Collateral Damage: Sentencing Affected Those at Home

London Street with carman

Criminals were not the only ones punished when they were incarcerated. As young Thomas Arment said in his first petition for clemency, the women at home depended on the men to support them. Perhaps that was why Thomas' mother, Sarah Arment, was the first to send in a petition on behalf of her husband and son.

Of course in this petition filed just after the trial, Sarah said that her husband and son had not stolen the items from Druce and Co., nor were they aware that the goods were stolen when they assisted in their sale. She pointed to her menfolks' previous good character and said that her son had supported himself in lawful employment, while her husband had been employed as a carman for Mr. Cobley "formerly of Essex Street" for 20 years. That had changed 8 years previously and now Thomas sold coals and was a green grocer. Sarah also indicated that both she and her husband were in poor health, she with asthema made worse by the distress of current circumstances and he with rheumatic gout.

Reading between the lines, it sounds like the elder Thomas was struggling and the loss of a steady job must have made things hard. Why had he lost the job he had for 20 years? A check of the 1851 census for Thomas Cobley shows that he and his family had moved. Cobley was also pursuing a different line of work, no longer a carman as he had been in 1841, he was now a collector of poor rates. Perhaps his new position precluded him from signing the petition for clemency for Thomas Arment and son to which many of Sarah's friends and neighbours had affixed their signatures. Perhaps it was another reason that stopped Cobley from signing though, as the officer who first arrested young Thomas was also named Cobley.

Sarah's petition paints a picture of poor, honest men trying to make the best of the circumstances in which they found themselves. The elderly Thomas had to keep trying to make a living at a time before there was widespread provision for retirement. Perhaps the idea of easier money from selling purloined goods was just too much of a temptation for men who normally walked the straight and narrow - or did they?

Story to be continued next week

Sources:

The National Archives (UK), reference HO 8/212 petition of Sarah Arment 1849



FindMyPast 1841 England, Wales & Scotland Census – Public Record Office: H.O. 107/717/5 – Tower Hamlets, St. Mary Whitechapel



FindMyPast 1851 England, Wales & Scotland Census – Public Record Office: H.O. 107/1546 – Whitechapel, St Marks, Tower Hamlets, 7 Gt Prescott St.
 



 Images:


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