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British parlormaid; inebriate; subject of medical enquiry (1830–1898)
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2 identifiers linking Jane Cakebread across the web's reference databases
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Jane Cakebread was a 19th-century British homeless woman who gained notoriety for her frequent arrests for public "drunkenness". According to official records, Cakebread appeared in police court 277 times for her behaviour in public. She was believed to have set a record for number of court appearances, as well as number of newspaper paragraphs devoted to a woman during the reign of Queen Victoria, besides the queen herself. By the time of her death, she had achieved international notoriety, as both The London Telegraph and The New York Times claimed in her obituary that she had been "convicted 281 times". Cakebread had mental illness, alcohol intoxication, cirrhosis of the liver, and visual impairment. She lived the final three years of her life at Claybury Asylum in London, where she was placed under medical observation. Her tragic case focused public attention on the ineffectiveness of the policy of dealing with drunkenness through short-term imprisonment. She is often credited for inspiring the Inebriates Act 1898, and other legislation.