Hampshire: The cork-legged swindler from Sherfield English

She then went into town and ordered several items from shopkeepers, including an umbrella and a tweed cloak, saying that her “ma” would settle the account. As the “ma” had not arrived by Sunday afternoon, Mr Sherborne began to get suspicious. Early in the evening she said she was going to church but did not return.

Mr Sherborne notified Superintendent Hibberd of the Basingstoke Borough Police. who discovered she had walked to Worting and called on Mrs Garrett at Crossways Farm. She said she was Dr Hill’s niece, and was on the way to Oakley, but the trap in which she was riding had broken down. After giving a pitiable tale, she persuaded Mrs Garrett to drive her to Oakley.

She told a similar tale to the stationmaster at Oakley, who let her sleep that night in the waiting room. In the morning he even made her breakfast. Shortly before the next train was due to arrive, she suddenly exclaimed, “Oh, I’ve forgotten my purse, and I have to dine at Mr Mitchell’s at Overton. What shall I do?”   She begged the stationmaster to let her have a ticket to Overton, saying she would repay him in a day or two. She appeared to be so upset at the thought of losing her train that he gave her a ticket.

Instead of getting out at Overton, she stayed on the train. When the train stopped at Salisbury, all the passengers were asked to show their tickets. She told the ticket collector that her “ma” had bought two tickets to Exeter but had been left behind on the platform. She said she would wait until her “ma” arrived on the next train. The station master was suspicious and told the porters not to lose sight of her. However, she managed to catch a train to Exeter.

On arrival at Exeter without a ticket, she said that at Chard Junction she accidentally missed her mother who had purchased the ticket for her. She gave her name as “Miss Nelson” and a false address. Constable Martin of the Exeter police found her in the High Street where she had just ordered goods to the value of £3. She appeared before the Exeter magistrates and was charged in the name of Louisa Anne Nelson Trollope with travelling on the railway without a ticket. She was jailed for a month.

Shortly after her release, she took lodgings in Ottery St Mary and began her usual practice of ordering goods from various shopkeepers, saying that her papa, Captain Morris, would pay for them.  She next appeared in Charmouth in Dorset, where she repeated her usual activities calling herself Miss Green with a fictional “mamma” who would be arriving from Lyme.

When she decided it would be prudent to leave Charmouth, she persuaded the landlord of an inn to drive her to Bridport. She told him that she only had a sovereign in her purse and asked him to wait while she got some silver from her father. She knocked on the door of the house of her fictional father and asked the person who opened the door to protect her from a nasty man who had been following her and to allow her to leave the house by the back way. The poor landlord waited for nearly an hour before realising he had been cheated. 

It was only a matter of time before a person with such a distinctive appearance would be apprehended. She appeared at Dorset Assizes as Louisa Annie Grimes charged with obtaining goods under false pretences and was sentenced to four months’ hard labour.

One evening in October 1868 she arrived at the home of Miss Crockford, the schoolmistress at Twyford. She said her name was Louisa Nelson and that the carriage she was travelling in had broken down and had nowhere to stay. Miss Crockford gave her an evening meal, a bed for the night and breakfast. While she was there, she stole Miss Crockford’s gold brooch and other items. The police found her in Southampton and in January 1869 she was sentenced to 12 months at Winchester Assizes for stealing the brooch.

In January 1870 the Southampton County Bench sentenced her to six months’ hard labour for stealing lace from a draper’s shop at Freemantle. In August 1870 she was jailed for a further six months for obtaining goods by deception at several addresses in the Romsey area by adopting various aliases including that of a Miss Winstanley whose father was an officer in the navy and her brothers were officers in the army. The Hampshire Advertiser explained that “her diction is such as would very easily make persons believe she was all she represented herself to be”.

In June 1871 she was found guilty at Winchester Assizes of stealing a silk handkerchief from a shop in Alverstoke and other offences. In view of her previous convictions she was sentenced to seven years’ hard labour plus a further seven years on licence. In April 1876 she was released from Knaphill Women’s Prison, near Woking, on a ticket of leave. The following month she turned up in Rotherham where she obtained postage stamps and meals from three hotels without paying and and stole seven pairs of gloves a draper’s shop while pretending to order a quantity of goods. She gave her name as Edith Groves and said she had arrived from Denmark. She was sentenced to ten years and sent back to Knaphill. The Sheffield newspapers described her as a “genteel and highly respectable-looking young lady with long flowing hair”.

In 1885 she was released from prison on licence, but was soon sent back when she was found guilty of obtaining money by false pretences in Buckinghamshire. After her release in September 1886 she appeared before magistrates in various locations, including Oxford, Dorking, Wells and Chepstow charged with fraudulently obtaining board and lodging or obtaining goods or money by deception and received several short spells in jail. I lost track of her in Skegness in 1892 when she left without paying for three days’ board and lodging.

During the course of her trial at Southampton in 1870 it emerged that her real name was Louisa Annie Martin and she came from Sherfield English. I looked for her records and found that she was baptised at St Leonard’s Church at Sherfield English in April 1846 and that in the 1851 census her father was recorded as a “Pauper, formerly ag[ricultural].lab[ourer]”. This shows that Louisa must have been a superb actress to have been able to overcome her past and convince people that she was a lady of some means.

Louisa had one of her legs amputated above the knee. I don’t know why or when. Several of the newspaper reports called her “The Lady Swindler” and mentioned her cork leg. A cork leg was made of more expensive materials than the wooden “peg leg” and offered jointed movement. They were called cork legs because most were made in Cork Street in London.

By Bob Clarke