Robert Bell Playford: A Case Study in Desperation

I research death, study it, write it. From the average to the strange, the mundane to the suspicious. I spend my days finding how people died and ascribing meaning to the processes around their deaths. So, it becomes routine. But sometimes I find a death that stays with me, and sticks in my mind. This is one such death. The boy’s story has been told before, but this is my take on it.

This story begins in Docking in Norfolk, something of a regional anomaly. Docking is a large village, made very slightly larger when the West Norfolk railway opened in 1866, but it’s not exactly a central hub. However, it was the centre of Docking Union, formed in the 1830s, and thus had a large union workhouse on the road to Sedgeford. It also had its own magistrate’s court, held in the Hare Inn on Station Road once a month. The village was dominated, in terms of employment, by the manor of Docking Hall, part of the Duchy of Lancaster. Most men worked on the land, or in the many small plantations dotted around the village. Agricultural wages were low.

James Francis Playford married Susan Sadler in Docking in December 1867. He was thirty-four, she was barely twenty and very pregnant. Their first baby was a shortlived daughter born a few weeks after the wedding. Three sons followed: John Alfred in 1870, Edward James in 1872 and Robert Bell born on 7th January 1874. Bell was Susan’s stepfather’s surname. The Playfords lived on East Green in Docking.

From other evidence, which will be discussed shortly, it seems that James and Susan’s marriage turned sour around the time of Robert’s birth. Susan died in the summer of 1875, when she was twenty-seven.

James married again in 1877. His second wife was, confusingly, also Susan – Susan Bond. Susan was born in Docking in 1838, although she often claimed to be younger. Her early life appears to have been fraught – she grew up in Docking, and in 1856, was stabbed by a young female neighbour in the legs with a pitchfork. This fight appears to have been over a man. At the time of their marriage, she had given birth to five illegitimate children: Adelaide in 1859, Zachariah Charles in 1863, Edgar John in 1869, Laura in 1873 and Sarah Maria in 1876. One or two illegitimate children was quite normal, but five raised eyebrows. When she married James, she was a few months into her sixth pregnancy. In court, several years later, James claimed that he was the father of Laura and Sarah. This suggests their relationship predated Susan Sadler’s death. After their marriage, more children followed in quick succession. James was born in May 1878 and Albert in the first weeks of 1880.

However, our scene opens on Tuesday 11th October 1881. A normal day in the Playford household. Susan walked Robert and his siblings halfway to school after their lunch break, then went home. The other children returned that evening as normal, but not Robert.

When James returned home from work, he went to look for the boy. He informed the police the next day that the boy was missing and continued to search. The neighbours were slowly informed, primarily by the police, but Robert was not found.

On Saturday 15th October, Mrs Smithson was out early picking up sticks in a small woodland, after a night of howling wind. She thought she heard a dog whining, but on closer inspection, discovered poor Robert behind some railings. She fetched help to retrieve him, and carried him home. He was wearing just his shirt and trousers, and had taken his jacket and cap off¹. Robert moaned all the way home, but his pupils were fixed and he was unable to respond. The doctor came and ordered the boy to be warmed, and given brandy and warm gruel, but Robert died in the afternoon. He was seven.

But why had he run away?

To answer that question, we need to go back to Robert’s birth. Laura Ann Bond was born in January 1873, and according to evidence given by James at Robert’s inquest, was his daughter. Within three months of her birth, Susan Sadler was pregnant with Robert, but it appears their marriage ended with his birth. Susan went to live with her half-brother, James George Bell, and took Robert with her. They lived with the Bells for around nine months, culminating in Susan’s death.

Robert then returned to live with his father. Susan Bond became pregnant again within a couple of months of Susan Sadler’s death, and this child was acknowledged by James at baptism. It is likely that they were living together before Susan’s death, and then of course, they married.

But Susan Bond did not appreciate her three stepsons, particularly on the meagre wage her husband brought in. The boys were not fed properly, they were not clothed properly. And they were savagely beaten by James and Susan. This was nothing unusual, and James talked about it openly in court – to stop the three boys running away, Susan had tied them to the door latch (the sneck) and beaten them. Robert was the youngest of the three, and apparently the most badly treated. Both James and Susan described him as melancholy and sullen, prone to run away and sulk, prone to be ‘queer’. Perhaps he was neurodivergent. Perhaps he was simply an abused, miserable little boy who wasn’t shown enough love, or given enough food.

In late 1879, aged five years and ten months, Robert was sent to the workhouse (which was in the village, so not far away) for two months because the Board of Guardians thought he was too thin. The workhouse master described him as terrified, emaciated and incontinent due to weakness. He would cry when adults approached, begging them not to hit him.

On 3rd December 1880, aged six, Robert was caught red-handed stealing another boy’s lunch at school. His immediate response was to run away, and he hid in some bushes for two nights. When he emerged, he was arrested and sent to the workhouse. At the end of the months, he was pulled up before the magistrates in the village pub. He refused to speak during his trial, if such a thing can be so described. Major Hare, the magistrate, reprimanded James Playford harshly: “We do not for a moment suppose this child stole the bag from desire of having possession of it; for we know well it was to suppress the cravings of nature. You had better the future see the child properly fed“. He went on to say that if Robert was caught stealing again, they would send him to a reformatory for five years, and James would have to contribute maintenance. He finished his comments by saying “Children cannot be neglected without causing injury to society“, and rather than imprison Robert, sent him back to the workhouse. Susan protested that she ‘could not do much for ten on twelve shillings a week‘ but the magistrates told her to ‘go on, we know all about that’. It’s hard to infer exactly what they meant – either they knew that the family were poor but didn’t care, or they were remarking on the fact that the reason there were ten children was because of Susan’s morals. In a village the size of Docking, where everyone knew everyone’s business, the latter seems more likely.

Robert spent most of 1881 in the workhouse, where he put on weight and became much happier. However, as harvest rolled around in August, the Board decided to discharge him. They hoped that he would be able to glean and thus help the Playfords out. Robert cried his eyes out when he was told he was going home. He was still only seven years old.

And so he went home, and within two months, the Playfords managed to starve him back to his emaciated state. In early October, lunches started going missing at school again. Robert ran away on his way to school: perhaps he had already been caught stealing and was afraid to go in to school and face the penalty. Perhaps his father had threatened him, because the family could not afford reformatory maintenance. Perhaps he had been particularly badly beaten. Neither James or Susan showed much concern about him running away – Susan was noticed to be acting completely normal and didn’t tell the school he was missing for two days.

Today, this would be a serious incident. Questions would be asked of all the ‘services’ involved in Robert’s care – parents, extended family, the school, the Board, the magistrates. But not in 1881. The coroner summed up at Robert’s inquest three facts: the boy was starved and cruelly treated by his father and stepmother, the boy was half-starved, and his demeanour was unlikely to be improved by the treatment he recieved. He noted the poverty of the family – James reported his weekly wage was sixteen shillings and sixpence, to support a family of twelve. He said that it would have been better if Robert had been sent to the reformatory, to be well fed and fairly treated – a damning indictment of the parents considering how strict reformatories were.

The official verdict at the inquest was that Robert died due to the want of the common necessities of life, accelerated by exposure to the inclemency of the weather of 15th October. They could not directly blame his parents, but censured them. There were no criminal proceedings as a result of the inquest.

Susan was the first weeks of pregnancy when Robert died. Her final child, Beatrice Anna, was born at the end June 1882. They spent the rest of their lives in Docking. James died in 1899, aged sixty-six. Susan outlived him, dying in 1931, aged ninety-three. The family did not appear in the newspapers again: perhaps they fed the children. Perhaps they stopped beating them.

Robert Bell Playford was seven when he died, although the newspapers reported that he was eight. He was generally known as Bobby. An angry, frightened, starving little boy. Everyone knew he was mistreated, but nobody could do much about it – the neighbours fed him when they could, but nobody had the money to feed him properly aside the workhouse. The workhouse had hoped he could earn enough to fend for himself, at the age of just seven, when they discharged him. The alternative was reformatory. So he hid in the woods and froze. One less mouth to feed, at least for a few months.

These are the stories that haunt me.

¹ People suffering hypothermia will often experience extreme heat and sweating as their body shuts down, and remove their clothing.

² There are two main sources for this story, aside from parish and census records: the Norfolk News, 1st Jan 1881, p.8 and the Lynn Advertiser, 22nd October 1881, p.7