Are we justified in labelling Kate a thief?

[Ally]

There were 12 kids and Kate was the middle. It was 30 years later. It's hardly surprising that a sister didn't remember the exact age. And not all servants were beaten and abused. If I am not mistaken, Kate went to live and work for her aunt whom she lived with until she ran away with her first husband. So at the very least she probably wasn't being starved and abused as you imagine her to be.

[curious4]

Kate

Hello Ally,

Yes, there does seem to be a discrepancy in the date when Kate's mother died. Would have thought her sister would have known her (Kate's) age at the time, though. As for the rest, Google Domestic Servants in Victorian England. Ten or twelve, her working conditions would have been the same.

Best wishes,
C4

[curious4]

Kate

All facts checked, I can assure you. According to the newspaper report, her sister said that she was ten years of age, which she would have been when her mother died. Her father died a couple of years later, it seems.

Best wishes,
C4

[Ally]

Although your listings of the horrors Kate suffered was colorful and quite...imaginative, basic math indicates she would have been at least 13 in 1855 (when her mother died) not 10.

[curious4]

Hello Lynn,

Cheers!

Gwyneth

[lynn cates]

not habitual

Hello Gwyneth. I think you are correct that a single transgression does not an habitual criminal make.

Cheers.
LC

[curious4]

Hello All,

While watching a JTR documentary recently I wa surprised to hear a tour guide refer to Kate as "having robbed her employer" and thought at first that she was confusing her with Polly Nichols. Having checked, however, I found a reference to this in the Daily News of Oct 4th, 1888 from her elder sister, Mrs Emma Jones, who seemed determined to paint as black a picture as possible of poor Kate (sibling rivalry perhaps?).

According to her, Kate was sent to an aunt in Wolverhampton at the age of ten (!), but ran away to her uncle in Birmingham after a few months, having "robbed her employer". I have looked into what work a ten-year-old girl would be employed in and discounted her being sent down a mine, to the potteries or picking up lint under cotton spinning machines, and concluded that the most likely possibility was that she was in domestic service, as were her two elder sisters.

At ten years of age she would most probably be employed as a scullery maid or "slavey" - a very apt name. She would have been up at 5.30 a.m. and working until ten or ten-thirty at night, have slept perhaps in a cupboard under the stairs or in the kitchen and her work would have been the dirtiest and possibly the hardest in the house, emptying and cleaning chamberpots, scrubbing floors, polishing brass and so on. Her position was the lowest in the house and she would have been routinely ignored and humiliated. Quite probably she would have been given the worst food and litttle of it. Not every house was Downton Abbey. Food was kept under lock and key (as in a meatsafe, for example) and as a growing girl she may have been constantly hungry.

I have concluded that her "theft" was most probably of some food to sustain her on her journey to her uncle in Birmingham. She may well have resented being taken out of school and being a bright and spirited girl was perhaps in trouble for being seen and heard more than she was supposed to.

Some of this is conjecture - I do hope I haven't fallen into the trap of a deal of chaff (or do I mean chav?) and very little wheat, as I have seen in the case of perhaps one poster lol.

Is it time to clear Kate`s name? She was aged ten and doesn't seem to have become an habitual thief - quite the opposite, she seems to have worked hard all her life, hawking, hopping, picking fruit and cleaning and so on.

Best wishes,
C4