Walnut Fair: staged where the Fairfield Halls stands today, this annual autumn festival was an important tradition in Victorian Croydon. As well as an opportunity for burglars…
CROYDON CHRONICLES: Archive newspaper reports of a burglary on Church Street in 1861 provide a useful insight into the possessions of a Victorian household, as DAVID MORGAN explains
Burglaries are not new crimes. A trawl through the local newspaper archives comes up with any number of incidents.
One such crime occurred in October 1861. Not only was the crime reported by the newspapers in some detail, it also revealed a great deal about what an ordinary household owned at that time.
Families living in Croydon in Victorian times looked forward to their treats, like all generations. One of the highlights of the year was the Walnut Fair. Although smaller in size than the fairs years ago, Croydon’s Walnut Fair was a tradition extending back for many years, and an occasion when the family could all go out together and have fun.
We outlined the attractions of the Walnut Fair in an earlier column.
Wednesday October 2 was the evening when Richard Budd chose to take his family to the fair. Budd was a carpenter who lived in Church Street with his wife Elizabeth and their daughter Elizabeth, eight. The family appeared in the Parish Church records, as Elizabeth was christened there by the curate, Rev JC Garrett.
Local news: how the news of the Budd burglary was reported in 1861
The Budd family left home at about seven in the evening to walk to the fair, held where the Fairfield Halls now stands. Budd, who was born in 1825, was probably taken to the Walnut Fair by his parents as a boy.
When they returned home around 11pm, Budd sensed there was something amiss in the house. He couldn’t get the front door open. The latch was broken.
Getting the help of a neighbour, Budd went round to the back of the house and entered through a window. Once Budd had managed to secure some light, he saw what no householder ever wanted to see. The downstairs rooms had been ransacked. Drawers had been pulled out, boxes turned upside down and the contents strewn over the floor.
It was much the same upstairs. Once the police had been called and the Budds began to see what missing from their house, they formed an idea of what had happened.
The police surmised that more than one person had been involved, because of the complete chaos inside of the house and the list of items stolen. Entry to the property was gained by using a jemmy or a small screwdriver to force the latch. Once inside, the thieves had fastened the front door with a chain and then opened the other two doors in the property in order to make their escape if they were interrupted or caught out.
Jewellery and watches were what they were after and it appeared they took as much as they could, together with some money and some items of silver. Other valuables in the house in the form of clothing and bed linen were left untouched. They were too bulky to be removed quickly.
After questioning the neighbours, the police found one man who saw a light on in the Budd house at about eight o’clock. Having just seen the Budds a little earlier at the fair, the neighbour assumed that the family had returned home and so thought no more about it until he was questioned by the police.
Budd and his wife put together a list of items which had been stolen.
Perhaps the most personal of the missing items was a gold mourning ring which was made for the funeral of Budd’s father. The inscription on the inside of the ring read, “Richard Budd died June 21st 1849.” Budd senior had been a carpenter and was living at Barrack Field when he died.
Distinctive: a George III third-guinea, was introduced in 1797 and minted until 1813
Various coins were also listed as stolen: three sovereigns, two crowns (five shillings), a Queen Anne sixpence with a hole in it, a George III seven-shilling piece (one-third of a guinea), one florin (two-shilling piece) with a hole in it and 50 pieces of silver coin. These probably included the three-penny coin, the “joey”, and a four-penny coin, the grout.
Silver items from the cutlery drawer were stolen: four old-fashioned plain silver spoons, two old silver spoons marked “MH”, and one shell-shaped silver caddy spoon.
Two silver thimbles were taken, too.
The listed jewellery items were as follows: one jet ear drop mounted in gold, one pearl brooch, one gold brooch with a forget-me-not in the centre, one cornelian brooch set in gold, one old wedding ring, a keeper ring with white stone. a gold ring with red stone, an old gold seal with white stone with engraving, two gold pins, one with a white stone, the other with red, a pair of old gold ear-hoops, a pair of gold ear drops, one small gold brooch with hair, one oval gold brooch.
The Victorians were very into mourning jewellery. The brooch containing a locket of hair would probably have hair from a family member who had died. To have the item stolen would have caused great grief.
Four watches were taken, including one in silver, engine-turned, made by Taylor of London with a number 882 stamped on it. An alternative name for engine-turning was the French word guilloche. The makers of watches could often be identified by the patterns created by this method in the casing or on the dial.
The Taylor watch must have already been something of an antique because Thomas Taylor, a well-known London watchmaker, died in 1695.
Two silk handkerchiefs were taken together with a silver star which had recently been presented to Budd by the Ancient Order of Foresters, Court Britannia, of which he was a member.
The Ancient Order of Foresters provided support to working-class members and their family. They also offered sick pay and funeral grants. The meeting place of the Court Britannia in Croydon was the Gun Tavern, not far from the Budds’ home on Church Street.
Budd had handbills printed and distributed with his list of missing items. A reward of £5 – equivalent to nearly £800 today – was offered for any information which could have led to the capture of the thieves. But there was no report of any arrests in the local papers. The burglars had got away with their loot.
Business as usual: Richard Budd’s builders’ firm thrived for many years
Despite this trauma, Budd prospered in his trade. Adverts from 1863 show that he had opened a business with Mr Pearce.
Operating from a different address, 5 St. John’s Road, the men ran a carpentry and builders’ business, specialising in jewellers’ shop fronts with show, counter and cases “made on air tight principles”.
They also offered general house repairs with quotes available on request. “Opposite the Old Church” was the phrase used in the advertisement to show people how to find them.
The 1872 Croydon Directory showed R Budd Carpenter, on his own, at 5 St John’s Road. In 1876, the Directory stated that while Budd, by now in his early 50s, was the main occupier of the property, still a carpenter, the yard was let out to a bootmaker, J Coles.
Directory record: in 1876, Budd’s yard was being used by Coles the bootmaker
St John’s Road was where John Munro would live his quiet, reclusive life from the end of the 19th Century, as we recounted here a few weeks ago. Then, it was Mary Ann Budd who was the neighbour who alerted the police about the failing health of the novelist and writer.
Mary Ann Budd was Richard Budd’s second wife.
The couple lived next to Munro for several years. An entry in the deaths column of the Croydon Times for December 1896 informed readers that the step-daughter of Richard Budd, Edith Maud, had died aged 22.
Despite Richard Budd’s poor health, he lived to be 86, dying in December 1910. Because he passed away at home, an inquest had to be held. Elizabeth, Budd’s only daughter from his first marriage, had called in to see her father at the request of Mary. She stayed overnight as he was so poorly.
Final report: Richard Budd’s death, at 86, was reported in 1910
In the morning she had called in Dr Paget from Waddon, but when the doctor arrived Budd had taken a turn for the worse and he died at 1.30pm.
At the inquest, Elizabeth, now Mrs Brown of Clarence Road, said she visited her father every Saturday evening. She had frequently suggested to Mary not to leave calling in the doctor too long, so as to avoid an inquest in the case of her father dying suddenly. Mary replied in court that she would forever have been calling a doctor as Budd “was ailing so”.
The cause of death, given by the doctor and agreed by the jury was “syncope, following senile decay”. Syncope is a form of fainting, caused by a reduction of blood flow to the brain.
Richard Budd’s life story provides several glimpses into Croydon society in the Victorian period, including the time in July 1876 when he appeared as a witness in a case against a man mistreating a horse, which collapsed outside the Rose and Crown pub in Church Street.
But there was never any more mention of his precious mementoes stolen from his home that October evening in 1861. Sometimes there are strands in a story which you just can’t tie up.
- David Morgan has been chronicling Croydon’s history for Inside Croydon for more than a decade. Morgan is a former Croydon headteacher, now the volunteer education officer at Croydon Minster, who offers tours or illustrated talks on the history around the Minster for local community groups
If you would like a group tour of Croydon Minster or want to book a school visit, then ring the Minster Office on 020 688 8104 or go to the website on www.croydonminster.org and use the contact page
Some previous articles by David Morgan:
- The high street business that made sure Croydon was on song
- Teacher whose poetry saw ‘The Merry Gang’ visiting Croydon
- How sci-fi author John Munro died as a hermit in Croydon
- The church fire that consumed a thousand years of history
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