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A Horrid History of Christmas

Horrible Happenings & Frightening Festivities

The History Press

SOUTH WEST

Devonport, Plymouth

On Christmas Eve 1885, twenty-year-old Ella Mary Fitzroy and her eighteen-year-old sister Maud of Plymouth, Devon were getting ready to go to a ball when Ella's dress accidentally came into contact with a lighted candle and, within seconds, she was enveloped in a ball of flames.

She rushed screaming from her bedroom onto the landing. Maud ran to help her sister and tried to beat out the flames, but her own dress caught fire and she fled downstairs in a state of panic. Her stepfather, Edward St Aubyn, wrapped her in a blanket but both girls were extensively burned.

Surgeon Mr Toms attended and found that both girls were burned all over their bodies. He administered morphine to ease their excruciating pain but Maud succumbed on Christmas Day, while Ella lingered until 11 January 1886. Inquests later returned verdicts of accidental death on both girls.

Winchcomb

Towards the end of 1864, fifty-year-old retired surgeon Richard Smith of Winchcomb, Gloucestershire began to behave in a most peculiar manner. He became convinced that he was about to be kidnapped and sent to America and was sometimes seen sitting at the side of the road, 'fishing' with a rod and line.

On 27 December, the Smiths' sons visited their parents and saw nothing unusual about their father's behaviour, although when they left, their father cautioned them to run all the way home as he feared they would be waylaid and robbed. At nine o'clock, a neighbour heard what sounded like a gunshot coming from Smith's house. She went outside and listened but could only hear Smith talking and the sound of furniture being moved.

The next morning, a woman called on the Smiths to buy milk. Richard Smith seemed perfectly normal, although he made no reply when the woman asked how his wife was. Soon afterwards, Smith's sons were at their work on a farm when they saw their father walking towards them.

'Where's your sister?' Smith asked them conversationally and, when told that Martha was not there, he continued casually, 'Your mother's dead.'

The young men were so shocked that they struggled to comprehend their father's words, although they deduced from his rambling explanation that he had had a gun in his hand, which went off accidentally, killing his wife. One boy went for the police, while the other went to his parents' cottage, finding Sarah Smith lying dead on the floor in the parlour.

Smith was charged with wilful murder and appeared at the Gloucester Assizes in April 1865. The current Winchcomb surgeon believed that he had been mentally unsound for at least twenty years and it was obvious to all concerned that Smith was not in his right mind. Having heard the details of the case, the jury needed only five minutes to find him guilty but insane and he was ordered to be confined as a criminal lunatic for the rest of his life.

Bristol

At about five o'clock in the afternoon of Christmas Day 1850, the Wooles family of The Blue Bowl Tavern in Tottersdown, Bristol, were preparing tea when a petty argument about toast sprang up between them. After a piece of toast was burned, Samuel Wooles threw it onto the fire and decreed that nobody would have toast that afternoon. His wife, Hannah (or Harriet) retaliated, telling Samuel that if she wanted toast she would have it, and went to another room to get some more bread. Samuel followed her and slapped his wife hard across the face.

The couple's youngest son, Thomas, asked his father what he did that for and Samuel picked up a stick and swung it at the young man. Thomas seized the first thing that came to hand with which to defend himself, which happened to be a gun that his older brother had carelessly left lying around. Although Thomas didn't aim the gun at his father or pull the trigger, it went off and Samuel was shot in the groin.

Hearing the gunshot, a neighbour rushed in and found Samuel lying on a settle moaning, 'I shall die, I shall die.' Thomas was horrified by what had just happened, begging the neighbour to run for a surgeon and repeating again and again, 'I didn't know the gun was loaded.'

When surgeon Robert Ellis arrived, Samuel had been put to bed. Ellis found a large round hole in Wooles's abdomen and quickly realised that Wooles was mortally wounded. He died at about nine o'clock that evening.

At an inquest held by coroner Mr R. Uphill, the dead man's oldest son, who was also called Samuel, explained that he bought his gun downstairs on Christmas morning in the hope of shooting a pigeon. By the time he got downstairs, the pigeons had flown away, so Samuel junior put his gun to one side and promptly forgot all about it. The inquest jury learned that there was no quarrel between father and son and that when Wooles learned that there was no hope for him, he asked to see a solicitor to make a will, leaving his fortune to be divided equally between Samuel and Thomas. This act alone suggested that the shooting was not deliberate, theorised the coroner, since Wooles obviously bore no malice towards his youngest son.

The inquest jury accepted the coroner's suggestion that this was a parricide by misadventure rather than a deliberate act of violence, returning a verdict that the deceased was 'accidentally shot'.

Taunton

On Boxing Day 1882, Anna 'Nance' Roswell was enjoying a quiet drink with friends in the Crown and Tower Inn in Silver Street, Taunton, when Frederick Ripley entered the pub and said, 'Nance, I want to speak with you.' The couple left the pub together and, minutes later, Nance staggered back, bleeding heavily from a single stab wound in her throat. A doctor was called and a cab summoned to take her to hospital, but she bled to death shortly after her arrival.

Nance and Ripley had been 'walking out' together for four years but Ripley was extremely jealous and Nance had ended their relationship as a result. Arrested and charged with her murder, Ripley told the police, 'I done it.'

Tried for murder at the Somerset Assizes before Mr Justice Baggallay, Ripley insisted that he had been drinking at the time and had never intended to hurt his former girlfriend. In a written statement, he told the court that he was destitute, mainly because he had spent all his money on clothes for Anna, including the jacket that she was wearing when she died. Believing that Anna had ended their relationship because he had no money, he asked her for the return of the jacket and, when she refused and slapped his face he tried to cut it off her, accidentally stabbing her in the throat as he did so.

Ripley's defence argued that he was insane, due to the effects of drink and that the offence was manslaughter rather than murder, on the grounds that Anna had provoked him by slapping him. However, the jury disagreed, finding twenty-one-year-old Ripley guilty of wilful murder, although recommending mercy on the grounds of his youth and previous good character. Although sentenced to death, Ripley was later reprieved and sent to Portland Prison in Dorset.

Note: In contemporary reports of the case, the victim's name is variously recorded as Ann, Annie or Anna Roswell, Rowsell and Russell.

Awliscombe

The Pring family of Awliscombe, Devon, were planning to spend Christmas Day 1852 at the farm in the village owned by Mr Pring senior. As twelve-year-old Ann waited to leave in the porch with her cousin Mary Haynes and the family servant, there was a sudden bang and Ann dropped to the ground dead.

Ann's father, Francis, had already left to go to his father's farm and, before doing so, had asked his wife's nephew, John Wall, to fire a few shots in a newly planted wheat field to scare away rooks. Francis Pring had left the gun in a bacon rack in the kitchen but he neglected to mention that it was loaded and, when John picked it up, he pulled the trigger, accidentally shooting his cousin Ann behind the ear.

It was in a way fortunate that Ann took the full force of the blast, since John was only 3 or 4 feet away when the gun was fired and could easily have killed Mary Haynes and the servant too. As it was, the other two women suffered only minor injuries. The fact that the inquest returned a verdict of 'accidental death' was of little comfort to Wall, who was said to be much distressed by the shooting.

Plymouth

In 1858, the 17th Foot Regiment and the 2nd Warwick Militia were both quartered in the Citadel in Plymouth and for many months there had been bad blood between them. On Boxing Day, the underlying tension boiled over when Sergeant Henry Clay of the Warwicks went into The George and Dragon public house in Stonehouse Lane.

A number of the 17th Regiment were already drinking there and one told Clay, 'There's none of your sort here.'

Clay took exception to the man's tone and ordered his men to draw their bayonets. The 17th Regiment saw this as a challenge and a physical fight broke out, during which the 17th Regiment lashed out at the Warwicks with their brass-tipped belts. Charles Lawler was in the act of striking Clay when Clay plunged his bayonet six inches into his opponent's chest. The point penetrated a large artery near Lawler's heart and he rushed back into the pub shouting 'I'm stabbed', dying from internal haemorrhage within five minutes.

An inquest returned a verdict of manslaughter against Clay, who was tried at the Devon Lent Assizes in March 1859. There were a number of witnesses, all giving conflicting evidence, but as the case progressed it began to appear more and more as if the 17th Regiment were the aggressors.

Twenty-two-year-old Clay was known as a mild, inoffensive man, who was an excellent soldier. Immediately after the stabbing, witnesses noted that he had marks of a blow on his face and it was pointed out that, if used with force, the belts wielded by the 17th Regiment could easily fracture a man's skull.

Clay's defence counsel insisted that their client had no intention of hurting anyone, but was defending himself against a brutal attack when Lawler accidentally ran onto his bayonet.

The trial judge summed up the evidence for the jury, stating that he personally believed that Clay was justified in giving an order to draw bayonets, since it was his duty to ensure the safety of his own men. He asked the jury to decide if Clay deliberately struck the blow or if Lawler rushed onto the bayonet and the jury gave Clay the benefit of the doubt, finding him not guilty after a brief deliberation.

Bristol

Thirty-eight-year-old George Drewett, the former manager of a tannery in Bedminster, had taken a new job in Plymouth and returned to Bristol to arrange for his family to join him there but, on Christmas morning 1882, he was suddenly taken ill and died within hours. A post-mortem examination showed that he was suffering from acute meningitis.

On 5 March 1882, Drewett had tried to commit suicide by shooting himself in the head and the bullet was so deeply embedded in his brain that it was impossible to remove surgically. Even so, Drewett apparently made a complete recovery and showed no ill effects from the shooting. Charged with attempted suicide, he assured magistrates that he no longer had any wish to kill himself and was discharged.

Doctors thought it unlikely that the shooting was in any way connected to the meningitis that ultimately killed Drewett.

Broker's Wood, near Trowbridge

Early on the morning of Boxing Day 1896, Henry Turner walked into the police station at Westbury, Wiltshire and told officers there that he wished to give himself up for murdering his wife. Asked for more information, Turner explained that he and his wife had not quarrelled but he had simply hit her over the head with a hatchet earlier that morning then locked his house door and come to turn himself in.

The police officers rushed to Turner's cottage with a surgeon. Once inside, they could hear moaning coming from upstairs, where they found Sarah Jane Turner lying face-up on her bed, her head hanging over the edge. She died soon afterwards without regaining consciousness, at which point Turner was charged with her murder. 'I thought she'd be better dead than alive,' he explained, adding, 'if she died, she'd go to heaven'.

An inquest heard that sixty-year-old Turner was known as a sober, hard-working and steady man. However, he had also been admitted to the lunatic asylum at Devizes on three separate occasions, although he was not known to be violent.

Unable to consider Turner's mental state, the inquest jury returned a verdict of wilful murder against him and he was committed for trial at the Assizes. He didn't have long to wait since the next Wiltshire Assizes were in January 1897. By that time, he had been medically examined and found to be completely insane, and, judged unfit to plead, was ordered to be detained during Her Majesty's pleasure.

Bath

On 17 December 1925, five-year-old Dennis Evans of Bath, Somerset, was suffering from a very heavy cold and his mother decided to put him to bed early, leaving a gas fire burning in his room to keep him warm. Before long, she heard her son screaming and ran to see what the matter was.

Dennis had climbed out of bed and walked to the fireplace to peer up the chimney. His pyjamas came into contact with the lighted gas fire and burst into a ball of flames. 'I wanted to see Father Christmas,' he told his mother, shortly before dying from the effects of his burns.

Bristol

Priscilla Jenkins lived at Penn Street, St Paul's, as did William and Sarah Priddes and their family and Mrs Murphy. On 23 December 1883, Priscilla heard a commotion outside their house and, looking out of her window, saw Mrs Murphy, an epileptic, lying in the street in the throes of a fit. She was being supported by William Priddes and Priscilla rushed to help him.

With the assistance of another neighbour, Priscilla and William carried Mrs Murphy upstairs to her room. Later that day, Sarah Priddes noticed her husband rubbing his arm and asked him if he had hurt it. William dismissed her concerns, saying that he had just scratched himself, but, on Christmas Day, he asked his wife for some hot water to bathe his arm.

Sarah bathed it for him and, noticing that it looked slightly swollen, put a poultice on it. During that night, William himself suffered a fit but, although Sarah begged him to go to the Infirmary, he refused. On Boxing Day, his arm was so badly swollen and inflamed that she took matters into her own hands and procured a cab to take him there in spite of his protests.

Forty-seven-year-old William died at half-past eight that evening and house surgeon Mr Penny found that he had blood poisoning, arising from a human bite on his upper arm.

Coroner Mr H.S. Wasbrough held an inquest at the Bristol General Hospital, at which Priscilla Jenkins recalled seeing William start as he was carrying Mrs Murphy upstairs, as if she had bitten or scratched him. The jury returned a verdict that '... death was due to blood poisoning resulting from an accidental bite inflicted by a woman whilst in a fit.'

Radstock

On Christmas Day 1876, Mr Coombs tried to shoot a blackbird in his garden. The gun failed to fire and Coombs took it back into his house at Radstock, Somerset, telling his wife that it was loaded but that he was unable to fire it. The gun normally hung on the wall, out of reach of the children, but now Mrs Coombs was afraid to touch it and simply stood it in a corner.

A little later, Mr and Mrs Coombs went out to see relatives, leaving their ten-year-old twin sons alone at home. A favourite pastime for the boys was detonating the heads of Lucifer matches in their toy pistol and, spotting their father's gun standing in the kitchen, they tried to do the same with a real gun. John tried first but failed. He went to wash his hands and his brother, Francis, picked up the gun and managed to fire it. Sadly, he shot his brother through the left loin and John died from his injuries three hours later.

At the subsequent inquest on John's death, deputy coroner Mr R. Biggs told the jury that blaming his twin brother was pointless. Although the jury fell short of recommending any legal action for negligence against John's parents, in returning a verdict of 'accidental death' they asked the coroner to strongly reprimand them for leaving the children alone in the house with a loaded gun.

Gloucester

Frederick Harris of Morpeth Street, Gloucester, was seriously ill and, on 22 December 1929, he was admitted to hospital. He was not expected to return home.

On Christmas Eve, a relative called at Harris's home, but, although Mrs Harris and her son and daughter should have been in, there was no response to the man's knocks. Eventually he broke into the house and found three bodies in an upstairs bedroom.

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Excerpted from A Horrid History of Christmas by Nicola Sly. Copyright © 2012 Nicola Sly. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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