Jane Cakebread (1827/1828 – 17 December 1898) was a 19th-century British homeless woman who gained notoriety for her frequent arrests for public "drunkenness".

[3] She had a brother living in the countryside whom she once stayed with for six months, when police court missionary Thomas Holmes was trying to get her off the streets of London.

[3] Until the end of her life, she had delusions of grandeur,[2] constantly repeating that she was a member of the "high nobility of Bishop Stortford"[9][10] and entitled to a fortune.

[2] Taking great pride in her belief that she was "a lady of high character",[2] she was never idle, but showed no interest in earning a living.

[7] For more than fifteen years, Cakebread was a familiar figure on Worship Street, Clerkenwell, and in the North London police courts.

[4] Medical lobbyists and moral reformers during this period drew attention to the case of Jane Cakebread to show that legislation in the 1870s and 1880s had failed to help the "poor, mainly female, inebriates" who appeared before the courts often, and "represented a growing public scandal.

[3] During the great frost of 1895, for nine weeks, Cakebread slept outdoors using a bed made from a bundle of sticks, and she washed in the icy River Lea.

[2] She had memorised chapters of the Bible, including one from the Book of Job concerning the uncertainty of human life,[2] which she often recited when quarrels broke out.

[3][2] The sale and procurement of liquor for "habitual drunkards" and "drunken people" was made illegal after Cakebread's death, when the Licensing Act 1902 was enacted by Parliament.

[3] In contrast to other women who ended up in the dock, Cakebread took an active interest in the proceedings, and would comment on them loudly "to the amusement and the occasional embarrassment of the court.

12, Jane Cakebread, your worship,' was announced by the gaoler was the very breath of life, and proved ample compensation for the discomfort of the cells...

Disappointed, the next day, Cakebread made sure the police had more evidence to present on her behalf, so she could interrupt proceedings and have her turn to speak.

[3] Jane Cakebread's "courtroom antics" were covered regularly in the police-court columns of newspapers such as The Morning Chronicle, The Pall Mall Gazette, Lloyd's Weekly, and The Illustrated Police News.

[15] The Daily Chronicle gave "special attention" to her case, and also commissioned the famous sketch of Jane Cakebread by caricaturist Phil May.

[1] Lady Henry Somerset opened the Duxhurst Industrial Farm Colony, Reigate in 1895 to rehabilitate alcoholics as part of the temperance movement.

At the same time, she wrote letters about living in a beautiful country cottage, where the birds sang, the trees gave a shade, and the breeze blew.

Lady Henry found the recidivist alcoholic to be quarrelsome and spiteful and sent her back to London after three months,[4] despite the negative press coverage for her farm colony that Cakebread's ejection produced.

[4] On 31 January 1896, Cakebread, stated to be 62, but whose real age was older, was admitted into Claybury Asylum from the Hackney Workhouse, having been previously in Holloway Prison.

She constantly wanted reassurance and would try to impress the doctors by arranging her hair and decorating herself with lace and ribbons trying to gain attention from anyone.

[2][1] For instance, the British Medical Journal highlighted both the large number of times Cakebread had appeared before the courts and an incident where she was jailed for a month for disturbing the peace on the same day as she had been released from a month's imprisonment to support calls for "the involuntary internment of inebriates" in order to "protect the community and the wretched victims themselves from the domination of a disease which so effaces womanhood".

[21] The 1924 edition of the Standard Encyclopedia of the Alcohol Problem: Volume Two includes her notorious case and photograph noting how her record led to a change in the law which had previously just sent inebriates to prison.