I am at Southend, quite near the station, making out I have been ill with the flue [sic] … I am far from well through want of sleep. I don’t think I have slept one hour since the accident happened. Now what I want you to do is not for me but for May and the kiddies. My days are numbered. I want you to come down Sunday, on your own, please. Catch the 10.35 from Harringay Park, that gets you down in Southend at 12.8. Come out of the station, walk straight across the road and down the opposite road. Walk down on the left side. I will see you. I am not giving my address in case you are followed. Just walk slowly down. If you come, will you bring me 15 1/2 shirt and two collars, any colour will do. Also one pair of socks, dark ones, and one comb. I think that is all now. Best of luck. Mine is gone.
Tuckfield gave the letter to the police. Shadowed by them, he went as instructed to Southend and walked down Whitegate Road. A curtain twitched in Number 11, and Furnace looked out and beckoned. Tuckfield entered the house and conversed as easily as he could with his brother-in-law until the police, led by Superintendent Cornish, entered the house through a rear door. Furnace, who was thought to be armed, was rushed and overpowered. He was taken back to London.
In a statement made at Kentish Town police station that night, he claimed that the shooting of Spatchett was accidental. Furnace said that on the Monday evening they had both been in the shed, which also served as an office. He said: ‘I showed him the revolver. He cocked it. I told him it was loaded … I was showing him through the door, with the gun in my left hand, and as he was going through the door the gun went off and shot him. He fell to the ground groaning. I realised my position and lost my head. I went out. When I got back there I found that he was dead … I took the gun away and did not tell anyone I had shot him … Next morning about 7.15 I dragged him into the office … The idea struck me to destroy the body by a fire at my shop, making out that the body was mine. The idea at first seemed too terrible, but no other way seemed possible.’ The same afternoon he returned to the shed. He sat the body on a chair and poured spirits and oil over it. ‘I screwed up a lot of paper on the floor and set a candle, which I lit, in the middle of it … I came outside and pulled the outer door to, locking it.’
One wonders whether his story, if it had been used as a defence, would have been believed in court. But no trial was ever held.
Having made the statement Furnace was locked overnight in a cell in Kentish Town police station. During the night he could be heard pacing restlessly about. As it was very cold, he asked for his overcoat to be returned. It happened to be the only article of clothing that had not been searched. Towards dawn on Monday there was silence. A PC peered through the spy-hole at 7 am, and saw Furnace raise something to his mouth. The PC hastily opened the cell door, to find the prisoner now writhing on the floor.
He had swallowed some hydrochloric acid, the contents of a small bottle that had been sewn into the lining of his overcoat. He died twenty-four hours later, on Tuesday, 18 January in St Pancras Hospital, in whose mortuary Spatchett’s body already lay. A coroner’s jury concluded that the death of Spatchett was not accidental and they found Furnace guilty of murder.
In April 1931, Albert Pierrepoint, a wholesale grocer’s deliveryman, aged 27, living with his first wife, Mary, in Manchester, wrote to the Prison Commissioners at the Home Office in London, applying for as job as assistant executioner, mentioning the fact that Harry Pierrepoint had been his father and that Tom Pierrepoint was his uncle. He was interviewed at Strangeways Prison in Manchester, but it was not until September 1932 that he was employed as an assistant executioner, his first task being to assist his uncle, Tom, carry out an execution in Dublin that December.
27
PARKER AND PROBERT
THE MURDER OF JOSEPH BEDFORD, 1933
Murders committed in the course of a robbery are almost as common as sexual or domestic murders, and the murderers are commonly a pair of thugs, usually young, whereas their victims are usually middle-aged or old. The following case history was brutally commonplace. It is unusual in that the executions that settled the law’s and the victim’s account were the last, it is believed, to have been witnessed by a reporter – in this case, the chief crime reporter of the Press Association, WG Finch.
Joseph Bedford, an eighty-year-old bachelor, maintained a dilapidated general store in Clarence Street, Portslade, a run-down suburb between Worthing and Hove. On a slate in one of the shop’s windows was written – ‘Bankrupt Stock’. Somewhat doddery and deaf, he was also something of a miserly recluse, keeping his money in two chocolate boxes. One or two motherly women in the neighbourhood kept an eye on him and cared for him in a small way.
Bedford’s shop usually remained open until 8 pm, and it was about fifteen minutes before this on Monday, 13 November 1933 that Miss Kathleen Russell called on the old man to prepare a simple evening meal for him, as was her wont. When she left the shop about eight o’clock, she saw two young men, both strangers, outside – ‘hanging about’ as she put it. One of them said something to her, but she was later not allowed by the courts to reveal what that was.
The suspicions of another neighbour were aroused about two hours later when at 9.50 pm or so he observed that the light in Bedford’s shop was still on. This neighbour, Edward Myers, the son of the publican whose hostelry was on a street corner opposite the shop, was puzzled by this irregularity. Not only that – some of the old man’s stock was still outside on the pavement. Myers summoned a police constable.
PC Peters was also aware of Mr Bedford’s habits and investigated. He tried the shop door – it was locked. Hearing sounds ‘as if someone were stumbling against something’, he flashed his torch into the dimly lit interior through the glass panel of the door, across which a ladder had been placed. He said: ‘The light fell full across the face of Mr Bedford, and I could see that it was covered with blood. The next moment I saw him stagger backwards. He fell against some gardening shovels resting against a showcase. I then forced the door, and found Mr Bedford lying in a heap on the floor.’
Mr Bedford was taken to hospital, where the following morning he died of shock occasioned by multiple injuries to his head. On the same day, Tuesday, Scotland Yard were called in, and DCI Askew, after examining the premises, came across a bowler hat with a dent in the crown and an overcoat button that seemed to have been torn off. Both were on the shop floor among several copper coins that were scattered about: halfpennies, pennies and farthings. The old man had kept his coppers in one of the chocolate boxes and his silver coins – sixpences, shillings, florins and half-crowns – in the other.
Mr Bedford was buried in Portslade Cemetery a week after the attack on him. His two assailants had already been picked up in Worthing, on or about Thursday, 16 November, charged with loitering with intent to commit a felony. The actual circumstances of their arrest are not known, but a week later, on the morning of Thursday, 23 November, they appeared before the Worthing magistrates, who gave them a nominal sentence of one day’s imprisonment. After being taken back to their cells the two men were re-arrested by Superintendent Fairs at 10.40 am on a charge of murder. Handcuffed, they were driven to Portslade police station, where they were officially charged. Fifteen minutes later, they appeared before a special sitting of the Hove County Bench and were remanded until 1 December. Both men were granted legal aid. The chairman of the Bench and the younger of the accused men had the same name: Frederick Parker. Frederick William Parker was a twenty-one-year-old labourer. His partner in crime was a fitter, Albert Probert, aged twenty-six.
While in custody in Worthing, Fred Parker had been asked by Inspector Lewis about the attack on Joseph Bedford. Parker, who had not been told that Bedford was dead, said: ‘Why don’t you ask my mate? I don’t see why I should give someone else away.’
Later he confessed. ‘I don’t see that I shouldn’t tell you,’ he said. ‘We knocked an old man out in a shop at Portslade on Monday night. It was a shop where they sold bankrupt stock, and we took the money from the
till.’ Lewis then asked Parker if he realised the seriousness of what he was saying. ‘Yes,’ replied Parker. ‘I want to get it off my mind’:
We decided to hold up a chap in a shop in Portslade. It was an old dirty shop of bankrupt stock. We both walked to the shop window to see that all was clear. After investigating we walked into the shop and spoke to the old shopkeeper. I then turned and locked the door. No one was passing at the time, and I brought my revolver into play. The gun was not loaded, but I had no other choice of making the old shopkeeper put up his hands. I held him up and the other chap with me – I don’t want to mention his name – went around the counter and just knocked him out. I went to the boxes, and we both took money out and put it in our pockets. Those farthings you found on me are some I took from the till.
Later that night, Parker asked Lewis how Bedford was. Lewis was presumably non-committal, for the young man went on to say, still ignorant of Bedford’s death: ‘I wish it had been a bigger job. It was not worth doing for £6. He was an old miser; I thought we should have found buckets of money.’
Fred Parker first knew that Bedford was dead when told so by DCI Askew. ‘You don’t mean to say the old chap is dead?’ exclaimed Parker, who then made a statement elaborating what he had told Lewis and naming Bert Probert as his partner in the raid on Bedford’s store.
He said he first met Probert ‘by accident’ in the Church Army Hostel at Brighton. The police later established that on 7 November the two were in lodgings in Portslade, from which they disappeared on the 10th. The next day, Saturday, Parker was temporarily employed selling tickets for a sweepstake draw. Sometime during this period, Parker gave the older man, Probert, his blue overcoat, as the other man wanted one to match his blue suit. To replace it, Parker stole another coat.
On Monday the 13th, said Fred Parker, ‘Probert asked if I would “do” a jeweller’s. I said that the shop was bound to have alarms all over, but Probert said he was desperate. I tried to get him to talk sense. We walked round Portslade and we came to the shop. I explained to Probert that it was a big risk and I would not take any part except holding the gun.’ They entered the shop.
The gun, according to Parker, had been given to Probert by a man he knew. His statement continued: ‘While Probert was talking to the old man I turned the key, already in the door, and coming back I told Probert that the old man was deaf and could not hear what we were saying, but if he did hear to hit him gently. I took the revolver from my pocket and asked the old man to put up his hands. He resisted at first and Probert struck him. Probert was leading him backwards and as he struck the old chap went down. Probert did not take any notice of what I said and kept on asking if I had got the money. I told him to put a scarf under the old man’s head. He was knocking his head on the floor and I could hear that distinctly. I told Probert: “I have found the money,” and he left the old chap and we left the shop together.’
The police discovered that later that night, between 9.30 and 10 pm, the pair had a meal in a tea room in Worthing. The following morning, they went to an outfitter’s and bought new suits and shirts. While they were there, Probert had a new button sewn onto his blue overcoat to replace the one that was missing.
After their arrest and after Probert had been told about Parker’s allegations, he denied any involvement in Bedford’s death and having ever been in his shop. But he could not or would not say where he was on the night in question. When arrested, Parker was found to have twenty-seven farthings on him; Probert had twenty-nine.
During their various appearances before the magistrates at Hove in the first week of January 1934, Fred Parker fainted seven times in the dock and had to be revived. On 4 January, DCI Askew also collapsed. He was being cross-examined when he suddenly fell backwards down the steps of the witness box. After being given first aid, DCI Askew re-entered the box and almost immediately fell forward in a faint. He was taken into an adjoining room, where he was revived by the doctor who had been standing by to resuscitate Parker.
Fred Parker made a statement denying that he had struck the fatal blow:
I held up the old man with a gun and told him we had come for money. He put his hands up eventually. I stepped back for Probert to tie him up … We had tied my scarf and Probert’s together for that purpose. I thought we were going to carry out the whole thing by merely tying him up. I told him to stop hitting him … Finally, I hit Probert over the knuckles to separate him from the old man. I told him the old man had had enough … He told me to keep my mouth closed, and said that if I did not, he would do the same to me as he had done to Mr Bedford.
Parker and Probert appeared at Sussex Assizes in Lewes on Wednesday, 14 March 1934. Both gave evidence. Mr Justice Roche was the judge and Sir Henry Curtis Bennett, KC, was the Crown’s chief prosecutor. Mr John Flowers defended Probert.
Mr JD Cassels, KC, defending Parker, claimed that the charge against his defendant should be at the most one of manslaughter, as Parker alleged it was Probert who used the excessive violence that resulted in the old man’s death. The judge remarked: ‘I am afraid I shall have to tell the jury that that proposition is not correct in law.’ Mr Cassels then suggested – as did Mr Flowers for Probert – that Bedford, in falling backwards, possibly frightened by PC Peters’s flashlight, had struck his head on something sharp, had fractured his skull, and so died by misadventure.
The Crown’s view, supported by the judge, was that if two persons set out to commit a robbery and if one used violence, the other standing by was as guilty as the person striking the blow. Mr Justice Roche in his summing-up told the jury that if they accepted Parker’s evidence that he contemplated robbery and the use of some degree of violence, it was not manslaughter but murder. If they thought Mr Bedford fell because of the injuries he had previously received and died from the effects of that fall, then the original injuries were the cause of death.
After retiring for thirty-five minutes, the jury found both men guilty of murder. They were sentenced to death. An appeal was dismissed on 18 April by the Lord Chief Justice, Mr Justice Avory and Mr Justice Humphreys, and Parker and Probert were hanged in Wandsworth Prison on Friday, 4 May 1934. Tom and Albert Pierrepoint carried out the double hanging, assisted by Thomas Phillips and Stanley Cross.
28
CHARLOTTE BRYANT
THE MURDER OF FREDERICK BRYANT, 1935
Poisoners, especially female poisoners, who, with very evident malice aforethought, deliberately plan the deaths of their victims, and would seem to take some pleasure from their suffering, have invariably been treated with a corresponding lack of pity by the law.
Charlotte McHugh was an illiterate Irish girl and something of a slut, whom Frederick John Bryant, a corporal in the military police, met when he was serving in Ireland. This was during ‘The Troubles’, the guerilla warfare and savage reprisals of 1920-21 that followed the First World War, resulting in the official division of Ireland into Eire and Ulster in 1921-22. Corporal Bryant was at that time serving in Londonderry. He brought young Charlotte back with him to England and they were married in Somerset in March 1922. She was just nineteen and he was twenty-five or twenty-six.
But life with the upright, amiable Fred soon deteriorated. Jobs were hard to find – the country no longer needed or wanted its soldiery, and the best employment Fred Bryant could find was as a farm labourer. In 1925, they moved into a tied cottage on a Dorset farm on the Somerset border, at Over Compton east of Yeovil. Here, Mrs Bryant soon acquired a reputation for harlotry and excess. She was known locally, mainly in the public bars of inns, as ‘Compton Liz’, ‘Black Bess’ and ‘Killarney Kate’. It seems she had an insatiable desire for amorous adventure and sex.
Although her hair was lousy and she was virtually toothless, she had many affairs, which presumably consoled her mind and body and distracted her from the humdrum poverty of a labourer’s life. Along the way she produced five children, whose paternity must have been in doubt, and let the family cottage slide along with her local fame
into squalor and disorder. However, her extramarital activities were able to supplement the family income, and this was apparently of some importance to Fred. He was earning less than £2 a week. As he said to a neighbour: ‘Four pound a week is better than thirty bob. I don’t care a damn what she does.’ Accordingly, he was not displeased when at Christmas 1933 a pedlar and horse-dealer of gypsy origin, Leonard Parsons, began lodging at the cottage as a paying guest, sleeping on a couch in the kitchen and sharing Fred’s razor – and his wife.
Fred was forced out of his complacency when early in 1934 he was sacked by the farmer, largely on account of the scandal caused in the neighbourhood by Mrs Bryant’s amours. All the Bryants did, however, was to move east to another cottage on another farm not far way, at Coombe, a mile north of Sherborne, and carry on much as before.
Parsons was not a regular lodger, since his roving nature and occupation took him periodically elsewhere, sometimes in the direction of his ‘natural wife’, Priscilla Loveridge, a gypsy woman who bore him four children and later bitterly described him as ‘a woman’s fancy man, the kind of man who would break up any man’s home’. But his reappearances at the Bryants’ cottage, unshaven and unkempt, apparently excited Mrs Bryant so much that like a drug, she wished to have more – could not have enough of him, in fact – and began to consider how she might rid herself entirely of her marital obligations, loose as they were.
She was fairly besotted with Parsons and more than once went off with him on his travels, staying with him as his wife in Dorchester and Weymouth. During these absences as well as during his visits, her duties as mother and housewife were further neglected and the cottage lapsed even further into squalor and filth.
Murder of the Black Museum 1875-1975: The Dark Secrets Behind a Hundred Years of the Most Notorious Crimes in England Page 33