Murder of the Black Museum 1875-1975: The Dark Secrets Behind a Hundred Years of the Most Notorious Crimes in England

by Honeycombe, Gordon

  Sir John MacDonnell wrote in 1905 that murder was ‘an incident in miserable lives in which disputes, quarrels, angry words and blows are common’. This still applied 75 years later – as the 1980 Home Office Criminal Statistics for England and Wales show when listing the apparent circumstances of homicides in 1970 and in 1980.

  1970 1980

  Quarrel, revenge or loss of temper 173 239

  In furtherance of theft or gain 34 56

  Attributed to acts of terrorism 0 4

  While resisting or avoiding arrest 0 2

  Attributed to gang warfare or feud 4 5

  The result of offences of arson 0 84

  Homicide of women undergoing illegal abortion 4 0

  Other circumstances, including sex attack 51 66

  Not known, because:

  The suspect committed suicide 19 20

  The suspect was mentally disturbed 34 39

  Other reasons 20 49

  Totals 339 564

  Compared with the 1950s, there was less shooting or gas poisoning in the 1970s, and a much-reduced use of the blunt instrument – a reflection of changing social conditions. One constant was, however, murder by strangulation or asphyxiation.

  The Home Office list of figures for offences recorded as homicide in the decade 1970-1980 by apparent method of killing was as follows.

  1970 1980

  Sharp instrument 107 160

  Strangulation or asphyxiation 70 89

  Hitting, kicking, etc. 57 94

  Blunt instrument 43 61

  Shooting 23 19

  Drowning 12 14

  Poison or other drugs 9 14

  Burning 1 94

  Explosion 0 0

  Other 15 19

  Not known 2 0

  Totals 339 564

  The increasing use of sharp instruments in violent crimes from 1998 to 2007 has become a cause for some alarm. National Health Service statistics published in 2008 showed that in the previous ten years there had been a 32 per cent rise in the number of patients being treated for stab wounds or similar injuries. Home Office statistics also revealed that police in England and Wales had recorded 22,151 offences involving knives in 2007. Of these, 7,409 offences had occurred in London, where twenty teenagers had died. In one week in July 2008, twelve people were stabbed to death in the UK. Despite these knife-crime figures, the Home Office said that overall crime in 2008, as recorded by the police, was down by 9 per cent.

  The term ‘homicide’ covers the offences of murder, manslaughter and infanticide. Murder and manslaughter are common law offences that have never been defined by statute. In the Home Office statistics for 2005-2006, covering the period up to 9 October 2006, it should be noted that ‘homicide offences are shown according to the year in which the police initially recorded the offence as homicide’ and do not necessarily mark the year in which the homicide occurred.

  A summary of these statistics reveals that 766 deaths in England and Wales in 2005-2006 were recorded by the police – a decrease of 9 per cent since 2004-2005. Of that number, 67 per cent were male deaths. The most common method of killing, at 28 per cent, involved a sharp instrument. Compared to the seventy-five victims who were shot and killed in 2004-2005, only fifty were shot in 2005-2006. In general, female victims were more likely to be killed by someone they knew. For instance, 54 per cent of female victims knew the main suspect, compared with 38 per cent of male victims. But the main suspect was known by 67 per cent of victims under the age of sixteen, 44 per cent of whom had been killed by their parents. At 38 per million of the population, children aged one year old and less were the age group most at risk, baby boys being the most vulnerable.

  Several multiple deaths this century have bumped up the annual homicide statistics. The London bombings of 7 July 2006, in which fifty-two people died, accounted for 7 per cent of the homicides in 2005-2006. In 2003-2004, in Morecambe Bay, twenty cockle-pickers were drowned; 172 victims were attributed to Dr Harold Shipman in the 2002-2003 statistics – although well over 200 deaths were later accredited to him; and in the period 2000-2001, fifty-eight people in a group of Chinese nationals being smuggled into the UK in a lorry suffocated en route.

  Of some interest is the fact that suicide (there were 4,200 in Britain in 1979), homicide and mental illness are connected and complementary. Between 1900 and 1949, 29 per cent of the persons suspected of murder committed suicide, a proportion that rose to 33 per cent in the next decade. Again, between 1900 and 1949, 21.4 per cent of the persons found guilty of murder were also adjudged to be insane or unfit to plead. This figure rose in the next decade to 26.5 per cent. It seems that a person suffering from morbid depression, frustration or anxiety, whose mental balance is disturbed, may, as that mental stress or illness increases, commit either suicide or murder. If it is murder, that person may recover as a result of such an act, or become insane. There also seems to be a case for viewing murder as an act of displaced self-destruction, when the disturbed person, unable to kill himself or herself, kills someone near as a substitute. Some women, unable to kill themselves or a husband or a lover, direct their act of destruction against someone more vulnerable – a child – almost as a token sacrifice.

  Another factor connected with the causes of murder is the actual or subconscious yearning of a nonentity for notoriety, a desire inflamed these days by the ease with which other nonentities achieve a spurious fame through appearing on television or from the inflated attentions of the press. People desire to be noticed, to be distinguished in some way by what they are or do. In some cases, where a person is totally undistinguished and untalented, desperate measures are taken to remedy the defect.

  Bruce Lee, aged twenty – his real name was Peter Dinsdale – killed people by setting fire to the houses in which they lived in and around Hull. Said to be suffering from a psychopathic personality disorder, he admitted in court to twenty-six cases of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and to ten charges of arson. He was committed on 20 January 1981 to a psychiatric institution in Liverpool for an indefinite period. His counsel, Mr Harry Ognall, QC, said at Dinsdale’s trial: ‘No words of mine could assist this crippled, solitary and profoundly disordered young man. This pathetic nobody has, by his deeds, achieved a notorious immortality.’ Perhaps this was one of Dinsdale’s unacknowledged desires.

  It was certainly the aim of seventeen-year-old Marcus Serjeant, from Capel le Ferne in Kent, who on 13 June 1981 fired five blank shots at the Queen as she rode down the Mall to the ceremony of Trooping the Colour in Horse Guards Parade. Tried under Section 2 of the Treason Act, he was sentenced to five years in jail. He claimed he had been influenced by the shooting of John Lennon and by the assassination attempt on President Reagan. To a friend he wrote: ‘I am going to stun and mystify the whole world with nothing more than a gun … I may in a dramatic moment become the most famous teenager in the whole world. I will remain famous for the rest of my life.’

  Such a desire was probably not shared by Crippen, Christie or Haigh. But the last two certainly relished their notoriety, and they may have been subconsciously influenced by a desire to be different, to do something alien, at least to become notable by doing something notorious, like taking another person’s life.

  One interesting trait shared by many murderers is their use of pseudonyms. It appears that they assume false names not only to evade detection, but chiefly to invent for themselves new personas – as though they cannot bear to be what they are.

  In most if not all premeditated murders, the act of murder is not the only solution to a particular emotional or mental problem. Yet it is the one way out that a potential murderer chooses. There are many and complex reasons for this, apart from the minor factors outlined above. There is supposedly an X factor, a chemical reason – strictly speaking, an extra Y chromosome in the genetic structure of a few people – that turns them into psychopaths, if not into killers. There is undoubtedly a rage in the blood and in the mind that leads to murder, whatever its
cause. But what the murderers in this book have in common – and most are to some degree amoral, vain, cunning, cruel, avaricious, selfish, stupid and bad – is that without exception they are, and behave, like fools.

  What is also interesting is the fact that not a few, earlier in their lives, suffered blows to their heads or were involved in accidents that might have resulted in such damage. Could it be that damage to their frontal lobes impairs those areas of the brain controlling common sense, compassion, pity and remorse, and that physical or chemical factors should be added to genetic factors of omission and excess?

  There is one other factor that the case histories in this book reveal – the apparent significance of place in the perpetration of a murder. This may only be an oddity. But in this connection it should be noted that of the thirty-seven women poisoners executed for murder between 1843 and 1955 (sixty-eight women in all were hanged in this period), twenty lived in towns and seventeen in the country. Of the latter, five lived in or near Boston in Lincolnshire and six in and around Ipswich in Suffolk. The Ipswich murders may have been imitative – they all occurred within a period of eight years – but the Boston murders were many years apart.

  In considering the murders described in this book, one wonders how great a part chance and coincidence played in the following facts: that Miss Holland and Mrs McKay were murdered within a few miles of each other, and near Bishop’s Stortford, near where the poisoner George Chapman ran a pub and where Harry Roberts went to ground; that Mrs Deeming and Mr Maybrick died within a few miles of each other in Liverpool; that Frederick Deeming, Mrs Maybrick, Mahon, Armstrong, Kennedy and Wrenn at some time all lived in Liverpool; that Parker and Probert, Haigh, Thorne and Mahon killed within a twenty-mile radius of Lewes in Sussex (at Portslade, Crawley, Crowborough and Langney); that Mrs Pearcey and Samuel Furnace killed within a few hundred yards of each other in Camden – a mile away from Crippen’s house and 2 miles from where the Seddons lived; and that of forty-one murders in the London area, only eight were committed south of the River Thames.

  And why is it that so many victims and murderers in this book have visited and stayed at Bournemouth? The town has had some sensational murders, such as that of Irene Wilkins in 1921 by Thomas Allaway, that of Mr Rattenbury by George Stoner in 1935, that of Walter Dinivan by Joseph Williams in 1939, and that of Doreen Marshall by Neville Heath in 1946. But Samuel Dougal, George Smith, Major Armstrong, the Thompsons, Ronald True, Emily Kaye, Frederick Browne, Neville Heath – and Montague Druitt – all stayed there within a few months of a murder. They did not choose other resorts nearer London for their visits, like Brighton or Eastbourne, or any further away to the north. Why Bournemouth?

  What is most remarkable, however, is the number of murderers – indeed, mass murderers – who were born and brought up west and south of Leeds. The Wartime Ripper, Gordon Cummins, was born in New Earswick, to the north of York. Although Haigh was not born in Yorkshire, he was brought up from an early age in Outwood, south of Leeds. Christie was born and lived in a suburb of Halifax. The Black Panther, Donald Neilson, was born in Morley south of Leeds and lived in Bradford to the west; and the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, was born in Shipley and brought up in Bingley. To them can be added Peter Dinsdale, the killer-arsonist who came from Hull – to the east of Leeds, but on the same latitude – and Dr Harold Shipman. Although Shipman was born in Nottingham, he graduated from the Leeds School of Medicine in 1970, and spent his first few years as a doctor in the West Riding of Yorkshire, where it is thought he first began to kill.

  Finally, besides these mass murderers, there are ten Yorkshiremen who between them caused the deaths of over 1,200 men and women. James Berry, chief executioner, was born in Heckmondwike, south-west of Leeds (between Christie and Haigh), and lived in Bradford. The three Pierrepoints – Tom, Harry and Albert, all chief executioners, who between them hanged 834 people – came from Clayton, a western suburb of Bradford. The last two also lived in Huddersfield, as did another executioner, Thomas Scott. Executioner Steve Wade was yet another Yorkshireman, from Doncaster. The four executioner Billingtons – father James and his three sons, Thomas, William and John – all came from Bolton in Yorkshire. Whoever said that God was a Yorkshireman was worshipping some strange gods indeed.

  CHARLES PEACE

  THE MURDER OF ARTHUR DYSON, 1876

  Murder is often compounded with theft and sex – which is to say that it frequently results from a compulsive desire to deprive, or a compulsion not to be deprived of, one’s desire. Fortunately, much thieving seems to be related to a low or inadequate sexual capability. But not always. A randy thief or robber has therefore more problems than his undersexed counterpart – problems that can lead to murder. As they did in the case of Charles Frederick Peace.

  He was born in Sheffield on 14 May 1832, the son of a respected shoemaker. He was not a good scholar, but was very dexterous, making artistic shapes and objects out of bits of twisted paper. Apprenticed at a rolling mill, he was badly injured when a piece of red-hot steel rammed his leg, leaving him with a limp. He learned to play the violin with sufficient flair and skill to be billed at local concerts as ‘The Modern Paganini’. He also took part in amateur theatricals. When he was about twenty, in search of other excitements and reluctant to earn a living, he began to thieve. He was unsuccessful at first, and was jailed four times, with sentences of one month, four, six and seven years. During this period he wandered from town to town, and in 1859 met and married Mrs Hannah Ward – a widow with a son, Willie. He returned to Sheffield in 1872. Three years later, he set up shop in Darnall as a picture-framer and gilder. He was also a collector and seller of musical instruments and bric-a-brac.

  In 1875, Peace was forty-three. He was, according to a police description: ‘Thin and slightly built, 5 ft 4 ins or 5 ins, grey hair … He looks ten years older. He lacks one or more fingers of his left hand, walks with his legs rather wide apart, speaks somewhat peculiarly, as though his tongue was too large for his mouth, and is a great boaster.’ He was also shrewd, cunning, selfish, salacious, ugly, agile as a monkey and very strong.

  Peace became involved with his neighbours in Britannia Road, the Dysons. Very tall (6 ft 5 in) and genteel, Arthur Dyson was a civil engineer, working with railway companies. He was in America when he met his future wife, a young Irish girl called Katherine. She was tall, buxom and blooming, and fond of a drink. They married in Cleveland, Ohio. The couple often had rows. Peace – ‘If I make up my mind to a thing I am bound to have it’ – became familiar with the Dysons and enamoured of young Mrs Dyson, who unwisely responded to his attentions. It seems they visited pubs and music halls together and that their place of assignation was a garret in an empty house between their two homes. Peace took to calling on the Dysons at any time, including mealtimes. Mr Dyson put his foot down. But Mrs Dyson continued, accidentally or intentionally, to associate with Peace. In June 1876, he was forbidden to call on them any more. Arthur Dyson wrote on a visiting card, ‘Charles Peace is requested not to interfere with my family,’ and threw it into Peace’s yard.

  This was something Peace could not endure. He pestered and threatened the Dysons. ‘We couldn’t get rid of him,’ said Mrs Dyson, talking later to the Sheffield Independent’s reporter. ‘I can hardly describe all that he did to annoy us after he was informed that he was not wanted at our house. He would come and stand outside the window at night and look in, leering all the while … He had a way of creeping and crawling about, and of coming upon you suddenly unawares … He wanted me to leave my husband.’

  One Saturday in July 1876, Peace tripped up Mr Dyson in the street, and that evening pulled a gun on Mrs Dyson as she stood outside her house complaining to neighbours about the assault. He said: ‘I will blow your bloody brains out and your husband’s too!’ A magistrate’s warrant was obtained for his arrest and he fled with his family to Hull, where Mrs Peace ran an eating-house.

  For a time the Dysons were, it appears, undisturbed. But on 26 October,
they moved house, to Banner Cross Terrace in Ecclesall Road, and when they arrived (their furniture had gone ahead), Peace walked out of their front door. He said: ‘I am here to annoy you, and I will annoy you wherever you go.’

  A month later, on Wednesday, 29 November 1876, Peace was seen hanging about Banner Cross Terrace between 7 and 8 pm. It was later suggested in court that Mrs Dyson and Peace had had a rendezvous in the Stag Hotel the evening before.

  At eight o’clock on the 29th, Mrs Dyson put her little boy, aged five, to bed. She came downstairs, to the back parlour where her husband was reading, and about ten past eight she put on her clogs, took a lantern and, leaving the rear door open, went to the outside closet, which stood in a passage at the end of the terrace. It was a moonlit night. Peace later claimed that she left the house when he whistled for her. Her closet visit was brief. When she opened the door to emerge, Peace stood before her. ‘Speak, or I’ll fire,’ he said, presumably meaning the opposite. She shrieked, slammed the door and locked it. Mr Dyson rushed out of the rear door of the house and around the corner of the building. As he did so his wife fled from the closet. He pushed past her, pursuing Peace down the passage and on to the pavement. According to Peace, there was a struggle. He fired one shot, he said, to frighten Dyson. It missed. ‘My blood was up,’ said Peace. ‘I knew if I was captured, it would mean transportation for life. That made me determined to get off.’ A second shot was fired, striking Dyson in the head. The shots were fired in quick succession. Mr Dyson fell on to his back, and his wife screamed: ‘Murder! You villain, you have shot my husband!’ Within minutes Arthur Dyson was dead.

  Peace ran off, but in doing so dropped a small packet, containing more than twenty notes and letters and Dyson’s card requesting Peace not to interfere. The notes, clearly written by a woman, included lines such as: ‘You can give me something as a keepsake if you like’ – ‘Will see you as soon as I possibly can’ – ‘You must not venture for he is watching’ – ‘Not today anyhow, he is not very well’ – ‘I will give you the wink when the coast is clear – ‘He is gone out, come now for I must have a drink’ – ‘Send me a drink. I am nearly dead’ – ‘Meet me in the Wicker, hope nothing will turn up to prevent it’ – ‘He is out now so be quick.’