Early Life and Background
Louisa (or Louise) Josephine Jemima Masset was the first person to be executed in Britain in the 20th century when she was hanged at Newgate Prison on Tuesday, the 9th of January 1900. Louisa was the name given at trial, so it is used here.
Louisa was 36 years old and half French (on her father’s side) and half English. She was described as a “cultured” woman. On April the 24th, 1896, she gave birth to an illegitimate son named Manfred Louis and felt forced to leave France due to the stigma attached to illegitimate births in those days—it was considered “quite scandalous.”
She came to England and settled at 29 Bethune Road, Stoke Newington, in London. It does not seem that she was very maternal and soon placed Manfred in foster care with Mrs. Helen Gentle, who lived in Tottenham. Mrs. Gentle looked after Manfred from a baby and was paid 37 shillings a month (£1.85 or about $3), which allegedly came from the child’s natural father in France.
This arrangement enabled Louisa to work as a day-governess for a wealthy family. She also gave piano lessons. Playing the piano was a popular form of entertainment in those days before cinema, radio, and television.
The Affair
Sometime in 1899, Louisa took on a “toy boy,” 19-year-old Eudore Lucas, as her lover. Eudore was a young French bank clerk who lived next door and was in Britain training in finance. He was paid about £3 a week, which both agreed made marriage out of the question. Eudore was aware that Louisa had a son, although what his attitude was toward Manfred is unclear.
On the 16th of October 1899, Mrs. Gentle received a letter from Louisa stating that Manfred’s father was going to have the boy live with him in France and that Louisa would collect him on Friday, October 27th, to take him there. However, Louisa had also made another arrangement—she was going to Brighton with Eudore for what could be described as a “dirty weekend,” and they had booked two adjoining rooms in a cheap hotel.
The Murder
On the Friday, Louisa put a clinker brick from her garden into her Gladstone bag before going to meet Helen Gentle at Stamford Hill. After tearful farewells, she led Manfred away with a parcel of his clothes that Mrs. Gentle had packed for the journey to France and took a bus to London Bridge railway station.
Manfred was dressed in a blue “frock” and wore a sailor’s hat. Frocks were quite normal for small boys in those days. Mother and son were next seen in the First Class waiting room at London Bridge station at 1:45 p.m. Around 3:00 p.m., Mrs. Ellen Rees, the attendant in the waiting room, noted the little boy seemed distressed and suggested to Louisa that perhaps he was hungry. Louisa and Manfred then left rather hurriedly, Louisa saying she was going to buy Manfred a cake.
She returned without him about three hours later to catch a train for Brighton for her rendezvous with Eudore on the Saturday.
At Dalston Junction station, Mrs. Rees, the waiting room attendant, had a horrible shock when she went to the ladies’ toilets at about 6:20 p.m. and discovered the body of a child. It was a male child, naked except for a black shawl. The face and head had been battered, and there were two pieces of a broken clinker brick lying by the body. These were of the same type found in Louisa’s garden.
Manfred had been beaten unconscious and then suffocated, perhaps with a hand over his mouth and nose, according to Dr. J. P. Fennell, who examined the still-warm body at 6:55 p.m. Louisa was familiar with this station as she went there regularly on her journey to one of her piano pupils.
Saturday’s newspapers were full of the story of Manfred’s discovery—the Victorians were very fond of a “good murder,” and every prurient detail was reported.
The Investigation
Louisa had sent Helen Gentle a letter that arrived on Monday the 30th, saying that Manfred was missing her and had been sick crossing the Channel on the ferry but that all was well now. However, Helen Gentle was suspicious of the letter, having read about the discovery of the body of a child of Manfred’s age, and informed the police. She later identified the body as Manfred and also identified the parcel of clothes she had made up for him, which were found in the left luggage office at Brighton station together with the frock and sailor’s hat.
Back in Stoke Newington, the black shawl found on Manfred was identified by a shop assistant as one sold by him on October 24th to Louisa, whose half-French accent he remembered distinctly.
She was also identified by witnesses at London Bridge station as having been with the child earlier that day.
Louisa had read about the discovery of Manfred’s body and, when she visited her sister later, was clearly in a distressed state. She is reported to have said, “I’m hunted for murder, but I didn’t do it,” and implicated Eudore in the crime.
She was soon arrested at her other sister’s home. She was picked out in an identity parade by Mrs. Rees, the waiting room attendant, and was duly charged with murder. She was committed for trial at the Old Bailey in December 1899.
The Trial
Louisa was tried at the Old Bailey before Mr. Justice Bruce between the 13th and 18th of December 1899. Mr. Charles Mathews and Mr. Muir prosecuted. Her defence, led by Lord Coleridge Q.C., assisted by Mr. Hutton, claimed that Louisa had entered into an agreement with two women named Browning who, on payment of £18 a year, were going to look after Manfred for the foreseeable future and that it must have been them who murdered him. She claimed to have given them a £12 deposit before handing Manfred over.
This may sound far-fetched now, but it would have had more credibility at a time when “baby farming” murder cases were not uncommon. Much was made of which train Louisa took to Brighton—whether it was the 4 p.m. one or the 7 p.m. one. Given Dr. Fennell’s evidence, she could not have murdered Manfred if she had taken the 4 o’clock train, but could have done if she had taken the later one.
However, as the two Mrs. Brownings could not be found and no receipt for the £12 could be produced, Louisa’s story was not believed by the jury. The evidence against her seemed conclusive, and she was inevitably found guilty. She collapsed in the dock on hearing the verdict and had to be revived to hear her sentence—that she “be hanged by the neck until she was dead.”
She was taken from the court into the adjoining Newgate Prison and placed in the condemned cell, where she spent Christmas and New Year 1900, guarded around the clock by pairs of matrons, as female warders were called.
A petition raised by other French women working in London was sent to Queen Victoria but was ignored. Four days before her execution, the owners of Mutton Restaurant in Brighton and one of their waiters signed official statements that Louisa Masset had eaten at their restaurant in Brighton between 6 and 7 p.m. on the night of the murder. The defence asked for a stay of execution to allow positive identification, but the Home Office refused the request.
The Execution
On Sunday, the 7th of January, Louisa was informed that there would be no reprieve. On the Monday morning, she was given back the long black dress she had worn at her trial and was attended by the chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Ramsey. She was moved to the male condemned cell as it was much nearer the execution shed.
At three minutes to 9:00 a.m. on the morning of Tuesday, the 9th of January, Billington entered the condemned cell and placed a thick leather body belt around her waist, to which her wrists were pinioned. The procession to the execution shed consisted of the Under-Sheriff, Mr. Metcalfe, the Governor, Colonel Milman, the Rev. Ramsey, James Billington and his assistant William Warbrick, Dr. Scott, the prison surgeon, and two male warders. She was able to walk unaided to the shed.
Once on the trapdoors, her legs were pinioned by a leather strap outside her skirt (to stop it blowing up as she dropped), and the noose was placed around her neck. When all was ready, Billington put the white hood over her head and pulled the lever to “launch her into eternity,” to use the popular expression of the time.
Louisa weighed 106 lbs., and the drop given was recorded as 7’ 3”, causing instantaneous death. A few minutes later, the black flag was run up to tell the cheering crowd outside that the execution had been carried out.
After hanging for the regulation hour, her body was removed from the rope and prepared for inquest before the City Coroner, Mr. Langham. The inquest noted that her features looked peaceful and only the rope mark on her neck bore witness to a violent death. The Governor of Newgate testified that she had told the chaplain, “What I am going to suffer is just; now my conscience is clear.” She was later buried in an unmarked grave within the prison.
Comment
By the standards of the day, she was seen as an immoral woman. The case against her was strong, and there was no doubt of her guilt or the justice of her sentence for a crime that was clearly premeditated and violent. To many people, the killing of a child by its mother is particularly shocking. But her case is a good example of how social values have changed in 100 years.
In Victorian England, having an illegitimate child was a serious stigma, and it was considered equally scandalous to have a relationship with a much younger man.
There was no effective contraception in the 1890s—a silk handkerchief being about all that was available—so unwanted pregnancies were commonplace, as were “back street” abortions and the practice of giving unwanted children to people who claimed they would look after them but in fact murdered them once they had been paid. These were the so-called “baby farmers.”
Bringing up a small child at that time also meant it was virtually impossible for the mother to find work to support herself. There was no Social Security then, nor any day nurseries in the modern sense. Helen Gentle’s charges were by no means cheap when one considers what people earned at that time, so Manfred was no doubt a financial burden on Louisa as well as an emotional one.
It is probable that Louisa’s motive for the murder was that she perceived Manfred as an encumbrance to her relationship with Eudore. One wonders if she had ever really bonded with him, and whether she actually loved the child or simply found him an embarrassment in Victorian society.
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