A detective in the shadows

One Nottingham private detective ensured that he remained in the shadows... while shadowing a womaniser and violent husband

On 3 April 1900, Mary Oscroft petitioned for divorce from her husband of five years, John Byron Oscroft. By the end of the year, she would be divorced, her husband having failed to defend the allegations she made against him.

Mary Hoyland had married in March 1896 at the Mansfield Register Office in Nottinghamshire. She was the daughter of Jonathan Hoyland of Sutton-in-Ashfield, who worked variously as a coal miner, a farmer, and a publican. Byron, as he was known, was the son of house painter Luther Oscroft, and he had followed his father into the same profession. They married young - Byron was 21, and Mary 17 - and Mary was either pregnant or a new mother when they wed. Tragedy struck early, when their son John died shortly after his birth.

Mansfield, where Mary Hoyland married John Byron Oscroft in 1896 (image by Duncan and used under creative commons)

The couple had settled in Fulwood, but as soon as they married, Byron started to abuse his young wife, beating her, and burning her with a candle on his face. Some of the assaults were witnessed by Mary's parents, Jonathan and Emma, while they were staying with the couple. After eight months of marriage, Mary left her husband, and got an order of separation whereby Byron had to pay her seven shillings a week. However, in May 1898, the couple reconciled. This was a mistake. Byron was now drinking heavily and seeing other women, and within two months, the couple had again separated.

Mary returned home to live with her parents, and the Hoylands engaged a Nottingham private detective named Harry Grieves to shadow Byron Oscroft. Grieves undertook some initial research that suggested Byron was 'generally about public houses and in the company of girls'. In March 1900, he was stationed in Sutton-in-Ashfield to shadow the man. Grieves watched him drinking in the Red White and Blue pub; at about 10.20pm, he emerged and met up with a local girl named Eliza Armstrong. The couple went off down Sutton in Ashfield lane - Grieves left it unwritten, but it is clear that the couple had gone off down the dark lane to have sex. On another occasion, he saw Oscroft with a woman 'of bad character' - perhaps a local prostitute. This may have been a woman named Kitty Maloney, who Mary was informed had been seen 'under suspicious circumstances' with her husband.

Soon, Harry Grieves had compiled a dossier of incriminating evidence against Oscroft, who clearly had no intention of trying to stay married. However, when Harry served the divorce citation on Oscroft, at his home, Byron picked up his fireirons and threatened to 'knock' Harry's brains out. He then threw the citation out of the window into the streeet, and 'used the most abominable language' to the private detective.

Unsurprisingly, Mary was given her divorce, and Byron Oscroft was ordered to pay her costs. Mary was still living at her parents' house in 1901, having gone back to using her maiden name. The following year, she remarried, and would have three children by her second husband. What happened to John Byron Oscroft is not so clear.

I'm also not clear on who Harry Grieves was. The only man of that name I can find in Nottingham is a Harry Greaves who was born in Loughborough in late 1850, who was brought up in Nottingham, and who worked as a framework knitter in the city. Although he was just about literate - according to his signature on his marriage certificate (he would have a very short-lived marriage) - it would be unusual for someone in his field to then become a private detective. In addition, this Harry Greaves appears to have been incarcerated in the city asylum between at least 1901 and 1911.

This case is unusual, in that it is the men who are hard to find in the archives - in my experience, it is more common that an ordinary woman who gains a divorce at this time becomes hard to find subsequently. But Harry Grieves was perhaps a perfect private detective - making sure that his subjects' actions were on show, rather than him being so.