When you look at the details of an individual, as recorded in the census, you only see a snapshot of their life: where they were and what they were doing on a specific date. For example, if you look at a census return for 1881, you are seeing who was where on the night of 3 April 1881, and by the end of that year, they may have changed job, moved house, or even died. Add to this the fact that only the bare facts are often recorded, and you will inevitably need to cross-reference the census with other records.

If you are researching a criminal ancestor, this is even more obvious. If they were in prison at the time of the census, you might find them some distance away from their homes, and a description of them as ‘prisoner’ or ‘convict’ negates their prior lives and tarnish them with a bad image that might not reflect their wider lives or even the circumstances under which they committed a crime. Such women’s offences might not be recorded in the census; we get no picture of the circumstances of their lives. In that case, where do we go, and how full a picture can we get, of these once three-dimensional people?

Take, as a case study, Sarah Ann Gardner, 20 and originally from Warwick, who is listed in the 1911 census for the Aylesbury female convict prison. Baptism records show that Sarah Ann was baptised in February 1890, the daughter of Thomas and Emma. She grew up in various houses on Parkes Street, Warwick – numbers six, 49 and 60 – suggesting that her family moved around rented properties within a small geographic area. Thomas Gardner was a bricklayer’s labourer; Emma was six years his senior. She had a child, James, by her first husband, and at least five children by Thomas.

They were a typical midlands family – fairly large, and keeping things afloat financially by both parents working, as well as by taking in the odd lodger. Yet soon enough, Sarah Ann Gardner was going off the rails. The Leamington Spa Courier for 1 May 1908 includes a case from the Warwick Borough Police Court. Sarah Ann Gardner, a kitchen maid, had been charged with stealing a purse and 27 shillings’ cash from cook Alice Mary Homley, 17. Sarah Ann was employed at the Dale Temperance Hotel at Warwick’s Old Square, where she worked with Alice. Both girls were live-in servants, sleeping at the hotel at night. Evidence was heard that Sarah Ann had stolen Alice’s purse from the latter’s drawer in her bedroom; she then fled to Coventry, where she was apprehended by the police. Sarah Ann admitted stealing the purse and spending the money in it. She was given two years’ probation – it seems that Warwick’s mayor was generous towards the girl, having heard from a probation officer that she had previously been in a training home.

A month later, though, Sarah Ann was summoned by that same probation officer, George Rye, for failing to report her address whilst in his care. George Rye said she had been ‘placed’ in service to Coventry journalist Henry Ainsworth Jackson, and since her conviction for theft the previous month, she had ‘behaved herself exceedingly well’. She had been allowed holiday, and so had returned to her home in Warwick to see her mother, but was supposed to have returned to her job at 9am the following Monday. When she did arrive, she was two hours late – and the following day, she went missing, having left a note to her employers. It wasn’t until the Thursday that she was found, sleeping rough. The local press reported that Sarah Ann appeared to be ‘very distressed’ and that she pleaded guilty. She said she had run away after seeing loose change on a table at the Jacksons; she had panicked, worrying that she would not be able to avoid the temptation of stealing it, and so ran away instead. Her mother gave evidence that Sarah Ann ‘had illusions at certain times which accounted for her roaming about. She had done the same thing when she was at home’.

Sarah Ann sounds capricious, and unreliable; yet it is significant that her employer, Henry Jackson, gave her a ‘most excellent character’ and was happy to take her back into service if the magistrates would let him. The mayor was also generous towards Sarah Ann, agreeing that she could return to the Jacksons’ house, and telling her to ‘avail herself of their kindness’. However, he warned that if she did not keep her recognisances – her agreement to behave well in the future – she would be sent to prison.

Sadly, only one month went by and then Sarah Ann was back before the Warwick police, and another story appeared in the local paper, this time headed ‘What to do with her?’. ‘On 9 June, she had again gone missing from Mr and Mrs Jackson. This time, the Jacksons, who were described as being ‘devoted to the girl and willing to take her back again’, were again allowed to take her back into their employment. Her employer was mystified: ‘Whatever could be the cause of the girl breaking out in this way he could not understand.’ Another headline in the press made clear where others stood: ‘Servant’s Ingratitude.’

After July 1908, there are no more press stories about the difficult servant, and her probation would have ended in 1910. So why did Sarah Ann end up in Aylesbury prison in 1911? Records show that in May 1910, Sarah Ann Gardner ‘aged 20, a native of Warwick’ was committed for trial, charged with stealing a blanket. She had taken lodgings at the house of Thomas Owen in Stafford, grabbed his blanket, and absconded. She was tried at the Staffordshire Quarter Sessions. Although the verdict was not given in the press, it appears that she was found guilty and sent to prison.

In June 1914, the Warwick Quarter Sessions heard a case involving Sarah Ann Gardner, by now a 24-year-old dressmaker, who pleaded guilty to obtaining four nightdresses by false pretences from a draper, William Arthur Barton. She also admitted three other similar offences, committed at Leamington. Before being sentenced to six months’ hard labour, the court heard that she had ‘served three years at Aylesbury under the Borstal system’.

In a Police Gazette of May 1918, there is a reference to a woman named ‘Annie Hughes, alias Annie Gardner, Florence Cursor, Sarah Ann Gardner, Annie Bryan, Sarah Annie Gardner and Annie Gardner’. This woman was described as being born in Warwick in 1890, and that she had been convicted of larceny at the Plymouth Sessions of July 1917 and sentenced to 12 months in prison; she had served ten months before being released in May 1918. The article stated that she had previously been convicted of fraud and theft offences at Warwick but also at Droitwich, Birmingham, Rugeley, Hastings, Cardiff and London, and that she had two different methods of committing crime. Firstly, she would take good quality lodgings in private homes, steal money, jewellery and clothing and then abscond; secondly, she would pose as a Red Cross nurse and ask for charitable contributions in the form of clothing and so on, to ‘use for Belgian refugees living in the locality’.

If this was the same woman – and it seems likely, given her age and origins – it shows that from minor offences in her late teens, and spells on probation and in Borstal, Sarah Ann had become a career criminal, conning people around the country, and never reforming despite several stays in prison. This police notice about her is particularly interesting, as it gives us a description of her: she was 5’ 4”“, with a sallow complexion, dark brown hair and hazel eyes.

Checking other Police Gazettes, there is another entry for the same woman, recording her apprehension into custody in March 1917. This notes that she had been charged with stealing £10 from a dwelling house in Cardiff. At this time, she gave her name as Annie Gardner, but it was noted that her name was ‘Sarah Ann Gardner alias Annie Bryan’ but that she had been convicted at Birmingham as Florence Curzon but elsewhere under her real name. It also recorded her usual occupation as servant, and that she was a ‘native of Warwick’.

This is the last press mention of a thieving servant named Sarah Ann Gardner. However, what the records show is that by cross-referencing different sources, we can build a picture of someone’s life. In Sarah Ann’s case, she started off well, and even after her initial offences, was given the opportunity to turn her life around, with sympathy shown towards her by others. She spurned that help, though, and soon became a career criminal; so it is unlikely that she was, by 1917, able to stop, because this was now her life.