Marriage certificates can reveal a wealth of information about each party to the marriage: their name, age, occupation, current residence, father’s (and often mother’s) name, witnesses to the marriage, and, of course, the date and place of marriage. That’s a lot of detail, but what is missing is the back story of how they met and married, and what their relationship was like. Sometimes that story can be quite surprising.
One of the first marriage certificates I ever acquired was among a collection of documents left by my maternal grandmother. It recorded the 1855 marriage of her great-aunt, Ellen Walsh, to John Hatton Kean in the Parish Church of Saint Bride, London, England.
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Over the years, I tried without success to find out more about this couple. There was no sign of them in any subsequent census and no birth records for children, nor could I find any trace of their deaths. I wondered if they may have emigrated but also came up empty in searches of overseas records. Their story languished as one of several “brick walls” in my research.
A couple of years ago I decided to invest in a subscription to the British Newspaper Archive—a wise decision, as it turns out, as newspapers can be a treasure trove of information not to be found anywhere else. In the London Daily News of June 1, 1854, I discovered details of a jury trial in the Court of Common Pleas, for a case brought by Ellen Walsh against John Hatton Kean to recover damages for assault and for retaining some of her clothes.
The 25-year-old Kean had first encountered Ellen, then just 15, the previous year in a London cigar shop that was apparently a front for a “house of ill fame.” Well, here was something I wasn’t expecting: my 3G-aunt was a teenage prostitute! Despite her mother’s best efforts to keep her at home—giving her the best room and getting her a job at a dressmaker’s, which she quickly quit—Ellen refused to pay her parents room and board and began leading “an immoral life.”
After spending the night with Ellen at the brothel, Kean ultimately convinced her to move in with him at his house in Loughton, Essex. Several months later, the young daughter of Kean’s gardener knocked on a neighbour’s door, appealing for help for a badly beaten Ellen. Witness testimony at trial provided a graphic description of Ellen’s injuries:
“She was in a very bad condition, and appeared as if she had been dragged about by the hair of her head. There was a wound in her left cheek, her face was bloody, her left ear was quite discoloured, her face was all bruised, there was a mark as if of a whip half round her neck, and witness thought her left shoulder was bleeding. … There was a great bruise on her knee, her teeth seemed to be loose, and she could not take anything while she was with witness. … The plaintiff’s ankles were cut as with a whip, and her night-clothes were saturated with blood.”
Ellen’s mother testified that on arriving the following day, she barely recognized her daughter, her injuries were so severe, and that Ellen had been confined to bed, barely able to eat, for two weeks thereafter.
When confronted by Ellen’s mother, Kean did not deny assaulting her daughter, accusing her of being unfaithful. He nevertheless pleaded not guilty to the allegations in court. However, the jury very quickly returned a verdict in favour of the plaintiff, awarding Ellen damages of £100 for the assault plus one shilling for her detained clothing.
Author Charles Dickens, with an intense interest in crime and the paranormal, collected grisly incidents for publishing as a monthly supplement to “Household Words,” a weekly journal he edited in the 1850s. The tale of Ellen Walsh’s brutal assault is included in his collection for the year 1854.
It is astounding then to know that just over a year later, Ellen Walsh married her abuser—and how ironic it was to see her new husband’s profession recorded in the marriage register as “gentleman.” As Ellen was still a minor, parental permission was required to marry. In spite of Kean’s brutal treatment of his daughter, Ellen’s father, Timothy Walsh (my 3G-grandfather and a retired City of London police constable), nevertheless gave his permission and also signed the parish register as a witness to the marriage.
So now that I know the disturbing back story leading up to the marriage, what became of this couple? Unfortunately I have been unable to find any further trace of Ellen in any records after 1855.
As to her husband, just two years after his marriage to Ellen in London, we find John Hatton Kean marrying an Ellen Jane Newman in Liverpool. What happened to Ellen #1? Divorce is doubtful, being uncommon, expensive and difficult to obtain in Victorian England. It’s possible she had died, but it’s equally likely that Kean simply absconded (or Ellen managed to escape his home and abuse) and he married Ellen #2 bigamously. My suspicion is the latter.
Various newspaper reports reveal that by March of 1858, Kean was a prisoner in the Fisherton Gaol in Wiltshire, England, an insolvent debtor, having failed at several enterprises including licensed victualler and boarding-house keeper in a number of locales.
With Ellen #2, Kean fathered four children between 1858 and 1863. Two daughters did not survive infancy and his only son died in New York at age 27. The trail runs cold at this point for Kean, Ellen #2 and their remaining daughter.
While I have not yet found any evidence of her death, it is almost certain that Ellen Walsh had died by 1882 as her brother William (my 2G-grandfather), in settling his mother’s estate that year, declared himself to be “the only child of the deceased.”
For now my brick wall as relates to Ellen Walsh remains firmly in place, but I hope to one day learn her ultimate fate.
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