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

by Honeycombe, Gordon

  When Robert Hook married in 1909, aged thirty-seven – although he was nine years younger than Miss Barrow, he said they had once been sweethearts – Miss Barrow went to live with a cousin, Frank Vonderahe and his wife, taking Ernie with her. She paid 35s a week for board and lodging for them both. The Vonderahes thought she was excitable, irritable and had peculiar ways; she once spat at Mrs Vonderahe. After a year there was some quarrel and Miss Barrow, ‘dissatisfied’ according to Frank Vonderahe, moved out, soliciting the help of Robert Hook, who had continued to visit her and now sold her some of his sister’s (Mrs Grant’s) furniture for her new lodging in Tollington Park. Further, Hook and his wife also moved in, as did Ernie. They lodged with Miss Barrow rent free, in return for Mrs Hook’s domestic services.

  So, by 1 August 1910, twelve people were crammed into 63 Tollington Park. But before long Miss Barrow, according to Seddon, found fault with the Hooks. She said she was frightened of them, could not trust them, and enquired whether she could leave her cash box, in which she said there was about £35, in Mr Seddon’s safe. There was a row, fired by drink, on a Saturday night in the top flat, and on Sunday morning the Hooks took little Ernie with them to Barnet, leaving Miss Barrow in sickness and tears and unattended all day. All this displeased Mr Seddon – ‘They were creating a disturbance in the house which I was not used to. They proved undesirable tenants’ – so he gave all four notice to quit.

  But Miss Barrow was loath to leave. Hook, she said, was the cause of the trouble, and having no friends or advisors at hand she sought the help and advice of the Seddons. Mr Seddon suggested that she give Hook written notice to quit. She did, beginning her note: ‘As you and your wife have treated me so badly …’ Hook replied by scrawling on the back of the notice, which had been delivered by Maggie Seddon, then aged fifteen – ‘As you are so impudent to send the letter to hand, I wish to inform you that I shall require the return of my late mother’s and sister’s furniture, and the expense of my moving here and away – Yours RD Hook.’

  This brought a summons from Seddon. In Hook’s own words:

  I went down to see him. He said to me: ‘So I see you don’t mean to take any notice of Miss Barrow’s notice ordering you to leave?’ And I said: ‘No, not this time of night.’ He then gave me an order to clear out within twenty-four hours, and I said I would if I could, and if I could not, I would take forty-eight hours. He said: ‘I do not know whether you know it or not – Miss Barrow has put all her affairs in my hands.’ And I said: ‘Has she?’ I asked him if she had put her money in his hands and he said: ‘No.’ I said: ‘I will defy you and a regiment like you to get her money in your hands.’

  Seddon took him at his word and pinned his own type-written notice to quit on the Hooks’ bedroom door. On Tuesday, 11 August, the Hooks moved out, taking all the furniture in their room. Miss Barrow paid for the removal. As she was now on her own, apart from little Ernie, Seddon suggested that his daughter Maggie might cook and clean for her for 1s a day. Comparative calm returned.

  But then the top-floor lodger began to worry and fret about her properties and income. She consulted Mr Seddon. He later stated: ‘She came down one Sunday in the month of September into the dining room, and had a chat with me about her property … She said she had a public-house at Camden Town called the Buck’s Head, and it was the principal source of her income. She had had a lot of trouble with the ground landlord, and she said that Lloyd George’s budget had upset licensed premises by increased taxation; that her tenants, Truman, Hanbury, Buxton and Co had a lot of licensed houses, and she was afraid they might have to close some of them.’ She also owned the adjacent barber’s and had invested £1,600 in India stock, which had gone down in value – it had cost her £1,780. What with the gold and notes hoarded in her cash box – she mistrusted banks – and the money in her savings bank, she was worth about £4,000, a small fortune in those days.

  Seddon must have been most interested in the extraordinary wealth of his dowdy, dumpy lodger. Further discussions took place, he said later, in which she expressed an interest in purchasing an annuity, as a friend of hers had done. He advised her to consult a solicitor or the post office, but she mistrusted them as well. She chose to put her trust in him. A year later, her fortune had disappeared and Miss Barrow was dead.

  On 14 October 1910, Miss Barrow transferred the £1,600 India 3 1/2 per cent stock to Seddon in return for an annuity of £103 4s a year. About this time Mrs Seddon began to change £5 notes for gold at various stores, endorsing them with a false name and address. Twenty-seven £5 notes were eventually traced to Mrs Seddon and six went into her husband’s bank account, five on 13 January 1911. The leasehold of the Buck’s Head and the barber shop were likewise made over to him on 9 January 1911, for a further annuity of £52 a year. Although the transfers were legally made, there was no written agreement concerning an annuity – at least, none could be found later. But Seddon began paying Miss Barrow £10 a month in advance (for which she gave him a receipt), and allowed her to live in Tollington Park rent-free.

  Mrs Seddon’s explanation of the £5 notes (the proceeds of cheques paid to Miss Barrow by Truman, Hanbury, Buxton and Co) was that Miss Barrow had asked her to cash them for her. She said: ‘I think she had been out herself to get one cashed, and someone would not cash it for her, so she asked me if I would get it cashed. I took it to the post office, and they asked me for my name and address. I thought it was rather funny, as I never cashed a note in my life before, so I gave the first name that came into my head … M Scott, 18 Evershot Road … I gave the cash to Miss Barrow when I came back, five sovereigns. After that day Miss Barrow from time to time asked me to change notes for her … At the shops I went to where I was known I gave my right name and address, because they already knew it … I always gave the money to Miss Barrow.’

  Mrs Seddon gave birth to a baby girl, Lily, on 3 January 1911, and when the annuity transactions were completed, she said, the happy lodger gave Mr Seddon a diamond ring. She herself, she said, was given a gold watch and chain on her birthday and her daughter Maggie was given a gold necklet and locket.

  Seddon’s explanation of the ring was that it was given to him to defray part of the legal costs in arranging the property transfers – ‘She said she had no money to spare … I wore that diamond ring on my little finger until Miss Barrow’s death, and then I had it made to fit this other finger. I have a diamond ring of my own, which is four times the value of that ring.’ The prosecution’s explanation of these ‘gifts’ was that they were acquired after the lodger’s demise.

  On 25 January 1911, Seddon instructed Arthur Astle, a stockbroker, to sell the £1,600 India stock. It realised £1,519 16s and was paid by cheque to FH Seddon, who put the money into a deposit account. On 1 February, £119 16s of this was withdrawn and transferred to another bank, his own, where it was split roughly between his current and deposit accounts. Then, on 6 March the remaining £1,400, plus interest, was withdrawn and the account closed. With all this money Seddon bought the leasehold on fourteen houses in Coutts Road, Stepney, and added another £30 to his own deposit account to bring it up to £100.

  That month, Miss Barrow went to a funeral. Said Seddon: ‘She came in talking about funerals and death and one thing and another and she said, how would it be if anything happened to her now regarding the furniture and the jewellery she had got which had belonged to Ernest and Hilda Grant’s parents? I told her that she ought to make a will.’ Apparently she was afraid of the Hooks and Vonderahes getting possession of all she had left. He advised her to see a solicitor. But that night he received a letter from Miss Barrow through his wife, in which Miss Barrow named three first cousins, all called Vonderahe, as her nearest relatives and said: ‘It is not my will or wish that they, or any other relation of mine, should receive anything belonging to me at my death … They have not been kind to me, or considered me.’ ‘I took it that she meant the letter to be a kind of will,’ said Seddon, ‘and I put it away in my secretaire.�
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  His salary had just been increased and he was now earning £5 15s 10d a week. About this time the Charing Cross and Birkbeck banks crashed, making Miss Barrow afraid for money she had in a savings bank in Clerkenwell. After closing an investment account she had at the bank in April (£10 7s 9d), she and Mrs Seddon went to the bank on 19 June and drew out £216 9s 7d. It was put into two £100 bags of gold coin, with the rest in loose gold and silver. The account had been opened in 1887 – the last payment was made in 1908 and the last withdrawal in 1907. When the women returned to Tollington Park, Seddon apparently rebuked Miss Barrow for keeping all that gold in a trunk in her room – ‘I do not like the idea’ – and she said she knew what to do with it. Neither of the Seddons saw the money again, they said.

  On 1 August Miss Barrow went to see Dr John Paul in Isledon Road, accompanied by Mrs Seddon. Miss Barrow was suffering from ‘congestion of the liver’, and constipation. She paid further visits on the 3rd, 17th and 22nd. On the last visit, she complained of asthma. Meanwhile, all the Seddons, Miss Barrow and little Ernie went to Southend-on-Sea for the weekend of 5-8 August. Ernie, now aged ten, delicate and adenoidal, slept with his ageing foster mother. He called her Chickie. Mr Seddon disapproved – ‘I advised her to buy a small bed and to let him occupy the room.’ But Ernie continued to keep Miss Barrow company in bed.

  The last week in August and the first week in September were very hot: London sweltered in a heat wave. On the morning of Friday, 1 September, Miss Barrow felt ill. She sat in the kitchen and complained of feeling sick and bilious. Mrs Seddon took her upstairs, where she lay down on her bed; a cup of tea made her sick. ‘I had seen her like this before,’ said Mrs Seddon, ‘off and on, with these sick bilious attacks every month.’ The next day she was still sick and had diarrhoea. Dr Paul was sent for but was too busy to attend. The Seddons’ family doctor, Henry Sworn, arrived instead about ten o’clock that night. He prescribed bismuth and morphia, the latter for her stomach pains. He thought she was very ill, and that her mental state was as poor as her health.

  Returning on Sunday and Monday, Dr Sworn noticed no improvement. Mrs Seddon told him his patient would not take the thick, chalky bismuth. Instead, Dr Sworn prescribed an effervescing mixture of citrate of potash and bicarbonate of soda and gave her nothing for her diarrhoea, which was not too severe. But he suggested, raising his voice to counteract her deafness, that she should go to hospital. Miss Barrow refused. She also refused to have a nurse. She said Mrs Seddon ‘could attend to her very well indeed and she was very attentive’. Indeed, Mrs Seddon, who prepared the patient’s food – no solids, just soda water and milk, gruel, milk puddings and Valentine’s meat juice – must have been up and down stairs all day, seeing to her various needs. Already the top-floor bedroom stank with the smell of faeces. Because of the heat the windows were open; flies swarmed in. Mrs Seddon and her daughter fanned the patient to keep the flies away.

  On Monday, 4 September, Miss Barrow (according to Mrs Seddon) instructed her to get some flypapers, not the sticky ones, but ‘those that you wet … I got these flypapers at Meacher’s, the chemists’, in Stroud Green Road, just around the corner from our house. An old gentleman served me. I think I ordered at the same time a 9s 6d bottle of the baby’s food, Horlicks malted milk … I also bought a pennyworth of white precipitate powder, with which Miss Barrow used to wash her head. I have also seen her cleaning her teeth with it.’ Mrs Seddon bought four flypapers for threepence, and back in the top-floor bedroom put each one in a saucer of water, wetting them thoroughly. Two saucers were put on the mantelpiece and two on a chest of drawers.

  On Tuesday, Miss Barrow was slightly better. She summoned little Ernie to sleep with her, as she did every night. For the next three days, Dr Sworn continued to prescribe the effervescing medicine. But on the 9th he added ‘a blue pill which contained mercury’ as ‘her motion was so very offensive’ – so much so, that the stench pervaded the house and carbolic sheets were hung in the rooms. Ernie seemed not to notice the aroma around Miss Barrow, possibly because of his adenoids.

  Dr Sworn took a day off on Sunday the 10th, returning on the Monday before midday. His patient was weaker. He advised Mrs Seddon to give her some brandy. It was still very warm and close, and what with the heat and Miss Barrow’s weakness he was prepared for a sudden relapse and heart failure. He thought she was in some danger but not in a critical condition: her pulse was rapid and feeble, but her temperature had only once reached 101°F.

  That afternoon, Mr Seddon went upstairs to see his ailing lodger, who was worrying again about her possessions. She allegedly told Seddon: ‘I don’t feel well, and I would like to see, if anything happened to me, that Ernest and Hilda get what belonged to their father and mother.’ He advised her, he said, to call in a solicitor, but she asked him to draft a will for her. He agreed.

  Mr Seddon’s married sister, Mrs Emily Longley, and her daughter, had just arrived on a visit from Wolverhampton, and it was not until about half-past six, after dinner, that he returned to the sick room with his father and his wife as witnesses to Miss Barrow’s will. Mrs Seddon later said: ‘We propped her up in bed with pillows in a sitting position to get her to sign it … My husband read the will to Miss Barrow, and then she asked for her glasses to read it herself, which she did, and then she signed it … I signed it on a little table, and my father-in-law signed it.’ The will, revoking all others, made Frederick Henry Seddon sole executor – ‘to hold all my personal belongings, furniture, clothing and jewellery in trust’ until Hilda and Ernest Grant came of age, when Seddon was to hand them over (or the cash he made from selling them). But no article of jewellery was to be sold to the young Grants. ‘Thank you. Thank God, that will do,’ said Miss Barrow, according to Seddon. He said later that he fully intended to take the will to a solicitor and get it properly made out. The fact that no mention was made in the will of all the hoarded gold in Miss Barrow’s cash box seemed to have escaped his money-conscious attention. He said later: ‘I never gave it a thought.’

  That evening, as Miss Barrow lay ill in bed with Ernie, Frederick Seddon took his wife, his father and his sister for a night out to the Finsbury Park Empire, leaving his daughter Maggie to look after the lodger.

  They returned about midnight and revised the sleeping arrangements. The Seddons moved out of their bed, which was now occupied by Mrs Longley and her daughter, and they took over the bed where the two boys had slept with their grandfather, who in turn were moved into a large extra bed set up in a top-floor room, once occupied by the Hooks and next door to Miss Barrow’s bedroom.

  Nothing untoward happened on Tuesday the 12th, except that Mrs Seddon knocked one of the flypaper saucers off the mantelpiece. She then put all four papers into a soup plate on a table between the windows. Dr Sworn made no visit that day. But when he called before noon on Wednesday the 13th, he thought his patient was rather worse: she seemed weaker. Her diarrhoea was bad again, but she did not seem to be in much pain. He prescribed a bismuth-and-chalk mixture to be taken after every motion. Mr Seddon himself was not very well that morning. While the rest of the family, apart from his wife and Maggie, went to the White City, he stayed in bed. But at about half-past seven in the evening he went to the Marlborough Theatre, where occurred the row about the wrong change for his half-crown.

  About midnight, Mrs Seddon and Mrs Longley were chatting at the gate, waiting for Frederick’s return, when they heard Miss Barrow cry from the open top-floor window: ‘I’m dying!’

  Mrs Seddon rushed upstairs; her sister-in-law followed. Miss Barrow complained of severe pains in her stomach and that her feet were cold. A flannel petticoat was wrapped around them and hot flannels were laid on her stomach. Seddon, returning about twelve-thirty, was told by his wife about the lodger’s ‘dying’ cry. He looked at his wife and said: ‘Is she?’ Mrs Seddon said: ‘No,’ and smiled. Mrs Seddon later explained to the court: ‘I have a usual way of smiling at almost everything, I think. I cannot help it. It is my way.
No matter how serious anything was I think I would smile.’

  Seddon was still complaining about being done out of sixpence at the theatre when Ernie called down the stairs: ‘Mrs Seddon, Chickie wants you!’ Mrs Seddon was resting on a couch. ‘Never mind,’ said her husband. ‘I’ll go and see what she wants.’ But both the Seddons went upstairs with Mrs Longley, who was so overcome by the smell and by Ernie’s presence on the patient’s bed that she soon retreated. Mr Seddon also found the smell nauseating – ‘I have a delicate stomach’ – and after rebuking the patient for making so many demands on his wife he gave her a drop of brandy.

  The Seddons went to bed about two-thirty, and within minutes Ernie called Mrs Seddon again, and again half an hour later. ‘She had the diarrhoea bad,’ said Mrs Seddon later, adding: ‘She did not seem sick – she was only once or twice sick during the night. She seemed to be retching, not proper vomiting, but a nasty froth came up.’

  A third time Ernie called, crying: ‘Chickie is out of bed!’ It was now nearly four o’clock. Seddon told his wife to stay in bed – he would go. ‘It’s no good you going up,’ she said, as on all the other occasions Miss Barrow had to be assisted on and off the commode and given hot flannels. But this time Seddon went with her.

  Miss Barrow was sitting on the floor, moaning and in pain; Ernie was holding her up. ‘Whatever are you doing out of bed?’ asked Seddon. He waited outside while the commode was used and when he was able to enter the room he remonstrated with the exhausted patient. ‘You must remember Mrs Seddon has got a young baby and she wants a rest. If Mrs Seddon sits up with you all night she’ll be knocked up … Really we shall have to get a nurse, or you shall have to go to hospital.’ Miss Barrow said she couldn’t help it. She asked for Ernie, who had been ordered back to his own bed (not for the first time) and was very weary himself. Mrs Seddon thought she had better stay in the bedroom. She said: ‘What’s the good of going to bed, getting undressed, and being called and having to get up again?’ Her husband agreed. ‘I’ll put a pipe on and keep you company,’ he said, and while Mrs Seddon sat in a basket-chair near the end of the bed, he stood at the door smoking his pipe and reading a newspaper. Sometimes he went downstairs to see how the baby was. Miss Barrow seemed to sleep; Mrs Seddon dozed in the chair. For over an hour Miss Barrow snored as dawn began to light the top-floor room at 63 Tollington Park.