Elizabeth and Francis were married at Brook Green register office on Christmas Eve 1884. The somewhat strange choice of day appears to have come about through Francis taking advantage of his parents being distracted by other events since it is known that they opposed the match and he would not have wanted them on the scene. Probably, being more worldly than their son, they recognised Elizabeth for what she was.
The days before Christmas 1884 were busy ones for E.T.. The socialist Henry Hyndman had set up the Socialist Democratic Federation in 1881 and Morris and his followers were early members. However, by 1884 the autocratic behaviour of Hyndman led Morris and his supporters to challenge him for the leadership. It culminated in a vote being taken late on the evening of 27th December at the Federation’s headquarters in Westminster following which Morris, E.T. Craig and a number of others, exasperated by Hyndman’s intransigence, broke away and formed the rival Socialist League42. E.T., and probably his wife Mary too, were almost certainly away from home for much of the time over the days before and after Christmas, and Francis seems to have taken advantage of their absence to marry Elizabeth by special licence. The shock of his son’s rebellion coupled with the late nights and hard work surrounding the Hyndman machinations proved too much for the 81-year-old man. Within a few days he suffered a massive stroke from which he never fully recovered43. It was too late to affect Francis however. He and Elizabeth had already fled the nest and Francis would not see his parents again for nearly five years.
In 2011 a bundle of old documents tied with pink tape surfaced at The National Archives which suddenly threw a searchlight’s glare on the strange marriage of Francis Spurzheim Craig and Elizabeth. They included a petition for divorce and its supporting sworn affidavit44. There are many signs that Francis had embarked upon the venture with some hesitancy. The petition itself was dated 6th March 1886 but the word ‘Sixth’ was later crossed through and altered to ‘Eighth’ and initialled ‘FSC’ in the margin. Almost certainly it had been drawn up ready for him to sign on the sixth but he had not turned up until two days later. There are other little amendments that make no material difference to the document but show that he was in an uncertain frame of mind.
It commenced with the words, ‘The Petition … Sheweth that your Petitioner was on 24th day of December 1884 lawfully married to Elizabeth Weston Davies Craig then Elizabeth Weston Davies Spinster at the Office of the Registrar of Marriages, Brook Green Hammersmith in the County of Middle-sex the said Elizabeth Weston Davies Spinster describing herself as Elizabeth Weston Jones Widow,’ but Francis has inserted the word ‘falsely’ with a carat mark between the words ‘Spinster’ and ‘describing’ and initialled the alteration in the margin. It doesn’t alter the sense in any way but suggests that Francis was trying to justify his actions to himself and others.
It was written in the elaborate copperplate hand of a solicitor’s clerk and addressed ‘To the Right Honourable The President of the Probate Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court of Justice (Divorce).’ After establishing the fact that the marriage had taken place legally it goes on to state that he and Elizabeth had ‘lived and cohabited at 3 Andover Road, Hammersmith, 7 Lemon’s Terrace Stepney Green and 12 Argyle Square, all in the County of Middlesex.’
Then comes the bombshell. Using the tendentious legalese no doubt dictated by his solicitor, Francis goes on to state: ‘That I am informed and verily believe that on the night of 19th May 1885 the said Elizabeth Weston Craig was seen to enter a house and private hotel, 53 Tonbridge Street in the company of a young man 20 – 24 years at 10 o’clock at night45.’ It does not say whether she was seen by Francis or someone else, although if Francis himself had witnessed the act it would probably have said so since it is likely to have carried more weight in a court of law. Nor does it state whether by that date Elizabeth had actually left him although it seems highly likely that she had, since she would hardly have been abroad by herself at that time of night as a respectably married woman.
There seems little doubt that Francis had been totally unaware of his intended’s occupation at the time of their marriage. It was not unusual for a sexually experienced single woman to describe herself as a widow at the time of marriage in the 19th century for to do so conveniently explained her non-virginal state on the wedding night. She would then either have had to give her maiden name as her married name or invent a different married name. Elizabeth had chosen the latter course, changing her own name Davies for the equally common Welsh name Jones whilst retaining her middle, family name – Weston. The next time she decided to tell a partner that she was a widow she would revert to Davies as her married name46.
It was a ruse that, like the marriage, did not last very long. The marriage certificate itself shows that Elizabeth’s deception was not confined to her name. She also gave a false age, 26, which was two years less than her actual age. Again this was common in the 19th century when few checks were made against birth certificates and indeed many people, including Francis, had been born before civil registration of births, marriages and deaths commenced in June 1837.
The rest of the details on the certificate are more or less accurate except that Elizabeth failed to put ‘deceased’ after her father Edward’s name and Francis aggrandised his occupation by describing himself as a journalist rather than a reporter47. The witnesses are shown as E. and L. Warren. These were Edward Warren, a local rate collector who was perhaps the nearest to a true friend that Francis ever had and who would later give evidence at his inquest, and his wife Louisa. Then as now it was customary for close members of the bride and groom’s families to act as witnesses so the fact that no-one from either family did so suggests that none were present.
Although the exact date of Elizabeth’s leaving him is not given in the divorce petition, it seems clear that she had departed by 19th May 1885. In the space of just over four months they had lived in three different houses as well, perhaps, as having spent a week or two in Paris.
3 Andover Road was the house that Francis shared with his parents and Elizabeth had also given it as her address at the time of the marriage although it was probably just an accommodation address since it is highly unlikely that the Craigs would have permitted their son to share their tiny house with a young woman of whom they strongly disapproved. 7 Lemon’s Terrace was a cottage in a row of dwellings erected by a speculative builder of that name at the Mile End Road end of Stepney Green. In 1885 it was in an area densely populated by Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire who had fled the pogroms of 1871 and 1881, and it was close enough to Stepney gasworks to be affected by the sulphurous stench when the wind was in the wrong direction. It is difficult to see why Francis would have chosen to take his new bride there unless it was to put as much distance as possible between himself and his parents. At any rate they did not, it seems, stay there long before moving to the much more salubrious surroundings of Argyle Square, a pleasant leafy oasis in solidly middle-class Bloomsbury.
Exactly what caused such a rapid disintegration of the marriage is not clear although, with the benefit of knowing more about the character and personality of Francis it is possible to deduce some of the possibilities. He was, as became abundantly clear at his inquest, a strange, tongue-tied man who found normal conversation almost impossible. Yet Edward Warren disagreed with another witness that he was ‘sensitive’. Warren believed that Francis possessed a firm personality and was capable of standing his ground. If he was anything like his father he would have been stubborn to the point of intransigence. Elizabeth for her part was also possessed of a temper that could be explosive at times, especially if she was under the influence of alcohol, which was not infrequently. It was a recipe for disaster.
From the divorce petition it is clear that by May 1885, little over four months since the marriage, Elizabeth had left Francis. Years later Edward Warren would say that Francis’s wife disappeared about three months after the wedding and Arthur Lane, proprietor of the Indicator and Francis’s ex-employer, said that the marriage was ‘very brief, for his wife drank, and deserted him’.
Whatever the actual precipitating event, it is clear that a reclusive man who had lived with his parents for almost his entire life and a hot-headed, lively, upper-class courtesan who had spent much of the last ten years living in one of the grandest houses in London and mixing with well-known artists, writers and bohemians were not well matched. An age gap of 20 years and the fact that Francis is known to have been very abstemious whereas Elizabeth, if not an actual alcoholic, frequently drank too much, did not help. Francis’s decision to take such an unsuitable woman as his bride may have had more to do with a desire to break free from the suffocating influence of his parents than any real expectation that it could possibly work.
Despite that, Elizabeth’s desertion dealt Francis a savage blow. There is evidence from his later writing that he was very fond of children. He was an ardent supporter of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and frequently wrote in heart-rending terms about cases of child cruelty and neglect. Christmas was a time of special significance to him and he wrote wistfully about Christmas trees and tables groaning with presents ‘as in good days of old’. It seems likely that Francis’s Christmases in a small household dominated by an austere, teetotal father were anything but the Dickensian dream that he conjured up and possibly he yearned for a home with children and merriment such as he had never known. Whatever the truth, his reaction to Elizabeth’s departure was extreme.
His first response was to seek the help of his old friend Edward Warren. He prevailed upon the kind-hearted, easy-going man to give up his job for a few days to accompany him back to St. Pancras to comb the streets in a vain attempt to find his errant wife48. It was to no avail and Warren soon had to relinquish the task and return to his own family in Fulham. Francis did not give up however. It is clear from the petition that he next recruited the assistance of private detectives to search for Elizabeth. It was not a cheap undertaking and on Francis’s meagre wages as a penny-a-liner it must soon have eaten into his reserves.
His efforts eventually bore fruit but in a way that Francis might not have wished. At about 10pm at night on the evening of 19th May Elizabeth was spotted entering a private hotel at 53 Tonbridge Street in the company of a man of between 20 and 24 years of age. The inference was obvious and it must have come as a shattering blow to Francis. Elizabeth was working as a prostitute.
She had not moved very far. Tonbridge Street was only a few hundred yards from their lodgings in Argyle Square. Her lack of caution seems to indicate that she was either unaware of Francis’s attempts to find her or maybe she presumed that once he discovered the truth he would not bother to pursue her further. If so, she did not know her husband.
The initial sighting unlocked a series of others. Elizabeth, it was discovered, was living at the Monmouth Hotel and Coffee House, 161 Drummond Street, just west of Euston Station and either Francis himself or, more likely, the private investigator on his behalf quickly established through enquiries at the local police station that it was a well-known brothel. There followed a number of other sightings in and around Holloway and Camden of Elizabeth in the company of various clients. One man in particular was a regular. Elizabeth was spotted on several occasions during June, July and early August with one ‘Harry McBain, Baker’ and finally she spent the nights of 17th and 18th August 1885 with him at 26 Caledonian Road, Kings Cross. The address is that of another coffee house that rented out rooms, often a cover for a brothel and like other addresses that were later named in Francis’s divorce petition it was owned and operated by Elizabeth’s old employer Ellen Macleod.
Harry McBain was in fact Henry McBlain and his name is given correctly on the outside of the petition but misspelled throughout the actual document49. He was a retired 58-year-old ship owner and timber merchant, an Ulsterman who had made a modest fortune in Canada before retiring to London. Why he is described as a baker in the petition is a mystery although there was a large bakery within a few hundred yards of his house in St. Augustine’s Avenue, Camden Town and possibly he owned or had a financial interest in it. He may have known the Maundrells through his daughter Annie, who was a clerk in the Post Office Savings Bank for which Ellen’s father Robert had also worked.
The persistent attention of Francis or his agents eventually proved too much for Elizabeth. It must have been a nerve-shredding experience to be stalked night and day, never knowing when Francis would step out of an alleyway and beseech her to return to him. There may have been tearful rows in the open streets, a constant barrage of notes and letters, maybe even attempts to drag her back to their home by force. It may also eventually have proved too much for Mrs. Macleod. It could not have been good for business to have that sort of caper going on anywhere near her discreet establishments and involving one of her girls. It may have been she who finally told Elizabeth to pack her bags and leave the neighbourhood.
Whoever made the decision, the sightings in August are the last recorded ones of Elizabeth in North London and in fact the last ever of her under that name; after that she disappeared, not just from the scene but from history as far as most of her family and those that knew her are concerned. How long Francis went on looking for her in that area or paying others to do so is not known but at some time in the next few months the focus of his search moved further east.
On 6th March of the following year Francis visited Mr. R.H. Owens, a commissioner for oaths, at his chambers in Serle Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, to swear an affidavit to a petition for divorce against his wife Elizabeth. His solicitor, Arthur Ivens, whose own chambers were at 107 Great Russell Street, opposite the British Museum, had drawn up the petition based on the evidence that Francis had supplied him with which terminated abruptly after the sightings of 17th and 18th August the previous year. The document bears a momentous piece of information, although one which is easily overlooked on a first reading. It starts with the words: ‘I Francis Spurzheim Craig of 306 Mile End Road in the County of Middlesex …’ At some point in the previous months he had moved from the home he had shared with Elizabeth in Argyle Square back to the East End.
It is improbable that he would have done so as long as he thought that Elizabeth was still in the Bloomsbury area, so it seems that he had received some information which revealed that she had moved east. When and how this had occurred is impossible to say. Maybe he or someone acting for him had talked to other girls who knew her and had been told that that was where she had gone. Even if she had sworn her fellow prostitutes to secrecy, a few shillings or a glass of gin may have been all that was needed to loosen their lips.
The informant, whoever she was, very probably worked from the same brothel as Elizabeth. The divorce petition states that ‘… on the 10th January 1885 the said Elizabeth Weston Craig wrote a letter from the Monmouth Hotel and Coffee House, 161 Drummond Street, Euston Square in which she stated that she had been staying there since leaving the East End…’ It is a tantalising but odd snippet. On 10th January 1885 the pair had only been married for 17 days. It hardly seems long enough for them to have lived and cohabited at three different addresses and then to have separated, let alone to have also spent some time in Paris50.
There may be two explanations. It is conceivable that there is a mistake about the date. It may be that the letter was written in January 1886; early in the New Year, people frequently continue mistakenly to use the old year when writing cheques or letters. More likely is the possibility that Elizabeth had resumed her old trade during the day whilst Francis was at work and was using the Mon-mouth Hotel as her base. The intended recipient of the letter is not known. Almost certainly it was not Francis or that would have been stated in the petition. Possibly she had written it to a friend or family member so that they could safely write to her at that address and Francis had intercepted it or it had somehow come into his possession51. In that case, ‘since leaving the East End’ would indicate that they had only lived at Lemon’s Terrace, Stepney, for a matter of days.
Why had Elizabeth reverted to prostitution so soon after their marriage? Had life with Francis proved so intolerable that she had quickly realised that there was no future in it? Did she need the money? Francis was paranoid about his finances, frequently believing that he was facing ruin when there were no grounds for such an idea. A doggerel poem that he wrote in December 1889 called An Editor’s Christmas which was published in the Indicator, of which he was then the editor, talks of a table being strewed with ‘The bills and the notes for which he was sued’. Creditors, real or imagined, seem to have haunted Francis throughout his life. Elizabeth, who had until her marriage been financially independent and apparently well-off, at least for the few weeks whilst she was working in the West End gay house, suddenly found herself reliant on a man who could have been the model for Ebenezer Scrooge. If so, it was a situation that a girl of as independent a nature as Elizabeth would have quickly found intolerable.
The combination of living with such an odd man and the loss of her independence no doubt led to the first of many rows. Elizabeth may have resorted to drink which would have worsened an already precarious situation. Francis’s deepening paranoia may have caused him to employ the services of private detectives to keep his wife under observation until, unable to stand it any longer, she walked out on him.
When the trail finally went cold in August 1885 it apparently did not take Francis long to discover that Elizabeth had moved to the East End, whether the information was imparted by one of her former friends or not. As with all port cities, the area around the docks was a magnet for prostitutes. Sailors on their first run ashore after a long voyage, their pockets bulging with several months’ accumulated pay, were easy prey and the Ratcliffe Highway which ran parallel to the north bank of the Thames teemed with brothels. Moreover the East End, which had the highest population density in Britain, was an ideal place in which to disappear if that was your wish. It seems that Elizabeth had had enough of being stalked and accosted by Francis or his lackeys. Probably she only intended to make it a temporary exile; the upmarket West End was her more natural environment. She no doubt hoped that after a few weeks or months it would be safe for her to move back to old haunts by which time Francis might have lost interest or found it impossible to pick up the trail again. At any event, if that was her intention, she badly underestimated the extent of his obsession. Nor could she have known that his craving to have his wife back had gradually changed into a bitter, festering resentment. It was the classic case of love turned to hatred.