William Hogarth’s Gin Lane 1751.
(B. 1865 CREWE AND 1869 LIVERPOOL) – EARLY DEATHS
Born without the ability to either speak or hear, Julia Smith faced a hard life. She was born in 1865 and lived with her parents and siblings in Crewe (Church Coppenhall). Aged 15 she was working as a domestic servant in 1881, but by 1883 she had been convicted of vagrancy, probably for being homeless. Her father died two years later in 1885 (when he was 50 years old), the year she was first convicted of prostitution. Prostitution itself was not illegal, but court registers often recorded the offence as ‘prostitution’ if the defendant was assumed to make her living in that way – the real offence that Julia committed may have been vagrancy, public obscenity or urination, or soliciting for business. She was convicted four more times in the next six years, once for drunkenness, twice for vagrancy and once again for prostitution. And then her, difficult and probably quite unhappy short life was brought to a sudden end when she died in 1891, aged just 36.
Frances Murphy was born four years after Julia, in Liverpool. Her family moved to Crewe in 1889 but she obviously still liked to spend time in her home town, as she was convicted of drunkenness in Liverpool in 1890. She already had twenty-two convictions by this time, mainly for drunkenness and disorderliness, but here were also four felonies (more serious offences heard on indictment at a Quarter Sessions Court rather than the local magistrates’ court). When Frances then stole a jacket belonging to her landlady in Crewe, she again ran back to Liverpool (where she was arrested). Once out of prison, she was convicted of drunkenness and prostitution, but also a prosecuted for a string of assaults, all in 1891. She was acquitted of the assault on another woman, Sarah Ellis, but convicted of assaulting a man, and received two months’ custody. She was then reconvicted for a more serious offence. This time it was for grievous bodily harm on a 10-year-old child whom she had hit on the head with a bottle. She received another two-month prison sentence. During her trial Frances had threatened to ‘swing for’ one of the witnesses, but she never got the chance. She died in 1893 aged just 24.
William Hogarth’s Gin Lane 1751.
Just because we have a couple of examples of prostitutes who died young does not show that prostitution shortened one’s life. Many working and poor women died early from leading an unhealthy and physically demanding life. Nevertheless, earning money in this risky way, a choice few women would have made lightly, not only involved the risk of violence or catching diseases such as syphilis or venereal disease, it also meant spending long periods outside in cold weather, sleeping in stinking alleyways, picking up ‘normal’ diseases from clients and so on. It could wear a body out very quickly.