Frances Pacey

SO FAR: Dorrington, Lincolnshire, early September 1922. A young man called George Robinson, rejected by his former sweetheart, Frances Pacey, has attacked her in her bedroom in her mother’s house, slashing her throat. He has run off to his own house, and cut his throat. Both have been taken to hospital in Lincoln, fifteen miles away. Despite the best efforts of the surgeons, Frances succumbs to her wounds. The Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer carried this report in the inquest on the death of Frances Pacey:

Frances’s funeral, for whatever reason, was a lonely affair:

George Robinson was either lucky – or unlucky. I suppose there are arguments for both statements. He was lucky in the sense that his self-inflicted wounds were either half-hearted, or perhaps inefficient. Whatever the case, he made a full recovery. He was unlucky in the sense that had he died in his own bed on that September day. he would have been spared the subsequent court appearances throughout the autumn of 1922, and more dramatically, he would not have met his death on a chilly December morning within Lincoln prison.

It was all quite simple. George Robinson murdered his former sweetheart. The customary route for defence barristers when faced with the clear and obvious guilt of their client, was to plead that he (very rarely ‘she’) was insane at the time. A very unscientific guess, after researching many of these cases, is that the ploy worked in scarcely two out of ten cases. George Robinson, after months in the cells, was finally brought to trial at the Autumn Assizes in Lincoln. Presiding over the court was Mr Justice Lush (left) (who was to retire from his High Court duties a few years later, due to failing hearing). George Robinson’s defence fell on deaf ears – perhaps literally – and he was sentenced to death. Later, an appeal was lodged with the Home Secretary, but it was rejected.

In a unique circumstance, two Lincolnshire men were sent to the gallows in the same Assizes. Robinson’s fellow murderer was none other than Frank Fowler, killer of another eighteen year-old girl, and you can read about that case by clicking this link. It was two for the price of one on the morning of 13th December 1922, when the formidable Thomas Pierrepoint (right, Uncle of Albert) carried out his morning’s work with chilling efficiency.

FOR MORE LINCOLNSHIRE MURDERS, CLICK THIS LINK

If ever a Lincolnshire village merited the description ‘sleepy’, it might be Dorrington. A few miles north of Sleaford, it sits between today’s B1188 and the railway line between Peterborough and Lincoln.

In the late summer of 1922, like thousands of other towns and villages across Britain, Dorrington was making its way in the uncertain world that followed the Great War. Tiny though the village was, it had still lost eleven of its sons in that conflict. There is a Percy Robinson on the memorial, but there is no evidence to suggest he was related to the families in this story. Life, like elsewhere, had resumed its natural rhythm of the seasons.

Frances Pacey lived with her mother and father, but she had retained her mother’s surname rather than taking that of her stepfather – Robinson. It is one of the ironies of this story that her father – and her younger brother – were called George Robinson, but it was another George Robinson who would intervene in her life with tragic consequences. This George Robinson was of an age to have served in the Great War but, as fellow researchers will testify, it is no easy business to track men who survived the war. He had been courting Florence Pacey for some time, but in April 1922, she had decided that she and George were, to use the modern phrase, no longer ‘an item’.

Robinson was devastated. Four months went by, and every day was a torment for Robinson, as his pleas for the relationship to be restored fell on deaf ears. On the morning of Tuesday 5th September 1922, his despair at being rejected spilled over into a brutal madness. The Boston Guardian, later that week reported what had happened: