Foul Deeds & Suspicious Deaths in & Around Mansfield

Introduction

‘Mansfield in the centre of Sherwood Forest.’ The proud claim has been made for many years, and is still encountered today on direction signs approaching this historic Nottinghamshire town, although nowadays the built-up area of Mansfield and its outlying district reveals rather less evidence of the surrounding woodland. In the Middle Ages, when Sherwood covered two hundred square miles, it would have been a different story, with Mansfield and other settlements little more than clearings in the wild wood. Not so long ago a tree still stood in Mansfield’s Westgate which was said to have been the former centre of old Sherwood. The site is now marked by a commemorative plaque set there by the Old Mansfield Society.

Ever since it received its charter from Henry III in 1227, Mansfield has existed as a thriving market town, with no shortage of historical and legendary associations. That most famous of outlaws, Robin Hood of Sherwood, has long been claimed as an adopted son, and still draws tourists to the town and to the forest at nearby Edwinstowe, although his Nottinghamshire lineage has often been disputed by Yorkshire historians. And if there is argument over Robin, the Sheriff of Nottingham was real enough, as was the outlaw’s old adversary King John, who made frequent visits to his hunting lodge at Clipstone a few miles from Mansfield, and who died at Newark in the same county. Within close reach of the town are Newstead Abbey, the ancestral home of Lord Byron, and the mining village of Eastwood, birthplace of D H Lawrence, while three centuries ago Mansfield’s own poet Robert Dodsley earned himself a share of immortality with his popular ballad The King and the Miller of Mansfield.

With the industrial development of the county, Mansfield found itself in the centre, not of a forest, but the North Nottinghamshire coalfield, ringed about by the headstocks of collieries such as Sherwood and Crown Farm and the booming pit villages they supported. These, and the town’s own native industries, not least the world-famous Mansfield Brewery and its many public houses, added greatly to Mansfield’s prosperity over the past two centuries. With their decline, the town still draws visitors with its large, attractive market place, its shopping centre, extensive retail parks, and its historic tourist associations.

All the same, neither town nor county have been strangers to violence. Whether Robin Hood was here or not, outlaws have roamed the byways around Mansfield from the earliest times, and robbery and murder have been frequent events ever since, although we may not always have been aware of the fact. The Mansfield area was home to me for twenty years. I was born in Mansfield Woodhouse, went to school at Queen Elizabeth’s Boys, regularly visited the town’s four cinemas, attended Field Mill as a Mansfield Town supporter, and secured my first job as an assistant in Mansfield Library, but remained oblivious to the more sinister aspects of my birthplace. I drank my first half-pint as a teenager at the Jug and Glass, knowing nothing of the terrible suicide there in 1902. Every day I walked home from school past Sherwood Colliery tip, having no inkling of the gruesome finding of a female skeleton on that very spoil heap in the year 1912.

These, and other equally grim events, are detailed here. They gather twenty-one cases from Mansfield and other neighbouring Nottinghamshire towns and villages, and show clearly that greed, violence and sudden death have never been unfamiliar in this part of the world.

Much of my research has been carried out in Mansfield Local Studies Library, where the microfilm issues of the Mansfield Advertiser and Mansfield Chronicle have proved a valuable resource. Other useful information has been obtained from Mansfield As It Was by the late Robin Herrett, a former colleague at Mansfield Library, whose premature death robbed the town of a very able local historian. I would like to express my thanks to David Crute and the staff of Mansfield Local Studies Library, to Chris Hartnup and Retford Local Studies for details of Herbert Snell’s final reprieve, and to the Ordnance Survey for permission to reproduce County Old Series maps. Special thanks must go to my good friend Dennis Middleton for the many excellent photographs shown in the text, to Chris Watkinson for further information on the James Holden case, to Rob Smith for his geographical expertise on Ashfield district and beyond, to Jane and Anthony Brown for their help with Worksop locations and to Jane’s father Mr George Handley for his photographs of the town, to John Ellis who as well as taking photographs of his own generously offered his services as chauffeur to the many locations around the county, and to Brian Elliott and Wharncliffe Books for inviting me to produce this book.

Sources

Copies of local newspapers: Mansfield Advertiser, Mansfield Chronicle, 1877 – 1924

Herrett, Robin, Mansfield As It Was, 1973

Gallon, Barbara, Nag’s Head, King’s Arms, 1997

Ordnance Survey maps, Old County Series, 1877 – 1917

Sanderson, George, Map of Twenty Miles Around Mansfield , 1835

CHAPTER 1

He Could Not Tell What Possessed Him

1817

… her skull had been smashed by

repeated and violent blows.

On 7 July 1817, Elizabeth Sheppard left her mother’s house in the Nottinghamshire village of Papplewick, and began the long walk to Mansfield. Seventeen-year-old Elizabeth, whose fully developed figure proclaimed her as no longer a mere girl but ‘a finely-formed young woman’, was seeking work. She hoped to find a post as a domestic servant, and Mansfield, a large and prosperous market town some five miles away, offered better prospects for employment than her native village. It was early afternoon when she set off, some time between 12 and 1 pm, and her mother remembered afterwards that Elizabeth was wearing a pair of shoes newly bought the previous Sunday, and that she carried a light-coloured cotton umbrella. No doubt she smiled as she left the family home that bright summer day, on a journey that promised better times for them both.

She was not to return alive.

Papplewick village, home of Elizabeth Sheppard, from which she made her last journey to Mansfield in July 1817. Dennis Middleton

Griffin’s Head Inn, Papplewick. Dennis Middleton

It seems Elizabeth made the journey to Mansfield without incident, for she was seen leaving the town around 6 pm. Evidently she intended to return home to Papplewick, but this time her journey was never completed. Early on the morning of 8 July her body was found in a roadside ditch, a short distance from the third milestone out of Mansfield. Those who stumbled upon her were shocked to discover that her skull had been smashed by repeated and violent blows. Nor was there any need to search for the murder weapon. A five-foot hedge stake lay close beside the horribly battered corpse, its end thickly stained with clotted blood.

At first the murder seemed not only brutal but motiveless, as Elizabeth had carried no money with her, and there was no indication that any sexual assault had been attempted, but once it was confirmed that the girl’s shoes and umbrella were missing, the investigators had a lead to follow. Further enquiries revealed that a former serving soldier, Charles Rotherham, had been seen drinking in the Hut, a roadside inn not far from the scene of the murder, soon after Elizabeth had been killed. Later that night, he had turned up at the Three Crowns Inn at Redhill, where he had offered both the shoes and umbrella for sale. No-one took up the offer, and Rotherham retired to bed for the night. When he left the inn, the shoes stayed behind in his bedroom, but he still had the umbrella with him, and eventually found a buyer for it in the village of Bunny.

Market Place, Mansfield, where Elizabeth went to find employment. Bentinck monument in centre of picture, former Town Hall on left. Dennis Middleton

By this time his luck was running out. An officer of the law, Mr B Barnes of Nottingham, set off in pursuit of the suspect, following Rotherham’s trail beyond the county boundary and into Leicestershire. Barnes finally tracked his quarry down at Loughborough, where the much-travelled Rotherham was arrested, making no resistance.

Charles Rotherham was thirty-three, a citizen of Sheffield, and had only recently been discharged from army service. Originally apprenticed to a scissor-grinder, he had subsequently enlisted as a driver in the Artillery, serving for twelve years. During this time he had seen action in Egypt, and as a member of Wellington’s Peninsular army in the ferocious battles of Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, Salamanca and Toulouse.

No stranger to military violence, Rotherham appears to have suffered the fate common to many ex-soldiers of this and later periods. Cast off without money or employment when the Napoleonic Wars came to an end, he seems to have drifted aimlessly from one village to another, looking for easy money to fund his drinking habit and keep him from starvation. In the end, his wandering, purposeless existence had led to the fatal encounter with Elizabeth Sheppard on the evening of 7 July.

The Wednesday after his arrest, Charles Rotherham was taken to the coroner’s inquest at Sutton-in-Ashfield, where the cause of Elizabeth’s death was confirmed as being due to skull fractures from several blows with the hedge stake. Journeying back to Nottingham with his captor, Rotherham finally confessed to the murder. As they reached the place where Elizabeth had died, he pointed out the spot to Barnes, and showed him the hedge on the far side of the road, from which he had pulled the stake that ended his victim’s life.

Questioned as to why he had done such a terrible thing, Rotherham offered neither reason nor excuse, claiming that ‘he could not tell what possessed him at that moment.’ Coming up behind Elizabeth without a word, he had wielded the stake like a massive spear, using the pointed end to batter the head of his victim with a succession of frenzied blows until he was sure of her death. Perhaps it was true, as he claimed, that this was an unmotivated impulse killing, but judging from his subsequent actions the thought of robbery must have crossed his mind soon afterwards. Rotherham had turned out the dead woman’s pocket and, finding it empty, cut open her ‘stays’ (corsets) in the hope of finding money concealed inside. Once again he was out of luck, and had to settle for the shoes and umbrella of his victim. These items in turn had brought him nothing but trouble, providing his pursuers with clues to his whereabouts, and eventually leading them to him.

Hutt Hotel, Ravenshead, at which Rotherham drank after murdering his young victim. Dennis Middleton

His confession made, there could now be no hope for Charles Rotherham. Brought before the Honourable Sir John Bayley at Nottingham County Hall on 25 July, he pleaded guilty to the charge of murder, but was apparently ‘prevailed upon’ by his judge to go through with the trial procedure. Presumably Sir John was anxious that justice was seen to be done; either that, or, having come prepared for the full-length legal process, he felt cheated by Rotherham’s immediate confession of guilt. In the end it made no difference, for there could only be one outcome. Rotherham was found guilty of wilfully murdering Elizabeth Sheppard on 7 July, and sentenced to death.

Three days after the court appearance, on 28 July 1817, he was hanged at Nottingham’s Gallows Hill before a large, and no doubt appreciative, crowd, for whom public executions were one of the main entertainments of the early nineteenth century. How attentive they were to the speech-cum-sermon of the Reverend J Bryan, who ‘addressed the assembled multitude at great length’, is not recorded, but one suspects that they took a keener interest in the hanging itself. The clergyman prayed with the condemned man, who was then ‘immediately launched into eternity.’ Following the execution, Rotherham’s body was cut down and borne back to the County Hall where, after being worked on by the surgeons, it was left exposed to public view in the Nisi Prius Court as a grim deterrent to other would-be criminals. Mercifully, once a suitable interval had passed, the corpse was taken away and buried at the back of St Mary’s Church. It was a sad and ignominious end to the life of a man who had served his country for so long under one of its greatest generals.

In his time as a soldier, Charles Rotherham had seen action in some of the most vicious battles of the Peninsular campaign, and during those years he must have experienced horrors of a kind unknown to most. How much the memory of those fearful times affected him will never be known. Unemployed and taking solace in drink, he had hit rock bottom, and a final murderous act had cost the lives of both himself and his innocent victim. Why he did the deed seems likely to remain a mystery. Was it merely robbery? Or had hard drinking and a familiarity with killing, so ingrained it had become a habit, combined to produce the beserk fury where the killer had used a hedge-stake almost as big as himself to shatter the skull of poor Elizabeth? These are questions which seem certain to stay unanswered.

The fate of Elizabeth Sheppard struck a chord in the hearts of many Nottinghamshire folk, and, soon after the tragedy, a group of local gentlemen headed by Anthony Buckles subscribed to a memorial stone, which was erected at the site of her murder. Worked with panels on four sides, and surmounted with an ornament, it bore the following inscription:

This stone was erected in memory of Elizabeth Sheppard of Papplewick, who was murdered by Charles Rotherham, near this place, on the 7th of July, 1817, aged 17 years.

Papplewick Pumping Station. The Victorian pumping station, built a short distance from the village, is nowadays a well-known tourist attraction. Dennis Middleton

The ‘Bessie Sheppard Stone’ stands today in that spot beside the road where Elizabeth’s life was so cruelly cut short, and may be clearly seen by the many who commute from Mansfield to Nottingham, passing Papplewick and its famous Victorian pumping station on the way. It is a fitting monument to the young woman who set out from home so full of life and hope on that July morning in 1817, and of her final meeting with the desperate ex-soldier, down on his luck, who took that young life from her.

Bessie Sheppard Stone, erected by private subscription to mark the site of her murder by Charles Rotherham. Dennis Middleton

CHAPTER 2

A Jealous Lover

1877

Having killed the woman he loved, he seemed ‘quite

indifferent to the affair, and maintained a sullen silence.’

Thomas Gray was hopelessly in love with Ann Mellors. For three years and more he had laid claim to her affections, and was determined to make her his bride. The fact that she was not interested in him as a suitor, and found his attentions ‘distasteful’, appears not to have registered with him at all. His unavailing efforts at courtship had become the talk of their village of Car Colston, which lay two and a half miles from Bingham to the south of Nottingham, but Thomas cared nothing for what the neighbours thought. His unrequited love for Ann had long since reached the stage of a dangerous obsession, taking him over completely.

Ann, meanwhile, had made entirely different plans for her future. During the last few months she had been courted by a schoolmaster from a neighbouring village, who, in spite of suffering from ill health, was evidently far more acceptable to her as a prospective husband. This new love rival was also welcomed by Ann’s widowed mother, who with her daughter’s help ran a general dealer’s and smallware shop in Car Colston. Presumably the schoolmaster’s standing in the community made him more of a ‘catch’ than the persistent but unsuccessful Thomas Gray, and the young man was treated with ‘the greatest intimacy’ by both ladies. Ann had received and accepted his proposal of marriage, and their wedding was planned for the Christmas of 1877.

Car Colston village, view across the two village greens. John Ellis

Thomas Gray knew all about his rival suitor, and the arrangements for the forthcoming wedding, but none of these developments made any difference to him. Undeterred, he continued to pester his unwilling beloved with ever more persistent, and annoying, attempts to win her over. All he received for his pains were angrier and more emphatic rejections of his love, the young woman making it obvious that she wanted nothing to do with him. It was a point at which most thwarted lovers would have accepted defeat, and begun to look elsewhere. Not so Thomas, for whom Ann Mellors remained fixed in his mind as the only woman for him. Gradually, from this, a darker thought began to take shape, that if he was not to have her, then no-one should.

The wedding was still some months off when, on the morning of Monday, 20 August Ann Mellors woke and, having dressed, went through from the living area at the back of the premises to open her mother’s shop for business. Mrs Mellors was also awake, but had yet to come through and join her. The schoolmaster, who was staying with them, and apparently still suffering from his health problems, was asleep in bed.

Ann had opened the shop at about 6.30 am, and a few minutes later Mrs Mellors was startled by a succession of terrible screams. Rushing through to the shop, she found her daughter lying on the ground inside the counter in a great pool of blood. Frantic with terror, she ran to the schoolmaster’s bedroom and roused him from sleep. Forgetting his ailments for the moment, the prospective bridegroom left his bed and dashed into the shop to see for himself. At the sight of the blood his first thought was that Ann had burst a blood vessel, and he lifted her up, carrying her to the living room, where he laid her gently on the sofa. It was then that the true horror of the situation became obvious to both of them. The head of the young woman dropped back from the body, and he and Mrs Mellors were appalled to see that it was all but severed, held fast only by the bone and a piece of skin at the back of the neck. Ann Mellors had been brutally murdered.

Word was sent at once to the Bingham Police Station, and Constable Francis attended the scene. He found the situation already under control, and Thomas Gray in custody, having been arrested by Constable Peck. Apparently he had been seen leaving the Mellors’ shop about the time the crime had been committed, and had gone to the house of his brother-in-law, a William Wilson. When Peck apprehended him on suspicion, Gray seemed to have no blood on him, and the only unusual mark was a slight cut between the third and fourth fingers of his left hand, which might have been made by a sharp instrument. It was only later, when Wilson’s house was searched, that the officers discovered a set of clothes saturated with blood, and realised that Gray had changed and washed off the blood immediately on arriving there.