Derbyshire Murders

by Martin Baggoley

  Despite the absence of a formal statement by Bonsall, the Crown had evidence provided by two prisoners who had shared a cell with him following his arrival at Derby Gaol in early October. These were William Salt, who at the time was imprisoned for not complying with a bastardy order, and John Brown, who was awaiting trial for the theft of a cow.

  According to his two fellow prisoners, Bonsall told them that Hulme had called at his house on the night of the crime, and asked if he was interested in committing a burglary at Stanley. Bonsall’s wife protested at the idea and told him, ‘No my lad, go thee to bed’. Bonsall suggested that they rob a local tanner’s yard instead, as he knew a shoemaker in Belper who would buy any leather they could get hold of. Hulme, however, was not interested in this idea, and finally Bonsall agreed to go with him to Stanley.

  At Hulme’s suggestion they called on Bland to ask if he wished to accompany them, and he readily agreed. The three men set off at 7 p.m. and arrived at Stanley Hall three hours later. Hulme was said to have removed the roof slates, and, on entering the house, he was confronted by Sarah, holding a poker in one hand and a candle in the other. Hulme knocked her down, and did so for a second time when she attempted to stand up.

  Bonsall continued by insisting that Hulme and Bland forced Sarah upstairs, where they ransacked her bedroom, finding 12s 6d in one of the drawers. Bonsall later followed them and found Sarah screaming at Hulme, ‘Man, man, what a man you are! I’ve given you my money. Tell me what you want and I will give it to you.’ Hulme shouted back, ‘You damned old woman. I want one of those £5 notes!’, and he knocked her to the floor once again.

  Meanwhile, Bland had burst into Martha’s bedroom, with Bonsall supposedly exhorting him not to harm her in any way. At this point, Bonsall claimed he went downstairs to eat some cheese he had seen in the kitchen, leaving his two accomplices with the sisters. He returned upstairs some time later, having finished his meal, and on reaching Martha’s room he heard Hulme say, ‘I think we have nearly finished her, and now we’ll go’.

  Bonsall described his own weapon as a poker with a turned up tip; Hulme’s was a strong piece of iron; and Bland’s was a piece of wood lined with lead. He told Salt and Brown that all three weapons had been buried and would never be found.

  Joseph Roe, a farmer who lived at Smalley Mill, was in Woodhouse Lane at 2.30 a.m. on the morning of the murder. He testified that he met the three accused, travelling from the direction of Stanley, heading towards Heage, which was about three miles from the spot where they met. Each of the men was carrying a bundle over his shoulder. Suspicious, Joseph said, ‘Hullo my lads, have you got fighting cocks in your bags?’ Bonsall, who Joseph knew, replied, ‘What do you say?’ Joseph suggested that they had been up to no good, as he was convinced they had stolen goods in their bundles.

  Bonsall said to his two companions, ‘Let’s kill the bastard!’ A defiant Joseph retorted, ‘Come on, come on then!’ Bonsall took a few paces towards him, but Bland called out, ‘Oh come away, we have done enough for tonight’.

  Another prosecution witness, Elizabeth Wainwright, who lived in Heage, also provided important evidence. She lived only a few yards from Bland’s house, and could see if his door was open. On the night of 29 September she saw Bonsall arrive, and later noticed the three accused leave the house and make their way out of the village in the direction of Stanley. Importantly, having risen from her bed early in the morning to see her son off to work, she also saw the three men arrive back at the house several hours later, at about four o’clock.

  Seventeen-year-old Richard Dronsfield was employed as an apprentice chimneysweep by Hulme, and lived in his employer’s house. He testified that on that same evening, Bonsall called at the house and he heard him ask Hulme, ‘Are you ready?’ Hulme finished his supper after which the two men left. He saw Hulme put a bag and two short staves in his pockets, together with a knife he had made out of a razor. The youngster could also see that Bonsall had brought an iron crowbar with him.

  Richard slept on the floor downstairs, and was woken by the two men when they returned in the early hours of the following morning. The fire was still lit and the youngster could see that Hulme’s bag was full of various items. He and Bonsall examined their clothes for blood, and having found some they wiped it off. Richard could also see that Bonsall had blood on his left hand.

  Richard saw Hulme empty his bag, which contained two shawls, some stockings and other items of clothing. There were several pieces of material, and he heard Hulme say, ‘This will make thee and me some waistcoats’. He also heard him say that he thought one of the shawls might be worth as much as 30s. Having thrown the staves into the fire, Bonsall left the house.

  At six o’clock that morning, Richard left to sweep a chimney, and when he returned a few hours later, he found the three accused at the house. Hulme led the other two to the door, saying, ‘Its all clear, you may go now’. Bonsall returned the following day, and he and Hulme decided to bury the proceeds of the crime in the garden of a neighbour, John Rogers.

  Upon hearing of the arrest of his two accomplices, Hulme took Richard to the garden where the booty was buried, and moved it, apparently worried lest Bonsall tell the police where it was, thus incriminating him in the crime. The pair then travelled to Leek and on the journey Hulme admitted to his apprentice that he had taken part in the burglary, but insisted that Bonsall and Bland had killed Martha.

  After hearing of Hulme’s arrest, Richard wandered the countryside, worried lest he be considered a suspect. He eventually returned to Heage several weeks later, where he contacted Joseph Simpson. The two of them retrieved the proceeds of the crime that had been reburied by Hulme and took them to Constable Hawkins. These proved to be valuable items of prosecution evidence, as neighbours and friends identified them as having belonged to the Goddard sisters. Importantly, they also confirmed that they had seen them in the sisters’ possession after the two earlier burglaries that year, so the items could only have been taken on the night of the murder. Far from being considered a suspect, Richard was viewed as a crucial Crown witness, and so he proved to be at the trial.

  Although it did not link Bonsall directly to the crime, further damning evidence was provided by a fellow prisoner, Benjamin Potter, who was in Derby Gaol awaiting trial for police assault. Given his status as a prisoner facing trial for a capital offence, Bonsall was not permitted to send any uncensored mail out of the gaol. He therefore attempted to gain Potter’s assistance in smuggling a letter out to his father, written on a page torn from a Bible, obviously in the hope of establishing an alibi; it read:

  You must get Varges in come and sware he saw me stand in the yard in my short pising as I was going to call Abraham Jackson to go to work and I asked him what o clock it was, and he said it was about two, and olievar was in the little house and he asked me if I was going to work and I said I was not. It was about half past one I was doing a job for myself in the garding before the door. I was in my shirt. You must let me know if they will come.

  Unfortunately for Bonsall, the letter was discovered by an alert assistant turnkey, Edward White, and it never reached its intended destination.

  After the final witness had left the stand, Bonsall’s lawyer, Mr Miller, suggested to the jury that the witnesses for the Crown had been motivated by financial gain as they had their sights set on the substantial reward and should be ignored. Other evidence had been given by criminals and therefore could not be trusted. As for the attempt to arrange a false alibi, he believed it was not significant as it was simply the act of an innocent man desperate to extricate himself from a nightmarish situation.

  In his summing up, the judge highlighted the evidence that placed all three men together shortly before and immediately after the crime. As for the matter of the false alibi, the jury must decide for themselves what significance they put on it. He emphasised that the jury did not have to decide which individual had actually struck the blows that killed Martha. If they were satisfied that each
of the prisoners in the dock had armed himself, and that they were acting with a common purpose, each was equally guilty of the murder, irrespective of who had struck the fatal blows.

  The jury retired for a little over ten minutes before returning, having found all three defendants guilty of wilful murder. The judge passed death sentences on them and concluded by saying, ‘May God Almighty have mercy on your guilty souls’, to which Bonsall shouted, ‘There is no God!’

  The prisoners were taken down into the cells, but there was one more case to be heard before the close of the day’s proceedings. John Brown was brought into the dock, but no evidence was offered against him relating to the theft of a cow, and he was released.

  The executions took place at noon on Friday, 31 March 1843, the scaffold having been erected during the previous week, on top of the water tank to the left of the gaol’s main gate. Derby had not witnessed an execution since John Leedham was hanged for bestiality on 12 April 1833, and inevitably a triple hanging was bound to generate widespread interest. The crowd, which had begun to arrive from all over the county in the early hours of the morning, was estimated to be more than 50,000.

  Inside the gaol, the condemned men prepared themselves for what lay ahead. At 9 a.m. all of the gaol’s inmates attended divine service in the chapel, at which Revd G. Pickering read the special service for the condemned. He and Revd Vevers, a Wesleyan Methodist minister, remained with the three men throughout the morning.

  At a few minutes before noon the Under Sheriff, Mr Simpson, accompanied by a number of javelin men, arrived at the gaol to make his formal request that the condemned men be placed in his custody. As they left the condemned cell, the procession passed through the prison yard, in which a number of prisoners had gathered. Bonsall cried out, ‘God bless you lads. Take warning lads, take warning!’

  They were pinioned just before stepping out onto the scaffold, and Bonsall was the first to emerge before the vast crowd. His chest was heaving violently, his eyes were sunken and his face was pallid. Bland was the next to emerge, appearing relatively calm, but deep in prayer. Hulme could be seen to be trembling, and he too was praying as he stepped on to the drop. As the caps were drawn over their heads, the three men raised their voices in prayer, seeking forgiveness. The bolt was drawn and all three struggled for about two minutes before they finally became still. They were cut down one hour later, after which local sculptor W. Barton made death masks of each one.

  In addition, Manchester phrenologist, Mr Ball, had been commissioned to make phrenological measurements of the men. The so-called science of phrenology was seen as a means of assessing an individual’s character and intelligence from the shape of his or her skull. The skulls of criminals, especially those guilty of capital crimes, were regularly measured in the hope of finding ways of identifying those that posed a threat to society.

  Crowds at public executions were notoriously raucous, but on this occasion the spectators were well behaved throughout the day. However, that evening more than 1,500 people, many the worse for drink, struggled to find seats on the special trains that had been laid on to bring them to Derby from many of the surrounding towns and villages for the hangings earlier in the day, and which would take them home that evening. Fighting broke out, but the police eventually managed to restore order.

  Revd Vevers had been asked to visit Bland, and after doing so, the other two condemned men asked him to visit them also. He called at the prison as often as four times each day, and at these meetings he was pleased to minister to their spiritual needs. However, this was not before he had made it clear to each man that he believed them all to be guilty, and that they deserved to hang. On the Monday following the executions, he held a public meeting at the Wesleyan Chapel on King Street, at which he addressed a packed hall on his meetings with the murderers of Martha Goddard.

  He described their emotional farewells to families and friends. Although greatly distressed, Hulme said goodbye to his wife stoically. Bland wept openly as he spoke to his children through the prison bars, unable to embrace them. Bonsall’s brother made to leave after his visit, and as he did so they shook hands through the bars of the cell, but they did not release their grip for more than ten minutes; Bonsall wept continuously, until, regaining his composure, he told his brother, ‘Now my lad, keep out of the public house, and give over the cards and dice, for they are the foundations of all misery.’

  Revd Vevers next told of a dramatic meeting in the gaol’s schoolroom with the three men on the morning of their executions. He told them it was essential to confess their crimes if they were to find eternal rest and peace. When confronted, Bland denied striking Martha, but Bonsall, his guard down, exclaimed, ‘Thou didst strike her Will’. This slip made it clear that Bonsall, who had continued to maintain his innocence since the trial ended, had been present at Stanley Hall, and he finally admitted that it was he who had struck the blows that killed Martha.

  Further confessions followed, and it emerged that the three men had committed many crimes together, including highway robbery, dwelling house burglaries, and mill breaking. Bonsall told Revd Vevers that he had stolen the crowbar used to kill his victim from a blacksmith’s forge in Matlock, with a different crime in view. He and an accomplice he refused to name had intended to rob and murder a woman who kept a tollgate between Matlock and Bakewell. When they arrived they saw their intended victim sitting alone by her fire. They were about to enter the house when a carriage approached, and they decided to abandon their plans.

  Martha Goddard had not been so fortunate, but it is clear that with their executions a trio of murderous criminals had been removed from society.

  2

  A CUCKOLD’S BLOODY REVENGE

  Belper, 1844

  On the morning of Monday, 22 April 1844, fifty-year-old William Yeomans, a millwright employed at Strutt’s Mill in Belper, called at the Red Lion Hotel. He asked for a quart of gin, and complained to the landlady, ‘I am dying fast, as I am landed with a bad woman’. The landlady knew him well as he was a regular customer, and in recent weeks she had often heard him complain about his wife, whom he would also sometimes threaten with violence. His complaint was therefore nothing new to the landlady, and in an attempt to calm him down she expressed the belief that everything would soon be all right between them.

  However, on this occasion his words would prove to be no idle threat, for within hours Yeomans and his wife, Sarah, would suffer violent and bloody deaths. There would be no criminal trial, but at the inquest into the killings a story would emerge of betrayal, jealousy and despair, that would lead to murder and suicide.

  The inquest into both deaths, at which the tragic tale was revealed, was held at the Red Lion Hotel on Wednesday, 24 April before the local coroner, Henry Mozley. The first witness to be called was Hannah Godbehere, who had known William and Sarah Yeomans all of her life, and had been their next-door neighbour for several years. She told the inquest that she had been aware that her neighbours’ marriage had been unhappy for many months. The reason for this had been Sarah’s more or less open intimate relationship with a twenty-year-old nailer and local man, George Ride.

  Hannah described a conversation she had with William a few days before the tragedy, in which he complained bitterly that, despite it having been necessary for him to enter Derby Infirmary six weeks earlier as an in-patient due to a serious heart problem, he had been unable to stay for as long as his doctor had wanted him to. This, he claimed, was due to his having discovered his wife’s affair with Ride. He had discharged himself and was now attending the infirmary as an out-patient.

  Belper was the location of a tragic murder and suicide. (Author’s collection)

  Hannah had also spoken to William on the Saturday before the killings, the day when matters had seemingly come to a head. William had told her that Sarah had offered to travel to Derby to collect her husband’s medicine, which he had agreed to. However, as he waited for her to return he began to suspect that she would take the oppo
rtunity to meet her young lover. He therefore left the house and kept watch on the Derby road, awaiting her return. When he first saw her she was alone, but as she drew nearer to the village, Ride approached her, and William watched in horror as they embraced. He immediately confronted them, and punched Sarah to the ground, but before he could assault her lover, Ride ran away. William continued complaining to Hannah that his wife’s relationship with George Ride had led to her spending a great deal of money and to her neglecting her own family and home. Furthermore, he admitted to Hannah that in revenge for his wife’s scandalous behaviour, he had recently burnt some of her clothes.

  The witness continued her evidence by stating that as she and Yeoman spoke, Sarah, who had left the house earlier that morning, returned. Hannah watched as William approached her in a threatening manner, and she could see that Sarah, who tried to step back, was terrified. William grabbed her by the throat and forced her indoors. A short time later, Hannah saw Sarah run from the house, to which she did not return until the following morning.