Regular readers will no doubt have noticed by now how easily distracted I am. But how am I supposed to focus on my day job, book writing and book-chapter-for-someone-else-writing when there’s Edwardian lady wrestlers slash brothel keepers slash money forgers out there to be found?
While researching someone else for something else this month I came across a story about a woman called Violet Stanley, a 22-year-old music hall wrestler who had been arrested in 1909 for assisting with the management of a brothel on Caledonian Road.
“Ah, wrestling and sex work, a tale as old as time”, replied a follower when I posted about it on social media. They’re not wrong. I used to train in two pro-wrestling gyms down London back alleys, which both doubled as very different types of venues for vigorous intimate interaction come the weekend. Ahem, anyway…
Violet Stanley was charged at Clerkenwell Police Court alongside 26-year-old Bertram Young, who was described in newspaper reports as a salesman. They were to be prosecuted by Islington Borough Council.
Sub-divisional Inspector Roberts, G Division, had executed a warrant on a Caledonian Road premises after “the usual police observation” and in the course of the case it emerged that both the prisoners had been travelling the country as wrestlers – the lady having given “an exhibition at a sideshow at the Agricultural Hall”.
The couple were not married, but said to be cohabiting. When the police raided their alleged brothel, they found a loaded revolver, ready-cocked, and two life-preservers – a flexible weighted bludgeon or cosh popular in the 19th and early 20th century for ‘protection’.
Coverage of the couple’s trial was carried across British newspapers, but was also fairly brief and lacking detail. Reports noted that Young had at least one previous conviction. Stanley, “the strongwoman” was led from the dock “in a fainting condition” when she was sentenced to three months in prison and Young to four. These seem like fairly light sentences to me, to be honest.
There is nothing in the reports to suggest that Violet Stanley and Bertram Young might not have been the couple’s real names, but me being me and wrestlers being wrestlers, I had my doubts from the start. I couldn’t find anyone fitting Violet’s name and age and general location on the 1911 census, for example.
But what I did find easily via Ancestry is a 1912 entry on the Calendar of Prisoners for a woman called Rose Daley, who had been arrested for using counterfeit coins in Newcastle. And underneath the entry is information on her priors: Rose Daley alias Emily Baillie, 25, was sentenced to three months in Clerkenwell on 9 October 1909 for keeping a brothel as Violet Stanley. And she was then twice arrested for soliciting prostitution in 1910.
The ‘side show’ at the Agricultural Hall is most likely referring to the World’s Fair which opened early in 1909 and featured daily circus performances, a menagerie, aerial shows, a giantess and wrestling. No one called Violet Stanley or Bertram Young is explicitly named in newspaper coverage of the event, but there were certainly Lady Wrestlers among Billy Le Neve and Nora Sullivan’s troop, who were promoted in their advertising. Their ladies were also exhibiting at other attractions in London and around the country the same year, including the Olympia and the fairground on the High Street in Stratford. 1909 was something of a boom year for the grappling girls.
I’ve found nothing through the newspapers so far for Violet’s alias, Emily Baillie, but in December 1911 we can find her as Rose Daley, in coverage of her arrest for “uttering counterfeit coin”. Arrested alongside a man called Ernest Williams, and described as a married woman (but not necessarily married to Williams), Daley’s address is given as 70 Frank Street, Newcastle. In court, she was said to be ill, and was allowed to use a seat rather than stand.
Frederick Cook, an assistant in a grocer’s store in Chester-le-Street, gave evidence that a woman had entered his premises on October 21st, and purchased two pounds of sugar. She gave him what purported to be a five shilling piece, and received four shillings and sixpence change. A fruiterer gave similar evidence – a woman paid for some items with a crown and was given change, with the crown later identified as counterfeit. Further outfitters, hosiers and grocers also gave evidence. Rose had been on quite a shopping spree. An errand boy then confirmed that he had seen her in the street with a man who looked very much like the arrested Ernest Williams. Several other witnesses also identified him.
A jeweller hired by the police to investigate the fake coins used an acid test, and identified both copper and plaster of Paris in their construction. When a police inspector then visited 70 Frank Street, he found two small pans, some plaster of Paris, and several plates of glass. It looked even more suspicious than the gun and the cosh in the brothel.
Rose Daley took to the stand under oath and said that she was guilty. Ernest Williams had given her the coins and she spent them, then split the change between Williams, his wife, and herself. But it was Ernest who had made the fakes in the first place, she had nothing to do with that. He’d told her that if she were caught with any fakes she was to say that she’d been given them as change. Williams had nothing to say, but pleaded not guilty. They were committed to trial, with Daley receiving bail.
While most of the preliminary reports give the couple’s names as Rose Daley and Ernest Williams, the Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer on the 9th November 1911 also noted that Daley went by Emily Baillie. She’s described as a married woman, a boxer, and a wrestler. The latter details are missing from most of the reports from this case but suggest she may still, perhaps, have been active in the ring in 1911.
Press coverage from the trial in January and from the Calendar of Prisoners for 1912 confirms their sentences: six months with hard labour for her, 12 months with hard labour for him.
We can also find on the Calendar information about Williams’s extensive list of priors. The 30 year old bookmaker had, under the alias John Williams, served nine months for stealing boxes containing money and men’s coats as a young man in 1900. Then it was 15 months for stealing a chain. Another 15 months for house breaking, a six and a 12 month sentence under the Prevention of Crime Act. Plus six arrests for, variously, assault, drunkenness and keeping a brothel. Sounds lovely, doesn’t he.
Given the use of aliases and the brothel keeping, I had thought that Ernest or John Williams might potentially be the same man that Rose alias Emily alias Violet had been arrested with in London in 1909 – Bertram Young. Further digging, however, suggests that Rose alias Emily alias Violet just had a taste for bad men.
Bertram, who was also apparently a wrestler, was quite the rogue and vagabond.
The Calendar of Prisoners for 1921 gives a taste of just some of the then 40-year old commission agent’s arrest record, use of aliases, and lucky habit of only picking up fairly minor prison terms.
He was done for stealing a watch in 1900, got out of jail, then went back in for stealing five tubs of margarine. He stole oilcloth in 1902, was held under the Prevention of Crimes Act and for assaulting a policeman in 1905, and he robbed gas fittings in 1906. July 1909 saw him arrested for brothel keeping, and he was then arrested again a few months later for the same, alongside Violet Stanley. In early 1911 he served time for living off the earnings of prostitution. He variously used the names Bertram Young, Bertrand Young, Bertrand Jones, and Bertram Adolphus Young.
His first arrest, as Bertram Young, saw him imprisoned in Wormwood Scrubs as a 16 year old in 1900 – Young was 5ft 8 with a fair complexion, blue eyes and dark hair, although he may not yet have been fully grown – his later army records put him at 5ft 10 and a half, and 160lb.
He was, very occasionally, found not guilty and discharged, for example, in a 1918 case about the theft of 21 sacks of oats, and a 1916 case where he was charged with knicking 600 pairs of knickers.
Bertram’s occupation is never the same twice on any given document. He was a casemaker, a carpenter, a carman, a contractor, a commission agent, a tinmaker and a bootsmith. The criminal records and other documentation, particularly those under the full and very unusual name of Bertram Adolphus Young do all appear to be for the same man, though.
There are so many inconsistencies in his occupation alone that it would usually ring alarm bells, and I’d think I’d conflated two or more Bertrams. But since there looks to have only ever been two Bertram Adolphus Youngs in the history of Britain – this one, and his son who only lived to two – it looks like he was just a man who tried very many things, and lived very many lives.
Understandably, given Bertram’s interesting history, several ancestors have worked to construct his life on Ancestry. If any of you come across this blog, I hope you understand my intrigue and fascination with him, and – admittedly – a slight bit of envy that you have such a colourful character in your past!
A timeline shows his real, full, name to be Bertram Adolphus Young, and he was born on 28 December 1882 in St Luke’s, London, the son of Robert and Jane Young.
He married a woman called Mary Ann Tite in 1903 and they had a son, also Bertram Adolphus, who died as a toddler in 1906. A second son, Charles, was born in May 1909, just a few months before Bertram was arrested with Violet. Bertram and Mary’s address at the time of Frederick’s birth is around a half an hour walk from the Caledonian Road brothel. Given that Mary would have been pregnant at the time that Violet was wrestling, we can – I hope – rule them out of being the same person. The timelines suggest that Bertram may have been playing away, cohabiting with Violet, either as her lover or if we’re being polite, just as a ‘business partner’ at the Caledonian Road address.
At the age of 31, Bertram redeemed himself somewhat by signing up for the war effort, joining the Rifles. His record details his tattoos – a woman’s figure on his right forearm, what I believe to be ‘Love M.Y.’ (Mary Young, one would hope) and others. He was discharged after just 46 days. The writing on his scanned records is difficult to read, but it appears to me to say ‘Discharged Inefficient’.
Bertram lost three brothers in just two years – Charles in 1918 and Robert and Frederick in 1920. It is not clear when his marriage to Mary ended – and I cannot say whether Violet or Bertram’s general career choices had anything to do with it – but in 1923 he married a much younger woman, Sarah Rachel Ricketts in London. With Sarah, he fathered several daughters in his 40s. Bertram, the rogue and vagabond, lived until the very respectable age of 84, dying in Lambeth in 1964.
I have, unfortunately, not managed to find anything else out, yet, about his ventures in wrestling during the early 1900s.
What of Rose Daley or Emily Baillie or Violet Stanley? I, understandably, got sidetracked by Bertram but this story started with her.
Of all the aliases, Emily Baillie is the one used twice by the newspapers in two different cases, suggesting it may have been her given name. Rose Daley is the last one used, and she is referred to as married at this point. Might her birth name have been Emily Baillie, and her married surname Daley, for example? Various searches for her in the census and other documentation in London and the Newcastle area have so far not shown me anyone I can definitely say is her. There are several Emily Baillies born around 1887, but they may or may not be our girl. She might, of course, not have been born or christened under any of the three names she was using between 1909 and 1911, and have grown up under, or gone on to use, other names entirely.
This research was just a quick one which I hope (I always say this…) to return to. It has also been hindered by only having access to the British Newspaper Archive and Ancestry at the moment – Find My Past, for example, often magics up records that have not been available through Ancestry searches. Any readers with ideas or findings related to Violet, please do get in touch.
There is so much more to be explored, particularly around the links between Victorian or Edwardian music hall wrestling and sex work, for example. I love finding and piecing together the lives of these characters, however frustrating they and their fake name habit might be. Although, as is so often the case with the ‘ordinary’ people, itinerant people and the poorer classes – it is a shame that their voices are absent in these stories.
I wonder if Violet carried on wrestling and boxing. Perhaps she went on to live a long life, maybe even a very dull one. Did she call criminality quits after her second prison term? In the absence of a real conclusion, lets imagine her in the 1960s or ’70s, in old age, telling her great grandchildren about her time on the halls, and the very naughty men she used to know.
Rediscovering the wrestlers and boxers of Late-Victorian London 
Leave a comment