A ten year affair

A Sheffield private detective tracked down an errant husband three years after he vanished with another woman

When Hannah Parsons suspected her husband of having an affair, she first employed her son, John William, to investigate. In 1893, John duly found his father in flagrente with a young woman named Hannah Smith, and reported back to his mother. His father, Henry, was furious, grabbed his wife by the throat and threatened to “do for her”.

The marriage of Henry and Hannah Parsons in 1873 - both were minors (Derbyshire Record Office, via Ancestry)

Despite this, the couple remained living together in Brampton, near Chesterfield in Derbyshire, even though Mrs Parsons knew her husband had been carrying on his affair since at least 1890 (she had married Henry back in 1873, and the couple had seven surviving children).

But just after Christmas in 1898, Henry walked out on Hannah, and for over three years, she heard nothing from him. She had no idea where he was. This time, she employed a professional private detective to find him; he did his job and found Henry living in Sheffield with Hannah Smith. Mrs Parsons immediately employed a solicitor to start the divorce process; when the solicitor’s clerk visited Henry Parsons with the divorce papers, he freely admitted that he had been in a relationship with Miss Smith for a decade or so, that they were living together, and in fact had already had three children together.

Unsuprisingly, Hannah Parsons got her divorce, and custody of the four children from her marriage who were still under-age. The story made the pages of the Derbyshire Courier - but there was a little addition to the story. On a separate page, in the classified adverts, was the following:

“Private enquiries - Keeling, 9 Fig Tree Lane, is the Enquiry Agent referred to in case Parsons v Parsons reported in this day’s Courier.”

The private detective employed by Hannah Parsons saw the successful outcome of this case as a means of publicity. The paper had not referred to him by name, and he was determined to ensure that he got some attention for his services. He therefore advertised that he was the man who had tracked down Henry Parsons.

Keeling was Charles Keeling, a Sheffield man, whose local knowledge had served him well in the Parsons case. Yet he was not only a private detective - this was just part of his job. He seems to have spent years working as a solicitor’s managing clerk, before becoming an accountant and private detective at the turn of the century. Adverts from 1900 in the Sheffield Independent show him both advertising his services as a private detective, and advertising vacant shops for let.

Keeling specialised in two areas: finding evidence for divorce cases, but also, more unusually, finding evidence that could be used to rescind maintenance orders. Some individuals tried to stop paying money for children, for example, by arguing that their ex-partner had had sex with other people, or that the children weren’t theirs. In one case I’ve found, one man successfully got a maintenance order rescinded when he argued that his wife (who he had walked out on to have an affair with a woman that resulted in several children) had since had a relationship that had resulted in an illegitimate child. The court therefore told him he could stop paying for their own, legitimate child, because the mother’s morality since had been brought into question.

Although each census from 1871 to 1901 has Keeling at a different address in Sheffield, his press adverts show that he had a separate business address at 9 Fig Tree Lane, which he operated from for at least two years, from 1900 to 1902. His career as a private detective was short and did not result in riches, however. In 1907, Keeling appears to have died a pauper, a year after his wife’s death. Thanks to him, however, Hannah Parsons was able to find out what had happened to her husband - and to divorce him.