Guest post by Charlotte Smith, 3 April 2024.
THE LEWES ASSIZE OF 1923 AND A VERY MICRO, MICRO-HISTORY OF WOMEN IN ENGLAND IN THE 1920s
What can the business of one Sussex assize court tell us about the experiences of women, and their treatment by the law, in early twentieth-century England? Here, we use the minutes of the Summer Assizes at Lewes in July 1923 to find out.
IT’S ALL IN A CROWN MINUTE BOOK: LEWES, JULY 1923
As recently fictionalised in the film, Wicked Little Letters, in the 1920s, Littlehampton, a fairly sleepy seaside town on the south coast of England, was rocked by scandal as various of its residents received obscene and libellous letters. Rose Gooding, a woman who lived in somewhat scandalous domestic circumstances, was twice convicted and sent to prison for sending these letters, but their scourge continued, and she was eventually exonerated. At the Summer Assize at Lewes in July 1923, Edith Swan, Rose’s rather more respectable neighbour and arch-enemy, was finally convicted of obscene libel, having been identified as the true culprit.
Exploring the crown minute book entry for Edith’s prosecution reveals what a wealth of information is contained within these apparently quite sparse and formal records. From the crown minute book, we know that the Clerk to the Assizes was Arthur Denman, and that the trial judge was Mr Justice Avery. We can see the composition of the grand jury which committed Edith to trial, and of the petty jury which decided her case.
The minute book also reveals that Edith’s trial was the last of the Assize. It commenced on Wednesday 18July, on the penultimate day of the Assize, and the commission and jury had already disposed of two cases that day after the defendant had pleaded guilty. The court sat until 5:55pm. The case against Edith not being concluded, the court sat again at 10:30am the next day, Thursday 19 July, before finally rising at 1.25pm. This was, as criminal trials went, a relatively long one. In total the Assize heard 26 cases in five and a half days.
The crown minute book details the charges brought against Edith and the physical evidence submitted against her (which does not survive at The National Archives). It tells us that the case was prosecuted by a Mr Humphreys, and that Edith Swan herself was represented by Mr Collingwood. She was more fortunate, in this respect at least, than the ten defendants whom the minute book tells us were not represented by counsel. Edith was found guilty and sentenced to twelve months in prison without hard labour. She was given leave to appeal her conviction on 28 July 1923, but her appeal was refused on 13 August 1923.
(ASSI 31/55)
BEYOND POISON PEN LETTERS
So much for the cause celebre of Edith Swan; what else can the crown minute book entries for Lewes in July 1923 tell us about the position, treatment, and experiences of women in England at this time? As it turns out, the answer is quite a lot.
First, within its pages, we see the Sex Disqualification Removal Act 1919 in action. True, the grand jury, the bench, and the bar, remained the preserve of men in Lewes in 1923. Progress, however, had been made. On each of the juries empanelled, we find one woman juror among the men. Looking within the indictment files for the Assize (ASSI 95/340) we find that, behind this single woman on each panel, lay two jury lists of 50 and 54 persons respectively, of whom 6 and 10 respectively were women. Interestingly, at least one of the women named was described as a domestic servant and another was described as having no occupation.
An examination of the 1921 census returns reveals that the women who served on the empanelled juries were respectable middle class, middle-aged, housewives and spinsters of mature years. It is often assumed that a combination of property qualifications, judicial sensibilities, and peremptory challenge, excluded women from the jury room, even after the Sex Disqualification Removal Act.[1] Given this, the presence of one woman on every trial jury can be taken as an, admittedly small and limited, sign of progress. These women, being respectable souls who had long since reached the age of discretion, might have been seen to be more robust, and less susceptible to moral or emotional harm and corruption, than their younger peers. There may, in consequence, have been less squeamishness about their presence in the court room. There is no denying, however, that they heard some troubling cases which might have been expected to wound their sensibilities or provoke their ire. For the business of the court, as revealed in the crown minute book, has its own story to tell about the lives and vulnerabilities of women at the time.
Perhaps, though we cannot know this, the conduct which led to Edith Swan’s prosecution for obscene libel was provoked by the frustrations and constraints of life as a respectable spinster who, though in her thirties, still lived with her parents and slept in their bedroom. Be that as it may, within the minute book entries, we also see five cases of bigamy – reflecting, perhaps, the travails of those marooned in unhappy marriages. Despite the authorisation, in 1922, of 10 assize courts for the trial of some divorce suits, and despite the Matrimonial Causes Act 1923, which permitted both the husband and the wife to petition for divorce because of adultery, divorce remained difficult, expensive, and scandalous.
The bigamy cases are interesting. Many seem to have been the result of unhappy wartime marriages, as was not uncommon at the time. Two were disposed of following a guilty plea, and the other three cases, one of which led to an acquittal, were heard in the second court of the Assize by the deputy commissioner. In one case a woman was the sole defendant, and in another a woman was charged as a co-conspirator in the bigamous marriage, ‘being present – aiding and abetting in the commission of the said offence.’ In that case, while the husband confessed and was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment with hard labour, the bigamous wife confessed and was bound over. By contrast, Annie Moyle, whose bigamous husband was not indicted with her, was sentenced to 4 months imprisonment without hard labour. The women were, perhaps, felt to be less culpable than the men. Certainly, the sentences imposed in the second court would suggest so.
Looking at women as defendants otherwise than in respect of bigamy, several of the prosecutions reflected the realities of poverty, lack of access to medical care, and the shame attaching to, and lack of support available to, unmarried mothers. At Lewes in July 1923, two women were indicted, under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, for attempting to conceal the birth of their newborn babies by secretly disposing of their bodies. One woman was acquitted, and the other, having confessed her guilt, was bound over. One further woman was convicted of the separate offence of infanticide and sentenced to 15 months imprisonment with hard labour.
In all three instances, the details of the crimes revealed by the indictments (ASSI 95/340) were indicative of tragedy and desperation, rather than of calculating malevolence. One woman wrapped her dead baby’s body in a blouse and hid it under her bed. Another placed her deceased infant in a blanket and hid it in a chimney. The woman found guilty of infanticide had apparently strangled her child before leaving the body at the railway station.
More disturbing, at least in some respects, are the two entries where women were charged as co-defendants in incest cases – one involving a brother and sister, and other involving a father and daughter. Plainly, these women were deemed to have been at fault, though less blameworthy, perhaps, than their male co-defendants. This was despite census records suggesting that both were grown women. Minnie Miller was 26 and living in Bosham at the time of the 1921 Census. Described as a “housewife”, she was living with her father, then aged 53. The mother was apparently absent. More speculatively, the 1911 Census tells us of a brother and sister, Annie and Christopher Wells, then aged 10 and 25, living together in Chertsey with a female boarder. Having cross-checked the available information, they seem the most likely couple to have been the brother and sister who confessed to engaging in incest at Wisborough Green in 1923.
The indictments (ASSI 95/340) may shed light on the social attitudes at play in the sentences imposed in these incest cases. While Frank George Staker ‘had carnal knowledge of’ his daughter, she was described as having ‘with consent permitted him’ to have such carnal knowledge. The sense that the woman, as well as being significantly younger than the man, was a passive participant in the crime was reflected in the sentences imposed upon the women. These were less severe than those inflicted upon the male defendants.
In the remaining four cases involving women, they feature solely as victims of sexual violence. Roger Owen Johns was convicted of two counts of indecent assault and one count of assault with intent to commit a rape. Being a man of previous good character, an offender of the second division, he was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment without hard labour. Frederick Knight was convicted of unlawfully and carnally knowing a girl between the ages of 13 and 16, and of indecent assault of the same girl at Brighton. He was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment with hard labour. Finally, Alfred Warner Varrier confessed to unlawfully and carnally knowing a girl under the age of 13 at Worthing, and to indecently assaulting two other girls under the age of 16 on two further occasions in Worthing. He was sentenced to 21 months imprisonment with hard labour in total.
These entries bear witness to the vulnerability of young girls. They evidence, too, the persistence of ambiguities and inconsistencies around issues of consent. Before the Ages of Marriage Act 1929, it was lawful for a girl to enter and consummate a marriage at the age of 12. Her husband did no legal wrong. Outside of marriage, however, the age of consent had been raised first to 13, under the Offences Against the Person Act 1875, and then to 16, under the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885. The 1885 Act made it impossible for consent to be a defence to a charge of rape or indecent assault of a girl under the age of 16.
Given this, the fact that the minute book specified the age of the girls as being ‘under 16’, ‘under 13’ or ‘between the ages of 13 and 16’ would appear to have had more relevance to perceptions of moral culpability (maybe linked to the lingering sense that a girl over 13 might in fact have consented), and thus to sentencing decisions, than to legal liability. It is, however, hard to trace the effects of this in the sentences imposed. Roger Owen Johns, who had attacked an adult woman, and who was of previous good character, escaped hard labour. Frederick Knight, whose victim was between the ages of 13 and 16, was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment with hard labour. Alfred Warner Varrier, who confessed to his crimes, did not apparently suffer a more severe penalty for unlawfully and carnally knowing a girl under the age of 13, than he did for indecent assaults of girls under the age of 16.[2]
And so, we leave the Lewes Summer Assize of 1923. As we do so, one minute book entry shows us that women’s lives intersected with, and affected, the world of the Assize in ways which we might not always see or consider. We are reminded of this by the discovery of a note that the Clerk of Assize was summoned to London because his wife was in labour, and subsequently that she was delivered of a son. The court rose a little earlier than usual that day, though not, apparently, before the stirring events in London had been brought to a happy conclusion.
Author: Dr Charlotte Smith is a Legal Records Specialist at The National Archives (Kew).
Images: All documents © The National Archives. Photos taken by Charlotte Smith.
Notes:
[1] See Kevin Crosby, ‘Restricting the Juror Franchise in 1920s England and Wales’ (2019) Law and History Review 37(1) 163 – 207 and also Andrew Choo and Jill Hunter, ‘Gender discrimination and juries in the 20th century: Judging women judging men’ (2018) International Journal of Evidence and Proof 22(3) 192 – 217.
[2] On this point see generally Victoria Bates, Sexual Forensics in Victorian and Edwardian England: Age, Crime and Consent in the Courts (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2016).
Legal History Miscellany 