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Overview
Warwickshire has seen its fair share of murder down the centuries. This latest collection explores notorious crimes from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, using contemporary documents, trial transcripts and newspaper accounts to examine cases that gripped both the county and the nation. Among the stories included here are the case of Edwin James Moore, who set fire to his mother after an argument over supper at Leamington Spa in 1907; the Coventry bombings in 1939, for which two men were executed in 1940; and the case of Thomas Ball, who was poisoned by his wife in 1848. She was later tried and executed in Coventry and was the last woman to be executed in public.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780752484372 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 02/29/2012 |
| Series: | Sutton True Crime History |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 160 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
| Age Range: | 9 - 12 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Warwickshire Murders
By Kevin Turton
The History Press
Copyright © 2012 Kevin TurtonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-8437-2
CHAPTER 1
A DEADLY SECRET
Nuneaton, 1832
Mary Green, alias Polly Button, moved her family to the outskirts of Nuneaton at some point in 1828, taking a house at what was then known as Abbey End, a small terrace at the bottom of Abbey Street just outside the main town. Behind her lay two broken relationships and with her the product of those failed affairs in the shape of four children. Whether or not their by now absent fathers contributed to the family purse is not known, nor is Mary's occupation, though it is likely she had worked in the textile industry in one guise or another and quite possibly turned occasionally to prostitution. Money in the Green household, however, was always in short supply and Mary constantly sought a benefactor to ease her financial pressures. By the dawn of 1829 she had succeeded in finding a likely candidate in the form of near neighbour John Danks.
Danks was married but had no children and was no doubt an enthusiastic partner. The affair was hidden from prying eyes for much of that year, but by the autumn Mary had found herself pregnant for a fifth time. Unable to hide the relationship any longer their clandestine meetings were inevitably uncovered and Danks was forced to acknowledge both his involvement and his culpability. When Mary gave birth to baby Jane in the early months of 1830 the notion of paternity seemed to sit well on his shoulders and he readily agreed to make regular weekly payments towards his daughter's upkeep. Perhaps the affair ought to have ended at that point. But it did not.
Over the next eighteen months or so they continued to meet. How regularly those meetings took place or how important Danks was to Mary is unknown, but certainly by the winter of 1831 she was pregnant with her sixth child and the finger of guilt was again pointed in his direction. Unfortunately for Mary this was one baby John Danks was not prepared to allow into the world.
At the back of the terraced row where Mary lived lay open fields known locally as the Burgage (today Burgage Walk); a narrow track led from the back yards to a stile and, some way beyond, a gate. From its position straddling the track the gate probably marked a sort of boundary or marked the entrance to what was known as Astley's Hovel. This was simply a ramshackle, dilapidated, mean dwelling but a place where the couple often met. On 18 February 1832 at about 8 p.m., with Mary possibly some eight months pregnant and clearly showing, Danks decided they should meet for one last time. Not wanting to be seen at her door he hid in the yard and threw a handful of stones at her kitchen window to catch her attention, something he had done many times in the past. Mary, of course, knew the instant the stones hit the glass who had thrown them and had no hesitation in going out to meet him. Unfortunately for Danks the meeting in the yard was seen by Mary's eldest daughter, 18-year-old Elizabeth, who had gone out minutes earlier to meet her cousin. From their hidden vantage point in a nearby passageway they saw Danks emerge from the shadows and watched as the two talked. It was a cold night, and after a few minutes of conversation Mary ran back to the house to fetch a shawl and the two went off towards the Burgage.
At about seven the next morning a Nuneaton draper, Richard Beasley, who owned a field near to where Mary had last been seen heading, found her heavily bloodstained body. It lay face down in the centre of the narrow track some 15yds away from the hovel. She was clearly dead. As there was nothing he could do for Mary he sent his manservant off in search of the police and a surgeon and waited by the body. Police presence in the shape of constable to the parish, Joseph Haddon, was on the scene within the hour and here the parish was very lucky. Haddon was no average policeman. He took his role in the fledgling police force extremely seriously. Once Mary's body had been removed to her own home he closed off the area and began a thorough search of the ground around where she had been found. In modern-day parlance he did his utmost to secure the scene.
According to local surgeon, Dr Bond, Mary had been attacked with a knife; she had been battered on the left side of her head and her throat cut in three different places causing her to lose a great amount of blood. From her position on the track where she had been found, which was on the Abbey End side of the gate leading to the hovel, she had also survived the attack long enough to attempt to reach home. The evidence for this was borne out by the blood trail Constable Haddon discovered, which stretched from where her body lay back along the track, over the gate and into the hovel itself. Piecing all the evidence together he was able to show that Mary had been attacked inside the hovel, where she had sustained most of her injuries, and quite probably again by the gate. The comprehensive search he then carried out revealed a button torn off during the attack and two clear footprints in cow dung that covered much of the ground where the greatest staining was found. The significance of the footprints was that they were of both the left and right foot, from the same man, and each imprint showed that a nail was missing from each sole.
Believing that Mary had probably been murdered by someone she knew, someone close to her, Haddon then began questioning those who lived around her. The neighbours did not disappoint. They were quick to point the finger in John Danks's direction and the old constable was easily swayed. He arrested Danks some hours later a mile or so from the scene, and after taking him into the Red Lion pub outside Nuneaton charged him with murder.
Danks, of course, denied all knowledge. He had sustained no bloodstaining, had no murder weapon, and argued that he had no cause to commit murder. Haddon did not believe him and after walking him back to the police lock-up had his clothes taken away. Examination revealed that Danks wore two waistcoats, one of which had recently had a button replaced, and a pair of shoes, one covered in dried cow dung. Closer inspection of the shoes also revealed the missing nails on the soles. Haddon took them to the murder scene and after making a second imprint beside that of the first two realised that he had an identical match. There could be little doubt in his mind that it was an open and shut case.
So it proved. At the beginning of March 1832 Danks finally confessed. Possibly finding his guilt too burdensome a load to carry he made an impromptu statement to the village curate, Mr King. This found its way to Constable Haddon and after a brief meeting Danks reiterated all he had told the young clergyman for Haddon to record. According to the statement he eventually made he had murdered Mary in a fit of anger.
We walked across the grazing piece by the foot road, and thence to Astley's hovel. We was in the hovel about a quarter of an hour together, when I up with my fist and struck her on the left temple and knocked her down. I fell at her back and cut her once. She hooted very loudly. I cut her again a second time and stopped her hooting. I was quite sure she was done for. I got up, come out of the hovel, and got over the gate. I walked along the road leading to Abbey Street. When I got about one hundred yards from the hovel, I thought I heard a man behind me. I turned myself round but saw no one. I shut my knife and threw it over the hedge into the wheat field. I then made the best of my way to the top of Abbey End and home. I washed my hands and went to bed.
It was a confession that would lead him to the gallows.
The trial opened at Warwick on Friday 30 March 1832 before Sir J. Parke. For Danks it was merely a procession of witnesses, all of whom damned him. The knife he used to carry out the murder was located. Bloodstaining had been discovered on the button the constable had found, also on Danks's trousers; the soles of his shoes were an irrefutable match to the imprints in the field; Mary's daughter Elizabeth confirmed her sighting of him, and his wife offered up no alibi. The only moot point of any note was whether or not Mary Green had been alive when he left her inside the hovel. Had she subsequently struggled to walk the 15yds or so in the direction of home before finally expiring, or had Danks attacked a second time beside the gate and dealt the killer blow there? He argued he had not and the surgeon, Dr Bond, agreed. He told the court that in his opinion she could very well have struggled on alone for a brief time. Constable Haddon disagreed with them both, citing the medical evidence given to the coroner, which showed that despite Danks's insistence that he had cut her twice, there were three cuts to her throat. But at the end of the day it mattered not. The jury returned a guilty verdict after less than five minutes' deliberation. After donning the black cap and passing sentence of death the learned judge gave his final and damning condemnation.
Your guilt appears as clear from the evidence in this case as if we had seen it with our own eyes, that you had induced her to go to the place where you have been before carrying on your wicked intercourse with her, and that she went when she suspected nothing of this kind from you, you there betrayed her cruelly and ungratefully, and committed that crime, which you had before designed in your heart, and inflicted upon her instant death. In the whole course of my experience, I never heard a case in which so much brutality and cruelty has been evinced. ...
CHAPTER 2A QUESTION OF INSANITY
Spernal, 1842
William Crowley was considered by those who knew him to be quite wealthy. Living at Spernal, which lies on the River Arrow, some 3 miles north of Alcester, he had decided while still a young man to become a farmer, and this course had proved to be extremely profitable. The powerful Throckmorton family, Warwickshire landowners, offered him the tenancy of a farm on the outskirts of the village in about 1790 and later that same year he married. The marriage produced a family of seven before his wife died, possibly in childbirth, in about 1812. With a large family and what was effectively a smallholding to run he quickly remarried and by the late 1830s, when he accepted a second farm, had added another five children to the family roll-call. Life for the Crowleys ought to have been as comfortable as it was prosperous, but while William Crowley had been blessed with wealth he had not been blessed with virtue. He was, by all accounts, a mean-spirited man who had no time for any of his children, except one, and tended to make life thoroughly miserable for most of those around him. It was only to his youngest son Joseph that he paid any attention, and as the boy grew older it was to him that control of the two farms passed. Almost half the family were certified insane and all the daughters, of which there were six, were turned out of the house as soon as they had reached an age at which he deemed them able to care for themselves. Disowned, stripped of all financial resources, they inevitably fell on the parish, which was forced to administer poor relief and on occasion drag Crowley into court to demand that he pay something towards their upkeep. By the end of 1842 only his wife, the youngest son, Joseph, and two servants remained living with him at the farmhouse outside Spernal, and his life was under serious threat from the last member of the family to have been evicted.
James Crowley was 30 years old when he was ordered by his father to leave the house forever. The blood feud had been raging for over two years and when James left, in the spring of 1842, to go and lodge at the blacksmith's house some 300yds away, he promised to kill the old man. It was a threat his father took extremely seriously, although for some strange reason, despite this threat, he still gave his estranged son an allowance of £1 per week, a saddle and a horse for his use. James, now living alone, was far from enamoured of his father's sudden show of magnanimity; rather the reverse. He believed the allowance to be derisory and in an attempt to force an increase published a sixteen-page pamphlet outlining his grievances and detailing the family feud. This piece of polemic rant he then distributed far and wide. It had no effect. Everyone living within a reasonable radius of Spernal knew well enough what William Crowley was like but they also knew what could be done with a weekly allowance of £1. Sympathy was a scant commodity when for most money was in short supply.
While all this was going on William organised a defence against what he believed would be a very real attempt to kill him. Among the labour force working on his farms was a man named William Tilsley. He was a tall, stout man of 20, married with two children and in need of the work. He accepted an offer to become a constable and live in on the Crowley farm when needed. The job he was being invited to take on was essentially that of bodyguard, but he felt he knew the family well and despite the threat posed by James believed it was mostly nothing but hot air. He was very wrong.
On 22 December 1842 Tilsley had his first taste of family conflict. In a sudden burst of anger James stormed into the farmhouse and in a bitter verbal exchange with his father over money reiterated his intention to kill him if things did not change. The old man, incensed by the outburst and intent on the status quo remaining as it was, ordered Tilsley to go seek his son out the following day. He wanted James to see the power he could wield and the threat his newly appointed constable offered. It worked. Tilsley told James in no uncertain terms that he was no longer welcome at the farm and that he was to look elsewhere for his extra money. Had William Crowley stuck to his word then quite possibly the tension between father and son would have eased. Unfortunately, whether influenced by his wife or not, Tilsley's good work was all undone when William offered James an olive branch. It was Christmas and perhaps he felt he ought to offer up the hand of friendship. James was invited to return to the farm on Christmas Day for breakfast.
James, of course, had no intention of burying the hatchet. When he arrived at the farmhouse at a little after eight on a cold Christmas morning any good intentions he had set out with were left on the doorstep. Breakfast was a war of words. Tilsley, who had been ordered to attend, was forced to intervene more than once, much to James's chagrin and breakfast eventually ended in bitterness and acrimony. But this time James was not to be deterred from exacting revenge for what he saw as a life of resentment.
Returning to his lodgings he changed into his Sunday best, collected a shotgun from the cupboard, and stormed back to the farm. Inside the house his mother saw him crossing the fields and without too much persuading forced her husband upstairs. They heard the windows shatter and waited. But outside the trusty Constable Tilsley had also been alerted. Before James could force an entry the big constable ordered him to put his weapon on the ground. James merely turned the shotgun on him and fired. The shot hit the young policeman in the left eye and blew out his brains. He was dead by the time he hit the floor. James then calmly threw the gun to the ground, walked over to the stables, saddled his horse and rode away.
For James there was never going to be any dispute over his culpability and he knew it. As the fatal shot was fired it was seen by at least two other farm labourers who arrived on the scene just too late to influence the outcome. James, of course, had only two options open to him at that point – surrender or run. He chose to do the latter. After arriving in Stratford-upon-Avon by early afternoon he hitched a ride on the mail coach to Shipston on Stour. From there he travelled to Shrewsbury, where he lingered for a few days, certainly long enough to write letters to a woman in Washwood Heath near Birmingham; a woman he had, on occasion, cohabited with and who had no hesitation in handing the correspondence to the police. From there it is believed James travelled to London and then to America where he arrived in early summer.
Meanwhile, back at the farm Tilsley's body was initially carried into a nearby barn where it was later examined by surgeon, William Morris. This was a purely academic exercise on his part as Tilsley had died the instant the shot hit him in the eye. Morris was able to be precise in that view, the damage to the back of the man's head being so extensive that it left absolutely no doubt. He then organised the body's removal to the Marlborough's Head Inn at Studley to await the coroner's arrival.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Warwickshire Murders by Kevin Turton. Copyright © 2012 Kevin Turton. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction & Acknowledgements,1. A Deadly Secret Nuneaton, 1832,
2. A Question of Insanity Spernal, 1842,
3. A Case of Poisoning Nuneaton, 1849,
4. The Price of Jealousy Priors Hardwick, 1872,
5. Of Witches & Wizards Long Compton, 1875,
6. The Deadly Midwife Ettington, 1897,
7. A Deadly Engagement Baddesley Ensor, 1902,
8. The Bicycle Lamp Murders Coventry, 1906,
9. The Price of Herring Leamington, 1907,
10. A Grudge Killing Coventry, 1908,
11. A Marriage Made in Hell Harbury, 1922,
12. The Radio Ham Ladbroke, 1926,
13. The Bombing of Broadgate Coventry, 1939,
14. The Witchcraft Murder Upper Quinton, 1945,
15. The Ring of Bells Murder Coventry, 1945,
16. A Wartime Argument Coventry, 1950,
17. The Silencing of Penelope Mogano Coventry, 1954,
18. The Death of Innocence Fillongley, 1955,
19. Murderous Thoughts Coventry, 1955,
20. A Moment of Madness Coventry, 1957,
21. The Price of Lodgings Rugby, 1958,