However, the prisoners defence, Mr Maule, claimed that the case had too many irrelevances in it and the identification was ‘shaky’. He said there was little evidence to show that the knife found at the police station had belonged to Kenworthy. He also claimed that the police had ‘pulled to pieces’ the house belonging to the prisoner’s mother, where the waistcoat had been found. There was little evidence that the stains were blood, and all it proved was that it was the waistcoat he had worn on that day. He also spoke of the witnesses, claiming that on the day of the assault, the attacker was wearing a long, black coat, buttoned up to the neck. He asked, ‘Where is that coat which, despite the aid of twenty police constables, has not been found?’ He also questioned the identification of Kenworthy by Mr Lupton, due to the fact that the candle had been extinguished at the onset of the attack. He stated, ‘With respect to Mrs Horner’s recognition, I feel that she was erroneous.’ He advised the jury to discount her hasty identification of the man seen coming out of the shop. Finally, he told the jury that the hatchet had not been positively identified as the one belonging to the prisoner.
The judge, Mr Justice Hill, summed up for the jury, going into each minute detail. Despite Mr Maule’s claims, he expressed the opinion that there was very strong, direct evidence of the prisoner’s guilt. The jury agreed and only retired for five minutes before they returned a verdict of ‘guilty of wounding, with an attempt to do grievous bodily harm’. The judge then spoke to the prisoner:
You have been convicted of a crime which is almost unparalleled in its outrageous character. The evidence against you was clear and cogent and you know yourself in your own conscience whether you intended to murder the man. The jury has taken a lenient view of the case, but they have felt compelled to convict you of wounding, with intent to do bodily harm. I should be wanting in my duty to the public and every individual who now hears my voice, if I did not pass on you the most severe sentence.
In a very loud, cold voice, Mr Justice Hill sentenced John Kenworthy to the maximum sentence of fifteen years’ transportation. Kenworthy showed no emotion as he was led from the dock. His wife, who was present in court, was in tears as she saw her husband descend down the stairs to start his sentence.
John Kenworthy was one of 290 convicts who sailed on the convict ship Norwood on 13 March 1862, to spend fifteen years in Western Australia. This case is very intriguing and begs the question, was it just a matter of greed? Certainly there is no evidence that any items of value were taken from the shop. What did Kenworthy get out of it? Were the reasons for the attack more sinister? We know that Mrs Kenworthy worked for Lupton twice a week, and he was a single man who was obviously in a better financial position than her husband. Was there some romantic involvement of which the court was unaware, or was it just a case of pure malice? Did Kenworthy go to the shop that morning in a fit of jealous rage to try to kill the man he suspected of seducing his wife? One thing for certain is that Kenworthy had fifteen years to mull over the true reasons for his crime.
Case Nine
The Wanton Wife
The Acquittal of John Dearden, 1872
In July 1872, a man named John Dearden lived with his second wife, Minnie, at a temperance hotel on Old Hall Street, Burmantofts, Leeds, which he had bought out of his savings from being a sea captain. The hotel had formerly been a very old hall, which had been separated into three dwellings.
Dearden had been married before and had several children to his first wife. Aged 57, he had found love with a much younger woman – half his age –and married her at Hull. The couple had lived together for three years, having resided at Killinghurst near Sheffield before moving to Leeds. The marriage had been good and he was apparently very fond of his wife, but then things started to change. In the few weeks leading up to her murder on Wednesday 12 July, she had begun staying out all night, and her husband heard that on one occasion she had spent a night playing dominoes with two men.
For some weeks, her husband had been making enquiries and it seems that Minnie had started co-habiting with a former paramour, with whom she had lived before her marriage to Dearden. Matters came to a head when she left home on the night of Monday 8 July, taking a sum of money out of their savings, and did not return until 9 p.m. on Wednesday evening. Dearden had searched the local hostelries without finding her, and when she returned the couple began to argue. The neighbours, hearing the loud voices, kept to their own houses but then a shot rang out. A man named Benjamin Foxcroft, who lived in another part of the old hall, went to the hotel, where he found Mrs Dearden lying on a sofa at one side of a table and Dearden seated at the other side. In his hand he held a revolver, and, as Foxcroft entered, he held the gun up to his own head. Foxcroft grabbed at the gun and wrestled the weapon away from Dearden. He told Foxcroft, ‘I took the revolver out of my pocket and threw it on the table and it went off and shot her.’
A surgeon, Mr Holmes, was called and he found the woman still alive, but bleeding from the temple. Burn marks around the wound showed that the gun had been held close to her head when she was shot. He did everything he could to make her comfortable but, despite his ministrations, she died at 2 a.m. the following day.
Dearden was arrested later that night and taken to Marsh Lane police station by PC Cuthbertson, charged with the unlawful shooting of his wife with an attempt to murder her. Inspector Williamson received the revolver and, on inspection, found it to have five bullets left in the six-bullet chamber. On Thursday 11 July, Dearden appeared at Leeds Town Hall on a charge of wilful murder.
Foxcroft was the first witness. He revealed that he had known the couple for about five weeks, in the time they lived next door to him. He said that at around 9.20 p.m. he heard a shot and ran into the house next door, his wife close on his heels. The couple were in the sitting room of the temperance hotel. When he saw Dearden, he said to him, ‘John what have you done?’ He went over to Mrs Dearden and spoke to her, saying, ‘It is a very bad job that you had carried on as you have done,’ but she made no reply. Foxcroft took the gun away from Dearden, taking it to his own house and putting it on the top of a high cupboard. When he returned, Dearden was kneeling at the side of his wife calling her ‘Minnie’, but she did not reply – nor did she seem to understand that he was there.
Mrs Foxcroft attended to the dying woman whilst her husband went to find a doctor. When Dearden was arrested, and before he left the house, he said to Foxcroft, ‘Benjamin I leave all in your care.’ Handing him the keys of the house, he asked him to make sure the house was secure and locked up. The magistrate asked him about the relationship between Dearden and his wife during those last few days, and he told him that she had taken some money and gone out on the Monday night. He heard later that she had been seen in Leeds, drinking in the company of some men. He went into Dearden’s part of the house on the Tuesday, where the man had told him Minnie had not returned, and then he began to cry like a baby. Under further questioning, he said that she had been known to stay away for as long as a fortnight. Dearden was then asked if he wanted a solicitor to defend him and Mr Malcolm was appointed. At this point, the magistrate adjourned the case, as an inquest would be held on the body of Mrs Dearden later that day. Deardon was held in a cell at the Town Hall until the inquest and trial were completed.
At the inquest, the coroner, Mr Emsley, examined several witnesses and the events were corroborated. The only surprise witness was the daughter of Mr Dearden, Harriet, who was aged 14 and in service with Mr Carter of the Albion Inn, Lemon Street. She told the court that her stepmother had left her father and gone to live with another man whilst the couple lived in Sheffield. Her father had gone to get her back and all three of them had moved to Leeds five weeks previously. She and another servant, named Emma Jackson, had been at her father’s house just prior to the accident, and when they had left the couple were laughing and joking. She promised her father that she would come back on Sunday for tea, and she wore a brooch which her stepmother had lent her when she left the
house. Harriet told the coroner that Dearden had got the gun whilst he was a captain at Hull. The inquest was then adjourned to Friday 18 July.
At the resumed inquest, evidence was heard from 11-year-old Louisa Scott, who cleaned for Mr and Mrs Dearden. She had gone to the house on Tuesday to find no one in, and so had returned the following evening in order to light the fire. Mrs Dearden was on the sofa in the sitting room and Dearden was in the kitchen. She had promised to pay Scott 6d for cleaning, and Dearden went to put his hands in his jacket, which was over a chair, to find the money. He then went into the sitting room saying, ‘Minnie you have got my money,’ and he seemed very angry. The child told the court that he was so angry, she ran out of the house, fearing that there would be an argument. She heard the shot later that night and saw people going into the Deardens’ house. Mrs Parkinson, the landlady of the Fleece Inn on the High Street, Burmantofts, said that the prisoner and the deceased were drinking in her pub earlier on Wednesday. She told the coroner that Mrs Dearden had gone in at around 2 p.m. and had bought a whisky, saying that she had asked her husband to meet her there between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. that afternoon. Shortly afterwards, her husband arrived and they sat drinking until about 7 p.m. Mrs Dearden had drunk five or six glasses of whisky; Dearden had consumed about three or four.
Henry Tinsdale, the landlord of the Woodpecker at Burmantofts, took up the story. In his account, the couple went into his pub after leaving the Fleece and had two or three glasses of whisky between them. Mary Welton, a charwoman at the Albion Inn, where their daughter Harriett was employed, stated that she had seen Mrs Dearden drinking there several times, either on her own or with other men. On the Tuesday, a week before the incident, Dearden had told her that his wife had ‘gone off again’. Welton told him, ‘I wouldn’t bother with her any more,’ and Dearden replied, ‘Well, I will settle it one way or the other, because I am tired of her bad ways.’ He also told her that he would break up his home and move away.
The jury retired to consider their position and came back with a guilty verdict. However, they asked for leniency, due to the great provocation suffered at the hands of his wife.
On Friday 12 July, Dearden was brought into court at Leeds Town Hall before the magistrate, Mr Bruce. The first witness was Mrs Ann Foxcroft, who described trying the help the poor woman after the shooting and Dearden’s distress at what had happened. Whilst Mrs Foxcroft was in the house, she heard Dearden saying several times that he had thrown down the revolver onto the table and it had gone off accidentally. She claimed that the deceased woman smelt very strongly of alcohol. When asked by the magistrate if the pair had lived happily together, she replied that Dearden did all he could to make his wife happy. According to Mrs Foxcroft, the prisoner adored his wife and could not bear to have her out of his sight. At this point, the prisoner started to cry in the dock. She told the court that she had heard him say to his dead wife that he would give her anything if she would ‘only take up and be steady’.
Mr Henry Holmes, the surgeon, spoke about trying to help the injured woman. He got a sponge and wiped the wound, which he observed had penetrated right into the brain. He tried to find the ball in the wound but it had gone too far. When asked if the wound could have been made by a gun discharging accidentally, he said that in his opinion, it was impossible to have caused it from its position on the table. He was asked where the woman was sitting, and he told them that she was lying on the sofa, her head level with the table. Mr Holmes had undertaken a post-mortem on the body that morning, where he found the bullet had gone through the skull cap and into the brain. He produced the bullet in court and also reiterated that the wound could not have been inflicted in the manner suggested by the prisoner.
PC Cuthbertson told the court that when he was at the police station, Dearden had said that his wife had spent £70 of his money in the last five weeks. David Slingsby, a gunsmith of Lowerhead Row, Leeds, stated that the hammer of the revolver would have had to come into contact with the pin of the cartridge before it could explode, and therefore could not have gone off accidentally. The prisoner was further remanded until Thursday 18 July.
Dearden was once more brought into court the following week, where another gunsmith, Joseph Wilks, was called and corroborated the evidence of his colleague. However, he emphasised that all guns were dangerous and should not be carried around carelessly. Alfred Carter, the son of the landlord of the Albion Inn, told the court that he had known the prisoner for six months. A few months previously, in June, Dearden had asked his father to look after the gun for him, as he was in lodgings and didn’t want to lose it. He told his father that he had bought it at Hull and had it whilst he was a captain, due to having to go through some dangerous places on the docks at night. Carter said that the prisoner had left the gun and six cartridges, which had been handed back to him on 28 June. He had heard him say that his wife was a ‘bad woman who went with other men’. Carter saw the prisoner on the Tuesday before the occurrence, when Dearden told him that Minnie had gone off again and he was not going to bother with her anymore, as he could not get her to stay. Mr Malcolm asked the witness if he had seemed angry with his wife when he said this, and Carter replied that Dearden just seemed very sad. The judge summed up the evidence for the jury, who found Dearden guilty. He was committed to take his trial at the next Assizes.
On Wednesday 7 August, Dearden appeared before Mr Baron Cleasby at Leeds Assizes. Mr Wheelhouse and Mr Thompson were for the prosecution and Mr Waddy and Mr Tennant for the defence. Mr Foxcroft gave his statement, adding that the prisoner had continued to demonstrate great remorse for his actions. He had shown the deceased woman nothing but kindness and he would often do all the work before she got up in the morning. But in the five weeks she had lived in the property, she had left him several times to go out drinking with other men.
Mr Wheelhouse told the jury that they had to make the simple decision about whether the gun had been fired deliberately or by accident. No witnesses were brought in by the defence, and Mr Waddy gave a powerful argument as to the innocence of Dearden, who had sobbed repeatedly throughout the trial. Mr Waddy simply stated that anyone who read or heard about the case would instantly see that his client was not guilty of the crime. The prisoner’s misfortune had been that his wife was utterly unworthy of him: ‘She was a woman who drank and stole his money, and abandoned his bed and board.’
The court applauded his speech. The learned judge, in summing up for the jury, questioned why the prisoner had a loaded gun in his pocket – something which had not been satisfactorily explained. He said that despite the evidence of the doctors and gunsmiths, he did not consider it impossible that she had been shot from the table. Nevertheless, he told the jury that they must make up their own minds and deliver the correct verdict.
The jury returned back to the court and the foreman was asked for the verdict. He stated ‘Not guilty,’ and the court erupted with cheering, which continued for a full ten minutes until order was once more restored.
In this case, it is clear that Dearden faced a lot of provocation by his wife’s wanton behaviour, but the judge was right to highlight the fact that no full explanation had been given for why Dearden had the gun in his pocket that night. There was no evidence as to whether he had asked Carter to return the gun to him a month before the shooting – information that would surely have been of great importance to the jury. Nevertheless, we do see that he loved his wife, and the distress shown throughout the trial indicates his sorrow and anguish.
Case Ten
Murder at Oulton Hall
The Execution of John Darcy, 1879
Many murders are planned in advance and carried out with meticulous attention to details – recognised as ‘malice aforethought’. Yet little thought seems to have gone into the planning of the next case, which appears to feature one of the most incompetent criminals I have ever read about. Not only was the perpetrator seen by several witnesses on the road leading to the murder scene and away from it, but he was
seen actually committing the murder itself. How he hoped to get away with it is a complete mystery.
The Mansion at Oulton Park was owned in 1879 by a Mr Calverley. He had employed a gate keeper, William Metcalfe, who lived in a lodge on the estate for over forty years. Metcalfe was an elderly man, aged 85, who lived on his own, although a niece, Sarah, came to the lodge most days and did some cleaning and shopping for him. On Saturday 1 March, she had gone to visit her uncle and he gave her a sovereign to change for him. Later that evening she took him the change, giving him half a sovereign and 10s in silver. He put the money into a purse, which he then placed into the top drawer of a chest. A few days before, on 28 February, Sarah had been at her uncle’s house when there was a knock on the door. When she had opened it, a man asked her, ‘How is your time going on?’ and pointed to the clock. She told him it was fine and closed the door in his face. When she asked her uncle who the man was, he told her it was John Darcy, who came to repair and clean the clocks for him periodically.
John Darcy lived at Mulberry Street, Hunslet, in the lodging house of a woman named Smith. He was 26 years of age and earned a living from mending and cleaning clocks, but he had led a dissolute life. He travelled around the area calling on householders and asking if they wanted any clocks cleaned or repaired. Two weeks previously, Darcy had called at the cottage of a woman named Emma Wright, a widow who lived at Oulton. She had a clock that wanted fixing and as he repaired it in her kitchen, he talked to her about the old man who lived opposite. He asked her if Metcalfe lived alone and she replied in the affirmative.
Murder & Crime Leeds Page 7