Blind passion

Victorian art depicts blind people as objects of pity, and certainly, in a world where everybody had to earn their own keep, they faced particular challenges. Very few could remain safely at home, cared for by family members; a tactile, home-based craft such as basket-making was their best hope to avoid the workhouse. So what happened when a young person was suddenly disabled in a catastrophic accident? When I read that young Emma Warland of Noke was accidentally blinded by her intended husband in 1855, I was keen to find out how she would fare later in life. It was rather cheering to discover that there was no quiet basket-making on the cards for Emma. Her romantic career, particularly, overturns any notions that her disability must necessarily compromise her appeal to the young men around her…

NO DOUBT THE Warland family of Noke anticipated a happy occasion when their daughter Emma returned from her place of service in September 1855 to marry her sweetheart. Sawyer Robert Warland and his wife Elizabeth had been caring for Emma’s two-year-old son while she worked so, now in their sixth decade, they may have been looking forward to a slightly easier time. However, Fate had other plans, and…

“the incautious use of fire arms… resulted in severe injury to a respectable young woman named Emma Warland. It appears that… the young man to whom she was about to be united entered her father’s house and took down a gun which had been loaded some days and went into the garden for the purpose of firing it into a damson tree. The gun, owing to its not having been used for some time, did not go off so soon as it should have done; the poor girl at this time came up the garden, and when about eleven yards from her lover (who was still endeavouring to cause the charge to explode), she received the full contents in her face and neck.”¹

Poor Emma’s face was “shockingly mutilated”, she had lost several teeth and, it was feared, her eyesight too. She was rushed to the Radcliffe Infirmary while, we are told: “…the young man was deeply affected by the unfortunate experience”.² It is interesting to note how Emma’s respectability and the contrition of the shooter are emphasised. The fact that Emma had a child out of wedlock was not mentioned, and the young suitor remained anonymous. One might expect Emma to retire from the romantic stakes at this point and remain quietly at home. No doubt getting back on one’s feet after such a physical and psychological trauma would take time, and indeed the 1861 census has her still living at home with her parents and her eight-year-old son, Joseph.²⁰

Probably few people expected her to marry at all.

But by the beginning of 1863 Emma was expecting another child – she says by her cousin Joseph Jones, an agricultural labourer living at the Plough where his father was the licensee.³ Young Albert Joseph Warland was born in the third quarter of that year.⁴ And two years later, Alice Warland was born.⁵ Joseph Jones does not appear to have disputed the children’s paternity, and one cannot help but speculate that Joseph was the clumsy (or angry?) fiancé who shot directly at Emma’s face eight years before, and perhaps fathered her first child Joseph too – the Christian name is suggestive. If it was Joseph whom Emma had been happily returning home to marry, it seems that her disfigurement did not dim Emma’s attractions in Joseph’s eyes. In September 1865 year, an affiliation order was granted against him for the support of the two children, one shilling and eightpence in the case of each child.¹⁸ No mention of Emma’s eldest child, Joseph Warland. Was some debate over the identity of little Joseph Warland’s father the reason for the 1855 shooting incident? Had Joseph Jones discovered that Emma had tricked him into proposing marriage, and he then found that the boy was not his?

What happened between the couple during the next couple of years is unclear, but in the second quarter of 1868 Joseph Jones quietly married Jane Bennett in Bicester.¹⁹ Why? Why didn’t he simply marry Emma in the first place? With his hopes of taking on the Plough from his parents, perhaps he felt a blind wife might compromise his chances in the eyes of the magistrates. And later events suggest that he did not feel it necessary to notify the mother of his children of his marriage – or perhaps he was too embarrassed by his own shoddy behaviour. So by 1871 Emma was 43, and still at home with three children: Joseph, a labourer aged 18, Albert, 7, and Alice, 5.⁶  Also, bizarrely, she had at some point become a children’s nurse in the Jones household. Since Joseph had concealed his marriage from Emma, had he concealed his connection with Emma from Jane too? Emma’s credentials for the job were undeniable: she had raised three children of her own. But the awkwardness of the situation, particularly for Jane Jones, is evident.

During this period Emma’s love life became a veritable procession of admirers (though she would later deny this). In spite of the damage to her face – bullets were still “lodged therein”⁷ – at least three local men apparently considered her charms undiminished. We know this because, at the age of 48, Emma had another baby and went to court again.

In March 1876, Emma summoned Joseph Jones before the magistrates claiming that he was the father of her latest child, eight-week old Arthur, born in Bicester workhouse.⁸ Emma explained in court that she used to go to the Jones home at the Plough to look after Joseph and Jane’s children. On the day of little Arthur’s conception, she had taken Jane’s children Elizabeth, 3, and baby William, into the adjacent field. Joseph arrived between 10am and 11am and despatched Elizabeth to pick flowers while Emma laid William on a bed of straw. The same formula was repeated about a week later. Within weeks she began to feel unwell and people were accusing her of being “in the family way”. Accompanied by her friend and guide Emily Mortimer, she went to confront Jones and demanded to know whether he had told anyone she was pregnant. “No,” he replied simply, “I did not think you was so.” 

Asked in court whether the two children she had been nursing in the field were hers, Emma betrayed a flash of jealousy. She snapped back that, no, they belonged to “his woman” or “wife” or whatever anyone liked to call her, because she did not know they were married. She did not know if anyone had seen her go to the field or come back, and she did not speak to anyone on the way there or back. Joseph’s legal representative then went on the attack in the time-honoured fashion, listing all Emma’s conquests in an attempt to raise doubt as to little Arthur’s biological father. 

No, said a spirited Emma, she was not aware that she knew a good many men. William Stock did “not exactly” promise to marry her – perhaps Jane Jones gave him a wedding ring to try and persuade him to marry her! Stock gave her various gifts, as well as the money to publish the banns, but she spent the money on something else. (Laughter in court.) The cross-examination continued. No, she was not found in an indelicate position with William Tipping in Tipping’s back room, nor was she dismissed for improper conduct. No, Tipping did not kiss her in the Plough, nor did she ever go to his house alone while everyone was at church. She could not go anywhere alone, Emma pointed out, and therefore she did not go to Mr Webster’s house alone, she did not go into Bradwell Wood with him, nor did she go to Islip Feast with him.

Poor, besotted William Stock, who attended the hearing, was left in little doubt that Emma was not looking seriously for a husband. Her intention was evidently to use her attractions (even though she was now in her late forties) to make Joseph Jones jealous and perhaps also to spite Jane, an irritatingly young 35. And what better way to cause trouble between man and wife than by claiming that baby Arthur was conceived by the family nanny since they were married? Joseph, who identified himself as being “landlord of the Plough” although he was not, admitted in court to having fathered two of Emma’s other children, but pointed out very reasonably that that did not prove he had fathered this one. The magistrates decided there was not enough evidence to substantiate Emma’s claims; the case was dismissed.

Joseph and Emma’s decisions in the next few years suggest that they both realised it was time to move on. The undeniable attraction between Emma and Joseph had dominated their lives since they were teenagers. Perhaps acknowledging at last that he was never going to take over the Plough from his parents,⁹ Joseph moved his family away to Charlton on Otmoor where he continued to work as an agricultural labourer. Blind, and moving into her sixth decade, Emma finally accepted a marriage proposal from carpenter John Bannister. He was 35.¹⁰  

But Bannister had had a drink problem ever since his young wife Mary died ten years before¹¹ and he had been left with two children to bring up. Marriage with Emma appears to have settled him for a while because, apart from one aberration in 1881, he stayed out of trouble for nine years.¹² However, in July 1890 Emma was back in court, this time seeking support for herself dating back to March, suggesting that that was the date when Bannister deserted her.¹³ So in 1891, Emma was living on her own means as a lodger in High Street, Kidlington¹⁴ while John Bannister had moved to Bletchingdon where he was living in a “shed on South Causeway”.¹⁵ Emma was probably not too upset to lose her troubled husband; after her first attempt at matrimony in 1855 went so shatteringly wrong, she delayed for almost a quarter of a century before giving it another whirl. Emma died in 1898,¹⁶ and Bannister was found dead at a friend’s house in the following year.¹⁷

Whether Emma and Joseph Jones would have been happy together, we cannot know. But Emma seems never to have been seriously interested in any other man, even though plenty of them were interested in her, blind or not. And while Joseph was madly attracted to Emma, his heart’s desire seems to have been a victualler’s licence. In the end, neither of them got what they wanted.

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1  Oxford Chronicle and Reading Gazette, 15 September 1855

2  Ibid.

3  Emma’s father Robert was brother to Joseph’s mother Mary Warland.

4  England & Wales, Civil Registration Birth Index, 1837-1915, Jul–Sept 1863, Albert Joseph Warland

5  England & Wales, Civil Registration Birth Index, 1837-1915, Jul–Sept 1865, Alice Warland

6  1871 Census, Noke, Oxfordshire. All her life, Emma knocked a few years off her age; she was born in Islip in 1828

7  Bicester Herald, 17 March 1876

8  Anglican Parish Registers; Reference Number: BOD31_B_4, Bicester, bap 26 Mar 1876, Arthur Warland

9  Another reason to suspect Joseph Jones of being the shooter who took Emma’s sight; surely no magistrate would grant a victualler’s licence to somebody so reckless?

10  Oxfordshire, England, Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754-1930, Noke, 11 Oct 1879

11  Oxford Chronicle and Reading Gazette, 24 February 1866

12  Banbury Guardian, 28 April 1881

13  Bicester Herald, 04 July 1890

14  1891 England Census, Kidlington, Oxfordshire, Emma Bannister

15  1891 England Census, Islip, Oxfordshire, John Bannister

16  Oxfordshire, England, Church of England Deaths and Burials, 1813-1965, Cowley, Oxfordshire, 1 Oct 1898, Emma Bannister

17  Bicester Herald, 15 September 1899

18  Bicester Herald, 22 September 1865

19  England & Wales, Civil Registration Marriage Index, 1837-1915, Bicester, Apr-May-Jun.

20  1861 England Census, Noke, Emma Warland