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WALTER EDWARD BALL 1840 - |
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Some families have, amongst their ancestors, a ‘black sheep’ ‑ and ours is no exception. Walter Edward Ball, eighth of the ten sons of John and Hannah Ball, was born on 16 February 1840 at 22 St George’s Place, London, in the fashionable area of St Peter’s, Eaton Square. By 1851 the family had moved to 22 Chester Terrace, Belgravia, where Walter was a scholar. His eldest sister, Caroline, had married Benjamin Moon in 1854. Benjamin came from Plymouth, and the couple moved back there, as did Walter’s parents and two of his sisters. Walter probably moved with them, as it was in the church of St Andrew, Plymouth that he married Benjamin’s daughter (Anne) Cordelia, on 12 September 1860. Walter was described as an accountant, of 8 Courteney Street, St Paul, Devonport. Cordelia was described as ‘of full age’, but she hadn’t actually reached the age of 21 when she married, hence the reason for the marriage having to take place by Licence. No members of the Ball or Moon family witnessed the marriage. Walter and Cordelia were lodging in premises at St Stephen’s Bristol, in 1861, where Walter was the manager of an insurance company, but by 1871 he was a resident in Brixton Prison. In January 1869, he and fellow defendant William Rutter had been on trial at The Old Bailey on a charge of ‘Feloniously forging and uttering a warrant and order for the payment of £856 13s. 3d. with intent to defraud’. Both were found guilty. William Rutter was sentenced to 7 years and Walter to 10 years’ penal servitude respectively. During the trial it was revealed that Walter was living in Birmingham with a person called ‘Nellie’, probably ‑ from evidence given at his trial ‑ Ellen Church, and he variously used the aliases Walter Edward Mercer Ball, and Chester. So it appears that Walter had left Cordelia sometime before 1869. In 1871 she was a visitor at her sister and brother in law’s house in Finchley, and was still there in 1881. In February 1883 a newspaper report appeared in The Times regarding a suit for nullity of marriage on the grounds of bigamy. The petitioner was Emily Mary Bagwell (otherwise Ball, otherwise Edwards), who testified that on 13th September 1880 she had married the respondent. She stated that at the time she brought the suit Edwards was undergoing 12 months’ imprisonment in Wandsworth Gaol for embezzlement. (The Old Bailey records for 1880 reveal that Walter [under the alias of Blanchard Edwards] had once again been on trial there, this time for fraud, by making false entries in a cashbook, and also omitting to enter certain sums, with intent to defraud). Emily said Walter had married her in the name of Ball. She had believed he had been a solicitor, but that when they married he was a commercial traveller and afterwards became the manager of a sewing machine works. In 1881 the couple were living in Camberwell, Surrey, under the names of Walter and Emily Edwards. Cordelia Ball was called to give evidence and confirmed that she had married Walter Ball in 1860, and another witness stated that he knew her and the respondent at the time of their marriage. A decree nisi for the nullity of the marriage of the petitioner and respondent was granted. A search for this bigamous marriage showed that Walter and Emily had indeed married on the date stated, at St John’s church, Walworth, but Walter’s name was given as Blanchard Edwards. He had stated that he was a bachelor, a solicitor, and that his father was John Edwards, deceased. Emily, the innocent party in these proceedings, went back to live with her widowed mother Mary in Bromley. Cordelia, by now probably in dire straits, found work as clerk to a corset maker in Hackney, and in 1901 was still living in the area. She died in Dalston in 1910. Nothing further has been found about Walter, our ‘black sheep’ ancestor. Did he continue with his life of crime, under yet another name? We may never know.
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