Murdered for Gin

Mary Defour, illegitimate daughter of Judith Defour, a ‘throwster’ (a person who twists silk filaments into a yarn) and John Cullender, a weaver from Spitalfields, was born about 1742 and baptised in Bethnal Green, London. Judith put the child in the workhouse, but one day in 1744, she fraudulently obtained permission to take her out for a few hours. Just a week previously, the workhouse superintendent had given Mary new clothes; Judith stripped the child, strangled her with a rag and left her in a ditch. She then sold the clothes for ‘a shilling and a groat’ (a groat was four pence, so 7p in today’s money) and she spent the money on gin.

Judith was tried at the Old Bailey and sentenced to death. She ‘pleaded her belly’, a means whereby pregnant women could usually have their death sentences commuted, but a ‘jury of matrons’ declared that she was not pregnant.

This seems to be the first recorded instance of a Cullender coming into close contact with the worst effects of alcohol. A century later the Barnet branch of the family were staunch teetotallers and all belonged to the Salvation Army, citing the evil they had seen in London slums as their motivation. It is not inconceivable that it was this sad story that was at the heart of that conviction. This story (but not the Cullender connection) is often quoted in accounts of the conditions that led to England attempting prohibition, and eventually raising taxes on gin. It also happened at the time that Hogarth was engraving his famous 'Gin Lane', and helping Thomas Coram to fund his revolutionary foundling hospital in London. The Coram Family Museum opened in 2004; its curator is Rhiann Harris, who also has Cullender connections.

Click here to go to the museum website

Murdered for Gin

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