John and Marion Seddon, who had been married in about 1893, ran a small confectioner’s shop in Mortlake High Street from June 1905, having recently moved there from Staines, where they had run a similar business. It did not prosper. In fact, takings were only a few shillings a day. This meant that they were going to have trouble paying their annual rent of £36, which was due in October. John’s health was poor, and he was seventy-eight years old (his wife was fifty-five). He rarely went out in the day time, but took short walks in the evenings. Dr Charles Batchelor, of Staines, had been attending them professionally since 1898. Seddon had been suffering from diabetes and his wife once had neuralgia. In 1901, he prescribed liniment and some mixture and in 1904 there was a repeat prescription, which included an ounce of belladonna. She had six bottles of this. Relations between the two were problematic, with Seddon being increasingly quarrelsome – though usually he was easy going – and even having had a knife taken out of his hand on two occasions.
In September, Marion Harms, of Walthamstow, who was Mrs Seddon’s niece, came to stay with them. She realised her relatives were in a difficult situation and were worrying about money. On 11 September, Mrs Seddon asked her to write to Elizabeth Barrett, whose late husband was Mrs Seddon’s brother, asking for help with the furniture. The Seddons were planning to leave before quarter day because of their inability to pay the rent. On that night, Marion slept in the same bedroom as Mrs Barrett, which was on the first floor. The Seddons slept in the back room on the same floor.
Mortlake High Road, 2009. The Author
On the following morning, at 8am, Marion recalled that Mrs Seddon entered and said something about 30s. Apparently, ‘she was in her night dress and looked rather unsteady – as she went out of the room she staggered when she got to the door’. Marion then went downstairs and made some tea, taking it up to Mrs Seddon. However, her aunt waved her away. She then decided to call Dr Robert Mackintosh. It was now about 8.20am and in another twenty-five minutes, he arrived. He recalled, ‘I found them in bed together – he was in a comatose state, suffering from collapse, and I diagnosed he was suffering from belladonna [extracted from the deadly nightshade plant] poisoning.’ His wife was in a similar condition.
Mackintosh attended them for two hours, administering antidotes and using a stomach pump. After he had used every method he could think of, and after two hours, Mrs Seddon seemed to be improving, but the same could not be said of her husband, who was visibly weaker. He had the pair sent to hospital and called the police. He also looked about the room and recalled, ‘I saw this bottle on the table on the left hand side of the bed, empty, it was quite dry inside – I also saw a tumbler, there, which was dry – they both smell of belladonna liniment – I estimated that the poison had been taken about two hours before I went there – I judged her husband had taken the larger dose’.
The two poison victims were then sent to the Royal Hospital at Richmond. Dr William Davidson was house surgeon on their arrival, so he dealt with them. They arrived that afternoon and Davidson stated:
The deceased was in a deeply comatose state, his face pale, and his breathing was very shallow – he was unconscious and remained so for some hours, when he became delirious and started vomiting – those are symptoms of belladonna poisoning – he remained in that state until 6.30 pm the next day, when he died.
A postmortem held on the following day confirmed the doctor’s diagnosis. By 14 September, Marion was recovering and the doctor asked her what had happened. She said that at 6.30 am that morning, she had taken the bottle of liniment and had divided it into two unequal parts. They had then both drunk it and had taken an ounce of belladonna between them.
There was an inquest on 21 September, when Marion had recovered sufficiently to be present. She was examined, but not cross-examined and made the following statement:
I have only to say that my husband has been in a miserable depressed condition for a long time; for the last two years our circumstances have been getting desperate, and we decided that as there was no means of earning a living, we had better leave the world together. On this morning in particular I had been laying wake and worrying; then I jumped out of bed and I said, ‘I can stand this wear and tear no longer; I’ll end it.’ I took the bottle and the glass and poured out the biggest part of the poison. I said, ‘I am going to take this; it will end it once and for ever.’ He just said, ‘You won’t.’ I said, ‘I will,’ and I drank it off. Then I said, ‘I have left enough for you; will you have it?’ I said, ‘It means this or the workhouse.’ He said, ‘Yes give it to me.’ I poured it out and he snatched it out of my hand. I put the bottle back and got into bed.
She then went upstairs and told Mrs Barrett what they had just done, and that there was 30s in the house which she should use to get them buried cheaply and quietly. She also told her to take Miss Harms home safely, then, feeling a pain in her chest, left the bedroom and returned to her husband, and recalled:
My husband was lying just where I had left him, on the edge of the bedstead. He opened his eyes and looked, so I just said, ‘I have just been and wakened Lizzie and told her what we have done.’ He said, ‘Come and get into bed then.’ They were the last words he spoke. I remember nothing more … I took the biggest portion, as I thought it would take more to kill me.
Another piece of evidence which was brought forward was a letter that her late husband had written to her, and had put in his pocket. It read:
My last request and Desire is that you should dispose of all our effects and live on the results as long as it lasts and then follow me as your case is now hopeless. Above all pray Don’t be ruled by your Demon Mother. Instead of which you by order of your mother are giving all your own goods away and are saving your neither so that she may bring her Beauty out and plank on you and claim all as hers and make you her Slave. This is all arranged. What a Blind Fool you must be not to see through it and won’t listen to anyone else. To my Wife.
The ‘Demon Mother’ was Sarah Barrett, born in Essex in 1822 and whom the Seddons had lived with when in Clarence Street, Staines. Clearly Seddon believed she had a malign influence over his wife.
The verdict of the jury was that Seddon had died from exhaustion following the effects of belladonna and aconite, taking his own life whilst in a state of temporary insanity due to money troubles. DS Golden Barrell then arrested her for the murder of her husband by aiding him in taking poison. She was taken to the police station to have the charge read to her, to which she did not reply. Seven days later she appeared before the Mortlake magistrates’ court and was committed for trial, spending the next few weeks in Holloway.
The case came before the Old Bailey on 16 October and the charge was one of murder (to assist another with suicide was treated as a capital offence). After all the evidence and witnesses had been brought before the jury, the inevitable verdict was given – guilty. However, the foreman of the jury said, ‘We wish her to be strongly recommended to mercy; we are unanimous on that point.’ And indeed, that was what happened. Marion Seddon was not hanged. Mrs Seddon had told the court, ‘I did not kill my husband.’
So ended a most dismal and tragic case, where two people decided that the only way out of their money problems was to commit suicide. However, a reprieve was granted and the death sentence was commuted to one of imprisonment.
CHAPTER 12
An Accountant’s Deadly Reckoning
1927
I can find no solution in all my problems here, so I am going to look for one on the other side.
Alexander Bell Filson had come a long way since his humble beginnings in Portaferry, County Down, in 1877. By 1906 he began to work for Maurice Chater, a City accountant, as a clerk, in his offices in Cheapside, at Chater and Egerton. On 12 January 1907, he married Bessie Eliza Head (born in Mortlake in 1883) and in the following years, three children were born: John Warnock (10 June 1908), Maragret Warnock (14 December 1912) and Mary Warnock (7 November 1917). They were living in Coulter Road, Hammersm
ith in 1911. The two girls attended Putney High School and in 1927 John was a bank clerk. In 1912, Filson became an associate of the Institute of Chartered Accountants. During the war, Filson was rewarded for his financial acumen by Chater and was made a partner, earning about £1,200 per annum – about ten times that of the average working man (equal to c.£68,500 today). Chater and Egerton was dissolved in 1920, to be replaced by Chater and Filson. Chater was on visiting terms with the Filsons and knew his wife. He thought that Filson was devoted to his wife and children. In 1924, the Filsons moved to River View Gardens, Barnes, overlooking the Thames.
However, matters began to go wrong in the following years. On 11 October 1925, his wife died from cancer, which had been a long drawn out process. Filson told Mrs Woollard before his wife’s death, ‘You know your sister’s going, and if it were not for the children, I would go with her.’ Yet he later promised not to kill himself. Even so, this had a great effect on him and his career. In the following year, Filson had taken his holiday in September. It was then that Chater realised something was wrong. There were ‘irregularities’ which was presumably another way of saying that Filson had been embezzling money, to the tune of £371. The partnership was dissolved and on 30 September, Filson was out of a job. His only comment to his former partner was that he must have been mad. The motive was probably that Filson was spending heavily and needed money desperately. A note read at the inquest said that Filson had borrowed £484 from Chater at 6% interest. Filson was briefly in business on his own, with offices in Philpott Lane, but it did not last long.
Cheapside, 1900s. Author’s collection
Life seemed to go on. Miss Ruth Parrish, from Stockton-on-Tees, who had been the live-in housekeeper since November 1926, recalled that her employer was speaking ‘in a queer manner’ on Monday 9 January 1927. He was worrying about the untidiness of his daughters who threw things about the house. But later that day, he seemed unconcerned about it and laughed it off.
Riverview Gardens, 2009. The Author
On Thursday 13 January, Filson’s only brother, James, a deputy inspector general in the Indian Police, was on leave, staying at the Regent Palace Hotel, and rang up his brother. He wanted to see him, and Filson arranged that his brother and sister in law would come over for Sunday lunch. The two had not met since November 1926.
Events were moving rapidly by the following day. Filson returned home at 6 pm and seemed quite normal. At dinner he was even jolly. Margaret, who had been ill for a few days, ate in her dressing gown, before going to bed at 8.45 pm. Oddly enough, for the past few days (since 11 January), Filson had been sleeping in the same room as Margaret; usually he and his son shared a bedroom and the two girls slept in the other. At 9 pm that night, Miss Parrish went to her room, to write a letter. Just before she did so, Filson told her, for the first time, about the impending visit of his brother and his wife. She turned in at 10.10 pm.
However, she could not sleep because the light in the hall was kept on and it shone into her room through a glass panel in the top of the door. Until midnight she heard subdued voices coming from the drawing room, but she could not hear who was talking. Then silence reigned. The light in the hall was finally expunged at 2.10am. Ten minutes later she heard a strange noise, as if a piece of metal had been put through a pane of glass. Then the sound was repeated. Miss Parrish paid no attention to these noises, because, living by the river as they did, she was used to hearing odd sounds at night. The last sound of the night was as if a spanner was being dropped on the asphalt outside. After that she fell asleep, not waking until the alarm clock went off at a quarter to seven.
She then rose, put the kettle on and made tea, which she took up to the two bedrooms, but on knocking at both, received no answer, though this was not unusual, as she explained, ‘the children had been keeping late hours at parties during the holidays and were in the custom of getting up late’. At 9.30am, a friend of John’s visited him. On that day John was due to go to Lincoln to join the RAF, and the friend was calling to say goodbye. Mr Filson had earlier said that he would be sad to see him go, but did not want to stand in his son’s way, ‘I shall miss Jack very much, but the boy seems keen on it.’ He was not depressed about it and had said that the discipline would do him good. She told John’s friend that John was not out of bed yet. But Miss Parrish had seen a number of objects on the table in the dining room and was worried by them. They included two envelopes, but more alarming, in an open drawer nearby was a document headed ‘Cemetery. East Sheen’. Most worrying of all was a box of revolver cartridges on the table. Fighting back panic, she immediately went upstairs and knocked on John’s room. There was no reply, so she went inside and saw the lad lying on his back near the door. Although the blind was down, she could see he was dead. Turning on the light, she saw Mary’s corpse, too. She later recalled:
There was blood also on her, and I could see that she was dead. Both the bodies were covered with the bed clothes. It was a great shock to me. I stood for a moment just where I was, and then went out and shut the door. There was a girl servant there and I did not want her to see what had happened.
Thinking that she would see similar sights in the room next door, she went to fetch the police. On her return, she told the maid, ‘They are all dead. Please go home.’ When Detective Inspector Cooper arrived, she accompanied him to the room. They found Filson lying across the bed, and Mary was nearby. All corpses were dressed in nightwear, and Filson was wearing a dressing gown. The glass on a photograph on the wall had been smashed, too. Miss Parrish was particularly shocked because she had never seen him in a morbid state about his wife’s death and thought he was devoting his life to his children. Furthermore, she never knew that her late employer had a revolver in his possession, but then she had only worked in the house for two months. Filson evidently had kept it secret.
Dr James Scott, of Upper Richmond Road, Putney, conducted the post-mortem. All four had died from a single revolver wound to the head. Additionally, Mary had two wounds on her right cheek where a bullet had entered and departed. It had been the shock following the shooting that had killed the four people. The gun used was a small calibre .25 Browning automatic pistol. All the shootings had occurred within a very short space of time. The other important pieces of evidence were in the letters. Both were from Filson. The first was addressed to his brother and it read as follows:
My Dear Jim – My head won’t stand any more of the hell I have been living in for the past two years. It breaks my heart to see Bessie’s home going to rack and ruin. The girls are almost neglected when I am not here. I do not know what to do for them. If Bessie could only have stayed with me it would have all been so different. This will release Jack and Peggy’s share of the trust. Goodbye, old man. Better luck to you – Alec.
The second note was to his former partner:
Dear Chater – I can find no solution in all my problems here, so I am going to look for one on the other side. Perhaps this will make things easier for you in certain quarters, some of which you are not aware of. Yours, A. Filson.
P.S. Try and be a little more human in future. You have a lot to learn in the ways of humanity still. The narrow way is not for all in this world.
Chater told the police, ‘He never threatened to take his life in my hearing … He was devotedly attached to his wife and children.’ He recalled asking Filson, ‘I suppose you have constantly lived beyond your means’, to which his former partner had replied, ‘I don’t think so, although I have been rather near the mark up to the time of the wife’s illness, which, of course, entailed a great number of extra expenses.’
The inquest was held at Mortlake on Wednesday 19 January. James Filson identified his brother’s body. He also stated that having gone through his papers, he realised that Filson’s financial affairs were at a low ebb. After the witnesses gave evidence, the coroner warned the jury that the evidence, apart from that contained in the letters, did not lead to the inevitable conclusion that Filson had killed his thre
e children and then himself. However, the jury quickly concluded that Filson, whilst his mind was unbalanced, had shot his three children dead in the early hours of Saturday 15 January, then ended his own life.
Filson was a reserved, moody man. The police concluded, ‘From a search of his papers, and enquiries which we made, it is fairly evident that the tragedy was wholly due to his financial troubles. ’Yet it is worth noting that on death he had £1,010 5s 11d, which went to his brother.
Why he killed himself is not entirely clear, but his money worries and the death of his wife were preying on his mind and leading him to believe that he was unable to give his children the life they should have. Perhaps the imminent meeting with his more successful brother and the equally imminent departure of his son were the final straws to spur him into action. In order to successfully end it all for his family, he knew he would have to act now. He did so, and with appalling results.
CHAPTER 13
Murder in the Park (1)
1927
You are the last person she was supposed to meet and its funny she hasn’t been home.
Constance Gertrude Oliver was in love. She had confided in Mildred Lee, a friend, that, ‘I like him very much, I have been out with him several times.’ Mildred later said, ‘She thought this was Mr Right who had come along. She told me Bernard had promised to marry her and that they were to be engaged on her birthday next February and would get married at Christmas.’ This was all very sudden. Constance and Bernard had met in September 1927, probably at the coffee stall in Falcon Grove, Battersea. Bernard worked there, and Constance lived with her family in the same street. They had seen quite a lot of each other in the two weeks that they had known each other, going to the cinema or for walks. It had been a very innocent romance on her part; although he had wanted ‘to go through her’ (ie have sex), she was ‘not that sort of girl’.
Foul Deeds in Richmond and Kingston Page 9