Halifax Read online

  CONTENTS

  * * *

  Title Page

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  Case One 1839 Murdered by his Father

  Case Two 1865 ‘Oh Mother, don’t poison me’

  Case Three 1857 ‘I came to murder him and I have done it’

  Case Four 1858 Murder in a Newspaper Office

  Case Five 1864 ‘I’ve don’t it and what’s done can’t be undone’

  Case Six 1864 A Canal Side Rescue

  Case Seven 1865 Child Murder

  Case Eight 1865 Death of a Sister

  Case Nine 1868 Murder at the Parsonage

  Case Ten 1870 Murdered by his Son

  Case Eleven 1872 Saved by a Thick Overcoat

  Case Twelve 1889 ‘Acting like Jack the Ripper’

  Case Thirteen 1892 Murder in the Cellar

  Case Fourteen 1866 Murder and Suicide

  Copyright

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  * * *

  Writing a book is not a solitary exercise and it could not be done without the help and encouragement of friends and family. Many thanks, as always, to the skilful editors at The History Press, including Lucy Simpkin for making sense of my ramblings. Grateful thanks go members of my family, particularly to my niece Sue Trickey and her two daughters Genna and Bridie Wanley. I would also like to thank Mr and Mrs Tasker Taylor for their kind permission to take and reproduce pictures of Todmorden Parsonage. I also want to give my thanks to the Friends of Lister Lane Cemetery for permission to use the inscription on the grave of James Edward Jacobs. Lastly, but by no means least, I would like to thank Steve Baxter for helping me with the photographs of Halifax and for bearing patiently and with great stoicism as I reminisced endlessly about the places I knew as a girl.

  INTRODUCTION

  * * *

  For many centuries, Halifax was at the centre of the woollen trade, and by the Victorian era was a hub of commercial and industrial activity. Pride of place is given to Piece Hall, which stands in the town centre and was built in 1779. This Grade I listed Georgian masterpiece is unique as the only remaining Cloth Hall in England, where, traditionally, lengths or pieces of cloth were bought and sold.

  The introduction of the power loom in the 1820s saw a reduction in the number of handloomers throughout the area, many of whom had previously seen themselves as craftsmen and artisans. By 1839, however, weaving was undertaken in the large factories which were being increasingly built around the town. Many of the former handloom weavers were forced to find other trades to earn a living; even farmers were being forced to work other trades, some becoming slaughter men. Industrialisation had brought an influx of labour into the area and with it poverty and overcrowding, which resulted, inevitably, in a rise in crime.

  View of Halifax.

  Halifax Piece Hall.

  The town is dominated by Beacon Hill, which has its own history of executions. On Saturday, 6 August 1769, Robert Thomas and Matthew Normanton were executed at York for the murder of an exciseman. After the hangings their bodies were returned to Halifax under a heavy guard. The bodies were hung in chains on Beacon Hill, left there as an example to other murderers, and their hands were placed pointing towards the scene of the murder.

  A modern reproduction of the Halifax Gibbet upon the original base.

  The condemned cell at York Castle, where prisoners waited for their execution.

  People who committed murder in Halifax between 1541 and 1650 would most likely have been beheaded on the gibbet, situated on the aptly named Gibbet Street. The first felon to meet his end in this fashion was a man named Richard Bentley, or Beverley, although there is no record as to what his crime was. The last to be executed by this method was Anthony Mitchell of Sowerby, on 30 April 1650. By the Victorian period, the punishment for committing murder was handled in a very different way. Anyone charged with committing murder in Halifax would be tried at the local Magistrates’ Court and if found guilty were sent to stand trial at the assizes in York or Leeds. If they were found guilty again they would be hanged on the scaffold outside the castle at York, or Armley Gaol in Leeds. These were usually public executions which attracted thousands of people eager to see the committed hanged. In the 1860s, public execution was abolished in favour of private execution; now, instead of the felon’s death being a spectacle, it was announced by a black flag being raised into the air from within the walls of the gaol or castle, indicating that the law had been carried out to the letter.

  Margaret Drinkall, 2013

  CASE ONE 1839

  MURDERED BY

  HIS FATHER

  * * *

  Suspect: Eli Lumb

  Age: Forty-four

  Charge: Murder

  Sentence: Discharged

  * * *

  In September 1839, the people of Halifax heard of the atrocious murder of a son by his father. The murderer was a man named Eli Lumb, aged forty-four, who traded in multiple things including weaving, butchery and farriery. He lived with his wife and seven children – four sons and three daughters – in an overcrowded cottage. The cottage was made up of four rooms with two on the ground floor, one of which was used as a weaving shed and held two looms, and the other as a kitchen. Upstairs there were two bedrooms. The first bedroom contained two double beds, one shared by the oldest son Thomas, aged thirty, and his brother Joseph, aged twenty-three, and in the other bed was John, aged sixteen, and Eli junior, aged ten. Eli senior and his wife occupied the second bedroom, whilst in a corner, under a bundle of clothes, slept thirteen-year-old Elizabeth. Lumb’s eldest daughter was married and lived next door in another cottage which was attached to the same building as her parents’ house. Thomas was expecting to leave the family home following his marriage to a local girl. It was reported that Lumb became increasingly addicted to alcohol. Unfortunately, this combination of drunkenness and overcrowding led to many incidents of domestic abuse against his long-suffering wife and children.

  On Thursday 19 September, Lumb was due to butcher a cow belonging to Mr Thomas Hitchen of Ripponden Wood. In the afternoon he set off to Ripponden Wood, only to find upon his arrival that the cow had died and been taken away to the knacker’s yard. No doubt furious about this unexpected loss of income, he called in at the New Shop, a public house owned by James Heaps in the little township of Sowerby.

  St Peter’s Church, Sowerby.

  Later in the day he was joined by his son Joseph, who spent some time drinking with his father. About 7 p.m. Joseph told his father that he was going home, to which his father replied, ‘I’ll be along in a short while’. Just before 9 p.m. his wife, who was standing in the lane leading to their cottage, heard him coming towards her shouting and making a great noise. She castigated her husband for causing such a fuss and he told her to ‘hold her tongue’. Once inside, Mrs Lumb continued to berate her husband and he threatened that if she did not desist he would run away and leave her. After further altercations the irate Lumb punched his wife several times and then pushed her towards the front door. Before she could protest, he bundled his wife out of the house and locked the door. Pocketing the key he went upstairs to bed, leaving her in the garden. Normally he would leave the leather pouch containing his three butchering knives downstairs in the kitchen. This time, however, he took the knives upstairs with him. Blowing out the candle, Lumb got undressed and climbed into bed.

  Thomas, hearing his mother shouting outside, went downstairs to let her back in but when he reached the front door he found the key missing, so he went to retrieve it from his father. By this point, Lumb – who had been woken up – was infuriated with his son, who he now accused of taking his wife’s side; he threatened that if Thomas let his mother back into the house he would ‘stick him’. The two men started to sc
uffle in the darkened bedroom. Upon hearing the noise, the other children woke up and ran to the bedroom, where they witnessed the sight of their father struggling and punching their oldest brother. They ran to the bottom of the stairs, in fright, where they could hear their mother pounding on the door. It was at this point that Lumb drew out one of the knives from the pouch at the side of the bed and lunged at his son, stabbing him in the thigh. Holding his leg, Thomas made his way downstairs and got a fire iron from the kitchen, which he carried back up the stairs. He hit his father twice across the head before Lumb, now incredibly angry, attacked his son once more, delivering three more stab wounds – two to his side and one fatal wound to his left breast, burying the knife to the hilt. By this time it was half past ten in the evening, and the younger son, John, managed to get the key out of his father’s pocket and let his mother in. The two younger children – Eli junior and Elizabeth – ran next door to the safety of their sister’s house, whilst Joseph, John and their mother went to tend to Thomas’ wounds.

  * * *

  ‘lunged at his son,

  stabbing him in the thigh’

  * * *

  Lumb could now see the state of his eldest son’s health and he gathered him into his arms, crying out, ‘Oh Tom, speak to me, cannot thou speak to me?’ The father, mother and two sons looked upon the scene in the bedroom with horror; the silence only broken by Thomas’s last sobs as he died. When he realised that his son was dead, Lumb hastily donned his outdoor clothes and ran downstairs, crying out, ‘I shall be hanged for this’. Lumb’s other son, Joseph, followed him and tried to hold on to him, but he dashed out of the house and up the lane.

  A constable was called to the house and, after listening to Mrs Lumb and her sons, ordered that the surrounding fields and sheds be searched. By now, other neighbours had gathered, having heard the commotion, and joined in with the search. Within a short distance of the house the two remaining knives were found and the constable tracked Lumb’s footprints towards a nearby dam. The constable thought that Lumb was going to drown himself but was astonished to see that the footprints carried on past the dam, heading in the direction of a place known locally as Cobs Castle. The search for Eli Lumb continued and he was finally found in Bradford two days later and brought back to Halifax, where he was arrested for the wilful murder of his son.

  On Saturday 21 September an inquest was held at the Sportsman Inn, Halifax, before the coroner Thomas Lee Esq. Prior to the inquest, as was customary at the time, the jury were taken to the house where the dead man lay in order to view the body. A reporter, who accompanied the jury, stated that:

  The body provided a dreadful spectacle. The deceased man had a wound in his right thigh; his hand had also been stabbed, as was the right breast. But it was the wound in the left breast which had killed him. The dead man was shirtless although the blood-soaked shirt lay on the floor of the bedroom.

  One of the jurors picked up the shirt and noted that the cuts and blood on the shirt corresponded with the cuts on the body. It was reported that the bedroom was in a terrible state, with blood and gore stains splashed all over the walls and floorboards. Lumb, who had been captured that morning and was now in custody, attended the inquest and wept bitterly throughout the proceedings. Mrs Lumb told the coroner about her life with her husband, admitting that he was not the soberest of men. The coroner asked her about Lumb’s relationship with his sons and she told him that they argued from time to time, but he had always got on well with all of them, in particular Thomas.

  Lumb’s neighbours gave their own detailed descriptions of the altercation and how they had joined in the search that night. A female neighbour told the coroner and the jury that Thomas was a sober and hard-working young man, who had been employed as a weaver at Makin Place, Soyland, and had the respect and good opinion of all who knew him. The next to give evidence was Joseph, who stated that while in the public house, he and his father had about four pints each. Joseph left around seven o’clock and tried to get his father to come with him but was unsuccessful; his father remained in the pub drinking with his friends. He said that when he got home, he told his mother that Lumb had stayed on and she began to fret.

  Mr Bland, the surgeon who examined Thomas’s body at the house, described the wounds that he had found. He said that three were slight, only one of them going into the cartilage of one of the ribs, cutting it in half. However, it was the fourth stab wound which has been the cause of death. The surgeon told the jury that he had completed the post-mortem the following day and had found the fatal wound to be two inches long. The knife had gone through the chest and straight into the heart, causing an almost instant death. Lumb told the coroner, ‘I cannot remember anything except him striking me with the fire iron. I was dizzy for a long time, I cannot tell how long.’ The jury took very little time in finding Lumb guilty of wilful murder and he was sent to the spring assizes to stand trial.

  On Thursday, 11 March 1840, Lumb appeared before Mr Justice Erskine and the jury found that there was no true bill to answer. It was common practice before each assizes started for the jury to examine every bill of indictment for each prisoner. If it was felt that the prisoner was not guilty, there was not enough evidence or there were other mitigating circumstances, the action would be dropped and no true bill found. In this case, Mr Knowles, for the prosecution, rose and stated that no evidence would be offered and the jury, by the direction of Mr Justice Erskine, found a verdict of acquittal in favour of the prisoner, which allowed Lumb to be discharged.

  CASE TWO 1865

  ‘OH MOTHER,

  DON’T

  POISON ME’

  * * *

  Suspect: Leah Atkinson

  Age: Unknown

  Charge: Murder

  Sentence: Discharged

  * * *

  During the Victorian period, having a child out of wedlock was most definitely frowned upon. It was usually deemed to be the woman’s fault for allowing herself to be seduced by a man; little blame was attached to the putative father of the child, resulting in both the mother and child usually being shunned by ‘respectable’ society.

  Portland Road, Halifax.

  Leah Atkinson lived with her daughter, Betty, on Portland Road, Range Bank, Halifax, in a lodging house kept by Martha Booth. On 12 June 1856, Leah and a neighbour, Elizabeth Holgate, went to the market place in town to collect some laudanum for Betty, who was ill and had been steadily getting worse. Entering the druggists owned by Mr Wood, she asked the boy who served in the shop for a pennyworth of laudanum. He said that he was not authorised to serve this to her, as it was poison. He called for his master, Mr Wood, who came into the shop from the back room. He asked Atkinson how old her daughter was and she replied that she was almost twelve. He stated that he would give her some laudanum, providing she gave her daughter no more than ten drops. Atkinson promised that she would not, so Mr Woods gave her the medicine in a bottle clearly marked ‘laudanum poison’.

  On her return to the lodging house, Atkinson found Betty in the kitchen, along with some of the other lodgers; one of whom, Emma Heywood, took the bottle from her and stated that it read ‘poison’ on the label. Atkinson, who was unable to read, went to give her daughter some of the laudanum in a cup of tea. Betty was clearly unhappy and said to her mother, ‘Oh mother, don’t poison me,’ and her mother replied, ‘Thou fool, thou’s no occasion to be frightened of me poisoning thee, I like thee too well for that.’ Fellow lodger Emma Heywood, in order to reassure the little girl, took a spoonful herself but, despite all of her assurances, Betty died the next morning.

  Mr Laurence Bramley, the surgeon who had been treating Betty for a disease of the lungs, was called; he saw the body and signed the death certificate. Suspicions surrounding the death of the child, however, would not go away and it was not long before they were brought to the attention of the Halifax police force. Atkinson, after being interviewed by the police, was arrested and charged with poisoning her daughter with laudanum. The cor
oner was informed and the decision to exhume the child’s body was approved. The coroner also instructed surgeon Mr Bramley to conduct a post-mortem on the body.

  An inquest was held before coroner Mr George Dyson Esq. on Friday 20 June at 3.30 p.m. at the Bay Horse Inn. The jury was selected and a local manufacturer, Mr John Foster Esq., was elected to act as foreman. The first witness called forward was Elizabeth Holgate, who had accompanied Atkinson to Halifax for the laudanum. She talked about the exchange in the chemists shop and stated that she had seen Atkinson give the drops to Betty, but said that she did not see exactly how many she had put into the tea. Mrs Holgate was asked about Atkinson’s relationship with her daughter and said that Leah had spoken very disparaging about Betty on several occasions. She claimed that Atkinson had told her, ‘If the child does not die, I will give her some stuff to make it so.’ The coroner asked her what her own relations with Atkinson were and Holgate told him that Atkinson had confronted her about all the lies she claimed Holgate had told the neighbours just that week.

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