Murder at the Inn

by James Moore

  It was the landlord’s son at the inn, John Taylor, who realised that Ostrog matched the description in the newspapers of a man wanted for the thefts at Eton. Superintendent Thomas Oswell of the Staffordshire Constabulary was quickly on the scene and found Ostrog enjoying his dinner at the pub. Worried that Ostrog might turn violent, Oswell threw all the knives and forks out of Ostrog’s reach before confronting him with a copy of the Police Gazette. Ostrog protested his innocence, claiming to be a Swedish doctor who was visiting the breweries for which the local area was famed, but he was swiftly marched off into custody. Despite his cautious approach, Oswell does not seem to have had Ostrog’s pockets checked. Once at the station, his captive suddenly pulled out a loaded, eight-chamber revolver. Ostrog was only prevented from using it when Oswell grabbed his wrist and wrestled the weapon off his prisoner. The next day, Ostrog was taken to Slough for formal identification. In the meantime his behaviour was said to have been so unruly that he had to be handcuffed to one of the larger police officers in the Staffordshire force.

  The Burton Bridge Inn, formerly known as the Fox and Goose, where Michael Ostrog was arrested. (Courtesy of the Burton Bridge Inn)

  By this time, Ostrog was being referred to in the newspapers as ‘one of the most accomplished swindlers of the period’, and in January 1874 he was brought in front of the Buckinghamshire Quarter Sessions at Aylesbury. This time Ostrog was sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude.

  In 1883 he was released ‘on licence’, but soon his description was being circulated in the pages of the Police Gazette again, for failure to report. For four years he disappeared from the records. But in July 1887 he appeared again, this time in London attempting to steal a tankard from a military cadet’s room. He was chased across Woolwich Common and apprehended. Before his trial he tried, unsuccessfully, to throw himself under a train. In September 1887 he was sentenced to six months with hard labour. However, this time he was also judged insane and sent to an asylum in Tooting, then in Surrey. Ostrog was let out in March 1888, having apparently ‘recovered’.

  By 26 October 1888, just at the point when the Ripper outrages had gripped London, the police were apparently desperate to find Ostrog. They put out his description after he ‘failed to report’ as he was meant to do on a monthly basis, warning that ‘Special attention is called to this dangerous man.’ There’s no doubt that just weeks after the double murder of Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes on Sunday, 30 September the police had added Ostrog to their list of suspects in the frantic search for the serial killer who was becoming the scourge of London’s East End.

  But Ostrog was not found and the killing went on. He was finally traced in April 1891 living in London and was once again found insane and committed to an asylum. He was soon out and committing more thefts. In 1900 he was given five years for stealing a microscope. Following his release from Parkhurst in 1904 he vanished for good and his death certificate has never emerged.

  So is there any chance that he was indeed the Ripper? Unless the police had more information about Ostrog than came to light in court, his criminal history of theft and deceit does not seem to support Macnagthen’s assertion that he was habitually cruel to women. But he certainly had the capacity for violence as his reaction to arrest at the Fox and Goose showed. He is also known to have made easy attachments with women, deploying his considerable charm to win them over. His alleged background as a doctor was also interesting as the Ripper appeared to have had a good level of surgical and anatomical knowledge, given the way in which the bodies of his victims has been mutilated.

  Though Ostrog was a deeply troubled man, he was clearly clever. Yet he was not talented enough to avoid the clutches of the law, which had frequently caught up with him. Could he really have been disturbed enough to go on a sudden killing spree, and so astute at deception so successfully to cover his tracks? It seems unlikely. There is also the suggestion that Ostrog, who was in his 50s and stood at 5ft 11in, did not match the portraits of witnesses who had supposedly seen the Ripper – describing a younger, shorter man.

  Despite this, for decades Ostrog was held to be a plausible Ripper suspect. Yet recent research suggests that at the time of the Ripper murders in 1888 he was actually in prison in France, serving a two-year sentence for theft. Ostrog was convicted on 14 November 1888 using the name Stanislas Lubinski. Crucially he had been arrested in July. It is therefore highly improbable that he could have been in England in the intervening months murdering prostitutes in London. While he probably wasn’t the Ripper, Ostrog was certainly one of the more colourful criminals of his age. Ironically, it’s unlikely that either of the two other individuals mentioned by Macnaghten was the Ripper either. Many believe that Thomas Cutbush was actually a better candidate.

  LOCATIONS: Burton Bridge Inn, formerly known as the Fox and Goose, No. 24 Bridge Street, Burton on Trent, Staffordshire, 01283 536 596, www.burtonbridgeinn.co.uk

  THE PUZZLING DEATH OF CHARLES BRAVO, 1876

  The Bedford, Balham, South London

  On the morning of 11 July 1876, a throng of lawyers, reporters and curious onlookers clamoured to be let into the Bedford Hotel in Balham, South London, for a second inquest which was being opened into the death of a barrister who had died locally after writhing in agony over the course of three days. The proceedings, held in the oak-panelled billiard room of the Bedford, were aimed at uncovering just how 31-year-old barrister Charles Bravo had come to be poisoned. The evidence which emerged during the course of the inquest would provide a feeding frenzy for the Victorian press as they realised that they had a scintillating mystery on their hands. What is more, the notorious case remains an intriguing ‘whodunit’ to this day and just as captivating as it was to a nineteenth-century audience, who lapped up every lurid detail. The Bravo case fascinated the crime writer Agatha Christie, though even the creator of Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot struggled to piece the puzzle together.

  At the time of his death, Bravo had been living at a grand, crenelated pile in Bedford Hill, Balham, called The Priory with his new wife, Florence. The couple had been married in December 1875. By all accounts, Bravo was an arrogant bully. He was in debt and had already fathered an illegitimate child. He expected complete obedience from Florence who, it appears, he also beat. Florence, born in 1845, was herself a colourful character. A beautiful heiress, she had already been married to a handsome soldier in the Grenadier Guards before she met Bravo. Her first husband, Captain Alexander Ricardo, was an alcoholic and, when the marriage failed, Florence ended up having an affair with James Gully, an eminent married doctor twice her age. Gully may have made her pregnant and performed an abortion. The relationship certainly saw Florence become estranged from her family.

  Ricardo died in 1871 and, four years later, Florence, desperate to re-establish her good name, met and married Bravo. Much to her husband’s displeasure, Florence had decided to hold on to her own money after they wed, invoking the Married Women’s Property Act of 1870. She’s said to have had £40,000 stashed away. Also living at The Priory was Florence’s housekeeper and companion Jane Cox, a woman who Bravo resented.

  The Priory, Balham, where Charles Bravo died in mysterious circumstances. (© James Moore)

  Just four months into the marriage, on the evening of 18 April 1876, Bravo dined with his wife and Jane at around 7.30 p.m. All of them, it later emerged, had been drinking heavily. Bravo later retired to his bedroom – separate from that of Florence’s – taking a swig of water from the carafe on the bedside table. Within fifteen minutes he was rolling around in pain and vomiting violently. Over the next three days, as he endured violent stomach pains, a string of doctors were called in to treat him. Though they didn’t know exactly what had caused his symptoms they agreed that he must have been given, or taken, poison. Mysteriously, all that Bravo would say was that he had taken some laudanum to ease the pain of toothache. Bravo finally died at 5 a.m. on 21 April, in excruciating agony.

  A post-mortem carried out the next d
ay indicated poison but an unsatisfactory inquest, which was held just four days later at the Priory itself, recorded an open verdict. Yet questions about how he had died lingered. Had he taken his own life? Was his death a terrible accident? Or, more likely, had he been murdered?

  The police had been slow to get involved, but now something Bravo had said to Mrs Cox in the minutes after he fell ill came out. Initially Mrs Cox had said that Bravo had told her, ‘Mrs Cox, I have taken poison … don’t tell Florence.’ But now she changed her story, saying that he had actually said, ‘Mrs Cox I have taken poison for Dr Gully, don’t tell Florence!’ Things were murkier than they had at first appeared as Florence’s personal life came under the spotlight. One of the doctors who had attended Bravo stated that he believed Bravo had not knowingly taken poison. It also transpired that the sacked groom at the house had been in possession of antimony. Bravo’s own stepfather hired a private detective and there was a clamour in the press for further investigation.

  In a highly unusual move, the Attorney General granted another inquest. It was this second inquest at the Bedford, a cavernous hotel which had been opened in the 1830s, that would make the case such a cause célèbre. Bravo’s body was exhumed and a post-mortem demonstrated that he had been poisoned with a large amount of antimony, which causes symptoms similar to arsenic. The inquest was finally held in searingly hot weather. A penny broadsheet called The Balham Mystery, published as the case unfolded, set the scene:

  The accommodation presented at the Bedford Hotel is unusually ample. Not only is the inquest room of much larger dimensions than one might expect to find in so comparatively quite a locality but the hotel affords the additional advantage of a series of rooms for separately locating the various classes of witnesses summoned to give evidence as well as others of the jury and the numerous members of the legal profession who are engaged in this remarkable inquiry.

  Before the hearing began, one of the jury, made up of seventeen local tradesmen, was asked for his opinion about whether the floor in the room would be able to bear the weight of all the people crowded inside. The large sash windows of the room also had to be shut against the sound of train noise and the din of the crowd lolling outside waiting for juicy titbits.

  The Bedford, where the second inquest into Charles Bravo’s death was heard. (© James Moore)

  As the facts of the case were considered, Florence found herself on the stand under a heavy air of suspicion. Her affair with Dr Gully emerged, a fact which shocked prudish Victorian morals, especially since the doctor was an eminent physician who had treated the likes of Charles Dickens. Florence also claimed that she had suffered two miscarriages while with Bravo, who had forced her to undertake ‘unnatural acts’.

  But, on 11 August, after thirty-two days of enquiry and cross-examination, the jury was not much closer to discovering the truth. They delivered their verdict as follows:

  We find that Charles Delaunay Turner Bravo did not commit suicide; that he did not meet his death by misadventure; that he was wilfully murdered by the administration of tarter emetic; but there is not sufficient evidence to fix the guilt upon any person or persons.

  There would be no formal trial of any of the suspects, but in the 135 years that followed, debate raged about just what did happen to Bravo. Had Florence had enough of Bravo’s sexual demands and, scared that a third pregnancy might kill her, decided to get her husband out of the way? Had it actually been Jane Cox who killed Bravo? After all, he was apparently set to dismiss her. Was it George Griffiths, Bravo’s groom, who had been let go? When Florence and Charles had first got married he had been overheard saying that Bravo would not ‘live for more than four months’. Perhaps the culprit was actually Dr Gully, who still had feelings for Florence – this was Agatha Christie’s somewhat outlandish conclusion.

  Others believe that there was no murder at all and that Bravo had aimed to poison Florence and ended up killing himself by accident. Others think that Florence had been trying to stop him drinking by giving him regular tartar emetic, which contains antimony. This was an old remedy used to tackle alcoholism by inducing vomiting. Perhaps Florence administered too much to Charles by mistake. All the theories are plausible, yet no conclusive proof to back any of them has ever been found.

  There were certainly no winners in the sorry saga. After the inquest, Florence moved away and died of alcohol poisoning just two years later. Dr Gully faced professional ruin. Even Charles Willis who ran The Bedford claimed to be out of pocket thanks to the whole affair. He wrote to the Home Secretary demanding compensation for the damage done to seats, bannisters and brickwork at The Bedford. The Home Secretary is said to have given him short shrift, retorting that he was sure Mr Willis had received ample remuneration from all the food and drink he’d sold during the heady spectacle.

  LOCATIONS: The Bedford, formerly the Bedford Hotel, No. 77 Bedford Hill, Balham, SW12 9HD, 020 8682 8940, www.thebedford.co.uk

  THE BUTLER DID IT – IN A ROW OVER A PUB, 1876

  Dolaucothi Arms, Pumsaint, Carmarthenshire

  Henry Tremble was a troubled man. Fired from his job as butler, and seething with anger at his perceived ill treatment, he was out for revenge. And he planned to exact it not only on his former employer but anyone he could blame for his lot in life. On the morning of Saturday, 19 August 1876, Tremble confronted his 76-year-old boss, John Johnes, in the library of his Carmarthenshire country pile and shot him in the lower abdomen. Johnes, a former judge, was found by his maid lying on the floor, with his entrails already spilling out. He told her, ‘I’ve been shot by Tremble in the stomach. I am dying.’ Johnes expired an hour later.

  After leaving the bloodied body in the library, Tremble had left the room in search of his next intended victim – Johnes’ daughter, Charlotte. He found her in the kitchen with the cook. He declared, ‘Take that for your persecution of me’ before firing off his shotgun from a distance of just a few feet. Charlotte was left badly wounded in the back and leg but was to survive. The cook, Margaret Davies, was also wounded. After threatening other servants, Tremble then went to the kennels and shot each of Johnes’ dogs too, before leaving the estate looking for another man against whom he had a grievance.

  Tremble, by this time aged 36, had once been on good terms with the Johnes family who lived at Dolaucothi House. Indeed by the time he went on his killing spree he had been employed by them for a total of seventeen years. In a former life he had been the valet of Charlotte’s husband, Captain Cookman. When the officer died in 1859 Tremble was kept on by the Johnes family as a stable boy and coachman, finally working his way up to the post of butler. There is evidence that over the years Johnes had considered dismissing Tremble thanks to his surly attitude but had been dissuaded by his daughter who had promised her late husband that he would take care of his servant.

  With six children to support, Tremble decided, like many people of his era, to take on another job. At some point he and his wife Martha had also run a pub called the Sexton’s Inn at Caio but had been unsuccessful and had to give it up. It was the issue of the tenancy of another hostelry, the Dolaucothi Arms, that was to tip Tremble over the edge and lead to murder. The pub was owned by Johnes and in the summer of 1976 its tenancy had become available. That July, Tremble applied to Johnes for the lease but was turned down. Quite why he was refused isn’t clear – but Tremble’s wife, Martha, is said to have had a drink problem, and this may have been the reason. Tremble’s home life was an unhappy one. For some reason he harboured feelings of jealousy towards his wife, and his domestic troubles were said to have ‘provoked his already irritable nature beyond all bounds’. He once described himself as an Irishman with no friends.

  John Johnes was lining up another existing innkeeper, John Davies, who ran the nearby Caio Inn for the role of tenant at the Dolaucothi. This incensed Tremble and he made his fury clear to his boss. Apparently fed up with Tremble’s mood swings, Johnes had then fired him. After that, he made veiled threats towards the family, once
telling Charlotte and her sister Bertha (who was away at the time of the shooting), ‘Now yous are both together I tell yous that as sure as God’s in Heaven yous shall repent the injustice you have done me.’

  It was on what was meant to be the last day of his employment that Tremble had decided to terminate the lives of his employer and his family.

  Following the double shooting at Dolaucothi House, it was to Davies’ pub that Tremble now set out, still armed in order to do away with his business rival. On the way, Tremble threatened a local police constable, who went to raise the alarm. But on arriving at the Caio Inn, Tremble found that Davies was not there. Deprived of his target, he went to his home at Myrtle Cottage, Caio and, after a stand-off with police officers, shot himself in the chest instead. He died fifteen minutes later.

  There was a strange postscript to the sad tale. Tremble was quietly buried in the local churchyard at Caio. But locals resented having a murderer in their graveyard, especially since Johnes was buried there too, in the family vault. In the dead of night a group of them dug up Tremble’s coffin and took it to another village, Llandulais, some miles away, leaving it at the churchyard there instead. When locals there got wind of what had happened, they decided that they would rather not have another village’s murderer buried in their churchyard and took the coffin back to Caio, where it was dumped and later reburied.

  LOCATIONS: Dolaucothi Arms, Pumsaint, Llanwrda, Carmarthenshire, SA19 8UW, 01558 650237, www.thedolaucothiarms.co.uk