Cheltenham Murder Walk · 2020. 6. 10. · the site of Cheltenham’s most infamous murder, which resulted in the first private hanging to take place at Gloucester Prison - public

The Cheltenham Murder Walk

By Nell Darby

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This booklet is not for sale or resale, and was originally published on

www.criminalhistorian.com

ã Nell Darby 2020

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Map of Cheltenham and the locations visited

See more detail at https://bit.ly/cheltenhammurderwalk

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Contents Introduction 5 1 Drunk, disorderly and dead

Wellington Square, 1853 6

2 The murder of Emily Gardner Wellesley Road, 1871

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3 Sister to sister Brunswick Street, 1854

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4 Death by politics Chapel Street, 1865

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5 Domestic violence at the grocer’s High Street, 1894

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6 Where Emily Gardner lived High Street, 1871

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7 The housemaid’s secret Promenade, 1862

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8 The toddler under the stairs Ormond Terrace, 1864

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9 The transported man’s home Regent Street, 1865

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10 Death of the dairyman Winchcombe Place, 1882

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11 Poverty or murder York Street, 1903

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12 From Cheltenham to Broadmoor Winstonian Road, 1905

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Introduction Welcome to the Cheltenham Murder Walk - a walk through the darker side of this genteel Georgian town’s history. Although the title is ‘murder’, the walk covers untimely deaths more generally, including accusations of infanticide and charges of manslaughter in addition to murder. This is only a selection of cases - designed to cover the Victorian and Edwardian periods - and is a brief introduction with the walker in mind. The locations are mainly where crimes took place, but there is mention of other sites associated with the cases too. In two of the cases at least, the original building no longer exists. This is because Cheltenham, perhaps surprisingly to some, was once home to some notorious slum dwellings, which were cleared in the 20th century. Therefore, although you will be in the approximate location where the crimes took place, it is no longer possible to look at the original building. However, by taking this walk, you will be walking in the footsteps of those who resorted to violence for various reasons: out of jealousy, depression, a desire for control, and even simply a desperation to avoid a life of poverty. Their crimes came from different motives, but they all shaped the town’s history.

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1. Drunk, disorderly and dead Wellington Square, 1853

This walk starts at Wellington Square, which is where Winchcombe native Richard Mace was killed in 1853. One evening in early April, sawyer William Baker had bumped into his friend, 25-year-old Richard Mace, at the steeplechases at Prestbury Park.* Baker needed to go and see his landlord, John Newman, in Cheltenham, and asked if Mace would come with him. The two men visited Newman at his pub, the Anchor on the Tewkesbury Road, where they ate supper together. It was an ominous night to be out. The local police had been withdrawn from service due to tiredness, as it was felt they needed both a rest and some food and drink following their attendance at the steeplechase races that

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day. In effect, they now left the town ‘unpoliced’ for a good hour from nine till ten o’clock that evening. This was problematic as it was known that the racegoers could get a bit rowdy, and either cause damage to local houses, or even try and burgle them. In the absence of police, it was felt that ‘thieves [had] an excellent opportunity to exercise their vocation, while the violent and the turbulent could assault the defenceless at pleasure.’ The friends decided to stay at the Anchor for the night and booked beds, but at around 10.25pm, they went out for a walk, in order to see the town at night. By this time, they were already a bit drunk, but they stopped at the Hen & Chickens on the High Street and drank two bottles of ginger beer and a pint of beer each. After fifteen minutes or so, they left and walked up the High Street, arm in arm, until they reached Wellington Square. They drank there until they were getting a bit worse for wear, and then left for a walk along the High Street to Wellington Square. Somewhere along the route - accounts differ - they heard two women swearing and arguing while walking behind them. The men turned to ask what the matter was - Baker said that Mace simply said, “Hullo, misses, what’s the matter?” - and one of the women, hat-binder Margaret Bell, aged 30, hit Richard, knocking him down. Her friend, Bridget Whimble, a 25-year-old illiterate hawker, then kicked him. Another man, James Hart - a Yorkshire-born servant, aged 26, and

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described later in court as ‘a man of colour’ (Black) - then rushed out from a passage, and hit Richard again. William Baker then decided to walk away, and tried to persuade his friend to come with him. When Richard refused, Baker left. The three attackers then assaulted Richard again; Whimble was just four feet eleven, and Bell five feet one, but they were able to do a lot of harm. Bridget Whimble, who had a baby in her arms (one of which was tattooed with the name ‘William’), jumped on Mace while he was lying injured on the ground, and stamped on him until he lost consciousness. The three then left. It wasn’t until 3.30am the following morning that a policeman found Mace, who was lying groaning in Wellington Square, and took him to the police station, as he was believed to simply be very drunk. The next day, Bridget Wimble was seen approaching the spot where Mace was attacked, and saying to her companion, “This is how I jumped on the *** last night.” Richard Mace survived for two days, although some of the treatments he was given could not have helped him much. He was a thin man, and kept in a cold room; he was given leeches and blisters, but died the following morning. Leeches and blisters could have done nothing for the severe skull fracture he had received in the attack.

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All three attackers were charged with manslaughter. At the summer assizes in August, four months after the attack, Whimble and Hart were both convicted, and sentenced to nine months imprisonment at Gloucester; Bell received a lesser sentence of four months. Bridget Whimble had apparently been expecting to be transported to Australia for the offence; on hearing that she would be out of prison within the year, laughed, and nodded to her friends in the dock. She then started dancing, and had to be removed by the female warder.

A summary of the case at the Assizes,

from the Cheltenham Chronicle, 11 August 1853 * Richard Mace’s burial entry gives his age as 23 (born 1830), but the baptism records for Winchcombe show that he was baptised in 1828, which would make him 24 or 25 when he died.

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2. The Murder of Emily Gardner Wellesley Road, 1871

This road was, in the past, also known by the name of Murder Lane, which hints at its dark past. In 1871, it was the site of Cheltenham’s most infamous murder, which resulted in the first private hanging to take place at Gloucester Prison - public hangings had been abolished in 1868. This murder is covered more fully in my book Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in the Cotswolds (Pen & Sword, 2009), but the basic details are covered here. Frederick Jones was a young Cheltenham baker, who lived at 36 Swindon Place. He had been ‘walking out’ (or so he thought) with 18-year-old Emily Gardner, whose

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father ran the Early Dawn pub. Emily helped out, both in the pub, and in the accommodation above, where they had lodgers. It was Sunday afternoon, 10 December 1871, and Frederick, then aged 21, was drinking at the Early Dawn. While drinking, he became jealous, suspecting Emily of having been seeing other men behind his back. He knew that Emily’s father Peter tended to leave his razor in the kitchen, and so he took it and hid it on his person, thinking that he would tell Emily to stop being ‘intimate’ with others, and that if she refused, he would attack her. He was drinking there from 1.30 till 5pm. Emily’s sister Alice had half a day’s leave from her job as a live-in servant locally, so she had gone home to see Peter and Emily. Frederick left them all there, and went home to his father’s house, Swindon Place not being far, for tea. After half an hour, he returned to ask the two Gardner girls for a walk. That evening, therefore, the three went out, calling en route at another pub, The Tiger, where they shared a pint of beer. The girls later returned to the Early Dawn, while Frederick went back to his for supper. As soon as he had eaten, at around 9.30pm, he told his father he was going to go back to the pub. Both his parents tried to dissuade him, concerned about Frederick’s mood and intentions.

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As he got there, Emily and Alice were just leaving - Emily was going to walk Alice back to the latter’s accommodation at 2 Saxham Villas. Emily told Frederick he could come with him if he liked, and so the three walked along Greyhound Lane, Pittville Street, and the Cleeve Road, as this was the best-lit route to the house. They had reached it by 10pm, and saw Alice through the gate, both Frederick and Emily saying goodnight to her. Instead of returning the same way, they went the unlit route at the back of Wellington Square - a dark and foggy Wellesley Road. There, Frederick asked her who else she had been seeing, and whether she cared for him. In response, Emily retorted, “Don’t bother me - I shall do as I like.” This angered Gardner, and he growled, “I’ll make you tell me or I’ll kill you with your father’s razor, if I’m hung for it the next minute.” Emily, unsurprisingly, became scared, and started screaming “Murder!” She had managed to scream that word three times before Gardner overpowered her and cut her throat. Not only did he cut it once, but he made several cuts in order to make sure that she would not survive. At 10.30pm, Frederick returned to his parents’ home. He was covered in blood, with cuts to his cheek and neck. When asked what had happened, he claimed that Emily had attacked him, and so he had killed her out of self-

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defence, leaving her body in a ditch. In fact, a witness would later come forward to say he had seen a figure dragging a body towards the ditch in the lane, and later passing him by with his head down and coat collar up. His parents presumably called the police, and when Police Constable George Clayfield arrived at the Jones house, Frederick said, “Here’s the bobby! I am ready”, while filling his pipe with tobacco. He then added, “I have done it - murdered the girl”. PC Clayfield advised him to be careful, as murder was a serious matter, and Frederick, with perhaps false bravado, responded, “I don’t care. She began at me, and I finished it.”

Depictions of the crime in the Illustrated Police News,

23 December 1871 (quality is impaired in the original digitisation) Frederick’s wounds, he first suggested, were proof that Emily had attacked him, and he said that she had been the one carrying a razor. However, a surgeon was later asked to examine the scratches, and stated that they were both self-inflicted (of the cheek wound, the

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surgeon stated that “it was not so deep as a wound inflicted in anger would have been”). When he first appeared at Cheltenham Police Court charged with her murder, and Emily’s injuries were read out, Frederick moaned, saying, “My darling girl!” At another point, though, when Emily’s father stated that Frederick had known where he kept his razor, his temper again came to the fore, with him shouting “Liar! Liar!” to the bereaved father. Frederick blamed his drinking and jealousy for the murder, stating that they had caused him to commit the crime. He was concerned about the impact of his act on his own family - “My poor, dear, mother, this will break her heart!” - but was also concerned about getting the forgiveness of Emily’s grieving family. But at heart, he was a man who wanted to control a girl who was young and free, and who wanted to see whoever she wanted to. Her sense of freedom and friendliness were what drew Frederick to her; but they also caused an irrational jealousy in him. Frederick may always have been imagining his relationship with Emily to be something it wasn’t. In court, it was heard that he had known her for two years, and that he had tried to pay his ‘attentions’ to her - but ‘it did not appear from the depositions that she had any affection for him’. Perhaps Emily, like a good 19th century girl, had been brought up to be polite to men, but her

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patience must have been stretched by these unwanted attentions, and she eventually made this clear to Frederick, who could not deal with losing control of the situation. The Cheltenham baker was found guilty of murder, and Frederick Jones was hanged on the morning of Monday 8 January 1872. He was said to have walked calmly to the scaffold, and to have died ‘quietly’.

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3. Sister to sister Brunswick Street, 1854

Where Brunswick Street now is was the former Rutland Street, one of the most notorious slums in Cheltenham, where violence frequently broke out. In 1854, an Irishwoman named Mary Killanan, who lived in one of the overcrowded courts of houses here, was charged with assault, GBH and attempted murder after attacking one of her neighbours, a fellow Irishwoman named Ellen Carey. Carey was a widow and a mother of three, who had been lodging with Killanan in Long’s Court, Rutland Street. The two were more than lodgers, however: they were sister-

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in-law. Carey had been married to Killanan’s husband, but after he died, she had moved in with Killanan and her own husband. Killanan, aged 35, was jealous of Carey, and had previously threatened to murder her. She was suspicious of Carey, concerned that she was becoming too close to her spouse. Things were not helped by the fact that the three - Mary Killanan, her husband, and Ellen Carey - all had to share a bedroom, because there was so little space in their meagre lodgings. Apparently, Carey’s three children were also lodgers there, although it is not clear where they slept. The two women had quarrelled on the Thursday afternoon - 10 August - and Carey had, as a result, gone out to look for new accommodation, away from Killanan. When she got back, though, Killanan picked another argument with her. Carey managed to get away to her own bed at 11pm. Killanan soon went to bed in the same room, but with a bill-hook placed in her bed. At 7am, while Carey was still asleep, Killanan poured boiling water over her, before beating her. Some accounts say that the attack was with a gardening tool, others that it was a stick. Naked, and severely injured, Carey escaped to a neighbour’s house, but was followed by an angry

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Killanan, armed with a stick, who aimed several blows at her whilst saying she would ‘finish’ her sister-in-law off. The neighbour, Rosanna Davies, shut Killanan out, and Carey collapsed on the floor. She was so scalded that flesh was dropping from her arms, and the blanket the well-meaning neighbour had wrapped round her had quantities of flesh sticking to it. Her head and throat were swollen, she had scalding to her face, shoulders, arms and chest, and she had several injuries to her side and back from the beating Killanan had given her. It was said that her injuries were so serious that there were doubts as to whether she would recover. Another neighbour, Henry Moss, also witnessed Ellen running out of her lodgings, chased by Mary, who was threatening to kill her sister-in-law. Moss asked Killanan, “How can you be so unfeeling to serve your fellow creature in that way?” - to which Mary responded, “I could not get her out of the house any other way, as I had ordered her to leave several times before, but she would not go.” When a police sergeant, Cresant Jeffs, arrived to arrest Mary, she was still unrepentant, saying, “I’m sorry I have not finished her. I hope she’ll die, for I don’t mind being hanged for her, for what I have suffered for her; let her suffer as much as I have suffered these last two months.”

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Mary was charged with assault with intent to kill, and her case was heard seven months later, at the Lent Assizes. Mary was described as ‘an Irish woman, unable to read or write’; it was confirmed in court that the charge was assault with intent to murder, as Ellen Carey had survived her injuries. Rather surprisingly, perhaps, Mary was acquitted of the charge, but pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of common assault.

Prison register entry for Mary Killanan, 1855

Ellen had been left scarred mentally and physically by the unprovoked attack on her while she slept, and she would have these scars for the rest of her life. Mary, however, received the punishment of a mere week in prison, and was then free to continue with her life. The rough, overcrowded slum where the attack happened was cleared in the 1930s, and the road renamed to escape its bad connotations.

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4. Death by Politics Chapel Street, 1865

16 Chapel Street is where shoemaker William Lynes, who was killed for his political beliefs in 1865, lived. The election for a Member of Parliament for Cheltenham took place on 12 July 1865, with the candidates being Francis William Fitzhardinge Berkeley - the sitting Liberal MP - against Charles Schreiber, who was standing for the Tories. Election day meant lots of men out and about wearing their party’s colours - yellow for the Liberals and blue for the Conservatives, and lots of catcalling and threats of fights between opposing parties.

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Local shoemaker William Lynes was 31 at the time, married to Sarah, and a father of three young girls - Charlotte, Mary and Sarah. For the election, though, he was acting as one of Berkeley’s messengers. He was walking down the High Street around 9pm, and heard a band playing a song called “Hurrah for the bonnets of blue”. Lynes, loyal to the Liberal cause, unsurprisingly called out in response, “Hurrah for the bonnets of yellow!” He was heard by a Tory voter, chemist John Glass. 29-year-old Glass had previously lived at 13 Regent Street with his father John, the Cheltenham parish clerk, but had married his wife Ellen in 1863, and moved away to Bournemouth. He had now returned to visit his old town at election time. He called back, “I’ll give you yellow!” and promptly shot Lynes through the mouth with his pistol.

Charles Schreiber, the Conservative candidate for Cheltenham

in 1865

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Despite a number of witnesses being called, who could testify to Glass’s earlier threats of violence towards Liberal voters, and the fact that he had also shown off the revolver to a friend, saying that the gun would “stop any disturbance”, he was only found guilty of manslaughter, and was sentenced to 15 years’ penal servitude. There was one good outcome for Glass - the Conservatives won the election.

The burial register entry for William Lynes

Records show that Glass was sent to Millbank prison, but then transported to Australia, arriving there in December 1866. He left behind his wife Ellen and three small children, born a year apart - Sydney, George and Thomas. He behaved well in Australia, and would ordinarily have become eligible for a ticket of leave in 1873; but in fact, he died the same year as his father, in 1872, the father in Cheltenham, and the son on the other side of the world, a transported convict in Perth.

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5. Domestic violence at the grocer’s 303 High Street, 1894

It was at 303 High Street that one of Cheltenham’s most notorious murders took place. On 4 September 1894, the bodies of Rebecca Hartland, 57, and her youngest son George, 13, were found here, at their home. They had been murdered by Job Hartland - Rebecca’s husband and George’s own father. Rebecca Anstey had married greengrocer Job on 28 March 1859 in their home village of Great Washbourne. At that time, Job was a 20 year old labourer, and Rebecca a servant, aged 21. They started their family in Great Washbourne - eldest child Ellen was born there in 1860. By 1871, they were living in Alderton, and now had three children - Ellen, Mary and Emily. There was an eight year

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gap between the latter two, suggesting that Rebecca may have lost children in pregnancy or infancy in the 1860s. It was whilst living in Alderton that Job changed job, moving from his work as an agricultural labourer to the position of village greengrocer and haberdasher - a bit of an upward move for the family. By 1881, the family seemed established, Job and Rebecca now being in their 40s and parents to three more children - all boys: Joseph, James and William.

The Hartland home, as shown in the Cheltenham Chronicle,

8 December 1894

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Perhaps Job was an ambitious man, and thought that Cheltenham would offer more prospects, and more money, than a village. By 1891, he had relocated his family to the High Street. When he started drinking is not clear, but certainly, by the time he turned 60 he was known as a violent and unpleasant drunk, who frequently threatened his wife with violence. Hopefully, he had not always been this way, for the thought of Rebecca enduring four decades of aggression and drunkenness is hard to contemplate; but certainly, as he got older, his habits grew less pleasant, and his older children moved out or married as soon as they could. By 1894, George was the only child left still living at home. The previous Friday, Mrs Hartland had woken during the night to find her husband standing over her, holding a hatchet above her head. Rebecca refused to stay another night in the house, sleeping at her daughter’s house for the next two nights. However, on the Monday morning, 3 September, she had to return to run the grocer’s shop, and so after a long day’s work, she slept at home that night. On Tuesday morning, her body was found in her bed, and soon George was found dead as well. Job Hartland had attacked his wife and son with a coal hammer and a butcher’s knife, nearly decapitating Rebecca, and slitting George’s throat, in addition to beating them both around the head.

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After committing the murders on Monday night, Job had wandered to the Clarence Hotel for a drink. Here, he had boasted to the barmaid that he had just killed two people, adding, “You look in the papers this evening.” He later told the postman that there was no point delivering letters to the address, “for they are all dead here”. The police soon found Job, drunk, in a lane behind Clarence Street. They had to wait for him to sober up before they could charge him with murder.

Job Hartland, as drawn in the Cheltenham Chronicle,

8 December 1894 Job was duly tried and found guilty. His execution date was set for Thursday 13 December 1894, but a week prior to that date, he was reprieved by the Home Secretary and given a life sentence instead.

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This seems hard to believe, given the gravity of the offences, but it seems that his drunkenness went in his favour. It was considered that he was not responsible for his actions because of the drink, and because he had been suffering from delirium tremens as a result. However, it was recognised that given his age, a prison sentence might be nearly as likely to kill him as the executioner’s noose, and in the event, Job died in prison in 1896, two years after he murdered his wife and child.

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6. Where Emily Gardner lived 265 High Street, 1871

265 High Street was where the Early Dawn public house was situated. In the 1870s, this was run by publican Peter Gardner, with the help of his wife Sarah and also, at least occasionally, by his daughters. It was one of his daughters, Emily, who was murdered by Frederick Gardner in Wellesley Road in 1871. Peter Gardner himself survived his daughter by less than a decade, dying at the age of 49 in 1880.

The Gardner family at the Early Dawn in the 1871 census

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7. The Housemaid’s Secret Promenade, 1862

In April 1862, the body of a three-month-old baby girl was found on the premises of silk mercer William Smith, at the rear of Brunswick House on the Promenade. Some workmen had been based there one Friday, and one, named Jones, had been in the scullery when he heard a bell ring, but couldn’t see where the noise was coming from. He saw a hole in the wall under the stairs, about seven feet from the ground, and found the bell - but also a bundle, covered in a coloured pocket handkerchief. The police were sent for, and when they unwrapped the bundle, they found the partly decomposed body of a baby. It was then discovered that the housemaid of Brunswick House, 26-year-old Elizabeth Hale, had formed an

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‘improper relationship’ with an unknown man the previous year - she was unmarried and therefore, becoming pregnant, had to leave her employment. She had gone to a house at 3 Park Street, belonging to Ann Hest, a housekeeper in her early 70s, where she had given birth to a daughter on 22 November 1861. She stayed with Mrs Hest for a month, and then, just before Christmas Day, she returned to service, leaving her child in Mrs Hest’s care, and agreeing to pay the woman five shillings a week to look after her. On 21 January, she had returned to Mrs Hest and told her she had decided to take the baby to a nurse closer to where she was working. Mrs Hest dressed the baby in her usual clothes, and after Elizabeth Hale had left, and as requested, she sent on further clothes. Three weeks later, she wrote to Elizabeth asking for money outstanding for her care of the child, and asked how she was. Elizabeth replied that the baby was ‘going on nicely’. However, nobody saw the baby after it left Mrs Hest’s care. Elizabeth remained happily in service until 5 April, when the baby’s body was discovered. This was a shock to her employers, as Elizabeth had told them that her mother was looking after it. When asked by her employer’s wife, Agnes Smith, what had happened to the baby, Elizabeth Hale said that the little girl had died from an inflammation of the chest on 21 January, and that her mother had helped bury it. She had hidden it in the

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house, intending to later retrieve the body and rebury it in the Forest of Dean - where she was from - when went there that summer. There was no doubt that the baby was Elizabeth’s, for she was dressed in the clothes that Mrs Hest had put her in, and the clothes that had been posted on were found in Elizabeth’s possessions. But it seems that Elizabeth also readily admitted that it was her child. She argued that she had intended to place the baby with another minder, a Mrs Fortune, who lived near the burial ground - but she had been unable to find her, and then discovered that the child had died in her arms. Mrs Fortune, it turned out, actually worked for Mrs Smith - Elizabeth’s own employer - and had never had any conversation about looking after Elizabeth’s baby with her. Neither did she live near the burial ground, and Elizabeth had never even asked her where she lived. She was charged with wilful murder and appeared at the summer Assizes in August 1862. The baby had been found with a handkerchief tied around its mouth, and the prosecution at her trial argued that she had suffocated the child to death with it. But then it was admitted that the chest inflammation could explain other signs of apparent injury on the child, and Hale argued that she had tied the handkerchief around the baby’s jaw after it had died.

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Despite the evidence, and her hiding of the body, Hale was found not guilty of murder. Juries were often reluctant to convict a woman of infanticide, and preferred to convict of the lesser charge of concealment of a body instead. However, in this case the judge made clear that there could be no question of concealment in this case: the jury had to find Elizabeth either guilty of murder, or not guilty. They duly found her not guilty. The saddest part of the story is that the little girl who died never had her name recorded. In the newspaper reports, she is simply a baby or a child; her birth was never registered (registration was not compulsory at the time, and illegitimate children tended to be registered less often than the legitimate) and her death is simply recorded as ‘Hale: Female’. Her mother’s name is known, but the unwanted child who died without reaching her first birthday remains anonymous.

The index entry for the death of Elizabeth Hale’s

unnamed daughter

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8. The toddler under the stairs Ormond Terrace, 1864

The Promenade turns back into a continuation of the High Street. Continue along it and then turn right into Regent Street. On the left, just opposite the Cavendish House department store, is Ormond Terrace. The Cox family, who lived at 1 Ormond Terrace, had only moved there on 26 September 1863, having previously lived at an apartment in Bath Road. Soon after moving in, they could smell something unpleasant under a staircase that led to a basement kitchen. Eventually, after being unable to live with the smell, they employed labourer James Robinson to come and work on the area - moving some soil under some bricks that they thought might be the cause of the problem.

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What James found was certainly the cause of the horrible smell, but it wasn’t what he was expecting. It was the body of a child - a two-year-old, fair-haired, girl - dressed in the remains of a print frock and cape, a red necktie around her neck, and purple socks. A woman, Eliza Perrin, described in the press as ‘very respectable looking’ and ‘prepossessing’, was charged with the murder of the two-year-old girl: her daughter, Lizzie Perrin. Eliza was a single woman, only aged around 22, and originally from Wiltshire, although she had been brought up in Fawley, near Wantage (which was then in Berkshire). She was a servant who was currently working for a family at 27 Westbourne Park Villas, London, which is where she was arrested. She had had the baby, however, while living in Cheltenham. In fact, it later emerged that she had gone to the Cheltenham Workhouse on 12 August 1861 to be confined, as it had a lying-in ward, giving her name as Margaret Perrin. At this point, she was nine months pregnant, and gave birth soon after. She stayed in the workhouse for just two weeks, leaving on 24 August with her newborn baby. After having the baby, Eliza had put the baby out to nurse, with Maria Stinton. Eliza had taken lodgings with Maria and her husband Thomas at Belmont Terrace when she was heavily pregnant. After she had the baby, she managed to get a position as a wet nurse - looking

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after someone else’s child - and so Maria offered to nurse Eliza’s baby. Eliza’s new job only lasted two weeks, but she then found work in London. In the autumn of 1862, Eliza asked a woman she had once lodged with, Olivia Bick - the wife of a former police sergeant - if she would take Lizzie. Olivia’s husband James was ill, and so she refused. Eliza cried, and said if Olivia wouldn’t take her, Eliza would lose her job. Olivia relented, and looked after Lizzie until 3 September 1863. Eliza needed care for Lizzie at this point - October 1862 - because she had gained a job at Ormond Terrace, working as a servant for Samuel Cox and his wife Catherine. However, in 1863, she also took six weeks’ holidays. James Bick felt she should be looking after her child, and wrote to her several times to ask her to take back Lizzie, arguing that if she couldn’t afford to look after her, she should visit her parish relieving officer. Eventually, on 3 September, Eliza came and took Lizzie. A month later, the Bicks started to ask Eliza for money owed for Lizzie’s care, but she said she couldn’t give them any. She also said that Lizzie had been ‘fetched away by someone from her house.’ When Olivia, who had become fond of Lizzie, answered, “Poor thing, I shall never see it again!”, Eliza burst into tears, and said, “I dare say you never will.” After the body was discovered, Eliza was soon identified as the likely culprit. A local policeman, William Bowles, was dispatched down to Westbourne Park Villas, found

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Eliza working, and charged her with destroying her child, Lizzie Perrin, at Cheltenham, also cautioning her. In response, Eliza said, “Do not tell the people of the house”. She went upstairs and PC Bowles followed; she went into her bedroom and the constable, who, with due Victorian modesty, waited at the door, heard her whisper, “Oh dear, what shall I do? What will they do with me?” She then asked Bowles in, and asked him to tell her about the case. He cautioned her again, and she said, “It was downright want that made me do it.” Eliza said she had taken Lizzie from her nurse, but she was in lodgings and would not have been allowed to keep her daughter there. “I had nowhere to take it to, nor a penny in my pocket.” Eliza admitted burying the child at her then employer’s house on 6 September 1863, but at her trial at Gloucester Assizes in December 1864, her looks, demeanour, and positive work references were all used in her favour. The judge said, when concluding, that the jury should take into account “the circumstances of the woman, her affection for the child, and her desperate condition.” The jury listened to the judge, and after deliberating for only ten minutes, found Eliza not guilty of murder. Whether Eliza told the truth about her finances being the reason why she killed her daughter is not clear. She was

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said to have displayed affection towards the child, but she had managed to consistently find work, and so was usually earning money. She had taken holidays without thinking of visiting her daughter, and only did so when the Bicks persisted in asking her to come down. Some reports in the Victorian press, although focusing on Eliza’s tears and looks in a positive way, do make for uncomfortable reading: it feels as though she was eager to resume her earlier life, and failed to realise that she was both financially and morally responsible for her child. When the Bicks had enough, Eliza killed her child, and then claimed poverty, relying on pity to excuse what she had done.

Eliza had been living with her uncle Charles when the 1851 census

was carried out There was certainly tragedy in her family, however. Eliza had been orphaned young, and by the age of four, was being brought up by her uncle, grocer Charles Edlin, whom she regarded as a father. He was loyal to her, and went to watch her be examined in court on 17 October 1864. He then travelled back down to his home in Berkshire from Cheltenham, and on his arrival, promptly fell down dead.

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9. The transported man’s home 13 Regent Street, 1865

At 13 Regent Street, is the former home of John Thomas Glass, the chemist who shot Liberal voter William Lynes dead in 1865. John lived here with his father, also named John, Cheltenham’s parish clerk. John Sr died the same year as his son, in 1872, but on the opposite side of the world to him.

A glowing obituary for John Glass Sr in The Cheltenham Looker-On,

17 February 1872

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10. Death of the dairyman Winchcombe Place, 1882

A dairy might be an unusual place for a murder, but it was at the Pittville Dairy at 5 Winchcombe Place, in 1882, that 31-year-old William Webb met his death. Sarah Elizabeth Wanklin, a local girl, aged 17 and who worked as a servant, was the first to report what had happened. On the evening of Thursday 16 November, she had gone to the family-run dairy to get some milk. The dairy was on Winchcombe Place, which ran between Winchcombe Street and the Sudeley Arms on Prestbury Road. Sarah arrived to find a crowd gathered outside, drawn by noises in the shop. Braver than many there, she knocked at the shop door, but got no answer. However, inside,

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she heard groom Thomas Llewellyn shout that he had paid William’s mother Mary over £70 the day he had married her daughter Annie - presumably, he was demanding that money back. There was then silence, before Mrs Webb shouted, “Murder!” Sarah lifted the door latch and she and a young man standing next to her both went in. They found William Webb in a chair, alive, and he told them, “He has been and broken my jaw”. Pembrokeshire-born Llewellyn was still in the room, calmly looking for his hat. Mrs Webb, in shock, gave him a hat nearby, and Llewellyn turned to walk out. “You will kill me and my son!” called Mrs Webb, but got the response, “I have not done with him yet” before he left. William Webb died a couple of days later from brain inflammation caused by the assault.

The 1881 census entry for the Webbs at Winchcombe Place

It later emerged that William Webb had been worried about his safety for some 18 months before this attack; in early 1881, he had run into the Pittville Stores and asked the owner, William Meek, for protection - three minutes later, Llewellyn had also run in, demanding to

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know where Webb was. He had also described Webb as ‘one of the worst sons that God Almighty’s sun ever shone upon,” and had previously threatened to kill him. They had also been in a previous fight, one so bad that Webb had had to wear a shade over his eyes for a month afterwards. Yet Mary Webb believed that Llewellyn had previously had an ‘irreproachable’ character. He was married to her daughter, and had a large family (nine at the time - he would end up having 14 children, of whom 12 survived)*, and had worked for eight years as a coachman for barrister James Hutchinson at Prestbury. William Webb, on the other hand, had lived with his mother all his life, helping her out in the dairy business, but was a drinker, and Llewellyn believed that he should be more of a help to Mary, or the business would go to ‘rack and ruin’. In court, though, it was suggested that Llewellyn was jealous that William was ‘kept’ by his mother and had few worries, while Llewellyn had to work hard for a living, in order to maintain his family.

The prison register entry for Thomas Llewellyn

Webb was charged with both murder and the alternative charge of manslaughter. At the Gloucestershire Assizes

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in February 1883, he was found guilty of the latter. In light of his previous good character, and the fact that he had spent three months in prison awaiting trial, Llewellyn was given just a three month prison sentence for killing his brother-in-law. Llewellyn and his family - including wife Annie - had previously lived in Salford, and returned there on his release from prison. They were still living there in 1911.

Two years after the death of William Webb, the family was

preoccupied with the disappearance of their dog, Nellie (Gloucestershire Echo, 11 March 1884)

*Thomas Llewellyn’s 12 surviving children, who were born between 1870 and 1893, were William Thomas, Eva Annie, Sarah Louisa, Arthur John, twins Mary and Emily, Ada, George Edward, Hugh Owen, Ernest, Nellie, and Stanley. There is a gap between the births of Hugh and Ernest that coincides with the death of William Webb and subsequent imprisonment of Thomas Llewellyn.

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11. Poverty or murder York Street, 1903

Sidney George Smith was a 23-year-old fitter who had started a relationship with a local girl, Alice Woodman, who was a year his junior. In 1903, they had decided - rather shockingly for the time - to move in together, despite not being married. Sidney was alleged to have put pressure on Alice to make this decision, saying that she either moved in with him, or their relationship would be finished. Alice’s mother was horrified at the idea of her daughter cohabiting with Smith, and refused to give her consent - but Alice went anyway. The couple duly moved in with Sidney’s widowed mother Emma at 2 St George’s

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Avenue, but believing them to be engaged, she decided to move out, leaving them all the furniture in the place.

The 1901 census entry for the Smith family at St George’s Avenue

Sometime later, the couple moved to 1 Bubb’s Cottages, on York Street, taking the furniture with them from their old place. They couldn’t afford the rent on Smith’s salary alone, and so they took in a lodger named Leach. This did not solve their financial problems, and in September 1903, the couple’s landlord served Smith with a notice to quit the house, as he was in arrears with the rent. Matters seems to have temporarily resolved themselves, and Sidney and Alice remained at Bubb’s Cottages. On 14 December, though, their next door neighbour, Harriet Skinner, heard a noise: she went to investigate, but despite knocking several times on Smith’s door, nobody answered. At 2.30pm, Mrs Skinner broke open the front door with a poker, and when she went upstairs, she saw Alice lying on a mattress in an otherwise empty room - there was no furniture anywhere. Alice herself was clearly dead, her throat cut, and nearby was Smith, still alive, but with his throat also cut.

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On a shelf in the room was a razor and an envelope containing a letter from Smith to his brother Charles, claiming that he was his only friend, and that he was ‘a nobody’. There was also an envelope addressed to Smith’s mother, and on it was written: ‘I killed her. Three o’clock.’ Acquaintances and family members would later tell a story of destitution and despair, but also of a controlling man unable to cope with the possibility of his lover leaving him. Sidney had claimed that Alice’s parents were trying to split them up, and that another man had been trying to court her. He had also claimed to have been ‘brought to ruin and starvation’, having had no food to eat for weeks. He also said that he had intended to marry Alice, but being out of work, he could not afford to. Sidney was charged with murder and brought to trial. Here, it was argued that he suffered from a ‘hereditary taint’ as his father had been a drunk who had previously tried to kill himself. Yet it was also heard that ‘he had tried, but could not get work, and was faced by starvation and ruin’. He had tried to kill himself after murdering Alice, and had only survived thanks to the skill of a surgeon. Sidney was convicted of Alice’s murder, and, after surviving his own attempt to kill himself (itself a crime at

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the time), he would soon get his wish and die, but at the end of a rope.

Reference to Bubb’s Cottages needing to be demolished as part of

slum clearances, in the Gloucestershire Echo of 28 April 1933

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12. From Cheltenham to Broadmoor Winstonian Road, 1905

Alice Isbell Knight, aged 38, killed her young daughter, Olive Lilian Knight, at her home, Torwood Villa, on Winstonian Road, in March 1905. The wife of Cheltenham stationer and bookseller James Knight, Alice had been married nine years at the time of the offence, and was a mother of three - Harry Cyril, aged eight, Edgar James, aged six, and Olive, who was just three months away from her fourth birthday. It seems likely that Alice had been suffering from psychological problems that had originated with what we would recognise today as post-partum psychosis. She had been said to have suffered from depression, or melancholia, for ‘over two years’, and during bad spells, she became

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despondent and unable to show any interest in her children. At other times, she displayed signs of mania. Only a week earlier, she had returned from a three-month stay at her sister’s house in Greenock, which her family hoped would give her a change and a bit of respite. Her husband noted that for the previous couple of days, she had been in a bad way mentally, and he had already had to call the doctor to check on her. Her main symptom, she had said, were pains in her head that were so bad, she had considered killing herself - but she had never threatened to hurt any of her children. A change in her mood came when James had to leave home to go out on business, at around 9.20am on 1 March 1905. Both of their sons were at school. The Knights’ servant, Daisy Ratcliffe, had been looking after Olive, and had put her in a chair in the dining room with some toys to play with, while she went to the kitchen. She then got distracted by a neighbour knocking at the front door; she opened the door and showed the visitor, Annie Watts, into the dining room. Alice was called downstairs, and she and Mrs Watts chatted for around 15 minutes, before Alice excused herself. Mrs Knight then let herself out of the house. Daisy was doing the washing up in the kitchen by this time; she heard a small cry from Olive, but did not rush to see her, as she assumed her mother was with her. It was only when she wanted to return some silverware to

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the dining room that she entered, and found Alice standing over her with a pair of bloodied tongs in her hand. “Daisy, I have killed Olive!” Alice cried. Daisy started screaming, and ran out of the house to fetch Annie Watts back. When they returned, they found Alice dancing on a stair, halfway up the staircase, rubbing her hands and laughing, saying repeatedly, “I have done it, I have done it!” James was called home at 10am, to find his little girl in the arms of a doctor. Olive was taken to the Cheltenham General Hospital, but her mother had beaten her badly with the tongs, fracturing her skull, and she died shortly after being admitted. She was buried five days later.

The burial register entry for three-year-old Olive

Alice, who was born Alice Isbell Ivey, was from a good home in Plymouth. Born in 1867, her father, Frederick, was a Cornish oil merchant; her mother Eliza (nee Neame) was a tailor’s daughter. By the age of 23, Alice was working as a stationer’s assistant, and this is probably how she met Wiltshire-born James Knight. She married James in her hometown in 1896. They had then relocated to Cheltenham, where all three of their children were born. James had a good living as a bookseller, and they had a nice, suburban life.

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After she had killed Olive, Alice was taken to Worcester Prison where she was certified as insane. On 23 March, she was transferred to Broadmoor Lunatic Asylum. Because she had been found to be insane, no murder proceedings were taken against her.

Alice is listed in the 1939 Register for Broadmoor

After Alice’s incarceration, James took his sons and moved from Cheltenham to Burnham in Somerset, where he continued to work as a stationer and bookseller. Alice, meanwhile, was held in Broadmoor for the rest of her long life, dying there in 1949, aged 82.

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With thanks to Ancestry, Findmypast, TheGenealogist, British Newspaper Archive, and Gloucestershire

Archives. Image of Charles Schreiber on p.21 is from Wikipedia; maps are from Google Maps.