Maria Louisa Roulson (aka Old Ma Lechmere)

[Gary Barnett]

And I don't think there will be any useful info with the records of the Carmen's Union. Maybe for his son.

https://mrc-catalogue.warwick.ac.uk/records/NVW

There is also the Worshipful Company of Carmen, where I have a contact which might be of assistance.

Have you ever tracked down any land tax/rates records for CAL? He surely must have incurred some in respect of his business premises.

[Gary Barnett]

The name Whitcomb seems to ring a bell.

As you are of course aware Gary, by researching these aspects of the Lechmere case with an open mind as to where it might lead condemns you in some eyes.
But the obtuse thing is that seemingly intelligent contributors get totally blindsided and illogical when anything which might remotely contribute towards a guilty assessment of Lechmere is discussed...

His mother's bigamy and an assessment of whether she reasonably knew that her husband was alive, or at least had no reasonable grounds to believe he was dead.

His withholding of the name Lechmere from the police and court. When both Kattrup and your sparring partner O (or more accurately in this context B) researched multiple cases where both names would be given where two were in use, and they amazingly drew the opposite conclusion to what their own research blatantly illustrated.

The nature of the carman's trade in London, particularly that carried out by Pickfords, where there may or may not have been a van boy accompanying the delivery, and where drivers not infrequently absented themselves from their vans, and went to coffee shops and so forth, or even told their van boys, where they had one, to go off on errands. When their own research shows this they obtusely maintain that every driver had to rigidly stick to his van under the prying eye of the van boy... so providing a strict alibi.

And of course there are more examples.

Yes, a lot of people seem to be incapable of objectivity when it comes to the subject of Lechmere. One poster who denounces any whiff of the hypothetical in my arguments claims that checking out of witnesses’ IDs was a ‘standard procedure’ and cites Packer and Hutchinson as examples.

[Edward Stow]

Branch 46 records are for 1902-1908 so unlikely to feature a CAL or CAC.
He had businesses in Mile End Old Town, Poplar and Shoreditch.
The only record I have found is for Shoreditch - Broadway Market.
Rate paying records for all his addresses are absent - I think. I have checked before at Tower Hamlets Archives. Shoreditch is held by Hackney.

Rate paying and listing on the electoral roll were linked. As was rent paying.
His rent must have been paid as Lechmere... like his funeral card. With no mention of the C word.
And his widow only died in 1940. I still know one surviving great grandchild who will have met the widow - and I knew several other great grandchildren who are now dead. Never a sniff of the C name and no prior knowledge about any family Ripper connection either.

[Edward Stow]

There is irony in some posters simultaneously claiming Lechmere 'must' have been thoroughly checked out and cleared, as his circumstance of being seen alone and close to a recently murdered victim (if I am allowed to put it that way) invited obvious suspicion, such that the police must have been extraordinarily negligent in not checking him out... while also claiming all his actions were absolutely and totally non suspicious.

We have quite a good record of names of people that the police do seem to have checked out. They obviously did check some people. But it defies logic that they also checked Lechmere due to his name issue.

[Gary Barnett]

Branch 46 records are for 1902-1908 so unlikely to feature a CAL or CAC.
He had businesses in Mile End Old Town, Poplar and Shoreditch.
The only record I have found is for Shoreditch - Broadway Market.
Rate paying records for all his addresses are absent - I think. I have checked before at Tower Hamlets Archives. Shoreditch is held by Hackney.

Rate paying and listing on the electoral roll were linked. As was rent paying.
His rent must have been paid as Lechmere... like his funeral card. With no mention of the C word.
And his widow only died in 1940. I still know one surviving great grandchild who will have met the widow - and I knew several other great grandchildren who are now dead. Never a sniff of the C name and no prior knowledge about any family Ripper connection either.

It might be interesting to see who TAL worked for while he was a cats meat carter. And what name he used.

[Edward Stow]

And the branch I know are from the TAL line - he died in the Bethnal Green Tube Disaster and his character is remembered by his still living grandson. That line seems to be the most Lechmere connected one - they maintained the Broadway Market, cat's meat and carman trade and stayed more fixedly in the East End - some are still there.
But not the slightest hint of Cross.

[Gary Barnett]

At the risk of going off on a tangent from a tangent…

George Scudamore Lechmere is a very interesting character. He was John Allen Lechmere’s 1st cousin. Oxford educated and ‘bred up’ for the church (according to his obituary), he became a soldier, married the daughter of a Somerset butcher and ended up as a PC in Hereford.

In 1851 he was living in Hackney and being described as an annuitant; then in 1854 he and his wife appear in the Hackney Union settlement records. He would seem to have joined the Herefordshire constabulary in the mid -1850s and to have remained there until his death in 1863.

As we have seen, in 1851 Maria Lechmere was living in Blue School Lane in Hereford. The next household on the census was that of a police constable. Her husband had been implicated in the death of a police constable in Hereford. The executor of her father’s will, of which she was seemingly an ongoing beneficiary, was a local JP who had the power to appoint police officers in Herefordshire. And she would go on to marry a police constable - but not in Hereford, in the East End of London. (I say marry, but of course since John Allen was still alive her marriage to Thomas Cross wasn’t legally valid).

[Gary Barnett]

Could GSL have been the Mr Lechmere whom Eliza Botham claimed was in conversation with PC Cross? There is at least one press report of a drunken man being arrested in Hereford by a ‘Mr’ Lechmere.

The timing of GSL’s arrival in Hereford is interesting - it appears to have been around 1855/6. And Maria Lechmere married her boy constable in London in early 1858.

[Edward Stow]

That report reads like it was written by a member of the Lechmere family.
Unless you were part of the immediate inheriting family you could easily and rapidly fall down the social scale

[Gary Barnett]

That report reads like it was written by a member of the Lechmere family.
Unless you were part of the immediate inheriting family you could easily and rapidly fall down the social scale

Yes, what a contrast between the Hackney Union and the family vault at Fownhope. Family connections may still have been in play when he secured the PC position in Hereford, though.

[Edward Stow]

I don't know that becoming a rural PC depended on local connections

[Gary Barnett]

I don't know that becoming a rural PC depended on local connections

So who do you imagine appointed PC’s in Herefordshire?

I can’t recall the exact details, I’ll dig them out, but on one occasion there was a police position that needed to be filled in Herefordshire. Four candidates were shortlisted, 3 experienced officers and the ex-gamekeeper of a local gent. The gent recommended his ex-gamekeeper to The Rev. Archer Clive (the son of Edward Bolton Clive, a local JP and the executor of Thomas Roulson’s will) and the ex-gamekeeper got the job.

If the Rev. A. C. was the generous employer and all-round good egg he was reputed to have been, I have little doubt that he could have found a local police position for Maria’s husband-to-be.

[Gary Barnett]

Hereford Times

8th Feb., 1851


It was the Rev A. C. who made the case for the creation of the position of Superintendent Constable for the Abbeydore district in the first place and recommend the salary etc that should accompany the role.

He was deeply involved in the running of policing in Herefordshire - so why did TC have to go to the East End to find a job? If TC’s relationship with Maria had been viewed in a positive light by the paternalistic Rev. A. C., I’m sure the reverend gentleman would have put a word in for him.

[Gary Barnett]

I’m sure people will remember that the Rev. A. C. was the sole executor of Maria’s father’s estate.

PROVED at London 28th Febr 1848 before the judge by the oath of the Revd Archer Clive, Clerk the sole executor to whom admin was granted (47) having been first by commission only to administer.

[Gary Barnett]

Silurian, Cardiff, Merthyr, and Brecon Mercury, and South Wales General Advertiser 2nd August 1851


I’m sure the identity of Mr Hatton’s previous employer played some part in his securing the position.* It was the way the world worked.

* The Rev. A. C. was very likely one of the ‘Visiting Justices’.