1931

SO FAR: On the morning of 3rd October 1931, in their isolated farmhouse near Waddingham, Annie Priscilla Jackling (left) is found dead in her bed, while on the floor nearby is her husband Robert, grievously wounded. Both have been shot at close range with a twelve bore shotgun. Their child Maurice is unharmed, but standing in in his cot, crying for his mother. The couple’s nephew, sixteen year-old Harold Smith, who lived and worked on the farm, is missing.

Harold Smith’s escape from the scene was hardly a thing of drama. Taking Robert Jackling’s bicycle, he had made it as far as Wrawby, just north of Brigg, when he was arrested, just hours after the grim discovery at Holmes Farm. Superintendent Dolby from Brigg knew that the case, which became a double murder when Robert Jackling died in Lincoln Hospital, offered only three sensible scenarios. First, that this was a murder suicide, Jackling having shot his wife and then turned the gun on himself. Second, that the pair had been shot by an unknown assailant and, third, that the killer was Harold Smith.

Smith made a detailed statement quite soon after his arrest. It implied that he had been brooding for some time over his treatment by Robert Jackling, and had been contemplating taking action. At Smith’s trial at Lincoln Assizes in November, this was reported:

At his trial, Smith resolutely denied having anything at all to do with the murders, and only admitted to hearing gunshots in the night, and subsequently removing the shotgun from the bedroom, and placing it downstairs. He said that he fled the scene, fearing that he would be blamed. Neither Mr Justice Mackinnon (right) nor the jury were having any of this, and he was found guilty and sentenced to death, although the jury made a recommendation that mercy be shown. Invariably, judges had little option but to don the black cap when the charge remained as murder, with no suggestion of the defendant being insane. As there had been no-one hanged at the age of sixteen for decades, it was almost inevitable that the Home Secretary would order a reprieve, and Harold Smith was spared the attentions of the hangman. To me, from a distance of over ninety years, it seems that Harold Smith was guilty of cold blooded murder. The words in his original statement are chilling:

“I stood by the doorway of the bedroom for some minutes, deciding whether to do it or not. At last I touched the trigger.”

There was a long feature article in Thompson’s Weekly News after the reprieve, purportedly written by Smith’s mother. Thompson’s Weekly news was published in Dundee, and the parent company were also proud parents of The Beano. There is little to choose between Mrs Smith’s reported outpourings some of the more unlikely adventures of the Bash Street Kids and Dennis the Menace.

I don’t apportion any blame to Mrs Smith. She clearly was delighted that her son would not be hanged, and being a poor woman,the newspaper’s money would have been welcome, but the article is clearly the work of one of the newspaper’s more inventive hacks and, under the sub-heading reproduced above, contains such comments as:

“Harold was looking exceptionally well, but I noticed that the tears were not far from his eyes. Indeed, l am sure he would have broken down if we had not had our friend with us, Even then, if we had not turned the conversation round to the happy days he had spent on the farm after leaving school, he would not have managed to keep a stiff upper lip.”

“I could not take in what was happening. My poor boy sentenced to die by the hangman’s rope! Oh no! Surely there was some mistake.”

The 1939 register shows that Harold Smith was in Maidstone Prison. We also know that he was released on licence in June 1941, slightly less than ten years since the brutal killing for which was adjudged responsible. He was still younger than either of his victims. He died at the age of 78 in January 1998, in Crewe. The last surviving witness to the tragedy was the child who stood in his cot as the dreadful event took place. Maurice Jackling died in 2003, also at the age of 78.

We know that Holmes Farm was still occupied in 1939, because Harry Dickinson, who farmed there, was the victim of pig-rustling by a couple of his workers. The property was advertised as a vacant possession in April 1945, but I believe it was derelict and had been pulled down by 1950, as in 1952 a property known as New Holmes Farm, built just down the lane, was advertised as “an excellent modern farmhouse and range of buildings, both erected since the war.”

I would like to thank Mick Lake for help with researching this case.

I have been researching and writing about historic Lincolnshire murders for some years,and those wishing to find out more about our county’s macabre past should click this link.

Lincolnshire is England’s second largest county, and its landscape reflects that in its diversity. In the ‘Deep South’, fen and marsh prevail. Drive north from Boston on the A16, though, and as you near East Keal, the southern edge of the Wolds makes a dramatic appearance. From then on, until you reach Louth, the steep valleys and chalk hills provide some of the most dramatic scenery in England. Our story here, though, takes us to the north-west of the county where, in a pleasing symmetry, the land flattens out around Brigg and Gainsborough, and it is among these sometimes bleak fields that the story begins, near the village of Waddingham.

Nothing is visible of Holmes Farm today to anyone other than an archaeologist with ground penetrating radar. Holmes Farm is marked as Waddingham Holmes on old maps, and a visitor in 1931 would have found a lonely 19th century farmhouse. In October of that year, the residents were Robert James Jackling – a tenant farmer – his wife Annie (left), their infant son Maurice, and a sixteen year-old boy called Harold Smith, whose mother was Robert Jackling’s half-brother. Harold was born in 1915, in Scawby, just a couple of miles from Brigg. He was described as a big lad, perhaps not overly bright, and destined for the most laborious kind of farm work. It was later alleged that the relationship between Harold and Robert were strained due to Harold’s inability to complete jobs to his uncle’s satisfaction.

Families in the neighbourhood were very close-knit. William Jackling, Robert’s father, was another farmer, and on the morning of 3rd October he paid a visit to his son and daughter in law. The events of that day were to become national news. The Aberdeen Press and Journal reported:

“Mr Jacklin, senior, who lives at Waddingham, visited the farm early in the morning, and found the place locked up. Forcing an entrance to the kitchen, he saw apparent evidence of an attempt to set the house on fire. The room was full of smoke, and a rug and some straw were burning and smouldering on the floor. He rushed upstairs to his son’s bedroom, and found his daughter-in-law lying in bed shot through the mouth. His son had received a charge of shot in the side of the face, but was still alive. .Besides the bed was a cot containing the couple’s eighteen-month-old baby son, who was crying and calling for ‘Mamma’.”

Annie was beyond help, but Robert was still alive, and it looked as if he had perhaps crawled to the window to shout for help. William Jackling raised the alarm, but with the farm being in such an isolated position, the emergency services took some time to arrive. While Robert was taken to Lincoln County hospital, Superintendent Dolby of Brigg took charge of the scene, and the first question raised by the distraught William Jackling was, “Where is Harold Smith?”

It can have been little comfort to anyone involved, but Annie had obviously died instantly, most likely without even waking up. Robert – who was to die two days later – had suffered grievously. The inquest reported: