Percival Gerard Pochin

THE TIMES dated January 28th 1891 (page 10)

CHARGE OF CRUELTY

At Sheffield yesterday, Mr Percival Gerard Pochin, living in a fashionable quarter of Sheffield and Matilda Pochin, his wife, were charged at the instance of the National Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Children with having systematically ill-treated and neglected a lad named Wilkinson who was in their service as a page boy.. The lad, according to the case for the prosecution, was taken from the workhouse by Mr. Pochin who said he wished to adopt him. He first lived with Mr. Pochin, for a month in a house-boat on the Thames, and then went to his residence at Ranmoor Park Road, Sheffield where he became a page boy in buttons. It was shown that the boy had been thrashed by Mr. Pochin, with a horse whip, beaten by Mrs. Pochin, with a stick, and on one occasion tied naked to a bed post and whipped. During a heavy snowstorm he was turned out into the snow and kept there all day without food. At night, a maidservant took compassion on him and gave him half a slice of bread and butter. Several witnesses were called to prove habitual ill treatment.

Both the defendants, gave evidence, and denied that they had been guilty of any cruelty.

The stipendiary magistrates held the case to be proved, and fined Mr. Pochin, £5 and Mrs. Pochin, £10

The case was also picked up by other contemporary journals of the time. The Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper (London, England), dated Sunday, February 1, 1891; Issue 2515 repeated the case verbatim

The abused child - William Clarke Wilkinson

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"Throughout his life Henry Davis Pochin had suffered from headaches and high blood pressure. In December 1890 he suffered a slight stroke and, though he made a full recovery, following sixteen months of subsequent ill health he died on 28 October 1895 at Bodnant Hall, Eglwys-bach, Denbighshire. He was survived by his wife and two of his six children, Laura Elizabeth and Percival Gerald. With the latter disinherited ‘for conduct which private papers confirm, fully warranted that decision’ ( H. T. Milliken, The road to Bodnant: the story behind the foundation of the famous north Wales garden 1975 page 95–6), Laura, who had married Charles Benjamin Bright McLaren (later first Baron Aberconway), inherited most of her father's property. Pochin was buried in a mausoleum at Bodnant."

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