Cambridgeshire Murders (14 page)

These unedifying exhibitions have, happily, been abolished, and now the executions are carried out in such strict privacy that even the representatives of the Press, those indispensable watch-dogs of the public are not always allowed to be present.

A G
RIM
R
ECORD

The records of the last century show some 26 persons have suffered the death penalty in Cambridgeshire during that period. Of these, however only four were executed during the latter half of the century, and only two since public executions were abolished. In the early days of the 19th Century people were hanged for much less serious offences than that of murder. Thus the century's grim record commenced with the hanging of William Grimshaw in March 1801 for housebreaking and in April of the following year William Wright and Robin Bullock were put to death for arson. Then came an interval of 10 years, but in 1812 there were two executions, the first being that of William Nightingale, alias Bird, on March 28th, his offence being forgery, and the second, on August 8th, that of Daniel Dawson, for poisoning a horse at Newmarket.

Four years later came the Littleport riots for taking part in which John Dennis, Isaac Harley, Thomas Smith, William Beamise and George Crow were hanged together at Ely on Friday June 28th. The offence charged against them was that of ‘felony in the sad and dreadful outrages that had taken place at Littleport, Ely, and its neighbourhood during the last week in May'. John Dennis, it seems, was a publican at Littleport, and the ringleader of the gang. He was convicted on three separate indictments of having extorted money from Ely gentlemen. Harley, Smith and Crow were labourers and Beamise was a shoemaker. All appear to have gone in for robbery, and it was stated on one occasion Smith robbed a man named Josiah Dewey, of Littleport, of 100 guineas. All five were executed near the toll-gate on the Cambridge road, and it is recorded that they were preceded to the fatal spot ‘by the most respectable inhabitants of Ely, carrying white wands on horseback'. An account of the execution says that ‘No words can describe the awful effect of the execution, the prisoners, with the exception of Beamise, being young man in the full vigour of life. As they moved along, St Mary's bell tolled, and the unfortunate man prayed fervently aloud and uttered the most pious ejaculations.' After many expressions of penitence and exhortations to the crowd to profit by their examples, ‘the caps being drawn over their faces, they were launched into eternity'.

A D
ESPERATE
C
HARACTER

The next offender to suffer death was a well known character named John Scare, who was executed in 1817 for burglary at Whittlesford. He was only 21 years of age but he appears to have been a very desperate character and to have taken to villainy at an early age, his record, from the time of his apprenticeship to Mr. Pont, a gingerbread maker of Cambridge, until he met his end, being one of petty villainy and incorrigible scoundrelism. At one time he worked at the oil mills at Whittlesford, and at that place he robbed the house of an aged fellow-workman named Edward Stone.

Scare's heartless character was exemplified by his treatment of his wife ‘with whom he lived but a few days.' He took to systematic robbery and carried a loaded pistol about with him, and such was the terror which his reckless and ferocious spirit had inspired that none dared apprehend him. But his recklessness proved his undoing, for on Sunday, as he sat boldly drinking ale at a public house at Fowlmere. The parish constable, one Rickard by name, crept up behind him and seized him, while another man snatched away his pistol.

In his confession he gave an interesting account of the burglary at Whittlesford. He stated that he and two others went to the house and broke open the window, and as his companions were smaller men, he proposed that they should go in first. They however declined on the grounds that they were ‘afraid of the ghost which haunted the house.' Scare thereupon thrust his head and shoulders in at the window, exclaiming ‘Now Mr Devil, either you or I'. The burglars seemed to have gone pretty openly to work, for it is stated that they put a lighted candle through the window in the belief that if there was a ghost inside it would blow the candle out. Finding that the candle still burned, they entered the house, rifled it, and went off with their booty into a field, where they put down their hats and ‘threw the guineas into them as long as they lasted.' One of the thieves, named Frost, appears to have been stricken with remorse or fear, and sent his share of the spoil back to the owner, on hearing of which Scare came back from London, whither he had fled, and broke into the house again to get it. Both Frost and the third man named Teversham, were reprieved, but Scare's desperate behaviour secured him for the full rigour of the law.

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NTERESTING
R
ELICS

An interesting relic of the case, a piece of panelling from the old gaol, on which was carved the words, ‘C Teversham crost this bridge the last time March 14th, 1819, after 2 years' was in the possession of Mr John Whitaker, curio dealer, of Sidney Street, as was also a record of the crime of murdering his wife, for which Thomas Weems was hanged at Cambridge on August 6th 1819. This appears to be the first murder of the century so far as Cambridgeshire was concerned. A somewhat gruesome relic of this murder is, or was, preserved in Trinity College Library in the shape of a square piece of Weems' skin, dressed and carefully labelled and preserved. Alongside it was kept a similar piece of skin taken from the body of Corder, the notorious Red Barn murderer, whose crime near Bury St. Edmunds gave rise to so much excitement at the time, and on which a play was written which still has a vogue in travelling theatres. This fearsome relic is tanned and of considerable thickness. It is said that at Bury St Edmunds there is a book containing an account of Corder's life, covered with leather made from his skin.

D
EATH FOR
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IGHWAY
R
OBBERY

The gallow's next victim was one John Lane who on April 3rd 1824, was hanged for rape. Another five years elapsed before William Osborn was hanged for highway robbery. Osborn was a native of Boxworth, and the robbery was committed at Elsworth. The victim of the robbery was David Darwood, of Warboys, a higgler whom Osborn saw with some money at a public house in Knapwell. Osborn went out first, waylaid him on the road to Conington, called on him to deliver, and murderously assaulted him with a ‘dibbing iron', afterwards robbing him of twelve sovereigns and a £5 note on the Baldock Bank. But Darwood recovered to identify his assailant, and the ‘dibbing iron' covered with blood and hair, helped to seal Osborn's fate, which he met in April 1829.

The next execution took place on April 3rd, 1830, when three labourers, named Wm. Reader, Wm. Turner and David Howard, were hanged for having ‘wilfully and maliciously destroyed several stacks of corn and other property belonging to Mr. Chalk, at Linton, and Mr. Sharp, of Badlingham'. The Cambridge Free Library contains an interesting account of this and other crimes.

The attempted murder of a gamekeeper three years later brought Wm. Westnot and Chas Carter to the scaffold on March 30th, 1833, and in December of the same year John Stallan was hanged for arson. For 17 years after this the gallows was not required, and then, on April 13th, 1850 Elias Lucas and Mary Reeder were executed for poisoning the former's wife at Castle Camps. The case excited tremendous interest in the county and a great crowd witnessed the execution at Cambridge. On August l0th, 1861, the gallows was again requisitioned for the punishment of Augustus Hilton for cutting his wife's throat with a razor at Parson Drove. Then, three years later, came the last public execution in Cambridgeshire, that of John Green, on March 11th, 1864. The next execution was that of Robert Browning, on December l4th, 1876, when, although the execution was carried out in private, a great number of people came into the town in the hope of seeing something of it.

The last execution, that of Walter Horsford, took place at Cambridge County Gaol on Tuesday 28 June 1898 at 8 a.m.

H
UNTINGDONSHIRE
C
ASES

The records of other Huntingdonshire cases show that at the Hunts. Assizes in July, 1827, Joshua Slade was sentenced to be hanged two days later, but was respited until September 1st, when he was hanged on Huntingdon Common, near where the gallows now stands. After the barbarous fashion of the time, the body was dissected, and the public were allowed to view the remains. Another case was that of Jas. Bishop, who was executed in 1829 for sheep stealing, the execution taking place in front of the newly erected gaol at Huntingdon. On 6 November 1878 Henry Gilbert was tried at Cambridge, before Mr Justice Hawkins, for the murder of a child at Hall Weston, and found guilty, but recommended to mercy. He was, however, executed at Huntingdon on Monday 25 November 1878 Marwood being the executioner. The last charge of murder in Hunts. prior to the case of Horsford was in November, 1883, when David Wombwell was tried at Cambridge Assizes for the murder of W.J. Snelling at the Falcon Brewery, Huntingdon, but was acquitted.

H
otels bestowed with the name Temperance in their title were traditionally advertising themselves as teetotal establishments; the revelation that alcohol played a part in the events which occurred on Saturday 1 February 1913 added irony to the scandal.

The Temperance Hotel was owned by Elizabeth Warnes who was 46. She had been born Elizabeth Barton and had grown up in the Romsey Town area of Cambridge. With her husband, William, she had spent several years running a sweet shop before moving to St Ives to become tenants of the Cow and Hare Hotel. It was not long before their marriage deteriorated and, after a series of rows, they decided to separate. Her husband moved away but Warnes remained in St Ives and took over the Temperance Hotel in 1909.

When her husband left, a German, Gustave Kunne, became her regular companion. At the time of his death he was aged 44. He and a fellow German, Frederick Finke, had both come from a village called Hohendodeleben, near Magdeburg, to work at Wootten and Sons' chicory factory in Fenstanton. They were employed as driers and worked at the factory's kiln. Kunne was married with four children – three girls and a boy – and when work was not busy he made visits home. In the summer of 1912 his wife had died and his children had gone to live with her sister. The last of his visits to his family had seen him arrive back in England on 12 October 1912. He had lodgings in Fenstanton but was a frequent visitor to the Temperance Hotel, often visiting both at weekends and during the week.

Lucretia Cooper was a servant of Warnes, and was known by her middle name of May. Saturday nights were her regular evenings off and she had been to the local picture palace accompanied by a St Ives man, William Walker. Walker had walked her back to the Temperance Hotel where they arrived shortly before 10 p.m. to find the hotel locked and the lights out.

At first they were not concerned; she had seen Warnes earlier in the evening in the company of Kunne and her brother-in-law, Thomas Allen. As far as Cooper had been aware the mood between the three had been good.

So she and Walker waited around for some time until eventually they decided to call upon a friend of her employer in the hope of finding her there. Having been unsuccessful it was just after half-past eleven when they returned. Only then, in an attempt to gain entry, did Cooper discover that the back door of the hotel was unlocked.

She said goodnight to her companion and made her way inside, heading straight for the ground floor tearoom, which was used by Warnes as a living room. Pushing the door she found that something was wedged against it from the inside preventing it from fully opening. She struck a match to help her see what the blockage was. To her horror she saw Kunne's apparently dead body heaped on top of the equally lifeless body of Warnes.

Cooper ran from the hotel, back into the street, where she called for help from Walker who had not gone far. He summoned assistance from the St Ives police; Inspector Gale arrived on the scene within minutes. Walker was also sent to bring Dr Grove to the hotel.

With proper lighting Gale made his initial inspection of the scene. His immediate observation was that both Warnes and Kunne had been dead for some time. He also noted that Warnes was still wearing her jacket and had a single stab wound to her chest, in the region of her heart.

Grove arrived at approximately half-past twelve. His conclusion, from the temperatures of the bodies, was that they had both been dead for almost three hours. He agreed with Gale that the woman had clearly been stabbed and, after a brief search, they found a large clasp knife near Kunne's right hand. Grove quickly came to the conclusion that Kunne had stabbed Warnes before killing himself. As Grove had seen no obvious injury to the dead man he set about searching for a container that may have held some fast acting poison. It was only when he searched Kunne's body that he finally saw a single stab wound to the heart.

An inquest was held in the afternoon of Monday 3 February 1912 in the Magistrate's Room in St Ives. The deputy coroner, A.H. Barratt, led the proceedings with a jury consisting of G.J. Meadows (foreman), J.S. Briggs, H. Dawson, R.W. Glenn, G.H. How, A. Hurl, J. Jaffarey, G. James, F.W. Kirby, A. Nelson, A.W. Parfitt, H. Parker and W.J. Smith. Also present was Superintendent Griffin on behalf of the police.

Barratt opened the inquest by outlining the events surrounding the discovery of the bodies and the apparent cause of each death. He explained that the inquests for both deaths would be held as one and the jury would be asked to consider three possibilities; firstly whether Kunne had murdered Warnes then killed himself, secondly whether Warnes had killed Kunne before killing herself or lastly whether they had both died in a suicide pact.

The jury were taken to inspect the bodies before being transported to the Temperance Hotel to view the room in which the bodies had been found. Once they had seen the scene they returned to the Magistrate's Room.