Maria Louisa Roulson (aka Old Ma Lechmere)

[Robert Linford]

Nice.


Moore was only a page or so away from Charlotte in 1851. He was butling for His Reverence. I hope he didn't paw His Reverence too much - he can't stand that sort of thing.

[Gary Barnett]

On the face of it, Maria seems to have done the least well of the three sisters. Certainly in terms of the environment in which she raised her family.

If you were her, Rob, would you want your son's name in the papers in connection with a sordid East End murder?

[Gary Barnett]

Nice.


Moore was only a page or so away from Charlotte in 1851. He was butling for His Reverence. I hope he didn't paw His Reverence too much - he can't stand that sort of thing.

What was his Christian name?

[Gary Barnett]

What was his Christian name?

Got him. John, resident at the rectumry.

[Robert Linford]

Whose - John Moore's or the Rev Gilbert Lewis?

[Robert Linford]

John, resident at the rectumry.


We don't want any of that sort of talk here, Barnett.

[Gary Barnett]

On the subject of clerical types, I noticed that the service at CAL's funeral was conducted by the family's 'own minister'. In most other cases in the burial register only a name was given and the names were often repeated, suggesting it was someone attached to the cemetery in some way.

Which suggests that the Lechmeres may have been church-going folk.

[Robert Linford]

Didn't Fish say something about him being buried in some remote corner on his own?

[Robert Linford]

Blimey, the son born 1884 and dying 1973 in Ilford lived only a ten minute walk from me.

[Gary Barnett]

Didn't Fish say something about him being buried in some remote corner on his own?

I think so. In a common grave, I seem to remember?

[Robert Linford]

Something like that.

[Gary Barnett]

This has been quite an interesting little exercise. I'm not sure whether it has made CAL's guilt more or less likely. You can look at it two ways:

The 'v decent' label would seem to have been justified, on the exterior at least. Ma herself had a 'v decent' background and no doubt wanted the same for her children. Perhaps they were a 'v decent' and religious family.

But that wouldn't have been easy to maintain in the 1860s in Tiger Bay, where several of the neighbouring streets were lined with brothels. She must surely have drummed a dislike of 'unfortunates', with whom her young husband came into regular contact during his working day, into her adolescent son. And if she did indeed hold the purse strings in the form of the Clive inheritance, she may have exercised some financial control over Charles well into his adulthood.

On balance, I think it marginally supports the theory of Lechmere's guilt. However, I discern the disapproving hand of Ma behind the concealment of the Lechmere name.

[Robert Linford]

I don't think the police would have let him call himself Cross unless it really was his everyday name. It might mean trouble for CAL but the police could disregard Ma, unless she was a combination of Peggy Mount, Fanny Craddock, Margaret Thatcher and Mrs Pike.

[Gary Barnett]

I don't think the police would have let him call himself Cross unless it really was his everyday name. It might mean trouble for CAL but the police could disregard Ma, unless she was a combination of Peggy Mount, Fanny Craddock, Margaret Thatcher and Mrs Pike.

At the risk of sounding like a mouthpiece for the theory:

When he was born, they called him Lechmere
Ma reinforced that by Christening him in that name when he was nine and Thomas Cross was still alive.

When he married, registered his kids' births and deaths and marriages, enrolled them at school, completed census and electoral records etc he thought it appropriate to call himself Lechmere.

But when he reported the discovery of Nichols' body, and subsequently appeared at her inquest, he used Cross and (it seems) Cross alone.

Edit: I should add here that when he ran over and killed a child in 1876, he also used the Cross name. (Assuming that Pickford's driver, Charles Cross, was our man.)

The recent research by (I think) Kattrup of the use of assumed names in court demonstrated that all sorts and conditions of people thought it necessary to provide both their assumed name and their official/birth name to the authorities. CAL seems to have been an exception to that rule, which I find surprising as my guess would be that both he and his mother considered the name to be very significant.

Her claim to respectability was that her family had worked as servants to the Herefordshire gentry/nobility. Her son was actually descended from it. Whether he'd used the name Cross when first started at Pickfords and it stuck or not, he knew he was a Lechmere.

[Robert Linford]

Yes indeed, but the so-called weight of all those records is reducible to a handful, because once you start by calling yourself Lechmere it's difficult to stop. E.g. you can't have some of your kids called Lechmere and some called Cross. But his job at Pickford's - which his stepfather may have helped him get - and his everyday life would have been different. There was no reason why he shouldn't have called himself Cross. And in any case, suppose he lied to the police and they never checked it out : what would the motive be? How would calling himself Cross have allayed any suspicion that came his way?