John Sheridan aged 26 was a travelling hawker who originated from Leeds. At some point he met up with a woman called Ann O’Connor aged 21 who lived with him and adopted his name to hide the fact that they were not legally married. When he arrived at Rotherham the couple also had a two month old baby with them, a little girl also called Ann, who was reported to have been weak and sickly from birth. The couple had travelled from Barnsley on 22 July 1890 and two days later they rented a room at the lodging house of a man called Ben Shaw. It was not long before the deputy lodging house keeper, a woman called Mrs Emma Butler noted that the couple were almost continually drunk. She also saw Ann taking the little girl out with her to the public houses of the town, often returning back to the lodging house well after 11pm at night.
Mrs Butler had a room next door to the couple and as a consequence, she often heard them quarrelling and the child crying. One night, to her horror she heard Ann say to Sheridan ‘take this child and smother it as you did the other one’. Needless to say Mrs Butler was very disturbed about this, but felt unable to do anything about it. She was slightly mollified however as John Sheridan appeared to feel some sympathy for the little girl as she had often seen him carrying her around in his arms. On one occasion Mrs Butler saw him sleeping with the child in the same bed, even though she could not help noticing his drunken condition.
On Sunday 25 July 1890 the Chief Constable of Rotherham, Captain Burnett was walking along Westgate when he noticed a noisy crowd of people ahead of him. As he approached, he found a man lying on the floor, bleeding from a wound to his head. He was told that the man was called John Stronach and that he had been attacked by a woman. Captain Burnett immediately cleared the crowd and flagging down a passing waggonette, asked the driver to take the injured man to the Rotherham Infirmary. He was also told that the woman had run into Wilson’s Court off Westgate and he immediately followed her. She was hiding behind a privy wall and as the chief constable made towards her, the woman climbed over another wall and disappeared into the lodging house next door, which he knew was run by Ben Shaw.
When he entered the house, Captain Burnett found several men in the front room and behind them was the woman, lying on a bench with a shawl over her head, feigning sleep. By this point he had seen enough and he dragged the woman to her feet, arresting her on the charge of wilfully wounding John Stronach. At the station she told him that her name was Ann Sheridan and declared that she had just been defending her husband. The couple had been drinking with John Stronach when the two men started to fight. Ann said that when he knocked her husband to the floor, that was when she hit him with an earthenware bottle that she had been carrying. Ann claimed that the fight had started after Stronach had thrown a glass of beer into her husbands face.
After making her statement she was told that she was going to be arrested and locked in a cell. No doubt hoping for sympathy, she begged for her two-month old child to be brought to her. Consequently a constable was dispatched to fetch the baby from the lodging house on Westgate. However when shown up to the room in which the little girl lay, the constable was appalled at the state of her. He reported back to the chief constable that the baby was in a ‘fearfully emaciated condition’ and looked very neglected. Captain Burnett immediately asked for the child to be examined by the police surgeon, Dr Alexander Richard Cobban who had been present when her mother had been brought into the office. The surgeon weighed her and was horrified to find that she only weighed 5½lbs which, he said was probably less than she must have weighed at birth.
He also noted that the baby was in a ‘moribund’ state and he strongly suspected that not only had the parents neglected to feed her, but that someone had given her laudanum. On seeing the condition of the little girl, Captain Burnett and Dr Cobban decided that the mother should not have the custody of the child, and she was immediately removed into the care of Mrs Butler at the lodging house. Dr Cobban instructed her to just administer nourishment in small quantities, as it was obvious that the baby had been starved of food for quite a while. The local branch of the Society for the Cruelty to Children was notified, and they instituted enquiries to be made into the case, and as a result of this John Sheridan was also arrested.
The following day John Sheridan and Ann O’Connor were brought before the Rotherham magistrates. The first case to be heard was the attack on John Stronach. A witness, Mr Battersby introduced himself to the bench as being the house surgeon at the Rotherham Infirmary. He spoke about examining the man’s injuries which consisted of two deep lacerations above his right eye which required stitching. The surgeon gave his opinion that the wound was consistent with his being struck over the head with an earthenware bottle by the prisoner’s wife. After dealing with this incident, the magistrates were then informed by the chief constable of the terrible condition in which the little girl, Ann O’Connor had been found. After hearing the details they adjourned the case to the following Thursday and the couple were charged with the neglect of the child.
When the court re-convened on July 30, solicitor Mr Aizlewood appeared to prosecute the case on behalf of the NSPCC, and he asked that the first witness be brought into the court. Mrs Butler appeared, carrying the child in her arms, so that the bench could see for themselves its terrible emaciated condition. The witness told them that prior to entering the court room, she had seen the female prisoner in the cell and had castigated her for the treatment to her child. Mrs Butler told her that she and her husband should be ashamed of themselves, not sparing a halfpenny to get the little girl some milk. Instead of showing any contrition, the prisoner simply informed her that her husband wanted to ‘get rid of the child’ stating bluntly that ‘it was in the way’. When John Sheridan heard this statement, he laughed out loud. The clerk to the court silenced him by saying ‘you will find that this is no laughing matter’.
Police Sergeant Roper then gave evidence of arresting John Sheridan and said that on the way to the office the male prisoner told him that Ann was not his wife and they had only met five months previously. Irregardless of this, he claimed that the little girl was his. PC Roper said that Sheridan had told him that he had provided for both Ann and the child by giving her 4s a day for food. He also said that the little girl had been born at Goole, but her birth had not been registered. The magistrates heard this evidence before remanding both prisoners for another week in order to make further enquiries. Sadly the little girl’s condition had deteriorated and as a result had since been removed from the care of Mrs Butler to the children’s ward at the workhouse. However she could not be saved and died on Monday 4 August 1890.
A coroners inquest into her death was therefore held in the board room of the Rotherham Workhouse on Wednesday 6 August 1890. At first there had been some delay as the prisoners had not yet arrived, so in the meantime the coroner, Mr D Wightman asked Police Sergeant Roper what the name of the child was. He replied that she was known as Ann Sheridan, but pointed out that she had never been christened. Then the prisoners arrived, but the coroner showed them little sympathy. When he asked John Sheridan how old the child was, Ann answered and Mr Wightman rebuked her saying ‘I am not asking you’. The jury were visibly shocked when the police medical officer, Dr Cobban gave evidence that when he examined the child after the mother had been arrested, she was in a ‘moribund’ state and that he strongly suspected that she had been given laudanum.
Dr Cobban stated that nevertheless he had desperately tried to save the little girls life and thought at first he had succeeded. He had visited her on a daily basis and gradually found her to have recovered from the poison of the opiates she had been given. However the little girl was so weak that he was unable to save her life. The surgeon told the inquest that he and Dr Branson had then been asked to complete a post mortem on her. Externally they had found no outward signs of any violence, but having removed her clothing they could not miss the fact that the baby was barely a skeleton. She was weighed again and was found that she had actually lost weight and was only 4½lbs. The police surgeon stated that a child of that age should have weighed about 11lb or 12lbs. Dr Cobban added that because of such starvation, every vestige of fat and the greater portion of muscular structure had been absorbed back into the little body.
He finally concluded that the two surgeons had found there was no food in the stomach apart from some milk and wine, which had been given to her at the workhouse. Therefore he could only state that the cause of death was ‘wasting away from sheer starvation’. Mrs Emma Butler was the next witness and she gave evidence that the two prisoners had arrived at the lodging house on Thursday 22 July, and told her that they were man and wife. When she commented on the poorly state of the child, her mother said that the little girl had been ill. Mrs Butler said that after the female prisoner had been arrested, she had been instructed by the medical officer to feed the child on sponge cake and milk in very small quantities. The witness said she had done so but she told the inquest that little Ann had vomited much of it back again and could not seem to digest any food.
To our modern ears, the fact that the child had been given sponge cake and wine under medical direction, beggars belief, but sadly it only illustrates the lack of knowledge about infant digestion of the period. Mrs Butler then related how on the Thursday 29 July the child had not improved and she was removed to the workhouse and she had not seen her since. Questioned about the behaviour of the child’s parents, the witness told the coroner about an incident which had happened soon after the couple had appeared at the lodging house. She related how she had thrown the couple out of the house one afternoon because they were drunk and quarrelling and annoying the other lodgers. As a result, upon going outside the female prisoner had laid the child on the pavement and informed Sheridan to ‘take it up and take care of it and not to smother it, the same as you had done the other one’.
The boardroom was silent as the witness uttered these words. The coroner asked Mrs Butler if the mother had been sober at the time and she replied that she wasn’t. The witness, continuing with her evidence, then said that Sheridan had simply picked up the child and they both walked away. The witness told the court that she had no idea where they had gone, but they spent the remainder of the night somewhere else. Captain Burnett asked her if she had heard the mother express any evil intention towards the child and Mrs Butler looked grim as she replied that the female prisoner had called it ‘a bastard’ and wished ‘it was in hell’. Needless to say this statement caused a dreadful sensation in the room, which the coroner was forced to call ‘silence’ to end.
Captain Burnett told the inquest that John Sheridan had been arrested on 25 July for cruelty to the infant. He also said that the couple had a history of drinking to excess, and that when Ann O’Connor had been arrested for the attack on John Stronach, she was already drunk and incapable. Then Mr Wightman decided to look into the paternity of the child. Captain Burnett told him that the male prisoner had said on two separate occasions, on the 29 and 31 July that he was the father. The next witness was Ann O’Connor herself, but she showed little remorse as she told the inquest that the father of the child was not John Sheridan, but a man called William Johnson who ‘sells fish at Scarborough’. After hearing this the coroner was clearly disgusted at the couple’s lifestyle, and he did not try to hide it as he addressed the jury. He told them:
‘The two Sheridan’s are disgraceful and just about as bad as a man and woman could be, I should think there is very little doubt about that, and that morally speaking they had certainly hastened, if not actually caused the death of the child. That is beyond doubt.’
However he demonstrated the difficulties in proving the case before the legal authorities as he said:
‘But you do not have the power to punish them for the ill treatment of the child. The only verdict that you can record is that of murder or manslaughter against one or both of them.’
Mr Wightman explained that because the child had been removed from the care of the parents and cared for by others before she died, there was little chance of any conviction in a court of law. The coroner clearly stated that if the child had died on 26 July in the care of her mother, then he would have had no hesitation in saying that she was guilty of either murder or manslaughter. Although the medical officer had suspected strongly that one of the prisoners had given the child opiates, he was not able to prove it scientifically. Therefore Mr Wightman said that he did not think that the evidence was strong enough to send the prisoners for trial. This provoked a heated discussion on the legal aspects of the case, which indicated the jury’s dilemma in presenting a verdict.
One of them asked a question as to what John Sheridan’s moral responsibility was towards a child which might not be his own. The coroner replied that as an adult, he was bound to do the best he could for this or any other child. Another juryman asked about the possibility of returning a verdict of manslaughter against the couple, saying that would, at the very least, result in the matter being more properly inquired into at the Assizes. However Mr Wightman considered the matter carefully before concluding ‘I do not think you can send the female prisoner, as no jury will convict her on the evidence before us’. At this point a further discussion took place as to whether John Sheridan was obliged to provide food for a child that wasn’t his. The coroner told the jury that he was not, pointing out that the evidence showed that he had only known the female prisoner for five months on his own admittance, therefore he was clearly not the father of the child.
Captain Burnett at this point stated that he was going to Gainsborough to make further enquiries and might be able to bring back more information on the couple. Therefore Mr Wightman adjourned the inquest to the following Monday. When the inquest resumed at the Mechanics Institute in Rotherham on Monday 11 August it seems that his journey had been well worth it. There he had established some interesting facts about John Sheridan and Ann O’Connor. It seems that they had not simply known each other for five months, but had been living as man and wife at Goole a year previously, and the chief constable stated that he had found no evidence that they had ever been married. Captain Burnett had also established that a little girl had been born to the couple and she had in fact been baptised as Ann O’Connor, not Sheridan on 15 May 1890.
However he had also found that the female prisoner had a child 13 months previously and the father of that child was said to be a William Johnson, a fish hawker from Scarborough. He had managed to interview him, but instead of clearing matters up, Johnson had provided even more disturbing evidence. He admitted being the father of Ann’s first child, but said that when she and John Sheridan had left Scarborough a year earlier, the three month old child was with them, but he had heard nothing about the child since. A lodging house keeper of Goole, a man named Patrick Morgan confirmed that they had lodged with him and had claimed they were man and wife. He too remember the little girl being born in May of that year, and said that John Sheridan had said he was the father. Chillingly he stated that the pair had no other child with them. Summing up for the jury, Mr Wightman admitted that the police were no further forward in their enquiries apart from having confirmed that the evidence of both prisoners was totally unreliable. He told them that he had given the matter much thought and had consulted with people more qualified in criminal law than himself, but could offer no more advice than that at the previous inquest. He stated that there was simply not enough evidence to send the prisoners for trial.
The jury considered together for about 20 minutes before giving their verdict which was:
‘That the deceased died on the 4 August from starvation, but as to how brought about, or how caused there is not sufficient evidence before the said jurors to prove. The said jurors further say that Ann O’Connor, the mother of the deceased and John Sheridan, with whom she co-habits, are most censurable for their cruel and improper treatment of the deceased.’
When the coroner asked Ann if she understood the verdict she told him that she didn’t, and so he spelled it out to her in no uncertain terms. He told the couple that they would have to go before a magistrate and they would make a decision in the matter. He then said:
‘That you have contributed, either one or both of you, morally towards the death of this child, I have little doubt whatsoever. Fortunately for you there is not sufficient evidence to prove it. I hope that the awful recollection that you have been parties to causing the death of a poor innocent child, will be with you wherever you go. Whatever you do, if you get into trouble in any shape or way, this will be brought against you. It may enhance the punishment which by sheer good luck, you seem to have escaped today.’
The two prisoners were then dismissed. However if they thought that they had got away with it, they were wrong.
The Rotherham Police authorities were determined to make this couple be responsible for the death of little Ann O’Connor. It was announced in the Sheffield Daily Telegraph dated Wednesday 20 August 1890 that the couple, who had previously been charged under the Cruelty to Children Act, were now to be charged with the manslaughter of an infant under three months. They had been arrested and imprisoned in Wakefield Gaol and on Monday 18 August Captain Burnett had travelled to Wakefield to take them both into custody on the much more serious charge. They were brought before the magistrates at the Rotherham Borough Police Court on Thursday 21 August where Mr P Aizlewood prosecuted.
The facts of the case were gone into again and the same witnesses gave their evidence. Although there was little new evidence, the pair were nevertheless sent to take their trial at the next Assizes, where sadly there was still no happy resolution. The couple appeared before Mr Justice Smith on Wednesday 17 December 1890. All too sadly the words of the coroner proved correct and when all the evidence was heard, the judge summed up for the jury. He told them that although the cause of death was clearly starvation, the jury must prove that it the death was caused by ‘wicked neglect’. He clarified that means that the mother deliberately starved the child because she did not care whether she lived or died. The judge had to admit that there was simply no evidence for this. The jury had no option but to record that Ann O’Connor was guilty of neglect, but not wicked neglect. His lordship concluded that was equivalent to the prisoners being found not guilty and they were both discharged.