Acid Attacks in Britain, 1760–1975 (World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence) [1st ed. 2023] 3031272714, 9783031272714

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WORLD HISTORIES OF CRIME, CULTURE AND VIOLENCE

Acid Attacks in Britain, 1760–1975 Katherine D. Watson

World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence Series Editors

Marianna Muravyeva University of Helsinki Helsinki, Finland Raisa Maria Toivo Tampere University Tampere, Finland

Palgrave’s World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence seeks to publish research monographs, collections of scholarly essays, multi-authored books, and Palgrave Pivots addressing themes and issues of interdisciplinary histories of crime, criminal justice, criminal policy, culture and violence globally and on a wide chronological scale (from the ancient to the modern period). It focuses on interdisciplinary studies, historically contextualized, across various cultures and spaces employing a wide range of methodologies and conceptual frameworks.

Katherine D. Watson

Acid Attacks in Britain, 1760–1975

Katherine D. Watson Oxford Brookes University Oxford, UK

ISSN 2730-9630     ISSN 2730-9649 (electronic) World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence ISBN 978-3-031-27271-4    ISBN 978-3-031-27272-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27272-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Chronicle / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Burns produced by corrosive fluids which come under the observation of the medical jurist are the result of malicious throwing of the fluid on to the face or other parts of the body of the victim; the substances used are the mineral acids and strong solutions of the caustic alkalies; of these, sulphuric acid holds the first rank, so much so that a special name is given to the act — ‘vitriol throwing.’ None of these substances will directly occasion death when thrown upon the body, unless under very exceptional circumstances; they may produce great disfigurement, however, and may indirectly conduce to a fatal issue. —J. Dixon Mann, Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, 3rd ed. (London: Charles Griffin, 1902), p. 272.

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Acknowledgements

Partial funding for this research has come from the School of History, Philosophy and Culture at Oxford Brookes University, and the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and I acknowledge their support with thanks and gratitude. I am especially grateful for the help given to me by staff at the National Records of Scotland: I carried out most of my archival research at West Register House in Edinburgh prior to the introduction of personal photography, and value the numerous photocopies that were made and posted to me. I would also like to thank the staff of The National Archives at Kew, as well as two friends who provided valuable research assistance: Lynsey Cullen conducted a search for extant hospital records relating to London-based victims of acid throwing; and Jane Card compiled a comprehensive list of references to vitriol throwing in British literature. I am indebted to Jane and to Vivien Miller, for reading and commenting on drafts of the book chapters—thank you for your professional expertise and perceptive suggestions. I appreciate the permission granted by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc to reproduce a small portion of a chapter I published in Anne-Marie Kilday and David Nash (eds), Law, Crime and Deviance since 1700: Micro-Studies in the History of Crime (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016). Thanks are due also to The British Newspaper Archive, for supplying two images and giving permission to publish them here as Figs. 2.2 and 4.1. Quotations from Crown copyright documents held in The National Archives at Kew and the National Records of Scotland in Edinburgh are duly acknowledged. So too are excerpts from historic newspapers available from The vii

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

British Newspaper Archive, including The Scotsman 1817–1950, and The Times Digital Archive, 1785–2019. This book represents the culmination of many years of research on a topic that remains as current today as it was in the nineteenth century, and it is therefore respectfully dedicated to the survivors of acid attacks, past and present.

Contents

1 Introduction  1 2 Facts and Figures 19 3 Motives and Contexts 49 4 Law and Justice 81 5 Conclusion111 Bibliography119 Index131

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Abbreviations

ASSI assize records at TNA BMJ British Medical Journal c. numbered chapter reference to a specified Act of Parliament CRA Convict Records of Australia d. pence HMP Her / His Majesty’s Prison JP Justice of the Peace MO medical officer n.d. no date n.p. no page number NRS National Records of Scotland, Edinburgh OBP Old Bailey Proceedings PC Police Constable s. section s. shillings ss. sections TNA The National Archives, Kew UP University Press v. verso; versus WS Writer to the Signet

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ABBREVIATIONS

Currency 12d. 1s. 20s. £1 21s. 1 guinea

Dates Months have been abbreviated Jan; Feb; Mar; Apr; May; Jun; Jul; Aug; Sep; Oct; Nov; Dec.

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 2.2 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 4.1

Number of cases of throwing a corrosive fluid, 1900–1978 Vitriol outrage by Jealous Woman, 1922. Source: The Illustrated Police News, 27 April 1922, p. 6 Schematic pathway showing how a threat to self-esteem may lead to violence The Dudley Vitriol Throwing Case, 1885. Source: The Illustrated Police News, 20 June 1885, p. 1

26 37 68 94

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List of Tables

Table 1.1 Table 2.1 Table 2.2 Table 2.3 Table 2.4 Table 2.5 Table 2.6 Table 2.7 Table 2.8 Table 3.1 Table 3.2 Table 3.3 Table 4.1 Table 4.2 Table 4.3 Table 4.4

Laws against acid throwing 8 Number of cases by country 21 Location of offences, by county 23 Principal location of offences, by town 24 Principal substances used in cases of acid throwing 27 Perpetrator’s gender, 1722–1978 38 Individual victims of reported cases of acid throwing, 1722–197838 Multiple and non-human victims of reported cases of acid throwing, 1722–1978 39 Principal relationship of main victim to accused 40 Targets and motives in cases of acid throwing, 1722–1978 60 Principal motives for acid throwing, classified by type 61 Principal motives for acid throwing, classified by type and perpetrator’s gender 72 Outcome and penalty in cases of acid throwing 84 Length of custodial sentences imposed on convicted acid throwers, 1722–1978 86 Principal case outcome or sentence upon conviction, by country 87 Length of custodial sentences in relation to substance used and injury caused, 1949–1978 102

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Abstract  As a unique crime phenomenon which has to date been largely overlooked by academic historians and criminologists, the study of acid attacks offers a novel contribution to scholarship on the history of law, crime, medicine, gender, and emotions. This book provides the first national study of British acid attacks in historical perspective, using legal records and newspaper reports to identify individual cases and follow them through the criminal justice process. The introduction provides an overview of the history and historiography of acid throwing, surveys the development of laws against it, and summarises the book’s argument. Keywords  Assault • Crime of passion • Gender • Historiography • Law • Sources The crime of vitriol throwing is a novel feature in the annals of the country. It consists of putting into a wide-necked bottle a quantity of sulphuric acid—oil of vitriol as it is commonly called—and throwing this upon the person of the obnoxious individual, being either directed to the face or dress merely, or of throwing a quantity upon any work offensive to the party. The caustic nature of this fluid renders it a formidable weapon when it is applied to any exposed part of the body,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K. D. Watson, Acid Attacks in Britain, 1760–1975, World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27272-1_1

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and in several instances loss of sight has resulted from it, and in a vast number of others very great suffering has resulted from its application. It is immediately destructive to the texture of cloth from its corrosive qualities. —P. Gaskell, Artisans and Machinery: The Moral and Physical Condition of the Manufacturing Population Considered With Reference to Mechanical Substitutes for Human Labour (London: John W. Parker, 1836), p. 268.

According to Acid Survivors Trust International, “[p]er capita the UK has one of the highest rates of recorded acid attacks in the world,” underlined by the alarming fact that the hundreds of assaults involving acid or other corrosive fluids reported in 2017 and 2018 represented an increase of over 260 per cent since 2012.1 If that were not bad enough, it appeared that even minors had adopted this unusually cruel weapon: London schoolchildren were “using acid instead of knives as weapon of choice” declared The Evening Standard in April 2017.2 Such reports stimulated scrutiny of the laws used to prosecute perpetrators, together with issues such as contemporary patterns, motivations, and prevention.3 But there has been little public recognition that this crime is not new to the United Kingdom, or investigation of its origins and development.4 In fact, it first came to the attention of legal authorities in the eighteenth century, when it was associated with the weaving trade, before becoming more widespread in the early nineteenth century. Between 1820 and the 1940s, cases were remitted to the higher courts on a monthly basis. Its incidence declined markedly thereafter, to a few dozen cases per decade by the 1970s. The twenty-first century phenomenon should thus be recognised as a modern iteration of an old but relatively rare form of assault. This book provides the first national study of British acid attacks in historical perspective, using legal records and newspaper reports to identify individual cases and follow them through the ensuing legal process. It focuses on four main research questions: Who chose to throw acid or other corrosives? On whom did they throw it and why? Where did this occur? What was the response of the criminal justice system, and what influenced that response? The benefits of this extended chronological study are twofold: it will identify where, when and why acid attacks occurred in the past; and it will suggest reasons for the gradual reduction

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in its incidence after the Second World War. As a unique crime phenomenon which has to date been largely overlooked by academic historians and criminologists, the study of acid attacks offers a novel contribution to scholarship on the history of law, crime, medicine, gender, and emotions. Historians of crime and criminal justice have long sought to explain apparent shifts in the levels of interpersonal violence in post-mediaeval British society, concentrating their research mainly on homicide but also considering domestic violence, rape and other forms of assault. Two key analytical themes have emerged. One strand of the historiography has explored Georgian and Victorian elite attitudes to violence: work that has focused largely on jury trials in the higher courts has revealed a steady decline in public violence since the seventeenth century, together with increasingly rigorous application of the laws enacted to combat it.5 The nature of personal relationships and the socio-legal expectations placed upon them offer a second important area of study, often concentrated on gender relations and male aggression towards women.6 Assault prosecutions, in particular, provide a valuable means of identifying both attitudes to interpersonal violence and the lived experiences of the past from opposing perspectives, that of victim and perpetrator. Thus, popular attitudes to violence have been revealed by the records of the lower courts, which show that both men and women used the law to gain redress for acts of unacceptable violence.7 However, although women formed a significant proportion of the defendants, their use of violence differed from that of men in gendered ways, as did legal responses to them.8 This book contributes to both of these strands in the historiography of interpersonal violence, by investigating the relationship between gender, violence, and negative emotions—anger, envy, jealousy, shame—expressed in an infrequent but distinctive form of assault which is now known as acid throwing. It will argue that this intentionally disfiguring offence, which was unknown in Britain before the very early eighteenth century and which had largely disappeared by the late twentieth, can be examined on two levels: as a form of deviant behaviour which was linked to an evolving understanding of the role and nature of violence; and as a manifestation of popular conceptions of vengeance reinforced by the notion of provocation. In tracing the rise and decline of acid throwing in Britain, the book also offers some working conclusions about the renewed existence of this offence in the twenty-first century.

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Acid Throwing in History and Historiography It is important to begin with a note about terminology. During the period that this book considers, the phenomenon now termed ‘acid throwing’ or ‘corrosive substance crime’ was known as vitriol throwing, referring to the common term for strong sulphuric acid, a powerful corrosive used extensively in agriculture and manufacturing, or diluted for use as a domestic cleaning agent. It was cheap, widely available, and extremely dangerous: it mutilated and maimed victims by destroying skin and supporting tissues, causing permanent impairment such as blindness or extensive scarring. Historians agree that, unlike other serious assaults that amounted to attempted murder, vitriol throwing was an act designed to injure rather than to kill. Similar but less destructive effects were produced by nitric acid, hydrochloric acid and caustic soda, while solutions of oxalic acid, ammonia, and carbolic acid were occasionally thrown, causing still less damage. Just over 60 per cent of the cases on which this book is based involved vitriol, which by the late Victorian period had entered popular culture as a weapon associated with a clear stereotype. In February 1882 an editorial in The Times summarised the assumptions that middle-class Victorian males held about vitriol throwers: they were “furious women,” working class and irrational, acting from motives of jealousy and revenge.9 This expectation was well entrenched by the 1880s: it was played out numerous times in the melodramas, short stories and novels of the next 40 years,10 and became increasingly embedded in elite discourses about crime and criminality. In 1898 Mr Justice Wills, a Judge of the High Court of Justice, opined that the crime “was oftener resorted to by women than men, they seeming, indeed, to be sometimes possessed of a degree of malignity which was hardly attainable by the other sex.”11 And in 1914 a criminologist claimed that vitriol throwing “is rarely resorted to by men, being almost exclusively confined to females,”12 apparently as a result of “sexual mania.” The stereotype survived until the Second World War: as late as 1936 a textbook of forensic medicine stated that chemical burns “may be caused by attempts by jealous women to disfigure their rivals, as in vitriol-throwing.”13 By then, however, the cultural focus had shifted from the perpetrator to the victim, who was most frequently a woman whose face had been deliberately ruined by a man, as Graham Greene suggested in his 1938 novel Brighton Rock.14 But even as the media lamented the increasing frequency of vitriol throwing in the early 1880s, it was clearly understood to be a crime far

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more common in France than in Britain.15 Thus, to gain initial insights into the crime we must first look to the work of historians of Victorian and Edwardian France, particularly Joëlle Guillais, Ruth Harris, Mary Hartman and Ann-Louise Shapiro. They have shown that a so-called crime wave among bourgeois and upper-class women developed in the 1870s, characterised by the use of revolvers and vitriol throwing, so that a new verb came in to use: vitrioler, to burn with acid. The French concept of the crime of passion allowed greater judicial leniency for violent women in circumstances normally associated with sexual disappointment caused by men’s abuse and betrayal and, consequently, the vitrioleuse was often acquitted.16 By contrast, many in England assumed that no well-bred woman would ever resort to such violence, because English juries would not be swayed by sentiment and would judge harshly any person accused of avenging insults by extreme violence. The class distinctions associated with the crime are further revealed by Lucy Bending, who has shown that early criminologists allowed the violence of the deed to be occluded by a woman’s social status. In Lombroso and Ferrero’s The Female Offender of 1895, violence distinguished the instinctive working-class criminal, and for them vitriol throwing was thus not a crime of passion but an expression of an “innate desire to inflict pain.” For the aristocracy, however, it was the sign of “a sufferer pushed beyond endurance into action.”17 But more recent scholarship demonstrates that the assumption that French crimes of passion were committed largely by bourgeois females is incorrect: Pieter Spierenburg has shown that in murder cases, most perpetrators had a working-class background and, during the 1870s, 82 per cent were male.18 Eliza Ferguson’s work on Parisian crimes of passion found only a few middle- and upper-class cases, and shows that men outnumbered women three to one as defendants. Acquittal rates in jury trials were disproportionately high, a finding that she attributes to a tacit acceptance of the notion that in certain circumstances, intimate violence was understandable, excusable, or even legitimate.19 The case of Emilie Foucault, a Frenchwoman tried at the Central Criminal Court in London in 1907, together with other trials held there in the period 1837 to 1913, demonstrates a willingness on the part of English judges and juries to show similar lenience to defendants who were technically guilty but who had acted under what was perceived to be a severe provocation. Foucault threw vitriol in the face of André Delombre (also French), who had seduced, impregnated and deserted her, blinding him in one eye—yet she was acquitted to public acclaim. The narrative she presented, and which

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was accepted by the jury and newspaper media, framed herself as the victim—of a dishonourable man and a sudden loss of control under direct provocation. This suggested both a lack of intent to cause such grave injury, and that the victim had got no less than he deserved.20 Both Foucault and the man she blinded were middle class, making them atypical examples of the average British vitriol thrower, most of whom were of working-class status. Part of what this book will do is test the extent to which the suppositions and stereotypes identified above applied to both male and female perpetrators, not just in London but across the United Kingdom. Although English and Scottish law lacked a formal concept of the crime of passion, the common law defence of provocation,21 studied mainly in relation to the history of homicide law,22 could be influential. The courts in late nineteenth-century Ireland, for example, “often agreed that provocation was acceptable grounds for violence” committed by women, even those who had killed their husbands.23 However, one might expect that, as a crime which required fairly thorough planning, vitriol throwing might be subject to stiffer penalties than other forms of assault. Therefore, just how likely was it that vitriol throwers would be acquitted on the grounds of provocation? How important was the context of a romantic relationship gone wrong? Did men and women benefit equally from judicial sympathy? To what extent was the legal precept of malice aforethought invoked? With some exceptions associated with reasonable workplace or household access, acid throwers had first to purchase a corrosive substance, store it in a container from which it could be thrown, track down their victim, and then transport the acid to that location. Emilie Foucault, for example, had purchased vitriol in Paris—to commit suicide, she claimed—before travelling to London to confront Delombre in a hotel room.24 Her acquittal reveals the tension between intentions and outcomes inherent in the criminal law of assault.

Laws Against Acid Throwing The legal and medico-legal framework that shaped prosecutions for acid throwing in England and Scotland is of critical importance to any study of the offence, because for many years the law was unequal to the seriousness of the crime.25 Although it could be prosecuted under statutes against damage and wounding, the penalties were relatively light until the 1820s in Scotland and Ireland, and the 1830s in England and Wales. Without specific statutes to designate it a felony, acid throwing was prosecuted as a

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misdemeanour common assault, for which the maximum penalty was typically a fine and/or up to two years imprisonment. Table 1.1 summarises the evolution of laws against acid throwing, culminating in the Offences Against the Person Act of 1861, which remains in effect today. During the eighteenth century, acid throwing could be prosecuted as damage to property, if clothing had been destroyed; the maximum penalty was transportation for seven years. But its effects on the person were not adequately provided for until more than a century later, despite the introduction of Lord Ellenborough’s Act in 1803.26 In a reflection of elite concerns about interpersonal violence, this law made attempted poisoning and certain forms of wounding capital offences; the damage caused by acid was however excluded from its remit, because the contemporary medico-legal definition of a wound assumed injury caused by a solid object such as a knife, bullet, or club. However, in the 1820s the use of vitriol in disputes between masters and workmen in Glasgow led Parliament to extend the English statute to Scotland, making vitriol throwing a capital offence. By the 1830s the English were also associating the crime with labour disputes, as the quotation by the Stockport-based surgeon Peter Gaskell at the start of this chapter indicates, and politicians acknowledged it as a distinctive form of felonious assault. A series of statutes that punished offences against the person stiffened the penalties for vitriol throwing with intent to do grievous bodily harm or damage clothing, which became subject to imprisonment or transportation; and a law of 1847 raised the maximum penalty to transportation for life.27 Increased media reporting after 1837 suggests that the Offences Against the Person Act of that year marked a turning point, as cases that might once have been tried as common assaults at quarter sessions were instead indicted as felonies at the assizes.28 Finally, under the terms of the Act of 1861 it became a felony to burn, maim, or disfigure anyone with a corrosive fluid. But a legal loophole remained: no offence was committed if there was no intent to injure. Some defendants claimed they had accidentally spilt acid on their victim or had only intended to burn their clothes, a defence that occasionally succeeded despite the amount of planning usually required.

Aims, Methods and Sources Broadly speaking, this book seeks to identify acid throwers and their victims; to ask when, where and why the crime occurred; and to examine the manner in which such incidents were handled in the criminal courts. By

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Table 1.1  Laws against acid throwing Year

Statutes and their provisions

1719 6 Geo I c.23 s.11 (An Act for the further preventing Robbery, Burglary, and other Felonies, and for the more effectual Transportation of Felons): from 24 June 1720 assault in a public street or highway with intent to tear, spoil, cut, burn or deface garments or clothing became a felony punishable by transportation from the British Isles to “any of His Majesty’s colonies or plantations in America” for seven years, subject to the court’s discretion.a 1825 6 Geo IV c.126 s.2 (An Act to make provision in Scotland for the further Prevention of malicious shooting, and attempting to discharge loaded Fire Arms, stabbing, cutting, wounding, poisoning, maiming, disfiguring, and disabling His Majesty’s subjects, 5 July): throwing sulphuric acid or other corrosive substance with intent to murder, maim, disfigure or disable, whereby such injury or grievous bodily harm was done, became a capital crime; repealed in 1829. 1827 7 & 8 Geo IV c.30 s.3 (An Act for consolidating and amending the Laws in England relative to malicious Injuries to Property, 21 June): destroying fabrics in the process of manufacture became a felony subject to seven years’ transportation, or imprisonment for up to four years; male offenders could also be whipped. 1828 9 Geo IV c.31 s.12 (An Act for consolidating and amending the Statutes in England relative to Offences against the Person, known as Lord Lansdowne’s Act, 27 June): wounding with intent to maim, disfigure, disable or do some other grievous bodily harm became a capital offence. Judges, lawyers and some doctors believed that the injuries caused by acid did not constitute a wound. Repealed in 1837. 1829 10 Geo IV c.34 s.15 (An Act for consolidating and amending the Statutes in Ireland, relating to Offences against the Person, 4 June): throwing any corrosive or noxious substance with intent to maim, disfigure, disable or do grievous bodily harm became a capital crime, unless the circumstances did not prove an intent to murder. 1829 10 Geo IV c.38 s.3 (An Act for the more effectual Punishment of Attempts to murder in certain Cases in Scotland, 4 June): throwing sulphuric acid or corrosive substances remained a capital crime, but Scottish prosecutors had the option to indict offenders for common assault. In the late 1950s this law had fallen into desuetude but was still on the statute books.b 1837 1 Vict c.85 s.5 (An Act to amend the Laws relating to Offences against the Person, 17 July): from 1 October 1837, throwing any corrosive fluid with intent, whereby a person was burnt, maimed, disfigured, disabled or received grievous bodily harm, became a felony punishable by transportation for life, or for any term not less than fifteen years, or by imprisonment for up to three years; applicable in England, Wales and Ireland. (continued)

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Table 1.1 (continued) Year

Statutes and their provisions

1851 14 & 15 Vict c.19 s.4 (An Act for the better Prevention of Offences, 3 July): persons inflicting grievous bodily harm, with no attempt to murder, were deemed to be guilty of a misdemeanour and liable to three years’ imprisonment. This section did not repeal 10 Geo IV c.34 s.29, which allowed seven years’ transportation for violent assaults committed in Ireland. 1861 24 & 25 Vict c.100 s.29 (An Act to consolidate and amend the Statute Law of England and Ireland relating to Offences against the Person, 6 August): throwing any corrosive fluid with intent to burn, maim, disfigure, disable, or do grievous bodily harm, whether or not injury resulted, became a felony; penalties (at the discretion of the court) were penal servitude for life or for any term not less than three years, or imprisonment for up to two years, with or without hard labour or solitary confinement; males under the age of sixteen could be whipped. This statute remains in effect in England and Wales, with imprisonment replacing the Victorian penalties.c This law remained on the statute books in the late 1830s, according to The Charter, 21 Jul 1839, 9. However, this seems to be an error. According to the Manchester Mercury, 3 Feb 1829, 1, it had been recently repealed. Among the cases collected for this study, the last occasion on which a successful conviction was achieved under the statute of 1719 occurred in 1814, when a man was sentenced to seven years transportation at the Old Bailey: see OBP, trial of Joseph Butcher, ref. t18141026-141. The use of transportation as a judicial punishment was suspended in 1776 because of the American War of Independence; when it was resumed in May 1787, the destination was Australia a

Clause 14.—Amendment as to penalty for certain attempts to murder, House of Commons Debates, 28 Jan 1957, vol. 563 cols. 788–800, https://api.parliament.uk/historic-­hansard/commons/1957/ jan/28/clause-­14-­amendment-­as-­to-­penalty-­for#S5CV0563P0_19570128_HOC_477 (accessed 31 Aug 2022) b

See Offences against the Person Act 1861, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Vict/24-­25/100/ section/29#commentary-­c563623 c

answering these questions, the book will achieve the following aims: to provide a detailed analysis of when and why acid throwing began; to understand how and why it developed and changed; and to assess the effectiveness of measures taken to combat it. To address these questions, the project has adopted the methodology characteristic of social history of crime: a quantitative and qualitative study based principally on records created by the criminal justice system, supported by information collected from newspaper reports of acid attacks and the trials of alleged attackers. Although regional studies are common in histories of crime, the relative infrequency of acid attacks in relation to other forms of assault, or homicide, necessitated a national survey. The

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goal was to obtain a representative sample of all instances notified to the authorities in the period 1700–1980, with a focus on cases tried as felonies in the highest courts: the Old Bailey in London, renamed the Central Criminal Court in 1834; the Welsh Court of Great Sessions (1730–1830);29 the assizes (England, and Wales after 1830); and Scotland’s Court of Justiciary. The online Proceedings of trials held at the Old Bailey (1674–1913), and surviving records at The National Archives and National Records of Scotland—mainly indictments and depositions, plus a few prison records—form the core of the project data. These were augmented by three separate searches of digital newspaper databases, to seek additional details about known individuals and identify other cases: those heard at quarter sessions or police courts; in the Scottish sheriff courts; and in Irish courts (police, quarter sessions, and assize). Systematic surveys of The Times, founded in 1785, and The Scotsman, founded in 1817, were designed to identify all cases of vitriol throwing reported in those newspapers. Welsh Newspapers Online (1804–1919) was also searched, but most of the cases reported had actually occurred in England. These findings were significantly expanded by searches of the British Newspaper Archive (1700–1980),30 providing access to hundreds of historic newspapers from all over Britain and Ireland. The fact that the provincial press “was the majority newspaper press for more than a century,”31 and that much of its content was syndicated, lends strength to the argument that newspapers provide a valuable source of information about the nature and incidence of acid throwing. In fact, the ongoing annual digitisation of millions of pages led to the recent (2021) discovery of several previously unknown eighteenth-century cases, and consequently pushed back the origins of the offence by over two decades. Finally, Home Office and census records digitised by commercial companies Ancestry and FindMyPast were used to confirm sentences, prison release dates, ages and occupations for accused acid throwers for whom such data was not otherwise available. Unfortunately, efforts to identify hospital records relating to the victims of acid attacks proved largely unsuccessful.32 There were some cases for which no final outcome could be found. Twentieth-century cases proved to be among the most difficult to research in detail, possibly because some perpetrators were removed from the criminal justice process and sent to a psychiatric facility. By contrast, some cases, such as those of Kathlyn Seaby in 1948 and Janet Charlott in 1978, were reported quite extensively and it was possible to gain substantial amounts of information about the crimes and trials. However, press

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reportage of post-war cases was noticeably thin in comparison to the detailed coverage of the Victorian and Edwardian press, reflecting changing media views as to what constituted newsworthy public events. The sources were combined to construct a dataset of 515 cases that occurred across England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland between 1722 and 1978. This is, admittedly, a small number in relation to the overall incidence of assault. Official statistics do not provide exact figures for acid attacks in the period of study, but the records of the Old Bailey and the Scottish Justiciary court are indicative of its infrequency. Approximately 110 cases were reported in the Proceedings of the Old Bailey between 1820 and 1913, out of a total of just over 5300 trials for wounding. In October 1864, for example, only one of the 114 people scheduled for trial at the Central Criminal Court had been charged with throwing a corrosive fluid.33 In Scotland, fewer than 40 cases were tried at the high court during the nineteenth century, out of more than 10,000 cases of assault.34 During the Edwardian period, there was approximately one case per month,35 and in 1916, the British Board of Film Censors included the effects of vitriol throwing among the 28 grounds for censorship identified by its examiners.36 By 1955, however, a toxicologist writing in the British Medical Journal described vitriol throwing as a “rare and execrable crime.”37 Its relative rarity makes acid throwing all the more interesting from the perspective of criminal justice history. As we will see in Chap. 2, by far the largest regional cluster was located in and around London. This may be due in part to the prevalence of newspapers and police courts in the metropolis, its large population, and the fact that trial proceedings were held more often at the Old Bailey, eight times per year, than at the assizes, twice annually. While crime news can admittedly be selective and partial,38 the relative incidence of cases across the four nations is unlikely to be a simple reflection of reporting bias. Rather, the higher number of cases in towns and cities strongly implies that the throwing of vitriol or other corrosive fluids was an urban phenomenon, and that it was more common in London than in other British cities. Equally, the tiny number of cases identified in Wales suggests that formal complaints about acid throwing were rare in the Principality, from which we can infer that the crime was not prevalent there. The patterns, in other words, are representative: they give an accurate indication of the relative frequency of acid throwing over time and across the four nations, and of the perpetrators and their motives. Part of what the book will do, therefore, is attempt to explain such trends.

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Structure and Argument Chapter 2 provides a general overview of the crime of acid throwing, using statistical evidence from the findings of the 515 cases on which the book is based. It identifies where cases occurred around the country, the sex of victims and perpetrators, and which corrosive fluids were thrown. Although many different substances were used, the most common were the three strong acids (sulphuric, nitric, hydrochloric), with vitriol dominating the statistics until the 1940s. This ties into a description of the effects of corrosive fluids on the person and uses qualitative evidence from case studies. Chapter 3 investigates the motives of acid throwers. These have been classified on the basis of first-hand testimonies (statements made by perpetrators or their victim), or inferred from the facts provided by newspaper reports. This will demonstrate that acid throwing originated not as an offence against the person, but as a property crime associated with the grievances of a particular group of workers, the weavers, before providing an overview of the contexts within which the crime typically occurred. Case studies will illuminate the specific motives and thought processes that underpinned the actions of selected acid throwers. Chapter 4 focuses on the criminal courts, to consider the attitudes of magistrates, judges, and juries when faced with victims whose physical injuries elicited sympathy, and not a little horror, but who could also empathise with some of the perpetrators. Although regularly decried as a cowardly act of diabolical cruelty and an offence almost worse than murder, law officers and jurors could understand the motives of those who had been betrayed; and, if they had expressed remorse, could be moved to leniency like that extended to Emilie Foucault. As a magistrate commented in 1847, “when seduction was the beginning, mischief was almost sure to overtake the seducer in the end.”39 Suspects who had no claim to a modicum of tenability were, by contrast, dealt with more harshly, though not necessarily to the fullest extent allowed by law. As is the case today, corrosive fluids used as weapons were most often directed at the head and face of the victim. Less commonly, acid was used to destroy clothing or other property. The incidence of the offence plateaued in the period 1850–1930, and then declined under the impetus of more rigorous laws, a concomitant lack of public familiarity with the crime and access to strong corrosives, and changing attitudes to dispute resolution fostered by increased access to socio-legal alternatives. The perpetrators were motivated by powerful emotion: revenge and jealousy were most

1 INTRODUCTION 

13

frequently cited, frustration less often. Individuals who chose to throw corrosive fluid did so in order to seek redress against those who had in some way thwarted their intentions and desires, which were often but by no means always romantic or sexual. The self-justifications offered by perpetrators reveal that by publicly and permanently mutilating their victims, acid throwers sought to take justice into their own hands. Tacit acceptance of such claims was often reflected in the formal response of the criminal justice system, which recognised and accepted provocation as a mitigating factor in certain circumstances. As alternative means of dispute resolution became more easily available during the course of the twentieth century, the courts took a sterner line with perpetrators, though from a distinctly gendered and, post-Second World War, psychiatric perspective.

Notes 1. Acid Survivors Trust International, Country Files: UK, http://www.asti. org.uk/a-­worldwide-­problem.html (accessed 23 Jun 2022). 2. Mark Chandler, “London schoolchildren ‘using acid instead of knives as weapon of choice’,” The Evening Standard, 23 Apr 2017, https://www. standard.co.uk/news/crime/london-­schoolchildren-­using-­acid-­instead-­ of-­knives-­as-­weapon-­of-­choice-­a3521641.html (accessed 24 Jul 2017). 3. Matt Hopkins, Lucy Neville and Teela Sanders, Acid Crime: Context, Motivation and Prevention (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave, 2021). 4. Ibid., 7–9. 5. For the historiographical findings on declining homicide rates, see Peter King, “Urbanization, Rising Homicide Rates and the Geography of Lethal Violence in Scotland, 1800–1860,” History 96 (2001), 231–232. For assault, see: Phil Handler, “The Law of Felonious Assault in England, 1803–61,” The Journal of Legal History 28 (2007), 183–206; Peter King, “Punishing Assault: The Transformation of Attitudes in the English Courts,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 27 (1996), 43–74; Robert B. Shoemaker, “The Taming of the Duel: Masculinity, Honour and Ritual Violence in London, 1660–1800,” The Historical Journal 45 (2002), 525–545. For changing nineteenth-century attitudes to violence, see J. Carter Wood, Violence and Crime in Nineteenth-Century England: The Shadow of Our Refinement (London: Routledge, 2004). 6. Joanne Bailey, “‘I dye [sic] by Inches’: Locating Wife Beating in the Concept of a Privatization of Marriage and Violence in EighteenthCentury England,” Social History 31 (2006), 273–294; Elizabeth Foyster, Marital Violence: An English Family History, 1660–1857 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005); Garthine Walker, “Rape, Acquittal and Culpability

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in Popular Crime Reports in England, c.1670–c.1750,” Past and Present 220 (2013), 115–142. 7. King, “Punishing Assault;” Drew D. Gray, “The Regulation of Violence in the Metropolis; the Prosecution of Assault in the Summary Courts, c.1780–1820,” The London Journal 32 (2007), 75–87; Norma Landau, “Indictment for Fun and Profit: A Prosecutor’s Reward at Eighteenth-­ Century Quarter Sessions,” Law and History Review 17 (1999), 507–536. 8. Jennine Hurl-Eamon, Gender and Petty Violence in London, 1680–1720 (Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2005); Drew D. Gray, Crime, Prosecution and Social Relations: The Summary Courts of the City of London in the Late Eighteenth Century (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009), 92–115, 170–171; Jo Turner, “The ‘Vanishing’ Female Perpetrator of Common Assault,” in Women’s Criminality in Europe, 1600–1914, ed. Manon van der Heijden, Marion Pluskota and Sanne Muurling (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2020), 72–88. 9. The Times, 21 Feb 1882, 10: “In the class from which the actors in this ghastly drama are drawn ‘spite’ is a powerful engine, which acts in a ruder and less refined manner than it acts in the higher circles of society. [In this class] furens femina operates with violence and vitriol, with open scandal, or even with the weapons of a murderer. In a higher sphere her vengeance is more thought out, more subtle, though not, perhaps, less agonizing or less effectual.” 10. Sabine Baring Gould, Mehalah: A Story of the Salt Marshes (1880), chapters 24 and 25; George Gissing, The Nether World (1889), chapter 23; Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” (1892) and “The Illustrious Client” (1924 in USA, 1925 in UK); A. E. W. Mason, At the Villa Rose (1910), chapters 19 and 20 (threat only); John Buchan, The Three Hostages (1924), chapter 19 (threat); Gordon Casserly, The Desert Lovers (1926), review in The Scotsman, 1 Apr 1926, 2. 11. Grantham Journal, 5 Feb 1898, 7. 12. Hargrave L.  Adam, Woman and Crime (London: T.  Werner Laurie, 1914), 208. 13. Douglas Kerr, Forensic Medicine, 2nd ed. (London: A. & C.  Black, 1936), 110. 14. Graham Greene, Brighton Rock (London: William Heinemann, 1938), part 2, chapter 1. 15. Pieter Spierenburg, A History of Murder: Personal Violence in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008), 188–192; Henrique Mariño, “Cuando en Europa los hombres desfiguraban con ácido a las mujeres,” [“When men in Europe disfigured women with acid”] Público, 13 Feb 2020, https://www.publico.es/sociedad/violencia-­

1 INTRODUCTION 

15

genero-­europa-­hombres-­desfiguraban-­acido-­mujeres.html. My thanks to José Ramón Bertomeu-Sánchez for bringing this article to my attention. 16. Joëlle Guillais, Crimes of Passion: Dramas of Private Life in Nineteenth-­ Century France, trans. Jane Dunnett (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), 148–149; Ruth Harris, Murders and Madness: Medicine, Law, and Society in the Fin-de-Siècle (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1989), 238–239; Mary S.  Hartman, Victorian Murderesses (London: Robson Books, 1985), 239–240; Ann-­Louise Shapiro, Breaking the Codes: Female Criminality in Fin-de-Siècle Paris (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1996), 76–80. 17. Lucy Bending, The Representation of Bodily Pain in Late Nineteenth-­ Century English Culture (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000), 233–234. Lombroso’s views were embedded in his belief that women were inferior to men and thus less criminal than men were, but that criminal women were primitive and masculine in comparison to their law-abiding, feminine, and civilised sisters. In further distinguishing between the “born criminal” and the “criminal by passion,” Lombroso created a clear class distinction which could be easily applied to vitriol throwers. See Cesare Lombroso and Guglielmo Ferrero, Criminal Woman, the Prostitute, and the Normal Woman, trans. Nicole Hahn Rafter and Mary Gibson (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2004), 3–11. 18. Spierenburg, History of Murder, 188. 19. Eliza Earle Ferguson, Gender and Justice: Violence, Intimacy, and Community in Fin-de-Siècle Paris (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2010), 1–17. An accepted rationale for the legitimate use of violence was the rehabilitation of female honour: Eliza Earle Ferguson, “Emotion, Gender and Honour in a Fin-de-Siècle Crime of Passion: The Case of Marie Bière,” in Honour, Violence and Emotions in History, ed. Carolyn Strange, Robert Cribb and Christopher E. Forth (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), 145–161. 20. Katherine D. Watson, “Love, Vengeance and Vitriol: An Edwardian TrueCrime Drama”, in Law, Crime and Deviance since 1700: Micro-Studies in the History of Crime, ed. Anne-Marie Kilday and David Nash (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 107–123. 21. John H.  A. Macdonald, A Practical Treatise on the Criminal Law of Scotland (Edinburgh: William Paterson, 1867), 151; Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, A History of the Criminal Law of England, vol. 3 (London: Macmillan, 1883), 85; ‘Crimes of Passion Defence Restored in Murder Cases’, The Telegraph, 17 Jan. 2012, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ uknews/law-­and-­order/9020632/Crimes-­of-­passion-­defence-­restored-­ in-­murder-­cases.html. 22. Bernard J. Brown, “The Demise of Chance Medley and the Recognition of Provocation as a Defence to Murder in English Law,” The American

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K. D. WATSON

Journal of Legal History 7 (1963), 310–318; K. J. Kesselring, “No Greater Provocation? Adultery and the Mitigation of Murder in English Law,” Law and History Review 34 (2016), 199–225. 23. Carolyn A.  Conley, “No Pedestals: Women and Violence in Late Nineteenth-Century Ireland,” Journal of Social History 28 (1995), 803, 807. For an English example of a similar type, see Ginger Frost, “‘She is but a Woman’: Kitty Byron and the English Edwardian Criminal Justice System,” Gender & History 16 (2004), 538–560. 24. OBP, trial of Emilie Victorine Foucault, ref. t19070422-43. 25. Katherine D. Watson, “Is A Burn A Wound? Vitriol-Throwing in MedicoLegal Context, 1800–1900”, in Lawyers’ Medicine: The Legislature, the Courts and Medical Practice, 1760–2000, ed. Imogen Goold and Catherine Kelly (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2009), 61–78. 26. 43 Geo III c.58; also known as the Stabbing and Wounding Act. 27. 10 Vict c.23 ss.4, 5. 28. Watson, “Is A Burn A Wound?”, 76. 29. The online database, searched on several keywords (acid, aqua fortis, burn, corrosive, deface, spoil, vitriol) yielded a single case, that of Owen Owen in 1827. Aqua fortis is another name for nitric acid. 30. Key words and phrases include: acid; aqua fortis; burn or deface; corrosive fluid; spoil and deface; vitriol; with intent to burn. 31. Andrew Hobbs, “When the Provincial Press Was the National Press (c.1836–c.1900),” International Journal of Regional and Local History 5 (2009), 17. 32. I would like to thank Lynsey Cullen for research on the records of hospitals in London. She identified some case notes pertaining to named victims of acid attacks, but the medical information mirrored that provided by the press. Guy’s Hospital Reports proved singularly unrevealing, as did records relating to patients admitted to St Thomas’s Hospital 1690–1800, digitised on the London Lives website. The extensive record set digitised by St George’s Hospital, available at https://www.sgul.ac.uk/about/our-­ professional-­services/information-­services/library/about-­the-­library/ archives, was searched and was found to include post mortem reports on victims of accidents or suicides involving acid; but no records relating to patients who had survived a deliberate attack. 33. Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 30 Oct 1864, 4. In February 1868 it was one person out of 116: London City Press, 29 Feb 1868, 6. 34. NRS, ‘Solemn Database’ of criminal trials held in the High Court of Justiciary between the years 1800 and 1994. 35. F. J. Smith, ed., Taylor’s Principles and Practice of Medical Jurisprudence, 6th ed., vol. 1 (London: J. & A. Churchill, 1910), 605. 36. Kinematograph Weekly, 6 Jul 1916, 12.

1 INTRODUCTION 

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37. J. D. P. Graham, “Emergencies in General Practice: Corrosive Poisoning,” BMJ, 16 Apr 1955, 962. 38. Judith Rowbotham, Kim Stevenson and Samantha Pegg, Crime News in Modern Britain: Press Reporting and Responsibility, 1820–2010 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013); James Mussell, The Nineteenth-Century Press in the Digital Age (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012). 39. The Times, 1 Dec 1847, 7.

CHAPTER 2

Facts and Figures

Abstract  This chapter provides a general overview of the crime of acid throwing, using statistical evidence from the findings of the 515 cases on which the book is based. It identifies the main urban centres where cases occurred, the sex of victims and perpetrators, and which corrosive fluids were thrown. Although many different substances were used, the most common were the three strong acids (sulphuric, nitric, hydrochloric), with vitriol dominating the statistics until the 1940s. The effects of corrosive fluids on the person are described using qualitative evidence from case studies. Keywords  Blindness • Disfigurement • Incidence • Location • Perpetrators • Victims He had uttered, however, but the first two words of this sentence, when something was thrown over his face which caused him excruciating torture and almost drove him into a state of madness. It was liquid. The prisoner was then about a yard or a yard and a half from him. He could not observe afterwards, the pain having rendered him incapable almost of thought, nor did he see what became of the prisoner. He immediately ran with all his speed towards the shop of Mr Butler, the

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K. D. Watson, Acid Attacks in Britain, 1760–1975, World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27272-1_2

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druggist, calling out with all his might that he was ruined, some one having thrown vitriol in his face. —Testimony of Samuel Wade at the trial of Ann Murrow, Liverpool Assizes: “Throwing Vitriol,” The Kendal Mercury, 29 August 1835, p. 4.

When Samuel Wade testified against his former servant Ann Murrow at her trial in August 1835, neither could know that the case would prove to be a legal turning point. Murrow was convicted following jury deliberation “of about three minutes,”1 but the injuries that Wade sustained did not amount to a wound under the terms of Lord Lansdowne’s Act and the capital conviction was overturned. She was tried again in the spring of 1836 and convicted of assault with intent to do bodily injury; and in the following year the first genuinely effectual English law against acid throwing as a crime of interpersonal violence, the Offences Against the Person Act of 1837, came into effect.2 In its main characteristics, however, what happened to Samuel Wade was entirely typical of assaults committed with corrosive fluids. He was attacked in the middle of the street, in an English city, by a lone perpetrator of working-class status, with vitriol purchased from a druggist on the day in question. He suffered what today would be deemed a ‘life-changing’ injury: his eyesight was damaged, but not destroyed. It is difficult to discover more about the longer-term emotional and socio-economic impact of this experience on Wade, because the criminal justice system creates records focused on offenders; victims tend to disappear from view once a trial has ended. We know, however, that he was under a surgeon’s care for about a month, a not insignificant expense; and that he was still working as a cotton broker in Rumford Street, Liverpool, at the time of Murrow’s second trial.3 As a self-employed businessman who had escaped blindness, Wade’s future prospects were probably less negative than Murrow had intended. In order to situate Murrow and Wade within the wider context of acid throwing in Britain, this chapter will provide a statistical overview of the perpetrators and victims encountered in the 515 cases on which the study is based, focusing on nationality and gender, and to a lesser extent, age and class. It will also identify the cities and towns in which offences occurred, and provide a sense of the sites where acid throwers tended to corner their victims. This will show that acid throwing was an urban offence, particularly associated with London, Manchester, Dundee, and

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21

Glasgow; that it gradually moved from the street into the home but remained more public than private (for reasons to be elucidated in Chap. 3); and that the perpetrators were about evenly split between men and women until the middle of the twentieth century. Unlike many aspects of the history of crime and policing, it was not the Great War but the Second World War that was to be a conspicuous turning point. After 1945 the vast majority of offenders were male, and substances other than vitriol tended to be used. Victims and perpetrators came from a variety of backgrounds and followed numerous trades, but most were working class, including factory workers, labourers, prostitutes and servants; or artisans such as weavers. Fewer than ten cases involved middle-class individuals, mainly women, who did not do so-called blue collar jobs.4 A wider variety of occupations is found among twentieth-century cases, however, including some of lower-middle or middle-class status, in a reflection of the general broadening of social structures that occurred after World War One.

Incidence and Location Although there are no exact numbers for the incidence of acid throwing in the British Isles,5 it is fair to say that, given the systematic way in which the project database was compiled, the crime was mainly an English and Scottish phenomenon. Table 2.1 tabulates the number of cases in England, Table 2.1  Number of cases by country

Country England Irelanda Scotland Wales Total

No. of cases Date of offence 420 22 64 9 515

Mar 1722–Aug 1978 May 1784–Jun 1939 Sep 1820–Jun 1952 Oct 1827–Jul 1942 Mar 1722–Aug 1978

Source: Database of cases compiled from: National Records of Scotland, High Court Criminal Trials AD14/AD15 precognitions and JC26 trial papers (1800–1952); The National Archives, ASSI 36, ASSI 45, ASSI 52, ASSI 84, CRIM 1, J 82, J 267, PCOM 3, PCOM 4 (1861–1974); The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674–1913; The Scotsman (1817–1950); The Times (1785–1967); The British Newspaper Archive (1700–1990) Includes the entire island of Ireland

a

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K. D. WATSON

Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, showing that both the earliest and latest cases occurred in England, in 1722 and 1978 respectively. Of course, England had by far the largest population of the four nations. In 1851, for example, the census recorded the population of greater London at about 2.6 million persons, not much less than the entire population of Scotland (just over 2.8 million) and considerably more than that of Wales (1,163,000). The population of England as a whole was 16.8 million. By contrast, as the Great Famine was ending in 1851, the total population on the island of Ireland had fallen to 6.5 million, from 8.2 million in 1841.6 The figures in Table 2.1 would seem to suggest that Ireland and Wales are under-represented, while the number of cases in Scotland may have been somewhat disproportionate to its total population. It is impossible to calculate a crime rate, and so such comparisons must remain impressionistic; but the dates of the earliest offences are more informative, particularly when considered in conjunction with Table  2.2. This shows where the majority of incidents occurred at a regional level: Middlesex, in essence greater London, predominates; but significant numbers of cases of acid throwing occurred in Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Lanarkshire, which were among the most highly industrialised areas in the British Isles. Vitriol was manufactured at chemical works located in east Glasgow in the late nineteenth century.7 Some of the earliest offences recorded in England, Ireland, and Scotland were linked to labour disputes or acts of protest against unfair economic conditions. While the 1722 case, which happened in Middlesex, seems to have involved a personal dispute, it was followed by a period of over 40 years when no incidents could be identified. Then, in 1766, there was a cluster of three confrontations, all evidently forms of protest against activities believed to have negative local consequences. In October 1766, for example, a gentleman and his wife were assaulted in London, “in that Part of Fleet-Street that is now paving,” by ruffians who threw nitric acid on their clothes. “[O]ne of the Fellows was heard to say, ‘By G—d we will be revenged some Way or other on the cruel Rogues who are starving us, and the whole Nation, by sending away the Corn to feed our Enemies.’” The victim was “an exporter of corn,”8 his wife’s dress a typical target of the time, the ‘enemies’ unstated but almost certainly France, Spain and Portugal.9 The first case noted by the Irish press occurred in May 1784 when unknown “villains” took up position in Vicar Street in Dublin and used nitric acid to destroy muslin and linen gowns which they suspected to be English; several ladies were thus assaulted.10

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23

Table 2.2  Location of offences, by county Country

County

Englanda

Berkshire Cheshire Derbyshire Devon Dorset Durham Essex Gloucestershire Hampshire Kent Lancashire Lincolnshire Middlesex Norfolk Northumberland Nottinghamshire Somerset Staffordshire Suffolk Surrey Sussex Warwickshire Worcestershire Yorkshire Antrim Cork Dublin Aberdeenshire Dumfriesshire Forfarshire Lanarkshire Midlothian Renfrewshire Caernarvonshire Glamorgan Monmouthshire

Irelandb

Scotlandc

Walesd

Total

No. of cases 6 12 2 3 2 5 5 5 9 18 47 3 215 2 5 8 3 7 3 14 4 8 3 25 5 5 5 3 2 14 30 8 4 2 3 2 497

Source: As for Table 2.1  Plus one case in: Bedfordshire; Hertfordshire; Leicestershire; Northamptonshire; Oxfordshire; Wiltshire  Plus one case in: Armagh; Clare; Down; Kilkenny; Tyrone; Westmeath; Wicklow  Plus one case in: Ayrshire; Fifeshire; Stirlingshire d  Plus one case in: Carmarthenshire; Denbighshire a

b c

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The perpetrators were undoubtedly clothworkers. And we will see in Chap. 3 that the first Scottish cases of the 1820s were associated with the nascent trade union movement, led by cotton spinners in Glasgow. Table 2.3 further narrows the geographical scope of the crime, by demonstrating that 63.9 per cent of the 515 cases occurred in just 11 towns and cities. Notwithstanding the perennial problem of the ‘dark figure’ of unreported or unrecorded criminality, which admittedly may not apply equally across the counties, nations, and centuries summed up in Tables 2.1 and 2.2, the shocking nature of the offence lends itself against the argument that the pattern identified simply represents a greater willingness or ability to prosecute criminals in, or report crime news from, London. Local courts dealt with large numbers of prosecutions for assault by other means;11 the combined circulation of provincial newspapers was greater than that of the London dailies and there were more of them;12 readers everywhere were interested in stories about serious assault;13 and Table 2.3 Principal location of offences, by town

Town

County

Londona

City of London Essex Hertfordshire Kent Middlesex Surrey

Subtotal Glasgow Manchester Dundee Edinburgh Birmingham Liverpool Belfast Dublin Leeds Bristol Subtotal Total

Lanarkshire Lancashire Forfarshire Midlothian Warwickshire Lancashire Antrim Dublin Yorkshire Gloucestershire

No. of cases 8 2 1 13 207 10 241 24 14 11 8 6 6 5 5 5 4 88 329

Source: As for Table 2.1  Trials held at the Old Bailey, proceedings at various police courts, and reported cases that did not result in a prosecution a

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25

at least two cases were reported from 36 different counties. We can confidently conclude, therefore, that acid throwing was an urban phenomenon seen in all parts of Britain but which was most prevalent in London, where 46.8 per cent of all cases occurred. The explanation for this pattern appears to lie in two separate but related issues. Firstly, people were familiar with the effects of, and had access to, vitriol which was associated with industrial dyeing, calico printing, bleaching, and the manufacture of soda for use in making soap, glass, and paper,14 but it was also used at home to scour copper pots.15 Secondly, some perpetrators gained inspiration from previously reported crimes, evidenced by the periodic outbreak of small clusters of cases committed by unknown perpetrators in 1754, 1769, 1785, 1843, 1857, 1861, 1869, 1888, and 1936. There was clearly an element of copycat behaviour related to newspaper reporting, as for example in 1869  in North Yorkshire: “VITRIOL THROWING.  Since the case reported by us last week, we regret to say that one or two other instances of this offence have occurred; and still more so that as yet all the offenders are undetected.”16 A culture of acid throwing developed in eighteenth-century London, then spread to Manchester (1808), Stockport (1829), Glasgow (1820s) and Cork (1830s); it trickled out from industrial origins linked to the Combination Acts of the eighteenth century, to a wider segment of society and variety of disputes, which will be examined in Chap. 3. This then suggests a reason for the small number of offences recorded in Wales: its major industries of coal, copper, and iron were not affected by the Combination Acts, which targeted trades revolving around weaving and fabric-making, and often singled out London workers.17 Although the Welsh were no strangers to violence, political and industrial disturbances tended to involve more communal forms of protest, such as rioting,18 rather than the stealthy use of acid against persons or property. While the press was perhaps too sanguine in proclaiming acid throwing a crime “confined to viragos in England and deserted lovers in France,”19 it seems that in the absence of examples to follow, the crime did not spread into wider use in Wales, as it did in England, Scotland and, to a lesser extent Ireland, in the 1830s. The inclusion of instances of acid throwing in literature is indicative of its percolation into general public awareness, a process doubtless stimulated by Victorian melodrama and sensationalism. That the crime was gradually curtailed in the twentieth century is due to the developing range of options available to angry and frustrated people who might previously have chosen to throw acid; but even more to the restricting of access to

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strong corrosives by the Pharmacy and Poisons Act of 1933,20 and the shifting focus of interwar newspaper crime reporting. According to Rowbotham, Stevenson, and Pegg: Apart from murders, solved and unsolved, there was little consistency in the coverage of crime. Items covering stories which involved celebrities of some kind, or seemed amusing and occasionally educative in some way, would find their way into the tabloids, but outside murder it is not possible to say that any type of crime was more likely to be featured. On the whole, only provincial titles retained regular coverage of events in the magistrates’ courts, even in London.21

Only particularly serious incidents of domestic violence made it into twentieth-century newspapers, vying for column inches with more appealing human-interest stories and graphic accounts of murder and organised crime.22 As acid throwers turned to substances more easily obtainable than vitriol, the physical impact on their victims was less dramatic, and their stories thus less newsworthy. Figure 2.1 shows that the incidence of the crime declined steadily after the Second World War: 42 cases were identified in the period 1930–1949, and 41 in the years 1950–1978. There was a modest spike in the late 1960s, in London and the North West, but the pattern established in the nineteenth century was plainly at an end. With fewer cases occurring, and comparatively little media attention, the incidence of this unique offence continued to fall until its reappearance in a different guise in the twenty-first century.23

Fig. 2.1  Number of cases of throwing a corrosive fluid, 1900–1978

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27

Corrosive Fluids: Effects and Impact The corrosive fluids used in acid attacks are listed in Table  2.4, which clearly shows the importance of limiting access to vitriol, concentrated sulphuric acid: it accounted for 62.5 per cent of all cases. Prior to 1900, most attacks were committed with vitriol, although nitric acid was also used: a strong oxidiser, eighteenth-century counterfeiters used it to create base coins, and in the nineteenth, it was associated with metalworking. After 1900, however, a wider range of substances was employed. While vitriol and nitric acid remained the most typical choices until the late 1930s, perpetrators had already begun to use a number of different acids: most often hydrochloric, but also carbolic and oxalic acid. Sometimes the reports do not specify the exact substance, referring only to a ‘corrosive fluid.’ This was evidently because the fluid had not been analysed but was Table 2.4 Principal substances used in cases of acid throwing

Substance

Dates of cases

Acetic acid Ammonia Carbolic acid Caustic soda Corrosive acid Corrosive fluid Creosote Disinfectant Hydrochloric acid Nitric acid Nitric acid or vitriol Nitrous acid Oxalic acid Paint remover Sulphuric acid Unknown Unspecified Unspecified acid Vitriol Total

1925, 1944 1873–1974 1907–1928 1939–1978 1931, 1942 1880–1967 1925, 1940 1913, 1958 1860–1974 1722–1967 1785–1806, 1912 1827, 1850 1868, 1904, 1906 1959, 1977 1824–1975 1786, 1799 1796, 1867 1838, 1902–1965 1785–1969

No. of cases 2 14 7 5 2 10 2 2 38 52 5 2 3 2 31 2 2 6 322 509

Source: As for Table 2.1. The other substances used were citric acid (1861), cresylic acid (1968), copper sulphate (1881), mercury nitrate (1886), and mixtures of carbolic acid/caustic soda (1947) and nitric/sulphuric acid (1930)

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believed to come under the terms of the statute of 1861. Defence lawyers could of course challenge indictments of this kind, if the actual substance was not technically a corrosive; or, if it had not been thrown, by arguing for accidental spillage. In a case that occurred in April 1913, for example, Eddie Guerin, a Devil’s Island escapee and career criminal, was alleged to have thrown a corrosive disinfectant into the face of a prostitute with whom he had argued. The exact nature of the substance was not identified, probably because the woman suffered no permanent damage. The Director of Public Prosecutions declined to take action, and the charge of causing bodily harm was dismissed. In the end, Guerin was merely fined 10s. for being drunk and disorderly.24 Access to a corrosive fluid determined what was thrown. As long as would-be perpetrators could buy vitriol, it was the preferred choice. Of the 47 cases that occurred between 1945 and 1978, 4 were committed with vitriol but 11 with sulphuric acid. This may in part relate to the terms that legal officials chose to employ, but it seems likely that the acid was in a significantly weaker solution than vitriol, which was about 98 per cent pure acid. Perpetrators could get sulphuric acid from car batteries (29–32 per cent concentration) and manufacturing premises, but it is unsurprising that the strong vitriol that the Victorians favoured fell out of use after its sale was strictly controlled in 1933. The last two occasions on which vitriol was used occurred in the late 1960s, when the perpetrators had access to it at their workplace: one was a government chemist,25 the other an employee of ICI, the chemical company.26 The 1933 Act did not entirely prevent access to corrosive fluids, because chemists remained legal retailers and could be persuaded to sell small amounts, as occurred in 1936 when Stanley Pearce bought one ounce of nitric acid for 3d. from a chemist in Woolwich. He got a good deal: the first chemist he asked offered a half ounce for the same price.27 And some corrosive fluids remained in use for legitimate purposes, as components of commonplace products. The substances used from the 1940s onward were generally of this type. Ammonia, carbolic acid and hydrochloric acid were common household agents as, respectively, a powerful cleaning product, a well-known general antiseptic, and a key component of drain cleaner, especially ‘spirits of salt,’ which is still used today. These substances could certainly cause severe injury, including scarring and blindness, but were less likely to be used in concentrations where such an outcome would be likely, particularly as it became more common for victims to be taken to hospital for effective treatment.

2  FACTS AND FIGURES 

29

Victims of vitriol were usually far less fortunate, as their eyesight and appearance could easily be affected by just a few drops of the acid. Its medical effects, and those of the other main corrosives, were summed up in a textbook of forensic medicine in 1943: Sulphuric acid (vitriol), which has the most intense action, causes a considerable amount of destruction of tissue with the formation of blackish-brown sloughs. The face or other part will show splash marks where the acid has fallen, and usually there will be lines of ulceration where the acid has run down the surface of the body. The clothing will be destroyed in the places where the acid has fallen. Nitric acid causes a yellow or yellowish-brown slough, and spots of yellow colour will be seen on the skin. The clothing is destroyed and is brown in colour. Hydrochloric acid, though not so destructive as either sulphuric or nitric acid, causes an intense irritation and localised ulceration of a red or reddish-grey colour. Caustic soda and potash have a corrosive action on the tissues, giving a bleached appearance and greasy feeling to the skin. The skin subsequently becomes brown and parchment-like.28

The degree of physical injury done to victims depended on the quantity of acid that fell on them, where it touched their body (bare skin or clothing), and whether it was neutralised quickly. The longer vitriol remained in contact with flesh, the deeper the burns and more permanent the harm it caused. Victims’ accounts, like that of Samuel Wade, attempted to describe the pain. Most referred to the immediate effect as a burning or roasting sensation. A newspaper provided this description in 1829: “One of the persons who was visited with this fiend-like mode of revenge, has described it to us as a sensation similar to that of being placed close before a roasting fire. The first effect is to raise the skin as a sort of incrustation over the flesh, so as to enlarge the features, and give to the sufferer any thing but the human appearance.”29 The pain was extreme: “I would as soon have had my brains blown out,”30 said James Killeen, who assumed it was vitriol when he felt his face and neck burning from the liquid thrown over him. Thomas Abbott, a retired police inspector assaulted by his wife in 1900, said he “felt as though he was in flames.”31 Scottish victims, unlike the English and Irish, tended to cry out that they had been roasted or scorched, and one Glaswegian wife was heard to say of her husband that she hoped “his balls would be roasting in hell before morning.”32 This was a highly atypical case: the victim’s face was untouched but his wife poured vitriol over

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K. D. WATSON

his belly and genitals while he lay in a drunken stupor. When he came to, he knew what had burned him: as a brickmaker, he had worked with vitriol for a long time.33 With the exception of cases that specifically targeted clothing, most victims endured facial, eye and hand injuries; the neck and chest could also be affected, as could hearing if acid ran into the ears. In 1823 a Scottish surgeon noted that he had seen ears drop off in one piece.34 Hats offered some protection to people attacked in the street, but those assaulted at home had few ways to avoid serious injury unless they could turn away or duck quickly enough, and then run outside. A determined acid thrower would simply repeat the action until the container was empty, often suffering splash burns to their own face and hands in the process. A total of 64 victims were rendered partially or totally blind between 1722 and 1978: seven by nitric acid, seven by other corrosive fluids, and the rest by vitriol or sulphuric acid. Only two of these cases occurred after 1933, when the weaker substances employed by attackers, and swift medical intervention, made blindness less likely. Many victims, and some perpetrators who had been injured by their own acid, spent many weeks in hospital, particularly from the mid-­ nineteenth century onward, and we will see in Chap. 4 that some perpetrators’ scars were subsequently noted in prison records. But there was little that doctors could do once the acid had eaten into flesh. If an eye had been destroyed, surgeons removed it. Victims who escaped blindness did recover, but healing could cause ancillary problems such as constriction of the eyelid, so the eye was unable to close properly, or inverted eyelashes, which were problems that only surgery could correct. In the twentieth century, plastic surgery, particularly skin or corneal grafts, became more feasible, but only ten victims underwent such procedures, the first in 1909 at the Liverpool Eye and Ear Infirmary and the last in 1978, when Maria Camara’s doctor predicted that she would face years of treatment.35 All who were touched by the stronger acids ran the risk of severe and permanent mutilation, particularly of the face. The potentially adverse impact of acquired facial disfigurement is not unique to the period under study in this book. According to the mediaeval historian Patricia Skinner, deliberate facial mutilation has a very long history, and disfigurement in adulthood “had the potential to destroy or severely damage a pre-existing, and established, social identity.”36 Having a different face clearly involved stigmatisation of some kind: early mediaeval European law codes are replete with references to penalties imposed

2  FACTS AND FIGURES 

31

for disfiguring acts committed against elite men, for whom the consequences were humiliating and shameful.37 By the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when urban dwelling was becoming more common in Europe, evidence from medical consultations suggests that “heightened awareness of facial difference” influenced first impressions between strangers.38 The importance of faces is further highlighted by Valentin Groebner, who notes the late mediaeval use of nose-cutting as a means of disciplining sexually transgressive women, thus branding the victim a culprit, or to over-power and thereby undermine the masculinity and honour of male targets.39 Deformity, ugliness, sin, and punishment could be disconcertingly closely allied in early modern Britain, too, as royalist camp followers discovered after the battle of Naseby in 1645: dozens of women had their faces and noses slashed and cut by parliamentarian soldiers.40 By the late eighteenth century the pseudo-science of phrenology, which was to enjoy widespread popularity in Great Britain until the 1850s, had posited a direct link between outer appearances and inner states, sparking a renewed interest in heads and faces.41 It was facial disfigurement that set the victims of acid throwing apart from other victims of assault, and that is why some contemporaries described it as an inhuman crime almost worse than murder. The sentiments that underscored this thinking were clearly expressed in the report of a young man who, in late 1823, narrowly escaped an acid attack: “Had the monsters … succeeded in their hellish purpose, he would either have been murdered, or rendered for life an object more horrible than death.”42 This was the acid thrower’s intention: not homicide, but that the victim should suffer a literal ‘loss of face,’ as disfiguring facial injuries were difficult to hide and might possibly diminish the person, notwithstanding any sympathy felt by observers. James Killeen was certain of this: “I have no doubt the prisoner intended to make an object of me for life.”43 The American legal scholar Stephen Garvey has suggested an established tradition for this sort of punishment: the law of talion, crudely speaking the ‘eye for an eye’ dictum, which holds that “punishments should aim to reflect back on the offender what he has done to his victim.”44 Perceiving themselves as victims, acid throwers sought to reflect their own loss of face back onto their target, who was in turn diminished at the worst, changed at the very least, by the lasting physical effects of the acid. Depending on the extent of the damage and scarring, it was possible that victims might be consigned to a new, unwelcome status in the community because they were physically irregular and potentially prevented from work or marriage.

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K. D. WATSON

Doctors who testified during trials were asked about the longer-term physical effects of acid: could the eyesight recover, would the face be permanently marked, would burns prevent a person from working? Such injuries were rarely life-threatening, but they could certainly be life-changing. When one experiences facial disfigurement, one’s sense of self is challenged, threatening confidence and self-esteem.45 More generally, those who suffer from a physical disability are likely to feel self-conscious about being the target of stares from strangers: the exterior appearance diverts attention from the person within, to a perhaps profoundly undesirable and indecent focus on the external body.46 In theory, therefore, the most extreme consequences of an acid attack— particularly for those who had been blinded or extensively maimed— might involve a loss of social status and respect that could lead not only to a crippling diminution of self-esteem but also to serious financial hardship, via the imposition of a visible stigma. Neurologist Jonathan Cole has made a study of the modern consequences of various losses of face, noting that our nature is defined in part by our faces. Facial disfigurement often leads to social isolation: “there may be such a stigma attached to having an unusual face that social interaction and emotional engagement are not initiated by others.”47 But disability is more of a barrier for those who do not know the person, when superficial first impressions have more importance. Those who become blind as adults can learn to cope very well; and although the ‘loss’ of one’s face must be profound, it is possible to adapt and compensate. Disfigurement is not a one-way road to a problematic future, but it is a specific intended outcome of acid throwing that sets the crime apart from other forms of assault and their possible long-term consequences. Cuts and bruises will heal, but the corrosive effects of sulphuric acid tend to be permanent. The psychological effects of acid attacks are impossible to quantify, as most victims were not asked direct questions about their mental health. But a window into the emotional turmoil that a vitriol attack could trigger is offered by a brief notice of the death of a young man in Nottinghamshire. The body of Albert Alonzo Drummore, an actor, was pulled from a river in July 1888 and an inquest heard evidence which suggested that he had taken his own life. A former schoolmaster aged only 26, he had recently taken up acting, but had been blinded in one eye when vitriol was thrown into his face during a rehearsal in Sheffield. He lodged a civil suit for damages, but when he lost the case, the injustice preyed on his mind and drove him to suicide.48 And we might infer the impact of an episode of acid

2  FACTS AND FIGURES 

33

throwing on a family from the case of Grace Emily Brown, who assaulted her husband’s lover in 1914 and was jailed for nine months. Ten years later, she was involved in a custody battle with her ex-husband; but their daughter, aged 14, was resolutely determined to have nothing to do with her mother. When Brown’s history as an acid thrower was revealed, the magistrate awarded custody to the child’s father.49 The other principal way in which the victims of vitriol attacks tended to suffer was in the realm of work. Accounts of court cases paint a picture of victims swathed in bandages, missing eyes (in one case extensive scarring gave a female Scottish victim the appearance of never having had eyes at all),50 in severe pain, perhaps partially deaf and, even when fully recovered, facially scarred. It was not uncommon for depositions and news reports to comment on how this might affect a person’s employment. Many committal hearings were delayed while the victim was in hospital for periods that could stretch from several days to two or three months, during which they were unable to work. A few news reports noted that a victim’s work had been affected by an attack, as for example in 1809, when a milliner’s assistant was “now unable to follow her employment;”51 or, conversely, that a victim would not be prevented from working, as for instance when the press reported of John Taylor that “His face is somewhat burnt, yet the injury is not sufficient to unfit him from following his work.”52 It is however quite difficult to discover what became of the victims of vitriol once they had made their dramatic and shocking appearance in court. As is often the case when researching the history of crime, there is little information about how the people involved fared once their court cases had ended. News reports suggest that in the immediate aftermath of an offence, communities might start a collection for the victim, as occurred in 1890 at Macroom, County Cork: within five weeks of the assault that blinded Margaret Sullivan, £65 12s. 6d. had been donated to a fund set up for her.53 But as both victims and perpetrators were generally poor, they tended not to leave written records beyond the documents associated with their appearance in the legal setting. However, in the 1860s a public appeal revealed the fate of one male victim. In November 1865 a young Londoner named Felix Deacon became friendly with a married woman with whom a dentist named John Wainwright had become dangerously infatuated, leading to so much jealousy that Wainwright threw vitriol over both of them as they stood talking in the street. Margaret Peacock lost her left eye, while Deacon was completely blinded. He had been a skilled lithographer; but as his family could

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K. D. WATSON

not support him, he had to go into the St. Pancras workhouse. A teacher employed by the Home Teaching Society for the Blind taught him to read Braille, but he remained in the workhouse for four years, unable to learn any trade that a blind man could follow. In 1869 the honorary secretary of the Home Teaching Society published a letter about Deacon in The Times, asking for the public’s assistance. Within two weeks nearly £50 had been pledged, enough to send Deacon to an institute where he was to be taught how to use a machine for knitting stockings, in the expectation that he would then be able to earn a living.54 During a period when the New Poor Law held out the threat of the workhouse to those who could not keep themselves, the degree to which working-age adults impaired by vitriol may have been at risk of confinement depended upon a number of factors. Unless an individual was physically incapable of work, he or she would have been expected to find employment. Anne Borsay makes the point that the disabled had an increased risk of poverty, and that although home-working schemes dated from the mid-nineteenth century, these were planned mostly for the blind and deaf and tended to identify disabled people with low-status jobs.55 The crusade against outdoor relief in the last quarter of the century additionally stigmatised those without work, but local welfare policies continued to vary between different Poor Law Unions. The Victorian philosophy of “seeing those regarded as disabled solely in terms of what they could not do, rather than recognising and responding to what they could do,” continued well into the twentieth century.56 It is thus most likely that those who were not fully able-bodied pieced together a living from a combination of charity, family and community support, work and welfare. The facially scarred or partially blind may have been able to return to their regular employment, or to find other (perhaps lower-status) jobs. Single unskilled female victims may have been at the worst disadvantage, if their faces were damaged and their chances of marriage reduced. Married women whose husbands were sent to prison would also have been subject to financial hardship, but might have had a greater claim to welfare, particularly if they had children, than any other group. Ultimately, we do not know much about the socio-economic history of disfigurement, or the specific long-term effects that becoming the victim of a vitriol attack had on British men and women prior to the quite recent past,57 but the evidence suggests that some loss of self-esteem would have been the very least of the potential consequences, which may indeed have been very much greater.58

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35

Finally, although death was not the intended consequence, some reports stated that a victim’s life was “despaired of,” and four people did in fact die as a result of medical complications following an acid attack. In 1827 Archibald Campbell died from blood poisoning in an Edinburgh hospital, but the state prosecutor deliberately avoided a murder charge because of the difficulty of proving the intent to kill. The accused woman, Euphemia Lawson, was instead convicted on the capital charge of throwing vitriol, but reprieved.59 A child of four perished from exhaustion at Carnarvon in 1864 after a teenager, whom many suspected to be insane, poured vitriol over her genitals,60 and Jane Allen was convicted of manslaughter in 1868 following the death of an infant whom she had scalded with vitriol at Portadown in County Armagh.61 In a mysterious London case of 1881, Marie McIlvey was acquitted of murdering William John Martin, who died from erysipelas 21 days after being admitted to hospital with severe burns to his face.62 There is no evidence to support the claim made by the American toxicologist Rudolf Witthaus that the Secretary to the Danish Legation died following a vitriol attack in London in 1894,63 but it is possible that victims succumbed sometime after their attackers had been tried. An inquest held in Essex in 1802 on Mary Mattams suggests that the coroner and jury were keen to avoid a possible manslaughter charge against the “blacksmith’s man” who had assaulted her five months previously. The surgeons who treated her claimed her death was unrelated to the prior acid attack, and the jury returned their verdict accordingly: “Died of a mortification of the whole system, and not occasioned by the vitriol thrown upon her.”64 But when Archibald Hendy was arrested for a vitriol attack committed two years earlier, in 1903, on a young woman who had since died, “the doctor was of opinion, though unable to prove it, that death was accelerated by her injuries.”65 Hendy was convicted for the assault, and sentenced to 12 years’ penal servitude. Chapter 4 will examine sentencing in relation to the perceived seriousness of acid offences, but we can note here that 12 years was among the longer sentences imposed.

Acid Throwers and Their Victims Who were the acid throwers, and who were their victims? Many incidents, particularly from the mid nineteenth century onward, involved a sexual relationship between victim and perpetrator, and it was these cases that reached into popular culture and reinforced the notion that vitriol

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throwers were mainly “furious women” of the type noted in The Times in 1882 and depicted in The Illustrated Police News 40 years later. The image reproduced in Fig.  2.2 portrays an incident that occurred in France in 1922,66 but the stereotype that the sketch reflects is obvious. It is also inaccurate, at least in the British context: the crime was committed slightly more frequently by male than female perpetrators, and after World War Two the use of corrosive fluids by women declined to negligible totals in comparison to the number of offences committed by men. Table  2.5 shows that across the entire period, there were 10 per cent more male perpetrators, but it also suggests when and why the stereotype arose: female attackers outnumbered male acid throwers in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods, when crime reporting fed a growing hunger for human-interest and sensational news stories.67 Women who committed violent crimes were by definition newsworthy, as they were both relatively few in number and outrageous in their abrogation of the feminine ideals that society attached to womanhood. By the time the ratio of female to male acid throwers began to level and then reverse, the female vitriol thrower had been typecast in the popular imagination. There was more truth in the assumption that women threw acid at men. Table 2.6 shows that there were slightly more female than male victims of acid attacks, but when the figures are broken down further, according to the gender of the perpetrator, we see that both men and women were about twice as likely to attack victims of the opposite sex. These differences are significant when viewed in comparison to the statistics for common assault, as women have historically been less likely than men to engage in interpersonal violence. According to Clive Emsley, the typical nineteenth-century assailant in all forms of assault was male,68 and D’Cruze and Jackson found that female defendants formed just one third of the cases of common assault heard by magistrates in three sample years of 1930, 1950, and 1960.69 Until the 1940s, women were evidently more prevalent in corrosive fluid crime than in other forms of assault. They were also slightly more likely than men were to act in concert with another woman, whereas men were somewhat more likely to act in a group of three or more. In the latter cases the targets were generally other men, for reasons to be explored in Chap. 3 in relation to labour disputes. Table 2.7 considers these proportions from a different perspective, by tabulating the 53 cases that involved multiple or non-human victims, as opposed to a single victim. Charges laid in relation to more than one victim were not common but did occur, most often when bystanders were

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37

Fig. 2.2  Vitriol outrage by Jealous Woman, 1922. Source: The Illustrated Police News, 27 April 1922, p. 6

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Table 2.5  Perpetrator’s gender, 1722–1978 Period

Male

Female

Unknown

Othera

Total

1722–1769 1770–1804 1805–1839 1840–1874 1875–1909 1910–1944 1945–1978 Total

3 13 41 53 63 59 39 271

0 4 15 61 85 54 7 226

1 6 4 3 0 0 0 14

0 1 2 0 0 0 1 4

4 24 62 117 148 113 47 515

Source: As for Table 2.1  Includes three mixed-sex pairs and one accident caused by an animal

a

Table 2.6  Individual victims of reported cases of acid throwing, 1722–1978 Perpetrator’s gender

Female Male 2 Females 2 Males Female & Male Group (Female) Group (Male) Unknown Total

Victim’s gender and No. of cases Female

Male

63 146 8 3 1 1 6 9 237 (51.41%)

135 77 1 4 2 0 4 1 224 (48.59%)

Total

Percentage

198 223 9 7 3 1 10 10 461

43.0 48.4 1.9 1.5 0.6 0.2 2.2 2.2 100

Source: As for Table 2.1. Excludes pairs and groups of victims (44 cases); animal victims (5 cases); property targets (4 cases); accident caused by an animal (1 case)

injured. The attackers rarely intended for this to happen, but the fluid could spray out indiscriminately and burn witnesses, as happened in 1924 when Edith Bassett, a career criminal who had been in and out of police custody since 1905 and had a history of violent behaviour, assaulted Arthur Thompson, a bus inspector, in the foyer of a London police court. Three other men, strangers who happened to be standing nearby, were also burned, and Bassett was tried for all four assaults.70 It was rarer for a single perpetrator to target more than one person deliberately, and more difficult, as the victims had to be positioned within the same relatively small space. In 1828, blacksmith William Sinnett had an angry dispute

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Table 2.7  Multiple and non-human victims of reported cases of acid throwing, 1722–1978 Perpetrator

Victims

No. of cases

Female

2 or more females 2 males Mixed pair or group Animal Property

6 5 5 1 1

Male

2 or more females 2 or more males Mixed pair or group Animal Property

7 7 6 3 2

2 males

2 or more females

1

Group (male)

2 or more females Mixed pair or group

2 3

Unknown

2 or more females Animal Property

2 1 1

Percentage

34.0

47.2 1.9

9.4

Total

53

7.5 100

Source: As for Table 2.1. Excludes 461 cases involving a single victim and one accident caused by an animal

with two prostitutes who lived in his street; he returned and threw a cup of vitriol at them while they stood talking at their door. Hephzibah Terry was blinded in one eye and her unnamed companion was burnt from cheek to breast.71 Acid throwing could sometimes be a hit and miss crime; but perpetrators generally approached their intended victim when they were alone, and it was therefore rather more common for perpetrators to injure themselves than onlookers. Table 2.7 also shows that women targeted single victims more than men did. This is because men tended to throw acid for a wider variety of reasons, as we will see in Chapter 3. Acid throwers had an established relationship with their victim in 80 per cent of cases. Indeed, the nature of that relationship was generally the cause of the dispute that arose between the parties, providing the grounds for the offence. Motives will be examined in more detail in the next

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chapter, but Table 2.8 provides a summary of the relationship of the primary victim to the accused person, to offer a suggestion as to what the most typical scenarios were likely to be. Most victims fell into one of several categories, with a large proportion having a romantic relationship as a Table 2.8  Principal relationship of main victim to accused Type

Relationship

No. of cases

Family

Brother Sister

Former partner

Cohabited Girlfriend Have a child together Ex-lover Previously engaged

23 5 13 14 13

Friend

Acquaintance Friend

24 4

Marital

Husband Husband (separated) Wife Wife (separated)

24 14 26 14

Neighbour

Neighbour Former lodger

28 6

Other

Barmaid Employer’s sister Police officer Prostitute

Romantic

Cohabiting/common law Girlfriend Have a child together Infatuation Lover Rival

7 5 6 3 12 11

Unknown

Stranger Unknown Unspecified

37 33 5

Percentage

4 3 1.8

17.2

7.1

19.7

8.6 2 2 5 4 3.3

11.1

(continued)

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Table 2.8  (continued) Type

Relationship

Work

Colleague Employer (current, former) Customer (current, former)

No. of cases

Percentage 19.0

Former supervisor Rival Shopkeeper Total

15 15 4 3 7 4 395

12.2 100

Source: As for Table 2.1

spouse, lover, or former partner. Those who could not be so easily categorised tended to have a personal relationship of a somewhat more complicated nature, for example as a relative (daughter’s sister-in-law; son-in-law; daughter), significant person in a loved one’s life (daughter’s employer; wife of former common law husband), or on a more transactional level (debtor; prosecution witness; rival prostitute). The relative ease of access to corrosives noted above as a factor in the changing nature of the fluids thrown helps to explain the gendered pattern that emerged after World War Two: women typically did not work in professions where strong corrosives were used. Table 2.5 shows that at the height of the acid throwing phenomenon, from 1840 to 1944, the proportion of male perpetrators ranged from 42 to 52 per cent, but after the war this figure jumped to just under 85 per cent. Of 47 cases that occurred in the period 1945–1978, 39 were committed by a man, seven by a woman, and one by a couple. Of the female perpetrators, three chose ammonia, two used caustic soda, and the other two cases involved hydrochloric acid and a “corrosive disinfectant.” These substances were used as cleaning products and were thus more readily obtainable. A further reason for the swift decline in the number of female acid throwers after the war is related to the wider range of opportunities that were opening to women: to work, to choose not to marry, to have a child out of wedlock, or to leave an unhappy relationship. Motives for acid throwing will be examined in detail in the following chapter, but it is important to note here the significance of class. Most nineteenth-century female acid throwers were working class, including at least 14 prostitutes and 22 servants, and this suggests that they had a more narrow range of

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socio-economic options than a woman of higher social status might have enjoyed. Among the seven women charged after the war, socio-economic status remained relatively narrow: two cleaners, a housewife, the assistant matron of a mental hospital, a bottling machine operator, a nursing assistant, and an unemployed woman. It seems likely, therefore, that increased social and financial independence contributed to a reduction in the frequency with which women resorted to throwing acid over cheating husbands, duplicitous lovers, or female rivals for a man’s affections. The number of male perpetrators also fell, but much more slowly in relation to female perpetrators. For men, many of the pre-war pressures associated with responsible masculinity remained:72 to provide for a wife sexually and financially, and to maintain status within the family and workplace. Thus, male acid throwers were also mainly of working-class status, including three career criminals, but their motives for throwing acid did not change much over the course of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Some men continued to equate violence with masculinity and strength; others became frustrated and lashed out in a frenzy of high emotion, as Charles Allison, a cleaner, did in 1956: “I was jealous. The blood came to my head and I threw it. Is she all right?”73 There are two final points to note about the perpetrators of acid crime. First, 41 of them, 28 men and 13 women, had previous convictions for various offences including assault, drunkenness, theft, prostitution, child abandonment, and even acid throwing. While this does not suggest a correlation between acid crime and more general criminality, it perhaps reinforces the association between this type of crime and the stresses associated with urban living and lower socio-economic status. The criminal career of Flora Bain, a Scottish prostitute, fits this pattern. In October 1864, Flora had 23 convictions against her name, including two for assault, when she and another girl were arrested for disturbing the peace and sentenced to 40 days by a Glasgow bailie (city magistrate) who declared himself “determined to put down these pests.”74 He failed: in December 1865 Flora, then still only 18 years of age, was tried for throwing vitriol over another young woman (who also had previous convictions) but released following a verdict of not proven. A sense of her spirit, if not outright notoriety, is revealed in the newspaper report: “The prisoner was then liberated, and on leaving the court curtseyed to the bench, saying ‘Thank you, my Lord,’ which was followed by some applause from the public.”75 Second, at least

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20 perpetrators were immigrants, mainly from France and Germany in the second half of the nineteenth century, or from the West Indies after the Second World War; a further nine individuals were identified as Irish. This group will be considered in Chap. 4, which investigates the responses of the criminal justice system to acid throwers.

Notes 1. The Kendal Mercury, 29 Aug 1835, 4. 2. Watson, “Is A Burn A Wound,” 73–76. 3. Liverpool Albion, 12 Apr 1836, 6. 4. These include: solicitor’s wife (The Times, 9 Jan 1861, 12); surgeon’s wife (The Times, 15 Jun 1882, 8); female relative of a university professor (Weekly Irish Times, 2 Aug 1884, 6–7); gentleman (The Times, 27 Oct 1888, 5); married lady of respectable status (The Morning Post, 15 Sep 1890, 6); veterinarian’s wife (Bradford Daily Telegraph, 7 Dec 1903, 3); phrenologist (The Scotsman, 8 Sep 1909, 6); and a photographer (The Scotsman, 19 Sep 1928, 10). 5. This is because Home Office statistics were presented as aggregates (felonious/malicious wounding, assault) within the broad class of offences against the person. Although acid throwing occurred in other European countries and in the United States, there are as yet no national statistics with which to compare the statistics compiled for this book. 6. B.  R. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988), 9–10, 25, 30–31. 7. NRS AD14/82/205, Glasgow October Circuit 1882, Precognitions v. Margaret Broadly or Curran, depositions of Peter Curran, William Booth, John Keay. 8. The Derby Mercury, 10 Oct 1766, 2. 9. Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, 16 Jul 1767, 3, reporting a profit to the United Kingdom of £450,000 for exports to these countries in 1764 and 1765. 10. Saunders’s News-Letter, 20 May 1784, 2. 11. See, for example, Peter King, Crime and Law in England, 1750–1840: Remaking Justice From the Margins (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006), 227–278 on the hundreds of cases prosecuted at quarter sessions in Essex (1748–1821) and Cornwall (1730–1830). Levels of interpersonal violence, and victims’ willingness to prosecute, is suggested by the 3596 entries for assault (including wounding, but not malicious wounding) notified to the Court of Great Sessions in Wales, 1730–1830, representing

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17.1 per cent of all entries in the National Library of Wales, Crime and Punishment database, https://crimeandpunishment.library.wales. 12. Hobbs, “When the Provincial Press Was the National Press,” 17; Andrew Hobbs, A Fleet Street in Every Town: The Provincial Press in England, 1855–1900 (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2018). 13. Rowbotham, Stevenson and Pegg, Crime News, 76–79. 14. Watson, “Is A Burn A Wound,” 63. 15. Other uses noted in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries include: to alleviate toothache; clean boot tops; manufacture lemonade; cure external swellings; make shoe blacking; in solution, to whiten eggs. 16. Richmond and Ripon Chronicle, 22 May 1869, 5. 17. John V.  Orth, “English Combination Acts of the Eighteenth Century,” Law and History Review 5 (1987), 175–211; John V. Orth, Combination and Conspiracy: A Legal History of Trade Unionism 1721–1906 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 23. 18. Russell Davies, Hope and Heartbreak: A Social History of Wales and the Welsh, 1776–1871 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2005), 247–255; Richard W.  Ireland, Land of White Gloves? A History of Crime and Punishment in Wales (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), chapter 4. 19. South Wales Echo, 12 Nov 1881, 2. 20. Pharmacy and Poisons Act 1933, 23 & 24 Geo V c.25. This key piece of legislation placed the strong acids on a list of restricted substances for the first time, thereby curtailing their sale: Hugh N.  Linstead, Poisons Law (London: Pharmaceutical Press, 1936). The Pharmacy Act of 1868 (31 & 32 Vict c.121) did not restrict the sale of any acid or corrosive except oxalic acid; the Poisons and Pharmacy Act of 1908 (8 Edw VII c.55) did little more, adding only carbolic acid to the list of scheduled poisons. See also H. Wippell Gadd, “The Poisons and Pharmacy Act 1908 in Relation to the Public Health and Safety,” Transactions of the Medico-Legal Society 6 (1908–1909), 162–187. 21. Rowbotham, Stevenson and Pegg, Crime News, 140. 22. Ibid., 170. 23. Hopkins, Neville and Sanders, Acid Crime, 13: this book analyses data from over 600 corrosive substance attacks recorded by the police in England and Wales between 2015 and 2017. 24. Sheffield Evening Telegraph, 9 May 1913, 7. 25. TNA ASSI 36/695, Regina v. Peter Leonard Rennles, Sussex, 1969. 26. TNA ASSI 52/1785, Regina v. Alan Yeoman, Lancashire, 1967. 27. TNA CRIM 1/881, Rex v. Stanley Henry Pearce, Kent, 1936. 28. Sydney Smith, Forensic Medicine: A Text-book for Students and Practitioners, 8th ed. (London: J. & A. Churchill, 1943), 240. 29. Staffordshire Advertiser, 8 Aug 1829, 3.

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30. NRS AD14/65/244, Dundee April Circuit 1865, Precognitions v. Elizabeth Hay, deposition of James Killeen, 30 Dec 1864. 31. The Standard, 7 Dec 1900, 9. 32. NRS AD14/82/205, depositions of Janet Crawford and Janet Renwick. 33. Ibid., deposition of William Curran, 28 Sep 1882. In an interesting side note, the employees at the brickworks regularly used a few drops of vitriol to purify their drinking water. 34. NAS AD14/23/73, Glasgow September Circuit 1823, Precognitions v. Alexander McKay and others, deposition of Dr James Corkindale. 35. Faringdon Advertiser and Vale of the White Horse Gazette, 19 Jun 1909, 2; Reading Evening Post, 28 Nov 1978, 3. 36. Patricia Skinner, Living with Disfigurement in Early Medieval Europe (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 6. 37. Patricia Skinner, “‘Better Off Dead Than Disfigured’? The Challenges of Facial Injury in the Pre-Modern Past,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 26 (2016), 39–40. 38. Ibid., 41. 39. Valentin Groebner, Defaced: The Visual Culture of Violence in the Late Middle Ages, trans. Pamela Selwyn (New York: Zone Books, 2004), chapter 3. 40. Barbara Donagan, “Law, War, and Women in Seventeenth-Century England,” in Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones: From the Ancient World to the Era of Human Rights, ed. Elizabeth D.  Heineman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 197. 41. Nicole Rafter, “The Murderous Dutch Fiddler: Criminology, History and the Problem of Phrenology,” Theoretical Criminology 9 (2005), 65–96. 42. Carlisle Patriot, 3 Jan 1824, 3. This story, originally published in Glasgow, was reprinted in at least three other newspapers. 43. NRS AD14/65/244, deposition of James Killeen, 30 Dec 1864. 44. Stephen P. Garvey, “Can Shaming Punishments Educate?,” University of Chicago Law Review 65 (1998), 738–739. 45. Alicia Clegg, “Changing Faces,” Oxford Today, Michaelmas Issue 2007, 40. 46. Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity [1963] (London: Penguin, 1990), 19–31. 47. Jonathan Cole, About Face (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 194. 48. The Scotsman, 31 Jul 1888, 3. 49. Hampshire Advertiser, 7 Nov 1914, 4; Belfast Telegraph, 29 Aug 1925, 6. 50. NRS JC26/1872/68, Dundee October Circuit 1872, Trial Papers v. Peter Anderson, deposition of Dr A. C. Campbell. 51. The Chester Chronicle, 15 Dec 1809, 3. 52. Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 20 Jun 1829, 3.

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53. Cork Constitution, 13 Sep 1890, 8. Three men were charged with the crime, but the main instigator was Sullivan’s former sweetheart, Patrick Lucy; for more on this case, see Chap. 4. 54. The Times, 28 Jan 1869, 5; 1 Feb 1869, 12; 4 Feb 1869, 12; 15 Feb 1869, 10. 55. Anne Borsay, Disability and Social Policy in Britain Since 1750 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005), 123–128. 56. Martin Atherton, “Allowed to Be Idle: Perpetuating Victorian Attitudes to Deafness and Employability in United Kingdom Social Policy,” in Disability and the Victorians: Attitudes, Interventions, Legacies, ed. Iain Hutchison, Martin Atherton and Jaipreet Virdi (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2020), 182–183. 57. Hopkins, Neville and Sanders, Acid Crime, 67–68. 58. Suzannah Biernoff, “The Rhetoric of Disfigurement in First World War Britain,” Social History of Medicine 24 (2011), 666–685 notes that among disfigured servicemen, the loss of one’s face was regarded as the worst of war injuries, and perceived as a loss of humanity. 59. NRS AD14/27/14, Precognitions v. Hugh and Euphemia McMillan for the crime of murder at High Street, Edinburgh, 1827; The Times, 21 Dec 1827, 4; The Scotsman, 9 Jan 1828, 5. 60. Cambrian News, 9 Apr 1864, 4. 61. Armagh Guardian, 17 Jul 1868, 4. 62. OBP, trial of Marie McIlvey, ref. t18810627-620. 63. R. A. Witthaus, Manual of Toxicology, 2nd ed. (New York: William Wood and Company, 1911), 255. 64. The Ipswich Journal, 24 Dec 1802, 2. 65. Leicester Daily Post, 22 May 1905, 2. Hendy fled after the assault in April 1903 and was not arrested for two years; the victim died in 1905, possibly from bronchitis. 66. The Illustrated Police News, 27 Apr 1922, 2. A young woman assaulted her former lover and his fiancée at Béziers. 67. Joel H. Wiener, The Americanization of the British Press, 1830s–1914: Speed in the Age of Transatlantic Journalism (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011), 154–163. 68. Clive Emsley, Crime and Society in England, 1750–1900, 5th ed. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018), 45. 69. Shani D’Cruze and Louise A.  Jackson, Women, Crime and Justice in England Since 1660 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009), 19. 70. TNA CRIM 1/268, Rex v. Edith Louisa Bassett, 1924. 71. Evans and Ruffy’s Farmer’s Journal, 24 Nov 1828, 6.

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72. Anette Ballinger, “Masculinity in the Dock: Legal Responses to Male Violence and Female Retaliation in England and Wales, 1900–1965,” Social & Legal Studies 16 (2007), 462–465. 73. TNA CRIM 1/2716, Regina v. Charles Allison, 1956. 74. Greenock Telegraph and Clyde Shipping Gazette, 1 Oct 1864, 2. 75. Paisley Herald and Renfrewshire Advertiser, 30 Dec 1865, 1.

CHAPTER 3

Motives and Contexts

Abstract  The chapter investigates the motives of acid throwers, classified on the basis of first-hand testimonies and newspaper reports. This demonstrates that acid throwing originated not as an offence against the person, but as an eighteenth-century property crime associated with the industrial grievances of weavers. It then spread into more general use in a range of contexts during the first few decades of the nineteenth century. Case studies illuminate the specific motives and thought processes that underpinned the actions of acid throwers: overwhelmed by negative emotion, particularly anger, shame, or despair, they perceived alternative options as ineffective or inaccessible. Keywords  Anger • Jealousy • Labour disputes • Revenge • Shame • Targets The prisoner [Samuel Hudson], in a statement in the witness-box, said that what happened was the climax of two years of bitter anguish. When he threw the acid he was no longer in control of his physical actions. His one predominating thought was that he must take from his wife that which made her attractive. He thought if he did that he would have her

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K. D. Watson, Acid Attacks in Britain, 1760–1975, World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27272-1_3

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for himself, and thought nothing of the penalties of his action. He concluded: “It has been said that her earning capacity is lessened because she has been disfigured. Why should she earn? I am still her husband, and I am prepared to do my duty by her.” —“Vitriol-Thrower Sentenced. Penal Servitude for a Jealous Husband,” The Times, 24 April 1925, p. 14.

It is sometimes said that, where they survive, legal records relating to assault prosecutions “shed almost no light on the assailants’ motives,”1 as many offences were so trivial that few details were recorded. Moreover, non-lethal violence attracted little press attention in the eighteenth century.2 After 1800, however, as the number of newspapers grew and crime news came to occupy a significant proportion of their content, reports from the police and assize courts provided detailed and often verbatim accounts of committal hearings and trials, including those of accused acid throwers. These open arenas provided perpetrators with an opportunity to try to explain, or even to justify, their actions, while victims gave detailed accounts of the strained relations that preceded the assault and journalists included their own assessment of how such events should be interpreted. Even before the advent of the sensationalism, bold headlines and human interest stories associated with mass-circulation journalism in the later nineteenth century, it is possible to gain meaningful insights into the range of motives that inspired acid attacks. This chapter uses pre-trial depositions, trial proceedings and news reports to identify, tabulate and examine the main motivations expressed by acid throwers in their own words— such as those spoken by the London metal-turner Samuel Hudson at his trial in 1925, or which can be inferred from the context in which the crime occurred. Although the majority of cases can be ascribed to sexually oriented revenge or jealousy, or sometimes a combination of both, a large number were sparked by more mundane interpersonal conflicts. Simmering disputes about money, workplace behaviour, or long-held grudges could erupt into violence. Triggers included unplanned pregnancy, insult, marriage breakdown, a slight or reprimand, unpaid debts, infidelity and rejection. These experiences had the potential to damage an individual’s sense of self-esteem, leading to anger and acts of aggression. But acid throwing was not a first option. Rather, it was a last resort for someone who, in their own mind at any rate, had exhausted all other possibilities. There was usually no attempt

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to carry out the crime in secret: the act itself was intended to be as public as the physical ruination it was designed to cause. The excuses offered by perpetrators help to explain why they chose to commit such a deliberate act. Many were overwhelmed by negative emotion, particularly anger, shame, or despair, and perceived alternative options as ineffective or inaccessible. This exacerbated feelings of frustration and a belief that justice had been thwarted, leading in turn to victim-blaming, as suggested by one young woman’s impassioned plea in 1913: “May the Lord punish men who ruin girls!”3 The stereotype of the vengeful female acid thrower grew out of cases ascribed to sexual jealousy, but men too succumbed to this motivation. For both sexes, there was a fine line between possessiveness, the attempt to force a partner to stay in a fading relationship by making them undesirable to others, and a vengeful goal of inflicting permanent punishment. However, although acid throwing was a calculated crime, the underlying reasons for it were not always personal. There were clusters of cases, all of which occurred on busy city streets, that shared a specific feature: victims, usually female, had acid thrown on their clothing from behind, by unknown perpetrators. Some were undoubtedly acts of industrial protest, but other incidents seem to have been a form of delinquency for which no firm motive can be established. More importantly, acid crime played a historically significant role as a feature of nineteenth-century industrial action: workmen used vitriol to destroy property such as fabrics and looms; and to punish individuals who undermined employment rights, especially strike-breakers and the mill owners who hired them. The viciousness of these attacks, particularly in 1820s Glasgow, led to the introduction of a series of increasingly stringent laws against the use of vitriol as a form of interpersonal violence, culminating in its total criminalisation by the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act. The statutes that addressed acid throwing have been summarised in Table 1.1 in Chap. 1. This chapter considers the origins of acid throwing among disgruntled workmen, beginning with the eighteenth-century weavers who destroyed imported fabrics, often while they were being worn, with nitric acid. Under the impetus of the Combination Acts of 1799, 1800, 1824 and 1825, the practice spread amongst striking textile workers in England, Scotland and Ireland, continuing until the 1840s when a series of shocking attacks by sawyers in Cork seems to have brought the phenomenon, or at least its most violent manifestations, to an end. By then, of course, acid throwing had spread to personal quarrels, a phase in the development of the offence that began in

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areas of the country where it had first been used in labour disputes— London, Lancashire and Lanarkshire. As corrosive fluids once associated primarily with industry became more widely and cheaply available in chemist’s and oil shops, and news of attacks was reported more frequently, the power of imitation took hold. At just two or three pence for an ounce of vitriol, acid throwing flourished in urban society until it was finally curtailed a century later, when the Pharmacy and Poisons Act of 1933 made access to corrosives much more difficult.

The Origins of Acid Throwing Given the extensive historiography of the Bloody Code, the name given to the eighteenth-century legal system in England, Wales and Ireland that created a huge number of capital crimes, mostly designed to protect property,4 it should come as no surprise that acid throwing could be treated as a crime against property. A law that had the capacity to punish it severely came into existence during the reign of George I, a fact that was not lost on the print media. In 1785, the crime gained public prominence following a spate of incidents in which ladies’ gowns, cloaks, and shawls were damaged by acid, leading linen drapers to form a prosecution association to try to deter the perpetrators.5 And in what was probably the first trial of its kind at the Old Bailey, two prostitutes were sentenced to seven years’ transportation for destroying a servant’s dress with nitric acid.6 A report published in The Newcastle Courant reminded readers of the relevant statute: The practice of spoiling women’s gowns in the public streets, by sprinkling aqua-fortis and other destructive compositions upon them, having lately prevailed very much, the following extract from an Act of the 6th of Geo. I, c. 23, sect. 11, will, it is hoped, be deemed a useful caution to the perpetrators of this kind of mischievous wantoness: From and after the 24th day of June, 1720, all persons who shall wilfully and maliciously assault any person or persons in the public streets, or highways, by tearing, spoiling, cutting, burning, or any way defacing the garments or cloaths of such person or persons, and be convicted thereof, shall be treated as felons, and the court shall have power to transport him or them for seven years.7

The origin of this law was explained in another newspaper article some 14 years later: “This act was occasioned by the insolence of weavers and

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others, who upon the introduction of some India fashions, prejudicial to their own manufactures, made it a practice to deface them, either by open outrage or by privately cutting or casting aqua fortis in the streets upon them.”8 There are no extant newspaper articles about these early instances, but in June 1719, unemployed weavers in Spitalfields were said to have rioted “with intent to destroy all the Callico’s they met with.”9 This rising was put down with violence, albeit the weavers’ complaints were believed to be just, and a letter written on behalf of ‘Callico Haters’ two months later posed an implicit threat to women who visited Spitalfields wearing calico.10 The earliest report of the specific use of acid to damage fabrics or clothing dates from the 1750s, when “riotous and wicked people” in Dublin and Cork assaulted “the Weavers and Wearers of stamped Linnens and Cottons, and with Knives and Aqua Fortis cut and destroy[ed] them.”11 The use of acid had spread to London a decade later; by the late 1760s, when the Spitalfield riots (1765–1769) occurred during a downturn in the silk weaving industry, it appeared “to have become a practice, by a number of malignant people, to spoil the cloaths of well-dressed persons, by throwing aqua fortis, &c. on them, or by cutting them with a sharp knife.”12 This means of protest was soon adopted as a mode of defence, possibly by a counterfeiter: in May 1773 “as a Sheriff’s officer was attempting to break into a gentleman’s room in Surrey-street, in the Strand, in order to arrest him, the gentleman, through a hole which he had made for that purpose in the door, squirted such a quantity of Aqua-fortis in his eyes, that in the opinion of his surgeon, he has for ever lost the use of them.”13 This man probably got the idea of throwing acid from the actions of weavers and other clothworkers suffering depressed rates of pay. Earlier in 1766, an offender who threw acid on a woman’s dress in London’s Strand was allowed to depart the scene “without molestation,” when he explained that he was a journeyman weaver whose wife and four children were “almost starving to death, for want of employment, and that the Lady’s gown on which he had thrown the aqua fortis was French wrought silk, the wearing of which was contrary to law.”14 Acid throwing continued at the rate of a few cases per decade, usually involving nitric acid targeted at clothing—at least ten of the 21 identified cases in the period between 1766 and 1799. A handful of reports from quarter sessions courts in the first decade of the nineteenth century provide insufficient detail to identify the precise aims as personal or professional,15 while numerous cases in which clothing was targeted cannot be assessed fully as the perpetrators

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were not arrested. In the absence of further information, it is impossible to say for certain that these incidents were related to the ongoing friction caused by the Combination Act of 1800, which led workmen in England, Ireland, and Scotland to combine in defiance of the law, and to acts of violence and serious breaches of the peace.16 However, the cases prosecuted between the 1780s and 1820s show that two significant shifts occurred at that time: personal motives began to emerge alongside the protests of skilled workers; and vitriol began to replace nitric acid. Both trends are highlighted by trials held at the Old Bailey, where 180 of the cases examined for this book were tried. The extent to which the statute of 1719 was actually used to punish acid throwing is unknown; but, if the records of the Old Bailey and national newspaper reports can be taken as representative, trials were not numerous, despite a rising incidence in cases from the 1780s onward, because of the way in which the statute defined the crime as one that took place in the street. This is observable as a corollary of the way in which acid crime shifted from a form of coercion in labour disputes to a weapon of control in personal relationships. The assault committed by Peter Murray, an Irishman aged 37 who was tried in April 1793 for blinding Mary Chapman with nitric acid in “a malicious spirit of revenge” demonstrates this clearly.17 They had lived together for six years before separating and taking up with other partners, by whom both had children; but in February 1793, Murray, a brazier who used nitric acid in his business, decided to leave for India and asked Chapman either to marry or wait for him. She refused, and returned home to discover that he had thrown acid over the back of her cotton gown. Worse was to come. A week later, he waylaid Chapman on her doorstep and threw nitric acid over her face, neck, and head. The effect was such that “she appeared to be all in a smoke,” spent five weeks in hospital, and lost her right eye.18 Murray was charged under the 1719 statute because of the seriousness of his crime,19 but acquitted when the case was deemed not to come within the statute— they were not in a public highway and no one saw him do it. Chapman’s employer (and possible lover) then prosecuted Murray at the Clerkenwell quarter sessions, where he was convicted and sentenced to two years in Newgate and sureties for a further year—the judge noting with displeasure Murray’s comment that he was glad he had done it and would do it again. Murray appealed his sentence, with support from a lawyer and a petition signed by skilled artisans, and begged to be released for military service on grounds of his extensive naval experience and lack of previous convictions.

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But the magistrate who reviewed the case decided—unsurprisingly—that he was not “a fit object of His Majesty’s royal mercy.”20 Murray’s punishment could easily have been greater. Ten years earlier, the aptly named Hannah Dreadfire had been sentenced to three years’ imprisonment and fined 6s. 8d. at the Guildhall, the City of London’s petty sessions court, for throwing nitric acid over Catherine Creed, a domestic servant that Dreadfire wrongly believed had married the man she was in love with. The court noted that “the laws were deficient in proportioning any punishment equal to the magnitude of the offence for which she was convicted,”21 since the statute of 1719 was inapplicable: the acid was thrown over the victim as she answered a knock on the door, burning her face, breast and hands in a “dreadful manner.”22 A prosecution for the destruction of Creed’s clothes, which must have been damaged as the acid dripped over her, would have failed for the same reason that the later attempt to prosecute Peter Murray for felony failed: the statute specified that clothing must be destroyed in a public street, but Murray and Dreadfire had assaulted their victims on the doorstep of a private dwelling. While acid throwing for such personal reasons had not yet become commonplace, acid attacks that targeted clothing continued at regular intervals until the mid-1820s: there were 37 occurrences in the period 1784–1826 12 of which were committed by unknown perpetrators, out of a total of 52 acid attacks. But a new feature emerged in the mid-1780s: vitriol began to replace nitric acid. The first report of its use came in June 1785. Seemingly less aware of the existing law than journalists in the North-East were, The Times reported that: On Thursday evening, as two ladies were returning from Mile End, some ill-looking fellows run against them, and on their getting home, they found their muslin gowns had been burned with vitriol. Is there any law to punish offenders who are so cruel and wanton to injure others when it cannot tend to benefit themselves?23

A report in The Sussex Advertiser a month later was somewhat clearer about the motive for such assaults: The ladies are desired to lay aside muslins, for some time at least, as there are a set of wretches going about who dash vitriol on them. What infernal purpose can be served by destroying the manufactures of our own country, they best can tell, but we can assure our fair readers that many ladies have, within

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these three weeks, had their gowns burnt, and destroyed totally, by this gang of miscreants.24

Precisely why this by now well-established form of protest shifted from the use of nitric acid to vitriol in the 1780s is impossible to determine with certainty, as is the reason why acid throwers more generally began to use vitriol at this time. However, at least part of the reason must be related to the simultaneous increase in publicity and availability. The case of Elizabeth Wrack, tried at the Old Bailey in 1805 for assaulting two prostitutes by throwing vitriol on their dresses, suggests both that personal disputes were becoming a more common motive for acid throwing and that it was easy to purchase vitriol. She explained, “We all three lived in one house together; they said to me, they owed a young woman a spite, and they gave me the two pence to fetch the vitriol; and that is how I came by the vitriol; in fact we all three owed the girl a spite.”25 The world’s first large-­ scale factory for producing sulphuric acid had been set up at Prestonpans, East Lothian, in 1749,26 and by 1779, vitriol was “an article of very extensive commerce.”27 Newspaper advertisements show that from the early 1770s oil of vitriol was regularly sold to satisfy the need of manufacturers, especially dyers, bleachers and stampers in Lowland Scotland, Manchester, and Dublin.28 The growth in British trade and manufacturing thus fuelled the widespread use and availability of strong sulphuric acid. Although a few individuals suffered personal acid attacks of the type that became sadly typical of the nineteenth century, including the husband of an angry wife at Halifax in 1766,29 the crime continued to be associated with sporadic outbreaks by “refractory weavers” and other working men,30 in response to economic hardship and attempts to unionise. Until the end of the eighteenth century, only seven perpetrators, including Murray and Dreadfire, deliberately threw acid at a victim’s face, head, or body. But the outrages that occurred in Glasgow during the early 1820s, when at least one victim lost an ear and an eye and a number of others were severely assaulted, show that an important change had occurred: vitriol had become a weapon to be used against people, not just property; and victims’ heads and faces, rather than their clothes, were targeted. Weavers had been tried at Glasgow in 1813, accused of attacking strike-­ breakers and putting vitriol on their webs,31 pieces of cloth in the course of being woven or fabric after it came from the loom, but not of maiming people. This changed in the autumn of 1820 when, in separate incidents, two cotton spinners, James Bowie and Patrick Mellon, assaulted other

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cotton spinners by throwing vitriol directly into their faces, blinding one and disfiguring the other. The motive was intimidation: Bowie singled out Alexander Fisher because the latter gave only 1s. to support striking workers and refused to give more,32 while Mellon’s victim was working on “broken wages” and was presumably viewed as a strike-breaker.33 These appear to have been the first cases in Scotland where vitriol was thrown at people’s faces, but both trials resulted in verdicts of not proven. The situation in Glasgow reached a head three years later, when five tenters at a power loom factory—men who set the warp and weft of woven fabrics at right angles to each other, stretched and set the fabric to its final dimensions, and supervised less skilled female workers—were tried for throwing acid during a series of escalating incidents targeting men hired to replace workers who had been dismissed.34 All five were convicted and sentenced to 14 years’ transportation. The verdict pleased the Lord Advocate, Scotland’s chief legal officer, because the crimes were “inhuman attacks on individuals who refuse to join in the illegal combinations now so prevalent in Glasgow.”35 The 1820s therefore marked a period of decisive change: vitriol throwing became a capital offence in Scotland in July 1825, the same month in which the Combinations of Workmen Act received royal assent.36 This law applied in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland: it re-imposed criminal sanctions for picketing and other methods of persuading workers not to work, and criminalised combinations—trade union activity—which were other than for the purpose of pressing for wage increases or a change in working hours.37 Acid throwing was thrust into the public consciousness first by the events in Glasgow and then by a similar spate of equally ferocious attacks in 1829, at Stockport from March to August and at Glasgow in May and June.38 Ironically, these incidents were linked: workmen in Stockport used acid as intimidation, to force cotton-spinners from Glasgow to cease working and return home. They informed the writings of Peter Gaskell (1806–1841), a liberal physician who lived in Stockport and published several well received accounts of industrial life and labour in the 1830s;39 his observations about vitriol introduced Chap. 1 above. But Gaskell’s book, Artisans and Machinery, which was advertised extensively in the newspapers for a year after its publication in February 1836,40 was not wholly original in its comments about the use of vitriol: he was quoting Dr Andrew Ure (1778–1857), who had noted the growing prevalence of vitriol in labour disputes in a book published in 1835. In his The Philosophy of Manufactures, Ure wrote:

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In this extraordinary state of things, when the inventive head and the sustaining heart of trade were held in bondage by the unruly lower members, a destructive spirit began to display itself among some partisans of the Union. Acts of singular atrocity were committed, sometimes with weapons fit only for demons to wield, such as the corrosive oil of vitriol dashed in the faces of the most meritorious individuals, with the effect of disfiguring their persons, and burning their eyes out of the sockets with the most dreadful agony … This atrocious system of violence was exceedingly common in Stockport, Manchester, Oldham, Hyde, Stayley Bridge, and Duckenfield, some time ago.41

The use of vitriol in labour disputes, with ever more deliberately savage attempts to blind, moved from England and Scotland to Ireland in the 1830s, most notoriously at Cork. Over the course of a year in 1835–1836, 13 men were blinded or disfigured in the city, as workers sought to enforce rules established by trade unions;42 and in 1842, a group of sawyers attacked the proprietor of a new steam-run mill, leading officials to offer the enormous reward of £650 for information leading to the conviction of the perpetrators.43 Such incidents must still have been fresh in readers’ memories when Elizabeth Gaskell included an episode of vitriol throwing in her novel Mary Barton, published anonymously in October 1848, which addressed the antagonism between masters and workers in Manchester.44 By then, however, acid throwing had largely disappeared from labour disputes: only two further cases were identified, in 1857 (clothworkers in Manchester) and 1919 (transport workers striking at Clapham in London), before its last appearance in 1938, when a yarn dresser named Joseph Stevenson was acquitted at the Down assizes in Northern Ireland. Although this case occurred in the aftermath of a work stoppage, the alleged trigger for Stevenson’s assault on his former foreman owed more to personal spite than the strike itself.45

Motives for Acid Throwing By the 1830s vitriol had become a recognised form of interpersonal violence, employed deliberately by offenders who sought to cause a particular type of physical and emotional damage. Table 2.8 has provided an overview of the main relationships that existed between victim and perpetrator. In the 395 cases where there were two or more associations of the same type, they were for the most part romantic in nature, accounting for 48.0

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per cent of this total. A further 120 cases were not included in Table 2.8 because there were two victims or perpetrators and thus two separate relationships, or because the relationship was unique. However, all cases can be classified according to the nature of the dispute that sparked the crime. Thus, Tables 3.1 and 3.2 offer a more detailed summation of the motives that prompted acid throwing. Table 3.1 is set out in date order, to show both the principal target that acid throwers attempted to hit (face/head, body, clothing, property, unknown) in parallel with their main motive (some form of dispute, jealousy, revenge, unknown). This classification permits the direct comparison of changes in these two characteristics of acid throwing over time, as well as in its overall incidence, and confirms a trend suggested by Table 2.5: the highest number of reported cases occurred not in the nineteenth century but in the first few years of the twentieth. Numbers of reported offences then fell sharply as a result of the disruption caused by the First World War, followed by a brief resurgence in the late 1920s. The left side of the table shows that clothing remained an occasional target until the 1870s, but from the mid-1820s, the face and head were the acid thrower’s usual focus. This coincided with the government’s attention to a problem that it had ignored for a century, and marks the decade as the starting point of the modern acid throwing phenomenon. The right side of Table 3.1 shows that the central motivations for acid throwing were not quite as limited as Victorian journalists seemed to assume. Disputes of various types rivalled revenge as the main cause of the crime, with jealousy being about equal in number to a fairly wide variety of other reasons. These are set out in more detail in Table 3.2, which has been compiled on the basis of the explanations provided by the perpetrators and their victims, and augmented by further contextual information given in news reports. While the main motives were relatively simple to identify, close scrutiny of each case revealed how immensely variable the specific situations that culminated in acid throwing could be: when cases involving entirely unknown motives are excluded, 37 different types of situations can be recognised. The majority of the cases involving unknown motives were attacks on clothing which may have been related to industrial disputes of the kind discussed above, but without more detail, it is not possible to reach a firm conclusion. Some of these incidents were likely to have been pranks, however, a category that relates mainly to episodes of mischief-making by teenage boys acting in pairs or small groups. The first such case of this sort

5 0 0 0 3 13 11 8 26 30 23 30 21 49 21 23 19 7 9 15 313

Face/Head 1 0 0 1 1 1 2 3 2 5 11 4 4 10 0 7 1 3 4 5 65

Body 4 8 5 11 9 8 6 4 7 8 2 1 2 1 0 0 2 1 0 0 79

Clothing 1 2 1 0 0 1 0 0 6 4 3 7 3 9 2 3 2 0 1 2 47

Othera

Principal target

0 1 0 5 1 2 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 11

Propertyb 2 0 1 4 8 13 8 5 14 11 11 11 9 18 3 12 4 4 5 7 150

Dispute 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 6 7 8 6 5 9 8 8 11 6 4 7 88

Jealousy 0 1 0 1 2 3 7 6 8 23 12 16 9 30 8 9 5 0 2 3 145

Revenge 5 4 1 3 1 5 2 3 7 2 6 9 6 11 4 4 3 0 2 5 83

Otherc

Principal motive

 Includes animals

3 6 4 9 3 4 1 1 6 4 3 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 49

Unknown

c

11 11 6 17 14 25 19 16 41 47 40 43 29 69 23 33 24 11 14 22 515

Totals

 Includes accident, cruelty, insanity, prank, protest, resentment, sudden rage, theft, or some alternative but clearly deliberate reasoning for an assault

b

a

 Includes multiple targets on the same victim (e.g. face and clothes), and unknown targets (due to lack of precise information)

Source: As for Table 2.1. Totals are for the number of cases in each period of time, tabulated separately by target and motive

1722–1784 1785–1794 1795–1804 1805–1814 1815–1824 1825–1834 1835–1844 1845–1854 1855–1864 1865–1874 1875–1884 1885–1894 1895–1904 1905–1914 1915–1924 1925–1934 1935–1944 1945–1954 1955–1964 1965–1978 Total

Years

Table 3.1  Targets and motives in cases of acid throwing, 1722–1978

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Table 3.2  Principal motives for acid throwing, classified by type Motive

Type

Dispute

Domestic

28

Domestic, insanity Domestic, jealousy Domestic, provoked Family Family, provoked Financial Financial, provoked Labour Neighbour Other (resisting arrest) Other (resisting eviction) Personal Verbal

1 5 11 15 1 19 1 19 19 3 3

Insanity Provoked

14 11 5 47 4 8

Revenge Stalking Accident Deliberate

17 12 6 13

Insanity Jealousy

Other

Mistaken identity Prank Protest Rage

No. of cases

2 13

Sudden Sudden (lovers’ quarrel) Sudden, provoked

Resentment

4 18 4 7 5

Revenge Grudge

15 26

Context Married, separated or cohabiting couples Alleged in court Involving infidelity or a sexual element Provocation noted by JP, judge or jury Animosity between related individuals Provocation claimed by defendant Business or financial transactions Provocation claimed by defendant Employers and employees, e.g. strikes Animosity between neighbours Victims are police officers Victims are bailiffs or tenants Animosity between acquaintances Verbal confrontation, e.g. in a pub As a sole apparent motive No further distinguishing information Alleged as accompanying factor Provocation noted by press and/or court Deliberate harm for a perceived wrong Previous history of threats etc. Due to a spill or clumsy encounter Various underlying motives, e.g. cruelty Perpetrator misidentified intended victim Mischief alleged or acknowledged cause Against seemingly foreign goods No evidence of prior planning Perpetrator acted on impulse Provocation noted by press and/or court At a specific episode of unfair treatment No further distinguishing information Resulting from a history of ill-will (continued)

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Table 3.2  (continued) Motive

Theft

Type

No. of cases

Insanity Love Love, money

9 42 11

Love, provoked Provoked

23 7

Work Robbery Burglary

12 5 1 16 24

Unknown Clothes Other Unspecified Total

7 2

Context Alleged or accepted in court Act committed by a spurned partner Spurned partner seeking financial support Provocation of spurned partner noted Unique provocations noted by the court Colleagues, employees, etc. Used to incapacitate the victim Householder assaulted during incident No arrest, or no motive given No arrest, or no suggestion as to motive True motive unclear/absent No detail provided in confirmed reports

515

Source: As for Table 2.1

occurred in London in 1788, when two 14-year-olds, William Everett and Samuel Dawson, both of whom worked for an apothecary, were tried for throwing vitriol on the clothes of three young women. According to one of the victims, “as she was passing about her lawful Business, the Prisoners being together, one of them came up to her and said to the other, ‘do it,’ and that instantly they threw something upon her Clothes, which very much burnt and damaged them.”46 Although they could have been prosecuted under the statute of 1719, they were tried at the Guildhall rather than the Old Bailey. In reporting the verdict against the “two young rascals,” the Kentish Gazette hoped that their sentence of six months imprisonment, “with a little seasonable whipping,” would “deter them from such acts of wanton cruelty in future.”47 In 1811, an even younger boy, just 13, was tried at the Old Bailey and also sentenced to be whipped.48 Two “young sons of mischief” targeted female churchgoers in Hatton Garden, London, in 1819.49 In later cases the perpetrators were often unnamed or managed to escape, but the reported details suggest the handiwork of juvenile delinquents who delighted in causing havoc, as for example at Wimborne, Dorset, in 1861:

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We would especially direct the attention of the police of this division to a great annoyance the townspeople are subjected to on their way to and from church. It is that of a number of idle boys who congregate near the east end of the Minster, and both by their language and conduct prove that they have as little respect for the sabbath as they have for their own characters. One of these lads, it is fully suspected, on Sunday evening, the 16th inst., threw a quantity of vitriol on the dress of a lady who was passing to church, and completely spoiled her garment. Fortunately, none of the liquid fell on the lady, or the consequences might have been serious.50

The last example of this type of mischievous behaviour occurred in 1965, when an unnamed 16-year-old threw an unspecified acid at a 15-year-old female workmate in Liverpool, claiming that he had done so as a joke. His defence counsel admitted that it was “a joke that might have turned out to be more serious, but one cannot put old heads on young shoulders.” The boy was conditionally discharged, having lost his job and “suddenly become older and wiser.”51 A very small number of cases were linked to thefts: perpetrators threw acid over victims, usually shopkeepers, in order to incapacitate them. The first known example of this form of acid throwing occurred in 1828  in London. Robert Durley got away on that occasion, but when he tried to rob the same silversmith again two years later, he was arrested.52 The last example was a home invasion at Warrington, Lancashire, in 1967, when John Joseph Oates, 40, assaulted a bookmaker and threw an unspecified fluid at his wife. Oates was sentenced to concurrent terms of ten years for robbery and five years for throwing corrosive fluid; two accomplices got slightly shorter sentences.53 An equally infrequent context for acid throwing arose during attempts to resist arrest or eviction, examples of which last occurred in Warwickshire in the mid-1970s.54 The categories identified in Table 3.2 reveal the wide variety of disputes that led to reported cases of acid throwing. The sanity of a perpetrator could be called into question, often as a defence in court but less frequently as a sole motivating factor. The category ‘domestic dispute’ covers crimes that occurred in the context of ongoing domestic violence, involving almost equally husbands and wives as perpetrators, 14 and 11 cases respectively, but also an obsessed landlady, a live-in lover and a father, between the years 1860 and 1943. ‘Resentment’ denotes motives more immediate and less intimate than revenge, typically those of servants rebelling against their employer. ‘Revenge’ implies a highly planned attack and

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a longer history of bad feeling, often related to a failed relationship but which could also include related disputes about money or child custody, for example when couples separated. It was in the cases related most closely to pure jealousy that the classic ‘If I can’t have you then I’ll ensure nobody else will want you’ motive was articulated. In cases where provocation was accepted by the court, this has been noted and will be discussed in more detail in Chap. 4. ‘Sudden rage’ includes a small number of crimes committed without prior planning, when the perpetrator happened to have immediate access to a corrosive fluid. Finally, a small number of cases are strongly suggestive of what in modern terms would be labelled ‘stalking,’ distinguished from other jealousy-related crimes by an element of long-term harassment. The first stalking case occurred in Sussex in 1839, when Sarah Hemsley, 31, threw vitriol over her former lover, a baker named Edward Webber, whom she waylaid at his place of work; his employer was also seriously injured. Hemsley and Webber shared a long history: he had seduced her 14 years earlier, promising marriage; but despite setting up home together, he did not marry her. Twelve years later, he left her for another woman, which was presumably the point at which Hemsley first threw acid at him, a crime for which she served four months in prison. When he then married someone else, she again went after him with acid. According to Webber, Hemsley “had been in the habit of teasing and terrifying” him for over a year, and he had repeatedly asked her to keep away from him. The depth of her anger and passion was revealed in court, when she threatened to kill the new Mrs Webber and had to be dragged from the dock.55 Hemsley became one of the few acid throwers to be sentenced to transportation for life, and arrived in Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) in January 1841.56 A detailed insight into the warped rationale of an acid thrower who claimed to love his victim is provided by the case of Reginald Everest, 33, a Maltese man who attacked Marjorie Cutts with nitric acid in Sheffield on 20 December 1967. His desire to possess her completely after a two-year relationship ended led to a short period of stalking during which he pushed a bar glass into her face, resulting in six stitches. Everest was fined £10 for this assault by a city magistrate on 4 December, a decision that the judge at his trial for acid throwing criticised in strong terms, because “had he been sent for trial and kept in custody after the glass incident, this lady would not now be in hospital with these terrible burns.”57 A photograph taken as Cutts lay naked from the waist up on a hospital bed shows darkening marks of the acid across her entire face, upper chest and thighs.58

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Everest was arrested shortly after the acid attack and tried to explain himself when interviewed by police: I admit that I threw the acid at Mrs Margery Cutts on Wednesday afternoon and then I just went away. I got the acid when I was working at Sheffield Twist Drill about a year ago to clean some tools and I forgot all about it. I went in the cellar one day last week to mend the Christmas tree and then I saw it. I’ve wanted to marry Mrs Cutts for some time but she didn’t want to be tied down. In November, the 4th November, she told me she’d finished with me and it’s played on my mind ever since. I don’t know what made me take the acid with me when I went to see her yesterday. That letter you have is the one I gave her before I threw the acid in her face.59

Not only had Cutts refused to marry him—an impossibility since he was already married, a fact she was aware of—but she continued to associate with other men. The depth of Everest’s obsession is revealed in a probation report written a month after the attack, which noted that he was unable to focus on anyone but Cutts, as he had never met anyone like her. She was 32 and divorced, and after two years, he believed they should marry, even though he already had a wife. His world caved in when he learned of her other associations; and the coolness of her attitude to him, mixed with anger, jealousy, passion, and frustration, overwhelmed him. He had “completely gone to pieces,” considered life without her not worth living and was unable to accept the reality of the situation. According to Everest, “you don’t hurt someone because you hate them but because you love them and want them for yourself.”60 This is a slightly different motivation from that discussed in Chap. 2, where the intention was to cause disfiguring trauma. Everest does not appear to have wanted to punish his victim for not loving him enough, but rather to make her unattractive to other men and demonstrate his passion for her. But why was he unable to let her go? His actions seem to have been motivated by his own loss of face consequent upon losing the affections of a person who helped to define his self-worth. He confessed and was sentenced to eight years. On appeal, he claimed he was treated harshly because he was foreign, that he committed the crime due to jealousy, and that Cutts drove him to it and led him on. Everest’s appeal was rejected.61

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Anger, Shame and Despair It is significant that after World War Two, acid crime was mainly committed by men (Table 2.5). In the period 1945–1978, there were 39 male perpetrators, 18 of whom targeted an intimate partner; seven crimes were committed by women, two against an intimate partner; and one by a couple—Frederick and Doreen Byott, who form the subject of a case study at the end of this chapter. These cases provide us with the opportunity to understand the decision to resort to acid, but before doing so, we must reflect on a deeper emotional register than simple polarities of anger or vengeance. Post-war cases are especially revealing: the infrequency of the crime offered less encouragement to copycats; and large case files contain interviews with a variety of officials including psychiatrists, police and probation officers, social workers, and prison medical officers, all of whom encouraged perpetrators to explain themselves. Such files provide evidence of, and underscore the need for, interpretations that acknowledge underlying emotional states. These more detailed accounts help to reveal feelings that briefer Victorian reports conceal, and suggest the presence of another emotion: shame. Psychologist June Tangney notes that shame makes individuals feel devalued as a person, concluding that shame-prone people tend to react to stressful situations in one of two ways: passive withdrawal or active aggression. Blaming others, instead of oneself, can serve an ego-protective function and reduce inner pain, so that shame turns to anger and then to violence, accelerated by reduced empathy for others.62 According to a model originally developed by psychiatrist Donald L. Nathanson in 1992, shame is the basis of jealousy that warns of a threat to a relationship with a valued other person, leading to four possible self-­ protective responses: withdrawal, avoidance, or anger directed at oneself or others. In the latter scenario the person may, or may not, acknowledge the negative experience of self, does not usually accept the implicit message about themselves, and attempts to make someone else feel worse. The tendency to violence arises because when a person fails to meet the standard they have set for themselves, shame is experienced as envy or jealousy of another. The latter emotion is more likely to cause depression and anger, leading to an urge to strike back at the person who has caused the emotional pain.63 This model correlates with Tangney’s conclusions, and provides an explanation for the range of motives that led to acid throwing, especially those related to personal relationships. Psychiatrist

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Donald R.  Catherall has studied emotion in intimate relationships, and identifies guilt, jealousy, envy, and depression as variants of shame that can be triggered by a threat to self-esteem.64 The desire for vengeance expressed by acid throwers can be located in this framework and viewed as a reaction to the belief that the victim had wronged them in some shame-­ causing manner—even if the shame is not openly recognised. Acid throwing, then, lies at the extreme end of the response mechanism adopted to cope with emotional distress. This concept accurately describes the worldview of at least some acid throwers, whose emotional turmoil was at times compounded by a belief that they lacked any other means of achieving a just or satisfactory outcome in a troubling situation. Although few expressed their thought processes in terms of shame, anger and vengeance were frequently invoked. In an example from 1906, the root cause of the dispute was phrased in terms of honour, which was perhaps a more familiar concept to those born in the nineteenth century. William Lilley threw sulphuric acid at his housemate Lucien Gaillard after the latter formed a relationship with his sister yet stated his intention never to marry, and then read out the letters she sent to him to a male friend. Lilley took this affront to his sister’s honour as a deeply personal insult, since he was responsible for her as the head of their family, and it is not too much to presume that he felt shamed by the situation. He explained his motives in a melodramatic letter to his victim: I do not know the extent of the injuries I may have inflicted on you, but rest assured that if they are not what I expect, whatever my punishment may be it shall be carried out. I have someone else to take it up in my absence, unless you make yourself scarce. Should they not be successful I will, on my release, finish it; for what you have done I will never forgive. To read the letters you have received to other fellows from my sister and to talk to other girls about her is only the behaviour of a cad and a sneak, so beware! That unless you leave the country I will see that satisfaction is given. I do not ask clemency from you, as on my part I shall give none. If it is for years to come I will be revenged on you and yours.65

Figure 3.1 summarises stages of the potential pathway between a perceived threat to self-esteem and an externalised reaction to problems and failures, and can be applied to a range of scenarios in which acid was thrown. Jealousy, depression, and pure anger are easily recognised in case histories, shame less so, but on occasion, shame made a dramatic

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Fig. 3.1  Schematic pathway showing how a threat to self-esteem may lead to violence

appearance. The circumstances in which Ann Beaton threw vitriol at two teenage boys in 1842 stands out as perhaps one of the last examples of a charivari in Scotland, and as a possibly unique example of the attempted use of a burning effigy in a Scottish episode of rough music. Historians of shame David Nash and Anne-Marie Kilday found that effigies were neither used nor burned in Scotland or Wales, only in England,66 yet in Pathhead, Fifeshire, Ann Beaton was subjected to just such a shaming ritual. The incident occurred the week after Beaton’s husband, a manufacturer and grocer, was found on his business premises with another man’s wife, a discovery that caused a good deal of excitement in the neighbourhood. On 21 March a large crowd of men, women and children assembled outside the Beaton house, jeering, throwing stones and calling out that Peter Beaton’s effigy would be burned on account of his immorality. The crowd dispersed without burning the effigy, but a mob of 60 to 100 boys returned the next evening, intent on “conducting themselves in a riotous and disorderly manner, calculated to hurt the feelings of [Mrs Beaton] and her husband.”67 She was not alone in the house—her young children, a female visitor and a servant girl of 12 were with her—but her husband was

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in his warehouse some distance away. Mrs Beaton put up with the commotion for as long as she could, though it made her cry, but when the teenage boys started waving burning sticks and rattling her door, one took hold of her dress as she tried to close the shutters. When she was struck in the leg by a small stone, she reached the end of her forbearance: she threw a small basin of vitriol at those nearest the front door, hitting two of her tormenters. The police arrived at 9pm, as the mob was dispersing, and Ann Beaton “reproached them for being lax in their duty and said she’d done for them herself.”68 In her own defence, she referred to the annoyance and irritation the crowd had caused,69 not to a sense of shame at her husband’s alleged misbehaviour; but the fact that acid was thrown in the midst of a full-blown charivari links it inextricably to the shame inherent in this type of communal censure. The jury at her trial evidently empathised with Beaton: they convicted her of common assault, but strongly recommended her to the mercy of the court, “owing to the great provocation she received.” She was sentenced to six months in gaol.70

Case Study: Frederick John Byott, 1971 The scenario described in Fig. 3.1 is clearly evident in the case of Frederick Byott, a 46-year-old builder and former prisoner of war who threw caustic soda over a teenager named Kenneth Dear in 1971, telling police “there is a long story attached to this business,” and that he had decided to take the law into his own hands. Following Dear’s conviction for having unlawful sex with his 13-year-old daughter Lorraine, who later became pregnant by another boy, Byott distributed 1000 copies of a handwritten leaflet warning readers to beware a young predator: Warning: To the parents of teenage daughters in the Lewisham area. Among your midst is a rapist known by the Ladywell Police to have attacked and raped on two seperate (sic) occasions and still allowed to walk among us unpunished[.] I have a teenage daughter this animal attacked & raped. Now I have two duties to perform. One as a parent the other as a citizen. I feel I am doing my utmost as a parent to righten the wrong that has been done and as a citizen I feel its (sic) my duty to name this animal and his address as follows.71

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This was clearly an attempt to shame the boy publicly. When Lorraine fell pregnant and had an extremely difficult birth, it pushed Byott over the edge and he channelled all of his emotion towards Dear, who was not the father and had been one of a group of four teens alleged to have sexually assaulted Lorraine. Byott’s police statement revealed his inner anguish, and although he did not mention feeling shame at his daughter’s predicament, it is clear that the incident affected him at a deeper level than pure rage: To see my daughter after the birth made me feel really sick. She had to have eighteen stitches as a result of the baby being born, for a girl of thirteen to go through all that, it was more than I could stand. Ever since November 1970 I have eaten and slept ‘Kenny Dear.’ I wanted to make his life as miserable as he had made my daughter’s. I can’t really describe how torn inside I am over all this. Anyway I spent months tracking Dear until I eventually found him at his place of work in Lee High Road. I picked on Friday 13th August to do what I felt had to be done. I came face to face with him as he left work. I had a bucket in which I had mixed up some stuff like sugar soap or soda. I mixed it strong I said nothing to Dear, I just threw it all over his head. I have had more peace of mind since doing that and I have planned a new life for the family in Australia. In fact I should have been sailing next Sunday, 29th August 1971. I am not sorry for Dear but I feel now that the score is even and I have no further desire to do him any harm. I look upon Dear as an animal and all I can say is that he has brought out the animal in me. I strongly deny that my wife was present when I tipped that liquid on Dear’s head. I was on my own.72

Byott was assessed by a probation officer and a psychiatrist. The former noted many negative traits about him: he dominated his wife; he was disturbed by the fact that their elder daughter had begun to act up; he was alienated from members of his extended family; he equated violence with masculinity and strength; he was conscious of driving other people away as he thought himself a natural recluse; and he saw his response as the proper one to his daughter’s pregnancy and birth. Concluding that Byott was essentially egocentric, the case worker, D.  A. Clitheroe, recommended further psychiatric investigation.73 The senior medical officer at Brixton Prison, Dr B. L. M. Turner noted that Byott was depressed and bitter, but not mentally ill.74 A further insight into Byott’s character is revealed in correspondence he entered into after his trial, as he sought legal aid. He had failed to

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return the correct paperwork and was told that he and his wife would have to pay the full cost of their defence, £48.49 each, to which he sent a barbed response: “I feel know (sic) shame or guilt as reference to the bills etc. I was to (sic) busy administering to justice or revenge on four dirty over sexed animals that attacked my daughter.”75 The mere fact that Byott mentions shame and guilt suggests these were precisely the emotions he felt. Furthermore, Byott had a history of previous convictions for theft and assault,76 and had been dishonourably discharged from the army years earlier. He was one in a long line of acid throwers to have previous convictions, a point that will be returned to in Chap. 4. Finally, what of the victim, young Kenny Dear? His is just one of the voices preserved in the case file, but his formal statement says very little about how he felt about any of this: “He had a bucket in his hand, I saw him raise it, and then throw it over me. There was liquid in it and as it hit my face I could feel it burning. I just covered up my face and ran down the road. I kept running and went into my doctor’s surgery … I know the man who did this to me and his wife because sometime ago I had a bit of trouble with his daughter, Lorraine, and during the last few weeks he has been threatening me.”77 A month later, he clarified the nature of his relationship with Lorraine Byott: “I have never attacked or raped any girl or woman in my life, even when I had relationship (sic) with Lorraine it was with her consent.”78 Nevertheless, as often happened when perpetrators were perceived to have acted under provocation, the court took a lenient approach, sentenced Byott to three years of probation, and warned him to stay away from his victim. The fact that the boy was not too badly injured was also a factor in the court’s decision. Doreen Byott was acquitted.

Continuity and Change in Motives for Acid Throwing Table 3.3 provides a numerical count of the main motives for acid throwing according to the gender of the perpetrator(s), showing some predictable trends. Men were more likely than women to throw acid in the context of a labour dispute, to engage in stalking, pranking, and to fly into a sudden rage. Women were more likely to claim they had been provoked by a domestic situation and to throw acid following the ending of a relationship on unsatisfactory terms. With these exceptions, acid throwing was a gender neutral offence, a rather rare response to an unbearable

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Table 3.3  Principal motives for acid throwing, classified by type and perpetrator’s gender Motive

Type

Dispute

Domestic Domestic, insanity Domestic, jealousy Domestic, provoked Family Financial Labour Neighbour Other (resisting arrest) Other (resisting eviction) Personal Verbal

Insanity Jealousy

Other

Prank Protest Rage

Insanity Provoked Revenge Stalking Accident Deliberate Mistaken identity

Sudden Sudden (lovers’ quarrel) Sudden, provoked

Resentment Revenge

Theft

Grudge Insanity Love Love, money Love, provoked Provoked Work Robbery Burglary

Unknown Clothes Other Unspecified Total Source: As for Table 2.1  Includes mixed-sex pairs and unknown perpetrators

a

No. of Cases

Male

Female

Othera

28 1 5 11 16 20 19 19 3 3 14 11 5 47 4 8 17 12 6 13 2 13 4 18 4 7 5 15 26 9 42 11 23 7 12 5 1 16 24 7 2 515

15 0 4 1 9 11 18 8 3 2 8 6 2 23 3 5 11 11 4 6 1 11 4 15 2 2 0 4 14 4 16 0 3 4 6 5 1 10 13 6 0 271

13 1 1 10 7 9 0 10 0 1 5 5 3 24 1 3 6 1 1 6 1 1 0 3 2 5 5 11 11 5 26 11 20 3 6 0 0 4 2 1 2 226

0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 9 0 0 18

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situation. Following on from the examples discussed above, the following case studies help to show why the nature of the crime changed as it did over the course of the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries. On 9 October 1869, an inspector in the Dundee Police became a victim of acid throwing when his former lover assaulted him, two days after he refused her money to go to America. But there was rather more to the story than this, as his attacker, Mary McCormack, explained: I am unmarried. In June 1868 I had a child to Robert Million, Police Inspector. For about three years before, I lived in the same house with him. The child died when it was four weeks old. He gave me very bad usage and provoked me to do what I did. I asked a pound from him in November and he gave me a kick in the breast. After that I did not see him until last week. He passed me on the street without taking any notice of me. I wanted him to give me something to take me out of the town, but he refused. I then provided myself with a bottle of vitriol, and on Saturday night waited for him, till he should come out of the police office to go home. I spoke to him at the end of Ward Road and he told me to go to Hell. The vitriol was in a flagon and I threw the contents at him. He then seized me and took me to the police office.79

She made no attempt to deny what she had done, avowing that she was “sorry he had not got more.”80 At her trial, she pleaded guilty to a charge of common assault. Her counsel explained that she had committed the offence as an act of revenge when her seducer refused to assist her to emigrate, and she was sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment.81 Despite the fact that any love between them had undoubtedly long gone, McCormack appears in Table  3.3 as ‘revenge (love)’ because she had had a lengthy relationship and a child with her victim, distinguishing her from others who did not have this sort of intimate relationship as a backdrop to their crime. Although Mary McCormack fits neatly into the Victorian stereotype of the vengeful female, one could argue that she was a victim too. Indeed, that she had been remarkably tolerant of a man of higher social status who had taken her virtue, and perhaps her respectability. His refusal to support her to emigrate—an upheaval pursued in order to begin a new life— pushed this illiterate Scottish millworker over the edge and she became determined to exact a calculated revenge. Male acid throwers at that time had a wider range of motives, to go along with their more expansive employment and social opportunities. By contrast, twentieth-century

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women became more independent as the social strictures that compelled them into, or to remain in, marriage began to loosen, and their prospects for employment increased. This helps to explain the smaller numbers of female acid throwers after the war, but was also a motive for men like Michael McNamara, who committed his offence a century after McCormack’s. On 12 December 1969, Iris Brown arrived at the home of her estranged common-law husband Michael McNamara to collect their daughter for a weekend visit. While she was waiting on the doorstep, McNamara appeared with a plastic jug in his hand. Saying, “This will stop you seeing your nice new house, how do you like it,” he threw the liquid contents at her face. She instinctively turned away, but felt an immediate burning sensation when the liquid hit her face, arm, and legs; smoke rose around her head and she noticed an acidic burning smell. Thinking she was on fire, she ran to the car where her new partner was waiting. He drove her to hospital, where a doctor noted that if she had not been treated so quickly the burns would have been much deeper; if it had touched her eyes, her sight might have been impaired. A forensic scientist later confirmed that the liquid was concentrated hydrochloric acid.82 McNamara was soon under arrest, telling the arresting officer “she needed it, her and her fancy man taking my children away from me, I have had enough.” He and Brown had lived together for over 11 years before she left him in August 1969, taking their two children to live with another man—Clifford Cochrane. One of the children had since returned to their father’s house, but McNamara wanted the other child too. He told the police: I have just had enough of everything with my wife and the way they are taking my children away from me, she and that man Cochrane. I just felt I had to do something. I intended to get him, but I couldn’t get to him so I threw it at her. I put some of the Spirits of Salt we use for cleaning drains, into a jug and I put it in the coal cupboard waiting for them to come … It was there and I used it, I would not have gone out to buy it. I just had to do something, it’s gone on far too long for me. She has built me up as violent and I have never hurt anyone in my life, but now I have played right into their hands. They will get the children after this and I have got nothing left after twelve years.83

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At his trial at the Old Bailey, McNamara, an Irishman aged 51, was sentenced to nine months imprisonment. His motive for this assault has been entered in Table 3.3 as ‘jealousy (revenge).’ There is much about this case that typifies twentieth-century cases of acid assault. It involved individuals who had an intimate relationship that had broken down, leaving one person feeling aggrieved, angry, jealous, and depressed. Emotion built to a high level as various events occurred over a significant period of time (over a year, in this case), culminating in a conscious decision to throw a corrosive fluid at another person’s head and face, targets that for centuries have been associated with the potential to disable someone socially as well as physically. While it was relatively uncommon for a perpetrator to want to attack two victims, the claim that the act was not planned was quite typical, though usually untrue. Unlike a beating or even a knifing, assault using a corrosive liquid was always a premeditated act, clearly designed to inflict a lasting punishment on the victim. Acid throwing is rightly associated with vengeance, as punishment for a perceived wrong committed by the victim against the perpetrator. While various motives can be identified, the underlying cause was frequently a threat to his or her self-esteem, most especially but not exclusively in relation to an intimate relationship. This led to jealousy, the foundation on which the decision to throw acid was often built. Michael McNamara explained this to the police. As a married Roman Catholic, he could not divorce his wife to marry Iris Brown when her husband died in 1968. This led her to stop sleeping with him, and then to leave him.84 When she tried to take their children, and announced her plans to marry her new partner, the impact on McNamara’s self-esteem was enormous. He had lost his ‘wife’ to another man and thought he was about to lose his children too— both damaging blows to his sense of self-worth as a husband and father. This was compounded by the fact that the new man had a nicer house than he did, affecting McNamara’s sense of his ability to provide for his family. His response to these circumstances was less extreme than that of many other men and women, not least because he did not have access to strong sulphuric acid; he threw hydrochloric acid, which he used in his job as a council worker.

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Notes 1. Jessica Warner, Gerhard Gmel, Kathryn Graham and Bonnie Erickson, “A Time-Series Analysis of War and Levels of Interpersonal Violence in an English Military Town, 1700–1781,” Social Science History 31 (2007), 582. 2. Gray, Crime, Prosecution and Social Relations, 92, 96. 3. Derby Daily Telegraph, 15 Nov 1913, 4. 4. John Walliss, “New Directions in the Historiography of the Administration of the Bloody Code,” History Compass 16 (2018), e12463; https://doi. org/10.1111/hic3.12463. 5. Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, 7 Jul 1785, 3; Stamford Mercury, 8 Jul 1785, 2; Kentish Gazette, 8 Jul 1785, 3. On the role of prosecution associations, see Mark Koyama, “Prosecution Associations in Industrial Revolution England: Private Providers of Public Goods?,” The Journal of Legal Studies 41 (2012), 95–130. 6. OBP, trial of Charlotte Springmore and Mary Harrison, ref. t17851019-57. They arrived in Australia on the First Fleet in January 1788, aboard Lady Penrhyn. 7. The Newcastle Courant, 29 Oct 1785, 4. The full title of the statute is given in Table 1.1. 8. The Ipswich Journal, 5 Oct 1799, 2. 9. Pue’s Occurrences, 20 Jun 1719, 3. 10. Pue’s Occurrences, 5 Sep 1719, 2–3. 11. The Derby Mercury, 11 Oct 1754, 3. 12. Kentish Gazette, 2 Aug 1769, 3. 13. The Ipswich Journal, 22 May 1773, 1; Newcastle Chronicle, 22 May 1773, 1. Aqua fortis was one of the tools of the counterfeiter’s trade, used to make coins look older. 14. Leeds Intelligencer, 21 Jan 1766, 3. 15. Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, 14 Oct 1802, 3; Chester Courant, 23 Jul 1805, 3; Hampshire Chronicle, 16 Jan 1809, 4. 16. Orth, Combination and Conspiracy, 73–74. 17. TNA HO 47/17/101, folios 469–478, Report of the Case of Peter Murray, 27 Nov 1793. 18. Ibid. 19. OBP, trial of Peter Murray, ref. t17930410-86. 20. TNA HO 47/17/101, folio 475, report by William Mainwaring JP, 25 Nov 1793. Murray had served at the Siege of Gibraltar, 1779–1783, on board the Fortitude. 21. The Ipswich Journal, 3 May 1783, 2. 22. Ibid. The trial was also reported in the Reading Mercury, 5 May 1783, 1 and Northampton Mercury, 5 May 1783, 1.

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23. The Times, 6 Jun 1785, 3. 24. The Sussex Advertiser, 4 Jul 1785, 1. 25. OBP, trial of Elizabeth Wrack, ref. t18050710-59. She was acquitted. 26. David Anderson, Sourcing Brickmaking Salting and Chemicals at Prestongrange (Prestonpans: Prestoungrange UP, 2000), 14. 27. P.  McNeill, Prestonpans and Vicinity: Historical, Ecclesiastical and Traditional (Edinburgh: John Menzies, 1902), 105. 28. Manchester Mercury, 5 Jul 1774, 4; Saunders’s News-Letter, 23 May 1786, 3; Manchester Mercury, 9 Mar 1790, 3. 29. Leeds Intelligencer, 5 Aug 1766, 3. The date is no coincidence: she probably got the idea from the instances committed by weavers. Unfortunately, I could find no indication of how this case ended. 30. In relation to events in Manchester, see The Morning Post, 25 Jun 1808, 4 and Belfast Commercial Chronicle, 29 Jun 1808, 2. 31. Perthshire Courier, 18 Mar 1813, 3. 32. Glasgow Herald, 16 Apr 1821, 1. 33. Ibid. 34. NRS JC26/1823/143, Glasgow September Circuit 1823, Trial Papers v. Alexander McKay, Peter McConnachie, John Robison, Archibald Nicholson and William Walker; AD14/23/73, Precognitions v. Robert Aitken (as witness), Alexander McKay, Peter McConochie  (sic), John Robison, John Elder (as witness), William Walker, and Archibald Nicholson. For more on the violence and unrest among Scottish weavers in the early 1820s, see W.  Hamish Fraser, Conflict and Class: Scottish Workers 1700–1838 (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, 1988), 114–121. 35. NRS AD14/23/73, letter from the Lord Advocate to Thomas Grahame WS, 24 Dec 1823. 36. 6 Geo IV c.129. 37. Orth, Combination and Conspiracy, 84–89. 38. See for example Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 20 Jun 1829, 3. 39. Lynn M. Alexander, ed., John Halifax, Gentleman, by Dinah Mulock Craik (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Editions, 2005), 519. 40. It was advertised for sale at 6s. in Saint James’s Chronicle in February, April, May, June, and December 1836, and February 1837. 41. Andrew Ure, The Philosophy of Manufactures: or, An Exposition of the Scientific, Moral, and Commercial Economy of the Factory System of Great Britain (London: Charles Knight, 1835), 282–283. 42. The Limerick Chronicle, 6 Apr 1836, 1. 43. Cork Examiner, 20 May 1842, 1. One of the perpetrators informed on the others, and four men were transported for life.

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44. Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life, vol. 1 (London: Chapman and Hall, 1848), chapter 16. 45. Belfast News-Letter, 16 Mar 1939, 10. 46. The Derby Mercury, 16 Oct 1788, 3. 47. Kentish Gazette, 21 Oct 1788, 4. 48. OBP, trial of Edward Beazley, ref. t18110403-66. 49. Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser, 15 May 1819, 4. They were remanded in custody, but I can find no record of how this case concluded. 50. Weymouth Telegram, 27 Jun 1861, 4. Churchgoers were repeatedly targeted at Camberwell a few years later: London Evening Standard, 4 Nov 1867, 4. For youths intent on causing trouble, parishioners wearing their Sunday best were evidently an attractive prospect. 51. Liverpool Echo, 25 Mar 1965, 7. The boy got the substance from a fire extinguisher at their place of work; whatever it was, it caused burns to the girl’s legs. 52. Berkshire Chronicle, 17 May 1828, 4; Morning Herald (London), 27 May 1830, 4; OBP, trial of Robert Durley, ref. t18300527-10. Durley, who was 26, was sentenced to death for the later robbery, but reprieved and sent to New South Wales for 21 years: https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/ life?id=obpt18300527-­10-­defend209. 53. Liverpool Echo, 5 Jul 1967, 20. 54. Birmingham Daily Post, 11 Feb 1976, 23; Coventry Evening Telegraph, 29 Jun 1978, 17. 55. The Morning Post, 21 Mar 1840, 6. 56. CRA, Sarah Hemsley, https://convictrecords.com.au/convicts/hemsley/ sarah/99544. 57. The Times, 9 Feb 1968, 2. 58. TNA ASSI 45/898, Regina v. Reginald Kenneth Everest, Yorkshire, 1967. 59. Ibid., Statement by R. K. Everest, 21 Dec 1967. 60. Ibid., Probation Report by D. Stow, 22 Jan 1968. 61. Ibid., Court of Appeal, Regina v. Reginald Kenneth Everest, Judgment, 7 Oct 1968. 62. June Price Tangney and Ronda L. Dearing, Shame and Guilt (New York: The Guilford Press, 2004), 3, 90–111. 63. Jeff Elison, Randy Lennon and Steven Pulos, “Investigating the Compass of Shame: The Development of the Compass of Shame Scale,” Social Behavior and Personality 34 (2006), 222–224; Mary Lamia, “Jealousy and Envy: The Emotions of Comparison and Contrast,” Psychology Today, 13 July 2013, https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/intense-­emotions­a nd-­s trong-­f eelings/201307/jealousy-­a nd-­e nvy-­t he-­e motions-­ comparison-­and (accessed 26 Jun 2017).

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64. Don R. Catherall, Emotional Safety: Viewing Couples Through the Lens of Affect (New York: Routledge, 2012), 113. 65. OBP, trial of William Lilley, ref. t19060521-31. 66. David Nash and Anne-Marie Kilday, Cultures of Shame: Exploring Crime and Morality in Britain, 1600–1900 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2010), 42, 201 n.78. 67. NAS AD14/42/15, Perth April Circuit 1842, Precognitions against Ann Dewar or Beaton, deposition of Esther Bennett, 28 Mar 1842. 68. Ibid., deposition of PC Hugh Gibson, 29 Mar 1842. 69. Ibid., declaration of Ann Dewar or Beaton, 23 Mar and 26 Mar 1842. 70. Fife Herald, 5 May 1842, 4. 71. TNA CRIM 1/5655, Regina v. Frederick John Byott and Grace Doreen Byott, Kent, 1971, Copy of handwritten leaflet printed on pink paper. Dear was 16 years old. 72. Ibid., Statement of F. J. Byott, 24 Aug 1971. 73. Ibid., Probation Officer’s Report for Central Criminal Court, n.d. 74. Ibid., Medical Report, 1 Sep 1971. 75. Ibid., Letter from F. J. Byott (no addressee), 15 Feb 1972. 76. Ibid., Metropolitan Police, Return of Convictions recorded against F. J. Byott, 6 Sep 1971. 77. Ibid., Statement of K. D. Dear, 13 Aug 1971. 78. Ibid., Statement of K. D. Dear, 9 Sep 1971. 79. NRS JC26/1869/309, High Court of Justiciary November 1869, Trial papers v. Mary McCormack, declaration of Mary McCormack, 11 Oct 1869. 80. Ibid., depositions of Elizabeth Dunsmore, 18 Oct 1869, and John Hill, 20 Oct 1869. 81. Buchan Observer and East Aberdeenshire Advertiser, 3 Dec 1869, 4. 82. TNA CRIM 1/5286, Regina v. Michael Francis McNamara, Essex, 1969. 83. Ibid., statement of M. F. McNamara, 12 Dec 1969. 84. Ibid., Child Custody Suit between M.  F. McNamara (plaintiff) and Iris Newton McNamara (otherwise Brown, widow), 1969.

CHAPTER 4

Law and Justice

Abstract  This chapter examines the outcome of trials for acid throwing and presents an overview of the sentences imposed on those convicted, to identify gendered and national characteristics, and how they changed over time. Trial reports are used to explore the narratives presented in court, and how judges and juries responded to them, to demonstrate that compassion affected both trial outcomes and sentencing, in sometimes surprising ways. Even when they had blinded their victim, provocation could be accepted as a mitigating factor for both male and female defendants. Keywords  Criminal trials • Medicalisation • Provocation • Punishment • Sentencing The jury found prisoner guilty, and expressed the opinion that he acted under great provocation. The Judge said the jury’s recommendation did not move him, for he would be sorry to think that any kind of provocation could warrant the barbarous and disgusting habit of throwing corrosive fluid. It was most un-English. What did move him was that this was a very small bottle, and that no (sic) so much evil was

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K. D. Watson, Acid Attacks in Britain, 1760–1975, World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27272-1_4

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intended as had happened. That was the only reason prisoner would not be sent to penal servitude, but he would have to go for 18 months’ hard labour. —“Aqua Fortis Throwing at Sutton-in-Ashfield. Remarkable Superstition,” Mansfield Reporter, 5 November 1915, p. 6.

Unlike the more numerous historical studies of homicide, one of the benefits of studying assault lies in the fact that both parties survived to present their side of the story. Perpetrators who committed acid attacks had a clear purpose and wanted to explain it to police officers, magistrates, judges, and juries, trying to justify their act in a manner designed to elicit sympathy. Others were so infuriated or convinced their act was justified that they bragged they would do it again. The victim’s explanation of the sequence of events, as well as the physical impact on them of the crime, were also important, the latter most especially in relation to sentencing. This chapter examines the outcome of trials for acid throwing: over 70 per cent of perpetrators were convicted, but sentences could vary within the framework created by the law. Scottish prosecutors had access to the most stringent penalty, capital punishment, but almost never sought it, preferring instead to prosecute for common assault.1 English judges frequently admonished defendants, and in so doing provided clear indications of how they decided what sentence to pass. Perpetrators who were more obviously motivated by a failed relationship, where shame might be the key underlying emotion, tended to receive lighter sentences than those motivated by irrational jealousy, an unfounded grievance, or pure ill will. More women fit into the former category, more men into the latter. Similarly, those with previous convictions tended to be dealt with more stringently. Thus, this chapter will first present an overview of sentencing, to identify its gendered and national characteristics, and how they changed over time. Trial reports are used to examine the narratives presented in court, and how judges and juries responded to them, to demonstrate that ­compassion affected both trial outcomes and sentencing, in sometimes surprising ways. Even when they had blinded their victim, provocation could be accepted as a mitigating factor for both male and female defendants. There are no official statistics recording the number of incidents of what the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act defined as casting or throwing “any corrosive fluid or any destructive or explosive substance” with intent “to burn, maim, disfigure or disable,”2 because these crimes cannot be easily disaggregated from the totals for malicious injury and

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wounding. But the courts continued to react sympathetically to many of the cases brought before them over the course of the twentieth century, albeit sentencing was framed more overtly in medical terms, with hospitalisation for mental health issues substituted for imprisonment in some cases. One significant change occurred during the 1940s: it became inaccurate to refer to vitriol throwing, and even to acid assault. Instead, the more precise term was ‘throwing a corrosive fluid.’ After the war, acid throwers tended to reach for accessible household or workplace products. This in turn affected the likelihood that a serious injury would be inflicted, so that those who sought out and used the more dangerous substances inevitably received the longest sentences.

Trial Outcomes and Sentencing The outcomes for all the cases of acid throwing on which this book is based are listed in Table 4.1, together with the types of penalties imposed upon those who were convicted. There were relatively few outright acquittals, just 64, the majority of which occurred before 1900; there were 16 in the period 1901–1949, and just two after 1950, in 1954 and 1957. A total of 33 female defendants were acquitted and 31 male defendants. Although the case of Emilie Foucault, discussed in Chap. 1, demonstrates the power of a jury to acquit despite clear evidence of guilt, most acquittals were due to a lack of evidence: that the accused person had thrown the substance or had done so with a criminal intent, or that the substance was corrosive. As detective policing and crime investigation improved, and the police took over responsibility for preparing prosecutions in England and Wales, weaker cases were weeded out, and it seems probable that some form of plea bargaining occurred, as became the practice in Scotland in the early nineteenth century.3 Scottish records include correspondence between the procurators fiscal, who investigated crime in the counties, and the advocates depute who prepared cases for court, showing that the latter usually chose to allow acid throwers to plead to common assault, a crime for which the punishment was at the judge’s discretion but could range from a fine through to penal servitude.4 The capital statute of 1829 was mostly bypassed, although not ignored. In 1899, for example, John Robertson mistakenly pleaded guilty to a charge under the statute, but was allowed to withdraw it; the advocate depute then restricted the charge to common assault, and Robertson pleaded guilty to throwing vitriol with intent to cause grievous

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Table 4.1  Outcome and penalty in cases of acid throwing Outcome

Verdict or penalty

No. of cases

Released

Acquitted Discharged (police court) No billa Not provenb

64 10 4 4

Not prosecuted

No prosecutionc Not caught Suicide

11 32 2

Convicted

Borstal Bound overd Corporal punishment Death Discharged (no penalty) Financiale Hospital order f Imprisonmentg Mixedh On another indictment Penal servitude Probation Transportation

Unknown

Bailed Remanded Unknown outcome

Percentage

15.9

8.7 2 15 2 4 2 16 11 172 21 2 95 9 16 71.3

Total

1 5 15 515

4.1 100

Source: As for Table 2.1  Legal term indicating that a grand jury found there was no case to answer  Verdict unique to Scotland c  Includes two people who died in prison before trial and one person unfit to plead d  Requirement to do as an order issued by a court or judge directs for a particular period of time e  Includes fines, payment of compensation or damages, and sureties to be of good behaviour f  Committed to an asylum (2); or detained under the Mental Health Act of 1959 (4) g  Both with and without hard labour h  Payment of a fine or to be imprisoned (14); or imprisonment plus a financial penalty (7) a

b

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bodily harm.5 The conclusion that plea bargaining was used in twentieth-­ century English cases, when more defendants had access to lawyers, is supported by the fact that 80 accused acid throwers pleaded guilty between 1900 and 1978;6 but only 36 did so in the period 1800–1899, nearly all in Scotland or London. A guilty plea lessened the sentence imposed, but did not necessarily mean that the perpetrator received a light sentence. A list of convictions compiled during the legal discussions surrounding the Robertson case reveals that sentences imposed on five Scottish acid throwers from 1858 to 1886 did not exceed 15 months’ imprisonment, yet Robertson was sentenced to five years’ penal servitude. His offence was considered more serious: he had blinded and disfigured his wife; witnesses testified that he had also struck, kicked, and threatened to murder her, and so “the nature and the gravity of the crime” were reflected in his sentence.7 Table  4.1 shows that the most typical punishment was a period of incarceration: judges handed down this sentence in 276 cases, or just over 75 per cent of all convictions. The table acknowledges the distinction between penal servitude, introduced in 1853 as a substitute for transportation,8 and imprisonment, although figures for imprisonment with hard labour have not been separated out and mixed sentences (of imprisonment plus a fine) are counted independently. However, these differences are not especially illuminating, despite the fact that far fewer criminals were confined in convict prisons, where the conditions were harsher and longer sentences were served than in the more numerous local prisons.9 Penal servitude and hard labour were abolished by the Criminal Justice Act 1948, but it should be noted that judges sentenced acid throwers according to the framework created by the nineteenth-century statutes, using their own principles of proportional punishment and moral culpability. Therefore, the length of each sentence, which was directly correlated to the type of prison in which it would be served, can be taken as clear evidence of judicial responses to the crime. This makes the use of a hospital order, which was relatively rare, all the more interesting. Finally, only two acid throwers were sent to borstals, which were reformatory custodial institutions introduced in 1902 for offenders aged 16 to 21. The Prevention of Crimes Act 1908 permitted borstal sentences from one to three years in length.10 The length of the custodial sentences imposed on convicted acid throwers is set out in Table 4.2, and shows that the majority of prisoners, 67.5 per cent (197 individuals), received sentences of up to three years. In five cases where two or more people were convicted for the same offence but

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Table 4.2  Length of custodial sentences imposed on convicted acid throwers, 1722–1978 Penal Institution

Length of sentence

Borstal Convict Prison

2 & 3 yearsa 3 years 4 years 5 years 6 yearsb 7 years 8 years 10 years 12 years 14 years 15 years 20 yearsc Life Under 6 months 6–12 months 1–2 years 2–3 years 4 years 5 years 8 years 10 years Life 7 yearse 14–15 years Life

Prisond

Transportation

Total

No. of cases 2 26 5 31 2 8 2 9 1 1 4 3 3 30 86 46 7 2 4 2 1 1 5 8 3 292

Male 0 13 4 16 2 4 1 5 1 1 3 3 3 16 29 24 4 2 4 2 1 0 3 5 2 148

Female 2 13 1 15 0 4 1 4 0 0 1 0 0 14 57 22 3 0 0 0 0 1 2 3 1 144

Source: As for Table 2.1  Both 18-year-old girls, in 1924 and 1911 respectively  Includes a male prisoner’s sentence reduced on appeal to 18 months’ hard labour, in 1930 c  Includes a male prisoner’s sentence commuted to 7 years in 1875 d  Includes suspended sentences and imprisonment plus a financial penalty e  Includes one male convict subsequently pardoned, in 1822 a

b

sentenced to different periods of incarceration, the table records the longer sentence, because it was handed down to the principal instigator(s) of the crime. Judges always explained their rationale when this occurred. For example, when John Hall and Alfred Doherty were convicted in 1857 for the assault of a fellow Manchester textile worker who had refused to abide

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by union rules, the judge informed Hall that “it appears to me that you stand in even a worse position than the prisoner Doherty, not only because your hand committed the offence, but because you had not even the pretence of being a member of the club [union]. The sentence upon you, Hall, is that you be kept in penal servitude for six years, and that you, Doherty, be kept in penal servitude for four years.”11 The length of every sentence reflects both the degree of culpability that judges ascribed to each offender and the seriousness of the particular offence. Thus, since Patrick Lucy had concocted the plot to throw vitriol on his former lover Margaret Sullivan, who had rejected him, but induced another man to do the actual deed, he was sentenced to penal servitude for life while his accomplice got seven years. A third plotter turned Queen’s evidence and informed on the others to escape prosecution.12 This crime was one of the most vicious instances of acid throwing in Ireland—Sullivan lost an eye and her nose—but Lucy served only twenty years: he was released from Maryborough Convict Prison on a life licence in December 1910 and sent to Liverpool, where he took up work as a shoemaker.13 In Scots law, previous convictions constituted an aggravating factor that could lead to the imposition of a longer sentence,14 but Table  4.3 shows that the majority of the prison sentences handed down by Scottish Table 4.3  Principal case outcome or sentence upon conviction, by country Case outcome or sentence Acquitted or released Not prosecuted Unknown Tried and convicted Death Imprisoned up to 2 yearsa Imprisoned 2+ yearsb Penal servitude 3 years Penal servitude 4+ years Otherc Transported Total

England

Ireland

Scotland

Wales

Total

70 37 16

5 5 1

4 2 4

3 1 0

82 45 21

0 123 16 25 57 66 10 420

2 6 0 0 2 0 1 22

2 32 2 1 8 5 4 64

0 2 0 0 2 0 1 9

4 163 18 26 69 71 16 515

Source: As for Table 2.1  Includes one Scottish borstal sentence of 2 years, and 14 English sentences of 2 months or less  Includes one English borstal sentence of 3 years c  Includes hospital orders, fines, fine or imprisonment, probation/bound over, and corporal punishment a

b

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courts were fairly short, and very much in line with those awarded by courts elsewhere in the British Isles. In England, Wales, and Ireland, the Offences against the Person Act 1837 imposed a penalty of transportation for fifteen years to life, or imprisonment for up to three years. This statute was replaced by the Offences Against the Person Act of 1861, which gave judges the discretion to sentence within specific guidelines: convicted acid throwers were to be sent to penal servitude for life or for any term not less than three years, or imprisoned for up to two years, with or without hard labour or solitary confinement. This explains the national pattern revealed by Table 4.3: the typical prison sentence imposed for acid throwing was under two years in length, in keeping with the law and, we can conclude, the judges’ opinions about the seriousness of the cases they tried. Sentences could be for periods of days or weeks, but a number of months was typical: 6, 9, 15, 18 or 24. The shortest sentences were handed down in England: three acid throwers were sentenced to a few days; six were sentenced to one month, and five to two months in prison. The much larger number of English cases offers a partial explanation for the wider range of sentences: some cases were dealt with by magistrates in police or quarter sessions courts, where lesser offences were adjudicated. One could argue that judges had a great deal of flexibility in their sentencing options. The death penalty, for example, was available in Ireland from 1829 until 1837, and in Scotland from 1829 until after the Second World War, while convicts could be transported for periods ranging from seven years to life until the 1850s. Variable periods of penal servitude and imprisonment were permitted. In 1907 the Probation of Offenders Act allowed offenders whom the courts did not think fit to imprison on account of their age, character or health, to be placed on probation for one to three years.15 Problems with mental health were recognised in twentieth-century hospital orders, under the terms of the Mental Health Act of 1959.16 Where property but not the person was damaged, the court could order payment of a fine or compensation. But Table 4.1 shows that these options were rarely used. A total of four people, one woman and three men, were sentenced to death, of whom one man was executed. In 1827 Euphemia Lawson became the first capital convict under the Scottish statute of 1825, but was reprieved and transported for life;17 she arrived in Van Diemen’s Land in January 1829,18 apparently with her two children but without her husband.19 Hugh Kennedy, a married man who worked as a ‘boot boy’ in a Glasgow inn, had the misfortune to become the first and only person to be executed for

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acid throwing in the British Isles. He was found guilty of attempting to murder a workmate, over whom he had thrown a mixture of sulphuric acid and sand as the man slept. Kennedy’s trial was held at the end of December 1833, and although the evidence against him was at first thought to be uncertain,20 an impressive-sounding forensic reconstruction proved that only Kennedy could have committed the crime, since the two men were alone in a locked room. Other testimony suggested that he had probably tested the acid on a dog and cat a fortnight earlier.21 Kennedy, aged 27, was hanged in Glasgow on 20 January 1834, having made a full confession. Only two other men, both Irish bakers, were sentenced to death. Bartholomew Long and Edward Driscoll had assaulted two master bakers at Cork in September 1835, during the period of extensive labour-­ related violence noted in Chap. 3. Both men were reprieved and transported for life.22 Only 16 acid throwers were sentenced to transportation, the first being a man convicted at the Old Bailey in 1722. Richard Foreman was a farrier whose motive and relationship to the male victim are unknown. He cheated the colonies by committing suicide in prison shortly after his trial, at which he had entered a guilty plea and been sentenced to seven years under the statute of 1719, which had only recently come into force.23 Other sentences of seven years were also related to this statute, which applied when victims were attacked in the street. The longer sentences listed in Table 4.2 were used mainly in the 1820s and 1830s (14 years) or 1840s and 1850s (15 years). The Criminal Law (Scotland) Act of 1830 ended the use by Scottish courts of transportation as a punishment,24 but it continued in England until the 1860s. John Smith, a Yorkshireman, was sentenced to 15 years’ penal servitude in 1858 but was actually sent to Western Australia late in 1860,25 becoming the last acid thrower to be deported. He had blinded his ex-fiancée by throwing the contents of a bottle of vitriol in her face when she opened the door, in an act of revenge sparked by the return of a watch that he had given her.26 All but one of the prison sentences of three years or more date from 1950 or later, reflecting the shift from penal servitude to imprisonment. However, one Scottish woman was sentenced to life in 1829. Ann Sparrow poured sulphuric acid over one of her three children whilst in a depression so deep that she was suicidal, and numerous witnesses testified to her ongoing derangement. She was convicted, but the Court recognised that she should not be punished. Instead, the judge ordered her confinement “in the Jail of this City during life, on account of her insanity, subject to

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the future orders of the High Court of Justiciary.”27 There she remained for a year, until a petition to release her into the custody of relatives was granted on 9 September 1830.28 Table 4.3 shows that most of the acid throwers convicted in Scotland received much shorter sentences, despite the existence of the capital statute and the flexibility of the sentencing options available for common assault. Some insight into the judicial thought process is revealed by the trial of Christina Gordon in 1905. She had attacked the long-term lover of her estranged husband with nitric acid, destroying the woman’s eyesight, but her defence lawyer argued Gordon was goaded to madness by the conduct of her husband and the victim. However, the judge pointed out that under the statute of 1829, the crime was punishable by death,29 and that in relation to “its character and consequences, he could not pronounce a sentence of imprisonment. The sentence would be five years’ penal servitude.”30 Gordon had pleaded guilty to assault at common law, for which the penalty was penal servitude or imprisonment,31 and given the fact that her crime was aggravated by the extent of the victim’s injury, it is no surprise that she was sentenced to penal servitude. Her confession to a detective, “Yes I did throw the acid at her, and I’ll do it again: the next time I get hold of her I’ll take her life,”32 was possibly another aggravation, as was the fact that she had chatted with the victim for hours before throwing the acid. The typical sentence for even the most shocking cases of acid throwing committed by both men and women in Scotland was five years’ penal servitude. This was the shortest sentence allowed by the Penal Servitude Act of 1864,33 and although the minimum term was reduced to three years in 1891, Scottish judges evidently accepted five years as the standard, though lengthier tariffs could in theory have been imposed. Indeed, the only occasion in Scotland on which a longer sentence was passed occurred in 1935. Alphonsus O’Keeney was a married ex-soldier who threw acid after flying into a “flaming rage” when a woman refused his advances.34 One of her eyes had to be removed and two other people were also injured. He was charged under the capital statute, but the advocate depute opened the prosecution by asking the judge “to restrict the pains of law to an arbitrary punishment,” a sentence based on the judge’s discretion.35 Despite O’Keeney’s guilty plea and apparent contrition, the judge sentenced him to ten years’ penal servitude, noting that this was a terrible crime that no civilised community could tolerate.36 In comparison to the Scottish laws against acid throwing, the law in England was relatively weak until 1861, and only seven convicted acid

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throwers were transported under the 1837 Offences Against the Person Act. However, as incarceration began to replace transportation in the 1850s, judges began to impose longer sentences, as in the case of John Hall and Alfred Doherty in 1857. The earliest example of this is Ebenezer Allen, who pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four years’ penal servitude at the Old Bailey in 1853.37 Although the victim, a parish officer, was not seriously injured, his clothes had been destroyed. However, in passing sentence the judge described Allen’s crime as “a very bad offence,” and decided that, “it was highly necessary for the sake of example, that such an act should receive severe punishment.”38 The sentence he imposed was the minimum permitted by the Penal Servitude Act 1853, a tariff that was lowered to three years in 1857.39 But two female acid throwers received longer sentences of penal servitude, eight and four years respectively,40 until late in 1861 Ellen Smith became one of the first to be sentenced under the revivified Offences Against the Person Act. She received the minimum three years of penal servitude authorised by that statute, having faced three charges of throwing acid: with intent to maim and disable, disfigure, and do some grievous bodily harm.41 She pleaded guilty to the third count, demonstrating how the new statute inaugurated an increased range of options for prosecuting acid throwers, and also for sentencing them. Despite the restrictions imposed by the various Penal Servitude Acts, English judges had some flexibility, and arguably more than Scottish judges, because of the specific terms of section 29 of the Offences Against the Person Act. As a result, they tended to use a variety of lengthy periods of penal servitude for the worst offenders, with terms of five, seven, ten, 15 and 20 years imposed. Prisoners could plead guilty to one or more of the charges against them, or a jury decided which of multiple charges to uphold; but sentencing reflected the judge’s opinion about the seriousness of each crime and the circumstances in which it had taken place. This combination of factors meant that longer sentences might be used in cases where the victim was not blinded, or shorter sentences of five or seven years even when a victim was blind. The trial of Ellen Bevan, below, provides an example of how a case was resolved in court. Defendants had to be careful at sentencing, as judges were not above yielding to exasperation and imposing a harsher sentence than originally intended. This could happen when a perpetrator failed to behave in a suitably contrite manner, or maintained an unseemly defiance of the court. The best, though by no means the only, example of this, occurred in 1909

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at the Kent assizes, when Kathleen Burt pleaded guilty to throwing vitriol over her husband. Her flippant bravado cost her at least one year of freedom: She said she had asked her husband to support her, but he refused, and turned her away without a bed to lie upon. The Judge said whatever troubles she had nothing would justify the prisoner in throwing vitriol on her husband. It might have blinded him. Prisoner (in low tone)—Pity it didn’t. His Lordship—Did I hear rightly? What did she say? One of the Senior Counsel—Pity it didn’t. His Lordship (to prisoner)—Then I have no hesitation in passing a severer sentence upon you than I at first intended. It will be penal servitude for three years.42

Table 4.2 shows that sentencing was even-handed with regard to men and women, though more women served prison sentences of six to twelve months. But the only acid throwers sent to penal servitude for life were two men, tried at the Manchester summer assizes thirteen years apart. John Stanney, a labourer, was only 22 when he poured acid over his new wife in 1875, grimly remarking that anyone who had her “should have her a cripple and blind.”43 His lack of remorse, and attempts at self-­justification amounting to victim-blaming, were deeply unpleasant, and the jury found him guilty of throwing acid with intent to burn, disable, and do grievous bodily harm. He already had a felony conviction for embezzlement and so faced at least seven years, but the judge was clearly moved by the young woman’s disfigurement, and sentenced Stanney to life.44 The other man sentenced to life was an even worse offender: John Mills assaulted not one but two wives with acid. In 1877, with a conviction for theft on his record, he was sentenced to ten years for throwing acid with intent to burn his wife, Ellen, who lost the sight of her right eye. He may have been surprised by this sentence, for after he threw the acid he was heard to exclaim “Good-bye for seven years.”45 Mills served his ten-year sentence and was released from prison on 14 January 1888, aged 46. Within ten days, he had entered into a bigamous marriage with Alice Green, and on 28 March 1888, he threw vitriol over the left side of her face, two days after she discovered he already had a wife and told him she was leaving.46 At his trial in June, Mills was found guilty of throwing acid with intent to do grievous bodily harm, and then made a strange request: he asked for leniency because he had just come out of penal servitude! Mr Justice Grantham took a contrary view: “The least sentence I can pass upon you, is one that

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will prevent you repeating your offence upon any other poor woman who may be placed in your power. The sentence I pass upon you is that you be kept in penal servitude for the rest of your life.” One report of Mills’ trial noted that this sentence was well-deserved.47 The last acid thrower sent to penal servitude was a 41-year-old ex-boxer turned soldier: William Joseph Sullivan was convicted of assaulting his estranged wife at Llanelly, Wales, in 1942, as a result of which she lost an eye. His motive was her alleged unfaithfulness, and he obtained the unspecified corrosive acid from his former place of employment, a tin-­ plate works. Sullivan’s barrister proposed that he should “not be judged in entirely the same way as a normal person” because of the medical effects of his long boxing career, but the judge thought the victim’s injuries were terrible and so the sentence must be severe. Sullivan was sentenced to 14 years.48

Case Study: Ellen Bevan, 1885 In sentencing Ellen Bevan, 36, to seven years’ penal servitude for throwing vitriol over an alleged love rival, the judge noted the offence was, short of murder, “one of the most dastardly and inhuman.”49 It was July 1885 and not only had Bevan completely blinded and permanently scarred her victim, but she had herself nearly lost an eye when some of the acid splashed into her face as the victim’s 13-year-old daughter attempted to defend her mother with an umbrella. There was never any doubt about Bevan’s culpability: in police court, apparently hysterical with jealousy, pain, and anger, she screamed out “She is blind. Thank God He has given me my sight; I can see with this eye, and he will give me my sight.”50 Several witnesses testified to the fact that Bevan had followed her quarry, Mrs Jane Strother, from Liverpool to Birmingham and then to Dudley in Worcestershire; and Bevan readily admitted purchasing vitriol and contemplating the offence for three weeks before the attack, which took place on a street in Dudley in full view of onlookers. Following these sensational revelations, The Illustrated Police News published an image depicting the brutal assault,51 reproduced in Fig. 4.1. At her trial, Bevan pleaded guilty, while her accomplice, Mary Ann Lee, 28, was tried, convicted, and sentenced to 15 months’ hard labour for “counselling and procuring Bevan to commit the offence.” In many ways, this case was entirely typical of Victorian acid throwing, although accomplices were relatively rare. Bevan was motivated by jealousy, convinced that

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Fig. 4.1  The Dudley Vitriol Throwing Case, 1885. Source: The Illustrated Police News, 20 June 1885, p. 1

the recently widowed Mrs Strother was having an affair with her husband; she planned the attack carefully; she chose to use vitriol; she threw it straight at her victim’s head and face; and she was herself injured by the acid.

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As is typical in modern criminal justice history, it is fairly straightforward to use the records created by the Home Office to trace accused criminals and convicts. In this case, the records reveal that Ellen Bevan had three previous convictions when she was sent to prison in the summer of 1885, and that she was released on licence from the Fulham Refuge on 20 May 1890.52 She remained in the South of England and was once again before the courts in October 1895, when she was sentenced to 18 months in Wormwood Scrubs for a larceny at St Albans. She was released on 14 April 1897, recorded as working as a nurse in London.53 These entries clearly relate to the same woman: she had blue eyes, dark brown hair, a round face, and was only 4 feet 9½ inches tall. More importantly, she had been marked by her crime. The 1890 register records “Burn scars left face, scar forehead, right eyebrow, corner right eye and left forearm, J. on right forearm,” while the 1897 volume states “sc lt face, rt of forehead, rt eyebrow, corner rt eye, lt cheek and lt hand; J. rt forearm.”54 While the tattoo on her right arm might have been acquired in prison, the burns were sustained on the day she threw vitriol over Jane Strother. As a result of their injuries—“both women are fearfully burnt”55— Bevan and Strother spent weeks in hospital: the crime occurred on 29 April 1885 but the committal proceedings were not concluded until early June. Bevan was able to come to court on 1 June, wearing “a large green shade over her eyes, and her face from the forehead to the lips showed traces of the terrible burning received.”56 She was still wearing the green shade a week later, when Strother was at last well enough to attend the police court. Bevan had narrowly avoided blindness, but Strother was far less fortunate. A doctor testified that, “for some time Mrs Strother was in great peril of her life, and her eyesight was totally destroyed,”57 the victim stating that “She was blind, one eye being sloughed away, and the other gone.”58 This report provided more details of the doctor’s evidence: Dr Warden, physician, was called, and stated that Mrs Strother came to him suffering from the effects of corrosive fluid flung upon her face, head, and neck. The right eye was the worst, and destruction was going on. … The effect on Mrs Strother was to produce ulcers on the head, severe burns on the neck producing an abscess. She would be disfigured for life. The right eye had perished, and the left eye was so injured that the woman would be perfectly blind.59

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Given the extreme and permanent impact of the attack on Mrs Strother, and the judge’s recognition of the gravity of the crime—“If a woman rightly or wrongly was jealous of her husband it was no justification for such an offence”60—it seems astonishing that Bevan was sentenced to a mere seven years. But in comparison to other acid throwers whom we have encountered in this chapter, this punishment was not particularly unusual. The statistics produced in Table  4.2 suggest that her gender may have been a factor in the court’s decision: very few women were sentenced to more than seven years’ penal servitude, the minimum term for those with a previous felony conviction. But Bevan’s injuries and the element of provocation help to explain why she did not get a longer sentence, as John Stanney and John Mills had in the 1870s. Jealousy was often seen to explain, if not to excuse acid throwing,61 and it seems likely that Strother was engaged in some intimacy with Mr Bevan.62

Provocation as a Mitigatory Defence English common law acknowledged provocation as an excuse for crime, but focused particularly on its role in reducing murder to manslaughter. Its impact in sparking other forms of violence was not a concern of legal textbooks in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, though it seems likely that defendants could expect a claim of provocation to “weigh with the Court in apportioning the punishment.”63 Krista Kesselring has identified a growing acceptance, by nineteenth-century judges and juries, that provocation offered a partial defence to husbands who killed their unfaithful wives or male rivals;64 and by the middle of the next century, loss of self-control due to provocation could be considered in passing any sentence except those fixed by law.65 Scots law was more specific as to the role of provocation in assault: it had to be recent and proportional; spoken or written words did not justify assault but might mitigate the punishment.66 In an allied argument, Judith Knelman finds that by the end of the nineteenth century, accused murderesses could be viewed with compassion when they presented themselves as “more sinned against than sinning.”67 Essentially, provocation can lead to an emotional reaction powerful enough to overcome one’s self-control. In law, this is a question of fact that juries decide, according to the standards of a reasonable person.68 Jealousy can be a contributing factor: the Victorians understood it to arise as a result of violated or unrequited love, or from the fear of losing a partner to another. Despite its association with mental instability, however,

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Jade Shepherd discovered that “in late-Victorian Britain insane jealousy and provocation (particularly infidelity) were rarely accepted as a defence” in murder trials.69 The same might be said of trials for acid throwing. Between 1840 and 1971, 43 women and 15 men claimed to have acted as a result of provocation, or they were explicitly recommended to mercy by a jury on such grounds. Of these individuals, two women and a man were acquitted, and the case against two other women was dismissed before trial. One incident in 1847 involved nothing worse than a damaged handkerchief, and a victim was not badly harmed in 1867; but two others were facially disfigured, in 1841 and 1910; and we have already encountered Emilie Foucault, who blinded her former lover in 1906. Her case represents the extreme end of this small sample. However, four years later another Old Bailey jury adopted a similarly sympathetic attitude: after hearing how Marie Young had been disgraced and deserted by a man, and had only intended to damage his clothes when she saw him with another woman, she was acquitted to general applause.70 She had done the deed, but was excused on the grounds that she lacked moral culpability. Foucault and Young may have been identified by male jurors as ‘more sinned against than sinning,’ but the fact remains that most of the acid throwers who claimed provocation were convicted. Their fate then lay in the hands of the presiding judge. Did the sentences imposed on these defendants acknowledge provocation as a mitigating factor? If so, did this suggest that the court accepted the defendants’ actions as bearing a reduced level of culpability? To some extent, it does: only eight of these defendants were sentenced to three or more years in prison. This 15 per cent is a much smaller proportion than the 39 per cent of all convicted acid throwers who were sentenced to a similar period of incarceration. Those who claimed to have been provoked received on average a shorter sentence than those who did not; and this was not solely because their victims were not severely injured, for some had been permanently scarred or suffered damage to their eyesight. Twelve of those convicted served no time at all. Some benefited from changes in sentencing policy, such as the introduction of probation; others were bound over to keep the peace or offered the chance to pay a fine instead of going to prison. An American woman, the estranged wife of a London solicitor, was simply released on the proviso that she return immediately to New York.71 Table 3.2 shows that the majority of those who claimed they had been provoked did so in relation to the breakdown of an intimate relationship.72

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All but four of these defendants were female, and the outlines of their stories did not change much over time. Biddy Keiley was sentenced to 18 months’ hard labour in 1849 for blinding her soldier husband in one eye after he repudiated her and refused to pay for their two children. There was no doubt she had planned the crime, as she had specifically asked a chemist if the acid would burn the skin. But a jury at the Northamptonshire summer assizes recommended her to mercy, as she “had been much ill-­ used by the prosecutor, and at the time was in a very excited state.”73 In 1915, George Jeans received an identical sentence after he attacked his common law wife on the doorstep of a friend’s house, blinding her in one eye. Despite twenty years and ten children together, she had taken up with another man, and Jeans wanted to persuade her to come home. In a novel defence, his barrister claimed that Jeans had bought nitric acid to remove corns, but had then used it to create an incantation to bring her back to him: Many miners, like sailors, were superstitious. In order to bring success to his effort at reconciliation on this evening he had bought a bottle of aqua fortis and dropped some red hot pins into it, at the same time repeating this incantation: ‘It isn’t the stuff I want to burn. But it’s your heart I want to turn.’ With the bottle in his hand, he went to the house and saw his wife through the window. When the other women told him she was not there he became angry, and threw the fluid at the window. Mrs. Walton [the victim] made a grab at his neck, and he struck at her, the bottle, which he thought was empty, being still in his hand. The jury found prisoner guilty, and expressed the opinion that he acted under great provocation.74

The judge’s response to this is recorded in the epigraph at the start of this chapter. The crime may not have been defensible on the grounds of provocation, and yet it looks very much as though that was why Jeans was not sent to penal servitude. The mental distress he suffered had overcome his self-control, thereby reducing the criminal intent inherent in his act. By contrast, five men claimed they had been provoked by jealousy, compared to only three women (including Marie Young). Of these eight defendants, two of the men received sentences of five years, but all the others received considerably shorter sentences of from three to 18 months. It is clear that the element of provocation was considered by the various judges, even in the cases where a longer sentence was imposed. A Dundee blacksmith named Peter Anderson poured sulphuric acid over his wife of nineteen years, Jessie, the mother of his seven children, after she took to

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drinking, working as an occasional prostitute, and then began an affair with another man. This situation had continued for four years, was well known to the entire neighbourhood, and Anderson had repeatedly forgiven her to no avail. Two of their teenage children recounted the sad life he led. Jessie herself admitted the cause of the attack: “I believe that jealousy was the cause of him doing this to me, and I admit I have given him some cause, though I have not been unfaithful to him lately.” Anderson confessed at once: “Moved by jealousy, and wishing to stop her in her bad career I last night bought some vitriol … meaning to throw it over her, and I accordingly threw some of it over her face this morning. She was sitting up in bed at the time I did this.”75 The fact that Jessie Anderson had lost an ear and been rendered totally blind was not even mentioned in the judge’s statement in sentencing: Lord Jerviswoode said the Court was desirous to give weight to everything that had been stated on behalf of Anderson. … They had a duty to perform which they must discharge, however painful; and Lord Neaves and himself, after fully considering the case and giving all weight to what had been so well said on Anderson’s behalf, could not pronounce a sentence short of one of penal servitude, but they would make it the shortest period—viz., five years.76

However, the grave nature of her injuries was part of the discussion raised when Anderson applied for a remission of his sentence in July 1874. In a letter that lacks both addressee and signature, it is clear that a legal official in the Crown Office, Scotland’s public prosecution service, was responding to a request for information made by civil servants at the Home Office. I have considered this case very anxiously. I find all that is stated in the application as to the character of the prisoner, and the provocation he received from the infidelity and intemperance of his wife is entirely true. He pleaded guilty to the charge, and therefore the judges saw nothing but what appears in the Indictment. … There is no doubt the effects of the outrage have been dreadful; and it seems to have been perpetrated deliberately, whatever the provocation may have been. The only suggestion which can be made in mitigation of the [?] nature of the act is that the prisoner probably did not expect effects so violent to ensue. … I cannot recommend any remission at present. If the prisoner should apply when half the sentence has been under-

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gone … benefit both to his wife and his family as well as his own good and character might then avail for his release.77

This is exactly what happened: records of the Prison Commission show that Anderson was released on licence on 6 April 1875,78 exactly two and a half years after his trial. Other prisoners who had not claimed provocation in court later used it as an argument for seeking early release. Mary Morrison did this in 1884, one year into her five-year sentence for assaulting her husband. Her petition to the Home Office claimed her sentence should be mitigated because of the provocation she received by his infidelity, brutality, prodigality and desertion, as well as her own blameless life and the fact that his injury was not serious. It was rejected, as was the one she submitted a year later, which stressed his lack of injury and brutal treatment of her. Morrison was finally released from the Fulham Female Convict Prison in August 1886, but only to serve the last nine months of her sentence in the East End House Refuge.79 This may have entailed a more rehabilitative regime, but clearly, Morrison’s claim of provocation was not accepted. The small group that received the shortest sentences of all were the seven defendants who claimed to have reacted to provocation in an outburst of sudden rage. Of the two men and five women, Ann Beaton and Emilie Foucault included, two were acquitted and none served more than six months. In a rare instance of corrosive fluid assault in Wales, in 1928 Ernest Doughty, 58, “pleaded guilty under great provocation, alleged that people continually teased and pestered him, and said he threw the liquid, which he did not consider harmful, to frighten but not to injure them.”80 He threw ammonia over four children and damaged one boy’s sight, but was sentenced to six months. The facts may have stretched the credulity of the court, but sympathy often prevailed: provocation could be a powerful defence. However, it was a defence limited mainly to the period between 1840 and 1935: only three defendants, all of whom pleaded guilty, gave this excuse in later years (1963, 1968, and 1971). They were all placed on probation.

Medicalised Responses to Acid Throwers Until the Second World War, convicted acid throwers could expect to be imprisoned; but following the war, a more overtly medical response to the problems that prompted many of these offenders to their crimes

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developed. After penal servitude and hard labour were abolished, the majority of offences commonly tried on indictment were punishable with imprisonment for two, five, seven, ten or fourteen years, or life.81 For acid throwing, the terms of the 1861 Act meant that upon conviction, the sentence would be one of imprisonment for a period not exceeding the maximum term of penal servitude, which was life. Of the 22 prison sentences imposed between 1949 and 1978, only seven were for terms under two years, whereas 16 were for three or more years, including terms of three, four, five, eight and ten years. Table 4.4 lists these sentences in relation to the substance used and injury inflicted on the victim. Other acid throwers convicted during this period were sentenced to probation (seven cases between 1942 and 1971), and a significant number were found to be suffering from mental health problems. From 1940, when Nellie Keylock was certified as insane during the course of her trial at the Old Bailey,82 until 1974, when Robert Davison was sent to the Cane Hill Hospital in Surrey under the Mental Health Act of 1959, with a solicitor’s bill noting that “this defendant was a very difficult client and as mad as a hatter,”83 ten defendants were ordered to receive psychiatric treatment. Two were people against whom no allegation of insanity was made in respect of their alleged offence, but the judges at their trials decided they must be in need of medical care. In February 1948, the assistant matron of the Royal Earlswood Institution, Miss Kathlyn Seaby, 47, was accused of throwing ammonia at a teacher, Margaret Walker, following a campaign of harassment alleged to have begun soon after Walker joined the hospital staff in January. Seaby had already been there for five years without any difficulties, no one saw the alleged incident, and she categorically denied wrongdoing of any kind. Despite a spirited defence by her barrister, experiments made by a retired police officer that showed Seaby could not have thrown any liquid as the victim had described, and a titled character witness, she was convicted. The judge was most definitely not convinced by her denials: Addressing Seaby, Mr Justice Oliver said ‘You have been convicted of [a] dreadful offence; I know you say you are innocent, but I don’t think anyone who heard the evidence could doubt that is wrong, or that you are guilty. That means that you have done this desperate thing  — put some sort of fluid into this unfortunate woman’s eye. I am quite sure there is something wrong with you. You are willing, I understand, to go to a mental institution where you will be taken care of as a voluntary patient. If not, I shall have to send you to prison.’84

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Table 4.4  Length of custodial sentences in relation to substance used and injury caused, 1949–1978 Year

Prison sentence

Injury to victim

Substance

Male/ Femalea

12 m, reduced on appeal 1950 Pleaded guilty, 4 y 1952 3 y 1953* Pleaded guilty, 3 y

One eye slightly affected

Ammonia

F

Permanent scar on one cheek Eye injury, severe facial burn Minor to lower lip

M M M

1955* 9 m 1956* 3 y

Clothing Not permanent

1956* Pleaded guilty, 5 y

Superficial burns

1958

Not permanent or serious

Sulphuric acid Vitriol Hydrochloric acid Sulphuric acid Hydrochloric acid Hydrochloric acid Irritant disinfectant Hydrochloric acid Hydrochloric acid Ammonia Vitriol Corrosive fluid Nitric acid Nitric acid

1949

Pleaded guilty, 6 m

1961* 30 m

Not permanent

1964* 18 m

Facial scars, eyes weakened

1965 1967 1967 1967* 1967*

8y 5y 5y Pleaded guilty, 10 y Pleaded guilty, 8 y

Not serious Back of neck, leg Unspecified Blind in one eye 20% of body burned; damage to eyes; skin grafts 1968* 18 m suspended 3 y No permanent damage to eyes Cresylic acid 1968* 4 y Burns on face, arms, chest, feet Sulphuric acid 1969* 9 m No visible burns Hydrochloric acid 1969 Pleaded guilty, 5 y Face, corneas, neck; skin grafts Vitriol 1974 Pleaded guilty, 2 y Unspecified Hydrochloric acid 1977 3 m suspended 2 y Clothing (uniform) destroyed Paint remover 1978 3 y Blind in one eye; corneal graft; Caustic soda plastic surgery Sentences are in months (m) and years (y). * denotes an immigrant Source: As for Table 2.1  Perpetrator’s gender

a

M M M F M M M M M M M M M M M M M F

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Seaby proved to be a remarkable character. She spent a year in a mental hospital, emerged feeling emotionally strong, and got a new job. And then she was vindicated. In 1950, “new evidence” that showed she was completely innocent emerged. The nature of this evidence was not revealed, but it can only be that Walker—the main witness against her—had told a tissue of lies. The Home Office granted a pardon and paid Seaby £400, but would not admit liability.85 Kathlyn Seaby’s fate was evidence of a growing medicalisation of the criminal justice system. The fact that allegations of insanity, and the use of hospital orders, were more common after 1900 than before is not altogether surprising. Historians of forensic psychiatry, particularly Joel Eigen, have shown that by the 1880s, significant numbers of medical witnesses were appearing in trials where an insanity plea was made.86 Standing orders issued in 1900 and 1902 required prison medical officers to provide pre-­ trial reports on all prisoners of doubtful sanity. Furthermore, the Mental Treatment Act of 1930 created new categories of voluntary and temporary admission to a mental hospital, giving judges a new sentencing option, as in the case of Miss Seaby. Its successor Act of 1959 made provisions for the compulsory admission or guardianship of patients convicted of criminal offences. However, not every claim of mental illness was accepted by the courts. Table  3.2 notes a total of 19 individuals whose crime was presented in court as the possible result of mental impairment: the group includes Ann Sparrow (1829), but the rest of the cases occurred in the period 1897–1974. Eight culprits were convicted and sent to prison, ten were sent to a hospital, and one was released on probation. Two processes appear to have been at work. The criminal justice system was becoming more open to claims of mental ill health, and thus offered more channels for assessing and dealing with such individuals. At the same time, provocation was recast as a form of temporary insanity: perpetrators claimed they had been driven mad by worry or bad treatment at the hands of the victim. However, these assertions failed to convince when unsupported by a psychiatrist. And, as was common in the nineteenth century, prison medical officers often did not accept mental illness that a defence-­ appointed psychiatrist claimed existed,87 so the court had to balance differing opinions. In the case of Locksley Kerr, a West Indian immigrant charged with throwing sulphuric acid over four people in 1968, the fact that he had also deliberately burned his own face was one indicator of inner turmoil.

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The victims included: “1) another W Indian who he thought was going out with his girl; 2) his girl, after tying her up, for going out with another man; 3) a W Indian woman for not paying her rent to him; 4) the ex-­ manager of a loan club who seems to have owed him money from the club; (then he actually burns his own face).”88 Kerr’s selection of victims was related to the nature of his personal problems: he was being divorced by his wife in Jamaica and expected to marry his girlfriend, and so needed money to provide for her; but she was planning to leave him. Following extensive interviews with Kerr, the MO at HMP Brixton, Dr G. R. Grant, denied that he exhibited any evidence of mental illness: In discussing the offence with him it appears that it was the culmination of about three years of frustration and provocation due to his common-law wife’s infidelity. … His description of his feelings and actions on the day of the offence does not suggest that he was at the time suffering from a psychotic illness however temporary. He appears to have lost his self-control and having committed the offence and realising what he had done, he decided that he himself should be punished similarly. He accordingly threw some of the acid on himself as well.89

However, consultant psychiatrist Dr U. B. H. Baruch sent Kerr for a battery of neurological tests, before interviewing him for over two hours. He determined that at the time of the offence, Kerr had suffered both physical and emotional illness that “lessened his self control and probably contributed to a state of temporary insanity.”90 Another psychiatrist supported this conclusion,91 and Kerr was sentenced to two years in hospital. Locksley Kerr was one of twenty acid throwers who were identified as immigrants to the British Isles. Eight came from France and Germany in the second half of the nineteenth century, three women and five men. The rest arrived mainly from Jamaica after the Second World War, including the only woman; but there were also men from Poland, Malta, and Ukraine. At least nine perpetrators were identified as Irish, but only two of these cases occurred after the war, both in the late 1960s. Both Reginald Everest and Michael McNamara were discussed in Chap. 3: there was no apparent bias against either when their cases were decided in court. However, although collectively this is a very small group, it is possible to detect a disproportionate use of imprisonment, as recorded in Table 4.4. Although the long sentence imposed on Winston Black, who received ten

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years for blinding his ex-fiancée in one eye with acid bought from a chemist,92 was clearly related to the seriousness of the victim’s injuries, three other possibilities arise. First, immigrant men tended to work in occupations where corrosive fluids were more easily accessible, and thus were able to cause more significant injury. Or, immigrant men were dealt with more harshly by judges, perhaps because psychiatrists were less inclined to support an insanity plea. Finally, at least eight of the immigrants tried after the war had previous convictions. Some combination of any or all of these possibilities may account for the fact that fully half of those sentenced to prison after World War Two were newcomers to Britain. While the news reports and case files reveal no overt discussions about race or nationality, this issue is one that requires future investigation, not least because Hopkins et  al. found that in contemporary cases of acid throwing in London, those of non-white ethnicity form a larger proportion of both victim and offender groups.93 However, this chapter has shown that, working within the framework created by statute law, the judicial response to acid crime changed comparatively little over the course of the period under study. It remained a relatively rare crime, numbering in the dozens rather than hundreds of incidents tried by the courts each decade. But, while newspaper headlines attested to its continuing power to shock, juries remained willing to make recommendations to mercy on the grounds of provocation. Judges were not unmoved by the physical impact of a strong corrosive fluid on a victim, and in sentencing offenders to prison or a hospital, judges continued to refer to acid assault as a dreadful crime. It was predictably those who had inflicted the worst injuries who received the longest sentences. When Mr Justice Lawton sentenced Reginald Everest to eight years in 1968, his words echoed those of his predecessors on the bench: “This is the most terrible case of its kind I have ever met.”94

Notes 1. NRS JC26/1899/9, List of Sentences in cases of Vitriol Throwing from 1858 to 1899. 2. The Act was unchanged until 1991, since when eight clusters of amendments have been made. Section 29 which covers throwing any corrosive fluid, remains as it was first enacted in 1861. For a timeline of changes made to the Act, see https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/ Vict/24-­25/100.

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3. Paul T.  Riggs, “Prosecutors, Juries, Judges and Punishment in Early Nineteenth-Century Scotland,” Journal of Scottish Historical Studies 32 (2012), 181–182. 4. A.  M. Anderson, The Criminal Law of Scotland (Edinburgh: Bell & Bradfute, 1892), 78–81, 257–258. 5. NRS JC26/1899/9, High Court of Justiciary May 1899, Trial papers v. John Robertson; NRS AD14/99/2, 1899, High Court Edinburgh, Precognition against John Robertson, Con[travention] of 10 Geo IV c.38 s.3, vitriol throwing. 6. Philip A. Thomas, “Plea Bargaining in England,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 69 (1978), 170–178. 7. NRS AD14/99/2, Opinion of The Lord Justice Clerk re John Robertson (throwing vitriol), 12 May 1899. 8. Penal Servitude Act 1853, 16 & 17 Vict c.99 (An Act to substitute, in certain Cases, other Punishment in lieu of Transportation). 9. Victor Bailey, “English Prisons, Penal Culture, and the Abatement of Imprisonment, 1895–1922,” Journal of British Studies 36 (1997), 285–287. 10. John Warder and Reg Wilson, “The British Borstal Training System,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 64 (1973), 118–119. 11. Liverpool Mercury, 14 Dec 1857, 3. 12. The Tablet, 6 Sep 1890, 20; Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 20 Dec 1890, 20. 13. Ancestry.co.uk: Ireland, Prison Registers, 1790–1924, County Laois (Queen’s), Maryborough 1892–1924 (1881–1907), 25; TNA, Registers of Habitual Criminals and Police Gazettes, 1834–1934, MEPO 6/21, Habitual Criminals Register 1910, 459. 14. Anderson, Criminal Law of Scotland, 23–26. 15. 7 Edw VII c.17. 16. 7 & 8 Eliz II c.72, Part 5. 17. TNA HO 17/12/6, Home Office, Criminal Petitions from Scotland, Hugh McMillan and Euphemia Lawson or Euphemia McMillan. 18. CRA, Ephemia (sic) Lawson, https://convictrecords.com.au/convicts/ lawson/ephemia/110116. 19. Female Convicts Research Centre, Spring 2018 Seminar, Andrew Cocker, “Euphemia Lawson; Three generations of convict and orphans,” 2, https://femaleconvicts.org.au/fcrc-­s eminars/research-­s eminars/61-­ seminar-­programmes/259-­a-­great-­blessing-­convict-­women-­and-­orphan-­ school-­children (accessed 7 Dec 2022). 20. NRS AD14/33/324, Glasgow Winter Circuit 1833, Precognition against Hugh Kennedy (10 Geo IV c.38), Letter from George Salmond (procura-

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tor fiscal) to William Rose Robinson (sheriff), 24 Aug 1833 and Letter from Robinson to Salmond, 27 Aug 1833. 21. London Courier and Evening Gazette, 10 Jan 1834, 3; NRS AD14/33/324, depositions of Dr John Aitken, 9 Aug and 27 Sep 1833, and George Penfold, chemist and druggist, 2 Aug 1833. 22. Sligo Journal, 8 Apr 1836, 4; Sligo Journal, 13 May 1836, 2. I can find no record of either man in CRA. 23. OBP, trial of William Foreman, ref. t17220510-10; Stamford Mercury, 7 Jun 1722, 9. This is the earliest case of acid throwing identified for this book. 24. 11 Geo IV and 1 Will IV c.37 s.10. 25. CRA, John Smith, https://convictrecords.com.au/convicts/smith/ john/46452. He was transported under the Penal Servitude Act 1857, s.3. 26. Hull Packet, 26 Feb 1858, 5; Leeds Mercury, 27 Feb 1858, 4; Yorkshire Gazette, 17 Jul 1858, 4; Nottingham Journal, 30 Jul 1858, 3. 27. Edinburgh Evening Courant, 24 Sep 1829, 3; NRS AD14/29/361, Glasgow autumn 1829, Precognitions v. Ann Sparrow for the crime of administering vitriol at Hamilton. 28. NRS JC13/68, West Circuit Minute Book 7 Apr 1830–13 Sep 1830, 81v. 29. Cheltenham Chronicle, 4 Mar 1905, 6. 30. Stonehaven Journal, 9 Mar 1905, 4. 31. Anderson, Criminal Law of Scotland, 81. 32. NRS AD15/1905/57, Precognition against Christina Gordon for the crime of contravention of Geo IV c.38 s.3 at 283 Bilsland Drive, Maryhill, Glasgow, deposition of Donald Graham, 21 Nov 1904. 33. 27 & 28 Vict c.47 s.2. This statute raised the minimum sentence to five years from three. A higher minimum of seven years applied in Scotland if the convict had a previous conviction for any crime, and in England, when they had a previous conviction for felony. For the penalty structures of the legislation of 1861 and 1864, see D.  A. Thomas, The Penal Equation: Derivations of the Penalty Structure of English Criminal Law (Cambridge: University of Cambridge, Institute of Criminology, 1978), 42–45. 34. The Scotsman, 21 Mar 1935, 15. 35. Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 20 Mar 1935, 7. 36. The Scotsman, 21 Mar 1935, 15. 37. OBP, trial of Ebenezer Allen, ref. t18530919-993. He was sentenced according to the tariffs set out in the Penal Servitude Act 1853, s.4. 38. Weekly Chronicle (London), 24 Sep 1853, 27. 39. Penal Servitude Act 1857, 20 & 21 Vict c.3 s.2. 40. OBP, trial of Mary Allen, ref. t18590404-407; Lancaster Guardian, 17 Mar 1860, 6 (Bridget Mooney). 41. OBP, trial of Ellen Smith, ref. t18611125-45.

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42. Northern Whig, 20 Nov 1909, 12. Her husband divorced her in 1914: Kent & Sussex Courier, 4 Dec 1914, 8. One year was the difference between the maximum prison sentence and minimum term of penal servitude under s.29 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. 43. Western Times, 2 Aug 1875, 3. 44. Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 31 Jul 1875, 11; Ancestry.co.uk: TNA, Home Office Calendar of Prisoners, Hampshire-Lincolnshire 1875, HO 140/30, p. 473 of 879. 45. Dundee Evening Telegraph, 15 Jan 1878, 2; East & South Devon Advertiser, 19 Jan 1878, 3. 46. Manchester Times, 16 Jun 1888, 3. 47. “A Well-Deserved Sentence,” Cardiff Times, 21 Jul 1888, 6. 48. Western Mail, 20 Nov 1942, 4. 49. The County Express, 25 Jul 1885, 8. 50. Eddowes’s Journal, and General Advertiser for Shropshire, and the Principality of Wales, 10 Jun 1885, 4. 51. “The Dudley Vitriol Throwing Case”, The Illustrated Police News, 20 Jun 1885, 1. The women’s clothing suggests a difference in class that newspaper reports do not mention. 52. FindMyPast.co.uk: TNA MEPO 6/2, Habitual Criminals Register 1889–1890, “All Persons Sentenced to Penal Servitude Who Have Been Liberated Between the 1st January and 31st December, 1890,” 16. 53. FindMyPast.co.uk: TNA MEPO 6/8, Convicts List 1897, office no. 1223 (n.p.). 54. Ibid. 55. The Cheltenham Mercury, 2 May 1885, 3. 56. Bradford Daily Telegraph, 2 Jun 1885, 4. 57. Wolverhampton Express and Star, 8 Jun 1885, 3. 58. Eddowes’s Journal, and General Advertiser for Shropshire, and the Principality of Wales, 10 Jun 1885, 4. 59. Ibid. 60. The County Express, 25 Jul 1885, 8. 61. Watson, “Love, Vengeance and Vitriol,” 111–112. 62. Wolverhampton Express and Star, 8 Jun 1885, 3. 63. Sir John Jervis, Archbold’s Pleading, Evidence & Practice in Criminal Cases, 26th ed., ed. Henry Delacombe Roome and Robert Ernest Ross (London: Sweet & Maxwell, Stevens & Sons, 1922), 1235. 64. Kesselring, “No Greater Provocation?,” 201. 65. John Hostettler, A History of Criminal Justice in England and Wales (Hook, Hampshire: Waterside Press, 2009), 268–269. The provocation could be by things said or done. 66. Anderson, Criminal Law of Scotland, 79.

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67. Judith Knelman, Twisting in the Wind: The Murderess and the English Press (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 236. 68. Jeremy Horder, Excusing Crime (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007), 172–178. 69. Jade Shepherd, “‘I am not very well I feel nearly mad when I think of you’: Male Jealousy, Murder and Broadmoor in Late-Victorian Britain,” Social History of Medicine 30 (2017), 287. 70. Irish News and Belfast Morning News, 22 Nov 1910, 7; London Daily News, 22 Nov 1910, 9; Gloucester Journal, 26 Nov 1910, 1. 71. OBP, trial of Jane Hannah Haynes, ref. t18601217-78; Weekly Chronicle (London), 12 Jan 1861, 6. 72. Table entries for dispute - domestic, provoked; dispute - family, provoked; revenge - love, provoked. 73. Oxford Journal, 21 Jul 1849, 4. 74. Mansfield Reporter, 5 Nov 1915, 6. 75. NRS JC26/1872/68, Dundee October Circuit 1872, Trial Papers v. Peter Anderson: declaration of Peter Anderson, 9 May 1872; depositions of Jessie Anderson and Elizabeth Anderson, 9 May 1872, and Hercules Anderson, 16 May 1872. 76. Dundee People’s Journal, 5 Oct 1872, 5. 77. NRS AD14/72/226, Dundee Autumn Circuit 1872, Precognitions v. Peter Anderson, Con[travention] 10 Geo IV c.38 s.3, Letter to Home Office re Peter Anderson, 6 Jul 1874. 78. Ancestry.co.uk: TNA PCOM2, Metropolitan Police, Criminal Record Office: Habitual Criminals Registers and Miscellaneous Papers, Woking Prison, Surrey: Register of Prisoners, p. 19 of 221. 79. TNA PCOM 4/65/24, Penal Record: Mary Morrison, convicted at Manchester Assizes 16 Jul 1883. 80. Western Mail, 14 Nov 1928, 4. 81. Thomas, The Penal Equation, 46. 82. TNA CRIM 1/1192, Rex v. Nellie Louisa Keylock, London, 1940; Chelsea News and General Advertiser, 7 Jun 1940, 3. 83. TNA J 267/416, Supreme Court of Judicature: Central Criminal Court Case Files, Robert George Millward Davison, 1974. 84. Surrey Mirror and County Post, 26 Mar 1948, 5. 85. The pardon was widely reported. See for example Yorkshire Observer [Bradford], 8 Mar 1950, 1; The Scotsman, 8 Mar 1950, 8. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that Walker was prosecuted for perjury. 86. Joel Peter Eigen, Mad-Doctors in the Dock: Defending the Diagnosis, 1760–1913 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2016), 68. 87. Ibid., 144. 88. TNA CRIM 1/4845, Regina v. Locksley Kerr, London, 1968: handwritten case summary, 19 Mar 1968.

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89. Ibid., Medical Reports by Dr G. R. Grant, 29 Feb 1968 and 25 Apr 1968 (for the quotation). 90. Ibid., Letter from Dr Baruch to Messrs Cooper and Co, 30 May 1968; 6 Sep 1968 (for the quotation). 91. Ibid., Medical Report by Dr Ian McDonald, 13 Sep 1968. 92. TNA ASSI 36/583, Regina v. Winston Keith Black, Essex, 1967; Daily Mirror, 4 Apr 1967, 2. 93. Hopkins, Neville and Sanders, Acid Crime, 59–62. 94. TNA J 82/1050, Court of Appeal, Criminal Division: Case Papers, Reginald K. Everest, 1968, trial transcript, 8 Feb 1968, p. 8.

CHAPTER 5

Conclusion

Abstract  The conclusion presents a summary of the main findings of the book. It highlights the origins of acid throwing as an eighteenth-century property crime, its development into a unique and rare form of interpersonal violence in the nineteenth century, the motivations of perpetrators, and, by extension, the reasons why the crime could sometimes be excused on the grounds of provocation. Its gradual suppression in the middle decades of the twentieth century provides a basis for understanding how and why it continues in a different form in the present day. This chapter also suggests directions for future research. Keywords  Assault • Corrosive substance crime • Gender Recounting the details of the actual throwing of the vitriol, which took place in the street, Mr Ellison said there was no doubt that it was a cold-blooded and deliberate act. The prisoner worked at premises where vitriol was used, and he must have known its deadly effects, but when he met the girl in the street he stepped towards her and threw the liquid over her face. ‘I am instructed,’ said Mr Ellison, ‘that the acid is now expected to attack the girl’s brain, and in that case she will die. She is at present suffering the most terrible agony, and it would have been more

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K. D. Watson, Acid Attacks in Britain, 1760–1975, World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27272-1_5

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merciful perhaps if she had been killed outright. She has lost the sight of both eyes completely, and her face will be permanently disfigured.’ —“Vitriol Throwing Outrage. Sheffield Youth’s Punishment. Vain Tears. Awful Crime: Girl’s Terrible Agony,” Sheffield Daily Independent, 5 May 1914, p. 5.

On a spring morning in 1914, a Yorkshire court was told the grim details of a once-happy relationship that had soured into jealousy and culminated in a determined act of terrible revenge. Confronted by the stark reality of his actions, Horace Hibberd abandoned his erstwhile protestations of innocence and pleaded guilty to the charge of causing grievous bodily harm to his former sweetheart, Amy Simpson, by throwing vitriol into her eyes. Prosecuting Counsel Mr T. E. Ellison then painted a bleak picture of the victim’s prospects, before the judge sentenced Hibberd to ten years’ penal servitude.1 A decade later, a London judge decried the apparent “recrudescence of this terrible crime,” and the “sickly sentimentality for the people who commit these offences;” for the crime was one which must not be tolerated “in a law-abiding country.”2 Such sentiments were repeated at regular intervals throughout the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but the fact that some acid throwers were met with a considerable degree of sympathy — from the press, the public and judiciary — is one of the characteristics of the offence that this project set out to examine. In presenting the most detailed and extensive historical study of acid throwing in the British Isles to date, this book has revealed the hidden history of a relatively rare but uniquely disturbing phenomenon. It has explained its origins and development, the motivations of the perpetrators and, by extension, the reasons why the crime could on occasion be excused. Even judges were not above telling certain victims that they had got what they deserved.3 The book has, consequently, illustrated the importance of the concept of provocation in trials for a violent offence other than homicide. Chapter 4 has shown that in many cases, some of which resulted in severe injury to the victim, juries convicted but made a recommendation to mercy. Judges usually accepted this and handed down sentences of a few months or years in prison. Provocation served as a defence for both women and men, though more successfully for women, and continued to influence judicial attitudes well into the twentieth century. Many judges

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accepted the prevailing belief that “There was no passion which was so likely to drive a woman to desperate methods as the passion which was caused by jealousy; the fact that she had been, or thought she had been, discarded.”4 Others remained determined to punish an appalling crime regardless of its causes or fortuitously minor consequences to the victim: “It must be clearly understood that whether the injuries are serious or slight, the court will never take a light view of this type of crime.”5 Yet many judges imposed sentences that were obviously aligned with the severity of the injury inflicted on the victim. Moreover, there was a tacit acceptance that crimes of passion, in which a person was provoked to violence by the cruel or shameful actions of a lover or spouse, should not be treated as harshly as other crimes, especially if the accused expressed remorse. These competing principles could occasionally be at odds, as for example in 1930, when, in sentencing Stanley Carmichael to six years’ penal servitude, the judge noted he could not pay attention to the claim that the victim had annoyed him by “going with other men,” but would take into consideration the fact that she was not badly injured.6 And yet, the fact that the victim “admitted that she goaded Carmichael into jealousy” was precisely what the judges in the Court of Appeal cited as grounds for reducing his sentence to 18 months.7 Thus, despite the egregious nature of the crime, many acid throwers received fairly light punishments, with little difference in the lengths of the sentences given to women and men. They were imposed by judges working within the framework created by nineteenth-century statutes and legal practice, which allowed flexibility in assessing cases on their particular features. The harshest penalties, prison terms of eight years or more, were reserved for defendants who could not claim to have acted under provocation. Individuals who had a history of violence or previous convictions, and people who attacked love rivals, rather than a lover or spouse, received longer sentences, as did those who sought revenge for matters unrelated to a broken relationship. It was mostly men who fit into these categories, and so received the longer sentences: it was more difficult for them to offer excuses that could be accepted in mitigation. Judges retained this discretion after the war, when the injuries inflicted were generally not as bad. The Pharmacy and Poisons Act of 1933 restricted the sale of strong sulphuric acid, so that weaker corrosive fluids were used. This led to less serious injuries and perhaps a diversion of cases away from the higher courts, and thus away from the gaze of journalists. But the crime itself also became less frequent. It did not just disappear,

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however, and in the aftermath of the Second World War it became more closely associated with men, an increasing number of whom had arrived in Britain from overseas. Post-war acid throwers benefited from a greater recognition of the role of mental illness in cases of violence, but were in the vanguard of a new wave of male-perpetrated violence that, according to historians of crime, has continued until the present day.8 Exactly why post-war men chose acid was related to a complex mixture of factors, including individual shame-proneness, access to corrosive fluids, and the perpetuation of long-standing tropes about the use of acid as a weapon. The crime was evidently still very much in the public eye in the late 1960s, when incidents of acid throwing in a stage play, novel, and television drama attracted media commentary.9 Ongoing familiarity with the crime offers a possible explanation for the late 1960s spike in cases observed in Chap. 2, which located acid throwing in relation to broader socio-economic developments. In focusing on the whole of the British Isles, the book has shown that acid crime was a mostly urban offence that originated as a crime against property in cities such as London, Glasgow and Manchester, before entering into wider popular usage in the 1830s. By the 1880s, acid throwing was associated with jealous and irrational women. At its peak, however, during the years from 1840 to 1944, both men and women opted for this form of assault, occasionally injuring themselves as well as their victims. The use of acid was particularly associated with attacks on the face and head, the intent being to punish with blindness, deformity, and social disability. Relatively few chose this extreme means of controlling and dominating another person, however, and the choice of acid has been theorised as arising probably from the perpetrator’s propensity to feel shame and to turn that negative emotion outward upon the perceived cause of that humiliation. This association can serve as a starting point for expanding the study of emotional regimes in the history of crime, to include not only shame-based punishments and intimate partner murder,10 but also nonlethal crimes of violence between people who were not involved in a romantic relationship. One of the benefits of studying assault lies in the fact that both the victim and perpetrator survive, enabling an additional level of analysis beyond the immediate context of a criminal trial. Chapter 2 investigated the negative impact of acid attacks on victims, to suggest what the nature of their experience was likely to be. This is an area that would benefit from future research, but it is more difficult to follow the victims than the perpetrators after the criminal process has ended. Those who went to prison

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were, almost without exception, eventually freed: Horace Hibberd’s prison sentence allowed him to avoid the slaughter of the First World War, and he was released in October 1921.11 We do not know how exactly Amy Simpson’s life story unfolded, but she did not marry and does not seem to have been able to find work: she is listed in the national Register taken on 29 September 1939, as a single woman aged 48, “at home through disability” at Duchess Road in Sheffield.12 Chapter 3 showed that the main motives for acid throwing were largely gender-neutral, but women were more likely than men were to use acid following the ending of a relationship on unacceptable terms, in revenge for having their lives ‘ruined.’ By publicly and permanently marking their victims, acid throwers sought to inflict a lasting punishment in response to a perceived transgression. Both sexes felt shame, anger, jealousy, and depression; but before the middle of the twentieth century, it was much easier for men to walk away from a relationship, leaving women with few options. The decline in the post-war incidence of acid throwing, and virtual disappearance of women from the statistics, suggests that individuals who might previously have resorted to the use of violence were able to employ another form of dispute resolution, via the civil, family and criminal courts.13 Moreover, the “hybridity between penal and welfare regimes” in the twentieth century was especially focused on women,14 and may have diverted lesser offenders away from the higher courts and thus away from the attention of the media. This left a small number of mainly male perpetrators who had reasonably easy access to and chose to throw a corrosive fluid, often at a romantic partner, in the belief that they had been left with no alternative. The courts adopted a more polarised approach, characterising such individuals as bad and in need of punishment, or mad and in need of treatment. And yet, the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century perception that some acid throwers were sad unfortunates, driven by circumstances beyond their control, became less tenable but did not disappear: it is reflected in the use of post-­ war probation orders. Finally, the gradual reduction in the historic offence of acid throwing suggests that the recent resurgence of corrosive fluid crime in Britain is likely to be linked primarily to broader criminogenic factors, compounded by widespread publicity in the aftermath of the attack on Katie Piper in March 2008. Hopkins et al. have shown that the characteristics of contemporary assaults with corrosive fluids are substantially different from this historic crime: modern-day victims and perpetrators are most likely to

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be male; the offence is frequently committed during some other form of urban gang-related violent crime incident; and, as a result, it tends to occur in public, between individuals who are unknown to one another. Corrosives are carried as a weapon, not selected with a specific target in mind. As in the past, however, the crime is associated with areas of deprivation, particularly in London;15 and research shows that it never really disappeared from the metropolis, where hundreds of incidents were recorded in the 1980s.16 It seems likely, therefore, that increased media and police attention accounts, at least in part, for the ‘rediscovery’ of a crime that has shifted in some but not all of its key characteristics. Corrosives still give users a sense of control, enabling them to achieve a desired outcome quickly and with minimal interference from bystanders,17 but such outcomes are now quite different from their historic predecessors. The modern crime may not be amenable to the solutions of the past, as existing laws do not deter and the determined criminal will find a way to access strong corrosives. But its continued existence in the criminal landscape suggests that future historical research could usefully consider acid throwing as part of a wider examination of the use of nonlethal interpersonal violence. By integrating historical and criminological research on the role of factors such as class, emotion, gender and social exclusion in the decision to use aggression against another person, we might well begin to find ways to better understand, and thereby reduce, levels of violence in our society.

Notes 1. Sheffield Daily Independent, 5 May 1914, 5. 2. The Illustrated Police News, 18 Sep 1924, 3. 3. See, for example, Morpeth Herald, 9 Dec 1865, 6 (trial of Margaret McLagan); Belfast Telegraph, 4 Jun 1910, 6 (trial of Alice Bird). 4. Statement made by Mr Justice Swift in his summing up at the trial of Iris Howe at the Old Bailey: The Times, 18 Sep 1924, 9. 5. Statement made by Lord Aitchison in sentencing James Grierson Fraser at the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh: Aberdeen Press and Journal, 11 Jan 1936, 2. 6. Nottingham Evening Post, 30 Oct 1930, 9. 7. Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 9 Dec 1930, 6; The Illustrated Police News, 18 Dec 1930, 6 (for quotation). 8. Martin J. Wiener, Men of Blood: Violence, Manliness, and Criminal Justice in Victorian England (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004), 290–291; Clive

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Emsley, Hard Men: Violence in England Since 1750 (London: Hambledon & London, 2005), chapter 10. 9. “A Thought-Provoking Evening,” The Stage, 15 Jul 1965, 14; “Viewers Stirred Out of Apathy to Violence,” The Stage, 17 Apr 1969, 10. The titular character in Marjorie Kellogg, Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (London: Secker & Warburg, 1969) has been institutionalised following an acid attack. 10. Lizzie Seal and Alexa Neale, “‘In His Passionate Way’: Emotion, Race and Gender in Cases of Partner Murder in England and Wales, 1900–39,” British Journal of Criminology 60 (2020), 811–829. 11. Ancestry.co.uk: TNA, Registers of Habitual Criminals and Police Gazettes, 1834–1934, MEPO 6/33, Habitual Criminals Register 1921, 237. 12. FindMyPast.co.uk: TNA RG 101/3555f, The 1939 England and Wales Register. Simpson was living with her parents at Duchess Road in May 1914. 13. A. H. Manchester, Modern Legal History (London: Butterworths, 1980), 378–395 notes the high demand for divorce in the 1940s, and slow steps taken in the interwar period towards alleviating the stigma associated with illegitimacy. 14. D’Cruze and Jackson, Women, Crime and Justice in England Since 1660, 131–142. 15. Hopkins, Neville and Sanders, Acid Crime, 26–27. 16. Ibid., 12. 17. Ibid., 174.

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Index1

A Acid Survivors Trust International, 2 Acid throwing geographical distribution, 11, 20–25 historiography, 4–5 incidence, 2, 11, 12, 21–22, 25–26, 43n5, 54, 55, 59, 115–116 stereotypes, 4–5, 14n9, 15n17, 36, 51, 73, 114 Acid throwing, effects, 26, 28–35, 113, 114 blindness, 30, 32, 33, 54, 82, 90–92, 95, 97–99, 105, 112 burns, 64, 74, 95 on clothing, 39 deafness, 33, 99 death, 35 on eyesight, 20, 97, 100 facial disfigurement, 4, 30–32, 92, 97, 112 scars, 30, 33, 97

unemployment, 33–34 See also Plastic surgery Acid throwing, motives, 12–13, 31, 49–75, 115 insanity, 35, 89, 97, 101, 103–105 jealousy, 3, 4, 12, 13, 50, 51, 59, 64–67, 75, 82, 93, 96–99, 112, 113, 115 labour disputes, 7, 22, 36, 54, 57, 58, 71 revenge, 4, 12, 22, 29, 50, 54, 59, 63, 67, 71, 73, 75, 89, 112, 113, 115 shame, 3, 31, 51, 66–67, 71, 82, 113–115 See also Anger Acid throwing, perpetrators, 12, 35–43 class, 20, 21, 41–42 gender, 21, 36, 38, 41–42, 51, 66, 71–75, 82, 83, 92, 96–98, 113–115

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K. D. Watson, Acid Attacks in Britain, 1760–1975, World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27272-1

131

132 

INDEX

Acid throwing, perpetrators (cont.) immigrants, 43, 103–105, 114 medical response to, 100–101, 103–105 minors, 2, 59, 62–63, 78n50 previous convictions, 42, 71, 82, 92, 95, 96, 105, 113 weavers, 2, 12, 49, 52–53, 56–57 Acid throwing, substances, 27–28 corrosive fluids, 2, 7, 11–13, 20, 27–30, 36, 52, 63, 75, 82, 83, 95, 100, 105, 113–115 hydrochloric acid, 4, 28, 29, 41, 74, 75 nitric acid, 4, 22, 27–30, 51–56, 64, 98 sulphuric acid, 4, 27–30, 32, 56, 67, 75, 89, 98, 113 vitriol, 4–7, 10, 11, 35, 36, 50, 57, 58, 83, 112 See also Ammonia Acid throwing, targets, 12, 59, 60 clothing, 7, 22, 51–53, 55, 59, 60, 62, 91, 97, 102 head and face, 56, 75, 94, 111, 114 Acid throwing, trials for, 6–7, 81–105 judges, 5, 12, 82, 85, 87, 88, 90, 91, 96, 98, 101, 103, 105, 112, 113 juries, 5, 12, 82, 96, 105, 112 plea bargaining, 83, 85 (see also Courts) provocation, 3, 5, 6, 13, 64, 69, 82, 96–99, 101, 103–105, 112, 113 punishments, 9, 31, 51, 55, 67, 75, 82, 83, 85, 89–91, 96, 112–115 sentencing, 35, 82, 83, 88, 90–93, 97, 99, 105 Acts of Parliament, 8–9, 52 Combination (1800), 51, 54

Combinations of Workmen (1825), 57 Criminal Justice (1948), 85 Criminal Law (Scotland) (1830), 89 Lord Ellenborough’s (1803), 7 Lord Lansdowne’s (1828), 20 Mental Health (1959), 88, 101 Mental Treatment (1930), 103 Offences Against the Person (1837), 7, 20, 88, 91 Offences Against the Person (1861), 7, 51, 82, 88, 91, 105n2 Penal Servitude (1853), 107n37 Penal Servitude (1864), 90, 107n33 Pharmacy (1868), 44n20 Pharmacy and Poisons (1933), 26, 44n20, 52, 113 Poisons and Pharmacy (1908), 44n20 Probation of Offenders (1907), 88 Transportation (1719), 52, 54, 55, 89 Ammonia, 4, 27, 28, 41, 100–102 Anger, 3, 25, 49–51, 64–67, 75, 93, 115 See also Shame Assault, physical, 2–4, 6–7, 9, 24, 42, 50, 64, 70, 71, 82, 96, 114 incidence, 11, 36, 43n11 See also Acts of Parliament B Bending, Lucy, 5 Borsay, Anne, 34 C Case studies Anderson, Peter, 98–100 Bain, Flora, 42 Beaton, Ann, 68–69

 INDEX 

Bevan, Ellen, 91, 93–96 Burt, Kathleen, 92 Byott, Frederick John, 66, 69–71 Doughty, Ernest, 100 Everest, Reginald, 64–65, 104, 105 Foucault, Emilie, 5–6, 12, 83, 97, 100 Gordon, Christina, 90 Hall, John and Alfred Doherty, 86–87, 91 Hemsley, Sarah, 64 Hibberd, Horace, 111–112, 115 Jeans, George, 98 Kennedy, Hugh, 88–89 Kerr, Locksley, 103–104 Lilley, William, 67 Lucy, Patrick, 46n53, 87 McCormack, Mary, 73 McNamara, Michael, 74–75, 104 Mills, John, 92–93 Morrison, Mary, 100 Murray, Peter, 54–55 Murrow, Ann, 20 Robertson, John, 83, 85 Seaby, Kathlyn, 10, 101, 103 Stanney, John, 92 Sullivan, William Joseph, 93 See also Victims Catherall, Donald R. 67 Central Criminal Court, see Old Bailey Cole, Jonathan, 32 Cork, 23, 25, 51, 53, 58, 89 Corrosive fluids, 2, 7, 11–13, 19, 20, 26–28, 30, 36, 52, 63, 64, 75, 81–83, 95, 100, 102, 105, 113–115 Courts, 10, 11, 43n11, 55, 88, 90, 113 police, 10, 11, 24, 38, 84, 88, 93, 95 See also Old Bailey Crime of passion, 5, 6, 113 Crime reporting, 10–11, 26, 50

133

D ‘Dark figure’ of unreported crime, 24 Dublin, 22–24, 53, 56 Dundee, 20, 24, 73, 98 E Edinburgh, 24, 35, 116n5 Eigen, Joel, 103 Envy, 3, 66, 67 See also Shame F Ferguson, Eliza, 5 G Garvey, Stephen, 31 Gaskell, Elizabeth, 58 Gaskell, Peter, 7, 57 Glasgow, 7, 21, 22, 24, 25, 42, 51, 56–57, 88, 89, 114 Greene, Graham, 4 Groebner, Valentin, 31 Guillais, Joëlle, 5 H Harris, Ruth, 5 Hartman, Mary, 5 Home Office, 99, 100, 103 records, 10, 43n5, 95 Honour, 67 Hydrochloric acid, 4, 12, 19, 27–29, 41, 74, 75, 102 I Indictments, 10, 28, 99, 101 Insanity, 63, 89, 101, 103–105

134 

INDEX

Ireland, 6, 10, 11, 21, 22, 25, 51, 52, 54, 57, 58, 87, 88 Dublin, 22, 53, 56 See also Cork J Jealousy, 3, 4, 12, 33, 50, 51, 59–61, 64, 75, 82, 93, 96–99, 112, 113, 115 stalking, 64–65, 71, 72 See also Shame Judges, 5, 82, 91, 96, 97, 112–113 comments, 4, 54, 81–82, 87, 90–93, 96, 99, 101, 105, 112, 113 Juries, 5, 12, 96–98, 105 K Kesselring, Krista, 96 Kilday, Anne-Marie, 68 Knelman, Judith, 96 L Labour disputes, 7, 22–23, 51, 56–58 Lancashire, 22–24, 52, 63 Lanarkshire, 22–24, 52 London, 2, 6, 11, 16n32, 20, 22, 24–26, 35, 38, 52, 53, 55, 58, 62, 63, 85, 95, 105, 114, 116 See also Old Bailey M Magistrates, 12, 33, 55, 64 in Scotland, 42 Manchester, 20, 24, 25, 56, 58, 86, 92, 114 Middlesex, 22–24

N Nash, David, 68 Nathanson, Donald L. 66 Nitric acid, 4, 12, 16n29, 19, 22, 27–30, 51–56, 64, 76n13, 90, 98, 102 O Old Bailey, 5, 9–11, 52, 54, 56, 62, 75, 89, 91, 97, 101 P Piper, Katie, 115 Plastic surgery, 30, 102 Provocation, 3, 5, 6, 13, 61, 62, 64, 69, 71, 81, 82, 96–100, 103–105, 111–113 Punishments, 7, 84, 86–87 borstal, 85 capital, 82, 88–89 hospital order, 85, 88, 103, 104 imprisonment, 54, 55, 62, 73, 85, 88, 89, 97, 98, 101–103, 113 penal servitude, 85, 88, 90–93 probation, 71, 88, 97, 100, 101, 103, 115 transportation, 7, 9, 52, 57, 64, 77n43, 78n52, 86, 88, 89, 91 R Revenge, 4, 12, 50, 54, 59–61, 63–64, 72, 73, 89, 112, 113, 115 shame, 71, 115 vengeance, 75 See also Provocation

 INDEX 

S Scotland, 6, 7, 11, 21–23, 25, 51, 54, 56–58, 68, 83–85, 87, 88, 90, 107n33 Edinburgh, 35 Glasgow, 7, 21, 22, 24, 25, 42, 43n7, 57, 88, 89, 114 law officers in, 42, 57, 83, 99 (see also Dundee) Sentencing, 82–93, 102 See also Punishments Shame, 3, 49, 51, 66–71, 82, 114, 115 Shapiro, Ann-Louise, 5 Shepherd, Jade, 97 Skinner, Patricia, 30 Spierenburg, Pieter, 5 Stockport, 7, 25, 57–58 Suicide, 6, 32, 84, 89 Sulphuric acid, 1, 4, 12, 19, 27–30, 32, 56, 67, 75, 89, 98, 102, 103, 113 See also Vitriol T Tangney, June, 66 U Ure, Dr Andrew, 57 V Vengeance, 3, 66, 67, 75 Victims, 38–41, 114 Brown, Iris, 74

135

Deacon, Felix, 33–34 Dear, Kenneth, 69–71 Drummore, Albert Alonzo, 32 Simpson, Amy, 112, 115 Strother, Jane, 94–95 Sullivan, Margaret, 33, 87 Wade, Samuel, 19–20, 29 Violence and emotion, 3, 114 envy, 3, 66, 67 jealousy, 3, 50, 96, 113, 115 shame, 3, 66, 113–115 See also Anger Vitriol, 1, 4, 7, 12, 14n9, 19, 21, 26, 27, 30, 51, 54, 102 availability, 6, 20, 22, 28, 52, 56 uses, 25, 44n15, 45n33 (see also Acid throwing, effects) victims, 4, 6, 7, 12, 20, 21, 26, 28–30, 32–36, 38, 51, 56–59, 62, 64, 67, 73, 75, 92–95, 112 Vitriol throwing, 1, 4–7, 10, 11, 25, 35, 36, 39, 42, 55–58, 62–64, 68–69, 73, 83, 87, 89, 92–95, 99, 111–112 See also Acid throwing W Wales, 6, 10, 11, 21–23, 25, 43n11, 44n23, 52, 57, 68, 83, 87, 88, 93, 100 Y Yorkshire, 22–25, 112