This post is part of the Blogging from A to Z Challenge (#AtoZChallenge), where I’m exploring historical newspaper clippings—one story at a time—through my series “Behind the Newsprint.”
The Clipping
The clue comes from a police report published in the Morning
Chronicle on 17 October 1855:
"SOUTHWARK—YESTERDAY. DARING HIGHWAY ROBBERY.—John Jones, a determined looking young fellow, was finally examined before Mr. a'Beckett, charged with stealing a valuable silver watch from the person of James Joseph Todman, a rope-maker at Rotherhithe…
…the prosecutor was going along Dockhead with his mother, when he was suddenly surrounded… He then felt a tug at his watch…
…Charlotte Todman, mother of the prosecutor, said… she seized hold of the prisoner, and held him until a constable came up…"
A Marriage Under Strain
To understand what this newspaper report reveals, it helps
to know something of the marriage behind it.
Charlotte Snell and Joseph Todman married on 21 July 1833[i]
— she was 32, he was around 20 or 21,
and their first child James arrived just six months later.[ii]
The age gap, the haste, and the subsequent four-year delay before their second child, a daughter Mary Ann, was baptised[iii]
all hint at a domestic life that was never entirely stable.
By 1841 the family were living together in Greenwich, but
the cracks were already there. [iv]
The census record contains errors — Charlotte was recorded under a different
name and wrong age — almost certainly because neither she nor Joseph could read
or write well enough to correct the enumerator.
Decades of Domestic Breakdown (1851–1871)
From 1851[v]
onwards, the couple ceased to live together. The census that year shows
Charlotte — aged 50, working as a laundress — heading her own household in
Bermondsey, with James (17, apprenticed to a rope-maker) and daughter Mary Ann
living with her. Joseph is absent entirely.
By 1861[vi]
nothing had changed. Charlotte was still heading her own household in
Bermondsey, now working as a monthly nurse, with Mary Ann (by then married as
Mary Ann Willoughby) and two grandchildren under her roof. Joseph remained
nowhere to be found in the record.
This was not a temporary arrangement. It was a settled
separation — legally unacknowledged, but practically complete.
Charlotte at Dockhead
It is against this backdrop that the 1855 newspaper report
should be read.[vii]
When her son cried out "I'm robbed!", Charlotte
immediately turned, saw the accused with the watch chain in his hand, and
seized him. Together, mother and son restrained the suspect until a police
constable arrived. Sergeant William Sopp, when he reached the scene, found the
prisoner "struggling with the prosecutor and his mother." Charlotte
then gave evidence that helped commit the suspect to the Old Bailey.
The setting matters. Dockhead Fair drew large crowds and
carried a reputation for disorder and opportunistic crime. The accused was
described as a "determined looking young fellow," and his accomplices
fled before the police arrived. Yet Charlotte held her ground.
One detail is easy to miss: James is named in the report as
James Joseph Todman, carrying his absent father's name into his trade.
Yet it was his mother he was out with that October evening, and his mother who
acted when it mattered.
What It Tells Us
By 1881 the separation remained complete — and the records
hint that Joseph had gone further than simply living apart.
Charlotte, then 79, was lodging with the Willoughby family
in Poplar, still recorded as married. [viii]
Joseph is a more complicated picture. A Joseph Todman, gardener, appears that
year as a boarder in Charlton — consistent in occupation and location with the
family's known south-east London geography, and Todman is an unusual enough
surname that no other plausible candidate exists in the records. But this
Joseph is listed as 60 and, notably, as unmarried.[ix]
Both details invite scrutiny. If this is the same man — and
the circumstantial case is strong — then by 1881 he appears to have been
misrepresenting himself to the world in two distinct ways: shaving perhaps
eight or nine years off his age, possibly to appear more employable as a
labouring man in his sixties, and presenting himself as single. After thirty
years of living apart, he may simply have stopped thinking of himself as a
married man — or found it more convenient not to.
Three years later, in 1884, Joseph was admitted to the
Greenwich Union Workhouse — not by any of his children, but by a nephew.[x]
He died there in 1892, described in the records as a gardener of Greenwich, of
chronic bronchitis and senile decay.[xi]
When Charlotte had died a decade earlier in 1882, her death
certificate still named her as "the wife of Joseph Todman,
Wheelwright." [xii] Their legal bond was the only thing left
connecting them. The paperwork was completed by her son James — the same James
who had stood beside her at Dockhead Fair nearly thirty years earlier.
That is the fuller picture the newspaper report sits inside.
Charlotte was not a woman caught up in a moment of crisis. She was someone who
had been managing her own life, her own household, and her own family for
decades — and the Dockhead incident simply shows us what that looked like in
practice.
Reflection
Reports like this are easy to overlook — just another column
of "Police Intelligence" in a Victorian newspaper. But for family
history, they can be invaluable.
In a few lines, this account transforms Charlotte from a
name on a certificate into a person we can almost see: turning at her son's
cry, spotting the thief, and refusing to let him escape.
It is only a moment — but knowing what surrounds it makes it
mean far more.
For those interested in learning more about Charlotte Snell see her profile on WikiTree.
Sources
[i] Charlotte
Snell marriage to Joseph Todman on 21 Jul 1833 in St Mary Magdalene,
Woolwich, Greenwich, England; London Metropolitan Archives; London, England,
UK; London Church of England Parish Registers; Reference Number: P97/MRY/027, Saint
Mary Magdalene, Woolwich: Church Street, Parish register: 1826-1837 Year
1833 page 180 [image 91 of 1856]
[ii] James Todman(son) born 23 June [unable to read year]
and baptised on 2 February 1834 in Saint Alfege, Greenwich: Greenwich
Church Street, Greenwich, Greenwich, England. The son of Joseph Todman(Groom)
& Charlotte, residing in Woolwich Road. Citing London Metropolitan Archives;
London, England, UK; London Church of England Parish Registers; Reference
Number: P78/ALF/011, Parish Register for Saint Alfege, Greenwich: Greenwich
Church Street, Greenwich, Greenwich, England for: 1830-1873, entry
2201, page 276, year 1834. [Image 138 of 457]
[iii] Mary Ann Ramsey Todman(daughter) born 31 August 1835 and baptised on
31 July 1839 in Saint Alfege, Greenwich: Greenwich Church Street,
Greenwich, Greenwich, England. The daughter of of Joseph Todman(Coachman) &
Charlotte residing in Woolwich Road. Citing London Metropolitan Archives;
London, England, UK; London Church of England Parish Registers; Reference
Number: P78/ALF/013, Parish Register for Saint Alfege, Greenwich: Greenwich
Church Street, Greenwich, Greenwich, England for: 1830-1873, entry 678,
page 85, year 1839. [image348 of 457]
[iv] 1841
England Census, Household of Joseph Todman(age 25), at Ceylon, East
Greenwich, Kent, England citing Class:
HO107; Piece: 489; Book: 3; Civil Parish: Greenwich; County: Kent; Enumeration
District: 6; Folio: 27; Page: 6; Line: 3; GSU roll: 306881
[v] 1851
England Census, Household of Charlotte Todman(age 50), at Maxwells Cottages
in the Borough of Southwark, Surrey. England. Citing Class: HO107; Piece: 1560;
Folio: 152; Page: 51; GSU roll: 174793
[vi] 1861
England Census, Household of Charlotte Todman(age 59), at Jamacia Level, 2
Ackworth Bldg. borough of Southwark in Bermondsay, Surrey, England. Citing: Class:
Rg 9; Piece: 320; Folio: 112; Page: 5; GSU roll: 542614
[vii] Police
Intelligence Morning Chronicle, dated 17 October 1855
[viii]
1881 England Census, Household of Charles Willoughby, at 4 Montague
Place in Poplar, London, Middlesex, England. Citing Class: RG11; Piece: 510;
Folio: 105; Page: 10; GSU roll: 1341114
[ix] 1881
England Census, Household of Frederick Carr, at Ann’s Place, Lower Woolwich
Road, Charton Next Woolwich, London, England. Citing Class: RG11; Piece: 740;
Folio: 112; Page: 30; GSU roll: 1341173
[x] Admission record for Joseph Todman(69,
destitute gardener)
on 17 Jan 1884 into Greenwich
Union Workhouse, Greenwich, City of London, England. Citing London
Metropolitan Archives; London, England, UK; London, England, Workhouse
Admission and Discharge Records, 1764-1921; Reference Number: GBG/250/15, Title: Workhouse
(Institution) Woolwich Road, 1883-1885. Folio 15 [Image 92 of 383]
[xi] Death Certificate of Joseph Todman
(76), GRO Reference: 1892 J Quarter in GREENWICH
Volume 01D Page 611
[xii] Death Certificate of Charlotte
Todman, GRO
Reference: 1882 S Quarter in MEDWAY ()
Volume 02A Page 276
Thanks again for preserving another fine story
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