Victorian Crime Spree!
- Sarah Browning
- Jul 4
- 7 min read
“There is an old saying that half the world does not know how the other half lives, and an exemplification of this was brought to light at Hebden-bridge at the end of last week. For some months the curious doings of a young woman have been giving the police of Todmorden, Hebden-bridge, Manchester, Bolton and Rochdale a considerable amount of trouble, but in such a wily way did she also carry on her work of imposition and deception that she has for a considerable time been able to baffle them...”
If you were an intelligent and bored young working class woman near the turn of the 19th century, what would you do:
- find an interesting trade?
- immerse yourself in books to escape your humdrum life?
- go on a cross-county crime spree that lands you thirteen convictions and over three years of jail time with hard labour between the ages of 17 and 21?
If you chose option 3, your name is Mary Elizabeth Smith, and you woke up one morning and chose chaos.
Mary Elizabeth was born in Greenbooth near Rochdale in March 1874, the first child of her parents Richard and Alice. The Smiths were weavers and spinners, working class folks, and would have 9 children altogether over the next 25 years. Richard was also one of the founders of Greenbooth Cricket Club and he passed his love of an active life on to his eldest, perhaps not in the way he’d have hoped for though. On the 1891 Census she was named as Mary Lizzie Smith, working as a woolen weaver in Heywood, lodging with a fellow weaving family and seemingly without incident...but soon she would prove to be a slippery character whose crimes would be serious enough to attract carceratory sentences.
Her reign of terror apparently began soon after the Census was taken, with a newspaper mention of theft in Middleton in March 1892. The Habitual Criminals Register tells us that her conviction for this offense was her third, and offers us a description of her – 4' 11” tall, fresh complexion, light brown hair, dark green eyes, an oval face and “proportionate” build. She was by now an accomplished confidence trickster. She would pretend to be a young gentlelady in a temporarily embarrassed circumstance – an inheritance pending, a missed train, a letter that did not come in time – and seek lodgings with (usually) a local woman who did not customarily take in lodgers. She would then borrow money or rob them of small items like watches, scarves, or corsets, and disappear without notice.
By the time she got as far as what is now the Calder Valley she was ready to commit criminal offense #7. On the evening of October 10th 1893, Ada Towers of Knowlwood Road in Walsden answered a knock on the door to find an unnamed neighbour and Mary, with the neighbour asking Ada if she could take the stranger in. Mary said she was “so tired she could not travel to her home in Hebden Bridge” that night and must have put on quite a convincing show for this thin story to be acceptable. She stayed the night. The following morning at 5:30am she asked Ada if she could stay in bed a little longer and meet her later on, which Ada agreed to. Mary never turned up to their arranged meeting place. When Ada got home she found her house “ransacked”, with jewelry, clothing, hairpins and even silk bobbins missing. Where was Mary? Mary was now over a mile away, at Matilda Marshall’s house on Burnley Road, using the fine items she’d stolen to weave a more complicated story.
Mary was now an heiress who hailed from a “large villa residence” in Wolstenholme, waiting to reach 21 to obtain her inheritance, and needing somewhere to stay for a few days while she waited for her mother to come to Todmorden to pay Matilda for her lodgings and travel onwards from there. She stayed with Matilda for six days before disappearing again, curiously leaving behind almost everything she had taken from Ada Towers, but after having borrowed some money from Matilda to buy a new hat and leaving unannounced with her shawl and a few other small items she had borrowed.
Mary’s whistlestop crime tour now continued over into Hebden Bridge, where she approached Mary Hannah Barraclough of Market Street with a sad tale of family breakup. She was still an heiress awaiting her 21st birthday, but now had a cruel stepfather who her mother had sent her away from with promises to join her soon with money. Over the course of 11 days she borrowed up to £1 from Mary Hannah. During this time she had supposedly sent another letter home, and received one back from her mother “Mrs. Aspinall”, which included a note of thanks to Mary Hannah telling her what a good girl Mary was, what an angel Mary Hannah was for looking after her, and even suggesting that if Mary Hannah had any eligible sons that maybe one day there might be a joining of the families! Obviously this letter was a forgery designed to support the fraud. There were many layers to this deception. Mary must have been having a whale of a time.
The police caught up with her in the end, after a description of her in an Oldham newspaper sparked awareness for one of Mary Hannah’s sons (one of the ones Mary might have been hoping for a romance with?), who remembered Mary’s curious habit of disappearing quickly into shops whenever a policeman was nearby! She was taken to Todmorden Town Hall to be arraigned by the magistrates, and turned on the waterworks: “The prisoner appeared to feel her position keenly, and her eyes gave indications that she had been weeping a great deal; she turned her face from the gaze of the spectators”. The various victims of her crimes gave their testimonies, and her father Richard made what must have not been the first embarrassing appearance for him to try and explain to everyone that this was not his fault. He said Mary had left home five or six weeks earlier, saying she was going to a hotel in Bacup where she had been working to collect some wages owed, and they hadn’t heard from her until a letter she had sent while staying with Matilda. The later letters both from Mary to her mother and to Mary Hannah from “Mrs. Aspinall” were exposed as fakes.
At Mary's sentencing in January 1894 she continued with the dramatics. According to the Hebden Bridge Times in their coverage on January 5th:
Her father, who occupied a seat beneath the dock, completely broke down, as also did the prisoner. She made a most piteous appeal for mercy. Admitting her guilt, she expressed the greatest sorrow, and promised to turn over a new leaf if an opportunity was given her. She said that when she came out of prison she could scarcely look at her companions. - Eventually the Court sentenced her to four months' hard labour, the Chairman administering a severe rebuke to the girl.
The Chairman's rebuke wasn't severe enough. Once out, she made her way to Dewsbury, then Kildwick, and then back down to Cragg Vale in June 1894, where she called at farmer John Sutcliffe’s house at Cloughfoot asking to rest her feet for an hour before continuing on her journey. She told him she had been looking after a woman at Luddendenfoot who was confined to her house, and was travelling back to Rochdale on foot to visit her relatives after sending her luggage on ahead. John left her in the kitchen to rest her feet and have a drink. When he came back and found her gone he went and checked an unlocked drawer full of money and found 4 shillings missing. He set off after her but she was well away, having used some of the money to hire a passing carriage so she wouldn't have to walk.
She was apprehended a week later in Keighley and stood trial for all three crimes in turn, earning a combined prison sentence of twelve months with hard labour.
This was the end of Mary Elizabeth Smith’s time in Calderdale, which is a shame in a way because there are so many more stories about her exploits. Her 13th appearance in court, in Batley in October 1895, is maybe her crowning moment; having moved on from silent tears and turning her gaze from the onlookers, she was now suffering from an unnamed condition and had to be carried into the courtroom in an armchair by two constables...
Criminologists will tell you that the majority of young offenders tend to stop committing crimes around the ages of 18-21, mainly because they become old enough to leave behind the conditions or situations they lived in which encouraged criminal activity, or develop relationships or careers that make offending less attractive. It could be argued that a similar thing happened to Mary. In 1897 she married Edward Norris in Rossendale and her offending came to an end. But...maybe that's because Edward turned out to be the greater villain. The couple soon split, with Mary going into service, and Edward fled Britain to go to the US with his housekeeper’s 14 year old daughter in tow in late 1901. The less said about him the better.
Mary spent the rest of her life living with family members (who had not forsaken her despite everything!) and working various service jobs such as servant or cook. The good folk of the Calder Valley were safe once more. She died in 1948 at the age of 74, having left her youthful crime sprees far behind her. Not the spectacular dramatic ending her early story would have suggested...but maybe it's proof that there's hope for all of us?
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