Emily Jane Popejoy

The Tragic Story of a Bagshot Girl in Victorian Times.

Christmas is expected to be a time of joy and happiness, but for one 17 year old local girl, just before the turn of the century, it was as far from this as one can imagine.

The story commences in 1896 when the mother of the young girl was approached and asked if she would like her daughter to take employment in London as a domestic servant. There was a post available with a Mrs Nicholls in Pitt Street, a fashionable area of Kensington, which would just suit a girl like Janie. She would have a good home and the work she had to do would be light. She would have but to wheel an invalid young lady, about her own age, in a perambulator in Kensington Gardens when the weather was fine. She would get 1s.6d a week to start with.

Janie, 16, was big and strong for her age, and healthy, having had but two days illness in her life and she commenced working for Mrs Nicholls in October 1896. Her life at Pitt Street was unhappy in the extreme and can only compare with certain episodes in a Dickensian novel. She was systematically starved and had to resort to begging bread from neighbours and pleading with them not to inform her mistress. On one occasion she was observed being beaten in the street by Mrs Nicholls with an umbrella. At another time she was seen to be dragged by the hair backwards into the house and belaboured with a stick. On being asked why she put up with this and didn't return home, Jane said that she had no money and must not go.

In her first letter home she said that the work was hard, as she was having to do the washing for all the family and she was given only bread and dripping and tea with no milk and very little sugar. Her mother's reply was intercepted by Mrs Nicholls and she was beaten for writing home without permission. Her next letters were dictated by her mistress and she was compelled to write that she had a kind mistress and she was sorry for mentioning the bread and dripping. It was all a mistake.

On Christmas Eve 1897, accompanied by a nurse from The Travellers' Aid Society, she arrived at Ascot from Waterloo and was conveyed to Bagshot in a horse carriage. She was in a pitiful state, could not stand and had to be carried into the house. On Christmas Day, Dr Osborne was summoned, and carried out his examination. He found that although five foot five inches (1.66 m) tall, Jane weighed only four and a half stones (29 kg). She had a broken nose, a broken finger, bruises all over her body and was suffering from acute starvation. He told her mother that she was dying. With her mother she said a prayer that either she should get better or she would be taken to heaven. Her lips were seen to move following her mothers words.

The Doctor advised that the police should be called in. On 27th December, P.C. Nunn from Peel House came and took a statement which Jane, being barely able to speak, just managed to get out, that her mistress was responsible for her condition. The Magistrate arrived just as she breathed her last.

An inquest was held in Bagshot over five days amidst hostile demonstrations by villagers. Then followed two and a half days at a Magistrates Court in Chertsey and as a result of intervention by the Public Prosecutor, it was transferred to a Metropolitan Magistrates Court at Bow Street.

After hearings lasting a further four days, Mrs Nicholls was committed to the Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey, to answer a charge of manslaughter.

This resulted in a sensational five day trial, in which Mrs Nicholls, in spite of being defended by the redoubtable Marshall Hall, was sentenced to seven years penal servitude, and committed to prison at Aylesbury. On each occasion of Mrs Nicholls' appearing for court hearings and on her departure to serve her sentence, she attracted enormous public demonstrations of hostility.

grave A national Sunday newspaper of the time, The Weekly Dispatch, because of the intense interest occasioned by the trial, organised a public subscription to fund a memorial to Emily Jane to be erected in Bagshot's little graveyard. The plot was given by the vicar, Revd Lory, who waived funeral charges and Edwin Spooner, the notable local builder and undertaker, provided the Sicilian marble cross for the cost of the materials.

Although, at one time completely vandalised it can, with its memorial inscription, be seen today, in its repaired state, under a cypress tree near the Chapel Lane entrance to the graveyard.

This page is based on an article by the late John H. Jillings (at the time Hon. Research Officer - Bagshot Society) published in the December 1997 edition of St Anne's Bagshot Parish Magazine.

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