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    The Wharncliffe A–Z of Yorkshire Murder
    The Wharncliffe A–Z of Yorkshire Murder
    The Wharncliffe A–Z of Yorkshire Murder
    Ebook339 pages6 hours

    The Wharncliffe A–Z of Yorkshire Murder

    By Stephen Wade

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    The history of the old county of Yorkshire has been concerned with the great and the good, the ambitious and the downright unscrupulous. Its broad acres has had more than its fair share of highprofile murders, especially though not exclusively in its burgeoning urban centres. Now there is a reference work to bring together most of the principal murders, from the mid-eighteenth century when Dick Turpin went to the York gallows, through to the end of hanging in 1964.In a time-span of two centuries, Yorkshire has witnessed a range of tragic narratives including husbands killing their wives, homicidal attacks in the night alleys and courts, gangs at work looking for vulnerable victims on dark streets and country lanes.Many of these tales are from the countryside too. Revenge and jealousy on and around farms, clashes between poachers and gamekeepers and shootings in rolling hills and valleys.Other factors in the social scene are also recounted, including legal and historical features, definitions, explanations, even short accounts of lives of murderers and of course the enigmatic hangmen.STEPHEN WADE specialises in writing criminal and military history. He hasauthored several volumes in Wharncliffes Foul Deeds Series as well as Unsolved Yorkshire Murders. He teaches courses in crime writing and crime history at the University of Hull and also works as a writer in prisons.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateJan 19, 2007
    ISBN9781781596135
    The Wharncliffe A–Z of Yorkshire Murder
    Author

    Stephen Wade

    Stephen Wade is a biographer and social historian, usually associated with crime and law, but here he turns his attention to a place he has known for forty years, as he has lived and worked in Scunthorpe all that time. His most recent books have been "Going to Extremes", "The Justice Women" and three volumes in the "Your Town in the Great War" series (all Pen & Sword), and :No More Soldiering" (Amberley).

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      Book preview

      The Wharncliffe A–Z of Yorkshire Murder - Stephen Wade

      Introduction

      Whether we like it or not, murder cases make good copy. Even cases from the highway robbery days still come to life regularly in the popular press. The casebooks of murder continue to be produced, usually in the red and black paper covers of True Crime. But murder, like imagination, has ‘a local habitation and a name’ - in SHAKESPEARE’S words. In this instance, that habitation is the county of Yorkshire. The chronicle of murders in that county covers not only the obvious settings of the new industrial towns which burgeoned in the boom decades of the Industrial Revolution, but also such locations as farms, shops, idyllic rural places such as Fewston Reservoir, and even in those modern centres of global tourism and ‘heritage industry’: YORK and the scenic Pennines.

      Naturally, there have to be limitations of scope in a reference work such as this one. The Broad Acres do indeed cover a massive area and a great deal of social history. Where there has been social conflict, there will be murder cases; Yorkshire has had more than its fair share, from the Chartist and LUDDITE unrest in the early years of the nineteenth century, to riots and public disorder over a variety of causes. The items included here are therefore restricted to three categories: the ‘classic’ and infamous cases or personalities such as TURPIN, CHARLES PEACE and MARY BATEMAN; the more enigmatic and intriguing killings such as unsolved cases and those involving certain forensic or investigative interest; and finally a selection of murders which are quite unfamiliar to many but arguably should be better known to anyone interested in crime history. The byways of social history emerge clearly from these narratives.

      Research for the book has also involved finding some cases which were huge in their day but are now largely forgotten, such as the ‘fearful outrage’ occurring in Leeds in 1855 when a gang of roughs set about some police officers and killed a young man who happened to be in the way, or the murder of SERGEANT JAMES WEEDY of the North Yorkshire Constabulary in 1890.

      There are also places and occasionally aspects of the social context that figure in the murder stories, such as the tale of WILLIAM DOVE, who was deeply and fatally under the spell of the ‘Leeds Wizard’ Henry Harrison, and who went on to kill his poor wife. Certain locations are integral to the tales of murder: YORK CASTLE for instance, or the Victorian prisons around the county, so these have their importance also. Then there are the methods of murder such as poison or weapons; some of these earn a place here as well; the methods often enlighten us regarding living conditions.

      Overall, the aim has been to provide a quick reference on murder in the old county of Yorkshire for anyone wanting to check on the narratives of passion, hatred, enmity and downright lust for killing which have been a part of this dark history. I have chosen to make the abolition of capital punishment in 1964 my termination point for the entries. A great help in monitoring these hangings in Yorkshire in the twentieth century has been John Eddleston’s magisterial work, The Encyclopaedia of Executions, published in 2002.

      Just before the abolition of capital punishment in Britain in 1964, a document forming an appendix to an official report listed fifty murders which had taken place in the previous year. This list confirms the view that a murder has no constants, no common features and few patterns of repeated behaviour. For instance, one case on the list is that of a man who ‘struck his brother in the groin with a knife after an altercation about payment for drinks’ and another is that ‘a man killed his fiancée because she persisted in going out with another man...’. When we look at the records in Yorkshire for the twentieth century, the figures are daunting: sixty-eight people were executed at ARMLEY GAOL; ten hanged in HULL and ten at WAKEFIELD. But that is a small figure when taken in relation to the number of homicides in Yorkshire. An immense number of homicide cases were patently murder, but reprieves were granted when there were doubts about premeditation.

      What, then, is murder? The accepted definition is given in a statement that stems from Tudor thinking on the matter: ‘The crime of unlawful killing during the Queen’s peace with malice aforethought; as where the accused causes death by an unlawful act with the intention to cause death or grievous bodily harm.’ (Osborn’s Concise Law Dictionary, 10th edition, 2005.)

      Then we have the necessary social and legal history which has to be included. I have included entries on such topics as important legislation, and on some of the elements of criminal life involved - including the destinations of murderers after the trial if they escaped the gallows. This includes such institutions as ASYLUMS and prison HULKS. In the end, however, as with all good stories, the biographies dominate the entries, as such terrible but enthralling characters as CHARLES PEACE, MARY BATESON and LOUISE CALVERT enter the scene.

      The Wharncliffe A-Z of

      Yorkshire Murder

      A

      APPEALS AND APPEAL COURTS

      The crime of murder - ‘unlawful killing with malice aforethought’ - emerged through history by means of common law. The central point about an appeal when it happens is that some party involved wishes to show that the conviction from the first court was ‘unsafe’. For a long time there has been a resistance to the idea of a retrial. This makes sense when we consider just how many professionals do so much work and preparation for a murder trial.

      In the criminal law, until 1907, a person condemned only had one hope to cling to and that was a royal pardon. It was with the celebrated case of Adolph Beck that there was a call for a reform of practice. Beck was unfortunate in that he had a double, and that double was a dangerous character. When Beck was arrested a second time, for something that had clearly been prepared by his twin, meant that a debate began on appeal possibilities. For some time after 1907, there was no successful appeal in murder cases, and several Yorkshire murder trials exemplify this, notably the story of John Ellwood, whose case went to appeal on a matter of procedure.

      A ‘court of appeal’ was made by the Judicature Act of 1873 but did not involve an appeal court, which is why 1907 is the true watershed in this for the criminal law. From 1873, the right to appeal depended on the crime being indictable, so that someone sentenced to a magistrates’ court could appeal and be able to appear again at a Crown Court.

      Earlier appeals, going back into the centuries before the modern period, would involve the victim appealing for a re-hearing. In the period covered by this book, the notion of an appeal began with a way of making a trial happen in a situation where an attempt to convict a person of a homicide had somehow failed to happen. Therefore, in the early twentieth century, when the appeal court was becoming a matter of more easy access and use, many cases depended on a supposed fault in procedure rather than in the trial of the offence itself. For instance, many murder trials involved judges directing the jury in certain ways which could be challenged by the accused’s defence team. Reading the accounts of criminal appeals in murder cases now, taken from the first decades of the twentieth century, many hinge on the question of sanity/insanity and many on defective court procedure.

      The foundation of an appeal, then, was what happened in the 1873 Judicature Act, because this created a Supreme Court of Judicature, and this was divided in to the High Court of Justice and the Court of Appeal. Many of the cases in this book in the period covering the ten years after the Great War involve appeals linked with the thorny issue of mental health, psychological effects of trench warfare and bombing, and so on.

      Finally, naturally from the point of view of a compelling narrative of criminal history, the record of an appeal court dealing with a murder case within the period up to the abolition of capital punishment, is compulsive reading. There is no fine point of law attached: the decision is a matter of life and death, and the arguments of appeal lawyers will be the decisive factor in whether or not the story ends on the scaffold, whether the defendant walks free, or if he is detained at Her (or His) Majesty’s Pleasure in an asylum or prison. The Court of Appeal records provide high drama, tense and full of rational debate on either the theory, or on the complexities of human behaviour and motivation.

      ARAM, EUGENE (1704-1759)

      Aram was a Knaresborough schoolmaster implicated in a number of murders in the town, his trial being in 1759, after he had been brought back to the place while teaching in Kings Lynn. He came to figure prominently in the notorious Newgate Calendar, such was his fame. But more alarming at the time was the fact that a man learned in the classics could be so nasty.

      Eugene Aram, from an old print.

      When some bones were exhumed in 1759, questions began to be asked about a few local low characters, and Aram’s connections with them emerged. It has to be asked whether or not these men ‘fitted up’ Aram. Fourteen years had passed, and the man whose bones were supposed to have been dug up may well have been long gone from the town. There was no sophistication then in forensic anthropology, and maybe a ‘bone doctor’ would have proved the teacher to be innocent.

      Such was the notoriety of the case that the Victorian novelist, Bulwer-Lytton, wrote a novel based on the story, published in 1832. In 1913, E R Watson compiled the most exhaustive study of the case, The Trial of Eugene Aram, and made a convincing case for the defence. Yet, it has to be said that ’the jury is still out’ on this.

      ARMLEY GAOL

      This is the popular name for Leeds Prison, a place designed as a fortress, easily seen from the city, on a hill. Armley was built in 1847 and the parts of the structure which were first made were then an experimental plan of four wings, and a further two extended wings. The first inmate was one James Beaumont. This is unlike the typical Victorian gaol, with all wings radiating from a central tower. Armley extends to eight hectares, and when it was first in operation accommodated 334 cells. It is indeed a formidable sight, and its recent reputation has not been very good, notably in terms of the number of suicides in its walls.

      Leeds became the Assize town for the West Riding in 1864. This meant that killers convicted in that riding would be hanged in Leeds. York then became the Assize town for the East Riding. Over the years, it has been home to many other than killers, of course: one of the most curious cases being that of Eliza Stafford, who spent a month inside for selling dripping from her master’s table. On a more serious note, five suffragettes spent six weeks in Armley after a scrap in 1908.

      The prison is remarkable for many reasons historically, not least because, as Frankie Fraser expressed it in his memoirs, ‘It was the last place they hanged a man and a woman together.’ This refers to John Gallagher and Emily Swan in 1903; they had killed Emily’s husband, William in George Square, Wombwell. The ROCHDALE HANGMAN, John Ellis, has written at length about their execution. In fact, Armley was the place of death of sixty-eight people in the twentieth century, the last one being ZSIGA PANKOTIA in 1961. There was only ever one public hanging in Armley: that of Myers and Sargisson of Rotherham, in 1864. In 1868 public hangings were ended in England.

      Armley Gaol, from the 1877 Prisons’ Reports.

      ARSENIC

      First used as yellow sulphide, but then as white oxide it produced a heavy white powder, and became what some have called ‘a very Victorian murderous way of death’ and the Arsenic Act of 1851 made it more difficult for ordinary people to buy it over the counter. All compounds from then were to be mixed with either soot or indigo: it was going to be harder to kill with it. But in Yorkshire, there have been many murders using arsenic, one of the most famous being that of ELIZABETH WARD in YORK, who attempted to kill her sister-in-law. But one of the most brutal and heartless cases in the nineteenth century occurred in Bronte country, when overseer JOHN SAGAR of Oakworth poisoned his wife, Barbara. There was no real forensic or properly relevant medical knowledge applied to the case then, so he was not convicted, but it is highly likely that he also poisoned his children with arsenic. Barbara ‘lost’ nine children in her married life.

      ASKERN, THOMAS (HANGMAN)

      Askern was hangman from 1816 to 1878 and was the main executioner for Yorkshire. He was an ex-criminal, as was the practice at that time for recruiting executioners. Apart from the strong likelihood that he hanged WILLIAM DOVE, his most celebrated victim was Mary Ann Cotton, the mass murderer, in Durham in 1873. He also hanged Priscilla Biggadyke at Lincoln - the first female hanging out of the public eye.

      ASYLUMS

      When a murderer such as Bairstan killed someone but was clearly insane, what happened? He was generally sent to an asylum for the criminally insane. In the first asylums the philosophy was to bind the patient so that they were restrained and largely immobile. In the early years of the nineteenth century, the York asylum was in trouble: such places were always open to mismanagement. There was a very negative report written about the asylum in 1813 and there was a public enquiry. But there were always good people who wanted to reform these repressive and cruel places. Matthew Allen, the man who was later to treat the poet John Clare, took over at York in 1819 and he advocated the ‘moral management’ of the insane. This was something practised most famously by Dr Willis on George III. Allen’s belief was that the way forward was for staff to live, work and eat together in a tolerant and humane atmosphere. People had also adopted the habit of placing embarrassing relatives in asylums, and the placements in asylums were to be properly regulated in 1890; this would have a spin-off benefit in terms of protecting various classes of homicide cases coming from courts to confinement in health care.

      Later in the Victorian period, asylums became more influenced by these enlightened methods and treatments. In the 1959 Mental Health Act, the most famous institution in this respect, Broadmoor, changed its official name from ‘Criminal Lunatic Asylum’ to ‘Special Hospital.’ The earlier Homicide Act of 1957 also clarified the issue of diminished responsibility, something that would have meant that many killers in earlier times would not have been hanged.

      B

      BACK LANE CHILD MURDER

      Horsforth, near Leeds, was the scene of one of the very worst child murders in Victorian Britain - and there were thousands of those killings. Six-year-old Barbara Waterhouse was found, horribly butchered, on 10 June 1891, in Alexander Street in Leeds. But the murder had taken place in Horsforth. Not only had she been raped, but her throat had been cut and the poor child had been stabbed over forty times. But this was a case that was soon solved: the killer lived nearby and, unbelievably, this man, Walter Turner, was helped by his mother to carry the girl’s corpse from the cellar where he had killed her. The mill worker, in his thirties, had a mother who was even prepared to take chloride of lime to quell the stink from the corpse. Then they had taken her body to central Leeds in a trunk, tipping it out into the cobbles of Alexander Street. The trunk was left on the platform of a railway station.

      Turner was hanged, and the cruel mother, aiding in the disposal of the

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