He was poor & Irish. His defence was that both they & their mother had been struck down by fever & taken to the infirmary. He received a message that all 3 had died &, unable to bear to live in Manchester without them, moved to Birmingham
He returned to Manchester some 4 or 5 years later, & somehow news of this got to the authorities
The mother had indeed died, but the magistrates declined to accept his story about the message. He was sentenced to the City Gaol
His children had become the responsibility of the Poor Law Guardians, a charge on the rates, & it was this form of benefit fraud which was his real offence against Victorian morality
***
One of the most heart rending places I have visited is in St Josephs Roman Catholic cemetery in Moston, Manchester: the paupers section
Row after row tells the story of infant death, often of brothers & sisters, perhaps whole families, who died within days of each other
There are 10 bodies in each grave
But what makes it heart rending, rather than heart breaking, is that their existence is commemorated.
Someone paid for gravestones & the carving of the names
