DEATH IN DORRINGTON . . . A 1922 tragedy (2)

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

February 2, 2023 0

DEATH IN DORRINGTON . . . A 1922 tragedy (1)

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:

IN PART TWO

A DEATH
A FUNERAL
ANOTHER DEATH

February 1, 2023 0

THE SIBSEY MURDER . . . A brutal killing in 1859 (2)

SO FAR: March 1859. An elderly Sibsey farm labourer, William Stevenson, has been found dead in a ditch, his head destroyed by repeated blows from a blunt object. Three local men have been arrested on suspicion of his murder. One has been released without charge, but William Pickett and Henry Carey have been accused of the murder.

Their motive for killing William Stevenson? He was hardly a rich man, but on his return from Boston market he had a few shillings in his pocket and, incredible though it may seem, it was for these pieces of silver that he was repeatedly battered about the head and thrown in a ditch to die.

The sequence of events when people were suspected of murder back in the day was that there would be a coroner’s inquest where the cause of death would be established and – assuming there were suspects identified – a jury would, provided they were convinced that there was a case to answer, send the case on to magistrates. The magistrates court would normally be a repeat version, but with the case focusing on the suspect(s) rather than the victim. The final element in the trilogy was the Assize Court. This would be held four times a year, and almost always in the county town, and presided over by a senior judge. This arrangement meant that key witnesses for both prosecution and defence had to give their evidence three times, the only difference being that in the Assize Court the cross examination by barristers would be more incisive.

So it was that Carey and Pickett, having been in custody since late March finally had their day in court in late July, in front of Mr Justice Williams at Lincoln Assizes. By this time, Pickett had decided his best defence was to claim that he had been a reluctant partner in the fatal enterprise, and he feared Carey’s violence more than he feared justice. Given no other choice, Pickett was reduced to making a counter claim against his associate, but neither the judge nor the jury were convinced. Readers of The Lincolnshire Chronicle of the morning of 29th July were informed:

“Long before the Judge took his seat on the bench this morning, the Court was crowded to excess. Every avenue by which it was hoped that access to it could be gained was also besieged by an anxious crowd. The bench, as yesterday, was filled with ladies, and a hoarse murmur pervaded the court, as of parties expectant of some great exhibition. His Lordship took his seat on the bench precisely at half-past nine o’clock. The prisoners, on their appearance in the dock, presented the same appearance as on the previous day, save that their countenances seemed more anxious and worn. His lordship at once summed up. The pith of his lordship’s address to the jury was, that there could be no doubt,from the confession of both prisoners that they were present on the dreadful occasion, and, therefore, all the evidence given was superfluous. Each prisoner accused the other of striking the blow by which William Stevenson met his death.”

“The learned counsel for Picket bad endeavoured to show that Pickett was merely an accessory after the fact, and he, therefore, went into the evidence against prisoner. He pointed out that Pickett had given two different accounts of the place where he spent the night of the murder. Before proceeding to read Pickett’s statement, his lordship explained the law with respect to such confessions. The jury might believe all or any part of it they pleased. They should also read that part of the evidence which tended to show that the deed was done more than one person. With regard to Pickett’s confession, his lordship remarked that had that prisoner been a mere innocent stander-by while Stevenson was knocked down, he might have interfered, and there would have been two to one. He put it to the jury whether they could believe that he was reduced by terror to the state of inaction he describes. Tbe jury, amid the breathless silence of the crowded court, returned a verdict of GUILTY of WILFUL MURDER against both the prisoners, and the learned Judge, having assumed the black cap, proceeded to pass upon them the sentence of DEATH. The prisoners, who heard their doom with little emotion, were then removed. This concluded the criminal business of the Assizes, and the court rose.”

The hanging of Carey and Pickett on the morning of 5th August 1859, conducted by William Askern and the Horncastle cobbler William Marwood was the the last public hanging at Lincoln.

The names of Carey and Pickett remain inscribed in the judicial records while their victim, William Stevenson, was interred in the churchyard of St Margaret’s Sibsey, a few days after his brutal murder.

Criminals executed at Lincoln were interred with little ceremony in a tiny walled garden in the Lucy Tower. I am grateful for Alan Robinson for allowing me to use his photograph of the the last resting place of Henry Carey and William Pickett.

As a mundane comment on the price of justice, the Stamford Mercury of 21st October 1859 reported:

FOR MORE HISTORICAL LINCOLNSHIRE MURDERS
click on the image below

December 12, 2022 0

THE SIBSEY MURDER . . . A brutal killing in 1859 (1)

In 1859 The Lincolnshire village of Sibsey, just north of Boston, had a population of around 1400. The Sibsey Trader mill had yet to be built, but the railway had arrived in 1848. The 1851 census recorded the names of William Pickett, aged about 13, living with his parents and 9 siblings at Cherry Corner, Sibsey Northlands; Henry Carey, aged 18, lodging with Potter family at Sibsey Fenside, and someone who newspapers later described as ‘a notoriously bad character’, and William Stevenson, aged 57, an agricultural labourer. On the evening of Tuesday 16th March 1859, the lives of these men were to collide, with violent and fatal results for all three.

On the Tuesday morning, Stevenson had left home to go to market, and returned in the evening. He went to *The Ship inn in Sibsey Northlands which, as the name suggests, is a small settlement to the north of Sibsey. Stevenson’s home was in Stickney Westhouses, about a mile away from the pub and, after a convivial evening of drinking and smoking, he left The Ship at about 10.30 pm to walk the mile or so to his home. Westhouses is more or less a single track road these days and, on a winter’s night would still be bleak and forbidding. But this was a warm August night, and Stevenson, no doubt warmed from within by an evening drinking, would have had little fear of being out on his own on a lonely country road. He never reached his home.

*It is not clear if The Ship was a different pub from The Boat which is marked on old OS maps. The Ship was destroyed by fire in the late 1960s, and was owned by the Soulby, Son & Winch brewery.

Beside Westhouses Road ran a small drain, described in later court reports as ‘a sewer’. At a coroner’s inquest on Friday 19th August a local woman, Sarah Semper, testified:

What followed the grim discovery was recorded at the subsequent Coroner’s Inquest.

“A messenger was despatched for Dr. Moss, of Stickney, and Dr. Smith, of Sibsey, and another to the police, with information of the occurrence. The deceased’s son then commenced inquiries as to where his father had spent the previous evening, and on ascertaining that he had been at the Ship, proceeded there, and on going into the tap-room about seven o’clock in the morning, saw Carey and Pickett sitting there drinking beer; they had been there about hour: he sat opposite them for a minute or two and noticed spots of blood on their boots; he made no remark, but went and gave information of his suspicions to Sergeant Jones, who apprehended Sands ( a young man who was subsequently absolved from any blame) at half-past ten at his father’s house in bed; Pickett about half-past one, and Carey a little later in the the Ship. Sands stated that he slept in his father’s hovel, and on it being inspected it was ascertained that some one had slept there.“

“Pickett stated that he slept in his father’s stable, and Carey came to him at five o’clock in the morning, and they afterward, went to the Ship together. From the evidence of Sergeant Jones, and from inspection of the locality, it appears that the deceased had only gone a short distance after he left the public-house, when some person, crossed the road (which is a silt one, showing footmarks) from the opposite side to that where he was walking, and overtook him, and struck him a violent blow on the head, which felled him to the ground.”

“A struggle then ensued, and having been ultimately overpowered, after his pockets were emptied, the deceased was dragged to the side of the road, and thrown into a deep ditch: out of this he appeared to have scrambled, and got up the bank, and through the hedge, leaving traces of blood upon the bank and hedge, and got into an adjoining field. The murderers seeing their victim recovering, and doubtless fearing that he might identify them if he got away, crossed over the ditch by bridge a little higher up, and overtook the deceased in the field, where with hedge stakes they finished their bloody work, literally battering his skull and dashing out his brains, the ground about showing the following morning strong evidence of the murderous attack, patches of blood, pieces of skull and hair lying about They then carried the murdered man short distance and threw him over a hedge into the ditch where he was found.”

IN PART TWO

Trial, retribution, and a job for the Horncastle cobbler

December 11, 2022 0

THE SANDRINGHAM MYSTERY . . . Between the covers

I found this novel intriguing in two ways. Firstly, the action takes place on my home turf. I live in Wisbech (well, someone has to) and Spalding, Sutterton, Sutton Bridge (just over the border in Lincolnshire), and Sandringham in West Norfolk are all very familiar. Christina James (real name Linda Bennett) writes:

“I was born in Lincolnshire, in England, and grew up in Spalding. I’ve had a lifelong fascination with the South Lincolnshire Fens, with their huge skies, limitless landscapes and isolated communities; I have always been interested in the psychology of the people who have lived there over the centuries. I have now put some of this interest and fascination into the fictional world of Detective Inspector Tim Yates.”

I believe she now lives in Leeds, but the Lincolnshire (South Holland is the administrative district) landscape is as vivid as if she were just still standing there.

Secondly, she employs two narrative viewpoints. The first is centred on DI Tim Yates – obviously one of the good guys – but the second is narrated by a rich industrialist called Kevan de Vries, and we are not sure if he is on the side of the angels or the devils.

Kevan de Vries lives in a palatial country home called Lauriston, in the village of Sutterton. Almost by accident (police are investigating a suspected burglary) a package of forged UK passports is discovered in the cellar, but de Vries claims he has no knowledge of how they got there. Then, a more shocking discovery is made, in the shape of skeletons which, when examined, appeared to be those of black people. They have been there since the 19th century.

For all his riches, de Vries had not been able to buy happiness. His wife Joanna has terminal cancer, and their autistic son attends a boarding school in nearby Sleaford. The couple spend much of their time on the Caribbean island of St Lucia, while the business of running the huge processing plant in South Lincolnshire is largely left to a manager called Tony Sentance who, surprisingly, de Vries loathes and abhors. So, does Sentance have some kind of hold on de Vries?

Tim Yates’s life is made even more complicated when the remains of a young woman are found on the Queen’s estate at Sandringham, across the border in Norfolk. It should be none of Yates’s business, except that the dead woman was wearing branded work clothing from Kevan de Vries’ factory. Meanwhile, a mysterious diary dating back to Victorian times, and found in the cellar at Lauristan, reveals that the controversial colonial politician Cecil Rhodes had connections with the family who owned the house at the time.

When Yates investigates the connection between the girl whose remains were concealed on the royal estate and the de Vries factory, he comes up against a wall of silence which convinces him that the dead girl was caught up in a trafficking and prostitution racket linked to the huge numbers of Eastern Europeans who came to work in the area during the years of *freedom of movement.

*The tens of thousands of people from Poland and the Baltic states who arrived in Eastern England in the 2000s transformed towns like Boston, Spalding and Wisbech. The owners of food processing factories and farmers grew rich, and the immigrants found they could earn far more for their labours than they could back home. There was a downside to this, in that along with the hard working immigrants came unscrupulous people who made fortunes exploiting cheap labour, renting out multiple-occupancy homes and – worst of all – establishing a thriving slavery and prostitution network.

This is an enjoyably complex novel which works on one level as an excellent police procedural while, on another, takes a long hard look at how powerful people – both now and in times past – exploit the most vulnerable in society. The Sandringham Mystery is published by Bloodhound Books and is available now.

November 17, 2022 1

DEATH IN DONINGTON . . . A Lincolnshire murder, 1897 (2)

SO FAR: It is 25th May, 1897. Donington Farmer Joseph Bowser has been in bed most of the day and has been drinking heavily. Late in the afternoon he staggers downstairs, in a foul mood, and attacks his wife Susan, kicking her brutally. She staggers to her feet and seeks refuge in the doorway of a building used to rear calves. The Bowsers’ servant, Elizabeth Berridge, sketched later (below) by a court reporter, witnessed what happened next.

Lister, and a young woman called Eliza Drury were distant relatives, and had been staying with the Bowsers. It remained a matter of some controversy that Lister had apparently made no effort to restrain the murderous Bowser, while being fully aware of what he was about to do. The Bowsers’ farmhouse was isolated, there were no telephones, and information only traveled as fast as someone could run, or a horse could gallop. Let The Lincolnshire Echo take up the story:

Dr. E. W. Jollye next gave evidence. He was called between 5.30 and 6 on the evening in question, and was asked to go Bowser’s directly. He, asked what was the matter, and was told Bowser had shot his wife, and that it was thought she was dead, but he was wanted to go and see. On arriving he saw the girl who fetched her master, who came out, to meet him. On witness saying “What is the matter?” Bowser replied, “You’ll see, she is there.” He examined deceased and while doing so Bowser stood close by, and kept saying over and over again “She has tantalised me.” Bowser further said “I have done it, and I am ready to go when they fetch me.”

“The charge had entered the skull just over the right eye and in a mass, that was, the shots had not spread. The charge went downward and to the left, coming out at the nape of the neck on the left side. The socket the eve was completely smashed, the brains scattered on the door, and there was a deal of blood under the head. The bones on the top of the head were all broken, though he would not say the skull was completely shattered. The cause of death was the gun-shot wound. The shots had made a clean way. By Mr. Crawford: He found one recent bruise just on the right buttock, and other smaller ones close to, apparently connected. There was a smaller bruise on the left buttock, but nearer the centre line of the body. There were other discolourations of the skin, but these had accrued after death. He would give no opinion as to the cause the bruises; they might nave been caused by a fall on a hard substance.”

“Bracebridge Seward, labourer, said that on the afternoon of the day question, as he was passing along the road, he saw Bowser kick his wife very badly twice. Bowser then went to the tumbril, and leaned over it for some two or three minutes, and then groaned out. saving the woman. “You –,” and went to the house. Witness heard no report of gun, having gone then. The woman had a difficulty in getting up, and went to the fowl-house in a “staggery” manner, which led him to think she was rather intoxicated.”

Joseph Bowser was quickly convicted of murder by the local magistrates and packed off to Lincoln to await trial at the next Assizes. Meanwhile Susan Bowser was interred in Donington churchyard.

On Wednesday 7th July Joseph Bowser was found guilty at Lincoln Assizes by the judge, Baron Pollock, and sentenced to death. An artist made sketches of some of those present.

Joseph Bowser was executed at Lincoln Prison on Tuesday 27th July 1897.

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November 8, 2022 0

DEATH IN DONINGTON . . . A Lincolnshire murder, 1897 (1)

Susan Coates was born in November 1853 in the village of New Bolingbroke. At the age of 18, she gave birth to a son – to be called Henry Coates-Harrison. The double-barreled surname was not a sign of nobility, but rather that the boy’s father was a local farmer called Edward Harrison. Three years later, the couple “did the decent thing” and married on 19th October 1874, in the church of St Andrew, Miningsby. I imagine that it must have been a Victorian church, as it was declared redundant and demolished in 1975. A medieval building would not have suffered that fate.

The 1881 census has the three of them plus Edward’s elderly father – living in what the document describes as ‘Enderby Allot”. Short for allotment, possibly? No matter. Edward Harrison did not live to complete the next census, as he died in 1884. The farm did not pass on to Susan, which suggests that they were tenants. It seems that in widowhood she took up a position as housekeeper to another local farmer, Joseph Bowser. She married him in December 1886. Bowser’s history has been difficult to pin down, for one or two reasons. The first is that when the census records were digitised, his name was misread as “Beezer”, which accounts for his near invisibility. Secondly, there is another Joseph Bowser, also a farmer, and also living in the area, but he seems to be a much younger man than “our” Joseph, who was born in 1854, in Sibsey. The 1891 census has him living in Northorpe, a hamlet just north of Donington, and his wife is named as Susanah. He was something of a local dignitary, and was on the *Board of Guardians in Spalding.
*The 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act put an end to out relief, grouping parishes together into legislative bodies called Poor Law Unions. Each was administered by a board of guardians who would oversee the running of a workhouse.

Bowser was however, a volatile sort of man, as a newspaper later describes.

“Bowser was a familiar figure market days, and every regular attendant knew him. Many are the stories that are being retailed in illustration of his excitable nature and violent temper. The general opinion would appear be that he was the worse for drink at the time, and was a common thing for him to indulge freely before he left Boston on market days, when he would drive away at break-neck speed down West-street and to Sleaford-road. The use of a gun as argument appears have been a favourite one with Bowser, as it is stated he on one occasion shot a valuable horse that was rather lively in the field, and which he could not capture, and another time a greyhound did not readily obey his commands, and its career was put an end to in equally summary and untimely manner.”

Despite much searching for clues, I have been unable to identify for certain which of Northorpe’s farms was run by Bowser. I do know that he was a tenant of the principal local landowner, Captain Richard Gleed, of Park House. My best guess is that it was one of the farms near Hammond Beck Bridge.

By 1897, the relationship between Joseph Bowser and his wife has seriously deteriorated. Susan’s son, now 26 had left and was living in Lincoln, and Bowser’s behaviour was frequently affected by drink. The Lincolnshire Echo of Thursday 27th May reported:

“His wife had left him for short time on several occasions owing to his treatment, and had often sought refuge the house of Mrs. Roe*, at the lane end, but Bowser would go there and smash the windows, Mrs. Rowe after a time dare not shelter her.”

*The Roe family are listed next to the Bowsers on the 1891 census return, in the vicinity of Hammond Beck Bridge.

Whatever the demons were that drove him to seek comfort in the bottle, they were particularly vindictive on Tuesday 25th May, 1897. He had risen at the usual time, but thought better of it, and returned to his bed with a bottle of whisky. Later on in the afternoon, in the grip of drink, he staggered from his bed and went downstairs. A newspaper reported what happened next:

“Towards evening, the only people in the house at the time were Bowser and his wife and a servant girl named Berridge. Two visitors were staying at the place – a Mr. Lister, of Mavis Enderby, near Spilsby, aud Miss Barber of Wyberton – but they had gone out for a walk when the quarrel commenced. From a statement by the servant girl, it appears that Mrs. Bowser had been engaged with her domestic duties more or less during the day. In the afternoon, according to custom, she was preparing some chicken food, and about this time Bowser left the house, and coming up to his wife, said,
“What are you mixing that for?“ and she said
“For the chickens.”
Bowser then began call his wife names and otherwise insult her, but she took no notice, and walked round to the front the house. Bowser, however, followed her into the home held, where he kicked her, and she fell to the ground. He again kicked her while in this position. It was clear that Mrs. Bowser was hurt, for she failed to rise. In the meantime her husband had returned to the house. Mrs. Bowser length got up, and walked with difficulty to the calf-house where she supported herself near the door.”

IN PART TWO

GUNSHOTS
A FUNERAL
A TRIAL
A DATE WITH MR BILLINGTON

November 6, 2022 0

MARY ANN GARNER . . . A life and death (2)

SO FAR: March 1891. Mary Ann Garner, a 32 year-old widow, is living with her three children and teenage step son in a tiny end-of-terrace cottage in Stanley Place, Lincoln. She has been in a relationship with Arthur Spencer, a 22 year-old pork butcher. He has asked her to marry him, but she has refused. Spencer has not taken kindly to the snub.

On the evening of Monday 30th March Arthur Spencer arrived at 19 Stanley Place. He knocked at the door, and Mary Ann’s step son, John Henry Garner answered the knock. The subsequent conversation was later reported in court:
Mary Ann said, “Who’s there?”
“It’s me,” answered Spencer. (Earlier, Spencer had threatened to shoot Mary Ann and then himself if she wouldn’t marry him. She had not taken him seriously.)
She called out, “Have you got that pop-gun?”
Spencer replied, “No.”
Mary Ann said, “Let him in, John.”

At a court hearing, it was revealed that Mary Ann, despite appearing not to take Spencer’s threat seriously had thought of contacting the police. Spencer had previously lodged at the house, and she assumed that the young man had come back to collect his clothes and belongings. The sequence of events that followed was reported in a newspaper.

Mary Ann was, sadly, beyond medical help, and she died in the small hours of the Tuesday morning. Spencer had been true to his word, and turned the gun on himself. It is debatable whether he exhibited the same fatal intent, however, as although he was taken to hospital, he was well enough to appear in court within a few days, charged with the murder of Mary Ann Garner.

At the subsequent coroner’s inquest, the effect of Spencer’s bullets was revealed:

“There is not much to add to the details published yesterday of the dreadful tragedy at Lincoln, except perhaps that later information only tends to intensify the horror which was felt at the cold-blooded premeditation of the murderer, for it was found at the post-mortem examination held on the body of the unfortunate victim that her assailant had fired four shots at her from the revolver. Two of these did no injury beyond causing superficial wounds on the woman’s body, but one fired into her breast and another at her back were both serious wounds. Either of them would have proved fatal.”

The melancholy sequence of events that follows a murder took their course. Mary Ann Garner was buried in Canwick Road cemetery on 3rd April, 1891. Arthur Spencer was brought before a coroner’s inquest, then the magistrates’ court, and finally the Assizes Court at Lincoln in July, where he appeared before Mr Justice Roland Vaughan Williams (below left), an uncle of the celebrated composer. The conclusion was inevitable, and on Tuesday 28th July, Arthur Spencer paid the ultimate price for killing Mary Ann Garner. The hangman was James Berry (below right)

The Gods of Misfortune had not finished their business with Mary Ann’s family, however. On Friday 28th June 1895, a newspaper ran this story:

It is a sad reflection on life that most murderers are men, and their victims are frequently women. The women should not be forgotten in Lincolnshire or anywhere else. Click the names below to read the stories of Lincolnshire women who met their deaths at the hands of men. By doing so, you will not bring them back to life, but at least they will not be forgotten. They are in chronological order according to when they were killed.

Louisa Hodgson
Louisa Hay
Mary Ann Garner
Harriet Rushby
Mary Eliza Bell
Ellen Kirk
Lucy Lingard
Sarah Ann Smith
Catherine Gear
Ivy Dora Prentice
Minnie Eleanor Kirby
Janice Holmes

October 7, 2022 0

MARY ANN GARNER . . . A life and death (1)

Mary Ann Elizabeth Witrick (or Witterick) was born in Wereham, Norfolk in 1857. Her baptism (above) is recorded in the village church (below) as taking place in 1859. Her parents, John and Ann (née Rust) were poor, hard-working and, like so many other families across the land, produced children on a regular basis. There was no contraception other than abstinence, and child mortality tended to keep a lid on the birth-rate.

Her life was to end, violently, in a Lincoln terraced house on the evening of 31st March 1891. We know that the family were still in Wereham in 1861, but the remainder of her youth – and where she spent it – remains something of a mystery. We do know that in 1880, she married a Lincoln widower, Henry Garner. Garner’s wife Charlotte (née Foster) had died in 1879. They had one son, John Henry, who had been born on 23^rd April 1875. Mary Ann and Henry went on to have three children, Arthur Garner (b1882) Ernest Witterick Garner (b1883) and Ada Florence Garner (b1886).

What was to be a run of misfortune for Mary Ann Garner began in 1889, with the death of her husband. He died on 19^th August 1889, in Lincoln Lunatic Asylum, Bracebridge (above). ‘Bracebridge’ was a potent word in Lincolnshire, certainly when I was growing up. I spent many hours being looked after by my grandmother in Louth, and when I played her up (which was frequently) she didn’t mince her words. “You’ll have me in Bracebridge, you little bugger!”

Henry Garner had just turned 40. I can only speculate on his cause of death. One possibility might be, given his age, was what was euphemised as GPI (General Paralysis of the Insane) or Paresis. When researching family history one has to be prepared for unpleasant surprises, as was the case with my great grandfather. He died in an asylum, of Paresis. It is actually the final and fatal stages of syphilis. The disease could be contracted when young, but then the visible symptoms would disappear, only for the disease to return later in life, manifesting itself as delusions of grandeur, erratic behaviour, brain inflammation and, finally, death.

It is unlikely that Henry Garner left his widow very much by way of an inheritance. The early spring of 1891 found her in a tiny end-of-terrace, 19 Stanley Place, pictured below as it is now. To make ends meet, she was taking in washing and, according to a newspaper report, was also taking in lodgers. This is scarcely credible from a modern viewpoint, looking at the size of the house, but that was a very different time in terms of privacy and living space.

At some point after the death of her husband, Mary Ann met a young man called Arthur Spencer. He was ten years her junior and came originally from Blyth in Nottinghamshire. His trade was pork butcher. For a time, he lodged at 19 Stanley Place, and one must assume that he shared Mary Ann’s bed. He asked her to marry him, but she refused, saying they were better off apart. After this, he left the house, and went back to live over the shop where he worked. Spencer was clearly besotted with Mary Ann, and on the evening of Sunday 29th March, he returned to Stanley Place and told her that if she wouldn’t marry him, he would shoot her and then turn the gun on himself. Mary Ann did not take him seriously, and sent him packing. The following evening, 30th March, Spencer came again to see Mary Ann. A newspaper reported, rather cryptically:

“They appear to have gone upstairs together, leaving the eldest child, a boy of 14, in the kitchen, the other children being in bed.”

What happened next was to send a shudder or revulsion through both the citizens of Lincoln, and cities, towns and villages across the land.

IN PART TWO
Gunshots
Trial and retribution

October 7, 2022 0