Broadmoor Revealed_ Victorian Crime and the Lunatic Asylum - Mark Stevens [34]
Despite Margaret’s good behaviour in Broadmoor, her life outside did not change much. She was unable to keep herself away from trouble and remained a petty criminal. At the time of the 1891 census, she could be found resident in another cell, this time in a police station in Paddington.
Margaret Crimmings was the exception to the Broadmoor mothers, in that she was more of a criminal than a lunatic. When it was time for the next baby to arrive, it came from more typical stock. By now, it was 23rd February 1873. A second girl, christened Elizabeth Margaret, this child was born to Margaret Davenport, a thirty-one year old housewife from Warrington, Lancashire. Like Catherine Dawson, Margaret Davenport had also been detained in Kirkdale Prison, and was transferred from there to Broadmoor on 26th September 1872, when she was four months pregnant. She had been detained in Kirkdale a little over two months while she awaited the move.
Margaret had already given birth to four children, including two daughters. These were all now deceased. The two boys had died from natural causes while in infancy; her younger daughter, also Elizabeth, was twenty-two months old, and elder daughter Margaret, six, when in June 1872 their mother had held their heads under water in a pan mug until they drowned. Margaret Davenport had then attempted to drown herself in the tub, then to hang herself, and finally to cut her wrists but had been unsuccessful in all these tasks. So she washed the children, laid them out in her bed and then made dinner for her husband.
She had been found insane when she was due to plead at her trial at the Liverpool Assizes. The supposed cause of her illness was given on her admissions statement to Broadmoor as ‘family troubles’. She had married Joseph Davenport in 1862, after they met while working as servants for a landed Cheshire family. Joseph worked long hours as a delivery man, and the family lived a basic existence in the centre of an industrial town. Margaret had apparently been taken ill after the birth of the first Elizabeth, becoming depressed and twice being found wandering the streets at night. The local Police felt that she was the victim of domestic neglect, and that it was her isolation as the homemaker which had led to her depression. She was advised to return to her native Shropshire for a break, and the effect of this was beneficial. A cheerier woman returned to Warrington, and life for the Davenports carried on much as before. There had been no recovery, though, and Margaret was still thinking irrationally. At her first committal hearing after the murders she had stated that ‘I was very much provoked before I did it. I was made in hell.’
Now that she was resident in Crowthorne, her mental state continued to be a cause for concern. Like Catherine Dawson, the Broadmoor doctors did not let her nurse her baby. They considered it unsafe for her to do so. Instead, little Elizabeth was taken from her mother at birth, and reared on cow’s milk elsewhere in the Asylum. It is unclear who decided to name the girl, and to create the arguably morbid situation where she was named after her dead sisters. It is possible that it was Margaret, for she was a little more reliable than Mrs Dawson. She saw the baby frequently, though under supervision, and this bonding did not include any unfortunate incidents. Nevertheless, the doctors noted that on more than one occasion, Margaret expressed the hope that her new daughter would die. It would never be safe to let her have the connection enjoyed by Mary Meller or Margaret Crimmings.
In line with previous practice, the Broadmoor authorities busied themselves organising who would take in the child. As Margaret was married, Dr Orange’s first correspondence was with her husband, Joseph Davenport. He wrote to Davenport in early April, but the working man refused point blank to have his baby daughter, saying, like Henry Dawson, that he was too