to the regular column by Miss Ida Meller, ‘Fashion and Things Feminine’.
There it was, on page seven, in large font:
The Serious Charge Against an Erddig Housekeeper.
Extraordinary Proceedings. Prosecutor Wishes to Withdraw. Accused Sent to the Assizes.
The article took up a good half-page. Louisa and Philip bravely went visiting on their bicycles. ‘The great topic of conversation is the 9 days wonder of Wrexham, namely the misdoings of our former cook’, she wrote that night. Now that the stakes were so much higher, she had to maintain her dogged conviction of Ellen Penketh’s guilt–and her friends were quick to support her, rounding on the ‘thief cook’ where previously they had praised the lightness of her drop scones and moistness of her Madeira cake.
‘We hear so much against the woman’, Louisa wrote, ‘that Philip is going to withdraw the bail.’ Gossip had come to their ears that Mrs Penketh–rather than turning up at court and surrendering bail–was simply going to disappear. Manchester would swallow her up and she would never be heard of again. The careful and precise Philip Yorke was enraged. And so, five days after her reprieve, Ellen was without warning rearrested at her mother’s shop, handcuffed and transported fifty miles south to face her former master in Wrexham Magistrate’s Court again on Tuesday, 1 October. Here, bail was formally withdrawn. ‘The prisoner will be only too glad to release Mr Yorke from his surety,’ snapped her barrister, Mr Downes Powell, incensed by such unwarranted shilly-shallying. He had an alternative: Mr Willis Sterrett (a blacksmith) and Mr Wright (a storekeeper) would become surety for £50 each. Mrs Penketh was not without friends.
As the Wrexham Advertiser reported the following Friday (‘Mr Yorke withdraws his Recognizances’), ‘Mr Sterret was accepted, but Mr Wright was not, and the prisoner, therefore, left the court in custody.’