The Sad Tale of the Paupers Nobody Wanted : Proving the right of a British Citizen

 

In recent years, recent days even, we have heard people in this country denouncing refugees crossing from France because, “the British Taxpayer has to provide for them.”  In 1834 the government passed the New Poor Law to reduce the burden on the rate payers in England of providing for paupers with out relief by replacing it with indoor relief within the Union Workhouse.  The old rules of Settlement, where birth in a parish was necessary to receive help no longer applied so clearly but gradually the right of aid within a union of parishes was established.

However, in one sad case in Surrey and Hampshire no rights of support were legally allowed. It concerned a family where the wife, Catherine Stringer, had been born in Prussia (Germany), the daughter of a British soldier, and her husband, Michael Stringer, the son of a freed slave who had been born in Jamaica was considered a foreigner even though he received a soldier’s pension after more than 20 years’ service in the British army.

In November 1854, Catherine Stringer, who with her husband, Michael, had given birth to 14 children, presented herself at Guildford Union Workhouse, with her youngest 3 children because her husband had seduced their adopted orphan child, who at 18 was expecting his baby. Catherine was a British subject in every census record but had no right to poor relief.  Her husband was stationed in the barracks in Guildford, but when the Guildford Board of Guardians discovered she had a son-in-law in Portsmouth (where Catherine had once lived) who could take her in, they bought her train tickets so she could remove herself and her youngest children to Portsea.  Mr Ames, Master of the Workhouse took them to Guildford station and accompanied them in the carriage to Woking station where he put them on the Portsmouth train.

Subsequently the Poor Law Board in London ruled this removal from Guildford to Portsmouth was illegal.

Michael Springer is described on his pension documents as 5 ft 8 inches tall with dark brown hair, grey eyes and a swarthy complexion. He had a good military record and was a Sergeant as well as a Bugle Major. He retired aged 38 because of arthritis, probably caused by many years of service in Ireland after his upbringing in the warmer climate of Jamaica where he was born. In 1821 Michael married Catherine after meeting her in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where her father was also serving as a soldier.

Michael had served as a Bugle Major for 19 years with the 2^nd Battalion 60^th Infantry Regiment but prior to that he had enlisted in Jamaica at the age of 12. After being discharged in Ireland in 1834, where many of his children were born, he moved to the more favourable climate of Portsmouth. Unfortunately in 1851 he was convicted of the felony of larceny, which is why the 1851 census lists Catherine as Head of the house.

On finishing his sentence in 1852, Michael joined the Surrey Militia in Guildford until his discharge in 1854 when like his estranged wife he moved back to Portsmouth where some of their adult children lived. Soon his itchy feet took him back to Cork in Ireland but in 1861 Catherine is still in Portsmouth with some of her children.

I believe Michael remarried in Cork, probably bigamously but in 1875 Catherine died in poverty in the Union Workhouse on Portsea Island.

The problems the couple had in establishing rights as British citizens despite valid parentage, being born abroad as a result of her father's army service and in Michael's case owing him reward for his duty to Britain as a soldier, reflect the experiences of the Windrush generation and also of the difficulty experienced by some of my generation in obtaining a British passport because they were born in Singapore or Malaysia due to their father's military service. No wonder they had such tempestuous lives.

#Murder in the sand dunes

On Thursday February 20th 1908 a schoolmaster named Spurgeon was walking on the cliffs at Southbourne in Bournemouth when he noticed the clothing of a young lady between two sand hills.  On investigating he discovered that she was face down so he quickly rushed to tell the Coastguard half a mile away.  The body was that of Miss Emma Sherriff, a dressmaker, who had gone missing from her lodgings in Palmerston Road, Boscombe two days earlier.  She was found to have a muff over her face and had two handkerchiefs stuffed inside her mouth. 

Southbourne Cliff

Police investigation quickly lead them to picture dealer and ex-guardsman, John Francis McGuire, who had been seeing Miss Sherriff regularly.  Like Emma, he was in his early twenties, but according to Miss Lily Hatch, her close friend of 12 years, the relationship the couple had, was like that of brother and sister.  Emma had last been seen alive by her landlady, Mary Lane, at 1 pm on Tuesday when she seemed very distressed by a note that had been left for her.  At 6.30 Emma went out but did not follow her usual habit of leaving her key under the door mat.  On Wednesday a telegram was delivered for Miss Sherriff but as there was no sign of her, Mrs Lane forwarded it to Mr McGuire’s mother.

By Wednesday afternoon, Mrs McGuire, Miss Hatch and John Francis McGuire were outside the door of Emma’s bedroom.  McGuire forced it open but they could find no clue as to the whereabouts of Miss Sherriff.  After her body was found on Thursday an examination revealed several serious injuries caused by blows made by foot, knee or a blunt instrument.  It was later reported that some of her jewellery had gone missing.

The trial of John Francis McGuire, which commenced in late March, was full of conflicting evidence.  McGuire said that he had last seen Emma on Monday 17^th February and that he had returned to his home in London on Tuesday and yet a witness saw him catch a tramcar in Southbourne at 8.12 on Tuesday 18^th February, quite close to where the body had been found.  He had in fact been seen in London on the Tuesday by a shoe black who knew him well.  The shoe black stated that McGuire gave him 2 letters earlier in the day asking him to post them after 8 pm. that evening.  There was evidence that McGuire did sleep in London that night but train timetables proved that he could have caught a train to London from Bournemouth at 8.45 pm. 

There was considerable disagreement amongst the jurors and so the prosecution was withdrawn on July 2^nd and the magistrate released McGuire.  Within a few days McGuire was charged at Barnet of desertion from the British Army.  He had joined the Royal Horse Artillery in 1901 but later transferred to the Royal Horse guards.  In 1904, he was court martialed for stealing a pin from a corporal’s kit and was dismissed from the army.  One month later he joined the 2^nd Life guards, but deserted in 1906.  Now that he had been discovered he was imprisoned for 84 days.

McGuire may not have been convicted of murder but his life lurched from one misdemeanour to another.  After his imprisonment had ended towards the latter part of 1908 he moved to Mundesley-on-sea, Norfolk where he and a young lady took a furnished cottage.  Calling themselves Captain and Mrs Francis, they paid no rent and were soon in debt with local tradesmen.  Finally, McGuire jumped on a train to London, with no ticket, leaving the young woman destitute.  We pick up his story again in February 1909 when he was taken into custody in Westminster with another man for fraudulent conspiracy to obtain goods from a firm of house furnishers, earning himself 12 months’ imprisonment.

But what of poor Emma?  She can be found in a list of 36 unsolved murders between 1890 and 1908.  There is no doubt that John Francis McGuire was a cad and a wastrel.  He said at his trial for conspiracy that he had had no home since he was 14 (when he joined the army) but his mother was a friend of Emma Sherriff so at that stage of his life he appeared to be cherished.  Many of the witnesses at the murder trial were unreliable so no clear verdict could be declared.

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/