A cruel and monstrous mistress

IN THE SPRING of 1860 a young girl came home to Finmere, bruised, weak from hunger and traumatised.¹ The worry of sending a daughter out into the world of work was an experience many Victorian parents had to endure, and the hope that their child would be treated kindly was only natural. Hopefully not many families went through the ordeal that the Tompkins suffered.

Domestic service was the single largest employer of women in nineteenth-century Britain. Girls generally left home at between 13 to 15 years old so, at 17, Mary Ann Hopkins had probably already been away from home for two or three years when she found herself at the Buckinghamshire farmhouse of Hugh and Dorcas Brise. This would have been a very different situation from that of uniformed servants with narrowly defined duties in a large country house – lady’s maid, parlour maid, kitchen maid, etc. In a farmhouse, Mary Ann would have been a maid of all work.

At 46, childless Mrs Brise was an angry woman with a mean streak. In the year before Mary Ann’s removal from her house, Mrs Brise had spied on the employee who milked the cows and caught him drinking half a pint of milk direct from the pail. William Judge, otherwise a man of good character, was sentenced to a month’s hard labour.²

No such crime was alleged against Mary Ann, so the reason for Mrs Brise’s fury against her remains unclear. She denied the girl any food until dinner time, and refused to allow her any beer at all. In an age when the water was unsafe to drink, beer was part of a servant’s wages. Church-going on Sunday was forbidden – although it has to be said that none of the Tompkins children was baptised, so they do not appear to have been fervent in their belief. But, again, time off on a Sunday was considered a servant’s right; dressing smartly and leaving the house to mingle with the neighbouring youngsters was the highlight of the week. 

Mary Ann was regularly beaten and, throughout the winter, she was obliged to go to bed and rise in the morning in complete darkness and without the aid of a candle. Unsurprisingly, she became lethargic and low in spirits, at which point Mrs Brise accused her of slacking and of neglecting her personal hygiene. For Mrs Brise, the solution was obvious: she forced Mary Ann to kneel over a bucket in the outhouse, and hacked off all the poor girl’s hair. Five months of this appears to have been the limit for Mary Ann’s parents, and she was promptly fetched home to Finmere.

Charges were brought against Dorcas Brise who was characterised in court as “monstrous” and “cruel”, and astonishment was expressed that “such acts should have been committed in a Christian land”. The shearing of Mary Ann’s hair was seen as particularly shocking – “an indignity which nothing could palliate”. The Bench inflicted the gravest penalty available to it upon Mrs Brise: a fine of five pounds.

Once back in Finmere, Mary Ann was placed under the care of the village doctor but, with five siblings between 14 and 2 still at home, a prompt return to work was essential.³ By the following year she had moved on to a new situation in Buckingham and brave Mary Stanley, 22, had taken on the challenge at Mrs Brise’s.⁴

1  Banbury Guardian, 26 May 1860

2  Bucks Herald, 26 February 1859

3  1861 England Census, Class: Rg 9; Piece: 922; Folio: 8; Page: 9; GSU roll: 542722, Finmere, Oxon

4  1861 England Census, Class: Rg 9; Piece: 869; Folio: 20; Page: 33; GSU roll: 542714, Winslow, Bucks