Interesting Lechmere Trivia

[Gary Barnett]

In 1908, a woman applied to the Brentford magistrates court for advice as to whether could remarry after her husband had been absent for 20 years. This was the advice she was given.

9AB85155-DD77-450A-B795-5BC0B85BA34E.jpeg

Its a little more complex than how RJ explains it above.

[Gary Barnett]

Much has been made of the fact that CAL was recorded on the 1861 census as Thomas Cross’s son and was recorded as Charles Cross. Less remarked upon is the fact that the 24/5-year-old Thomas Cross was recorded as aged 36 - two years older than his 34-year-old wife rather than the ten years younger than he actually was.

[Gary Barnett]

She's back to being a double bigamist? I see no reason to keep accusing her of this crime.

By statute, if the husband has abandoned his wife and left her for parts unknown, she could legally remarry after seven years, and not be at risk of any wrongdoing. Lechmere's mother waited more than seven years. Her third marriage would have been equally legal. Calling her a bigamist is a way of making her look cheap, and, by implication, giving Lechmere a sordid background.

As for Thomas Cross's parents, they appear to have been an entirely respectable couple, trusted to be the keepers of the gate on the toll road, Brockhall turnpike. There is a long article in the Hereford Times, 25 January 1851, describing how they saved a family from burning to death. It's too long to reprint in full, but here's the beginning of it.

There also appears to have been a second Thomas Cross who was a gatekeeper on a Hereford turnpike, but I never figured out the relationship.

I really see no reason why anyone back in Hereford would care if Ma Lechmere, abandoned in London, would have married into this family, unless she ran off with him to begin with, but there is nothing to suggest that she did.



Hereford Times.JPG

An interesting find, RJ. Do you somehow imagine that the more respectable Cross’s family were, the less likely it would have been that he might have wanted to conceal his relationship with John Lechmere’s wife? The fact that they were the toll-keepers suggest they too had useful local connections.

Was Ma Lechmere abandoned in London? Possibly, but she returned to Hereford and was living without her husband by 1851. Then in the early 1860s, both she and Thomas Cross turn up in London - in the East End no less. If she didn’t run away with him, it was a lucky coincidence that she bumped into him.

Maria’s marriages would have been bigamous if she’d had reason to believe JAL was still alive. Perhaps he decamped to Northants and was never heard of again in Hereford. Perhaps Maria, assuming her husband was dead, thought it made sense to leave her native county where she had valuable connections and seek her fortune in the East End and miraculously bumped into young Tom Cross in the street. And perhaps the registrar who filled out their marriage cert misheard his age and inadvertently made him a little older…

[R. J. Palmer]

Same family, Thomas Cross, shoemaker, living next to Brockhall gate in 1841, if anyone doubts this is them.

1841.JPG

[R. J. Palmer]

Yes the Lechmere name woukd resonate in Hereford but why would that embarrass his mother, even after two bigamous marriages?

She's back to being a double bigamist? I see no reason to keep accusing her of this crime.

By statute, if the husband has abandoned his wife and left her for parts unknown, she could legally remarry after seven years, and not be at risk of any wrongdoing. Lechmere's mother waited more than seven years. Her third marriage would have been equally legal. Calling her a bigamist is a way of making her look cheap, and, by implication, giving Lechmere a sordid background.

As for Thomas Cross's parents, they appear to have been an entirely respectable couple, trusted to be the keepers of the gate on the toll road, Brockhall turnpike. There is a long article in the Hereford Times, 25 January 1851, describing how they saved a family from burning to death. It's too long to reprint in full, but here's the beginning of it.

There also appears to have been a second Thomas Cross who was a gatekeeper on a Hereford turnpike, but I never figured out the relationship.

I really see no reason why anyone back in Hereford would care if Ma Lechmere, abandoned in London, would have married into this family, unless she ran off with him to begin with, but there is nothing to suggest that she did.



Hereford Times.JPG

[Gary Barnett]

As for the ‘embarrassment’, it would have been considerably worse than that if she had known that her husband was alive when she ‘remarried’. In that case she would have committed the felony of bigamy.

I think it’s highly unlikely that JAL left Hereford and thereafter never once made contact with anyone there. And if he had made contact with anyone in Hereford, small town gossip being what it is, it might well have got through to Ma.

[Gary Barnett]

Yes the Lechmere name woukd resonate in Hereford but why would that embarrass his mother, even after two bigamous marriages?

I think there was a previous Charles Allen. I forget.
Allen was common after they acquired the Allensmore estate in Herefordshire from someone called, I think Thomas Allen, in the late 1700s.
One of Lechmere's children was called Thomas Allen.

She married two men - one little more than a boy - while her first (only) husband was still alive. She was living in the East End and her son found a dead or dying prostitute while on his way to his job as a lowly carman. Her two sisters were living very different lives in Herefordshire and she may well have still been receiving an income having its origin in Edward Bolton Clive’s bequest to her father. At one time that was being administered by the Rev Archer Clive, a man with connections to Hereford Cathedral and a local JP who had it in his power to approve or reject applications for local police jobs.

Victorian society being what it was, she would have had every reason to not want people in Herefordshire to know her situation.

There was a Charles Allen born in STGITE in 1872 who died in 1875, wasn’t there?

[Edward Stow]

Yes the Lechmere name woukd resonate in Hereford but why would that embarrass his mother, even after two bigamous marriages?

I think there was a previous Charles Allen. I forget.
Allen was common after they acquired the Allensmore estate in Herefordshire from someone called, I think Thomas Allen, in the late 1700s.
One of Lechmere's children was called Thomas Allen.

[Gary Barnett]

Yes but would Lechnere have been concerned about the link in 1888. Don't forget the sister was known to neighbours as Lechmere in 1867

On Thomas Cross - would he, barely if at all out of his teens, have taken old ma - about ten years older - with two kids to London without a job and then got in the Police? Seems unlikely but it also seems unlikely that they didn't know each other from Hereford.. All sorts of possibilities can be speculated upon, but it is certainly a bit odd.

Yes, the sister was known as Lechmere, but the Lechmere name - specifically Charles Allen Lechmere - would have meant nothing to the residents of Mary Ann Street. It would have been immediately recognisable in Hereford, though. I think I’m right in saying that before he gave one of his children his own first two names it was unique to him.

[Edward Stow]

Yes but would Lechnere have been concerned about the link in 1888. Don't forget the sister was known to neighbours as Lechmere in 1867

On Thomas Cross - would he, barely if at all out of his teens, have taken old ma - about ten years older - with two kids to London without a job and then got in the Police? Seems unlikely but it also seems unlikely that they didn't know each other from Hereford.. All sorts of possibilities can be speculated upon, but it is certainly a bit odd.

[Gary Barnett]

JAL was safely dead by 1888.

But not in 1876. And Ma’s second and third ‘marriages’ had both taken place while he was still alive I think (?).

[Edward Stow]

JAL was safely dead by 1888.

[Gary Barnett]

If it's in the middle of a lengthy Lechmere thread then it's lost forever.
I suspect Old Pa Lechmere's business was ruined by drink! Maybe old ma turned him to it. She was very domineering after all.
from memory his brother was in the shoe business and lived in London.
I think again from memory that Thomas Cross's Hereford family were in the shoe business... as was Fosdike - the last husband's Old Ma. She liked a cobbler.

Good point about Cross’s dad being a shoemaker. I’d like to know when young TC caught Ma’s eye. He can’t have been much out of his teens - if he was out of them at all. Also, did he move to London to join the Met before he hooked up with her? In Archer Clive she appears to have had a contact who had a say in who got police jobs in Hereford. I’m leaning towards their leaving Hereford together to avoid any scandal that might have arisen as a result of their age difference and the possibility of JAL still being alive. If that had been the case, it might explain why CAL did not give both his real name and that of his ‘stepfather’ when appearing at the two inquests.

[Edward Stow]

If it's in the middle of a lengthy Lechmere thread then it's lost forever.
I suspect Old Pa Lechmere's business was ruined by drink! Maybe old ma turned him to it. She was very domineering after all.
from memory his brother was in the shoe business and lived in London.
I think again from memory that Thomas Cross's Hereford family were in the shoe business... as was Fosdike - the last husband's Old Ma. She liked a cobbler.

[Gary Barnett]

My apologies Gary for not seeing this sooner.
it is interesting indeed to see that Lechmere's father was involved in the death of a copper.
I think we see here, with those clippings which are somewhat hard to read (but I shall look then up myself), the split up of old pa and old ma Lechmere.

As for Marshall, that is also interesting.
That Lechmere's sister was called Lechmere while Thonad Cross was alive is of course a strong indicator that the children were called Lechmere and not Cross.
Oneof the suggestions is that Lechmere went to visit his daughter at Mary Anne Street on the night of the Double Event and overlaps went for a drink after in a local pub, before killing Stride. As he had lived in that vicinity for a big chunk of his life, he would obviously know people in the area abd perhaps have old drinking buddies there.
So having an d neighbour in Berner Street would not be a shock, if he knew what address they had moved to.
His close familiarity with the area and heightened nervousness might explain why Stride was not mutilated.

Incidentally, a possible close Kosminski connection to Berner Street was regarded as a bonus to his suspect status... but some regard a close Lechmere connection as a negative!
Such is life!

Ed, if you click on the images a more legible version pops up.

Its a very interesting story. I think Pa may have overstretched himself financially by taking on larger premises in Hereford and perhaps his business suffered as a result of his involvement in the death of the PC. His assets were taken over by a bootmaker in St Martin’s Lane, not far from where CAL was born, which may explain the ‘Soho’ birth.

And the shop in St Peter’s Street, Hereford was taken over by a lady bonnet maker. Was Ma working for her in 1851?

All from my (very poor) memory. On this rare occasion I think I may have posted more about the subject on CB than on here. But I think it’s sitting in the middle of one of the lengthy Lechmere threads.