In the afternoon of Tuesday 23 May 1876 a respectable looking, twenty six year old woman with long flowing hair, stepped down from the Sheffield train and went to the Station Hotel Rotherham. There she reserved rooms for herself giving the name of Edith Groves. The landlady, Mrs Taylor was delighted when she told the woman the price for lodgings and was informed that lodgings in Sheffield were much more expensive. Edith then request a tea of ham and eggs and asked for it to be served around 5 pm, which was agreed. Edith told the landlady that she was anxious to post a book back to a person in Sheffield from whom she had borrowed and forgotten to return.
She asked Mrs Taylor if the hotel could supply her with a shillings worth of postages stamps in order to post it immediately and was supplied with sufficient stamps from the hotel’s cash box. The woman told the landlady that she would go for a walk around Rotherham whilst her tea was being prepared. Only after the woman had gone out did Mrs Taylor began to suspect that her elegant lodger might not be as respectable as she claimed. Although she had taken lodgings with her she had brought no luggage with her. Her suspicions were confirmed when two pairs of boots were delivered. It seems that upon leaving the hotel, Edith had gone into a boot shop which adjoined the hotel, and ordered two pairs of boots to be delivered next door.
Mrs Taylor advised the boot boy to take them back again, which he did. Unbeknownst to the landlady her errant lodger then went to the Ship Hotel, Rotherham and ordered lodgings there for the night. Once more she ordered a tea to be prepared for her and whilst waiting for it, the landlord supplied her with a glass of port wine. Again she asked him for postage stamps in order to return a book and was given 2s 6d worth of stamps. Edith then walked along the High Street until she arrived at the shop of Henry Wigfall and Company. There she purchased goods amounting to around £5 to be delivered to the Ship Hotel. By the time the goods were delivered, the respectable looking Edith was nowhere to be found.
The police were notified and thankfully found her at midnight at the Station Hotel waiting for her supper of bread and cheese. She again gave the name of Edith Groves to Police Sergeant Morley and Police detective Hodgson, before being taken to the Police Office and searched. The stamps were found in her possession, as were four pairs of kid gloves, which were found in the corner where Edith had been standing earlier. When asked if the gloves were hers, she denied this most strongly claiming that they had been ‘placed’ there by someone. The prisoner claimed that they were intended to get her into trouble. However these were later identified as being stolen from Henry Wigfield’s shop.
However trying to establish the truth from Edith proved to be much harder than the two officers had, at first anticipated. The woman seemed to change versions every time she spoke. Firstly she said that she was Danish and had just landed in this country, but when the Mayor questioned her, Edith told him she was from Liverpool. When hotel staff were questioned it seemed that the prisoner had said that she was on her way to Edinburgh and another that she came from Bristol. The following morning she was brought before the bench and was defended by solicitor, Mr Packwood. The first witness was an apprentice to Henry Wigfield and he described the prisoner coming to the shop and asking for a pair of gloves.
She ended up selecting two pairs one of black and one of grey silk and once again asked for them to be delivered to the Ship Hotel. The apprentice confirmed that she did not pay for any of the articles that were later delivered by himself on the Wednesday morning. He also identified the four pair of gloves that he had missed after the prisoner had left the shop. At this point the prisoner was simply remanded for a week. When she was brought back into court however on Thursday 1 June the Superintendent of Police, Mr Gillett gave quite a different ‘character’ to the woman now being called ‘the Lady Swindler.’ He had discovered that despite her elegant language, Edith Groves was a convicted felon at present out on ‘ticket of leave.’
This was a prisoner who had served part of a previous sentence before being issued with a certificate stating that she was considered to be trusted with some freedom. When questioned about the postage stamps that were found in her possession the prisoner claimed that she had done the ‘postage stamp business’ before. She therefore considered it not to be a theft, but that she was merely ‘borrowing’ them with the intention of paying the hotel back. It was noted however, that throughout the trial this feisty ‘lady’ questioned all the witnesses who gave evidence against her at considerable length. Mary Farmery the female searcher gave evidence that after the prisoner had been searched the gloves were found under a bench where the prisoner had been sitting.
However when charged with stealing them from Messrs Wigfields and Company, the prisoner once again complained that the gloves had been ‘planted there’ by the female searcher. She went onto claim that the woman had probably stolen the gloves herself. Needless to say Edith was found guilty and sent to take her trial at the Sessions. Accordingly, Edith Groves was brought before the Rotherham Quarter Sessions on Friday 31 June 1876 where Mr Barker prosecuted. He was lucky to get a work in edgeways. Once again the prisoner took charge of her own defence addressing the jury at some length as ‘gentlemen of the jury, before elaborating on three doubtful points in her defence.
It has to be admitted that even the chair to the magistrates, Mr G W Chambers was impressed and later described it as being ‘a very clever defence.’ However, once the jury found the prisoner guilty, only then was her previous criminal career revealed. Mr Chambers told the court that ‘this lady swindler’ had commenced her questionable dealings fifteen years earlier. On 2 August 1861 she had been sentenced to 28 days imprisonment for two different charges of larceny. On 6 January 1869 she was again charged with larceny and sentenced to prison for twelve months. On 14 January 1870 she was sentenced to six months, once again for larceny. On 18 August 1870 Edith was charged with being a rogue and a vagabond and was given six months imprisonment on three different charges.
At the Hampshire Sessions on 11 June 1871 the prisoner had pleaded guilty to three different charges and was given seven years penal servitude followed by seven years police supervision. That was when Edith Groves had been liberated from Woking Gaol as a ticket-of-leave criminal on 4 April of the present year and the offence with which she was now charged took place on 23 May of the present year. Mr Chambers told the jury that they could not sentence her to any less than ten years penal servitude, but the bench had wanted to sentence her for a much longer period.
In the end they had decided on a sentence of ten years penal servitude followed by five years police supervision. The prisoner was then taken downstairs to begin her sentence. However the last word on this matter goes to a Rotherham correspondent to the Sheffield Daily Telegraph dated Saturday 1 July 1876. He wrote about the case describing Edith Groves as:
‘The Lady Swindler, who a few weeks ago spent a couple of days among the hotel keepers of this town, relieving them of their surplus postage stamps, and entertaining them with her engaging manners and pleasant conversation. However that was when she met with her Nemesis. For ten long weary years our bucolic publicans will now sigh in vain for the charms of her voice, and will, no doubt miss her engaging conversation and pleasing manners.’