Accessibility and Archives: A death in Cheltenham Part 2: “They’ve done for me. I shall never get over it”

In this the second of a two-part blog, drawing on newspaper reports of a Coroner’s Inquest from 1845, we continue exploring the same events through multiple perspectives – this time other prisoners, family members, and the individual himself.  We can see the challenge posed to officialdom by disability, but also the impact on an individual of not being believed.  Unfortunately, the culture of disbelief about internal states and physical disability remains prevalent in the present day.

We saw in the previous blog that one William Smart had died in the workhouse mere months after being convicted of an offence the game laws.  Extraordinarily the Inquest allows us to hear from others who had been imprisoned alongside him.

Other prisoners

At the end of the first blog, we noted that of the prison staff, the governor (Christopher Reeves) seemed to have stood out by showing compassion for William Smart.  Turning to the prisoners, however, might give us a different impression.  Thomas Smith records that Reeves had “threatened to get [William] flogged” because, on the treadmill, he consistently disobeyed the instruction to desist, when he “complained of his left arm, and put it upon the box to save it”, instead of reaching out to grasp the rail.  Another prisoner Joseph Brown said “he knew William Smart was forced on the wheel when unable to work.”   Cornelius Riordan, another prisoner, appointed to look after William in the prison hospital, similarly claims Reeves threatened to tie  William up when he was “unsettled during the violence of the pains”, and explicitly that it was Reeves order that William be tied to the bed. At this point, we may note that Reeves’ alone claimed William had seemed “in a delicate state of health and emaciated back in September.  That certainly seems inconsistent with the evidence of the Superintendent of Police who had walked William to Northleach who thought him “in good health.”

Smith confirmed the tread-wheel officer Acock’s description of William’s awkwardness on the treadmill and specifies that “he used to drop off the wheel and could not walk around the yard like the other prisoners.  He could not get upon the wheel as quick as the others.”  Unlike Acock, he believed William’s difficulties were genuine, noting that “[t]he wheel-men don’t often shirk their work who are not ill; the risk they run of injuring themselves is greater than the trouble of working.”  In commenting on William’s sweating and being fatigued, it is implicit that these were beyond what others experienced.  This gives an edge to the complaint that the post-mill cool-downs were too short for all. 

It is also from Smith that we hear of horse-hair being added to William’s wooden soled shoes, presumably after he had complained of pain in his instep.  As a mitigation it seems to have been ineffective as William “often used to lean against the post and cry, when walking round the yard.” 

Smith claimed that William’s body after death was “so altered that he could not swear it was that of the man he knew in the prison” and Riordan agreed his features were“much altered”. 

Smith gave evidence of the turnkey Curtis threatening prisoners, specifically including WillIam, and Riordan said that his requests of extra bed covers for William had been ignored by Curtis.  He also says both that the prison doctor had argued “a good horse-whipping” would do William good, and that William had needed carrying “from the cell to the hospital”.  Riordan reported the tread-wheel officer Acock to have said that if William “had his liberty he would run home to Cheltenham without stopping” as “there was nothing wrong with him.”

Riordan also notes that a second “blister” (likely the mustard plaster mentioned in the first post) had been enforced before the site on the back of his head had healed, and that the barber had cut into “the flesh of the old wound”.  When William cried out saying he would not have it, the barber applying it had called him a “d___d scoundrel” and “knocked his head against the wall”. 

Another prisoner John Pinching admitted that he and another had forced William into the straitjacket without explicit authorisation because “he was noisy, got out of bed, and threw the hard brush and poker at them.”  They had ensured he was freed before the turnkey arrived, and had not said to the officers or doctor what they had done.

John Bullock had known William for years, and is the only person who mentions “he always looked pale and stooped in his walking”. 

Siblings

From William’s siblings we learn something of his class and the family’s means.  Imprisonment was the sentence accorded because he could not pay a fine.  Although he asked his brother to pay it partway through his sentence, when his sister mentioned that she wished she could, it was he said already too late.  

According to Governor Reeves the sister had once confided that William “had been ill from his birth, that his ‘head had never been closed’, that he was always weakly, that he could not get his living like other men, that he had been at her house four months laid up with the same complaint.”  She explicitly refuted that she had ever said anything of the sort.  Although she suggested he had previously been sickly and mentioned that “he had been injured in the foot by a wagon” - an accident elsewhere suggested to have been three or four years previously - she notes him walking back from Warwickshire in one night “a short time before”, and that three weeks before his committal, “he then appeared very well”.  She also seems appalled (rather than sanguine) about him being “perfectly helpless both in mind and body” in November. 

There appears to have been a degree of estrangement from his brother prior to the conviction.  As things turned out, his brother may have felt some responsibility as one prisoner witness, Thomas Davis, alleged him to have told William he would not pay the money that would have secured his release as “you are as comfortable here and as well done by as you could be at home: you have only three weeks to stop.”

William Smart

William’s decline and death mean that we don’t get much of his story in his own words.  It is clear, however, that he was aware he had had “a stroke” at Northleach.  He appears to have attributed his disablement to both the treadmill, and to other ill treatment and poor conditions. In particular, his brother mentions William talking in the Cheltenham hospital about an “injury to the back bone” which he blamed on “the mill shaking him”.   In pain, overnight in the prison he screamed “Murder” loud enough to attract attention from outside the prison, and repeatedly asserted versions of “They’ve done for me.  I shall never get over it.” 

Most witnesses describe him manifesting fear of speaking in the presence of staff, even after discharge, and note that he claimed to have been threatened (but did not specify by whom or with what).  However, Riordan suggests he had heard him say “if ever he got out alive, he would publish a book of his ill treatment”. Due to the speed of his decline, his turned out to be beyond him, but the reports of the inquest allows us to raise his case again 180 years later.

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Copyright Eirian Evans and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence