How much for a daughter?

There’s nothing new about the compensation culture. Early medieval tit-for-tat blood feuds often spiralled out of control, so Anglo-Saxon kings introduced a law code whereby a monetary value was assigned to each member of society. Once the killer’s family had paid the due price to the victim’s family, it was expected that the matter would end there. For humbler 19th-century families who had to make every penny count, blood feuds rarely featured, but the loss of a bread-winner added financial disaster to personal agony.

IN SUMMER 1899 sawyer George Swadling and his wife Mary looked forward to a visit from their 23-year-old daughter Ellen. She had been away in service in London, so a day’s leave at home with her parents was a treat to be relished. Ellen’s brother, Frank, 21, and her sister Kate, 19, were also away working, while youngest brother William, 16, was still at home in East Hendred, earning his keep as a gardener. All the young Swadlings would have been expected to contribute to the family exchequer.

On the day of the visit, Joseph Moulder, former policeman and landlord of the Wheatsheaf Inn, was driving his wagonette to Steventon station so Ellen’s father George asked him to give Ellen a lift if he spotted her. Betraying a touching excitement at re-uniting with his first-born, Swadling asked whether he could go to the station too, but Moulder refused.¹ Because Moulder’s own horse was resting, he borrowed one from George Castle, Castle having assured him that it was “quiet as a sheep”.² (The 1901 census shows that a “George Castle” did live in the village at the time, but he was only 11. More likely the reporter means John Castle of Hill Farm.) All went well on the outward journey, but coming up Steventon Hill on the way home, and with Ellen now on board, the horse “showed signs of rearing away”. Moulder pulled it up and asked Ellen if she was frightened and, if so, had she better get down from the cart? She replied that she was not afraid.

The little party continued to the old chapel in East Hendred, where the horse began to play up once more. To return Castle’s horse to the stables in Cat Street, it was necessary to negotiate a left-hand turn from the High Street. This seems very likely to be the point at which the wagonette tipped over onto the bank and both passengers toppled out. By now the horse had kicked the footboard to pieces. Word reached George Swadling that Moulder’s trap had been involved in an accident so he raced round to Cat Street where he must have been relieved to see Ellen standing in the road. Asked if she was well, she replied that she did not think she was much hurt. But once father and daughter reached home, Ellen declared that she felt she should perhaps see the doctor after all. 

At Dr Loveday’s surgery in Wantage a small wound was found on Ellen’s elbow. It was entirely superficial and did not affect the use of her arm. Loveday cleaned the wound and it appeared to be progressing normally until ten days later when he was called out to East Hendred. Immediately he recognised the unmistakeable signs of lockjaw.³ Before the age of antibiotics, tetanus was almost certainly a death sentence; any effort could be directed only at relieving the symptoms. Ellen was removed to the cottage hospital where she died on 5 August and at the inquiry in the Town Hall a verdict of “accidental death” was returned. Doubtless the jury expressed their sympathy to the bereaved family, sighed, and turned away to go about their business.

Several months passed and, the initial spasm of grief having dulled into a less debilitating but bone-deep agony, George decided to sue Moulder in the county court for £50 – over five thousand pounds in today’s money⁴ – for the “loss of a daughter”.⁵ He revealed that Ellen’s contribution to the household amounted to thirty shillings (£160)⁶ plus a yearly present of two pounds (£200)⁷ . The period covered by the thirty shillings is unclear, but if George was intending to recover a lost contribution of three pounds and ten shillings a year for the rest of Ellen’s supposed working life until, say, her marriage, fourteen years’ worth does seem a bit steep. 

In the event, money was never discussed in court. Moulder himself was badly hurt in the tumble, but nobody appears to have held farmer Castle to account for his wildly misleading description of his horse: “a child could drive it”.⁸ Indeed, one might imagine it being described in today’s parlance as “not fit for purpose”. Of more interest to the judge was the contractual situation. Was Moulder engaged to bring Ellen home in return for any monetary consideration, or was it just a friendly act? George admitted that he did not ask about any charge for the wagonette until after Ellen’s funeral. In answer to the suggestion that Moulder had performed the same favour before without charge, Swadling claimed he “did not know”. The jury found that no engagement had been made, presumably meaning no contract, and found in favour of Moulder, awarding him costs.

Moulder fought off the court case but, as so often in serious village disputes, the perceived wrong-doer had to go. Although born in Abingdon,⁹ Moulder had decamped as a young man to Kent where he served as a policeman for three decades.¹⁰ Perhaps a move back to take a pub in East Hendred in his retirement had been a lifelong dream, but it turned out to be a short-lived project. He fled back down south. In 1901 he popped up as a fruiterer and grocer in Tottenham,¹¹ and his death was registered in Edmonton in 1917 aged 80.¹² The Swadlings, who could not so easily put their pain away just by moving house, did not fare so well. Ellen’s father George died within a few years – aged 62 in 1906,¹³ and in 1911 his wife Mary was an inmate in Wantage workhouse.¹⁴

1  Berks and Oxon Advertiser, 18 May 1900

2  Oxford Chronicle and Reading Gazette, 12 Aug 1899

3  Symptoms include muscle spasms and stiffness, particularly in the jaw and neck, along with difficulty swallowing and breathing

4  https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator [accessed 30 Oct 2025]

5  Berks and Oxon Advertiser, 18 May 1900

6  https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator [accessed 30 Oct 2025]

7  Ibid

8  Oxford Chronicle and Reading Gazette, 12 Aug 1899

9  1841 England Census, Class: HO107; Piece: 32; Book: 5; Civil Parish: St Helen; County: Berkshire; Enumeration District: 5a; Page: 1; Line: 16; GSU roll: 241208

10  1861 England Census, Class: Rg 9; Piece: 531; Folio: 61; Page: 34; GSU roll: 542656, Sheerness

11  1901 England Census, Class: RG13; Piece: 1253; Folio: 28; Page: 48, Tottenham

12  England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1916-2007, General Register Office; United Kingdom; Volume: 3a; Page: 652

13  England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1837-1915, Wantage, 1844, George Swadling

14  1911 England Census, TNA; Kew, Surrey, England; Wantage Union Workhouse, Mary Swadling