Coventry Murders E-Book

Vanessa Morgan

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 151

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

This chilling collection of murder cases delves into the villainous deeds that have taken place in Coventry during its long history. Among those featured are the niece who poisoned her uncle in 1831 to fund her 'love of nice dresses', a woman whose throat was slashed by her jealous husband in 1859, a mother who literally died of fright when her son attempted to poison her in 1910, and a double murder in 1906. Illustrated with a wide range of archive material and modern photographs, Coventry Murders is sure to fascinate both residents and visitors alike as these shocking events of the past are revealed for a new generation.

Leseprobe

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Research for this book was mainly undertaken using local newspapers of the period, including the Coventry Herald, the Coventry Times, the Coventry Mercury, the Coventry Evening Telegraph, the Leamington Spa Courier, the Birmingham Gazette, the Birmingham Journal and the Birmingham Daily Post, all of which are held at either the Coventry History Centre, the Warwick Record Office or the Library of Birmingham. Other original registers and census records are sourced from the Warwick Record Office.

All images, unless otherwise stated, are from the author’s collections of original photographs, old postcards or newspaper cuttings.

Market Square c. 1910, a prominent historic site. The prestigious Leofric Hotel was built here in the 1950s. Plans are now being made to turn the building into student flats.

CONTENTS

Title

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Case One

1831

His Wicked Niece

Case Two

1844

Murder in Leicester Row

Case Three

1844

All for a Sovereign

Case Four

1845

Murder in Berkeswell

Case Five

1859

All Through Her Father

Case Six

1860

Dreadful Occurrence in Hill Fields

Case Seven

1861

Death Under Suspicious Circumstances

Case Eight

1871

Murder on Gosford Street

Case Nine

1887

A Strange Tragedy

Case Ten

1906

A Double Murder

Case Eleven

1908

Murder in the Bakery

Case Twelve

1910

Poison in His Mother’s Drink

Case Thirteen

1924

The Stoke Heath Tragedy

Copyright

INTRODUCTION

On the night of 14 November 1940 the skies above Coventry were ablaze. For miles around the horizon was lit up like a brilliant but devastating sunset. Everyone in those neighbouring towns had one thing on their lips – ‘Coventry’s getting it tonight.’

The ruined outer walls of Coventry Cathedral, 2013.

Over the course of around ten hours, 400 bombers from the German Luftwaffe dropped their bombs upon the city until, by dawn the next morning, Coventry was a mass of rubble. A great number of buildings were destroyed, including the fourteenth-century cathedral, St Michael’s. It had only become a cathedral twenty years earlier in 1919 although previously it had been described as one of the largest parish churches in the country. Therefore, when Coventry became a diocese, St Michael’s became its cathedral. Now, sadly, all that was left of it was the tower, spire and outer walls. The people of Coventry were in a state of shock and for once it was being reported that the British Bulldog spirit had crumbled.

The rebuilding of Coventry began in 1948 with Princess Elizabeth laying the foundation stone for a new cathedral which was built at the side of the ruins of St Michael’s. It was consecrated in 1962 in the presence Elizabeth, now queen, and also named St Michael’s.

The outer wall of the new cathedral, 2013.

This period of Coventry’s history is probably one which the city of Coventry is most associated with. Another concerns the wife of Leofric, Earl of Mercia and Lord of Coventry. Under Leofric’s rule in the eleventh century, the people of Coventry were heavily taxed. Legend has it that his wife, Lady Godiva, pleaded with him to lift the excessive taxes and her husband, tired of her persistence, told her that if she rode naked through the streets of Coventry he would do as she asked. At this Godiva asked the people of Coventry to close their shutters and bolt their doors and, letting down her long fair hair to fall as a cloak, she did as her husband asked.

A statue of Lady Godiva, unveiled in 1949, stands in Broadgate, 2013.

Only one man, a tailor called Tom, disobeyed her order and opened his shutters just enough to see her ride past. As a result he was immediately struck blind. Whether this is fable or fact no one really knows but everyone has heard of Lady Godiva, and ‘peeping Tom’ has become a common expression.

Being ‘sent to Coventry’ is another saying associated with this town and there are many myths about how this idiom came about. A popular one comes from the era of the Civil War, during a time when Oliver Cromwell sent many Scottish Royalist prisoners to be housed in St John’s church. They were allowed to walk around the streets for exercise but, being a staunchly Parliamentarian city, the people avoided them and young girls were told not to speak to them. This isolation and antipathy meant that many soldiers were unhappy about the idea of being sent to Coventry.

A different meaning could be taken from the sixteenth-century heretics who were brought to Coventry to be burned. Again, Coventry was not a place you would have wanted to have been sent to in those times.

The population of Coventry at the time of Lady Godiva was about 350. By the fourteenth century this figure had risen to nearly 5,000 which, by the standards of those days, made it a considerably large town. When the first census was taken in 1801 the population was 16,000 but by 1851 that figure had risen to 37,000 and by 1900 to 62,000.

For 400 years Coventry enjoyed the exulted status of being a county. During the War of the Roses, the Lancastrian king, Henry VI, had sheltered in Coventry during his campaign and, in 1451, he gave the city the title County of the City of Coventry. This status was taken away during the 1840s following the Boundary Act of 1842 and Coventry became part of Warwickshire.

In the Middle Ages, Coventry was prospering due to its wool industry, predominantly through the weaving and dying of wool. It was here, in this industry, that another saying was popularised – ‘true blue’. The Coventry dyers were well known for producing a blue cloth that did not fade and remained colour-fast in washing, and ‘as true as Coventry blue’ soon became a popular phrase when implying something was long-lasting and enduring.

By the eighteenth century the woollen industry was beginning to decline, although the employment of silk-ribbon weaving was rapidly expanding. This trend continued until the 1860s when a treaty was made with France in 1860 which allowed free trade. Silk ribbons flooded into England from France and the Coventry workers faced ruin. However, while the ribbon makers in Coventry were facing ruin, the watchmaking industry was flourishing. The first watchmakers were found in Coventry in the eighteenth century, even as early as the late seventeenth century, but it was in the late nineteenth century that watchmaking in Coventry was at its height. Bicycles were also manufactured in Coventry at this time. The first bicycles in Britain were made here in the 1860s and, as cycling became more popular, this industry also began to expand in the town. Towards the end of the century, in 1897, Coventry businesses were producing the first cars to be manufactured in the city.

Like other towns in the nineteenth century, Coventry prospered by the development of these new industries and inventions. A gasworks was opened in 1820 and the streets were given gas lighting. The railways arrived in 1838 and a hospital was also built in 1838. The cemetery was created in 1847 and, due to a smallpox epidemic in 1871, a fever hospital was opened in 1874. A sewage system was developed in the late nineteenth century and electricity arrived in 1895. Steam trams travelled the streets in 1884 and they were replaced by their electric counterparts in 1895.

Before the nineteenth century the town was policed in the old manorial way. Then in the early 1800s watchmen and special constables were employed to police the streets with the senior officer, known as the High Constable, being elected annually. Thomas Henry Prosser, who had previously been a Bow Street Runner, was elected in 1832.

The Municipal Corporation Act in 1836 reformed this old system. Boroughs throughout England were required to organise police forces; so Coventry enrolled a police inspector, a sergeant and twenty constables. Thomas Prosser was then appointed as chief superintendent. This new force began operating on 7 March 1836 but for a while surrounding villages, such as Berkeswell, continued with the old system.

A busy Broadgate c. 1950, with buses, cars and electric trams.

It seems this new force was supervised with great care and efficiency as, according to the Coventry Times on 7 April 1858 when Thomas Prosser retired in that year, the force presented him with a bronze clock inscribed with the words ‘Presented by the officers and men of the Coventry Police to Mr Thomas Henry Prosser as a testimonial of respect and esteem for his uniform kindness and upright conduct towards them during the twenty-one years he held the office of their Chief Superintendent.’

The old courthouse and gaol, County Hall, opened in 1783 and remained open until the late 1980s. Then it lay derelict on the corner of Bayley Lane and Cuckoo Lane until May 2012 when it opened as a bar called The Establishment. The building retains an ambiance of how it used to be, with the judge’s seat, the crest, the public gallery and the dock still in evidence. The cells have been made into dining areas and even the old keys to lock up the inmates are on display.

The old court house, 2013.

Inside the old court house, now a bar and grill, 2013.

The dining area leading to the cells, 2013.

The keys to the cell doors, now on display, 2013.

The prison governor’s house, on the corner of Bayley Lane and Cuckoo Lane, 2013.

The prison governor’s house was built on the side of the County Hall in Pepper Lane.

In the 1840s, when reverted back to being part of Warwickshire, the Coventry Assizes were abolished and those cases which needed to be tried by an assize judge were transferred to Warwick.

Up until 1831, public hangings took place at Whitley Common and then outside County Hall. When the assizes were transferred to Warwick they then took place outside Warwick Goal. Public hangings were considered a day out for most people and thousands would gather, often a few hours before the execution was due to take place in order to get a good view. There they would remain, watching the body hanging for the usual time of one hour, in order to see it being taken down. A number of the accused would also be sentenced to be dissected after their execution and people were keen to attended public dissections as well, with large numbers turning up to view the internal organs of the criminal.

Dissection was used as an additional punishment for the worst offenders through to the first half of the nineteenth century. Christians believed a person could only be resurrected on Judgement Day if a body was complete, therefore, dismemberment was considered a fitting punishment for those worst offenders. The body would be publically dissected and then exhibited and any family member trying to rescue the body prior to this fate would face a ten-year transportation. This form of punishment replaced the practise of hanging, drawing and quartering criminals, with the four parts of the body placed on stakes around a town as a gruesome deterrent. Dissection also assisted anatomists and medical students in their studies as, in those times, these were the only bodies available.

In July 1832 a bill went through parliament abolishing dissection. Lord Wynford, the deputy speaker for the House of Lords, was against this, protesting that he had known instances when the dread of dissection had produced more fear than death itself. Nevertheless, the bill was passed and Lord Grey suggested that the bodies of those executed would be buried beneath the gallows or in the confines of the gaol without funeral rites. This was also passed. As the years progressed graves were reopened and several would be buried in one grave.

Another custom of the time was to take a death mask of the hanged person. This was in order to answer the question – was it possible to tell from the shape of the head whether someone could be the type of person to commit murder?

The next reform in execution came in 1868. At the time of Kington’s execution in 1859 (detailed in case number five) the newspapers were reporting that there was already a change in the public excitement surrounding execution. The Leamington Spa Courier on 31 December wrote that public opinion seemed to be changing regarding the viewing of an execution:

There is something too mysterious and solemn about death for any man, however depraved, to look upon it. When society, as a vindication of an outrage upon its law, assumes the awful and responsible power of depriving a fellow creature of his life, and in order that that solemn act shall lose none of its effect, as a terror to the evil doer, and a warning to those whose ungovernable passion becomes a frenzy, takes care, that he who has to pay the penalty of this outrage, by the forfeiture of his life, shall pass from life unto death, on the public scaffold, it assumes a prerogative which gives to all men an instinctive shudder, and which no person with a well constituted mind voluntarily witnesses.

Although the reporter for this newspaper conveys the idea that people were losing interest in hangings, a letter published in the Coventry Herald on 14 January 1860 seemed to disagree. The writer notes: ‘An execution is witnessed by two hundred, three hundred or a thousand persons; whilst as execution reported by the representatives of the press is conveyed to millions, both abroad and at home.’ People were, it seems, still willing to voluntarily witness, or read about, execution.

Nonetheless, an act in 1868 abolished public hanging and executions now took place within the confines of the gaol. For a while reporters were allowed to witness the execution for the benefit of describing the scene to the public as they (the public) the press said, ‘demand to be informed of all reasonable details in connexion with so unusual an event’.

Coventry c. 1850, showing the three spires looking north from Warwick Road.

Even when there was no execution to watch certain people would still gather outside the gaol to watch the blag flag being hoisted showing that the execution was taking place. In 1902 this practise also ended as it was felt that this ‘often aroused interest in minds of morbidly inclined people to assemble outside the prison’. Even the prison chaplain, instead of reciting the service for burial while the man was still alive, now waited until the executioner had done his job and the prisoner was dead.

In the late seventeenth century a travel writer described Coventry as standing on the side of a pretty hill. The spire and steeple of one of its churches was very high, thought to be the third highest in England and, with all the other towers from neighbouring churches and high buildings standing close by, the town looked very impressive. With its broad streets being well paved with small stones, Coventry was an ideal place to visit. But lurking behind this facade grisly murders were about to take place, some of which are now chronicled in the following pages.

Vanessa Morgan, 2014

CASE ONE 1831

HIS WICKED NIECE

Suspect:

Mary Ann Higgins

Age:

20

Charge:

Murder

A labouring man, named William Higgins, residing in Spon Street, in this City, having died suddenly on Tuesday night last, an opinion was formed that he had been poisoned. After a diligent enquiry, on the part of Mr Barton, chief constable, and others, suspicion fell upon a young girl named Mary Ann Higgins, a niece of the deceased, who resided with him. She was accordingly taken into custody on Wednesday night, by Gardner, constable, and conveyed to the Watch House

Leamington Spa Courier, 26 March 1831

Mary Ann Higgins was born in Henley in Arden, Warwickshire, in 1811. It seems either her parents couldn’t look after her or they didn’t want to because, at the age of 12 months, her grandparents took her to live with them somewhere near Coventry. When they died her mother still wouldn’t have her back so she went to live with an aunt in Manchester. This was probably around January 1826 as two burials are recorded in the registers of the parish for Wooton Wawen and Henley in Arden for that year. One was a Samuel Higgins, who was buried on 2 January 1826. He was aged 65 and from Coventry. The other is for an Elizabeth Higgins from Coventry who was buried on 14 January 1826, aged 62.

How happy Mary was at being sent to her aunt is not known but it is clear that the aunt kept a house of ill-repute and, by the age of 14, Mary had become a prostitute. People described Mary as a good-looking girl with a fresh colour and clear complexion, but said she didn’t have an ‘intellectual appearance’.

Mary did eventually leave her aunt’s house and go into service but her love of nice dresses led her into a life of crime. At one point it was recorded she was on the brink of being transported. It was then that her uncle stepped in and she went back to Coventry to live with him at his house in Spon Street.

Her Uncle William was unmarried and looked after Mary as if she was his own child. He was said to be of ‘humble station’, but it seems he had saved a reasonable amount of money for those times, which he had invested and was earning interest from. Some said it was about £100 and that he was also known to have a collection of guinea coins in the house. All this he intended to leave to Mary when he died.