A Burglar Caught by a Skeleton & Other Singular Tales from the Victorian Press (7 page)

He began by teaching it to take its meals on his hand, and although the tiny creature was at first shy of going through its
table d’hôte
on such an unusual festive board, in a very short space of time it grew to expect to be fed in that way.

Sir John preserved this pet with the greatest care. True, it stung him once, but then it had every excuse for doing so. Sir John was examining it on a railway journey, and, the door being opened by a ticket collector, he unceremoniously stuffed it into a bottle, and the outraged Spaniard, not feeling quite at home during the process, gave him a gentle reminder as to the proper way to treat a guest.

The wasp was a pet in every sense of the word, and became so fond of its owner that it allowed itself to be stroked.

It enjoyed civilisation for just nine months, when it fell ill, and although Sir John did all he could to prolong its life, it died.

Many wasps have been under Sir John’s observation, but he has never had such a genuine pet as this one.

The Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette
, March 16, 1899

A Lion Loose

Mr T.J. Osborne of Old Market Street, Neath, was the subject of a strange adventure at the Bridge Hotel, Llandrindod Wells, on Friday afternoon, about half-past three o’clock. Mr Osborne was preparing to leave for home by the afternoon train on that day, when a full-grown African lion dashed in through the open window. Mr Osborne seized a chair to defend himself. At this instant the lion’s keeper and a staff of men appeared on the scene. The keeper warned Mr Osborne not to stir. With as little delay as possible the keeper and his assistants made their way to the room with the necessary appliances for recapturing the brute. With some difficulty they succeeded in throwing a sack over the lion’s head, after which he was firmly secured with ropes. It was found that the lion had made its escape from Wombwell’s menagerie, which was located on a plot of ground near the Bridge Hotel.

Berrow’s Worcester Journal
, July 6, 1889

A Monkey Murderer and Suicide

An extraordinary occurrence is reported as having happened at Jump, near Barnsley, on Saturday afternoon, and on inquiry the following facts were well authenticated: A miner named John Hines possessed three monkeys, an old one and two young ones, and like the generality of the tribe, the elder one was fond of imitating what was going on in the household.

On Saturday afternoon whilst shaving himself, Hines was called out into the back yard to see after some pigs that had broken out of the sty, and half-shaved as he was he rushed out, leaving the razor on the table, and his pets, apparently oblivious of his movements.

No sooner, however, was his back turned than the father of the two young monkeys seized the razor and commenced to try his ’prentice hand on his offspring. He evidently miscalculated the keenness of the edge, for in the twinkling of an eye he had severed the heads of the little things almost completely from their bodies.

Even here his experiment did not stop, for he next turned the blade against himself with an almost similar result, for he inflicted a deep gash in the throat.

On Hines’ return in a few minutes he found his two young pets quite dead, and the father gasping for breath on the ground, bleeding profusely. The author of the mischief lingered until Sunday, and then he too succumbed to his self-inflicted injuries. The affair has excited considerable interest. It is the intention of the owner to have the dead monkeys stuffed.

The Royal Cornwall Gazette
, March 20, 1890

LOVE, MARRIAGE
and FAMILY

Preface

It was a wedding night to forget for Henry and Mary Glanister of Liverpool. At least, it would have been if they could remember it in the first place.

On the morning of their first day of married life, they woke up apart. The groom had been arrested the evening before and spent the night in a police cell. His new bride would have been furious with him if she hadn’t been locked up too.

Perhaps she reserved her rage for her mother instead. After all, Mum started it, according to the
Manchester Evening News
on July 11, 1882, becoming ‘so overcome with emotion and liquor that she became uproarious and fell into the hands of the police’. The newlyweds piled in to free her, and ended up behind bars that night rather than in each other’s arms.

In that, they weren’t unique. Two years later another couple from Liverpool spent their first night as man and wife in the cells. Thomas and Mary McNamara had enjoyed the convivial company of their sisters, cousins and aunts during the afternoon, reported the
Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser
of October 9, 1884. The drink flowed freely, and when they staggered off to the pub, the barman refused to serve them. ‘This by no means pleased the wedding guests’, the paper noted, drily. When the police arrived to turf them out, Mrs McNamara punched PC 829 in the face, and it was off to the bridewell for the unsteady bride and groom.

A similar tale of drunken nuptial woe played out in London in October 1868, according to the zippily-titled
Bucks Herald, Uxbridge Advertiser, Windsor and Eton Journal
. Elizabeth Stanton, of Holborn, was dancing in her local when things – in a frustratingly unspecified way – got a little out of hand, and she was asked to leave. By way of reply, she smashed a window, punched the barman then tried to bite a policeman. Twice. You can guess the rest.

These stories, and a few more in the chapter that follows, put a bit of a dent in the theory of French physician Eugene Becklard that marriage is ‘the principal medium through which nature makes the human species tranquil and happy’.

Not just that. It also ‘purifies the complexion, removes blotches from the skin, invigorates the muscles, makes the carriage erect and free and the voice full and firm’.

These bold claims came in his 1840s work,
Physiological Mysteries and Revelations in Love, Courtship and Marriage: An Infallible Guide-Book for Married and Single Persons, in Matters of Utmost Importance to the Human Race
. Think of it as sex tips for Victorians.

The breed must be crossed, that was his maxim. A melancholy man should pair up with a sprightly woman, and vice versa. The ambitious should unite with the humble. The amiable with the choleric. That way, the danger was minimised of growing bored of each other’s company (although you had less chance to grow tired: the mortality rate meant few marriages lasted more than 30 years).

M. Becklard’s match-making advice didn’t stop with pairing chalk-and-cheese personalities. ‘The length of the neck should be proportionably less in the male than the female’, he cautioned. The back of the woman should be more hollow than of man; woman should have loins more extended than man … and on he went.

Not everyone needed to pay heed to his fussy strictures. Marriage was a cornerstone of Victorian life, but it wasn’t universal. According to the Registrar-General, there were getting on for 1¼ million women aged between 20 and 40 who were unmarried in 1851. Out of 100 women aged 20 and over, 30 were classified as spinsters.