Lincolnshire

THE MAN THEY COULDN’T HANG . . . The murder of Sybil Hoy (part 1)

Arnold House (above), in Great Gonerby, was built in 1820 for a local solicitor and JP, and changed hands many times over the decades. After World War II it was bought by Aveling Barford, which was a prominent Grantham firm making heavy vehicles such as road rollers and dumper trucks. The company used the grounds for social and sporting activities, while the house itself, by then known as Arnoldfield, was divided into flats for AB employees. Two such were Mr and Mrs Elliot, originally from the North East, and in 1954, they invited a young woman who they had known ‘back home’ to come and stay with them for a short holiday. Sybil Hoy, from Felling, near Gateshead, was certainly in need of a break, as she had recently broken off her relationship with a man called John Docherty, and he had not taken the separation well.

Sybil (right) was born in the summer of 1930, and grew up with her family in their house in the relatively comfortable Gateshead suburb of Felling. The few contemporary pictures which were published in newspapers at the time of her death show an attractive and confident young woman. At some point after WW2, she was courted by John Docherty, a few years her senior, who worked as a despatch clerk with a local firm. He was not in the best of health, and had been diagnosed with what Victorians called consumption. We now know it as tuberculosis and, despite reported occurrences of the disease within immigrant communities, it has now been conquered by immunisation. Docherty and Sybil became engaged, but at some point in the spring of 1954, Sybil had second thoughts, broke off the engagement and returned to Docherty the ring, and various other gifts.

Sybil worked in the sports section of a Gateshead department store, but In early August 1954, she was invited to spend a few days with the Mrs Elliots, at the flat in Arnoldfield. The intention was for Sybil to spend a few days there, before her parents joined her, and then went on to extend their holiday on the Kent coast. On the morning of 10th August, Sybil offered to walk into Grantham, a couple of miles away, but in those days no great distance, with the Elliot’s son, Kevin. Just after 11.00am, Mrs Elliot heard her son screaming at the communal front door to the flats. As she tried to comfort him, she ran a few yards down the drive, which had once clattered with the wheels of carriages belonging to Grantham’s gentry. What she saw would hang her for the rest of her days.

Lying partly at the edge of the drive and partly under a tree was the body of Sybil Hoy. She was lifeless and covered in blood. The subsequent post mortem found that she had been stabbed nineteen times by something resembling an army bayonet, with four of the wounds penetrating her heart. Police and an ambulance were summoned, but there was nothing to be done for Sybil Hoy. Police immediately began a murder investigation, but a discovery on the nearby railway embankment a little later that day was to add an utterly bizarre note to what was already a gruesome killing.

IN PART TWO a grim discovery, a trial, and a problem for the Home Secretary

August 19, 2024 0

TED LEWIS . . . A Lincolnshire perspective

Alfred Edward Lewis was born in Stretford, Manchester on 15th January 1940, but in 1946 the family moved to Barton upon Humber. Five years later, Lewis passed his 11+ and began attending the town’s grammar school. There, he was fortunate enough to come under the influence of an English teacher called Henry Treece. Treece was born in Staffordshire, but had moved to Lincolnshire in 1939, and although he ‘did his bit’ as an RAF intelligence officer, he was able to make his name during the war years as a poet.

Ted Lewis excelled at both Art and English, and when it came to leaving school, he was desperate to go to Art School in Hull (now the Hull School of Art and Design). His parents thought this idea frivolous and a waste of time, and were determined that he should get ‘a proper job’ locally. Henry Treece interceded on Lewis’s behalf and was able to persuade his parents to let the young man cross the murky waters of the Humber to study.

After leaving the college, it seemed that Lewis was going to make his way as an artist and illustrator, and a book written by Alan Delgado, variously called The Hot Water Bottle Mystery or The Very Hot Water Bottle, can be had these days for not very much money, and the description on seller sites usually adds “Illustrated by Edward Lewis”. That was the first serious money Ted ever made. He moved to London in the early 1960s to further his prospects.

His first published novel was All the Way Home and All the Night Through (1965) and it is a semi-autobiographical account of the lives and loves of art students in Hull. I remember borrowing it from the local library not long after it came out and, looking back, it was a far cry from the novels that would make Lewis’s fame and fortune.

Five years later, Lewis was getting regular script work in television, but now his second novel was published. Its original title was Jack’s Return Home. I believe that to be a reference to a mock Victorian melodrama of the same name, that featured in a Tony Hancock episode called The East Cheam Drama Festival. In Lewis’s book, the main character is Jack Carter, a London gangster returning to his home town to investigate the death of his brother. Re-badged as Get Carter, it was made into one of the finest British films ever made. It was released in March 1970, and Lewis is credited, along with director Mike Hodges, with the screenplay. Incidentally, a hardback first edition of JRH can be yours – a snip at just £3,250 (admittedly with a hand-written note by the author)

Although the film is clearly set in Newcastle, the action in the book takes place in the far less glamorous setting of a ‘steel city’ much closer to where Lewis grew up – Scunthorpe, obviously. Sadly, the town was already regarded as a metaphor for somewhere awful, and the butt of many jokes, so setting Lewis’s story there would probably have been box office suicide.

Lewis wrote more novels, none achieving quite the success of Get Carter, although he returned to the character in his penultimate novel Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon (1977). By this time, however, Lewis was in a self induced spiral of decline, mainly due to alcohol abuse. His final novel, which many critics believe to be his finest was GBH, published in 1980. Here, he unequivocally returns to Lincolnshire, and a bleak and down-beat out-of-season seaside town which is obviously Mablethorpe. The central character is George Fowler, a mobster who has made a living out of distributing porn movies, but has crossed the wrong people, and needs somewhere to hide up for a while. Rather like his creator, Fowler is in the darkest of dark places, and the novel ends in brutal and surreal fashion on a deserted Lincolnshire beach, with the wind howling in from the north sea as Fowler meets his maker in the remains of an RAF bombing target.

With his marriage over and career in ruins, Lewis returned home to Barton, to live with his mother, but his health had gone, and the Grimsby Evening Telegraph ran this melancholy story on 30th March 1982. There is something deeply sad about a man who had the world at his feet, immensely gifted as a writer and artist, and a man whose literary legacy would prove to be immense, being taken by ambulance from a modest semi in Ferriby Road to a ward in Scunthorpe hospital, where he would die a few days later.

So what was the legacy of Ted Lewis? Some critics have dubbed him ‘England’s Albert Camus’. I don’t buy into that, for any number of reasons, one of which is that I have never knowingly been captivated by any book written by the French existentialist, while GBH, to name but one of Lewis’s books, gripped me by the throat and never let go until I had reached the final page. Another description of Lewis is that he was the ‘Godfather of English Noir.’ There isn’t time here to go into what is and isn’t ‘Noir’ in books and films, but let’s settle for a few descriptions, in no particular order: bleakly pessimistic; realistic; violent; deeply flawed characters; full of dark humour.

The more sharp-eyed of you will see that the cover of GBH bears the legend ‘with an afterword by Derek Raymond.’ Raymond (aka Robin Cook) was also self destructive, but he managed to survive until 1994, and left a catalogue of brutal, compassionate and disturbing crime novels, perhaps the best of which is I Was Dora Suarez. There is no evidence that Raymond was influenced by Lewis, but he clearly recognised a kindred spirit. But this article is about Lincolnshire. Lewis’s life – and his greatest novels – are book-ended by the county. He described the grimy and frequently corrupt world of a town dominated by a thriving steel industry (Scunthorpe) in Jacks’ Return Home and – when his personal life was in total disarray – he made his last words play out in GBH, resonating over the often bleak seashores around Mablethorpe, a place he must have visited with his parents when he was young. For George Fowler, however, there was not to be the long walk from the railway station to the beach; no arcades with penny slot machines, not a sniff of the intoxicating sweetness of candy floss, no jingling of bells from the donkey rides, and not a hint of the itchy reassurance of Mablethorpe sand between his toes. All that remained was an almost surreal death, which Lewis described brilliantly, while making sure we readers were never certain about what was real and what was not.

The good folk of Barton upon Humber have, perhaps rather belatedly, chosen to honour their two most famous literary sons. There is a Ted Lewis Centre, and his mentor from back in the day is acknowledged with a blue plaque. For a more detailed account of Ted Lewis’s life, I can recommend Getting Carter by Nick Triplow.

December 28, 2023 0

THREE WEEKS-BLACK CAP-ROPE-HANGED BY THE NECK-FINISHED . . . The murder of Annie Coulbeck, Caistor 1919 (2)

SO FAR: Caistor, North Lincolnshire, October 1919. William Wright (39), a former soldier, is now working in a sawmill in nearby Moortown. He has a reputation as a ne’er-do-well and sometime vagrant, with a long criminal record. He has been in a relationship with Annie Coulbeck, (34). She is carrying his child.

Annie, who lives in a cottage at Pigeon Spring on Horsemarket. has been working as a nanny, looking after the children of Mrs Plummer. On the morning of Wednesday 29th October, Annie has not turned up for work, so Mrs Plummer sends one of her children to Annie’s cottage to see if she was unwell.

Annie Coulbeck had been strangled, and had been dead for some hours, and it goes without saying that her unborn child – some seven months in her womb – had shared its mother’s fate. At the coroner’s inquest, the doctor gave his report:

It was no secret that Annie Coulbeck and William Wright were lovers, and when police visited him at his home in South Dale, Caistor, his admission was astonishingly matter-of-fact:

“Last night, a little after 10 o’clock, I left the Talbot public house. I had a lot of drink and went down to Annie Coulbecks house. I asked her where she had got the brooch from which she was wearing. She said it was her mothers. I told her I did not think it was. I told her I thought it was one of her fancy men’s. She said, “I’m sure it is not, Bill.” I told her I would finish her if she did not tell me whose it was. I strangled her with my hands and left her dead. I put the lamp out and went home.”

The Talbot in Caistor (above) is no longer a pub, but if its walls could talk, they might bear witness to a chilling conversation William Wright had with a fellow drinker, a local chimney sweep.

The umbilical cord is often used as a metaphor for two things being inextricably joined, but it also has a presence in the British legal system, particularly in the case of murdered babies. Criminal history, particularly back in the day, is full of young women being tried for murder after they have killed an unwanted new-born baby. For it to be murder, it has to be established that the infant had an independent existence, and it is clear that the child Annie Coulbeck was carrying had no such thing. However, in my book, William Wright was as guilty of murdering that child – his child – as he was of killing its mother.

Wright, in his drunken estimation that it would take just three weeks from the death of Annie Coulbeck to his appointment on the gallows, was as ignorant of the legal system as he was of the way decent human beings should behave. The law took its rather ponderous course, and after the Coroner’s Inquest and then Magistrate Court, William Wright finally appeared at Lincoln Assizes, before Mr Justice Horridge (left) on Monday 2nd February 1920. It was a perfunctory affair. Wright’s defence lawyers, as they were bound to do, came up with the only possible plea – that Wright was insane. They cited his war experience, and the fact that members of his family had been committed to institutions. Neither judge nor jury were impressed and, as Wright had predicted, hunched over his beer in The Talbot, the judge donned the Black Cap. An appeal was lodged, but failed.

Throughout the legal process, Wright had shown not one iota of remorse, nor did he betray any concern about what awaited him.

Wright was executed at Lincoln Castle on 10th March 1920. He had refused the ministrations of the prison chaplain, and the last face he would have focused on before the hood was placed over his head and he dropped to his death was the grim visage of executioner Thomas Pierrepoint (right), uncle of the more celebrated hangman Albert Pierrepoint, subject of the excellent film (2005) featuring Timothy Spall as the man who hanged, among others, Ruth Ellis and dozens of Nazi war criminals. The corpses of executed criminals at Lincoln Castle were interred in a little graveyard situated on the Lucy Tower. If ever a soul deserved to rot in hell, it is that of William Wright.

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November 27, 2023 0

THREE WEEKS-BLACK CAP-ROPE-HANGED BY THE NECK-FINISHED . . . The murder of Annie Coulbeck, Caistor 1919 (1)

There is an aphorism attributed to George Orwell which goes:

“We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.“

It echoes Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem, ‘Tommy”, where he says:

“For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an` Chuck him out, the brute! ”
But it’s ” Saviour of ‘is country ” when the guns begin to shoot”

In a nutshell, we want our soldiers to be savages when they face the enemy, but except them to revert to civilised and urbane when they walk our peaceful streets, far away from conflict.

This prelude is in no way an excuse for the murder of a woman in the Lincolnshire village of Caistor in the autumn of 1919, but it points to the problems that some former soldiers have when they leave the world of government-endorsed killing, and walk again down peacetime streets.

William Wright was certainly not from an impoverished or brutal background. He was born in 1880, and the 1881 census shows that he was the youngest of three children to Charles Wright, a tailor, and his wife Jamima. He worked for his father for a while in his teens but it is recorded that he joined the army in 1898, and fought in the Boer War. Peacetime clearly didn’t suit him, as between 1907 to 1914 he received 32 convictions, mostly for theft, vagrancy and drunkenness.

1914 came, and with it the chance to turn whatever demons plagued him in the direction of the Boche. His military record was to be no better than his civilian one, however, as In 1916 he was sentenced to death for striking his superior officer. The sentence was commuted to one of five years penal servitude and then further reduced to two years hard labour.

The army was clearly glad to be rid of Wright, and when he returned to Caistor in 1918, he struck up a relationship with Annie Coulbeck. We know relatively little of Annie. We know that she was 34 at the time of her death, was probably born in the nearby village of Stallingborough, and some sources suggest that she was simple minded. More pertinent to this story is that she had the misfortune to meet William Wright, and was pregnant with his child. In October 1919, her daily employment was to look after the children of a Mrs Plummer at her cottage near Pigeon Spring on Caistor’s Horsemarket. The picture below dates from 1908.

This is an extract from a short video about the Horsemarket, and is well worth watching, as it places Pigeon Spring on the photograph.

On the afternoon of 28th October 1919, William Wright came to visit Annie Coulbeck at Pigeon Spring. On the morning of the 29th, Annie Coulbeck had not arrived to look after the children, so Mrs Plumer sent one of her daughters to see if Annie had slept in. What the child found sent shock waves through the peaceful rural community.

TO FOLLOW
A DREADFUL DISCOVERY
AN INNOCENT BROOCH
A SMILING PRISONER
MORE WORK FOR MR PIERREPOINT

November 26, 2023 0

DEATH AT HOLMES FARM . . . A double murder in 1931 (2)

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.

October 22, 2023 0

DEATH AT HOLMES FARM . . . A double murder in 1931 (1)

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:

TO FOLLOW
The search for Harold Smith
Trial
Was justice done?
Aftermath

October 21, 2023 0

‘A PALE FACE AMONG THE RUSHES’ . . . The death of Alfie Wright (part two)

SO FAR: August 1895. Hannah Elizabeth Wright, 23, gave birth to a little boy, Alfred Edward, in November 1893. The boy’s father has disappeared, leaving Hannah to deal with the situation. Alfie has been in the care of a Miss Flear, who lives near Newark, but Hannah can no longer afford to give Miss Flear the money she requires, and has collected the little boy, and returned to Lincoln on the evening of 26th August. The following day, having not returned to their home in Alexandra Terrace the previous evening, she tells her brother and his wife that the boy is still in Newark, and is being put up for adoption.

Foss Dyke is a canal that links Lincoln with the River Trent at Torksey. Some historians insist that it was built by the Romans, while others believe that it dates back to the 12th century. It was along the bank of this ancient waterway, between Jekyll’s Chemical chemical works and the back of the racecourse grandstand, that on the evening of Monday 26th August our story continues. A young man called James Fenton was sitting on a bench with a lady friend, when a woman passed them, walking in the direction of Pyewipe. She was carrying a bundle, but they heard a whimpering sound, and they realised that she was holding a child. It was, by this time almost dark, but when the woman passed them again, this time heading back towards the city, she was empty handed. Thinking this strange, Fenton followed the woman at a distance, but lost her somewhere in the vicinity of Alexandra Terrace. The following morning, Tuesday, a man on his way to work had an unpleasant surprise. He was later to tell the court:

James Fenton had contacted the police with his suspicions, and the discovery of the body confirmed the police’s worst fears. It is not entirely clear how the police knew exactly where to find the mystery woman, but on the Tuesday, they paid several visits to the house at 25 Alexandra Terrace. Hannah Wright, however, was nowhere to be found. She had left that morning, telling her sister-in-law that she was going to visit friends. She did not return until the Wednesday morning, by which time the police had instituted a full scale murder investigation. Hannah confessed to Jane Wright, and a neighbour, Mrs Sarah Close. It was Mrs Close who accompanied Hannah to the police station, but the girl seemed to be under the bizarre misapprehension that if she told the truth she would get away with a ‘telling off’ or, at worst, a fine. She was not to be so fortunate:

The law took its inevitable course. There was a coroner’s inquest, then a magistrate’s hearing, both of which judged that Hannah Wright had murdered her little boy. As was customary, the magistrate passed the case on to be heard at next Assizes. Meanwhile Alfie’s body was laid to rest in a lonely ceremony at Canwick Road cemetery. It is pointless speculating about Hannah’s state of mind, but it is worth reminding ourselves that Alfie had known no father and had seen very little of his mother during his brief sojourn – fewer than 300 days – on earth. If ever there were a case of ‘Suffer the little children’ this must be it.

Whatever the state of Hannah Wright’s mind when she drowned her son, and during her long months before she came to trial, when she finally appeared before Mr Justice Day at the end of November she must have had a cold awakening as to what possibly lay ahead of her. Since September, there had been various intimations in the press that Hannah was, to use the vernacular, “not quite all there” but there was no medical evidence that she was weak minded or mentally deficient. Her defence barrister made a rather odd case, as was reported in The Lincolnshire Echo on Tuesday 26th November 1895:

“The Judge pointed out that the defence was rather an unusual one, namely of a two-fold character, one contention being that the prisoner never committed the crime all, and it she did do so that her mind was unhinged at the time. As to the plea of insanity he did not see that there was the slightest evidence to show that her mind was diseased. The jury retired to consider their verdict at 5.20, and returned into Court after an absence of twenty-seven minutes. They found the prisoner guilty, with a strong recommendation mercy. Prisoner made no reply to the question put to her by the Clerk whether she wished to say anything before sentence was passed. The Judge, who appeared be deeply affected, said the jury had simply discharged their duty, painful though undoubtedly was. With regard to the recommendation to mercy his Lordship said he would wish and beg her not to place undue reliance upon that recommendation. His Lordship then passed sentence of death in the usual manner. Prisoner fainted as she was being led down the dock steps.”

The general public in Lincoln and round about had become very involved in this tragic case, and even before Hannah collapsed on the steps of the dock, a petition was created and with thousands of names on it, presented to the Home Secretary, Sir Matthew White Ridley KCB. Within days, the threat of the hangman’s noose was lifted.

Peter Spence, a distant relative of Hannah, and to whom I am indebted for sharing his research, suggests that this story has something of Thomas Hardy about it, but we would do well to remember that poor Tess (of the D’Urbervilles) is hanged for her crime. Not only did Hannah survive, but she was released from prison in Aylsbury, apparently going straight to London to work as a servant.

Strangely, that is where the story ends. Peter Spence, and that eminent compiler of Lincolnshire crime stories Mick Lake, like me, have found no trace of what became of Hannah. This is unusual, given the amount of information available on modern genealogy websites, but it it is what it is. There are a couple of inconclusive mentions in the 1939 register, but no evidence that these people are ‘our’ Hannah. There is this, but is it feasible that a servant girl could have eventually returned to Lincolnshire and died at the age of 89, leaving the sum of £2552 10s – nearly £47,000 in today’s money? Perhaps that is a mystery for another day.

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

September 16, 2023 0

‘A PALE FACE AMONG THE RUSHES’ . . . The death of Alfie Wright (part one)

Hannah Elizabeth Wright was born on 25 August 1872 to John Wright, an agricultural labourer, and Mary Anne Key in  Kirkby la Thorpe, a tiny village a few miles east of Sleaford. The 1881 census recorded 256 souls.

Hannah was the youngest of five  children, two boys and three girls. Sadly, her mother died when she was four. Her father remarried so she  was brought up by her stepmother. There were few options for young women ‘of humble birth’ in rural communities in those days. It was either work on the land, or go into service – meaning a live-in position with some wealthy family, either as a cook or a general maid. The census in 1891 shows us that Hannah was working in The Manor House at Ewerby, less than two miles from Kirkby. Her employer was Mr William Andrews, a farmer. The Manor House (left) still stands.

By 1893, she had moved further away to the village of Weston, near Newark. It was here that she began a relationship with a local lad and became pregnant. Alfred Edward Wright was born on 3rd November 1893. He was, by all accounts, a healthy child, but his father quickly disappeared from the scene, and became engaged to another woman. This left Hannah in a dire situation. With no other means of support other than her own work, how was she going to bring up Alfie? A solution – of a kind – was found when a Weston woman called Jane Flear offered to take the boy in – for a price.

We know that by 1895 Hannah was working for a family in Branston, south of Lincoln, and had begun another relationship, with a young man called William Spurr, but she kept Alfie’s existence from him. Hannah had already fallen into arrears with her payments for Alfie, but her problems became worse when she received word from Miss Flear that the price for looking after the little boy was to be raised to three shillings and sixpence each week. Using the Bank of England inflation calculator, that would be nearly £38 In modern money, probably more than Hannah earned each week, given that her food and housing would come with the job.

Jane Flear received this letter (facsimile) from Hannah:

Having traveled to Lincoln on the afternoon of 23rd August, Hannah visited her brother and his wife at their house, 23 Alexandra Terrace. All appeared to well, and on the Sunday evening Hannah even brought her young man, William Spurr, round for tea.

Hannah Wright arrived in Weston on the afternoon of Monday 26th August to collect Alfie. Miss Flear had misgivings about handing over the little boy, and thought that Hannah was in something of a disturbed state. When she went to collect the rest of Alfie’s clothes, Hannah said she didn’t want to take them. The three of them, Jane Flear wheeling Alfie in his pram, set off to walk the two miles to Crow Park station, just outside Sutton on Trent. Hannah and Alfie caught the 6.15 train to Retford. Jane Flear never saw Alfie alive again. Hannah eventually returned to the little terraced house in Alexandra Terrace late on the Monday evening,and explained to Jane and William Wright that her little boy was still in Weston, but she had arranged for someone to adopt him permanently. Jane Wright asked her sister in law if she had discussed the situation with William Spurr, but despite Jane telling her that it was wrong to keep back something so important, Hannah was adamant that he was not to be told. They all retired to bed at 11.30 pm. The next morning, at about 9.30 am, Hannah announced that she was going to visit some friends, and would return later.

IN PART TWO

A CONFESSION
A TRIAL
THE BLACK CAP

September 14, 2023 0

TWO FAMILIES, TWO TRAGEDIES. . . The murder of Florence Jackson (part two)

SO FAR: Grantham man Dick Rowland had seen action in the trenches from 1915 until 1918. Unlike his two brothers, he survived, but was wounded and gassed. Spring 1919 found him back in Grantham, aged 29, just another ex-soldier. He had, however, met and fallen for a Fulbeck girl, Florence Jackson. She was ten years his junior and there, I think, lay the problem. She was pretty, fun-loving and with no shortage of local suitors, not to mention dashing officer types from what was to become Royal Air Force College Cranwell. Florence’s mother thought Dick Rowland too old for her daughter, but she could never have envisaged the events of 31st May 1919. It was the day of Caythorpe Feast, an annual event always held on the last Sunday in May. Dick and Florence were there, with hundreds of other local people both young and old. Dick Rowland had become insanely jealous, and every smile or wave Florence gave to some other young man cut him to the quick. He was particularly vexed when Florence decided to share a fairground ride – the wooden swing-boats with some other chaps.

Sometime around 10.00pm, Dick and Florence decided to walk home to Fulbeck. That road, now the A607, was known as the Lincoln Road. Many other people were on that road, but they would have been spread out and it was very dark. I have no idea if there was a moon that night, but one man heard something in the darkness as he rode his bicycle up to Fulbeck. He was later to give evidence at a Coroner’s inquest. This a verbatim report from a local newspaper:

Richard James Nelson, dairyman, Welbourn, spoke of visiting Caythorpe feast on Saturday night last. He saw the deceased girl in the swing boats with a man called Edward Knights. He left the feast about 1045. When he had reached Gascoigne’s gate in the parish of Fulbeck a man called out to him:
“Chummy, stop!”
He stopped, and man who was a stranger asked him to fetch a motorcar from the top as there had been a nasty accident. Witness asked him what it was, and he said:
“A girl has tried to cut my throat and now she has cut her own.”
He noticed the man’s throat was cut and bleeding and he also saw the body of the girl lying on the ground just inside the gateway. Witness attempted to go through the gateway towards the girl. but the man pushed him away and told him to get on his bicycle and fetch a motor car. He then rode off for the police.

There is a horrible irony in that the next people to arrive at the scene were none other than Florence’s older sister and her young man.

Laura Emma Jackson, the deceased’s sister, a land worker employed at Fulbeck Heath, said on Saturday night she was at Caythorpe feast where she saw deceased with Dick Rowland who was courting her. They seemed alright together. Witness left the feast at 10:15 and walked towards home with Percy Graves, a friend. When they got to Gascoigne’s gate she saw a man standing there. He said,
“Mr, Mr, come and look what I have done.”
She told Graves not to go as the man was drunk, but the man came towards them holding out his hands and said,
“Is that Laura?”
Witness replied,
“Yes.”
And he then said,
“I am Dick – I have killed your Flo. Another man wanted her. I have tried to kill myself but could not. Go and tell them at home.”
Witness noticed that Roland had blood down the front of his clothing and was bleeding from the throat. She did not notice her sister. She went home and reported the matter to Mr Palethorpe. Rowland was not drunk but seemed to be rather excited. Witness was at the Grantham statute fair on 17th May with her sister and Rowland. Flo went to speak to some soldiers and Roland asked her to keep an eye on her and watch that she did not go with the soldiers. She told him not to be so silly and that she would not go. Rowland shook his head and remarked,
“Flo’s alright. If I don’t have her I will see no one else does.”
Flo was with the soldiers three or four minutes and then she rejoined Rowland and witness.

The Fulbeck Doctor also gave evidence at the inquest:

Dick Rowland was arrested for the murder of Florence Ann Jackson. The Coroner recommended that he be charged with murder and the case was sent to the Sleaford Magistrates who agreed, and arranged for Rowland to appear at the Summer Assizes in Lincoln. Rowland’s bizarre defence that somehow Florence had received her fatal wounds in some kind of struggle for the razor was abandoned, and his legal team asked for a postponement of the trial so that further investigations could be carried out into the man’s mental health. This delay was granted, and so it was that Dick Rowland appeared before the Lincoln jurors and judge Mr Justice Greer (left) in November 1919. He was found guilty and sentenced to death despite the jury recommending a merciful punishment. There was an immediate appeal against the death penalty, but that was thrown out, with the appeal judge famously opining that Rowland was no more mad than Othello,(the newspaper managing to mis-spell the village name, and relocate it to Essex}

So, Dick Rowland sat in his condemned cell awaiting his fate, probably unaware that he had been compared to one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragic characters. Othello, of course, racked with guilt, stabs himself, which is precisely what Rowland claimed he had tried to do on that fateful evening back in May, but he was to have better luck than the Moor.

In the event, it appears that Dick Rowland was released in April 1935. He married, and the records tell us that he died in Cleethorpes in 1954. Had he become unhinged by his wartime service, a victim of what we now call PTSD? Or had his own chilling words – ” If I don’t have her I will see no one else does.” become a dreadful deed? You must make up your own minds. Incidentally, the fatal spot where Florence died is still there for anyone wishing to stand and contemplate.

Incidentally, a local man, Jonathan Wilkinson has written a novel based on the events I have described. It is very well written, and focuses on what the author believes happened in the months and weeks leading up to Florence’s death. It is available from the Fulbeck Craft Centre (07410 968333)

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

September 3, 2023 0