Down, but not out

One June evening in 1868, a young man was walking home down Scotsgrove Hill towards Thame when he saw a girl in the road, sobbing. Near Scotsgrove bridge, Ellen Tipping, 20, approached 19-year-old John Atwell and asked him to rescue her baby. She claimed that she sat the baby on the wall of the bridge and it fell backwards into the pool. Atwell peered over the wall and saw a small child lying on its back in a pond near the mill stream. Although its head appeared to be under the surface of the water, John noticed its little hand move so, afraid to go into the water himself, he set off at pace to the Thame Mill tollgate for assistance. Ellen lay down on the grass about a hundred yards off and watched… and waited…

IT MIGHT SURPRISE some readers to hear that illegitimacy in England was never common, the number of such births in the past usually being below two per cent. It rose to three per cent in the mid-eighteenth century, slowly increased to seven per cent in the 1840s, and then declined to about four per cent in the 1890s.¹ But within that diminishing group, the proportion of infant deaths was shockingly high. And a report laid before Parliament revealed that, out of 3,664 inquests on children under one year old in 1864, nearly one thousand were illegitimate. “Some were burnt to death; others were drowned; some died of starvation and neglect; not a few from accidents that might have been provided against, and a very large number from causes which, to say the least, were dubious, and suggest shocking notions of foul play in the earliest hours of life.” It was hoped that, among other factors, “the example of the upper classes” would help to curb the moral failings which gave rise to this “blot upon English social life”.²   The upper classes did indeed contribute enthusiastically to the illegitimacy situation, though not perhaps in the way the Morning Post hoped.

Ellen Tipping’s father had died in 1854³ and by 1861 she had been admitted to Thame workhouse along with her mother Edie and three siblings.⁴ From there, female paupers were sent away into domestic service, that danger zone for young girls made vulnerable by their need to please their employers in order to eat and to have a roof over their heads. At sixteen, Ellen joined the staff at the Howard House Academy in the High Street, Thame. According to the headmaster, James Marsh, Ellen gave “great satisfaction”.⁵ A young man apparently paid his respects to her but then left her, and as a result she was unable to affiliate the child, that is, give sufficient information to take the father to court for maintenance. She was obliged to give birth to Amelia Jane in the workhouse at Thame in March 1867.⁶  

Workhouse authorities generally allowed new mothers around a month’s rest after giving birth, but after that they were on their own. Mr Marsh allowed Ellen to come back to work at the school, but the first thing she needed was to find a baby farmer to feed and care for the child while she worked. She headed for her home village of Worminghall where she asked Martha Bedding for help. Perhaps persuaded by Ellen’s wild assertion that, if Martha did not take the child, Ellen would throw it into the fire that was currently burning on a farm in Shabbington, Martha agreed. The term was to be ten weeks “between hay time and harvest”, and the rate two shillings per week.⁷

“On the Second [Michaelmas] Fair morning” in October 1867, according to Ann Fletcher, Ellen moved Amelia to her care a few doors along from the school in High Street, Thame. Mrs Fletcher had already known Ellen for four years through her job at the workhouse.⁸ She agreed to keep Amelia for two shillings and thruppence per week; Ellen’s wages at the school were seven pounds per year, which probably included lodgings and meals. The transaction left Ellen with less than sixpence a week to live on. It was a perilously narrow margin.

Mrs Fletcher looked after Amelia for nine months, during which time she claimed that Ellen kept many late nights and visited the baby rarely. Ellen did, however, arrive for a visit on 16 June 1868 – and announced that she had left her situation at the school ten days earlier. An exasperated Mrs Fletcher said she could keep the baby no longer, and an equally despairing Ellen, who had somehow so far kept up to date with payments to Mrs Fletcher, retorted that she would either go on the tramp with the baby, or “the water will have it”. Sharp words were exchanged and then Ellen asked Mrs Fletcher to have unsuspecting little Amelia ready in her bonnet and jacket so that she might take her out for a walk that afternoon.⁹  

John Atwell noticed that Ellen was still clutching Amelia’s hat when she approached him near Scotsgrove bridge. When he returned from the Thame Mill tollgate with Mrs Jefferies and her son Alfred, Alfred waded into the pool to retrieve the little girl. The water came only halfway up to his knees. He said the baby was still warm, but not breathing. Amelia was taken to surgeon Herbert Grove Lee in the High Street who, to his credit, worked on her tiny, malnourished body for an hour to try to rescusitate her. But it was too late. Evidently Ellen did not accompany her child to the doctor’s surgery; she was found at the same time by a police officer, wandering around in a distressed state at Scotsgrove bridge. The timings reveal that, having collected Amelia from Mrs Fletcher at 2.30pm, Ellen spent almost six hours alone with Amelia before the baby went into the water. She was taken to the police station and charged with wilful murder. “I know it’s wilful murder,” Ellen replied, emphasising that she would not have done it if Mrs Fletcher had not said what she did. “I was driven to it. I had no home to go to.”¹⁰

A lawyer named Pritchard came forward to defend Ellen at no charge at her trial in July.¹¹ He pointed out that Ellen never varied in court from her original account – that she had set the baby on the wall of the bridge and it had toppled into the pool. The fact that Amelia was found on her back in the water was consistent with the baby having fallen backwards off the wall. Why, he asked, if Ellen had seriously intended to murder Amelia, did she not simply launch her into the running stream a few yards off, and not into a shallow pool? Furthermore, in a distressed state, she asked the very first passer-by to rescue the child. Pritchard raised the possibility that, in admitting to wilful murder, Ellen merely betrayed the fact that she did not fully understand the legal meaning of those words. The jury must decide whether she had “destroyed [her child] intentionally, with malice aforethought”. If not, the verdict must be manslaughter. And so it was. Ellen served eighteen months’ hard labour in gaol.

So how could a young woman with such a stain on her character reintegrate into society upon her release at the end of her sentence? Ellen’s best route to respectability was to find a male protector. The 1871 census shows her to be resident housekeeper to agricultural labourer Henry White at Fulmer Common, and mother to three-month old twins of which only one, Emily, survived.¹² Ten years later she was still with Henry, now in Denham, Buckinghamshire, and with three more children.¹³ In 1891 they had more children, and in 1901 the family was still in Denham.¹⁴ At some point thereafter Henry died, because in 1911 Ellen described herself as “single” and living in a two-up, two-down cottage at Pinstone Farm, Tatling End near Denham with two of her sons, but no Henry White.¹⁵ After this, this forgotten mother troubles the record no more.

Without counsel Pritchard’s calm and thoughtful defence at her trial, Ellen could have been sentenced to death. Instead, she lived a blameless life, loyal for decades to Henry White, and gave birth to crowds of other children, none of which seems to have come to any undue harm. It was a quietly triumphant, if now forgotten, example of an understanding jury giving an apparently defeated girl a second chance.

1  Camp, Anthony, “Records of illegitimate children”, Family Tree Magazine (UK), vol 17, no 7 (May 2001), pp 7–9

2  Morning Post, 11 August 1864

3  England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1837-1915, Thame, vol 3a, p 375, Dec 1854, John Tipping

4  1861 England Census, Class: Rg 9; Piece: 886; Folio: 103; Page: 46; GSU roll: 542716, Thame

5  Oxford University and City Herald, 18 July 1868

6  Oxford Times, 20 June 1868

7  Banbury Guardian, 16 July 1868

8  Oxford Times, 20 June 1868

9  Oxford Times, 20 June 1868

10  Oxford Times, 20 June 1868

11  Oxford University and City Herald, 18 July 1868

12  1871 England Census; Class: RG10; Piece: 1399; Folio: 79; Page: 33; GSU roll: 828504, Langley St Mary, Bucks

13  1881 England Census, Class: RG11; Piece: 1456; Folio: 58; Page: 15; GSU roll: 1341353, Denham, Buckinghamshire

14  1901 England Census, Denham St Mary, Buckinghamshire, “Helen White” [sic]

15  1911 England Census, Denham, Bucks