Three years later Joseph Hyatt, an elderly sawyer from Shipston-on-Stour, was staying in Warwick on business. On the evening of 1 July 1878 he went for a drink in the Vine Tavern in West Street. Here he met up with two local men, one of whom said his name was Barlow, and bought them some beer. Joseph met up with them a second time later in the evening, at the Malt Shovel Inn, where they asked him to ‘stand’ them another pint of beer as they had no money. These two men were, of course, Charles Wiggins, now aged twenty-four, and George Harrison, now aged nineteen.
Smith Street today. The Welch Harp and the Birmingham Arms are no longer here.
After he left the inn, Joseph was walking along West Street when Charles and George approached him. Before he knew what was happening, George had thrown him over the railings and into a field. They then got him down into a ditch. One of the men took hold of his arm so he couldn’t move and threatened to kill him if he did try to move. The other found a knife in Joseph’s pocket and cut his trouser pocket off to get at his money. They then ran off towards the town, having stolen 16s, the knife and a pocket handkerchief.
Joseph managed to get up and climb back over the rails. He then found Police Constable Rollaston and told him what had happened. During the course of his statement it became clear to the police who the culprits were.
First, they went to George’s house but he wasn’t there; they then went on to Charles’, but he wasn’t there either. They were eventually found in the Granville Arms in Barford, three miles away. When charged with robbery they protested their innocence and blamed another young man by the name of Caldecott, but Joseph identified them and they were sent to trial at the assizes in August 1878.
The Vine Tavern in West Street today.
Despite the judge’s opening remark, they were still found guilty and were sentenced to five years’ penal servitude. On receiving the sentence George said, ‘Thank you, my Lord, we can do it; but we are innocent.’
The 1881 census states that Charles Wiggins was in prison in Tavistock, Devon, and George Harrison was in Carisbrook Prison in Hampshire. Charles died a few months later and George disappears from the records thereafter.
On Wednesday, 24 October 1883, six-year-old Charles Buck left for All Saints’ School at nine in the morning from his home at No. 2 Victoria Terrace, Emscote. When he didn’t come home for his dinner his parents, George and Emily Buck, started to search for him. Someone said they had seen him playing by the Warwick and Napton canal, so they feared the worst – he had fallen into the water and drowned. A neighbour, Mrs Eliza Bailey, said that sometime between midday and one o’clock she had seen him being led by a man alongside the canal, away from Emscote. Reports later confirmed that a boy fitting the description of Charles Buck had been seen walking along the canal with a man, in the direction of Birmingham.
Frank Hunt was an eighteen-year-old grocer’s assistant who lived on Radford Road in Leamington. That same morning he had left home telling his mother he was going into Birmingham to enlist in the army.
Meanwhile, that Wednesday evening, at a lodging house in Mill Lane, Digbeth in Birmingham, a Mrs Bagley admitted two young men and a child. She asked if they were brothers but one harshly told her ‘that is nothing to do with you’. She was not concerned, for the little boy seemed quite happy and content and didn’t complain, and so she did not think anything was wrong; he even spent his time there happily playing with her own children. Although he didn’t seem tired when he had arrived, she did say later that his feet were so swollen they had a job to get his boots off.
* * *
‘they now feared the worst’
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On the Friday the two men left the little boy alone with Mrs Bagley while they went out looking for work. He was a quiet boy and made no comment and she left him alone while she got on with running her establishment. Later that day, two travellers arrived from Coventry and checked into the lodging house. During the course of their conversation they told her the story of a little boy who had gone missing. She then saw the newspaper report stating that ‘a little boy had been stolen from his parents at Warwick’. Her suspicions were immediately raised and she feared that this was the boy in her house.
Without hesitation she took him to the police station and it wasn’t until he was there that he said anything about his adventure, and how he had walked from Warwick with the man. He returned home to Warwick on the Saturday afternoon with Inspector Hall, seemingly unscathed by his adventure.
When Frank Hunt returned to the lodging house he was arrested, and the other man had disappeared. The story Frank gave was that he had found Charles walking about and thought he was lost so decided to take care of him. Frank was taken to Warwick where he appeared at the Police Court on Friday 2 November, charged with ‘having stolen Charles William Buck’. Frank maintained that Charles appeared lost and didn’t know where he was going: ‘I met the poor little fellow near Hockley Heath. I and another man took hold of his hand and led him to Birmingham’. Although Frank said he had found the boy near Hockley Heath, two witnesses identified him as the man they had seen taking Charles away from Warwick along the canal.
Edward Allsop, of No. 59 Hampton Street, said he walked with Frank and Charles as far as the second locks, below Warwick. He said that Frank had told him he was going to Birmingham and Edward remarked that he didn’t think the child could walk that far. Frank had told him that the mother had said he had done it before, but that if he did get tired he would find a station and go the rest of the way by train.
The Warwick and Napton canal today, running through the All Saints district of Warwick.
The defence, Mr Davies, said there was ‘an absence of motive on the part of the prisoner’ but the justices felt that there was a case to answer to and Frank was committed for trial at the next assizes.
The assizes took place on 14 November and Frank’s defence counsel, this time Hugo Young, argued ‘that the prisoner had no intention of depriving the parents of the custody of the child’. It seems the jury agreed and Frank was acquitted. However, the judge, Mr Justice Fitzjames Stephen, didn’t seem to agree and said ‘the jury had taken a merciful view of the case. The prisoner had better be careful, for if he took up another child in this way, and the jury found him guilty, the punishment would be very serious’.
On Thursday, 19 January 1888, Police Constable Salt was on duty in Smith Street, Warwick, when he heard a lot of noise and shouting at the bottom of the street.
Making his way there he saw a man coming towards him up the street, ‘making a great noise, flourishing his arms in the air, wildly shouting “Murder!” and reeling from one side to the other like a drunken man.’ As he reached the police constable he threw up his arms and said, ‘Here he is,’ before he staggered against the wall, saying, ‘I have murdered my wife; the devil has tempted me to do it.’
At first the constable thought the man had been drinking, although there was no smell of liquor on him. Salt asked him if he had been home at all that night and the man said ‘Yes’ and got up again. Salt then asked him his name but the mystery man either did not want to divulge it or he simply couldn’t remember. Noticing that there was blood on the man’s hands, PC Salt realised that something serious may have taken place. He decided to take the man to the police station, but as he tried to take hold of him the man started to get violent.
Edwin John Harris, a watchman for the Warwick Fire Brigade at The Butts, heard a cry of ‘Murder!’ coming from the Smith Street area and so went to investigate. He saw PC Salt holding onto a man who seemed in an excited state and went to his aid. He helped Salt get the man to the police station where he eventually calmed down and told the police to go to a house in Charles Street, where they would find the back door open.
Smith Street today.
On arriving at the house, PC Salt, accompanied by Police Constable Durham, did indeed find the back door open. As they went into the house everything seemed quiet and in order, until they went upstairs. In the back
bedroom they found, lying peacefully on her bed and partially covered with bedclothes, the body of the murdered woman. Her head was ‘buried in a pool of blood’ with dreadful injuries to the back of her head; reports described her skull as being ‘terribly battered’. The wall to the right side of the bed was splattered with blood. When surgeon Dr Guthrie Rankin examined the body, he stated that her injuries could only have been caused by a succession of blows. There didn’t seem to have been a struggle though, and it appeared that the woman had been murdered in her sleep. A brick by the bed, which had been removed from a line of bricks that formed a sort of fender in front of the fireplace, was obviously the murder weapon as it was covered in blood and hair.
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‘buried in a pool of blood’
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The police now needed to find out who the couple were so began knocking on the doors of the neighbours. They discovered that the woman was called Harriet Fanny Timms and that her husband was George Timms. They were described as a happy couple and when questioned, all George would say to the police was that they had ‘had some words after going to bed’ and he had hit her with a brick three or four times on the head.
George, aged fifty-three, was a labourer and for the last fourteen years had been employed by Nelson Dale & Co., the gelatine manufacturers of Wharf Street, Warwick; Harriet worked as a monthly nurse (someone who looked after a mother and her baby during the first month after the birth).
The couple had only recently moved from Avon Street, where they had been living for a few years at least, having originally moved from Coventry sometime between 1861 and 1871. They now lived in one of the company’s semi-detached cottages in Charles Street, which had been erected specifically for the employees of Nelson Dale’s.
George had arrived home from work with a fellow workman and neighbour, George Woodfield, who said that when he left the couple they were both sitting happily together. The walls in these houses were very thin, and Woodfield mentioned that he heard a noise from the Timms’ bedroom around one o’clock in the morning, as if someone was walking about. Thinking it was probably Harriet being called to attend a patient, he thought no more about it until the police knocked on his door making enquiries.
Charles Street today, with the Nelson Club on the right.
Henry Timms, George and Harriet’s son, still lived in Avon Street. He said that he had visited his parents on Wednesday evening and noticed that his father had appeared very ‘muddlified and funny and appeared to have something very heavy on his mind’. George mentioned that he was worried about Harriet, as she had been unwell. But Henry said that his father had seemed strange over the last few weeks, that he had seemed ‘very funny in his manner since before Christmas’ and kept complaining that he couldn’t keep himself warm in the house; he had seemed ‘very dull and discontented’.
When George made his statement he said, ‘We had some words after going to bed over some trouble. I hit her with a brick two or three times. Something shot through me when I was in bed. I have had no rest since I have been there.’ He appeared perfectly sober and when asked if he had been drinking he said he was a teetotaller. After he was charged with murder he said, ‘If I have done it, I am very sorry.’
Harriet’s funeral took place on the Sunday afternoon. The route between Charles Street and the cemetery was crowded, with some onlookers, the newspapers described, being there out of morbid curiosity. The service was conducted by the Revd W. Scarborough, the Wesleyan minister for Warwick.
The following morning, George appeared before the magistrates in the Police Court. He was described as being of average build, about 5ft 7in tall, with a dark complexion and clean shaven; in fact, the newspapers said that he ‘generally has the appearance of a respectable man’. George was charged to appear at the next assizes.
The Winter Assizes opened on Monday 12 March before Baron Huddleston. On the Tuesday, Mr Stubbings, George’s defence counsel, asked if his case could be postponed until the next assizes, to allow time for medical experts to make inquiries into George’s state of mind, to which the judge agreed.
George appeared at the Summer Assizes before Mr Justice Wills on 27 July 1888. Dr Sankey, the medical superintendent of the County Lunatic Asylum, was asked to give evidence. He said that George was an epileptic and had committed the murder while under the influence of an attack. The judge asked the jury if they were ready to give a verdict. He said that it seemed to him that if ever there was a case in which a man committed a murder without an adequate knowledge of the nature and consequences of his act that was one. The jury agreed and the judge ordered that George was to remain in a criminal lunatic asylum. He was permanently admitted to Hatton Lunatic Asylum on 7 August 1888. Four years later, his condition was said to have not improved, and so, on 15 October 1892, he was moved to Broadmoor Criminal Asylum, and it appears he died there in 1904.
Warwick cemetery today.
On 8 May 1891, at nine o’clock in the evening, Police Constable Sloss of Kenilworth met a man walking through Gulverson’s Spinney. The man said he had travelled from Evesham and was on his way to Coventry, and they walked together for three miles. A few days later Sloss was to meet that man again under very different circumstances.
Earlier that evening, Sarah Carty had made her way from her home in Stand Street, Warwick, across fields to Budbrooke Barracks, with napkins that she had freshly laundered for the Warwickshire Regiment.
The Carty’s had been an army family for many years. Sarah’s husband, Timothy, had been a colour sergeant, having joined up in 1852. He had retired in 1887, after thirty-five years of service. Their son John was also a colour sergeant with the Warwickshire Regiment, stationed at Budbrooke Barracks.
Sarah had spent many years working as a laundress for the army, travelling with her husband from Leeds to Fulwood Barracks in Lancashire, to the Colchester Barracks in Kent, and then finally Warwick. On this particular evening Sarah was carrying thirty-four napkins, which were said to be worth £3 6s.
As she walked across the fields a man walked quickly past her. They both continued in the same direction, but he kept stopping and turning to look at her. She could see some soldiers walking up ahead so didn’t feel afraid. When the man got close to the barracks he stopped again; this time he turned around and started walking back towards her, and when he came close he grabbed Sarah by the arm. She screamed ‘Murder!’ but he pulled her around, telling her to stand where she was. She told him her son would be looking out of the barracks window for her and tried to break free from him, but he was carrying an iron rod and as Sarah tried to pull away he struck her on the head with it, then twice on the arm. Sarah received a two-inch long wound on her forehead.
Stand Street as it is today.
* * *
‘She screamed “Murder!”’
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Soldiers coming out of the barracks heard her screaming and rushed to her assistance, at which the assailant grabbed the bundle of washing and ran off.
One of those soldiers was Corporal William Shepherd. He had been walking across the fields with one of his comrades, Corporal William Woodward, and had taken notice of the man walking in front of Sarah because he thought he recognised him as one of the ‘old hands’ at the barrack. Private Frederick Clayton had also been walking in the fields and had passed the man; he too had taken note of the man because he thought he knew him as well.
John Carty was indeed watching from a window and ran out to his mother. He found the iron bar, which turned out to be the pole from a golf flag, and later handed it to the police.
Sergeant Colgan’s wife, Sarah, had also been watching from a window and had called to her husband, who was down on the ground below, who had then jumped over the wall to try to catch the attacker.
The attacker was eventually identified as Edward Bowring, an army pensioner aged forty-four, and a search for him was started. Police Constable Sloss heard of the incident and recognised the description of the assailant as the man he
had been walking with. When Bowring was spotted in Leicester eight days later, it was Sloss who was sent to arrest him.
The fields between Warwick and Budbroooke Barracks (now demolished) today.
Bowring denied being the man who had made the assault, but when he was brought back to Warwick, Sarah made a positive identification. Even then he still denied being the man who attacked her, saying, ‘You never saw me in your life before.’
Other witnesses also recognised Bowring but all commented on him not wearing the same clothes as on that particular day, to which he said he had been wearing the same clothes for the last six months.
At the Warwick Assizes on Monday 27 July Bowring’s defence counsel, Mr Harrington, produced an alibi. A coachman at Wootton Court, David Palethorpe, swore that he had seen Bowring at Leek Wootton at half past six on the evening of the crime, which meant Bowring would have been four miles away from the barracks and going in a different direction. There were, however, five witnesses who identified Bowring as being in the vicinity at the time of the crime. Was Palethorpe lying or just mistaken?
Mr Harrington also pleaded that an ‘army pensioner, having several medals, was an unlikely person to commit such an assault’. The jury weren’t convinced, however, and found him guilty. On sentencing him to eighteen months’ hard labour, the judge said that wherever he found larceny committed with violence, he thought it his duty to repress it with a strong hand.
Warwick Page 7