On
the evening of 17 March 1859, Mrs Hannah Armour of 13 East Quay Lane in
Greenock opened her door to a young woman seeking a place to stay
overnight. With her was a young fair
haired girl aged about 4 years old. The
young woman was described as "apparently well educated and wearing a black
silk dress cloak and straw bonnet and a profusion of rings". She gave her name as Mrs Janet Loudon and
said that she had come from visiting family in Dumfries where her father was a
farmer in Upper Nithsdale. Her daughter, Jessie Ann, had become unwell and she was breaking her journey because of this. East Quay Lane led from the railway station in
Greenock down to the harbour and was home to many lodging houses. Mrs Armour had a room that she let out to
travellers.
Janet
Loudon and the girl were given accommodation for the night. Mrs Armour noticed that the young girl seemed
very unwell and was vomiting severely. Having
children herself, she suggested that a doctor be sent for. The woman said that this often happened with
the child and that she was liable to convulsions. She refused any medical help for the child. The next morning, the young woman, who
appeared to be pregnant, announced to her landlady that, tired after her long
day travelling, she had fallen asleep but when she awoke she became aware that
the little girl had died - sometime between four and five in the morning.
Mrs
Armour advised her that she would need to register the death with Mr Robert
Campbell the registrar for the Middle Parish of Greenock. This she did, giving the child's name as
Jessie Ann Loudon aged four and a half, and that William Loudon, draper was the
father. Janet Loudon gave her maiden
name as Young. The cause of death was
"Died suddenly. Disease
unknown." and it was noted that no medical attendant had been present. The place of burial was to be the church yard
of Dumfries. Janet Loudon told Mrs
Armour that she would continue her journey to Dumfries as soon as
possible.
A
coffin was procured from Andrew Crawford who was a joiner, Westburn Street,
Greenock and the body of the child was placed in it. In order to disguise the fact that she was
travelling with a coffin (Janet Loudon informed Hannah Armour that the fare
would cost more), the woman also acquired a wooden box and the coffin was
placed in this. She wrote a label giving
an address in Dumfries and this was
placed on the lid of the box. The young
man who made the box offered to carry it the short distance to the railway
station, but the woman refused. A
porter was called who, along with Mrs Armour accompanied the woman to the
railway station. When he asked what was
in the box, Janet Loudon told him that it contained china. At the railway station Mrs Armour saw Loudon
remove the label from the lid and replace it with another. Mrs Armour took a quick glance at the new
label and noticed that it gave address in Carlisle. The label read – “Mrs Loudon, Bush Hotel,
Carlisle." Hannah Armour saw Loudon
take her seat in the train and that was the last she ever saw of her.
Being
a kindly woman and a mother herself, I'm sure that Hannah Armour was slightly
perplexed at the woman's behaviour.
Indeed she was probably very surprised that a mother could sleep while
her child was so seriously ill. I
imagine she thought of her strange visitor and her poor little child often.
A
day or two later the box arrived by rail at Carlisle station. A porter employed by the Caledonian Railway
named William Morrison took the box to the Bush Hotel in as per the address on
the lid. Miss Bishop, barmaid at the
Hotel, took the box in and paid 2 shillings to the porter, assuming that the
owner would pay on arrival. The box
remained unclaimed and was put in a storage room. Some time later it was moved to a shed in the
yard (possibly because of the stench coming from it?).
Eventually it was decided to try and find the owner of the box. Someone knew a Miss Loudon who lived near
Carlisle, so word was sent to a relative of hers in the who was asked to
determine whether or not the box was her aunts.
She told the hotel management that her aunt was not expecting anything
to be delivered and that the box was not for her. It was then decided that the best option
would be to open the box to try and find more information about the owner.
A
newspaper reported what happened next - "Inside the box was a coffin
painted black. It was ornamented round
the lid, and bore a breastplate, the figure of an angel, and the representation
of a flower vase - all made of tin or zinc.
The plate had no initials or marks of any description which might lead
to a discovery of the parties who had sent the box. The coffin had also attached to it handles of
cotton cord - which is not a customary appendage to the coffins of persons in the
poorer classes of society."
On
discovering the coffin the Chief Constable George E Bent was called. He decided to open the coffin. The remains of little Jessie Ann were inside. The
newspaper report continues - "The face of the child was slightly inclined
to the right and the body had a resemblance to a mummy. " The lid was put back on the coffin and it, with the box, removed to the police office. Dr Elliot
and Mr Temperly, surgeons were immediately called in and examined the body. Because of the state of decomposition of the body, all that could be determined from an initial
examination was that the child was female.
There being no other clues to help the authorities identify the child,
the body was given a proper burial.
Mr
Bent, determined to get some facts about this poor child, had photographs taken of the coffin and box and these were sent to police
offices in Scotland in the hope that they could be identified. The incident, known as the "Carlisle Coffin Mystery" was widely reported in the
national press and soon the police were being sent bits and pieces of information
about who the little girl could be.
From
information received, the following came to light -
A
young woman named Janet Young had left home in Upper Nithsdale in 1852 and gone
into service in Newcastle. She was
reported to have been a good-looking young woman with dark hair. While there became involved with a shopman who
worked for her employer. The result of
the affair was that she had an illegitimate child, a daughter. She returned to live with an uncle in
Ayrshire until the baby was born. She
then found work in Glasgow leaving her child with her relatives.
In Glasgow "Janet Loudon or Young" met and married a man,
described as "a tradesman", but did not tell him about her daughter
until after they were married. The
couple were about to start a new life by emigrating to New Zealand and Janet
was pregnant. Her husband refused to
have anything to do with her illegitimate daughter. As
a result of her marriage, her family thought that she would take back the
child. They asked her to collect the
child as they were no longer able to look after her. This she did, then it was said that she took the child to
Hartlepool where her former lover and father of the child now lived. He had set up business there after leaving
Newcastle about the same time Janet did.
He had paid some money to support the child but when asked if he would
take custody of the child he refused.
Because of the resulting sensational publicity, William Loudon, draper in Hartlepool wrote to several newspapers complaining of the damage to his reputation. “I observe that, connected with the mysterious affair at Carlisle, a person representing herself as Mrs Loudon, wife of a draper in West Hartlepool, was mother of the child. Now, being the only draper in West Hartlepool of that name, I consider myself as seriously injured from the statements which have gone to the public through your medium and beg most emphatically to deny the accusation on the part of my wife and myself, neither of us having the slightest knowledge of the circumstances. In fact, I can prove, were it necessary, from the most convincing evidence that she was resident in West Hartlepool at the time the occurrence happened."
In
desperation, Janet then went to Dumfries to beg relatives to take and look
after the child - they also refused.
They described the child as a healthy, fair-haired four year old. On
17 March 1859, she had been returning to Glasgow with the child, but stopped
off at Greenock when the girl became ill and later sadly died. She sent the box and coffin to Carlisle and presumably returned to her husband in Glasgow.
In
April 1859 her relatives in Dumfries were surprised to receive a letter from
her marked "London". In this
letter she stated that she and her husband were about to travel to New
Zealand. Later they received another
letter, this time from New Zealand in which she informed them that she had
given birth to a son. She did not
mention her daughter in any of these letters.
It
also came to light that a Mrs Hoyle of the Union Inn, Citadel Row, Carlisle
remembered a woman answering to the description of Janet Loudon, accompanied by
a fair-haired child had stayed there sometime in 1859. (Perhaps this is where
Janet met with the child's father to ask him if he would take her. If he was from Hartlepool, I'm sure he would
not want to meet with her there where there would be a chance he could be
recognised.)
Having
gathered all this information, particularly with Mrs Armour of Greenock's
evidence of the child being unwell and vomiting, Chief Constable Bent’s suspicions
were further aroused. In February 1860, William
Carrick, the Coroner at Carlisle requested that the body be exhumed. At
last, little Jessie Ann was positively identified by a
"peculiarity" of her teeth - the relatives who had looked after her
said that she had previously had a fall which had chipped her two front teeth. Mrs Armour also identified the child by
looking at a clipping of her hair. Andrew
Crawford of Greenock was able to identify the coffin as the one he had made for
a "Janet Loudon" in Greenock in March 1859.
In
late March 1860, Robert Blair, the Procurator Fiscal of Greenock, and Robert
Hunter, the Chief Constable of Paisley travelled to Carlisle to view the
evidence in the case - the death had, of course
occurred in Greenock under their jurisdiction.
In
early April the inquest into the circumstances surrounding Jessie Ann's death
was held. Rumours abounded that evidence
of poison had been found in a portion of her stomach and this was widely
reported in the press. (All reports
naming The Paisley Herald as their source.)
However, according to the Greenock Telegraph, no cause of death could be
ascertained in the case of little Jessie Ann Loudon. It would be up to the Renfrewshire
authorities to take further action if they thought it was needed.
That,
infuriatingly, seems to be where the story ends but it seems to me that there are so many unanswered questions! It was very convenient for "Janet Loudon" that little
Jessie Ann (if that was her real name) died after being trailed around the
country only to be told she was unwanted anywhere. Why was a medical help not sought when they
arrived in Greenock, as Hannah Armour suggested? The mother said that her child suffered from
convulsions, but the relatives who had looked after the child said that she was
a healthy little girl. Why did “Janet
Loudon” change the address on the box containing Jessie Ann’s coffin? Why send the body off knowing she would never
be claimed and why to Carlisle? Did “Janet Loudon” and her
new family have a happy life in New Zealand?
Did she ever give her dead daughter a second thought?
I’d
love to know more!
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