Coombes Nathaniel - The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer

THE WICKED BOY

THE WICKED BOY

The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer

Kate Summerscale

For Miranda and Keith

CONTENTS

In 1895, a British pound (1) comprised 20 shillings (20/-) or 240 pence (240d). 1 could then buy the equivalent of goods that in 2014 cost roughly 100 ($150), and 1/- could buy goods that in 2014 cost about 5 (or $7.50). These comparisons, based on the Retail Price Index, are explained on the website measuringworth.com.

In Life and Labour of the People: Volume I (1889), the social reformer Charles Booth detailed the expenditure of several East London families. Over five weeks, a couple and their two sons with an annual income of about 70, slightly higher than that of the Coombes household, spent as follows:

Meat 19/1d

Potatoes 2/4d

Vegetables 1/1d

Fish 2/8d

Bacon &c 1/2d

Eggs 1/

Cheese 4/10d

Suet 1/2d

Butter and dripping 5/10d

Bread 7/3d

Flour 1/11d

Rice, oatmeal &c 8d

Fruit, jam &c 6d

Sugar 3/5d

Milk 5/

Tea 5/3d

Coffee, cocoa &c 2/11d

Pepper, salt &c 5d

Beer and tobacco 4/10d

Fire and light 9/

Rent 22/6d

Washing and cleaning 3/4d

Clothes &c 22/9d

Education, medicine &c 1/

Insurance &c 2/11d

Total over five weeks: 133/1d (approximately 6 13/-)

The average prices of some of these items:

Meat 7d per lb

Potatoes 1/2d per lb

Eggs 1d each

Cheese 8d per lb

Milk 4d per quart

Coffee 1/- per lb

In June 1930 an eleven-year-old boy walked four miles along a dirt track in New South Wales, south-eastern Australia, to report a crime. He went into a police station in a village in the bush and told the officer on duty that he had been beaten with a brush hook. The boy showed the constable the evidence: his right arm and leg were heavily grazed and bruised; his nose, his left cheek and his right eye were dark with cuts and swellings. The policeman put the child in his car and set out to investigate. The incident was reported in the local press, but to protect the identity of the child neither his name nor that of his attacker was given.

Early in the morning of Monday 8 July 1895, Robert and Nathaniel Coombes dressed themselves, collected the familys rent book from a room downstairs, and went out to the back yard. It was just after 6 a.m. and .

Robert was thirteen and Nattie twelve. Their father had gone to sea on Friday, as chief steward on a steamship bound for New York, leaving the brothers and their mother, Emily, at home together. They lived in a small, new, yellow-brick terraced house at 35 Cave Road, Plaistow, a poor but respectable working-class district in West Ham, the biggest borough in the docklands of East London.

In an attempt to attract the attention of their neighbour in number 37, Robert picked up a handful of stones and threw them at the roof of the washhouse next door.

At 6.15 a.m. James Robertson heard the stones clattering on the washhouse roof and came out. Mr Robertson saw the two Coombes boys in their yard: Robert, dark-haired, with blue eyes, thick eyebrows and sun-tanned skin, and the paler, smaller Nattie. He knew them as sharp-witted lads. Robert produced a gold sovereign, worth twenty shillings (or 1), and asked Mr Robertson if he could change it for them. Mr Robertson said that he had no silver but offered to change the coin for two half-sovereigns. He fetched the two gold coins from his house. Robert then asked him if he would

No, said Robert. We had a telegram late last night from Liverpool and she is going there. Weve had a rich uncle die in Africa, and Auntie wants to see Ma. Emily Coombes sometimes travelled to the north-west of England to visit her well-to-do older sister and her mother.

Mr Robertson asked whether she had gone already.

No, said Robert. She is going directly. She has had a faint. (Or She has had a fit when asked to recall the conversation, Mr Robertson could not be sure.)

How long ago was that? enquired Mr Robertson.

Robert pulled a gold watch from his pocket and consulted it. About an hour and a half ago, he said.

Mr Robertson asked who was with their Ma. Robert jerked his thumb behind him, in the direction of the house. Mrs...

Mrs England? suggested Mr Robertson. Amelia England was the Coombes familys neighbour on the other side, and a close friend of Emily Coombes.

No, said Robert. He did not explain further but added: Perhaps Ma will see Mrs Robertson before she goes.

The boys set out for Lords.

Robert and Nattie were among more than 12,000 people to travel to St Johns Wood that Monday to watch , the fixture of the season at the most famous cricket ground in England. The streets near Lords were lined with lawns and villas, and on the day of a big match they were packed with people, the men in top hats, bowlers, flat caps or straw boaters, the few women in dresses with bell skirts and high necks, their hats perched on pinned-up hair and their parasols tilted at the sun. A handful of police constables in domed helmets and flared jackets moved among the crowd.

The great draw that day was the legendary cricketer W. G. Grace, who, at forty-six, was enjoying an astonishing renaissance. He had just become the first player ever to score a thousand runs in the opening month of a season and was, according to the Illustrated London News, the most popular man in the British Isles. He would be batting for the Gentlemen, a team composed of well-born men who played for pleasure rather than profit. Their opponents, the Players, were professional cricketers, most of them of working-class stock. In theory, the match pitted those who were paid to play against those who were not, though many of the Gentlemen were known to benefit handsomely from tours, gifts and testimonials. Grace was foremost among crickets shamateurs.

Robert and Nattie paid a few pennies apiece to gain admittance to the ground and made for the low, roped-off stands to either side of the pitch. The more affluent spectators took their places in the tiered pavilion reserved for members of the Marylebone Cricket Club.

It was a clear, hot day, tempered by soft breezes. Just after noon the bell rang and the Gentlemen strode out from the pavilion in their whites to take their places as fielders on the huge swathe of green. The Players first batting pair emerged from their shabbier dressing room through a side entrance by the stands, which were partly covered with a white awning and backed by a belt of trees.

The Players had won the toss and elected to bat. They expected to score well on a pitch hardened by three months of drought, but the wicket proved far more volatile than anticipated, and their batsmen performed disappointingly. By 4.40 p.m. they were all out for 231.

Twenty minutes later, W. G. Grace and Andrew Stoddart opened the innings for the Gentlemen. Grace lumbered onto the field in his whites, a tiny red and yellow cap on his big, bearded head. It was thirty years almost to the day since he had played in his first Gentlemen v Players match at Lords. His partner, Stoddy, was another cricketing hero: a graceful, spirited batsman, with a magnificent moustache, he had led the English side to victory in the last test series in Australia, and had been honoured with a wax statue at Madame Tussauds museum in Baker Street.