Reporters and newspaper owners didn’t really understand the poor; they were a little frightened of them, aware of their potential to deliver chaos to comfortable Victorian lives. Viewed from a distance they could be quite entertaining, in their racy, drink-fuelled simplicity, but they were also a threat who needed to be kept firmly in their place if comfortable lives were to be protected.
You can see this attitude in three successive issues of The Illustrated Usk Observer and Raglan Herald for September 1859. Let’s begin with the case of Mary Biles, of Abergavenny, who had been detained by Constable Carter at the railway station after assaulting him whilst he was on duty. He said that she was very drunk, and very noisy. Definitely not the sort of person you would want to see on a train or in fact anywhere near members of polite society. Constable Carter certainly thought so.
When he saw her on the platform, he asked her if she was travelling by the train, and she told him that it was none of his business. She might have been right, but her answer did not help matters at all. He ordered her to leave the station immediately, and when she did not, he felt compelled to arrest her on the grounds that she was being noisy and was drunk. There were two other women with Mary and he would have arrested them as well, but they ran away, and he had not been able to trace them. Mary robustly denied any wrong-doing and said that Carter was lying. He had locked her up in the lamp house, but she pushed back the bolt twice, and walked out on the platform. She seems to have out-thought the constable simply by opening the door- either that or she was a highly trained escapologist. The third time he locked her up, she broke a pane of glass in order to get out.
The policeman came to her, and as she had over exerted herself, he thought she was faint, and called for some water, which he threw in her face, and afterwards beat her head against the wall.
You can’t help thinking that this was an unnecessary over-reaction – it certainly did not help his case.
His senior officer, Inspector Lipscombe, said that Mary might have been drinking but she wasn’t drunk. When she was brought into the police station, she told the same story then as she had repeated in court.
PC Carter does not appear to have been the most reliable of officers and, whilst the court acknowledged that she was liable to a penalty of 40 shillings, they decided to deal with her leniently and she was fined 2s. 6d with 7s. 6d. costs. You would like to think someone spoke to Constable Carter about his behaviour.
The following week we have another story to be enjoyed for its humorous content, where families mired in poverty in Pontypool were involved in arguments that brought them to court.
At the end of an inadequate attempt to unravel a bewildering and impenetrable argument, the magistrate urged the two quarrelling families to relinquish their antipathies and assume a more friendly bearing. Fat chance of that.
John James from Penygarn, Pontypool, was charged with threatening William Jones. Jones said that Mr and Mrs James were both drunk, and began insulting him and his wife. James threatened to knock Jones’ brains out, adding If anybody molests me I will hit them, which robustly removes any residual uncertainty. Mrs Jones was unwell, since these broils made her no better, which you can understand. Previously the two ladies had a quarrelled about a pig-sty and their husbands had disagreed about a donkey. Well, you do.
Jones denied stripping to the waist, ready to fight the defendant. James denied calling Mrs Jones wife a bitch, a name, which all women resent, and also denied saying that that her child was the result of a criminal connexion. Things were clearly feisty. But everything suddenly fizzled out, as these things often do and there was little the court could do to untangle any of it. It was so important to those involved and yet meaningless to anyone else.
But life amongst the poor had a frisson, the thrill of low-life scandal, and the reporter from the safe distance of his desk writes the following week about the formation of an Amazonian rifle corps, about a bold, warlike spirit existing in the bosoms of many of the females in the district, which, if directed into a safe and proper channel, might prove of considerable effect in the advent of a foreign invasion.
The inherent anger and hostility of the poor should be directed against an invader, rather than a neighbour. Thus, for instance, should Mrs. Stubbs argue with Mrs. Grubbs about children or chickens or a clothes line or a wash tub, or any of such numerous, and momentous, and prolific causes of dispute among housewives, she should be encouraged to nurse her wrath, to keep it warm until the day of rifle practice, when she could imagine that the target was the head of Mrs Grubbs. If she succeeded in hitting it, she will have the satisfaction of thinking that she could as easily have done for her neighbour.
Our reporter is very pleased with his idea. In his mind it would be the means by which many unseemly exhibitions would be prevented, much angry recrimination avoided, and the country would have to rejoice in the: addition of a formidable force to its defences.
But what he does not seem to consider are the consequences of arming the underprivileged and helping them to hone their shooting skills with structured target practise and access to guns. It might start with arguments about privies and petty theft but where would it end? Was it really such a clever idea?
Perhaps it wouldn’t be The Amazons of Abergavenny at all. Rather, it would take Abergavenny in Arizona.
