Ellen Risden. Courtesy of TNA, PCOM4; Piece: 48; Item: 13.
(B. 1842 CO. CORK) – CONVICT
Ellen Mahoney was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1842, just a few years before the Irish famine devastated the country. Those from the south and west of Ireland experienced some of the worst privations. Many families flocked from the rural lands of Ireland to the cities in search of help, only to find their best hope for survival was emigration. Ellen was one of thousands of children who travelled with families that could not afford tickets to Australia, Canada or America, who found themselves deposited in England’s port towns and cities, starving and impoverished.
Boats carrying refugees from Cork and Waterford commonly landed in Bristol, and while for some it was only a temporary stay before a journey onwards, for the Mahoney family, Bristol became their new home. Managing to navigate the immediate trauma and poverty caused by emigration, the Mahoneys settled in the city. Local populations could be hostile to Irish settlers, however, and policing practices often targeted Irish settled areas as particular sites of drunkenness, disorder and violence. The Mahoneys were a relatively law-abiding family, but as Ellen reached her late teens, she found herself in court on a couple of occasions charged with drunkenness.
At the age of 18, in 1860, Ellen married Edward Risden, a railway porter almost ten years her senior. In the following decade the pair had five children. Yet all was not well in the Risden household. In 1866, less than a year after the birth of their daughter Ann, Edward Risden took out a notice in the local paper, stating:
Ellen Risden. Courtesy of TNA, PCOM4; Piece: 48; Item: 13.
I hearby give notice that I will not be answerable for any debt or debts that my wife Ellen Risden may contract in my name after this date.
While the exact circumstances that led Edward to take out the notice are not clear (other than Ellen running up large debts that he was clearly unhappy about paying!) the couple continued living together, and had a further two children in the next two years. Although she did not run up any more debts, Ellen’s disorderly behaviour continued. In 1868 Ellen was taken to court and fined 2s. for an assault on Catherine Cater, a neighbour. A few years later, although still living with and supported by Edward, Ellen began to steal. This was perhaps a tactic to acquire the goods or raise the money that Edward’s notice had temporarily denied her. In 1873, Ellen stole a pair of boots and was given one month in prison with hard labour, the following year she again stole boots and received two months of hard labour. Ellen’s offences were infrequent, rather than perpetual, taking place less than once a year. This would suggest that her thefts were not closely related to financial hardship or destitution. Ellen offended again in 1874, 1876 and 1879, receiving two, four and six months of hard labour respectively. It does not seem likely that Edward and Ellen were living together during this time.
In 1880, Ellen’s luck changed. After stealing a shawl, she was sentenced to five years in convict prison, and three years’ police supervision following that. Ellen was a well-behaved prisoner, but while she was serving time in Millbank Prison, the staff wrote to Edward to inform him his wife was pregnant. Ellen gave birth to the baby, a boy, John, in Westminster Prison, and after she was allowed to nurse him almost a year, the child was transferred to a London workhouse alone while Ellen finished her sentence. The boy was given Risden’s surname, but never claimed by Edward, who continued to care for their other children. He may well not have been Edward’s biological son.
After her release from prison in 1883, Ellen went straight back to Bristol, and straight back to offending. Her lifestyle was evidently beginning to impact more heavily on those around her. A few months after her release, in February 1884, Ellen was charged with stealing a chemise from her daughter Ann and ‘feloniously pawning’ it. Ann saw the shawl in the pawnshop and begged her father to redeem it, although Edward claimed he had not the means to do so. Ann, rather unwillingly, asked the police to intervene, although a magistrate later dismissed the case as just a family squabble. Ann claimed that her mother ‘sold everything for drink’, a charge which Ellen denied. In 1886 Ellen was again in court for theft, charged with stealing 20 yards of flannel. She called her youngest daughter to act as a witness for her defence, but instead the girl gave conflicting evidence, and actually helped to convict her mother. Ellen was sent to prison for three months, much to the relief of her family.
Ellen was convicted of stealing boots again in 1889, and spent another nine months in prison after an 1890 conviction for larceny. As Ellen entered her fifties, her quality of life deteriorated, and she began to steal for subsistence. In 1894, she was convicted of stealing bread and butter, and given twelve months in prison. After release in 1895, Ellen managed to desist from crime (or at least evade detection) for almost three years, until she was back to stealing boots, convicted twice for this in 1898. At this point in her life, Ellen had been in and out of prison almost constantly for thirty years, and had a criminal record that spanned forty years, almost two-thirds of her life.
After release from prison, Ellen had little other option but to turn to the workhouse. Unfortunately, her violent temper ensured that she did not stay there for long. In July 1899 Ellen was charged with breaking three panes of glass and a basin in the Union Workhouse. She complained of bad treatment at the hands of the Guardians and stated she would ‘sooner be in Exeter Gaol than in the workhouse’. Her wish was granted, and she was sent to prison for fourteen days. Upon release, she immediately stole a coat and was sent back to prison again. After release, unable to return to her family and unwilling to return to the workhouse, Ellen entered the Bristol District Refuge for Penitent Women, a special home for ex-offenders attempting to turn their lives around. She spent two years in the institution before she left of her own accord and returned to offending. Ellen was imprisoned again in 1904 and 1905 for the theft of boots.
Now in her sixties, with more than a dozen offences behind her, known to the police and courts as a habitual offender and her age making other employment unlikely, Ellen had no other way to subsist than to rely on institutions or to turn to theft. It was often very difficult for those that had spent decades of their lives living transient and chaotic lives to exist peacefully within the strict regimes of voluntary institutions like inebriate or penitent homes, or within the disciplined world of the workhouse, and for many, theft and freedom (even with the constant risk of imprisonment) were preferable to living under such tight moral and physical constraints.
However, life on the streets was hard, and the older and more infirm an offender became, the harder it got to survive. Despite her resistance to institutions throughout her life, by the age of 69, Ellen had nowhere else to turn to but the workhouse. She remained a resident in a local workhouse until her death in 1915 at the age of 73. Ellen never, in all her years of testimony and incarceration, offered an explanation as to why she rejected her home and family for a life of habitual offending instead.