william chitty

Subject:              William Chitty (b 1860 – d 1908)

Researcher:       Pauline Sieler, Carol Thompson, Mike Brock

Former inmate’s future wife escapes child murder charge

According to the 1881 Census, 20-year-old William Chitty was an unmarried labourer from Send, Surrey, in the Guildford Union Workhouse.  In the same Census, he was also recorded as living in Lower Ashtead, Surrey as an unmarried 22-year-old agricultural labourer.  Although they might appear to be different people, the proof that this was the same person lay in his 1894 marriage to Ellen Trussler, a woman who, seven years earlier, had managed to escape the highest punishment for a truly shocking crime.  

William’s early life

William was born in Ashtead, Surrey, on New Year’s Day 1860, the youngest of ten known children for labourer Thomas and Sarah Chitty ^{1, 2}. William was baptised at the village’s St Giles’ Church four weeks later.

Over the coming years, William remained with his parents in Ashtead, becoming a labourer like his father Thomas ^{3, 4, 5}.    In April 1891, William, still single at the age of 31, was living in Skinners Lane, Ashtead with his 76-year-old widowed mother Sarah, his brother Thomas and two of his nieces, one of whom was 14-year-old Emily Anscombe, daughter of his sister Jane ^{6, 7}.

Three years later, on 5^th May 1894 at Send’s St Mary’s Church, 34-year-old gardener William Chitty, residing in Send, married spinster Ellen Trussler, aged 30 ⁸. William’s father was correctly given as ‘Thomas Chitty Deceased’, but the crucial fact showing that William was originally from Ashtead is that his niece, Emily Anscombe, signed the wedding certificate.

Who was Ellen Trussler?

William’s wife Ellen was born in Hook Heath, Woking in July 1863, the daughter of George and Elizabeth Trussler ⁹. 

At the time of the 1881 Census, 17-year-old Ellen, a ‘Dom Serv (domestic servant) unemployed’, was living with her parents and six of her siblings in Send Marsh ¹⁰.  This of course was the time that William was recorded both in Ashtead with his family, and in the Guildford Union Workhouse mistakenly listed as born in Send, so did this mean he had already met Ellen?

What is certain is that Ellen, at the age of 19, gave birth to a daughter, Georgina, in August 1882 in Send ¹¹.  No father was named on the birth certificate, but on the baptism record a few weeks later, the father was written as John Berriman from Cobham ¹².  

Five years later, in May 1887 Ellen, now 23, gave birth to another illegitimate daughter, which was to end in tragedy, leading her to appear in court for ‘wilful murder of her female child’.

Ellen on trial for child murder

A coroner’s inquest took place on 31^st May 1887 at The Ship Inn, Ripley where it was heard that on 28^th May, the lockkeeper at Paper Court Lock on the River Wey at Send had discovered a parcel wrapped in brown paper floating on the weir ¹³.  He took the parcel home whereupon it burst open to reveal the body of a child.  He contacted the police, with their investigation leading them late the same evening to Send Marsh where Ellen was living with her parents. 

Ellen strenuously denied the accusation that she had recently given birth but was persuaded by her father the next morning to go for a medical examination, with Ellen saying: ‘I’m alright – there’s nothing wrong with me’.  That morning, the doctor found that Ellen had not been telling the truth and ‘most decidedly she had been confined recently’, so she was taken to Guildford Police Station where she was charged with ‘concealing the birth of a child’. Ellen then revealed the truth of what had happened.

‘I was confined last Tuesday week.  I felt queer in the afternoon and went for a walk. I was confined in the lane.  I wrapped the child in paper and threw it in the river.  Nobody knows anything about it but myself’.  

When the police asked her if she thought the female child’s body found in the river was hers, Ellen said: ‘Yes’.

A post-mortem found that the child had been alive when born as the lungs contained air. The symptoms of death, the doctor said: ‘were those of suffocation but not of drowning’.        

The coroner summed up, noting that the child’s umbilical cord had been cut with a sharp instrument which Ellen must have taken with her on her walk, along with the brown paper and string to wrap it up. The jury at the coroner’s inquest returned a verdict of ‘wilful murder’ by Ellen Trussler.

Ellen’s trial took place at Guildford County Bench on 4^th June 1887 ¹⁴.  The reports described a crowded courtroom with Ellen noted as ‘of short stature, and of respectable parentage’ and ‘respectably attired, but looked very pale and ill’ as the Bench heard the details of what had happened.  Mostly this was a repeat of what had been said at the coroner’s inquest but added that brown paper like that used to wrap the child’s body in had been found in Ellen’s room.  One newspaper report stated that after hearing all the evidence, ‘the prisoner, in a cool manner, said: “I have nothing to say”’ ¹⁵.  Ellen was taken to Holloway Prison awaiting her final trial at the Guildford Assizes.

The final verdict

The trial took place on 16^th July 1887 with Judge Sir Lewis William Cave opening by saying that the charge of ‘wilful murder’ against Ellen could not be made ¹⁶. While accepting all the evidence given, the Judge said that the child had died from suffocation and not drowning.  He said that no evidence had been provided to show that Ellen had anything to do with the child’s suffocation, so the original charge of wilful murder was deemed to be not valid.  The charge was amended to ‘Endeavouring to Conceal Birth’ to which Ellen pleaded guilty.  She was sentenced to six months hard labour in Millbank Prison, Westminster ¹⁷.

William and Ellen together

It’s impossible to know how long William and Ellen had known each other, or whether he was the father of the unfortunate child – the presumed father of Ellen’s first child had married in 1884, three years before the trial ¹⁸.  

William and Ellen were not together at the time of the 1891 Census.  Bachelor William was with his family in Ashtead while spinster Ellen was in Surbiton, Surrey, working as a domestic cook, away from her family, including her 8-year-old daughter Georgina, who were in Send ^{6, 19, 20}.

Sometime after their marriage in 1894, they left Send.  By 1901 they were living at 30 Sorrento Road, Sutton, Surrey, with William, a 38-year-old stockman on a farm, while Ellen was 36 with no employment listed ²¹.

In August 1904, Ellen’s 22-year-old daughter Georgina married labourer James Fuller at Send’s St Mary’s Church where her mother had married William Chitty ten years earlier ²².  Georgina named George Trussler as her father – although he was actually her grandfather. She had spent most of her childhood being raised by her grandparents, even being named as their daughter on the 1891 Census return ²⁰.

Death of William

Georgina and Jim settled in 3 Beaver Cottages, Send before the birth of their second child in 1906 ²³.  Around this time, William and Ellen moved in with them, possibly the first time Georgina had lived with her mother since the trial.

It was not long though before William was in the infirmary of the Guildford Union Workhouse where, on 22^nd March 1908, he passed away aged just 48 from a cerebral haemorrhage and heart failure ²⁴. 

His burial took place six days later at St Mary’s Church, Send ²⁵.

Ellen

In 1911, Ellen was not living with her daughter, but in Church Street, Old Woking, working as a laundrymaid, and had a butcher boarding with her ²⁶.  Although a widow, she put on the form that she had been married for 28 years, since the time her daughter Georgina was born, and that she had just the one child.

By 1921, however, 58-year-old Ellen was back with her daughter and family at 3 Beaver Cottages ²⁷.  Georgina had six of her children with her plus her husband Jim, so it must have been fairly crowded with nine people in just five rooms.

Ellen did not remain with her family but did stay in Send Marsh and then Send ²⁸. In her later years she was living at The Flat, Norton Cottage, Send, but died at her daughter’s home in September 1936 from cancer of the gall bladder, aged 73 ²⁹. She was interred with William at St Mary’s, Send ³⁰.

October 2020, updated August 2026
Edited by Mike Brock

We’d love to hear from you if you are a relative of William Chitty, or Ellen Trussler Chitty, or simply enjoyed the biography!

Please contact us by email at spikelives@charlotteville.co.uk, or on Facebook at ‘Tales from Guildford Workhouse’

Sources and References

Surrey parish records and local newspapers are available at the Surrey History Centre, Woking. Digitised records were sourced through FindMyPast.co.uk and Ancestry.co.uk.  A complete list of references is at William Chitty references

Spike Lives is a Heritage project that chronicles the lives of inmates, staff and the Board of Guardians of the Guildford Union Workhouse at the time of the 1881 Census.  The Spike Heritage Museum in Guildford offers guided tours which present a unique opportunity to discover what life was like in the Casual/Vagrant ward of a Workhouse. More information can be found here