The suicide of a young woman jilted would perhaps have merited a paragraph in the Victorian press. But the story that led to large-scale riots in Castle Bromwich was widely reported in newspapers not only across this country, but made headlines across the English-speaking world.

“Once I was happy, but now I’m forlorn,
Like an old coat that’s ragged and torn;
No one to care for me, through the wide world I roam.”

These words, adapted from a popular song of the day (‘The Man on the Flying Trapeze’), were found written on a scrap paper by the bank of an icy pool in Castle Bromwich. Early on the morning of Thursday 11th March, on a bitter cold day in 1886, the body of Mary Ann Turner was discovered by a local farm boy. For Mary it was a tragic story that ended in the freezing water, but it was the beginning of an unforeseen series of events.

The newspapers of the day were discreet regarding the condition of 20-year-old Mary Ann. She was delicately described as ‘seduced’, ‘shamed’ and ‘enceinte’. However, the defence counsel in the ensuing trial, in which 15 individuals were accused of riot, was blunt: “Was Mary Ann Turner pregnant?” asked Mr Harris, using a term not generally then spoken in polite society.

Mary Ann was a seamstress from Cathcart Street off Duddeston Mill Road, an inner-city district of small terraces and back-to-back houses (Vauxhall Trading estate is now laid out on the site). She worked as a dressmaker for the prestigious ‘Warwick House’, Birmingham’s first department store, which was situated in a fine Georgian building in New Street (where the Britannia Hotel now stands). However, prestigious though, the pay and conditions were poor.

When she was just 17 Mary had fallen in love with a smart young man, one William Bagnall, the son of a well-to-do owner of a brickworks at Hodge Hill in the parish of Castle Bromwich. (The brickyard stood roughly where Doncaster Way is now on the Bromford estate). William was a prominent member of St Margaret’s church, Ward End and sang in the church choir; indeed it was in that church where the two had first met.

The couple were engaged to be married when, according to the contemporary newspaper reports, ‘she proved too trusting’ and found herself pregnant. She had returned to work after an absence and had shown her fellow dressmakers two rings which Will had given her. The one was her engagement ring; the other, she said, was her wedding ring. However, the girls were puzzled: for a new bride her demeanour was unusually melancholy.

The truth was that she was unmarried and pregnant. The unfortunate girl had been cast out by her own family and, unable to find support from a single relative or friend she set off, homeless and destitute, on the evening of Wednesday 10 March for St Margaret’s church where she knew ‘her Will’ would be attending choir practice.

It was a distance of two miles to Ward End, but Mary was used to walking. However, this was no ordinary March day. It had been no ordinary winter. Snow had been falling across the whole country since October (and would continue until May). That day was desperately cold, and the wind blew over the wastes of Washwood Heath as the distraught girl trudged towards St Margaret’s chapel. If she thought that her fiancé would make good his promise of marriage, Mary Ann was cruelly mistaken. On leaving the church after choir practice, Will harshly rebuffed her pleas and headed straight for the Barley Mow public house down the road.

In vain Mary waited outside the pub in the bitter cold hoping for a change of mind but, after several pints of ale, her Will’s cold heart remained resolute and he abandoned her in the lane. Mary set out for William’s house by the brick works at Hodge Hill. But here she was given the same stark answer from Will’s father: his son was in no position to marry her. And he too turned her away.

Mary disappeared into the darkness saying that if Will would not marry her, then she would end her life.

Nearby was the moat of the old Hay Hall, known as Chattock’s Moat. And it was here that Mary left her plaintive suicide note on the frozen bank, before throwing herself into the freezing water. (The site would have been near Redcar Croft on Bromford estate).

The next morning William Bagnall Snr sent one of his farmhands to inspect the ponds and pools round about and it was the boy who discovered her drowned in the waters of the moat.

The girl’s frozen body was pulled from the moat and taken to the Fox & Goose Inn at Ward End, where an inquest was held. Later that month the coroner’s verdict later was the inevitable one of ‘suicide due to temporary insanity’. However, coroner Joseph Ansell added, unusually, that her insanity had been ‘aggravated by the inhuman treatment of the Bagnalls.’

Mary’s funeral took place near her home at St Saviour’s church in Saltley and was attended by an emotional crowd of some 2000 mourners mainly women and girls. (The church could hold less than half that number.)

An angry mob head for Hodge Hill

Immediately after the funeral, an angry mob headed from Saltley to Hodge Hill, gathering outside the Bagnalls’ house and putting it in a state of siege. As news of the tragedy spread, day by day the crowd grew larger, with angry protestors coming from Saltley, Duddeston and Nechells and from Birmingham itself. Daily newspaper reports raised awareness locally and served to stir up anger still further with such headlines as, ‘Extraordinary Riots in Picturesque Village’, ‘Tragic Affair near Birmingham’ and lines such as, ‘man seduced the girl he refused to marry.’

A small body of police were able to hold back the crowd for a while, but the fence they stood behind collapsed under the weight of numbers and they were forced to withdraw. Bricks and tiles from the Bagnalls’ own brickyard were hurled at the house and soon not a pane of glass was left unbroken. Old Mrs Bagnall, aged 70, was hit by a brick which came hurtling through the window and badly hurt. The entire brickworks was wrecked, a wagon was rolled down the hill, the woodpile was burnt and finally the mob gained access to the house, which they also wrecked.

Police reinforcements sent from Aston

A further contingent of police were called from Aston and some 20 officers were deployed under the command of Inspector Caleb Hall (who later became Chief Constable of Rugby). However, although estimates of the size of the mob varied, there were certainly many thousands of people on the scene. One estimate put the number at 30,000.

In the house the rioters found only women there; the male Bagnalls having fled, it was said to Derby, never to return. One of the daughters was injured when the kitchen collapsed and she had to be taken to hospital. With the women out of the house, what remained of it was looted and then burned.

Despite their small numbers and the unusually large size of the mob, the police were nonetheless able arrest a number of individuals. Some 30 were taken in handcuffs, though many were no more than boys who were later released without charge. 15 men were charged and were sent for trial at the Warwick Assizes in May 1886. Inspector Caleb Hall was there to give evidence, but neither William Bagnall nor his father, William Snr turned up. Mrs Elizabeth Bagnall stood in the witness box alone and was given no quarter by the counsel for the defence.

Rioters found guilty but leniently sentenced

The rioters were found guilty. However, the punishments handed down by the judge, Mr Justice Mathew were remarkably lenient. He came to the conclusion that the damage to the Bagnalls’ property had been largely accidental and due to the circumstances, rather than deliberate acts by the defendants. Five of the rioters were given two months in jail, though without hard labour, as they were of previous good character. It may be that the judge also felt that Mary Ann Turner had been wronged by the Bagnalls and that there had been a justified meting out of ‘folk justice’.

As for the Bagnalls, they received compensation for the damage to their property and subsequently rebuilt their brickworks at Lichfield, never to return to Castle Bromwich.

And, somewhere in Saltley churchyard, in an unmarked grave, lie the last mortal remains of Sarah Ann Turner and her unborn child.