Tollington's a foreign country, they do things differently there.

There are roads round here called Tollington Park,  Tollington Place, Tollington Road and Tollington Way and there's even a Tollington ward but no-one thinks of themselves as living in Tollington. 

This is a shame. Tollington's in the Domesday book: 

Image courtesy of the wonderful Professor John Palmer and George Slater and domesdaymap.co.uk

John Wittich's Discovering London Street Names says it's in Anglo-Saxon charters even earlier as 'Tollandune' or 'The hill pasture of Tolla'.

I would like it to come back and displace Holloway, Finsbury Park and Stroud Green.

It's about as likely as this place (on the Tollington Way/Hornsey Road junction) re-opening or that bike being rescued.

*Popout

   

She Bangs the drums on Seven Sisters Road

Bangs (est. 1907) has left no trace on t'interweb. I'm hoping there'll be more at the Islington Local History Centre. 

In the meantime, here's a picture that's almost too clankingly symbolic:

The past was yours/But the future's mine/You're all out of time. 

Durian Cake seems an odd idea (Hua Run supermarket)

In my early days living round here someone more thorough than me at following recipes dragged me round half the shops in search of black bean sauce. 

I should have taken him straight here:

 

Hua Run (on the corner of Seven Sisters and Hornsey road next to the Eaglet)  is one of those tiny shops that cram in more stuff than seems possible. They sell every Chinese ingredient I've ever heard of as well as many things I don't recognise:

Or know how to use. What does one do with dried fish exactly? 

Or with sweet potato powder? 

Rice I can just about figure out:

And I'm building up courage to try this: 

The murder trial of Sidney Clay, Part III: Sentencing

[Part II is here]

After Dr Gruyther went to the police to report his suspicious behaviour Clay was arrested and tried for 'unlawfully soliciting Eustace Julian de Gruyther to kill and murder a certain male child aged two months'. There was no proof that the child had died of poison rather than neglect and malnutrition.

The defence argued that Dr Gruyther's testimony 'might have been actuated by motives of notoriety' and that there was no other evidence against Clay. Mrs Manning and Maud Morris both testified that he had tried to help the the boy and that they had done their best to care for him.

The jury found Clay guilty and recommended him to mercy on account of this youth and good character. The judge sentenced him to six months hard labour.

Spy:  Justice Lewis William Cave
Vanity Fair, 1893
Wikimeda Commons image

That judge was Justice Lewis William Cave. This is from his obituary: 'Fearless, if occasionally over-confident, and brusque and stubborn in his demeanour towards counsel pressing a point which appeared to him untenable, he shirked no difficulty, did not hide vacillations under a cloud of verbiage or impalpable qualifications and reservations; and, if he was occasionally wrong—and in the early days of his judicial career he was curiously often right—he was always intelligible.'

Justice Cave told Clay said he ‘should have been disposed to have dealt more leniently with him if he had taken advantage of the opportunity he had had of making an honest woman’ of Morris.

Dr Ginger S. Frost, of Samford University, thinks that means Clay would have got a lighter sentence for trying to kill his son if he'd been married to the mother.

The murder trial of Sidney Clay. Part II: 'I want you to get rid of this child for me'.

[Part I is here]

Gruyther and Sidney Clay's third and last conversation was on the 22nd of January 1883. As reported by the doctor, this was the most damning evidence at the trial:

Clay: 'I want you to get rid of this child for me.'

Dr Gruyther: 'What do you mean?'

Clay: 'I want you to put something in your medicine so as to slowly poison the child, and I will pay you any reasonable amount of money.'

Dr Gruyther 'I refuse to have anything to do with it.'

Clay: 'Why not? you will be handsomely paid; other doctors do it and no one is a bit the wiser.'

Dr Gruyther 'You won't tempt me to commit murder for any amount of money.'

1885 advert for a morphine-laced medicine

Clay 'How about the vaccination?'

Dr Gruyther 'The child is not in a fit state to be vaccinated, and if I did do it it would die.'

Clay: 'Then why not do it, it would be an easy way to get me out of my difficulty?'

Dr Gruyther 'If I did it would be murder.'

Clay: 'If the child dies in a fortnight or so will you give a certificate?'

Dr Gruyther: 'Provided there were no suspicious circumstances I should be compelled to give one.'

Clay 'If I call in a fortnight will you give me one?'

Dr Gruyther: 'You have had my answer.'

Clay: 'It would be easy to get rid of this child by putting something in its food or in your bottles of medicine, and I mean to get rid of it, and I shall call on you for a certificate.'

Dr Gruyther: 'If I suspect foul play I shall withhold it.'

Clay: 'You need not know anything at all about it, it will be done neatly and quietly, and after. You have given the certificate you can ask for what fee you like. I shall call in a fortnight and depend on you for the certificate.'

The boy Sidney died at two months old. 


[I'll post the final part tomorrow.]

The murder trial of Sidney Clay. Part I: 'If this thing gets about it will ruin me'.

On November 19 1832 Sidney Clay and Maud Morris had a child. He was a tobacconist with a shop on the Holloway Road and she was a dressmaker. They never lived together but Morris named the child Sidney and said at the trial that she had thought Clay would marry her.

A week before Christmas she asked him to find a wet nurse because her milk had run out. On Boxing night he arranged for a Mrs Manning to take the child away.

Mrs Manning lived at number 30, Hornsey Road, but told Morris that she lived in Poplar. Morris mustn't have believed her because she asked Clay where her baby had gone.

Clay told her 'You can see the baby whenever you wish to, but I don't wish you to know where the nurse lives'. He changed his mind when she threatened to tell his customers about his illegitimate child. Mrs Manning kept the boy and fed it on watered down condensed milk from a filthy bottle.

Condensed milk was marketed as food for babies and much used in poor households.

                    Eagle Brand Condensed Milk, 1887

The boy became sick and at 7pm on 8 January 1883 Morris and Mrs Manning took him to Dr Eustace Gruyther. He told them that the boy would probably die unless it got breast milk. 

Later that evening Clay went round to his surgery and they had the first of three conversations that Dr Gruyther would relay at Clay's trial:

Clay:  'I have called respecting a child you are treating, and about which I believe two women have been to you; I am the father of the child.

Dr Gruyther: 'What do you want me to do?'

Clay:  'I believe you ordered a wet nurse.'

Dr Gruyther:  'Yes; if the child has breast milk it will live.'

Clay: 'I don't think I can afford that, it has cost me a lot of money already; do you think it will do as well on artificial food?'

Dr Gruyther: 'It might.'

Clay 'I am a married man, and in business close by, and if this thing gets about it will ruin me.'

Dr Gruyther: 'As far as I am concerned no one will know anything about it.'

Their second conversation was on Thursday 17 at Clay's Holloway Road shop. Dr Gruyther told Clay that his son was getting better and and would probably live.

Clay:  'I am sorry to hear that, for it will be a burden for me for 16 years.'

Dr Gruyther: 'Why, if you pay 5s. a week you need not be troubled with it, any one will keep it and not say anything about it.'

Clay:  'It will never do, if my wife gets to know it there will be a fearful disturbance.'

[Continued tomorrow - I've split this story into three posts because it's so strange and bleak and tangled. Part II is here.] 

Streetscaping

Mizhenka found a survey that helps make sense of last week's post about Hornsey Road getting £571,000.

'The main elements of the scheme are:

• At the Tollington Way/Hornsey Road junction - to raise and buildout the kerbs to prevent vehicles overrunning the footway, widen the crossing on Tollington Way to 2.4 metres to ensure there is sufficient capacity for pedestrians. Further assist the partially sighted/blind by upgrading the tactile paving and cut back the right turn island on Hornsey Road into Tollington Way to ensure vehicles enter Tollington Way on the correct side of the road.

• to relocate the motorcycle bay at the Arthur Road/Hornsey Road junction further into Arthur Road to provide better access to the bus stop.

• to inset the parking bay and car club bay adjacent to the Fire Station on Hornsey Road to allow the fire appliances better access when turning left out of the Fire Station. 

• to widen the pedestrian island on Hanley Road at the Hornsey Road junction to 2.00 metres to make this crossing point safer for pedestrians.

• Extend the pedestrian island on Beaumont Rise at its junction with Hornsey Rise to make the crossing point safer.

• Install new shared use inset parking bays in the Spears Road/Lambton Road area.

• Upgrade tactiles, extend the footway width and adjust the position of the centre island for the Zebra crossing at the Hornsey Road/Lambton Road junction.'