CHAPTER VI

RECORD-BREAKERS: JANE CAKEBREAD

A strange being was Jane, or, rather, ‘Miss Cakebread,’ as she loved to call herself. Helpless, homeless, and penniless as she was, I question whether any lady other than the Queen attracted the attention of the public so long, or had so many paragraphs written about her as poor demented Jane Cakebread. For years all England laughed and grew merry over Jane, heedless of the tragedy that attended her, and of the cruel farce, so long drawn out, that was enacted with regard to her.

Queen of her domain, she held the field against all comers. Many were her challengers for notoriety, but they came and went, the grave closed over them, yet she held on. Her movements were regular as the motions of the planets. From police court to prison, from prison to the streets, thence again to the court, was the regular order of her life. Her quips and cranks, ready wit, and cool assurance, made her dear to reporters, and Jane became national property.

Vain to an extraordinary extent, she dearly prized the notoriety that a police court afforded her. To her the hum of amused wonder and scarcely suppressed laughter when ‘No. 12, Jane Cakebread, your worship,’ was announced by the gaoler was the very breath of life, and proved ample compensation for the discomfort of the cells. But by no means did she make herself miserable in the cells, for times and again have I seen her in those cells with her little hymn-book, singing softly her old favourite hymns, or repeating aloud choice portions of the Bible; for she had a capital memory. Many a time has she repeated to me two chapters from the Book of Job which she had learned forty years before. Again and again I have seen her on her knees in the cells, repeating her little prayers; yet there was not the faintest suspicion of the hypocrite about her. I have seen her rise from her knees and pour out floods of blasphemy and obscenity if she had been in the least disturbed in her devotions. That was Jane all over; from Job to foul obscenity, from hymns to coarse blasphemy, from prayer to violent temper, were to her natural transitions, occupying but one moment of time. The changes in her facial expression, even when sober and at liberty, were most extraordinary. One had only to look into that face, with its little, twinkling eyes, its square-set, powerful jaw, and its determined mouth, to see in rapid succession all the passions and powers that dwelt in her strange body and mysterious mind reflected in it. Put a little child before her, and that hard mouth would soften, and the whole face would brighten up. ‘Bless its dear little heart!’ she would say. ‘Shall I sing it a little hymn?’ And she would begin in her thin old voice to sing to the child. In the middle of a verse she would leave off abruptly to pour out the vials of wrath upon some imaginary offender--and her wrath was something to be remembered.

Five minutes’ conversation with Jane was quite sufficient to prove to me, at any rate, that she was an absolutely irresponsible creature, of unsound mind; not insane in the ordinary acceptation of the term, yet insane beyond a doubt. Her language in conversation would vary, sometimes choice, grammatical, and well-expressed, the next moment drivel, the next idiotic. I have seen her eyes light up with keen intelligence one moment, and the next moment be dulled with vacancy. When before the magistrate she was always at her best, and the knowledge that she was sure to be the cause of many paragraphs next day seemed to brace her up for a special effort; and oh the dear delight if she could but make the majesty of the law to unbend, and cause a smile to appear on the magistrate’s face! For that smile she would cheerfully ‘do’ her month. ‘Mr. Holmes,’ she has said to me many times, ‘did you see me make the magistrate laugh?’ And in the cells she would hug herself, and fall to her hymns and prayers with rare enjoyment.

Pitiful though her condition was, there was still an irrepressible gaiety about her, and a power of saying ridiculous things in a humorous way, that everyone who heard and saw was bound to smile at. The smiles would not only be visible, but audible, and having seen and heard, Jane would step jauntily out of the dock, bestowing her benediction on the magistrate, and assuring the police that she ‘loved the very ground they walked upon.’ ‘Save me a paper till I come out,’ she would say to me. I never did, but somehow she did get one, and carefully she treasured the little bits about herself.

Everything was for the best with Jane, and just as it should be. Everyone else might be all wrong; she was all right, though once or twice I have perceived a strangely pathetic look in her face, as if there was a glimmering consciousness that perhaps, after all, everything was not quite for the best with her; but on the whole there was a tone of confidence about her that admitted of no argument--indeed, ‘argufying’ was an abhorrence to her; she would have none of it, and I soon found that my only plan was to agree with her and pander to her vanity.

Jane was not an idle woman, but she had not the slightest wish or intention to do anything toward earning her own living. She believed herself to be a ‘lady,’ and prided herself on that belief. Very funny it was to see the poor creature pounding up pieces of brick to a fine powder. I came across her one day on Clapton Common while she was thus engaged. I asked her what she was making the powder for, and found she used it for tooth-powder. She was proud of her teeth, and cleaned them regularly with her brick-dust; and, indeed, she had a set to be proud of, for they were beautifully regular and perfectly sound. I believe that on one occasion, when Jane was in trouble and was not behaving nicely, the attendants, believing her teeth to be false ones, tried to take them out, fearing she might get choked with them. She bit right and left, and they soon came to the conclusion that her teeth were best let alone. She told me several times about the affair, but she was always angry about it, considering it the greatest indignity ever offered to her.

She was a strange mixture of good and evil, sense and nonsense, sanity and insanity. Her physical powers were as strange as her mental, for she bade defiance to the elements, and laughed disease to scorn. If out of gaol for a month, she spent that month out of doors night and day unless I provided shelter for her, and toward the last I found this difficult to do, for no one would have her, even if paid well. During the great frost of 1895, for nine weeks she lay out of doors, her lodging the bare ground, her bed a bundle of sticks, her dressing-room the banks of the Lea, where morning by morning she broke the ice that she might wash. ‘Ladies always wash in cold water,’ she was fond of saying, and not in the depths of winter would she consent to have even the chill taken off; and when at length in the asylum, she told me with tears that they compelled her to bathe in warm water. Time after time I have at midnight made some provision for her lodging. I have found her in the early morning at other times lying wet through on a bed of shavings shivering with cold, yet hot with fever. When I have suggested the workhouse, she has got up and cursed me, and staggered away. Next day she would smilingly accost me in the police court, where she cheerfully awaited her month.

She had given herself into custody--a not infrequent occurrence. Jane was not a drunkard; she had no drink crave at all, and when she chose could do without it. But the smallest amount of drink roused the worst elements within her; a pennyworth of four ale was quite sufficient, and after the nearest policeman she would go. The police often fled at the sight of her; they did not want to take her into custody. Many an officer has bribed her to go away when she approached him. I have seen policemen running away and ‘old Jane’ after them to be taken into custody. When she could not catch them, she would lie down on her back, screaming ‘Murder!’ and ‘Police!’ when of course they had to return and arrest her; but not an inch would she budge then till they had fetched the ‘perambulator,’ as she called the ambulance; and fetched it had to be, and Jane strapped on it, before they got her to the station.

During the nine weeks she lay out of doors she touched no drink, and no one could persuade her to take any, but the romantic heart of the old lady had been touched. A gentleman living in the neighbourhood left a shilling weekly at a coffee stall on Stamford Hill, that Cakebread might be supplied with two cups of hot coffee daily. That shilling a week loomed large in her eye, and became a pound a day; that kind act of pity on the gentleman’s part she construed into a declaration of love, and she built many hopes upon it. She became a nuisance to the stall-keeper, declaring that she was being robbed, and not getting value for her pound a day. She waited and waited on Stamford Hill for the lover that never came, but fancying every well-dressed man that passed to be her love. Hope deferred made her heart, hopeful as it was, sick at last, so she got her pennyworth of drink and gave herself into custody.

That was characteristic of Jane. No one could do her an act of kindness but she built tremendous hopes upon it, and made herself a perfect nuisance to the one who befriended her. Some years before the prison doctor had found her insane--and here let me say that many times have our magistrates remanded her to prison, that a medical opinion might be obtained as to her sanity--feeling sorry for her, I tried an experiment. By dint of much pressure and substantial payment I got a poor woman to let Cakebread have a furnished room, also arranging that she was to order her own food, for which I was to pay. I provided her with a complete change of clothes, and took her to her room. I naturally thought that, having been used to meagre prison fare so long, and being withal an old woman, it would not cost much to keep her. I was mistaken. Jane rose splendidly to her position. She was a ‘lady,’ and asserted herself. French rolls, new-laid eggs, prime cuts of ham, etc., for breakfast, were only the prelude to nice dinners and snug teas. She cost me over thirty shillings for food, etc., in a few days, but it culminated rather suddenly. I got a note from her in her own queer writing and spelling; I could scarcely read it, but with the aid of friends we at length made it out to be an invitation to take tea with her. I went. An expensive tea was nicely arranged, all at my expense, and there sat the poor creature in fine style. Her thin gray hair was plastered with pomade, and the whole room was redolent of eau-de-Cologne. She rose and bade me welcome, and I saw that she was nervous with suppressed excitement. During the meal she upset several things, and behaved most awkwardly.

I saw there was something exciting her, so after the tray was removed, I asked her what it was. It soon came out. Jane had fallen in love with me, and proposed that I should share with her the immense fortune which she believed had come to her. It was a delicate situation, and an alarming prospect, but I got out of it very well, and did not scorn her. I told her that I thought she had better go into the country for a few weeks while she thought the matter over, and that I must have time to consider her proposal, which had come so suddenly.

I got a cab, took her to the railway-station, and saw her safely into the train off to her brother who, I knew, would not be pleased to see her, for he was as helpless with her as myself. Six months she stayed in the country, and many were the letters she wrote to me, all couched in the most endearing language--they lie before me as I write, and bring it all back to me. She got tired of writing letters, and her brother got tired of her; so one night at eleven o’clock I found her on my doorstep, and all her worldly goods with her--three brown-paper parcels of good dimensions. She always had them with her. Few people saw her at liberty without those brown-paper parcels. Many people have asked me what she carried tied up in brown-paper. Every piece of clothing I had given her for ten years was tied carefully up in those parcels. When her clothing got too bad, I gave her some better; but all the old pieces were carefully treasured and jealously guarded; on no account would she part with any.

In two days’ time she bade a cheerful ‘Good-morning’ to the magistrate at North London, who promptly discharged her, because she looked so nice and had been away so long; and before she could well speak she was ushered out of court. But that did not suit Jane, so next day she appeared again, and this time more evidence had to be given by the police--she had taken care of that--so time was given her to get in her usual string of interruptions, and Jane was happy.

For over thirty years this farce had gone on, and all this time a demented woman had been looked upon and treated as a confirmed inebriate. Of course she took drink, and plenty of fools were always ready to treat her, nay, even to entice her into a public-house for the purpose of hearing her talk and seeing the fireworks. It has always seemed to me an extraordinary thing that publicans who knew her so well, and knew what would happen, should allow her to be served on their premises; but so it was.

Cakebread became a great nuisance, not only to the public, but especially to my family. As soon as she was discharged from prison she would make her way to the street in which I lived; but she never could remember which was the right house, and as there was a number of houses exactly alike, she invariably began at the first and inquired at every one till she arrived at mine. After calling at one house, and being told that I lived farther on, sometimes she would insist that I did live there, and would make herself comfortable on the doorstep, where she would remain till taken away by a policeman. The neighbours began to look coolly at me; they did not want any of Jane’s glory reflected on them.

Her appearances before the magistrate became more numerous and her vagaries more pronounced, till Lady Henry Somerset went to visit her in Holloway. I do not think that her ladyship expected to do Cakebread much good, but she did, I know, hope to put an end to the perpetual scandal, so an offer was made to Jane to live in one of the cottage homes that were being prepared for habitual inebriates at Duxhurst, and I was commissioned to convey her thither. The _Daily Chronicle_ had for some time given special attention to her case, and on the morning of her release from prison, the morning I was to convey her to Duxhurst, Mr. Milne of that paper, together with Mr. Phil May, came to my house to meet with Jane and see her off. My wife had prepared an entirely new outfit for her, and taking a mantle that was intended for her use on my arm, I went to meet her at Holloway. This mantle did its work too well, for while it brought her readily to my house, it also made her more certain than ever that at last her long-looked-for fortune had come to her, and this made her intractable. My wife performed the duties of lady’s-maid, and, I understand, did not have an easy task. Jane came down at length dressed for her journey, excepting boots. I told her that we had not bought boots yet, for we did not know her exact size. It was worth something to see the sixty-six-year-old woman pull up the front of her dress and look admiringly at her advanced foot and say, ‘Haven’t I a nice foot! Isn’t mine a high instep! I take threes.’ I looked at her foot, and sent out for a pair of sixes, which she could scarcely get on. I introduced her to Mr. Milne and Phil May as friends of mine, and a curious time followed, for she became aware of the notebooks and pencils, and wanted to know what they ‘were getting at.’

I was afraid of a storm, but Mr. Milne handled her with considerable tact, telling her that it was usual for ladies of quality and means to be interviewed and sketched, so at last she agreed to sit still. But that poor old face could not keep still. Change after change passed over it; all the emotions of her queer mind rang in quick succession their never-ending changes upon it, and Mr. Phil May had a hopeless task. Mr. Milne could get her to talk, and talk she did fast enough, but what a jumble that talk was! from one thing suddenly to another; sensible talk and silly talk; half laughing and half crying; sometimes pleased like a little child, at others raging with passion; tales of her own girlhood; bits of romance and love. She was just beginning to get coarse when I asked her to recite something for the gentlemen. Out came a long string of verses descriptive of the books of the Old and New Testament. Some hymns followed, and then on to her favourite Job, from whom she recited one chapter perfectly. As soon as it was finished she turned to Mr. Phil May and said: ‘Didn’t I say that correctly?’ I have it on the authority of Mr. Milne that Mr. May looked very confused, and blushed when this question was put to him. I am bound to confess that I did not see that blush, but I am inclined to think that Mr. Milne wished us to infer that he knew all about Job. Jane talked about those ‘nice young gentlemen’ to me many times afterwards, even when nearing her end in the asylum.

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.