Mother H in Doncaster

Askern and the Bathing Society – The New Betting Rooms -The daring robbery – Isaiah Smart – The Murrays

Ann King and Thomas Hodgkins lived part of the time in Askern, a spa town near Doncaster. Askern developed as a fashionable watering place in the 1820s, and received the approval of various medical men and chemists writing on the efficacy of mineral waters, as did Brighton. Ann’s liking for both places may have arisen from her own health issues and a need for the waters’ healing powers. Ann King’s physician, Joseph Thomas Pettigrew, was a long term friend and one of the executors of her long and complicated will. The will specified a sum of five pounds to be left to the ‘Askern Bathing Society’. This was most likely the Askern Bath Charity, an organisation founded in 1825 raising private subscriptions to fund the treatment at the spa for the poor.

In addition to ‘Mother H’s’ in Covent Garden, Ann King and Thomas Hodgkins owned a part share in the lease of The New Doncaster Betting Rooms. While quietly living in Askern, they managed to bring a piece of Covent Garden entertainment to the town of Doncaster. Charles Molloy Westmacott writing in about 1826 in The English Spy, broke into verse to describe his visit to the Betting Rooms:

 

 “Lo! Piccadilly Goodered [i]James Goodered, proprietor of  The Royal Saloon, 222 Piccadilly and joint proprietor of the Betting Rooms with Charles Bluck laughs,
  As when some novice, reeling, quaffs
  His gooseberry wine in tipsy draughts,
  At his so pure saloon.
 
 
  Good gracious too! (O what a trade
  Can oyster sales at night be made!)
  Here swallowing wine like lemonade,
  Sits Mrs H.'s man![ii]Thomas Hodgkins
  And by the Loves and Graces all,
  By Vestris'[iii]Lucia Elizabeth Vestris, contralto singer, famous for 'breeches' roles. trunks, Maria's shawl,
  There trots the nun[iv]Mother H often dressed as a nun. A 'Covent Garden Nun' was a term for a prostitute. Her will of 1851 bequeathed several luxurious nun's veils. herself, so tall,
  A flirting of a fan,
 
 
  And blushing like the “red, red, rose”
  With paly eyes and a princely nose
  And laced in Nora Crinas'[v]'Nora Crina' was a flirtatious Irish dance.  Westmacott may have known about Mother H's Irish origin. clothes,
  (Cool like a cucumber),
  With beaver black, with veil so green
  And huntress' boots 'neath skirt quite clean,
  She looks Diana's self-a quean[vi]Quean – a prostitute
  In habit trimmed with fur.
 
 
 
 

In addition to providing Westmacott with material for his salacious publication, The Doncaster Betting Rooms were a venue for serious gambling where there was space for 1,000 people. Bets on the races were taken in the rooms, where there was also the opportunity for other gambling such as ‘Hazard’: a form of roulette. Bets having been taken on the races, the assembled company would repair to the racecourse, and the money taken left in the betting rooms in strong boxes belonging to the agents. After the races, winnings would be paid out at the Betting Rooms, where further gaming would continue. The proprietors of the Betting Rooms received a percentage of the takings.

In 1829, Isaiah Smart, the manager of Mother H’s in Covent Garden, and his servant, Jenkins, were accused of a daring robbery at the Doncaster Betting Rooms which shocked the betting fraternity. While the company were at the racecourse, at least £1,700^[vii]£1700 in 1829 would have approx spending power in 2020 of £170,000. and probably more, was stolen from the strong box, of James Goodred and Charles Bluck, both London agents who were taking bets that day. It was never made clear why Isaiah Smart, who was Ann King’s (by then Ann Wilds) manager in Covent Garden was likely to be receiving stolen money from her Betting Rooms in Doncaster. All that was said was that since Smart’s arrest, Mrs Wilds was not to be found. Smart, who could afford expensive lawyers, was found not guilty. The robbery and subsequent trial were widely reported in the press, ^[viii]The Yorkshire Gazette 27 March 1830, and it was these accounts that first led me to identify Mother H as Ann Wilds.

Thomas Hodgkins died in Doncaster in 1826, and Ann Wilds having married respectably, to Amon Wilds, seemed to seek to distance herself from her notorious past. Although she retained ownership of the lease of the New Betting Rooms in Doncaster, she re-leased them to Goodered and Bluck at £500 a year. Isaiah Smart continued as the proprietor of Mother H’s at 13 Brydges Street, Covent Garden, for another year or so and declared his bankruptcy in 1834. He told the Commissioners of Bankruptcy that he had paid Ann Wilds £3,000 for the goodwill of the concern, and a further £300 a year rent. He complained that it was impossible to make a living there owing to the unwillingness of the excisemen to let him sell liquor without a licence!

Mother H’s closed until 1834, when much to the annoyance of the authorities, it was re-opened by the brothers Joseph and George Joseph Murray. The establishment continued to function in much the same way as before, and was the subject of court cases involving selling alcohol without a licence, inciting violence, defrauding gamblers, and being run as a bawdy house.

George Murray continued to run Mother H’s until 1848, when the London Society for the Protection of Young Females brought a case of living on immoral earnings against him.^[ix]The Morning Post 6 November 1848. George Joseph’s wife, Ann, had been reported by the press ^[x]Weekly Chronicle (London) 6 Aug 1848 as being Mother H’s daughter, but it is difficult to find evidence for this, particularly as George Joseph’s wife was actually Louisa Abrahams. It is likely that Ann Wild’s daughter , Ann was at 13 Brydges Street at the time of the raid in August 1848, but absconded, leaving Louisa Joseph, who was pregnant at the time, to deal with the police. It was then that the full extent of George Murray’s activities was revealed. Described as ‘a wholesale dealer in iniquity’ he was accused of keeping a chain of 50 brothels both in Westminster and in Northfleet (Gravesend) where he lived in some luxury. It appears that for some 14 years, Ann Wilds, now remarried as Ann Hunter had continued to receive income from Mother H’s in Covent Garden, but after 1848, when George Murray was imprisoned for his crimes, Mother H’s ceased trading forever.