Richard Wombwell Robinson Finds Himself in Court

St Dunstans and All Saints Stepney – many Robinson events took place here. From: http://www.stdunstanstepney.com/photos-historic.html

Richard Wombwell Robinson carried the name of his grandfather. He was born in Poplar in 1832 and died in West Ham in 1889. He was an engineer – and presumably initially a ship’s engineer, remembering he was down in the docks with his father Charles John Robinson on census day 1851. By 1871, he had moved on to Bromley St. Leonard, and in 1881 to West Ham, where the census again records him as an engine fitter. He married Emily Lugsden at St. Dunstan and All Saints, Stepney in 1872.

Was it the Wombwell name he carried that meant drama was bound to follow? In any case, in July 1876, Richard Wombwell Robinson found that he had a court case of his own to endure at the High Court of Justice. Thanks are due to a fellow researcher and relative, Andrew Parsons, for unearthing the details, and publishing the summary below, slightly edited here, on Ancestry.com:

4 months previously, Richard had a ‘dispute’ with his wife Emily regarding ‘certain matters connected with the mode of conducting the business’ and in the course of these discussions and in order to ‘protect himself from anticipated violence’ he ‘unfortunately and unintentionally’ pushed her. Emily then retaliated by threatening him with a table knife which he took from her and then ‘put’ her outside the door. Emily then came back into the house by the back door and took their youngest child, Harriett, and went to stay with her friends. Richard went to see her to ‘endeavour to persuade her to return’ but she refused and at the instigation of her friends, she obtained a summons against him for alleged assault which was heard at Ilford Police Court a few days later.
At the court hearing, the Magistrate him guilty and ordered him to ‘enter into his own Recognizance for £50 and to find one surety in the sum of £20 to keep the peace with regard to his wife for the period of 6 months’. Unfortunately, he was unable to find this ‘surety’ and was ‘detained’ for nearly 3 week until his Brother in-law, Mr Bradley (note: most probably Hetty Jane Owen’s grandfather, Henry Smale Bradley) bailed him out. Upon his discharge, he found that during this ‘imprisonment’ that his wife had sold his pony & cart, removed the stock from the shop as well as some of the furniture from this house.

When being summoned, Richard placed the other child, Charles Richard, in the care of his neighbour, Mrs Kemp. On release, he went to retrieve his son only to find out that he had been returned to his wife two days after the hearing.

Richard tried several times to meet with her but was unable to do so. By chance, he did see her, serving behind the bar at the Cooper Arms - Golden lane. Richard ‘asked’ her to return home but she refused, he asked about the children’s whereabouts, but she still refused to give any details, he even offered to take them from her, but she refused again. 

He asked again for her return home in the presence of George, but his reply was that Richard’s wife “might please herself as to whether she returned to me or not”. Richard then warned of the consequences of detaining the children from him.

It is not known whether she returned back to Richard or not, but no other children were ‘birthed’ by the couple nor any details of them being in Richard household from that date.