On Monday morning, 28 January 1888 a small group of Croydon citizens convened at the Rail View, Selsdon Road in Croydon at the direction of Mr Percy Morrison, Coroner. A public house was a not uncommon venue for coronial inquests. On this occasion they were to inquire into the circumstances of the death of Charlotte Elizabeth Crust, late of 59 Jarvis Road, Croydon, a laundress, 31 years of age, who had committed suicide by taking salts of lemon on Friday afternoon in the last week.
The husband of the deceased was not present, and it was advised he was suffering an attack of lumbago.
Charlotte Stevens was called and in answer to the Coroner said she was the wife of James Stevens and lived at 12 Purley Gardens. She identified the body of the deceased as that of her sister-in-law, the wife of William Henry Crust, a painter.
On Friday last, the deceased came to see Charlotte Stevens in the afternoon. William Crust had called in previously and Mrs Stevens made him a cup of tea. When the deceased arrived she abused her husband very severely, calling him "everything she could think of". She asked why he had not stopped at home and cleared up the house, and he replied he had been "looking after work". Charlotte Stevens tried to calm her sister-in-law and after a time she had some tea with them. She then left the witness's house, but at the gate she again abused her husband. About half an hour later the deceased returned, bringing her husband's two little boys with her. She said she was going to London to see her mother. She asked the witness to take charge of the children. The deceased asked her husband to go to the station with her. He replied "there's no money to be going to London with".
Charlotte Stevens said that on Christmas Eve 1887 she heard deceased say she should take some poison and she replied "Don't be so silly." She said the deceased had a very violent temper. She had been married three years and had one child who had died. The witness had never known the deceased to be addicted to drink, but "like men and wives, there had been disturbances between them". Her brother had been out of work since October until recently.
A juryman asked a very pertinent question: Was it not a fact that the reason for the quarrelling was that the deceased thought it very hard that she had to work and keep the two children?
Charlotte Stevens replied she did not think that was the cause.
Dr Paul Jackson said he was called to the deceased about 5 o'clock on Friday afternoon and found her on the floor, supported by a neighbour, in a half sitting position. Her husband and his brother-in-law were in the room. Deceased was very pale and her face was covered with perspiration. Her hands were very cold and clammy and she complained of pain, and said she was burning inside. The doctor was told she had taken poison and he asked her what she had taken. She answered "Salts of lemon". Dr Jackson gave her some mustard and water to produce sickness and this was successfully done, but directly afterwards the deceased became convulsed and died in a few minutes. The symptoms were consistent with the statement that she had taken salts of lemon which consisted of potash and oxalic acid, a very poisonous acid. A woman had been known to die in eight minutes after taking half an ounce. The deceased, when complaining of pain, said "You have driven me to this." Her husband was then in the room and appeared to be much distressed. Dr Jackson saw nothing to lead him to believe that deceased was insane. He had never attended the deceased before.
A juryman stated that salts of lemon, he believed, was used by laundresses to take iron mould stains out of linen.
Ellen Bellamy said she lived next door to the deceased, but only knew her as a neighbour. On Friday she was called to the deceased by her husband. She found her lying on the hearthrug in front of the fire. The deceased said to her, "It will be all up with me shortly. I have taken salts of lemon." She did not say why she had taken the poison. Mrs Bellamy had known the deceased to strike her husband and had known him to strike her back. She never saw either of them the worse for drink.
Mary Ann Hooker, a laundress for whom the deceased worked, said Charlotte Crust had often complained of her husband. She had said he was always "at her" and accusing her of going out with other men. She said Mrs Crust was always a hardworking woman and earned about 11s a week. The witness believed the money was always spent on the home. The deceased often cried through want of food. Lately she had appeared very depressed and complained of her head. The witness believed the deceased's husband was very jealous of her, but "there was no cause for it" to the best of her knowledge. One day in the week, the deceased said, "They only want me to do something to myself and then they will have 18 pounds to flash about with." The deceased had also said, "I shall either do away with myself or him" and on Tuesday she had said, "I don't know what my old man intends to do with me, but he has threatened to strangle me". Deceased was a woman of very short temper.
By early 1883, Charlotte, single and in need of a "situation" where she was housed and fed, aligned with William Crust, a house painter and widower with two young sons. In August 1884, when she was five months pregnant with his child, they married.
Charlotte gave birth to her second daughter, Charlotte Marian, in December 1884. Sadly, the baby succumbed to illness, dying in early 1886. The grief must have been immense.
Many young working class women suicided in the 19th century due to "misery and privation" (Illustrated Police News, 4 June 1870), lack of money and being "in want of food" (Illustrated Police News, 20 February 1864). The lack of work available to men in the 1880s only compounded this universal situation. Husbands not able to provide for wives and children forced women to take on the only work available to them - low paid and physically demanding or, if they were willing to take the risk, prostitution with all its attendant dangers.
Definition of insanity also altered during the 19th century; insanity came to mean " psychological disturbance of a certain kind rather than brain disease,"* making it easier for women who killed themselves to be classed as being insane when no previous indicators of insanity were present. Despite the obvious physical and social factors evident in Charlotte's death, the cause of her death was stated by Percy Morrison, Coroner to be "suicide during a state of temporary insanity."
The "insanity" to which Charlotte succumbed was fostered by her working class life - hard work both at home as a housewife and stepmother and at a labour intensive workplace coupled with lack of money, lack of food and a husband with whom she was in conflict, at least in part due to his unemployment and apparent lack of motivation to perform household duties within the home. Her sense of loss must also have been a constant source of sadness - two babies in three years.
It is not known where Charlotte lies. Presumably the meagre 18 pounds she referred to was her life savings and used to pay for her funeral. Suicides had traditionally been buried at cross roads until the early 19th century, when the practice was abolished. By the late 19th century they were only able to be buried in graveyards between 9.00 pm and midnight, with no ceremony. Her mother, stepfather and half-siblings, living in Islington may or may not have attended the burial, given their own parlous financial state and the distance they would have had to travel.
William Crust did not marry again. By 1891 he was living in a household comprising himself, his mother and his two sons.
*Smith, Roger Trial by Medicine: Insanity and Responsibility in Victorian Trials, Edinburgh University Press, 1981 page 49
