Victorian courtroom dramas in 2016
By Mark Freeman
On 28 January, as part of ‘Residents: Enjoy St Albans’
weekend, the St Albans Tour
Guides put on a performance of some Victorian courtroom scenes in the
courtroom in the old town hall. Built in the 1830s, this was a magistrates’
court, and also hosted grand jury proceedings, where the large jury considered
bills of indictment.
The proceedings that were re-enacted in 2016 came from various real trials and committals from the Victorian period, and featured such characters as identical twins Albert and Ebenezer Fox, known for their poaching activities. In the scene presented here, Albert tried to blame a poaching offence on his brother, but was convicted by the new science of fingerprinting.
We also saw the 1842 case of Jabez Rainbow, a soldier who attacked a woman, Jane Pearce, at the Boot Inn (a real pub, still there). Identified by his victim and faced with a bloody shirt presented as evidence in the courtroom, Rainbow was sent to the assizes in Hertford. We later learned that he had been convicted, and transported to Van Diemen’s Land, where he died in 1860. A descendant of Rainbow’s from Australia recently visited the courtroom where her ancestor had been committed for trial.
Above: Courtroom scenes in progress
Perhaps the most amusing scene depicted the arraignment of the town gaoler himself, John Sharpless, who, frustrated at the miserly expenses payments he received for transporting prisoners, had damaged the cell locks and locked the magistrates out of the courtroom. It emerged during the proceedings that Sharpless had also been letting prisoners out of the cells to go and drink in the King’s Head pub, of which he was the landlord. Also charged with assault on a police officer using a pitchfork, Sharpless was fined £100 and committed for trial at the assizes.
After the re-enactment, we were given a tour of the cells downstairs, and walked up the narrow passage from the cells to the dock. The old town hall is being converted into a new museum for St Albans. The courtroom itself will be preserved, and the cells, I’m told, will become the toilets.