A Grim Almanac of Nottinghamshire E-Book

Kevin Turton

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 246

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2009

Beschreibung

In 1826 'resurrection men' stole thirty bodies from the graveyard of St Mary's Church in Nottingham to sell to unscrupulous medical establishments in London. It emerged they had been shipping their cargo to the capital in wicker baskets booked aboard stagecoaches, but they were never caught. In 1908 Mansfield tattooist Arthur Scott attacked a customer who refused to pay his bill. Scott tracked his quarry down after two days and attempted to shoot him. He failed, but it didn't take the police long to find Scott - the only tattooist in Mansfield. On 7 June 1865 Thomas Whittaker left the bar of a Newark pub to visit the toilet in the backyard. As he returned he slipped from the top of a flight of wooden stairs and fell head first into a water butt. He drowned. When Retford eccentric John Clifton died in 1816 he left a deadly legacy. He had a life-long fascination for fireworks and made them for his friends. While sorting through John's things his sister found a tin of black powder, which she thought was worthless, and threw it on the fire. The resulting explosion killed her and demolished the house. A Grim Almanac of Nottinghamshire is a collection of stories from the county's past, some bizarre, some fascinating, some macabre – all absorbing. Revealed here are the dark corners of Nottinghamshire, where witches, body snatchers, highwaymen and murderers have stalked. Within the Almanac's pages we plumb the depths of past despair and peer over the rim of that bottomless chasm where demons lurk. Author Kevin Turton has pored over the historic records of the county to bring together these extraordinary accounts of past events.

Leseprobe

A GRIM ALMANACOF

NOTTINGHAMSHIRE

A GRIM ALMANACOF

NOTTINGHAMSHIRE

KEVIN TURTON

First published 2005

This edition published 2009

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2013

All rights reserved

© Kevin Turton, 2005, 2013

The right of Kevin Turton to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7509 5315 3

Original typesetting by The History Press

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

JANUARY

FEBRUARY

MARCH

APRIL

MAY

JUNE

JULY

AUGUST

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

NOVEMBER

DECEMBER

Mansfield Cemetery.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am indebted to the following, without whom this book would never have been completed, let alone packed with so many grim tales of the past: the staff of Nottingham Local Studies Library, who pointed me in the right direction and gave me access to information I never realised existed, the coffee-bar team on the second floor who kept me going with copious cups of tea and provided a hot lunch when it was so desperately needed; Newark Library, where nothing was ever too much trouble and the staff were tireless in their help; Mansfield Local Studies Library, where access to information was never a problem and where local knowledge proved invaluable; and lastly the hundreds of newspaper reporters who, over the last three centuries, meticulously recorded the events of daily life that so enthralled the readership of the Newark Advertiser, the Nottingham Journal and the Nottingham Evening Post. Without them many of the stories recorded here would never have seen the light of day and investigative writers like myself (and others before and since), would have found our research all the more arduous. Of course I also have to thank those archivists of the past who had the foresight to realise that newspapers would have such a real and necessary place in history. In previous centuries, of course, it was considered necessary for journalists to record detail in great depth, allowing us much more than a glimpse into history. So intense are the feelings invoked in me when I read of an event from the dim and distant past that I feel the ghosts stirring, particularly where they suffered some great tragedy. For a brief moment, in my mind’s eye, the people whose lives I write of live again, albeit briefly, and the past, no matter how bizarre, macabre, murderous or grim, becomes very real. Each and every personal event recorded in this almanac is true. The people who populate this book lived and breathed their way through the centuries, their anonymity stripped away by an army of scribes whenever their lives entered the public arena.

My thanks also go to the many authors past and present whose work has aided my own. They include John Darrell The Nottinghamshire Exorcist by Frank Earp; Mansfield in the Eighteenth Century and Historic Mansfield by A.S. Buxton; Facts and Fictions by John Potter Briscoe; A Nottinghamshire Christmas by John Hudson; A History of Newark On Trent by Cornelius Brown; Nottinghamshire in the Civil War by Alfred C. Wood; Brothers at War by Robin Brackenbury; The Nottingham Date Book, Of Bridles and Burnings by E.J. Burford and Sandra Shulman; The Encyclopaedia Of Executions by John J. Eddleston; The Art of Mystery and Detective Stories, by Peter Haining; and Ghosts and Legends of Nottinghamshire, by David Haslam.

Every attempt has been made to trace and contact the original owners of all images used in this book where relevant. If copyright has inadvertently been infringed, copyright holders should write to the publishers with full details. Upon copyright being established, a correct credit will be incorporated into future editions of the book. All pictures are from the author’s collection unless otherwise stated.

Mansfield Cemetery.

INTRODUCTION

The enduring popularity of crime, murder and all things grim is one of the indisputable features of literature past and present. People have always held a particular fascination for the genre that creates mystery and mayhem. Since the days of the penny broadsheets sold at public executions to eager crowds of spectators, the public at large has almost always thrilled to stories about the darker side of life. Murder, manslaughter, witchcraft and the macabre have formed the basis of some of the best-selling novels in history, and when fact mimicked fiction people often took to the streets, filled the courtrooms and jostled in front of public scaffolds. Whether we like it or not, a part of the human psyche seems unable to condemn and ignore the evil side of human nature which we know to be wholly unacceptable to any civilised society. Perhaps it is that very fact that creates the fascination. We know it should never happen, but we also know that it does and because it does, we want to understand it better. We seem to have a voracious appetite for all things criminal and if a story errs on the side of the ghoulish then so much the better. If it were the opposite, of course, we would never have followed the exploits of Sherlock Holmes or delved into the mind of Edgar Allan Poe, and would never have watched The Exorcist at the cinema.

History records that this is nothing new, and confirms that there is nothing sinister about us as human beings. It has been going on for centuries but probably developed in a literary sense during the Victorian period, when society was obsessed by crime and justice – though some of that justice was rough in the extreme. Penny dreadfuls, penny bloods, the Police Gazette, broadsheets newspapers giving comprehensive coverage of murder trials, the last letters of the condemned and the final confessions of those about to die were gobbled up by an eager public. Our sensibilities may have changed – we are no longer Victorian in outlook and our views on crime and punishment have certainly developed – but our curiosity about all things evil has not.

Thousands upon thousands have visited Madame Tussaud’s famous waxworks since it opened in 1835 but not just to see the faces of the famous. Many visitors were equally fascinated by the images of notorious murderers and the dark terrors of the Chamber of Horrors. Thousands more have read the numerous books that have been written about some of Britain’s most infamous men, while Hollywood has created its own library of all things grim and grisly. Fame, it seems, is often granted to those who perpetrate the most deviant acts of violence, although not to the executioners who (until 1964) enforced the penalty of the law.

Mansfield Cemetery.

In 1924 John Ellis retired without a pension. He had been Britain’s executioner for twenty-three years, and had taken part in 203 executions. The man who had stood on the scaffold with Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen in November 1910 was shunned by the government that had employed him. Despite his role in society he was relatively unknown outside his native Rochdale, where he ran a barber’s shop. He became more a source of curiosity than celebrity. People wanted to know of him but not necessarily about him. They would visit his shop, invite him to give lectures and flock to his seaside town demonstrations of the British method of execution. But of his life, both past and present, they knew very little and asked even less. So when he committed suicide, in September 1932, at the age of fifty-eight, it was perhaps not unexpected. What ought to have been remarked upon was the fact that neither the Home Office nor the Prison Commissioners sent a representative to his funeral.

In my research over the years I have often thought how bizarre it is that men like Ellis never really received any recognition.Their names are often known – Calcraft, Billington, Baxter, Pierrepoint – but little else, and I have come to the conclusion that perhaps that is how it ought to be. Notoriety is reserved for the criminal, while anonymity should protect and conceal those who operate the mechanism of the law.

We want to explore the causes, the motives, the people and the events that led up to those dark and deadly deeds that populate our murky past – and the more mysterious and sinister the better. We want to know about witches and warlocks, riots, disasters, unusual funerals, notable lives, executions and murder. The more extraordinary the behaviour, the more our interest is aroused.

This, of course, was realised many years ago and seized upon by authors such as Wilkie Collins, who created the first truly atmospheric mystery in his novel The Woman in White. Charles Dickens used it to great effect in Barnaby Rudge, and Edgar Allan Poe in ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’. From this came the detective figure, the man who solved the most baffling of crimes. Everyone is familiar with Sherlock Holmes, the fictional character who far outshone his creator, but there have been many others. Since the early nineteenth century writers have been creating stories populated by fictional characters whose job it was to uncover some dreadful murderer or solve an impossible crime. Many of these authors, whose names are long since forgotten, threaded real crimes into their narratives, which added realism to their stories and captivated a willing readership. As the years went by readers became more discerning and, as television replaced books, demanded ever more realism. Fiction, therefore, has now begun to mirror truth perhaps in more ways than it ever did in the past.

This book therefore is a journey through a collection of truths, a journey that, no matter how bizarre or gruesome, is as enlightening as it is engrossing. The people in the following pages all lived. No fiction embellishes the facts and every story, whether gruesome, bizarre, macabre or strange, is true. This is why Robin Hood, perhaps Nottingham’s most famous citizen, is not to be found here. This omission is deliberate, not because he has no place in Nottingham’s rich past but simply because I could find no dark and sinister side to the man. So I apologise in advance to any that seek him here; his past has been far too well guarded to be uncovered now and is perhaps best left hidden by the misty wreaths of time.

This ‘Grim Almanac’ is the product of many hours of research, during which I have thumbed my way through numerous archives covering murder, execution, coroners’ reports and some sensational newspaper reportage. In a comprehensive investigation I have blown away the dust of centuries to reveal Nottingham’s dark and sinister past. Each day in this almanac exposes a grim story from the county’s murky past, rarely spoken of and hardly ever published. This is your chance to meet some of those who peopled that past. hope you enjoy the journey – and above all have a good read.

JANUARY

Trent Bridge, Nottingham, c. 1930.

1 JANUARY1842 The inquest opened at Mansfield into the death of Mary Hallam, aged 20. Her body had been discovered by her own father inside the workshop of a man he knew as Samuel Moore. She was lying on the floor in front of an open fire. Her throat had been slashed open some hours earlier and according to medical opinion she had died almost instantly. Moore, a shoemaker, was later found drinking in a nearby pub and freely admitted his guilt. He told the arresting police officers that he had fallen in love with Mary and had invited her to see his workshop. She, he insisted, had readily agreed and had arrived that evening at around 6 p.m. The two spent some time alone and Moore asked her to marry him. She refused and in a fit of jealous rage he had attacked her with a shoemaker’s knife. In a statement presented to the coroner’s court he had also told police that having committed the murder he contemplated suicide, but after debating the issue with himself he had decided that if he killed himself then he would have to atone for two sins when he stood before God, murder and suicide. He therefore decided instead to await capture and accept the court’s decision. The jury had no doubt as to his guilt and the coroner, Mr Shaw, concurred. A remorseful Samuel Moore, whose real name was John Jones, stood in the dock three months later charged with wilful murder and after a brief hearing was declared guilty a second time. Penitent, he mounted the scaffold in front of Nottingham’s County Hall on 23 March and at precisely 25 minutes to 9 in the morning was launched into eternity before a huge crowd of eager onlookers.

An account of the trial and execution of John Jones, alias Samuel Moore, who murdered Mary Hallam.

2 JANUARY1806 Excited reports circulated throughout the city on this day after it became known that a duel with pistols had been fought at Basford, Nottingham, between Lieutenant Browne of the 83rd Regiment of Foot, a young man of only 17, and Ensign Butler of the 36th Regiment of Foot, both of whom had been on recruitment service in Nottingham. They fired their pistols and the young lieutenant fell to the ground mortally wounded. He was carried into Basford’s parish church where he later died. His body was brought back to Nottingham and interred in St Mary’s churchyard. A detachment of the 3rd Dragoons attended the funeral and formed up around the grave to fire three volleys into the air as a mark of respect.

3 JANUARY1689 Churchwardens at Mansfield Woodhouse ordered that 22-year-old Mary Thornton be publicly whipped for begging and then forced to return to her home in Yorkshire within twelve days or suffer a repeat of the punishment.

A whipping post.

4 JANUARY1832 John Armstrong (aged 26) and Thomas Shelton (38) were both sentenced to be hanged after being found guilty of causing a riot in Beeston in December 1831. The men, apparently at the head of some 3,000 rioters, had been seen setting fire to William Lowe’s silk mill, which burnt to the ground as a result. Thomas Shelton, it also transpired, had played a prominent part in earlier rioting at Colwick, which had resulted in a house being robbed of jewellery. The jewellery in question was recovered from a Nottingham jeweller who had identified Shelton in court as the man who had sold it to him.

5 JANUARYOld Nottinghamshire Beliefs and Sayings If a girl has two lovers and wishes to know which of them would be more faithful, she must take two brown apple pips and stick one on each cheek of her face. Then she must name the two lovers out loud and repeat:

Pippin, Pippin, I stick thee there,

That that is true thou mayst declare.

She must then wait patiently until one falls off, thus indicating which lover she must discard.

6 JANUARY1892 An inquest opened at the Newcastle Arms Inn, Southwell, into the death of an unknown man. Found lying on the railway lines near Southwell, he had clearly been struck by a train that had shattered his right hand and severely bruised his head. According to railway experts the injuries he had sustained were consistent with his having been lying between the lines and run over, probably by the 6.28 p.m. train to Mansfield. There was a 15in gap between the train and the ground, and the man must have lain inside that space, otherwise his body would have been very badly mangled. The bruising to his head was consistent with his having attempted to sit up as the train ran over him. The man’s identity was never discovered.

7 JANUARY1884 A report in the Newark Advertiser told the appalling story of 15-year-old Sarah Ann Leach. After running away from her employers she surrendered herself to Newark police, who discovered after a medical examination that she had been severely mistreated over a protracted period of time. In addition to being seriously emaciated, she had four deep scalp wounds, both her thighs were covered with long weals indicating she had been whipped, her nose was badly swollen from being punched, her mouth was lacerated internally, the lips badly cut, all the tips of her fingers were bleeding and ulcerated, her right wrist bore cuts from being struck with a leather strap, and her left hand and arm bore signs of old injuries. Her employers, William Rose, his wife Hannah and daughter Elizabeth, were all arrested and locked up, charged with cruelty. The unfortunate Sarah Ann was fed soup and then sent off to the workhouse. Rough justice indeed!

8 JANUARY1844 William Deakers (aged 29) was sentenced by a Nottingham court to seven years’ transportation to the Australian colony after being found guilty of bigamy. He had married a woman named Mary Rose at Radford on 27 December while still married to his first wife Sarah Deakers.

9 JANUARY1810An Attempt at Highway Robbery Mr Hoe, tailor of Bunny near Nottingham, was walking towards the city the previous evening when a man stepped out of the darkness as he approached Ruddington Hill and shouted out, ‘Halt and deliver up your money.’ Mr Hoe refused, at which point the highwayman drew a sword from under his coat and attacked him. Unfortunately for the robber he had not expected to find his intended victim expert in the use of arms. With only a walking stick for defence, Mr Hoe parried the initial sword thrust, pushed the attacker slowly backwards displaying an expert fencing technique, and eventually divested the robber of his weapon before pushing him backwards into a deep ditch. At that point a second highwayman stepped out from the surrounding undergrowth and, in an attempt to prevent Mr Hoe doing further damage to his partner, stabbed him in the chest after a fierce struggle. But that evening God was on Mr Hoe’s side and the blade, though penetrating all the layers of his clothing, did not succeed in puncturing the flesh, stopped by the pages of his music book, which he had stuffed into an inside pocket earlier that night. Both highwaymen at that point realised the futility of their cause and escaped into the night.

The type of sword likely to have been used in the attack upon Mr Hoe.

10 JANUARY1806 Job Brough, a local Newark councillor (aged 48), was thrown from his horse as he rode to join the hounds on the Great North Road. He died ten days later from a fractured skull while being nursed at his mother’s house.

11 JANUARY1776 The strange funeral of Hannah Waterill took place at St Mary’s Church, Nottingham. A very religious woman, Hannah had always attended church on Saturdays dressed in her very best clothes, but on Sundays had always done the opposite wearing her poorest everyday wear, regardless of the rest of the congregation. She had expressed a wish that after her death no man was to be allowed to touch her coffin at her funeral, and that seven bells must peal to register each day of the week.

St Mary’s Church, Nottingham, where in the eighteenth century three cemeteries stood close by and where a number of those condemned were buried after their executions.

12 JANUARY1828 John Dethick (aged 40), a well-known forger, was sentenced to death at Nottingham for ‘uttering a forged cheque’, worth £10 7s 6d, with intent to defraud city gentleman Frederick Hepworth.

13 JANUARY1820 A Case of Highway Robbery at Chilwell Thomas Pearson was held upon the Nottingham road as he drove his gig to Chilwell. Three men stepped out to block his path, one of them holding a pistol, and demanded he hand over all his money. Claiming he had none, Thomas then proceeded to strike out at the armed man using his whip stock. In the fight that ensued he was dragged to the ground, severely beaten, robbed of his watch, pocketbook and £19 in bank notes, and then left for dead. Unfortunately for the man with the pistol, Thomas survived and was able to identify his attacker; he was arrested within days and imprisoned. At his trial three months later Thomas Wilcox pleaded not guilty. His defence argued that it had been too dark for his face to be clearly seen but Thomas Pearson told the court that the moonlight had been clear enough to see by. The jury accepted this statement and Wilcox was duly executed.

14 JANUARY1814 After thirteen weeks of severe frost across Nottinghamshire temperatures fell to a low of – 17°C and the River Trent froze over. People flocked to see the spectacle and the more adventurous skated on the ice as huge bonfires were lit on river banks. It was officially the worst winter since 1795.

15 JANUARY1824 John Gilbert (aged 21) and John Smith (19) were sentenced to seven years’ transportation after being found guilty of stealing ‘twelve pairs of pattens valued at 12s’ from a Nottingham trader.

16 JANUARY1884 An inquest was held at the Markham Moor Inn, Tuxford, near Retford, into the discovery of a woman’s body found on the Retford road. The woman had been identified as Hannah Lyon. No marks of violence or robbery had been found and according to coroner John Housley there was nothing to indicate the manner or reason of her death. After a short hearing he returned a straightforward, if unsatisfactory, verdict of ‘found dead on the highway’.

17 JANUARY1772 An inquest held at Nottingham’s Guildhall declared that Thomas Smith had committed suicide. His body, which had been discovered with its throat slashed open, was ordered to be interred without a coffin and with no Christian rites alongside the highway on the Derby road, in an area known locally as the sand hills.

18 JANUARY1892 The Newark Advertiser reported the case of policeman Charles Curl, who appeared before the bench at Newark’s petty sessions charged with having assaulted Sarah Ann Hemshall. Two weeks earlier this young woman, a domestic servant at a local farm, had been sent out at around eight p.m. to buy bread. According to her testimony, the policeman had shone his light on her as she stood knocking on the door of Mr Ricketts, publican and baker. He asked her what she was about and then grabbed hold of her, forcing her across the road and into a small alleyway. There she claimed he had put an arm around her neck and behaved in an indecent manner. She had screamed, which forced him to release her, and she then ran back to the farmhouse at Hockerton. Her employer, Mrs Rickett, had then alerted the police. Constable Curl denied any impropriety and in court no witness could be found who had heard Sarah’s screams. Despite the lack of evidence her story was believed and Curl was sent to prison for two months’ hard labour.

19 JANUARY1826 Crowds flocked to St Mary’s Church, Nottingham when it became known that ‘resurrection men’ had been raiding the graveyard since the previous November, stealing bodies from graves and selling them on to unscrupulous medical establishments. The previous day a man named Smith had taken a large wicker hamper to Pickford’s yard in Leen Side, asking for it to be sent to London on the next coach. Unfortunately for Smith the clerk who noted down the details for despatch was suspicious about the package and questioned its owner at length about its origin and content. Smith became agitated and eventually, after refusing to reveal what was inside the hamper, left the warehouse on the excuse of needing to consult with his partner. The clerk ordered one of the Pickford porters, a man named Joseph Arnold, to follow Smith and report where he went. Arnold returned a short time later to say that he had seen Smith and another man in a yard close by putting a horse to a cart and in his opinion making preparations to ride off. Now extremely suspicious, the clerk, urging Arnold to show him the yard, ran off to attempt to prevent the escape. Between the two of them they managed to stop the cart from leaving the yard but after a fight both Smith and the cart driver, a man named Giles, succeeded in escaping. The local constable was called out and accompanied the clerk and Arnold back to Leen Side. Inside the basket they found two bodies. One was that of an old woman, her mouth stuffed with straw, the other was of a small boy. Both had been dead at least a week. The woman was later named as Dorothy Townsend, who had died the previous Sunday, while the boy was identified by his mother who told the authorities she had only buried him three days earlier. News rapidly spread, and crowds of people equipped with shovels gathered. Frantically they set about digging up the graves of their recently buried family to make certain the bodies had been undisturbed. In many cases their suspicions were well founded and within hours it was confirmed that the grave-robbers had stolen a total of thirty bodies. Every grave robbed had been dug within the last four weeks and the bodies taken had included children. Parsimonious to the last, the families nevertheless carried away the empty coffins to be used again in the future.

20 JANUARY1720 The Nottingham Weekly Courant reported that a great flood had swept through Nottingham as the snow which had been accumulating since Christmas began to thaw. Water levels in the River Trent rose so high it burst its banks rendering all roads into the town impassable; the bridge spanning the river was severely damaged. No post had arrived in Nottingham since 17 January. Countless people had drowned in the flood and the body of one unnamed woman found floating in a field to the east of the city had been partially devoured by crows.

21 JANUARY1892 Herbert Hardy, a painter of Wood Street, Newark, appeared before Newark magistrates charged with cruelty towards three of his children. A cruel, vengeful and vindictive man, he had beaten his children ever since his wife’s death six years earlier. Unfortunately for 12-year-old Annie, the eldest of the trio, she had been on the receiving end of the majority of those beatings. Examined a week earlier by local doctor Mr Hallowes, she was found to have sustained significant bruising along both arms, shoulders and much of her back, with one extremely large bruise beneath her left shoulder blade, which the doctor believed had been caused by a blunt instrument. He called in the police. Two days later Inspector Mason examined Annie and found that, apart from the bruising described by the doctor, she had also sustained a bad cut to her left hand and a black eye, both inflicted since the doctor’s visit. Under questioning Annie told Mason that her father had beaten her and her two younger sisters with a stick and a coal hammer. Hardy denied systematic abuse and claimed that he had ‘thrashed’ his children on occasion but never beaten them. But the doctor told the court that the injuries on Annie’s back were consistent with having been struck by the flat head of a hammer and that it was quite possible that such a hammer had been used to break up coal. The magistrates refused to accept any plea in mitigation and Hardy was sent to prison for a derisory two months’ hard labour, although he was warned that if he re-offended after his release he would be sent back for two years.

22 JANUARY1825 John Handley (aged 22) was found guilty of stealing 4 geese and 5 ducks from a Nottingham farmer, and was sentenced to be transported to Australia for seven years.

23 JANUARY1892 Police made a shocking discovery after forcing their way into a milliner’s shop on Arkwright Street, Nottingham. Neighbour Ann Smith had reported to police at St John’s police station that Margaret Castings (aged 32), who owned the millinery and haberdashery shop, had not opened the shop for over a week and neither she nor her children had been seen. Police Sergeant Asher was immediately sent to investigate. After forcing his way in through the cellar he discovered the bodies of two young children, later identified as 11-year-old Margaret and 8-year-old Ernest, lying on the kitchen floor. Both had been savagely beaten about the head. Upstairs in a bedroom he found the partially clothed body of the children’s mother lying across a bed. Her throat had been cut and the razor used lay on a dressing table, in front of a blood-spattered mirror. According to the sergeant’s report, a pool of dried blood had spread across the carpet in front of this dressing table, which indicated that she had committed suicide while staring at her reflection, before falling back onto the bed. All the doors and windows to the shop and house adjoining had been secured from the inside. Exactly why Margaret Castings had chosen to murder her family in such a brutal manner before taking her own life was never explained.

A Victorian cutthroat razor.

24 JANUARY1892