The Datchet Baby Murder

Last night, I wrote up the sad story of Louisa Atkin, who died following a botched abortion in 1873, on Twitter (you can find it here). Today, I want to tell you another, longer tale, of what could happen when abortion failed. Obvious content warnings for pregnancy, abortion, infanticide and coercive control.

Annie Harris was born in early 1873 at Ducklington in Oxfordshire. She was the daughter of an agricultural labourer, and grew up at New House Farm in Aston. She was small, only 4ft 10ins, with brown eyes and brown hair. In 1891, she met Albert Coombs, and they married at Witney Baptist chapel in February 1892, shortly before she turned nineteen. Their daughter was born at the end of the year, but she was their only child.

The marriage was unhappy. In November 1895, Annie had her daughter baptised into the Church of England, and then left Aston. Her parents took her daughter in, and Albert moved to Brentford. Annie went to work as a barmaid in Colnbrook, a few miles from Windsor.

Annie probably moved there because she already knew Benjamin Hopkins. He was born in 1864, the son of a butcher and inkeeper – his father had formerly ran the historic Ostrich pub. He’d married Kate Hambleton in 1886, but they separated in 1890 – Benjamin was chronically adulterous, and had impregnated a young servant in Colnbrook. He had to pay maintenance for both his two legitimate children plus his illegitimate daughter. His parents had also separated, and by 1891, he was living with his mother on Colnbrook High Street. His father, also named Benjamin, drowned in a gravel pit in 1895.

Annie and Benjamin began a relationship almost as soon as Annie arrived in Colnbrook, and by the end of March 1896, she was pregnant. Both parties were married, there was unlikely to be a happy ending. The story that follows was told openly by Annie, when she chose to cross-examine Benjamin in the coroner’s court. This was an unsual move, and scandalised the local press, but as with the case of Louisa Atkin and her mother’s evidence in court, means we have a much fuller story of what happened, and what reproductive choice looked like in the late Victorian era.

Annie became pregnant in early March 1896.

In April, Benjamin took Annie to the Pack Horse Hotel in Staines, and gave her half a pint of hot gin. It didn’t work.

In July 1896, Annie told Benjamin she was still pregnant. He took her to a chemist in Staines to buy some abortifacient medication – these were available under the title “obstruction removers”, but unreliable and worked (if they worked at all) by poisoning the pregnant woman. It appears that Benjamin asked the chemist to make up a recipe of his own to give Annie – the inquest didn’t record what was in the medication, or whether Annie took it. The inquest also didn’t enquire how Benjamin had developed his recipe.

Time passed, Annie’s pregnancy continued. Benjamin was beginning to despair. He asked her to have a surgical abortion, and she refused because she was too frightened – the story of Louisa Atkin suggests these fears were well founded.

He begged her not to go into the workhouse to deliver the baby – if she did, the Board of Guardians would enquire about the baby’s paternity, and sue him for maintenance, as had happened in 1892. The week before the birth, Benjamin asked Annie to employ a midwife called Mrs Taylor, who would strangle the baby at birth. This was a step that Annie was not prepared to take.

She did, however, agree to have the baby privately, with a family named Carpenter. Unexpectedly, the Carpenters had to leave Windsor, and Annie then applied for an order to go to the workhouse. Time ran out, and although the Board of Guardians sent a doctor to deliver the baby, Annie gave birth while staying with a nurse who knew the Carpenters.

The baby, a boy, was born on 12th December 1896 in Windsor. Annie and her son stayed at the house in Windsor until 4th January, and according to the nurse, Annie seemed fond of the baby, breastfeeding him and cuddling him. The nurse also noticed that Annie was using baby linen that she had for her daughter’s birth: she was prepared for his arrival.

On 4th January, Annie told the nurse she was leaving to go to visit a family called Hester, who were related to the Carpenters. Apparently, she was hoping they would take her baby boy in so she could return to work in service. According to her evidence, she had run out of money, had nothing to eat or drink for several days and the nurse had asked her to leave. She walked to Colnbrook to find Benjamin, so he could give her some money. She got as far as the bridge over the river at Datchet, and sat down to rest. The baby began to cry. She tied a scarf around his neck to quiet him. He died. This was Annie’s story.

Annie panicked. She wrapped up the baby with his things and went to find Benjamin. He got her a hot drink, and they appear to have spent the night together. The next morning, Benjamin paid for her train fare to visit the Hester family- Benjamin claimed to be ignorant to the fact the baby was dead. Annie spent the night of the 5th at the Hester’s house, telling them the baby was at Windsor, and then returned to Colnbrook on the 6th.

In fact, the baby’s body had been thrown over a fence in Datchet, landing in the garden of Leigh House, on the night of the 4th of January. It was discovered on the 5th, but it took the police a few days to round up Annie and Benjamin. Annie was arrested on suspicion of murder. The inquest was held on the 9th January, and found that the child, who was never named, had been murdered by Annie. She was sent to the Assizes.

Annie appeared in court on 30th January 1897. The charge was reduced to manslaughter, but she was found guilty and sentenced to seven years penal servitude. Her husband, Albert Coombs, applied for a divorce five months later, but the divorce was not completed until two years after Annie was released from prison. He remarried as soon as he was legally free to do so. Their daughter, Elsie May Coombs, died in 1901, aged eight.

Benjamin was not charged with anything. In the early 1900s, he reunited with his wife, Kate, and they moved to Portsmouth. There is a troubling postscript to their family story. When Benjamin and Kate separated in 1890, Kate was pregnant. Their daughter was paralysed, and died in 1911 when she was nineteen. Perhaps she had polio, but considering what we know about how Benjamin coped with unwanted pregnancies, her paralysis could have have been due to the effects of Benjamin’s DIY abortifacient medications.

Annie is untraceable after her release from prison in October 1901. Her divorce was finalised at the end of 1903, when she was still only thirty, so she may well have remarried.

The case of Annie Coombs has a terrible ending, not altogether satisfactorily answered by the evidence given in court. Did she really just strangle the baby in a fit of exhausted desperation, or did Benjamin have more to do with it? Why wasn’t he charged with concealing the body – something he is much more likely to have done than Annie? The baby was killed on the first day that Annie was alone with him, but it was also the first opportunity that Benjamin had to see the baby. He was determined to destroy the baby before it was born, right up to the last days before the birth, so why not afterwards?

SOURCES: The usual parish/census/divorce records. Windsor and Eton Express, 16th January 1897, Bucks Herald, 8th February 1897