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.
THE MOST HORRIFIC of the crimes occurred not on the British mainland, but in the sleepy countryside of County Tyrone, one of the Six Counties of Northern Ireland, in September 1944. The victim, Patricia Wylie was just seven years old. There is something about a child killing that curdles the blood of even the most hardened observer of criminal misdeeds. Private William Harrison was known to the Wylie family, who lived in a cottage near the remote village of Killclopy, and when he called at the house on 25th September, he found Patricia there on her own. She said she had to go into the village to do some shopping for her mother, and Harrison went with her. Patricia never reached the village, however, and after an extensive search her bloodied body – sexually assaulted – was found in a field, casually covered up with hay.
On 3rd December 1944, whilst at home at Honingham Hall, his estate in Norfolk, Teichman (left) heard the sound of gunfire nearby. He went out to confront two poachers (Private George E. Smith of Pittsburgh and Private Leonard S. Wijpacha of Detroit) who were trespassing in the grounds of his estate. Both intruders were American soldiers based at a nearby
He now forced Muriel into some bushes and raped her but surprisingly did not kill her. When she recovered from her ordeal she was able to give a full statement to the police and as a result all the rifles of the American soldiers stationed nearby were examined. Davis’ was found to have been fired and forensic tests matched it to the shell cases found near June’s body. Davis admitted he had been at the scene of the crime but said he had only meant to fire over the heads of the girls. He was court-martialled at Marlborough on the 6th of October for the murder and the rape, both crimes carrying the death penalty under US Military law. He was hanged on the 14th of December, 1943 by Thomas Pierrepoint, assisted by Alex Riley.
fullybooked2017 