Inconvenient People (24 page)

Mrs Cumming was driven across the river to York House Asylum, near the Thames at Battersea, where she was questioned by Pimlico-based surgeon Thomas Wilmot, who spoke with her for an hour before heading off to talk to the captain, now back at Belgrave Terrace. After having seen the state of the house, Wilmot signed a certificate of lunacy for Mrs Cumming. The other certifying medical man was George Cornelius Johnson, Ince’s business partner of thirty-four years – a fact that enhanced the sense of conspiracy. Questioned later, Johnson said of his decision to sign the certificate, ‘Mrs Cumming appeared to labour under a perversion of all natural feeling towards her children.’ Although it was Captain Cumming’s signature on the lunacy order, Mrs Cumming and those servants who had remained loyal to her (the majority of the household, though by a slender margin) were in no doubt that the incarceration had been cooked up by Thomasine, Catherine and their husbands.

The celebrated alienist Sir Alexander Morison himself came along to York House on 18 and 19 May to speak to Mrs Cumming; a few weeks earlier, he had accompanied John Ince to Belgrave Terrace, when the son-in-law had sought his informal opinion on Mrs Cumming’s sanity. On that occasion, Mrs Cumming had refused to allow the men into the house. Of his York House session with her, Morison stated that while Mrs Cumming was shrewd in business matters, she could nevertheless have been tutored by well-wishers to suppress the appearances of mental confusion; and that, said Morison, would account for how she could demonstrate business acumen while being of unsound mind. Morison quizzed her closely about the contents of her will and asked to whom she had chosen to leave bequests. During their talk, Mrs Cumming repeated to Morison her assertion that her husband had immoral relations with his nurses; she stated that a solicitor – John Dangerfield – had robbed her and that John Ince had been instrumental in the death of one of Thomasine’s children (the Hoopers lost at least two of their children in infancy, and possibly more. The Inces suffered the death of at least three children in infancy). Morison concluded that Mrs Cumming was suffering from monomania, and this was also the conclusion of Dr John Gideon Millingen, co-proprietor of York House Asylum. In his casebook Millingen noted that Mrs Cumming was suffering from a single derangement, relating to her family’s behaviour. Her delusions,
he wrote, were that her daughters were prostitutes and their children illegitimate, and that her husband was ‘a libertine’.

Millingen’s paperwork was notoriously sloppy: only three months before Mrs Cumming’s admission he had been reprimanded by the Commissioners in Lunacy for his lax patient casebooks and record-keeping and ‘irregular’ medical certificates and was warned that legal action would be taken if this negligence continued. A rather eccentric and rackety character, Millingen was also a playwright, writing such stage farces as
Ladies at Home; or Gentlemen, We Can Do Without You
(1819) and
Who’ll Lend Me a Wife?
(1834). William Makepeace Thackeray consulted him for the Waterloo scenes in
Vanity Fair
(1847–8), because Millingen had had a long career as an army surgeon; and it has been claimed that Dickens used the doctor’s researches on spontaneous human combustion for Krook’s demise in
Bleak House
(1853). Millingen had also published respected works on ‘the passions’ and was a member of the Society for the Protection of the Insane – the informal forum for private asylum proprietors set up by Sir Alexander Morison. Totally against the spirit of the lunacy laws, members exchanged ‘single patients’ between them, and met regularly at Morison’s home for social occasions. It is quite possible that Morison’s patronage and professional friendship shielded Millingen from harsh treatment by the Commissioners; certainly, less well connected proprietors faced stronger censure and threats to their licences for such persistent casebook misdemeanours and breezy lack of concern. In 1839 Millingen had been sacked from the huge Middlesex County Asylum when local magistrates found restraint and other punitive measures still in force; it was felt that Millingen’s military background was not suited to the more humane regime that was being demanded of county asylum superintendents.

In the same week as Morison’s visit, two Commissioners in Lunacy came to see Mrs Cumming and concluded that she was ‘full of delusions, most absurd in her conversation and certainly of unsound mind’. Commissioners William Campbell and James Cowles Prichard reported that she made no complaint to them about being confined in York House. They requested that the Inces, the Hoopers and certifying doctor Johnson come to the Commission’s headquarters to discuss the case; when they did so, the Commissioners unanimously sided with the family.

Campbell and Prichard had been shocked by Mrs Cumming’s allegations against her family and by the filthiness of her home, which they had visited after seeing her in York House. It is worth noting that the keys to 1 Belgrave Terrace from the time of Mrs Cumming’s removal to the asylum were held by the Hoopers and the Inces, and this would have given them plenty of occasion to dirty the premises and make up any story they liked about its state. Perhaps the start of this activity is what young Elizabeth Buck witnessed when she noted Ince rummaging around in the upper rooms on 12 May.

Like many private asylums, York House had beautiful grounds. The house and estate dated back to the late fifteenth century and there
was a locally held belief (probably erroneous) that Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII had conducted part of their courtship here; more certainly, George IV and Mrs Fitzherbert had canoodled within the Georgian rebuild. But Mrs Cumming preferred not to walk in the grounds. Pointing out of the window at two female patients strolling in the gardens, she objected that, ‘I have been associated with
those
people’, and she refused all social mixing with other inmates. However, she also felt that the solitude and seclusion of this ‘dull and gloomy’ place was having a bad effect on her, as she was ‘accustomed to society’. Mrs Cumming was therefore requested to dine in the private quarters of Mr and Miss Parkin, the brother and sister co-proprietors of York House, who oversaw the day-to-day management of the asylum. This Mr Parkin is the surgeon, and former asylum patient, who had joined the Alleged Lunatics’ Friend Society, and it remains a mystery why we now find him on the other side of the fence (or wall). The Parkins grew to like Mrs Cumming and introduced her to their friends. Nurse Elizabeth Davis also became fond of her: ‘I think she was of stronger mind than I am myself,’ she said later. ‘Considering her years, she was of very sound understanding . . . She lamented her daughters’ cruel treatment of her in tears many times.’ But Davis’s opinion of Mrs Cumming’s state of mind was never sought by anyone; she later claimed that nurses and attendants had ‘no control’ over matters if they ever believed that a sane person had been confined.

Before long the Parkins allowed Mrs Cumming to leave York House for carriage rides, with attendants. The Parkins were becoming worried that ‘the cries of the lunatics’ in the asylum might push Mrs Cumming into full-blown mania; but the presence of attendants on her drives, with the implication that she was not to be trusted, annoyed her. Mrs Cumming also complained that her friends were being denied access to her. Catherine called upon her mother just once, to supply her with some of her clothes, but the old lady did not wish to see her. Thomasine did not call at all. Mrs Cumming’s agent for one of the Welsh properties was not allowed to consult her, and the Inces and Hoopers would tell him nothing of what had happened to her when he called on them to inquire. So it was Dr Millingen who in August had the task of telling Mrs Cumming, as gently as he could, that the captain had died in mid-July. Mrs Cumming’s first response was anger, reported Millingen: ‘They have done for him, and now they want to do for me,’ she told the doctor.

The Inces and Hoopers revealed that they wished Mrs Cumming to agree to have an official receiver appointed by the Commissioners in Lunacy, for her rental income and the administration of her estates. This was communicated to her by solicitor John Dangerfield, who Mrs Cumming had already concluded was a robber. Since her incarceration, Dangerfield had been collecting the Welsh rents but Mrs Cumming never received any written accounts of these transactions; Dangerfield later claimed that he had rendered her verbal reports of her business affairs. At York House, Dangerfield (wrongly) told Mrs Cumming that by having a receiver appointed by the Commissioners, she could manage to avoid the expense and embarrassment of a lunacy inquisition. But the Commissioners soon advised Dangerfield that they could not undertake such a move, because the 1845 Lunatics Act severely limited the size of the estate to which such an avoidance applied. Put simply, Mrs Cumming was too rich to avoid an inquisition. Despite her husband’s profligacy, she was still believed to be worth £30,000 – and so on trial she would have to go. And in a pub. Catherine Cumming would have her psyche scrutinised before the press, spectators and drinkers at the Horns Tavern near Kennington Common.

The inquisition opened on Saturday 29 August 1846. Mrs Cumming was without legal representation, because access to her at York House had been controlled by John Ince, who permitted only John Dangerfield to visit her. By contrast, her accusers had hired three lawyers and four doctors. Commissioner Francis Barlow was in the chair, and his jury numbered sixteen.

The allegations flew at Mrs Cumming from many directions on that first day. Harriet Quin, a servant at 2 Belgrave Terrace, claimed Mrs Cumming had once threatened to dash Quin’s brains out against the wall. It was alleged that Mrs Cumming had placed an advertisement in a newspaper for a small girl whom she could adopt as her own, but when one Sarah Boswood had been put forward as a potential new daughter, Mrs Cumming had so mistreated the child that Sarah was removed. It was claimed that Mrs Cumming had sought out orphaned or abandoned girls in order to upset Thomasine and Catherine. Mrs Cumming did not deny that she had regularly described one such child companion, Cecilia Bartolini, as ‘her daughter’. This lack of affection for her own children and the attempt to supplant
them was offered as evidence of Mrs Cumming’s unnatural state of mind.

Thomasine had cried off attending the inquisition, due to ‘delicate health’, but Benjamin Bailey Hooper was there, claiming that the captain had twice run away to the Hoopers. When Hooper had brought him back to Belgrave Terrace, Mrs Cumming had told him, ‘I would rather see my husband brought back dead than brought home by such a scoundrel as you.’

Dr George Vernon Driver, who had worked at John Ince’s medical practice for seven years, stated that during one social call Mrs Cumming had taken him into the garden of Belgrave Terrace to show him the birds she kept, and ‘in my presence she made water, without offering any remark’.

John Ince alleged that his mother-in-law had always been prone to fits of outrageous temper and for years had made dreadful allegations of immorality against her husband, whom Ince described as ‘the mildest of elderly gentlemen’. He recalled that after the captain had got out of prison, Mrs Cumming would regularly lock him in his room and that because she had kept such a filthy house, the captain’s health had rapidly declined. Ince reported that in July, two months after Mrs Cumming’s incarceration, 1 Belgrave Terrace had been searched and up to forty parcels of sugar were found scattered about a dusty lumber room, alongside banknotes tossed around with old papers, firewood and rubbish. (This would not have been news to Ince, as he had had the run of the house since mid-May.) His mother-in-law had borrowed money from him, Ince claimed, yet for years had accused her family, servants and lawyers of robbing her.

Catherine Ince confirmed everything her husband had said and emphasised the ‘unnatural’ hatred her mother had for her children and grandchildren. She claimed that, although her grandchildren were very young, Mrs Cumming would fall to her knees and call out for God to curse them. Catherine also testified that Mrs Cumming had accused John Ince of killing one of the Hoopers’ children for financial gain.

The jury was told that Mrs Cumming had stated that she had three additional daughters – one in France; one called Lady Dillon; and one in India, called Sarah. This may have been Mrs Cumming’s rather generous attempt to include the captain’s illegitimate offspring within the family circle; or perhaps she used the word ‘daughter’ in a
figurative way, to speak of young women friends to whom she felt close. Mrs Cumming’s often oblique humour and allusive use of language were to play a significant role in the misfortunes of her old age.

Extraordinary emphasis was placed in these hearings on Mrs Cumming’s relationship with her five cats – Vic, Viz, Mrs Thomas, Kitty and Tommy. Those servants who testified against her sanity claimed that the creatures were never allowed out of her bedroom and so ‘performed all the offices of nature there’; as a result, the room stank and the house became ‘offensive’. The cats were said to have had 2lb of top-quality meat prepared for them each day by Mrs Cumming herself, who would place a clean white cloth, the best china bowls, a silver plate and napkins on the floor, so that the cats would dine in style.