Untold lives blog

In April 1777 Mary Day was indicted, arraigned and convicted of petty treason and murder at Madras.  She was found guilty of administering a poisoned drink to her husband Thomas Day, a sergeant with the East India Company, who had subsequently become ill and died.  Two accomplices - John Pybus, a cooper in the Company’s employ and Sheik Mucktoom - were also found guilty of murder as they were said to have both procured the poison or caused it to be procured.  This was a capital crime, and all three were sentenced to death by hanging.  For Mary Day, worse could have befallen her – the sentence on the statute book for a woman convicted of killing her husband was to be burned at the stake.

Government House, Fort St George, Madras by Thomas Daniell, 1795 (shelfmark P944) - Plate nine from the second set of Thomas and William Daniell's Oriental Scenery.

However, records show that the Justices weren’t convinced of the trio’s guilt.  The execution was postponed while the Madras Government wrote to the Directors of the East India Company giving the facts in the case, in the hope that they would petition the King for a pardon.  The copy of the petition to His Majesty is full of the details.  It wasn’t clear that Thomas Day had actually been poisoned at all.  The surgeon who attended him during his illness stated that Day's symptoms could have been caused by ‘acrid bile’.  He also tasted a white powder which had been given to the deceased but could not be certain that it was ‘mineral poison'.  The main evidence against Mary Day was apparently her own confession, obtained 'under an implied promise that if she confessed she should be most favourably dealt with'.  Sheik Mucktoom (sometimes given as Muktoon) was convicted after having allegedly confessed to an unnamed person that he had procured the poison - a confession which he vehemently denied in Court.  There was even less evidence again John Pybus: it was said that there was 'no legal Evidence given upon the said Tryal to charge him'.

Extract from the minutes of the East India Company Court of Directors, 16 September 1778 IOR/B/94 p.227 

The wheels of justice certainly moved slowly for the convicted.  A letter was not sent to the Directors until 5 February 1778, the delay no doubt influenced by the various political and administrative machinations in Madras in 1776-77, which included the Governor Lord Pigot being deposed and his successor and colleagues accused of murder.  The letter urged haste, as 'the unhappy Convicts… have already been several Months lingering in Confinement'.  It took six months for the letter to arrive in London; it was finally received on 6 August 1778.   The East India Company Court of Directors approved a draft of a petition on 16 September 1778, which was sent to the King on 23 September 1778.  Finally, a free pardon was approved at the Court of St James’s on 24 October 1778.  Almost two years after being found guilty by a jury in Madras, the pardon was finally dispatched from London on 18 February 1779.  It can only be assumed that during that time Mary Day, John Pybus and Sheik Mucktoom remained in prison.

And there the story ends. I have not yet been able to trace any further reference to the three convicted ‘poisoners’ in the records.  Perhaps evidence will emerge that proves that they were freed and went on to live long and happy lives.  If anyone knows more, we would love you to get in touch.

Lesley Shapland
Cataloguer, India Office Records

Further reading
IOR/E/4/308, f.7: Letters Received from Madras. 7 December 1777-21 January 1780: Letter to Court of Directors, 5 February 1778, requesting pardon.
IOR/B/94, p.227: Court Minutes. 8 April 1778-14 April 1779: Minutes of 16 September 1778. 'The Draught of a Petition to his Majesty for the Pardon of Mary Day, John Pybus and Shief Mucktoom who were capitally convicted at Fort St George in April 1777 was read and approved'.
IOR/H/141, ff.407-409: East Indies Series 49 (Home papers): Copy of the Company’s petition to the King, 23 September 1778.
India Office Private Papers Mack Gen 67/13, pp.267-268: Book of Abstract Letters from England No. 2 Public Department: 'The King’s free pardon to Mary Day, widow of Sergeant Thomas Day, John Pybus and Sheikh Muktoon, a native of India, from the sentence of death passed on them for poisoning Thomas Day'. Court of St James’s, 24 October 1778.
IOR/E/4/868, p.348: Despatches to Madras (Original Drafts). 1778-1779: Letter from Court of Directors to Madras dated 18 February 1779, answering letter of 5 February 1778 above and enclosing pardon.

Between 1788 and 1790, a sensational news story hit the headlines: a monster was stalking the streets of London.  The mysterious culprit picked women at random and stabbed them in the thigh or buttocks with a plethora of sharp objects, from knives to pins.  Sometimes he invited his victim to smell a small bunch of flowers and stabbed her with a weapon hidden in the blooms.  He always escaped before help arrived.  The press soon gave him the notorious nickname ‘The Monster’.

A Representation of Rhynick alias Renwick Williams, commonly called The Monster, coloured print collected by Sarah Sophia Banks, 1790 [BL L.R.301.h.3]

The attacks mounted up but the authorities had no leads.  The press reports grew more and more hysterical and, soon, it became a full-on public scare.

Sarah Sophia Banks, sister of botanist Sir Joseph Banks, was as swept up in the Monster hysteria as anyone.  She hoarded newspaper cuttings, prints, posters and notices about the attacks and stuck them in one of her many scrapbooks.

The London press refused to let the case drop, covering each sensational incident in gory detail.  They dropped heavy hints that the culprit must be an outsider – no doubt a foreigner – whipping up outrage and hostility despite having no evidence or proof of any kind.  Sensationalism of this kind has a tendency to drive sales.

The panic-stricken public formed vigilante groups to roam the streets of London and hunt for the Monster.  Rich businessmen and merchants promised hefty records for his capture.  They pasted up sensational posters across London alerting the public that a ‘bloodthirsty’, ‘dangerous’ monster was on the prowl and attacking young women.  One poster even suggested there might be more than one suspect: 'there is great reason to fear that more than one of those wretches infest the streets'.

The mass hysteria got so crazy that satirical posters sprung up across London in response.  Sarah Sophia Banks collected one with the over-the-top claim that the Monster 'attempted to cut up his own children' and was back in London to 'devour all editors of newspapers, book-sellers, engravers and publishers of satiric prints'.

Proto-police force The Bow Street Runners soon joined in the poster craze in their desperation to make an arrest.  Printed in red for maximum impact, one such poster encouraged servants 'to take notice if any man has staid at home without apparent cause, within these few days, during day light.  All washerwomen and servants should take notice of any blood on a man’s handkerchief'.

One Hundred Pounds Reward, poster collected by Sarah Sophia Banks, 1790 [BL LR.301.h.3]

The attacks continued for months before the Bow Street Runners finally made an arrest in 1790.

Their suspect was Rhynick Williams, a young unemployed man from Wales.  The mob threatened to lynch him when the Bow Street Runners brought him in for questioning.  Williams was eventually charged – although the judges struggled to pinpoint (excuse the pun) what exactly he should be charged with – and sentenced to six years in Newgate Prison.

Print and poster about The London Monster on display in the British Library’s Breaking the News exhibition

The attacks stopped after this.  Coincidence?  Who knows.

Historians today question whether Rhynick Williams really was the Monster.  Descriptions of the culprit varied wildly and Williams had an alibi for at least one of the attacks.  The case was further complicated by some reports of attacks being faked, and it was suggested at the time that there might be more than one person carrying out the attacks.

Some historians go even further: was there ever a Monster at all?  Or was the entire scare a case of mass hysteria and sensationalism on steroids?  We’ll probably never know.

Maddy Smith
Curator, Printed Heritage Collections

See these original posters about the London Monster in our Breaking the News exhibition, open until 21 August 2022. Explore 500 years of the news in Britain and discover more era-defining headlines and news stories.

The extraordinary escape from Botany Bay of nine transportees in an open boat has been narrated many times.  Mary Broad was the only woman who escaped on this boat in March 1791, travelling for 69 days, before reaching Kupang in Timor, with her two children and husband, William Bryant, who led and organised their escape.

Hamoaze, Plymouth where Mary Broad was held in the Dunkirk prison hulk before being transported with the First Fleet. 

Painting of The Hamoaze and Dock, Plymouth, Devon by Coplestone Warre Bampfylde. Image courtesy of Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery.

Mary’s husband and children died before she was returned to London in 1792.  James Boswell took up the case of the five returned transportees, and advocated their release from prison.  It is thanks to Boswell that Mary Broad’s family origins in Cornwall can be identified here.

Boswell's papers noted that Mary Broad’s ‘aged’ father was living in Cornwall.  He met Mary's younger sister Dolly Broad.  Boswell corresponded with Mary's married sister Elizabeth Puckey.  And her husband, Edward Puckey, a tailor in Fowey, who wrote to Boswell about an anticipated Broad family inheritance, which was a Pope family legacy.

Using this information, Mary Broad can be historically identified as the granddaughter of Prudence Pope, who married Josiah Broad.  Mary’s father was their eldest son William Broad, who was aged 84 in 1793, when Mary was aged 28.  Mary’s mother was William’s wife Dorothy Guilleff, who died aged 50 in 1778, when Mary was aged 13.  And William and Dorothy Broad’s daughters were Elizabeth (baptised 1756), Mary (baptised 1765), and Dorothy (baptised 1769).

Josiah and Prudence Broad, and most of their adult children, lived in the neighbouring Cornish parishes of St Neot or Braddock.  William and his brother Matthew Broad described themselves as ‘colliers’, and obtained leases to coppice woodland.  It may have been the profits from this trade which enabled William Broad to obtain a farm.  In the 1760s, William Broad moved his family between parishes within a few miles of Fowey.  Mary’s christening in 1765 was at Lanlivery, and Dorothy’s in 1769 was at St Veep.  By the late 1770s, some family members were present in Fowey, where the elder Dorothy Broad died in 1778, and Elizabeth married Edward Puckey in 1779.

1805 Map of Fowey river and parishes by Robert Dawson British Library Online Gallery

In the 1930s, the Boswell scholar Frederick A. Pottle sought to identify Mary Broad's family origins.  Through the assistance of members of the Old Cornwall Society, the Fowey and Lostwithiel parish registers were searched for her baptism.  This led to the suggestion that her parents had been a mariner William and his wife Grace Broad, who also had a daughter named Mary.  Judith Cook later acknowledged that there were many inconsistencies and gaps between the evidence related to this family and Boswell’s account.  William and Grace Broad did not have daughters named Dorothy or Elizabeth, and they had left Cornwall before Mary Broad returned home in 1794.

Members of Mary Broad's extended family as identified here can be found in other historical records, including the Clift family letters.  She was not the only member of her family to be accused or convicted of assault.  And it is possible to see her influence and legacy in the decisions of James and William Puckey, the nephews of Edward Puckey, to travel from Cornwall to Tahiti, New South Wales, and New Zealand.

Dr Charlotte MacKenzie
Independent researcher
@HistoryCornwall

Further reading
Tim Causer (ed), Memorandoms by James Martin (2017)
Charlotte MacKenzie, Mary Broad the documentary (2021)

In the late 1760s Charles Eyloe ran a boarding house at his home Orchard House in Blackwall, London.  One of his contracts was with the East India Company to provide lodgings for the Asiatic sailors, known as lascars, who came to England as part of the Company's ship crews. The sailors needed somewhere to stay until they could return home.

In August and September 1767 Eyloe suffered a string of break-ins and robberies at his house.  The first was on 2 August when his house was broken into and 50 shillings in silver was taken.  The second occurred on 6 August when his cellar window was broken and a 12lb shoulder of veal and a bushel of flour were stolen.

‘The Burglary’, p. 47 of The Wild Boys of London; or, the Children of Night. A story of the present day, London 1866. British Library 12620.h.27. 

Following these break-ins, Eyloe had a new cellar door put in and a metal bar put across his wine cellar.  These precautions appear to have deterred the thief from the cellar for a time, however instead eight hens and a cock were taken on 11 September.  On 14 September the thief managed to rip the cellar door off its hinges and took four pieces of beef worth 5 shillings and Eyloe suspected wine, beer and brandy was taken although he couldn’t say for sure.

The thief turned out to be Thomas James, a lascar from Bengal, who had previously boarded at Eyloe’s house.   James had indeed taken bottles of brandy from Eyloe’s cellar on 14 September, and was caught after promising ten of the bottles to a fellow sailor who then reported the incident to Eyloe.

Derby Mercury, 30 Oct 1767: summary of Old Bailey sentencing October 1767, including Thomas James. British Newspaper Archive

James was tried at the Old Bailey on 21 October 1767 and was found guilty and sentenced to death.  However on 24 February 1768  he was granted a conditional pardon and on 12 July 1768 his sentence was changed to transportation for life.

Karen Stapley
Curator, India Office Records

Further Reading:
Old Bailey Online – Trial of Thomas James 21 October 1767.
British Newspaper Archive - Derby Mercury 30 October 1767.

On 30 November 1814, Truman Wood was convicted at the Old Bailey for stealing from the East India Company 24 lb of paper, value 6s, and 21 lb of tea, value £3.  He was sentenced to be transported for seven years but remained in England on prison hulks.

Prison hulks in Portsmouth Harbour by Ambrose-Louis Garneray circa 1812-1814 © National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London 

Truman Wood had worked for the East India Company as a labourer for sixteen years.  His theft of Company goods from the Haydon Square tea warehouse was discovered when an officer searched an old woman in the Commercial Road on 27 October 1814.  Hidden underneath her petticoats were a bag containing a small amount of tea and some India paper.  After questioning her, the officer went with two colleagues to Wood’s home at 3 Trafalgar Square, Stepney.  There they found several jars, caddies and parcels containing tea. together with a quantity of India paper.  They also discovered £100 in notes, four guineas in gold, and some bags of silver.

Wood asked the officers if they could just take the money, paper and tea, and say nothing more about it.  It would be the ruin of him if the matter came to the Company’s ears.  He was taken before a magistrate and claimed that the paper was a perquisite of his job and that he had bought the tea from a man in the Commercial Road.  The Old Bailey jury found Wood guilty of theft.

Petition of Truman Wood to the East India Company 16 August 1816 - British Library IOR/E/1/252 p.21

On 16 August 1816, Wood wrote to the directors of the East India Company from the Portland hulk moored at Langstone Harbour, Portsmouth, expressing his ‘sincere and unfeigned sorrow’ for his crime and begging their forgiveness.  He had always tried to conduct himself with the ‘greatest recititude’ in his warehouse duties and in his service with the Royal East India Volunteers.  Before his lamentable lapse, Wood had never been suspected of an illicit transaction.  He had suffered the 'greatest privations and heartfelt afflictions' during his imprisonment.  His wife Jane and two children were reduced to ‘most poignant distress’, which was aggravated by Jane having ‘a Complaint in her breast’ which prevented her from looking after the family.  Wood asked the directors to recommend him for a free pardon.

Letter from East India Company to Viscount Sidmouth 17 September 1816 British Library IOR/E/1/251 p.509

The Company forwarded the petition to the Home Secretary, Viscount Sidmouth, with a covering letter expressing the hope that Wood might be pardoned.  The directors asked for Wood’s past good character to be taken into consideration, and suggested that the imprisonment he had suffered might be seen as a sufficient warning to others.  They believed that a continuation of his punishment would be the total ruin of his family who had borne the calamity ‘with becoming resignation and propriety’.

The Company’s intervention was not immediately successful. In October 1816, Wood was transferred to the Bellerophon hulk at Woolwich.  However on 10 July 1818 he was granted a free pardon by Sidmouth and released ten days later.

Sadly it appears that Jane did not recover her health.  The burial records of St Dunstan Stepney show a Jane Wood dying of cancer in February 1819.

Wood married widow Ann Blendall in May 1822 in Bethnal Green.  He was buried at Wycliffe Congregational Church in Mile End Old Town in July 1837.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
Petition of Truman Wood - British Library, IOR/E/1/252 pp.21-23, IOR/E/1/251 p.509
Old Bailey Online - Trial of Truman Wood 
Home Office records of Newgate Prison and the hulks – The National Archives via Findmypast
Parish registers for East London via Ancestry and Findmypast

On 11 July 1787 a young Indian servant named Sadi was sentenced to death at the Old Bailey after being convicted of stealing bank notes to the value of £400 from his employer Stephen Sulivan.  William Morris was tried for receiving the stolen notes and was defended by barrister William Garrow.  Morris was also found guilty by the jury, but sentencing was delayed in his case because of a legal uncertainty.

‘A Perspective View of the temporary Gallows in the Old Bailey’ 1794 © The Trustees of the British Museum Asset number 765670001 - View of the scaffold and gallows outside the north quad of Newgate Prison; a screen on the right leading up to entrance to scaffold, with gallows over platform.

Sadi, also known as George Horne, was a footboy in the Sulivan household in Harley Street, London.  Stephen Sulivan’s father Laurence had been a prominent East India Company director and politician.  Having served the East India Company in Madras and Calcutta, Stephen returned to England in the summer of 1785 with his wife Elizabeth and son Laurence.  The Sulivans brought Sadi with them as he had attended Laurence since his birth in January 1783 and was a favourite of the family.  They wished to preserve Sadi’s ‘simple manners’ and ‘innocent mind’ from corruption by their other servants so he stayed in the nursery, eating and sleeping with his charge.  He had unrestrained access to the private apartments of the house.

However in 1787, Sadi began behaving with ‘repeated irregularities’.  The Sulivans dismissed the young man, intending to send him back to India.  Whilst awaiting a passage in an East Indiaman, Sadi was sent to lodge with Thomas Saunders, the assistant keeper of the East India Company’s tea and drug warehouse.

It came to light that Sadi had been stealing from the Sulivans for two years – muslins, silks, calicos, linen, pearls, clothing, and a special shawl belonging to Elizabeth.  The stolen goods were passed on to other servants in the house who encouraged Sadi to continue with his thefts.  He stole four guineas without being detected and then one bank note for £1,000 and two for £200.  When Sadi showed the £1,000 note to two of his fellow servants, they told him it was too great a sum to pass on without detection.  After keeping it for some days, he threw it under the kitchen grate where it was found by the housekeeper who gave it to Elizabeth.  The notes for £200 were sold by Sadi for a guinea to William Morris, formerly butler to Stephen’s father.

Elizabeth called on Sadi at his lodgings.  He burst into tears and made a full confession, directing her to Morris’s home in Petticoat Lane.  She went there with a constable and Morris’s wife handed over the two bank notes.

Other servants of the Sulivans were also arrested and charged with receiving stolen goods: Thomas Absalom, his wife Martha, and Catherine Smith.  Martha Absalom was apprehended at Maidenhead in Berkshire and found to have property belonging to Elizabeth Sulivan.

On 24 August 1787, the King granted Sadi a reprieve from the death sentence passed on him.  The young Indian remained in Newgate prison but he died shortly afterwards on 9 December.  The death rate in Newgate was extremely high in the late 1780s because of severe overcrowding and an outbreak of ‘gaol fever’ (epidemic typhus).

A few days after Sadi’s death, the case of William Morris was finally settled. He was discharged because the judges agreed with his defence counsel that the bank notes he had received could not be classified as goods and chattels, the term used in the charge against him.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
The case is reported in Old Bailey Online and in the British Newspaper Archive (also available via Findmypast), for example Hampshire Chronicle 4 June 1787, Bury and Norwich Post 6 June 1787, Derby Mercury 7 June 1787 and 13 December 1787, Kentish Gazette 24 July 1787, Sheffield Register 1 September 1787.

In previous Untold Lives stories, we met two of Major William Down’s children, Arabella and Charles.  Now, for the final instalment of this scandalous tale, we have their sister Eva Magdalene Crompton Down.

Eva was born in St John’s Wood, London on 18 December 1856, the fifth daughter and seventh of the ten children of Major William Down and his wife Christian.

In 1876 Eva was called as a witness in the trial of her brother Charles and Joshua Keith Hilton.  During the trial Hilton had referred to Eva Down as his wife and claimed to have a marriage certificate which he could produce as evidence.  Several other people called as witnesses also stated in their testimony that they believed Eva to be Hilton’s wife.

Eva was called as a witness regarding the claims which she vehemently refuted, her testimony suggesting she was unimpressed at the allegations and that she only knew Hilton as an acquaintance of her brother.  She even demanded to see the marriage certificate which Hilton claimed to have, but it never materialised.

Image from Illustrated London News 22 August 1896 - British Newspaper Archive via Findmypast

Eva may not however have been as innocent as her court testimony suggested.  In 1877 Mrs Margaret Ann Redhead, née Thirkell filed for divorce from her husband of seven  years, Joshua William Readhead, on the grounds of adultery and desertion, citing Eva Down as the mistress.  Mrs Redhead had met her husband while visiting London in 1870 and they had married there in secret on 23 November 1870.  She had returned home to Sunderland shortly afterwards but her new husband did not accompany her and she at first attempted to conceal the marriage before admitting everything to her parents.  She never saw her husband again and her correspondence with him ceased after he attempted to extort money from her mother.  In 1876 Mrs Redhead learned that her husband had been living under the alias Joshua Keith Hilton and had been having an affair with Miss Eva Down, who he had been pretending was his wife. She filed for divorce shortly after.

Eva Down clearly cared about her lover as the couple married in Carlisle in 1881 following his release from prison.  The marriage does not appear to have lasted long however as by 1900 Eva had emigrated to the USA with her husband William Robert Tymms and their daughter Salome.  US immigration records suggest the couple married in England in 1885, however there is no record of that marriage.  Eva died in Benton, New Hampshire on 29 January 1926.

William Joshua Redhead assumed another alias, this time the stage name of Howard Reed, and he became manager of the Ilma Norina Opera Company.  He was romantically involved with its star Ilma Norina (real name Josephine Genese) who herself had divorced in 1888.

Howard Reed, aka Joshua Keith Hilton, aka William Joshua Redhead died in Southend on 23 February 1899.   According to his obituary he was ‘deeply lamented by his sorrowing wife and children’ although which wife and whose children is another mystery.

Karen Stapley
Curator, India Office Records

Further Reading:
Old Bailey Proceedings 26th June 1876 No. 265: Charles Victor Cleghorn Down (21), and Joshua Keith Hilton (23), Feloniously forging and uttering a warrant for the payment of 75l., with intent to defraud. 
Madras Military Fund Pension Records, Account-General’s Department, India Office Records:
IOR/L/AG/23/10/1-2 Madras Military Fund Pension Register entry for William Down (1822-1868)
IOR/L/AG/23/10/11, Part 1 No. 90 Certificates submitted in connection with William Down’s subscription to the Madras Military Fund, including baptism certificate for Eva Magdalene Crompton Down [given as Eva Neale Crompton Down].

A 19th century tale of adultery 

Unwitting accomplice or habitual offender? 

Since 2012 we have been sharing stories which try to piece together the later life of Eliza Armstrong, the child bought for £5.  This post focuses on Eliza’s husband Henry George West.

Henry George West’s birth was registered in Shoreditch in the first quarter of 1857.  He was the son of Henry West and his wife Elizabeth née Wetenhall.  His parents had three children born in East London and then moved their family to Newcastle-upon-Tyne where five more were born.  Henry senior was a boot and shoe maker, then a traveller in the boot trade, and finally the manager of a shoe warehouse.  Elizabeth was a dressmaker.

In January 1879 Henry George West, 22, married Sarah Turnbull, 19, at St Peter's Church Newcastle and his profession in given as barman.  However the 1881 census describes him as a plumber and gasfitter. 

‘London sketches - at a music hall’ from The Graphic 5 April 1873 p. 329. Copyright British Library Images Online

Sarah’s father William Turnbull was said to be a wine merchant on her marriage certificate.  William appears in local newspapers in 1885-1886 as landlord of the George Tavern in King Street, North Shields, and proprietor of the Gaiety Theatre in the same street.  The business manager for Turnbull’s Gaiety Theatre in 1886 was Mr H. G. West.

Advert for Turnbull's Gaiety Theatre from Shields Daily News 1 October 1886 British Newspaper Archive

Tragedy struck the family in December 1886.  Sarah West, aged just 27, was found dead in bed by her servant Mary Cooper at home in Marine Terrace, North Shields.  The inquest found that Sarah had a weak heart.

By February 1887, the Gaiety Theatre had passed into the ownership of George Duncan, a Tyneside comedian.  In January 1888, Henry George West was landlord of the Lord Byron Inn in North Shields.  He was summoned for allowing drinking after hours.  The police could hear men’s voices and drinks being ordered.  PC King covered the back door whilst Sergeant Clarke knocked at the front.  Three men were let out the back but retreated indoors when they saw Clarke.  West claimed that the men were friends being privately entertained.  He had only been at the pub at short while and was planning to leave because it didn’t pay.  The bench fined West £1 plus costs.  The other men were each fined 2s 6d plus costs.

The report of the case in the Shields Daily Gazette stated that West’s sister Florence, who kept house for him, had given evidence in his defence.  Henry wrote to the newspaper pointing out that his sister Florence was not involved and the name given should have been Audrey West.

Henry did not have a sister Audrey.  In the 1891 census, he was again working as a plumber and living in Jarrow with the family of Albert Overton, a barman born in  Aylesham, Norfolk.  Audrey West from Aylesham is with him and the couple are listed as Albert’s brother-in-law and sister-in-law.

Two and a half years later, Henry George West married Eliza Armstrong in Newcastle upon Tyne on 24 October 1893 and appears to have continued working as a plumber from that time.  Audrey (Audy) Overton, born in Norfolk, was living in Jarrow with her sister in 1901.

When West’s father Henry died in July 1890, the obituaries spoke of his long years of work as a temperance reformer in Newcastle.  I wonder what Henry thought of his son’s pub work?

Obituary for Henry West Newcastle Daily Chronicle 5 July 1890 British Newspaper Archive

Henry George West died of heart disease on 17 February 1906 at home in Hebburn, leaving Eliza alone with five young children.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
Whatever happened to Eliza Armstrong?
Eliza Armstrong – still elusive!
Eliza Armstrong – Another Piece of the Puzzle
Eliza Armstrong’s children

British Newspaper Archive also available via Findmypast e.g. Shields Daily News 1886 for William Turnbull and the Gaiety Theatre; Shields Daily News 27 December 1886 for Sarah West’s death; Shields Daily Gazette 13 & 25 January 1888 for the court case involving Henry George West; Newcastle Daily Chronicle 5 July 1890 & Newcastle Chronicle 12 July 1890 for obituaries of Henry West.