The sitting magistrate throughout the Wandsworth Common campaign
Mr Dayman was a Metropolitan stipendiary police magistrate who presided at the combined Wandsworth and Hammersmith Police Court from 1856. He appears consistently in newspaper reports across the 1860s and into 1871, his name given throughout simply as “Mr Dayman” without a first name.
His appointment is recorded in the Morning Post of Monday 14 January 1856, in a notice of magisterial changes:
Mr. Paynter, of the Wandsworth and Hammersmith Courts, will succeed him [Mr Broderip] at Westminster, and Mr. Dayman, who was called in 1829, and has been many years practising upon the Western Circuit, will supply the vacancy caused by his removal.
Morning Post, 14 January 1856
This establishes that Dayman was called to the Bar in 1829, had built a career on the Western Circuit, and was appointed to the Wandsworth and Hammersmith bench in 1856 as a direct replacement for Mr Paynter. He was thus a professional stipendiary of some standing — by 1856 a barrister of 27 years’ experience. His significance for the history of Wandsworth Common is considerable: he was the sitting magistrate throughout the entire campaign to save the Common, and would have presided over many of the cases arising from fence-breaking and trespass that formed a central part of that campaign.
The succession at the combined Hammersmith and Wandsworth court can now be established with some confidence:
Mr Paynter — presiding before 1856; transferred to Westminster in January 1856
Mr Dayman — appointed January 1856; presiding through the 1860s and into 1871; called to the Bar 1829, Western Circuit
Sir Richard Harington — appointed November 1871; moved on to become a County Court judge in 1872
John Paget — transferred from the Thames Police Court; presided over the West London court on its separation from Hammersmith until his resignation in 1889
Dayman thus held the Wandsworth and Hammersmith bench for some fifteen years, from 1856 to 1871 — the whole period of the Common campaign.
The earliest known report of Dayman sitting at Wandsworth appears in the Morning Advertiser of 26 January 1856 — within days of his appointment — and already shows a magistrate prepared to push back against the authorities when he thought justice required it. Two prisoners, Samuel Janet and a woman named Ellis, had been passing counterfeit sixpenny pieces at public houses and shops in Putney, and were watched through Wandsworth where they attempted to pass more. When arrested, ten of the pieces were found on the female prisoner. They proved to be medals or tokens filed down to resemble worn sixpences: the Queen’s head was perfectly visible on one side, but the reverse had been smoothed away entirely, except for a small crown left, no doubt, “for the purpose of deceiving persons.”
The case was remanded to allow the police to consult the Mint authorities, who then declined to prosecute on the grounds that the pieces did not resemble the current coin of the realm and were therefore not technically counterfeit. The Morning Advertiser records Dayman’s response:
Mr. Dayman was rather surprised to hear that the Mint authorities had refused to prosecute in such a case, for he was clearly of opinion that the pieces were calculated to deceive shopkeepers in the hurry of business.
Morning Advertiser, 26 January 1856
He had no choice but to discharge the prisoners, but his objection is on record. It is a small moment, but characteristic: a new magistrate, freshly arrived from years on the Western Circuit, unwilling to let a bureaucratic technicality pass without comment.
Claude: That counterfeit coin case is a lovely opening vignette — his very first week on the bench, and he's already at odds with the Mint. The detail about the filed-down medals with the Queen's head intact on one side but the reverse smoothed to a plain surface bar a small crown is vivid and rather telling about the ingenuity of Victorian small-time fraud. And his reaction — surprised, clearly irritated, but bound by the law — gives a real sense of the man.
At Wandsworth in 1868 he dealt with a Merton poulterer summoned for failing to vaccinate his child under the compulsory vaccination law. When the man explained he had kept his child unvaccinated “on principle” and had “declared that he would rather send it to Australia than have it done”, Dayman fined him 10 shillings with a further 10 shillings costs and warned that non-payment would mean fourteen days in prison.
In another Wandsworth case, a woman was found by a constable in the pond on the Common known as the “Black Sea”, having attempted to drown herself after a quarrel with her husband. When Dayman asked the constable whether she had been out of her depth, and was told she had not, he remanded her for a week with the dry remark that “she can compose herself in the interim.”
At Hammersmith he dealt with a servant girl convicted of robbing her mistress, sending her to prison for two months with hard labour. He told the court: “it was a very bad case, as servants must be trusted. There was no excuse for the prisoner to rob her mistress, as she had a comfortable house.”
In an arson case at the Wandsworth Reformatory on the Common, three boys were charged with setting fire to a stable. Dayman considered there was no evidence against one of them and discharged him; the other two he dealt with separately.
The cases on record suggest a competent, no-nonsense magistrate — clear in his reasoning, capable of a dry wit, and consistent in his sentencing. He appears neither harsh nor lenient by the standards of the day. The remark about the woman in the Black Sea composing herself, and his careful weighing of evidence in the reformatory fire case, both suggest a man who paid close attention to the facts before him.
His first name has not yet been traced. Contemporary newspaper reports invariably give him as “Mr Dayman” only. The Morning Post notice of January 1856 confirms he was called to the Bar in 1829 and practised on the Western Circuit, which should make him traceable in the Inn of Court admission records and in the Law Lists of the 1830s–1850s. His year of call (1829) also gives a probable birth year in the region of 1800–1808.
The most promising avenues for further research are: