Justice 1830s - the trial of Joanna Arter and her two daughters
At the 7 December 1830 Michaelmas County magistrates general session held at Exeter Castle, my 3 x grandmother Joanna Arter, together with her two daughters Maria and Hannah, were sentenced to prison in Exeter Bridewell for stealing and receiving stolen cheese from John Ashfield, a local tanner and farmer, who was Hannah’s employer. For receiving Joanna age 49 was sentenced to six months hard labour with one week a month solitary confinement. Both Maria age 25, with the surname Bowden through marriage, and Hannah age 13 were sentenced to twelve months hard labour with one week a month solitary. Hannah for stealing and Maria for receiving.
Information about this situation was assembled slowly over a number of years and, as ever with family history, raised more questions that cried out for further research. Some of these questions relate to the family circumstances others to a picture of power, struggle and poverty of Devon rural life at the time.
The usual online sources of parish registers, censuses, tithe apportionments and other family historians’ work helped build a picture of the life of the Arter family in Lurley part of Loxbeare, in 1831 a parish of 138 inhabitants near Tiverton and Sowton near Exeter. It was a colleague family historian that alerted me to the possibility of a criminal conviction when the Criminal Records came online. However details of the family circumstances have slowly been pieced together through searching the Parish, court and other records at the Devon records office in Exeter. The court records are hardly catalogued but are in date order in quarterly terms - Michaelmas etc. These were then supported by some newspaper reports. The court records are an amazing source of family and social history information.
The family background
Joanna Davey was born in Loxbeare in 1781, She married William Arter, born 1773 in Loxbeare, on 6 August 1800. On the marriage record he is recorded as a ‘sojourner’, a visitor to the neighbouring Washfield parish where the Davey family are farmers and Joanna was recorded as ‘of this parish’. The Arter family had been in Loxbeare since at least the 1680s. Records emphasising at every point where you belong and where you don’t. Their first son James Thomas Arter - my 2 x grandfather was born in Loxbeare on 21 October 1800. The next child was born in Loxbeare, the third in Exeter and the fourth through to the seventh were born in Sowton which indicates that’s where they were living from around 1805 - 1816. By the time of the birth of the eighth child in 1817 they were back in Loxbeare, more specifically Lurley, a small hamlet in the parish and that is where they stayed. Another four children followed up until 1827.
It seems very difficult to know why they moved back but one hint is from the Loxbeare poor law and apprentice records. The poor law records in Sowton have no record of a claim from the Arter family which legally, of course. would be most unlikely given that relief was only available from the home parish. 1815 saw the end of the Napoleonic wars and the start of the long agriculture depression as post war prices started to fall and depression set in. As an agricultural labourer William Arter could have been directly affected and the need for relief sent the family back to Lurley. There may have been one more draw. Using the tithe apportionment records it has been possible to identify where the Arter family lived and this can be corroborated using the 1841 census information. Their cottage at Lurley together with a garden and waste land, was owned by Baronet Sir Thomas Dyke Acland but the occupier at the time was a Sam Arter. It has been difficult to confirm who this person was exactly but there does seem to have been an inheritable tenancy within the Arter family for this property, as William, Joanna and William’s last born who was blind, was still living there in 1885 and an inquest into his death indicated this form of tenancy.
By the time of moving back to Loxbeare the eldest boys, James and Zachariah, had left home with Wlliam and Joanna going back with five of their remaining children. Almost immediately after moving back to Lurley in 1818 Mary Arter, their fourth child born in 1807 and now 11, was apprenticed to a local yeoman John Toswell until ‘21 or married’ and Maria Arter, their third child born in 1805 and now 13, was apprenticed to Loxbeare tanner John Ashfield for ‘housewifery’. This is where the court connection starts. Two more children were apprenticed. In 1821 Isaac aged 9 to Loxbeare yeoman Thomas Norrish for ‘husbandry’ and Abraham aged 11 to Loxbeare Yeoman Jonathan Nichols for ‘husbandry’ until 21 or married.
The parish poor rate assessments and expenditure exist for 1830-37. Throughout this period the William Arter family received payments and from 1829 to 1832 received monthly payments of 4/- for the children sometimes rising to 14/- due to the sickness of William. The years 1829 and 1830 were also years of poor harvests leading to a sharp rise in the price of bread. A picture emerges of a family struggling to survive throughout the 20 year period after Waterloo in 1815.
Details of the trial and sentencing
Copied from The Western Times – Saturday December 11th
1830, accessed at Devon County Archives:
“Devon County Sessions
Hannah Harters, for stealing a cheese from her Master,
John Ashford, and Johannah Harters, the mother of Hannah Harters, for receiving
the same knowing it to have been stolen. The prisoners receive a good
character, and the mother was recommended to mercy by the jury.
Hannah Harters was further indicted for stealing
another cheese, and Maria Bowden for receiving the same knowing it to have been
stolen. Hannah Arters 12 months imp, 6 weeks solitary – Johanna Harters 6
months imp 6 weeks solitary – Maria Bowden 12 months imp 12 weeks solitary.”
Ths image is the report of the trial as entered into
the minutes of the County petty sessions minute book kept at the Devon County
Archives at Exeter.
The report gives some indication of what was said at the trial as ‘the prisoners received good character and the mother was recommended for mercy”. What also emerges from these records is the fear that must have been going through their minds as the case before theirs resulted in six people being transported for seven years for the same charge of larceny. The one piece of evidence that has yet to be found in the boxed archives is the written deposition of John Ashfield which led to the trial. These are all in bundles tied with fading red tape but as yet I’ve not been able to find the detail of his accusations.
One more insight that emerges from the minutes of the petty sessions is the amounts paid to the person bringing the prosecution.
As can be seen John Ashfield was paid a total of £22.17.6 for his prosecution. I was completely unaware that the person bringing the prosecution would be paid for doing so. It starts to raise wider questions about the social context of the accusations, the trial and what could be seen as a financial incentive to bring a case against people with whom there was a dominating ‘master and servant’ relationship. The sum paid to John Ashfield needs to be considered against what was an average agricultural wage at this time of about 1/-3d per day in the South West (to remind younger readers 12 pence in a shilling and 20 shillings to a pound). Pay fluctuated through the year and employment was intermittent but even working for six days a week throughout the year would only bring in an annual wage of around £20.00.
Out of the 138 inhabitants in Loxbeare only 17 had large enough tenancies to pay rates. John Ashfield was one of these, his rate assessment for 1830 being 2d in the pound. This information is in the Loxbeare parish boxes held in the Devon Archives number 1558A/PO1. A small but not necessarily insignificant incentive perhaps to retrieve some of the rate payments. Maria Bowden (nee Arter), who was the elder daughter charged with receiving the cheese, had been a pauper apprentice with John Ashfield from the age of 13 for seven years until 1825 when she was married. Hannah Arter, 13 at the time of the trial, was employed by John Ashfield. So the family connection through apprenticeship and work extended over 12 years. Chaplands the farm and tannery owned by John Ashfield was about a mile away from where the Arter’s lived, just across three fields. Clearly something had happened leading to a breakdown of not only a work relationship but quite possibly a social one, with a long established local family in such a small community. It is worth remembering that Joanna and her two daughters had good character references at the trial, presumably from local people, so John Ashfield could have been seen as stepping outside the mores of the local community to bring these charges. Finding John Ashfield’s deposition becomes even more important. What did he do to justify such a large payment for bringing the prosecution?
The wider social and economic context of the time may also have had some effect though it will probably be almost impossible to link them directly. The Joanna and William Arter family had clearly been struggling for many years and possibly clung on locally due to their tenancy rights in their cottage. In the years 1828 to 1831 the Arter’s and many other families like them were experiencing extra hard times as prices rose due to the poor harvests but wages barely moved and work became more intermittent. Technical and political changes were in the air. Across Southern England the ‘Captain Swing’ uprising had taken place during the summer of 1830 in part against new farm machinery. George IV died and although the long term Tory and repressive government won the 1830 general election it was about to fall to the reforming liberal Whigs in the 1831 and 1832 elections. There was a shift toward a more technically administrative and rational form of government. One example of which was the first census of 1831. So, because of all this, the existing agrarian, aristocratic and landowning class system was under a general pressure to change with the times. Perhaps even reaching down to individual work relationships where pay which had traditionally been, in part through produce and allowances, now felt that boundaries such as this, payment in cheese, was being taken advantage of. What had been acceptable was beginning not to be any longer.
Finally what happened to Joanna, Maria and Hannah and the Arter family? Joanna lived until 1879 almost reaching 100. Through the census information it is clear she moved around the family but died in the cottage at Lurley with possibly the blind son William supporting each other. The prison sentence did not affect her social standing in the village. Maria and her family moved around the area and she died a widow in the workhouse in Exeter in 1902, again nearly reaching 100. Hannah has been more difficult to follow and did not seem to marry and in the 1871 census was a servant in a house in Richmond, Surrey. My own 2 x grandfather James, Joanna and Williams first son, clearly became involved with horses and stagecoaches whilst living in Sowton, drove coaches all over England and finally ending up owning two hackney carriages in Greenwich, Kent, my 1 x grandfather’s family still had horses there in the early 1920s.
End (at the moment).
Sources
Online census data via Ancestry
Devon Archives - Loxbeare registration - 1558A/PR
Devon Archives - Loxbeare
overseers - 1558A/PO
Devon Archives - Sowton overseers - 780A/PO
Devon County Council - tithe
apportionments - https://www.devon.gov.uk/historicenvironment/tithe-map/
Devon Archives - Sessions Order
Book 1830-1835 QS/1/27
