Ruth's Blog

In a recent blog post we recounted how Richard Richardson had narrowly avoided transportation to Australia, and came to live in Aswell Hole in Louth.  There was an infamous brothel here, run by Susanna Richardson.  We wondered if Susanna was in any way related to Richard.  Possibly sister-in-law, for instance.  After a lot of searching in the records, we eventually concluded that Susanna must be Mrs Mary Richardson, wife of Richard, i.e. Mary was also known as Susanna.

So let us look at the Richardson family from the point of view of Mary/Susanna.  Mary Wilson was born in 1775 in Alvingham, about four miles northeast of Louth.  Her parents George and Martha were probably agricultural labourers.  She had little or no education and was not even able to write her name.

When she was 41 years old and living in the nearby village of South Cockerington, Mary married Richard Richardson, someone she must have known since childhood.  He was a couple of years younger than her, and had a colourful reputation having been convicted of theft, and he had spent time in a prison hulk in Portsmouth.  In the early 19th century, working class women tended to marry at older ages for economic reasons, but even so, 41 years seems extreme.  Mary’s stimulus to marry was probably the fact that she was 3 months pregnant.  Many women who were economically disadvantaged used prostitution to supplement their income, and it is likely that Mary did too.

Mary, Richard and their three children lived in a small cottage at the western end of the Gatherums in Louth, on the left side of the horse steps, the path that goes down from Aswell Street.  It was described as the first of “two tenements, adjoining each other and [the watchmaker’s shop in Aswell Lane], fronting the way leading to Aswell Spring, with the yards and premises thereto belonging”.

For a family in poor economic circumstances, it may seem surprising that all three children survived to adulthood.  Jane, the eldest, married a sailor in 1838.  Joseph married in 1835, and joined the 69th Foot Regiment, although there are reports of his desertion.  Ann, the youngest, married a mariner in 1839.

After the children had left home, there must have been more space in the house, and it was then that we hear of the brothel.  A report in October 1846 tells us, “Susanna Richardson, who together with her husband keep a notorious brothel in Aswell-hole, in Louth, was charged by one of the unfortunate females resident in her house named Maria Thorold, with assaulting her, and turning her out of her house at 10 o’clock at night.”  It goes on to refer to “disgusting and obscure practices carried on in the brothel”, and states that the magistrates expressed their determination to use every means in their power to extirpate the sinks of vice and obscenity existing in that neighbourhood.

It doesn’t seem a coincidence that by 1851 Mary and Richard were living a short distance away in Newmarket, presumably as a result of the authorities’ actions to improve Aswell Hole.  However, by 1861 they had moved back down to Aswell Street.  Richard died in 1861, and I can find no further record of Mary.  Perhaps she went to live with one of her children.

Mary and Richard’s cottage in Aswell Hole, together with the adjoining cottage, became a lodging house run by Irishman Patrick Kayes, and was for a short period a beer house known as the Lord Nelson, or The Rag & Louse.