07 Aug 2012
A story from Victorian London: Mary Rainbow and her nameless murdered child
Mary Rainbow had a lovely name, but her three-week-old child had none. The baby, a girl, was illegitimate. Her father was married, but not to Mary Rainbow.
On the 12th May, 1879, labourer William Stocks left his home in Clapton and went to work just off the Seven Sisters Road.
“I was engaged in repairing a wall in the Green Lanes opposite the Manor House about 7.40 a.m.—while I was taking some bricks off the wall I saw a brown paper parcel laid up against the wall…I went down to the parcel—the paper was lying open—I looked under the paper and saw the dead body of a little child—a little flannel was wrapped over its feet.”
Mary Rainbow’s baby had been been drugged with laudanum; her skull was fractured. The child was never named. She had existed, but barely at all.
Mr and Mrs Hull, by contrast, did have names, but did not exist. In April, a couple bearing that name had come to London from Bedfordshire to have a baby. On the 22nd it had been born in a St Pancras lodging house kept by Ann Starling and her daughter Betty. A month later, the Starlings received a letter from Mrs Hull, now back in Bedfordshire.
Dear Mrs Starling,
I hope you won’t think I have forgotten you as I have not written to you, but I have been busy. I am very happy to say we arrived home without catching any more cold, and this leaves us all quite well, and hope it will find you better. My breast is nearly well…give my love to Betty, I hope she is well. I suppose she missed the baby, for I know she was very fond of nursing it. I have thought about you all a great many times since I have been away; the country seems dull after London, but still it looks very nice, everything is looking so green; I think I shall rather like it this summer.
This letter, like Mrs Hull, was a lie. The baby was a week dead. Mrs Hull was Mary Rainbow, a 28-year-old servant. Mr Hull was James Dilley, 41, a married man with three legitimate children who worked as a postman and picture framer. The summer of 1879, which Mary thought she would rather like, did not turn out so well. At the beginning of August, she and Dilley stood trial for murder. By the month’s end, they were due to hang. The sentence is preserved, with brutal concision, in the Old Bailey’s record:
Despite the jury’s recommendation, there was no other sentence available to the judge in a case of murder. Who drugged and struck the child is not certainly known, but Mary claimed her innocence. The London Telegraph report from the week before the execution, preserved in the online archives of the New York Times, says:
“The prisoners still continue in a very depressed state, especially the woman Rainbow, who takes but little food. She has made a statement respecting the murder, in which she avers that she was most fond of the child, and that Dilley took the infant from her and went away with it. When he returned he said he had got rid of it. He was a married man and feared that his wife would hear of the birth of the child.”
Mary Rainbow became a cause. A petition for her reprieve was set up and presented to the Home Office. Two days before she was due to hang, Mary Rainbow was reprieved. James Dilley, the father of the child, and it all probability its killer, had no such luck. He was hanged in Newgate prison on 25th August 1879.
Child murder, specifically baby murder, was a tragically common response to the twin pressures of poverty and shame which attended illegitimate births in this period. Some 30 years before, in 1860, Henry Mayhew estimated that 225 children under two were murdered by their parents in London each year. The gruesome, murderous practice of baby farming continued even into the 20th century. Babies, especially illegitimate babies, could be both economic drains and social disasters. Death was often a rational response to their birth.
Her child dead, her lover hanged, what of Mary Rainbow’s end?
The Bedfordshire county records complete her story:
“The 1881 census shows that she was still in prison, as might be imagined, at “H.M. Fem[ale] Convict Prison, London District of Fulham”. However, by the 1891 census Mary Rainbow was out and, remarkably, back home [in Bedfordshire], working as a domestic servant at Mayfield Farm, Lower Stondon. The 1901 census shows her working for the same family, the Russells, at Chibley Farm, Shillington. Shillington parish registers show that she died at the end of 1934, aged 83 and was buried in Shillington churchyard on New Year’s Day 1935.”
Mary Rainbow had a lovely name, and an apt one too. Her life a mix of sun and rain.
Image – Rainbow at Kings Cross, taken near to the spot where Mary gave birth to her child. By Flickr user Mark Hilary, under Creative Commons license.
Links:
Old Bailey Online – August 1879 for details of the trial.
Befordshire Council – Details of the case, and biographical details of the protagonists
Henry Mayhew statistic – The London Underworld in the Victorian Period
New York Times – The Hornsey Child Murder
London Historians – Baby farming
06 Aug 2012
Speculation, not scrutiny, as the "will Boris become PM?" pieces keep flying off the zipwire
In the last week alone you’ve been able to read:
Steve Richards in the Independent and Jacqui Smith at Progress saying no he won’t be PM.
His biographer Sonia Purnell at the Guardian saying he definitely shouldn’t be.
Peter Kellner of YouGov running through some polling numbers at the Huffington Post which appear to show that voters are similarly sanguine about the Mayor’s charms:
“Only 36% of voters think Boris is well suited to being Prime Minister. Cameron beats him easily, with a score of 46%. Among Tory voters the gulf is even greater: Cameron 90%, Boris 61%.”
And Phillip Collins in the Times (paywalled, but excerpted at their tumblr site) delivering the best line of all:
“Boris Johnson is a clown who happens to run a major world city. We like Mr Johnson as Mayor of London (those of us who do) because his power is limited. If London had its own defence budget we might be more wary. The best way to expose Mr Johnson’s credentials would be to devolve more power. Then the electorate would react the way that most children do when they see a clown. It’s not funny. It’s scary.”
The Mayoralty needs more power, if only so big media stop speculating on what the incumbent might do next, and start scrutinising what he’s doing right now.
06 Aug 2012
Fifty Fifty by The Luyas
Montreal’s The Luyas have just signed to the wonderful Paper Bag Records (Austra, PS I Love You) in Canada. This is the superb first single from their forthcoming third album, Animator, out October 16 on Dead Oceans/Paper Bag.
06 Aug 2012
London agenda for Monday 6 August 2012
1. Watch Sean Connery and Michael Caine in The Man Who Would Be King at the BFI [Le Cool]
2. Watch an immersive theatre event and art exhibition set in a fictional future version of London on the eve of the 2040 Olympics [Run Riot]
3. Take part in a Viking raid, or something, at the Danish House [Ian Visits]
5. Subsource // Invaders // Animal at The Old Blue Last [London in Stereo]
06 Aug 2012
"I'm Not Human At All" Mixtape
Something for the weekend? Here’s a new mixtape from Snipe’s music editor, featuring various bands that have been covered in the magazine this year like Sleep Party People, When Saints Go Machine and Enjoyed. Listen and download below, and subscribe to further podcasts on Mixcloud or Soundcloud.
04 Aug 2012
London agenda for Friday 3 August 2012
1. Help Clash Magazine launch their Friday nights with Glass Animals, Amirali, and Gang Colours at the Shacklewell Arms [Le Cool]
2. Talk to director Robert Cannan about his new film, Three Miles North of Molkom [Run Riot]
3. Go in animal fancy dress for Animal House with Raf Daddy + Horse Meat Disco at London Pleasure Gardens [Flavorpill]
4. Moon over Laurie Anderson at the South Bank Centre [Don’t Panic]
5. View the Peckham Town Centre Exhibition in a restored railway waiting room [Ian Visits] (Kaf has some background here.)
6. See St Paul’s Cathedral late & for free [Tired of London]
7. Eugene McGuinness // Laurel Collective // Post War Years // Clout // Nightwave DJ at Corsica Studios [London In Stereo]
03 Aug 2012
Three artists take on the Olympic Stadium. Who's painting it best?
One stadium, three artists.
Oh sure, you could look at these helicopter-view paintings as complementary landscapes, each one enriching the other two so that they mean more together than they ever could apart.
But in the spirit of the Olympics, it seems appropriate instead to pit them in a brutal competition against each other and ask, with no equivocation permitted: which one is the best?
The painting above is by Jenny Pockley.
This is by Alicia Dubnyckyj.
And this is by Daniel Preece.
The paintings, and similar views of Westiminster, St Paul’s and the City are on show at LONDON NOW: The Olympic City, an exhibiton at the Sarah Myerscough gallery which runs from August 3 – September 1. You can also compare them on the gallery’s website.
03 Aug 2012
Revamped William Morris gallery opens today with Grayson Perry's Walthamstow tapestry
The William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow reopens today after a big revamp. You can go there and look at arts and crafty textiles, pottery, furniture and lots more nice flowery artistically important stuff.
And there’s Grayson Perry’s Walthamstow tapestry (above).
Worth checking out.
@WMGallery on Twitter
William Morris gallery website
02 Aug 2012
Tina Dico - Moon To Let
Here’s a sparkly, winning Zero 7 remix of Danish singer Tina Dico that channels The Knife through a warmer trip-hop filter to create an affectingly dramatic and pretty sound. Her album proper is released on September 10th.
02 Aug 2012
Snipe Highlights
Some popular articles from past years
- Summer Camp: Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days
- Peter Bayley has worked for 50 years as a cinema projectionist in East Finchley
- Margaret Thatcher statue rejected by public
- An interview with Desiree Akhavan
- Random Interview: Eileen Conn, co-ordinator of Peckham Vision
- A unique collection of photos of Edwardian Londoners
- Hope and despair in Woolwich town centre
- The best church names in London, and where they come from
- London has chosen its mayor, but why can’t it choose its own media?
- 9 poems about London: one for each of your moods
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