The Prize-Fighters’ Trainer, His Wife, His Mistress, And The Vitriol-Throwing Outrage At Dudley

While working on my research into Jem Smith – the last bareknuckle Heavyweight Champion of England – this week, I came across a newspaper article vaguely connected to him that seemed so absurd I had to read it three times to be sure I’d understood it. 

In September 1897, a woman called Ellen Bevan took her husband, James, to court more than a dozen years after they had separated. It is my understanding that they had never formally divorced. Suddenly, after twelve years, Ellen was suing him for maintenance payments.

James Bevan had left Ellen in 1885 because he was having an affair with another woman, the rogue. 

In 1885 the Bevans were living in Liverpool and after James walked out on Ellen, she moved to Birmingham. She didn’t see him again for a long time. But in August 1897 Ellen was walking down the Fulham Road in London, having relocated to the city, and who should she see in the street, having an argument with a cab driver, but James. On catching sight of her, the shocked James dashed into his home (number 12).

James didn’t just want to avoid an awkward conversation. He was probably quite terrified of his ex-wife. Why?

Because a few months after he had walked out on 36-year-old Ellen in 1885, Ellen had tracked down and confronted James’s mistress Jane Strother – the widow of a Liverpool publican – and thrown vitriol in her face. No, I don’t mean metaphorical vitriol, like, bitter criticism or malice. But actual vitriol. A can of sulphuric acid.

Jane lost her eyesight in the attack, and Ellen also got her face scarred from forehead to lips and lost sight in one of her eyes because after the first assault, Jane’s daughter had picked up the half-empty container of acid and thrown the remains of it back at her mother’s attacker.

Ellen appeared in court a few weeks after the vitriol ambush “remarkably well dressed”, with a large shade pulled down over her eyes and bandages covering her face. She told the court of her husband and Jane’s infidelity – saying how she had stood out in the snow earlier in the year and seen them go to bed together. She also tried to darken James and Jane’s characters further by describing them as good friends of the boxer Jem Mace. Not only were they filthy cheats, but they were in with a bad crowd: prize-fighters. According to Ellen, Jane got what she had coming to her.

Jane, who had recovered enough to attend court, had a scarf wrapped around her injuries. “Oh, that’s my husband’s handkerchief she has around her eyes,” yelled out a hysterical Ellen.

“I gave it to him for his birthday. God will avenge my cause!”

Jane claimed that she always thought James to have been a single man. And yes, she did know Jem Mace, he’d come to visit alongside his friend James.

At Worcester Assizes in July 1885, Ellen was sentenced to a remarkably-light seven years of penal servitude, with her friend Mary Ann Lee convicted of abetting Ellen, due to having encouraged her and sourced the vitriol. She received 15 months with hard labour. The criminal register describes Ellen’s acid scars: “Burn scars left face, scar forehead, right eyebrow, corner right eye and left forearm”. She was of dark complexion, with dark brown hair and black eyes, just 4ft 9 and a half and “stout”.

Ellen ultimately served five years, and was released in May 1890.

An Ellen Bevan with the same birth date and physical description appears on the criminal register a few years later – she was convicted of larceny in 1895 and sentenced to another 18 months, being released to London in April 1897. Her intended occupation was given as “nurse”.

During her appearance in court in September 1897 to request maintenance payments from James, Ellen was asked why (except, of course, because of anger and jealousy), she had done what she did to Jane. Her answer was that James had, apparently, once written to his girlfriend, saying that “his love for her was blind”.

Jane, whose eyes had been burned away and neck and face badly disfigured in the assault, died young. James was true to his word – he had continued to support her, and her young daughter (who I believe was the publican’s child, not James’s) until her death.

Upon stumbling across her former husband in London in 1897 shortly after getting out of prison for a second time, Ellen evidently needed money. She thought, ah, I’ve nothing to lose, I’ll give suing him for maintenance a go. Even though she’d committed such a horrendous deed against his mistress.

And the judge gave it to her.

At West London Police Court in September 1897, Mr Rose heard of the affair between Jane – now deceased – and James Bevan in the 1880s and what Ellen had done in revenge. He heard how Ellen had blinded and mutilated a woman, and then served five years in prison.

He asked James what he did for a living and whether he was a man of means.

Mr John Haynes, James’s lawyer, explained that Bevan was a trainer of pugilists, and among his clients had been Jem Smith. James had trained Jem for his match against Frank Slavin.

“I suppose you received a great deal for training him?” asked Haynes of Bevan.

“No, he lost, and I got nothing,” replied Bevan, to roars of laughter from the court. 

Then Mr Rose made an order upon the defendant to pay his former wife, Ellen, the acid attacker, 20 shillings a week for the rest of her life.