I had bought a new trunk for Jane—an iron one—and my wife had packed it ready for the journey to Duxhurst. I called her attention to it, and told her it was time we were going. She indignantly refused a ‘tin box,’ as she termed it, and declared she would have a leathern travelling trunk, with ‘J. C.’ painted on it. Argument and promises were of no avail. For a ‘lady possessed of £17,000 to visit Lady Henry Somerset with a tin box! No, indeed, not Miss Cakebread!’ To end the matter, she gathered up her brown-paper parcels, went straight to Tottenham Station, and, with some money that Mr. Phil May and Mr. Milne had given her, paid her fare to Sawbridgeworth, where, in less than an hour after her arrival, she was deposited in the local ‘lock-up,’ and was next day sentenced to a month’s imprisonment in Cambridge Gaol.

I suppose the governor thought I had proprietary rights in the half-blind old woman, for at the expiration of her sentence, he kindly paid her fare to Tottenham, and once again she found her way to my house. But the month in Cambridge Gaol had not agreed with her. She had evidently been treated with more severity than in Holloway. She seemed weak and ill, and was quite prepared to go to Lady Henry Somerset, and even to accept the ‘tin box.’ So we went, but go without her parcels of old rags she would not, and they had to go with us. At Cannon Street she was quite willing that her box, which contained good new clothing, should be put into the luggage-van, but not so with the bundles; into the carriage with us they must come, and they did. It was a memorable ride to me—poor demented Jane on one side and three bundles of rags on the other. She nestled close up to me, and all the time spoke of her money, and what we should do with it, for she really believed that at last she was eloping. She grew more vivacious, and her broken health of the morning seemed to disappear by magic. She had renewed her youth.

I left her at Duxhurst, knowing that she would get every kindness and be treated with great patience. I knew also that I had by no means seen the last of her, for I felt sure that in an institution of that character they would not for long be able to put up with her whims and oddities, temper and violence. I wonder how Lady Henry Somerset and the matron stood it for three months; they went through something in the time, I am sure. So I was not surprised when I got a telegram asking me to meet Jane at Cannon Street, as they were obliged to send her away. Even Lady Henry seemed to acknowledge my vested interests in Jane, so I met her, and once more found her on my hands. I had to pay a fancy price for her lodgings in Tottenham that night, but for that night only. The next day she was conveyed on the ‘perambulator’ to the police station, and the day after she stood in her old familiar place—the dock at North London Police Court.

Her sojourn at Duxhurst had not been altogether in vain. Lady Henry discovered what the magistrates and myself knew years before—that she was mad. The medical officer at Duxhurst, too, found that Jane was mad. I acquainted Mr. Paul Taylor, the sitting magistrate, with these discoveries, and he promptly remanded her to Holloway, once more asking the prison doctor’s opinion on her state of mind. This is what happened on the remand:

‘At North London, Jane Cakebread, sixty-seven, was brought up on remand, before Mr. Paul Taylor, to answer the charge of being drunk and disorderly in Stoke Newington on the evening of the 20th instant. The appearance of the accused last week marked the two hundred and eightieth occasion on which she has been charged with drunkenness. Every effort to reclaim her has failed, and during the last few years, Mr. T. Holmes, the police court missionary, has constantly asserted that she was insane. Nevertheless, no doctors could be induced to agree upon the point, and the woman has been treated as an habitual drunkard. Last week a remand was ordered, for the state of the prisoner’s mind to be again inquired into, and the following report was now handed to the magistrate: “H.M. Prison, Holloway, January 27, 1896. Registered No. 17,706, Jane Cakebread, is well known to me. I have always considered her to be of impaired intellect. Her mental condition has, however, so much deteriorated of late that I am of opinion that she is now not responsible for her actions, and that she should be sent to an asylum.—Geo. E. Walker, Medical Officer.” Mr. Paul Taylor said, in the face of this certificate, he should order an officer to conduct the woman to the Hackney Workhouse. The gaolers endeavoured to remove the prisoner from the dock, but she clung to the rails and refused to go. “What have I got?” she screamed. “I did not hear. I will know!” Sergeant Baker, the gaoler, said he would tell her all about it outside. The prisoner was induced to go to the gaoler’s office, but as she left the court she screamed: “Tell Mr. Holmes to mind my box.” Directly she heard that she was going to the workhouse, she cried and said she would not go. Mr. Holmes told her that it would be better for her to go quietly, and she replied: “Yes, you want to get my property—my £17,000—but you will not. I have got my proper senses, though they say I have not.” Ultimately, after a struggle, during which she tried to bite the gaoler, she was secured on the police ambulance, and taken to the Hackney Workhouse.’

And so poor old half-blind Jane passed. She had grown old in the service of the State, and at length the State rewarded her with something other than prison—the lunatic asylum. But for the manner of that ‘passing’ Jane never forgave the police, for when very near her death, in Claybury Asylum, she referred to it, and said: ‘Mr. Holmes, if I was mad, why did they take me strapped on the perambulator to the workhouse? Why did they not take me in a cab, like they would have taken any other lady?’ And there was reason in her query. Sane enough to realize her misery in being surrounded by the insane—too insane to be fit for liberty or to control her actions. Nature had its pound of flesh, and her strange life ebbed out. I went several times to see her, and the last bit of needlework she ever did she saved for me, and I keep it for her sake; the tin box that she so much despised is in my possession, and the clothes that my wife so gladly arranged for her are still in it, neatly folded, mementos of the most ill-used woman it was ever my lot to meet with. Once again I went to see her, and death was upon her. She lay in a half-comatose condition, and as I bent over her and spoke to her, for a time I got no response. But I thought I would try again for some little sign of recognition; so I touched her, and said: ‘Jane, don’t you know me? I am Mr. Holmes.’ She half opened her eyes for a moment, and said: ‘You are a liar. Mr. Holmes wouldn’t leave me here.’ Even in death she had some kind of faith in me, and I am glad to remember it.

I had one other duty to perform, and on December 9, 1898, I performed it in Chingford Mount Cemetery. It was a very quiet funeral; the conveyance from the asylum drove up, two men lifted the remains of our ‘dear sister’ into the prepared grave; the clergyman read the beautiful service, and into the safe keeping of Mother Earth, and to the mercy of God, poor old Jane went, a solitary representative of the press and myself being the only witnesses. I have before me now an old letter, bearing the date 1890. It is one of Jane’s. A few wildflowers are inside that letter. She tells of living in a cottage surrounded by fields, where the birds are singing, the flowers blooming, and the ‘breases is beautiful.’ And it was meet and right, poor old demented Jane, that the birds should sing when thou wert laid to rest. For on that December day the sun shone gloriously, and the birds sang merrily in the trees around her, and as we laid her gently down the breath of the forest came about her, and the breezes were beautiful. Requiescat in pace.

A few words will suffice for the history of Jane Cakebread. Born of humble parents in Hertfordshire, she had some schooling, but not much. After leaving school she went into domestic service, and ultimately became what she called ‘a single-handed parlour-maid.’ To commemorate the sudden death of some connection of the family she lived with, she committed to memory certain chapters of the Bible, the one from Job having to do with the uncertainty of life. While in service someone left her a legacy of £100. That was her undoing, as she did no work again. She seems to have carried the money about with her and wasted it, or got robbed of it. Then began her life of so-called inebriety; the rest is public knowledge.

CHAPTER VII
RECORD-BREAKERS: KATE HENESSEY

Kate was an Irish girl, and there was no beauty about her. I met with her the first day I entered a London police court, and was afraid of her. I met with her many times afterwards, and the fear and disgust wore off.