Foul Deeds in Richmond and Kingston Read online

  Mr George Cundell, a surgeon, of Kew, was the doctor who was called. He thought that Earley had been dead for two days. Decomposition had already set in. There was severe bruising on the left forearm and hand and a slight puncture between the thumb and finger. There was a large wound to the left hand side of the face. Death had been caused by having his throat cut. A sharp instrument had been used here, but the other injuries may have been caused by a boot. There were also four scalp wounds, inflicted by the same sharp weapon which was used for the throat cutting. Earley had probably been rendered unconscious, then killed in the secluded spot, as well as being stamped upon. The body was then removed to the mortuary.

  Sergeant George Clarke was the first policeman on the site. He went through the deceased’s pockets. In them he found an old pocket knife, five raw potatoes and a clay pipe. In another pocket was an old pipe and two sixpences. On the ground near to the corpse was a hat, which had a cut in it. There was also a handkerchief. Finally, a piece of cord was found on a nearby branch, and this was bloodstained. The cord was of a type used by women in gathering fruit and probably had no connection with the man’s death. Despite a search by two constables, nothing else could be found.

  On Thursday 9 August, at the Queen’s Head, Mortlake, the inquest commenced. There were also police, journalists and spectators present, too. Daniel Lee, who had made the grisly discovery, was the first to give evidence. He recounted his activities on that Monday morning. He left home at 6am and, having collected his tools, got to work and carried on until 8am. He then returned home for breakfast. By this time he had been told about Earley’s disappearance, so he decided to look among the gooseberry bushes, because he had been last reported as being seen in that vicinity.

  The adjourned inquest took place on Friday 17 August. The police stated that they had been following one lead, but it had led nowhere. However, they now had a more promising lead. They believed that the killer might have been a man employed by Mr Morrison, at the Bee Hive pub, who had disappeared on the day of the murder, though he had not been discharged and was expected to turn up to work on the following Monday. Morrison remembered paying the man 7s 6d on the Saturday evening, before leaving. The man may have had a small handled hoe in his bag, but was not carrying the tools he worked with: a long handled hoe and a spade. He was not named in public, but the following description was issued to every police station in the country:

  Age forty-five, height five feet nine inches, square shoulders, proportionate build, dark complexion, dark brown hair (inclined to curl), beard, whiskers and thick moustache (long), dark and peculiar eyes, dressed in dark pilot jacket and vest, dirty fustian trousers (large patch on one knee), black billy cock hat, heavy lace boots. Carried a thin canvas or hempen skeleton bag, containing a coat similar to one worn. Works as an excavator or gardener’s labourer, and is known as ‘Jim’. Information to be sent to Superintendent Williamson, Detective Department, Scotland Yard.

  It was thought that the killer was a married man and the description of his wife was thus:

  His wife, a short, stout, dark woman, wearing a hat with a thick full supposed to reside in Hammersmith.

  This man had been seen by Burgess as he walked home on Saturday night, and whom Burgess vaguely knew by sight greeted him with a ‘good night, mate’. Presumably he attacked Earley shortly afterwards.

  The inquest was then wound up with the predictable verdict brought by the jury that this was murder by an unknown assailant. Despite the Home Office offering a reward, no one was ever charged with the offence and the man whose description is noted above was never apprehended.

  It is obscure why anyone should want to kill Earley, about whom little is known. There is a man of that name in the 1871 census; he is said to have been a labourer, born in Ireland in 1803, so this matches with what we know of him. Furthermore, in 1871, he was living in Glossop, Derbyshire, was married to one Bridget and they then had five children living with them. If this is our man, then presumably his wife had died between 1871–77 and he had moved south to look for work. He was of small height and was described as being quiet and inoffensive. He spent the summers working as a gardener, lodging with John William’s family at Garden Row, Mortlake, and spending the winters in Richmond Workhouse. His only known kin was Mary Welsh, an elderly and almost blind inmate of the forementioned workhouse, who was his sister. He liked his drink and had been before the Richmond magistrates on a couple of times for drunkenness, but apart from that had no history of trouble with the law. He usually ran up a ‘slate’ of between four and five shillings a week at the Beehive, by consuming about eight pence of tobacco and drink each evening, before paying it back on payday.

  He was buried at Mortlake Cemetery on Thursday 9 August, at 6 pm. As with many other murder victims, a large crowd turned out, between 200300 people. Although he was a Catholic, for some reason he was buried in the Protestant part of the cemetery and there was a rumour that there might be a disturbance because of this. Thus police were present, but apart from ‘a slight outbreak from an Irishman present’, there was no trouble. Since the deceased was a pauper, the expense of the funeral fell on the council.

  As well as not knowing who killed Earley, it is unknown why he should have been killed. Perhaps the killer had a secret grudge against him; perhaps he was killed for the small amount of money he had on him after being paid his wages; perhaps the killer had what police would have then termed ‘homicidal tendencies’. The police thought that the financial motive was the right one, with Inspector Edward Sayer writing, ‘The motive being the obtaining of his weekly wages and an additional sum he was entitled to for piece work … just before his last being seen alive [he] was heard to boast of the amount of money due to him.’

  Strenuous efforts were made to apprehend the killer. There were 2,500 handbills describing the killer distributed to police stations throughout the country. There was also an advert in the Police Gazette, an official police newspaper. On 21 August, a reward of £100 was offered for the killer’s arrest. Many suspects were identified. On 9 August, one John Johnson, aged thirty-three and from Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, was arrested in Worcester for vagrancy. He answered the description in some ways, but not all. He was five feet six inches, with dark brown hair and a thick moustache and blue eyes. He also worked as a gardener’s labourer. Crucially, though, he was not the right height.

  On 16 August, there was a report of a man seen in Watford and Luton who looked like the killer. On the following day, in Escrick, in the East Riding, George Appleby, a gardener, was arrested for vagrancy. He was five feet seven inches, with blue eyes and red hair. He had once worked in London and at Kew Gardens. He was discounted when Mr Morrison and his wife went up to see him and did not identify him.

  George Wyse was another man suspected, but again was excluded after he had been seen. The Morrisons accompanied Sayer to many places, including Hampshire, Hertfordshire and London to see men who were seen as potential suspects, and all this cost them considerable time and money, as Sayer reported on 17 October. The problem was that it was all too late. Sayer noted that it had been forty-eight hours between the murder and the discovery of the body. Given that the killer was ‘supposed to be a man without any fixed habitation and a perfect stranger to the neighbourhood’, to leave the locality without attracting any suspicion was straightforward.

  The police conclusion was a depressing one: ‘I beg further to report that up to the present time no trace has been obtained of the person or persons supposed to have been concerned in the murder of Patrick Earley.’

  Nothing else was ever heard of in connection with the case.

  CHAPTER 7

  Murdered and Chopped Up

  1879

  One of the most dangerous classes in the world is the drifting and friendless woman. She is the most harmless, and often the most useful of mortals, but she is the inevitable inciter of crime in others … She is a stray chicken in a world of foxes – Sherlock Holmes

  This chapt
er concerns the least unknown story in the book – both brutal and macabre. Perhaps the key character is Mrs Julia Martha Thomas. Born in St James’, Piccadilly, in about 1824, she was twice married; firstly to one Mr Murray, whom she was widowed by 1851, and then to James Thomas. Thomas was a printer’s reader and the couple lived in Finsbury in 1871, at Melbourne Terrace, then at Hazelville Road, Hornsey Lane. Two years later, on 28 June 1873, her second husband had followed the first one to the grave (he left just under £1,500 to her in his will). They had had no children, or at least none who survived infancy. Such a high rate of mortality among both adults and, especially children, was not uncommon at the time. Charles Menhennick, of Ambler Road, Finsbury, was a friend and described her thus:

  Mrs Thomas was an amiable, good natured sort of lady – she was about 55 or 56 years of age – she was not stout, she was animated in her manner and appeared reasonably strong – she was not an invalid, she was an ordinary person … she played the piano well.

  She also enjoyed a little work in the garden, attending chapel and was comfortably off. She was about five feet four in height. It is not certain what she did after her second husband’s death, but by March 1877 she was living in salubrious Richmond, at Mary Ann Kent’s house, in St Mary’s Villas (now part of Townshend Road). She left in April 1878. She then put an advert in a newspaper, reading, ‘A lady wished to meet with an elderly or widow lady to join in taking a house, at once in Richmond: companionship desired; willing to let rooms not required; could furnish in part; references exchanged. J.T.’ She was unsuccessful, so briefly rented a house in St Mary’s Grove, Richmond.

  Townshend Road, 2009. The Author

  In September 1878, she leased for seven years a semidetached cottage called 2 Vine Cottages, later renamed Mayfield and now 9 Park Road, from Miss Elizabeth Ives, who lived with her widowed mother, Jane, at number 1. The house was described thus, ‘a small but very respectable house, and its appearance would suggest that it is the dwelling of a person in good circumstances’. Ironically the street was only two streets parallel to that where Isabella Bankes died twenty years previously. She did not see much of her neighbours, with Jane Ives remarking, ‘I did not know Mrs Thomas personally, I knew there was a lady of that name living next door’. Mrs Thomas did not have any close friends in Richmond, only a number of acquaintances, and this worked to her disadvantage.

  Vine Cottages, Park Road, 2009. The Author

  At first she had the thirteen-year-old Edith, daughter of Mr Menhennick, live with her. At the end of January 1879 she decided she needed a ‘proper’ servant. A respectable local dressmaker knew of a charwoman. This was one Katherine Webster. She had been born in Enniscorthy, Wexford, Ireland in about 1850, and was a tall, strong woman, built like a navvy, as one observer noted. She told Mrs Thomas that she had been in laundry work in Hammersmith, but preferred a change.

  Regrettably, Mrs Thomas did not ask for character references, then usual for anyone engaging someone as a domestic servant who was unknown to them. First of all, she lied about her former address; she was living in Kingston, not Hammersmith. She also had an illegitimate son, aged five, born in Kingston Workhouse in April 1873, and whose father (one Mr Strong) lived in Kingston. More importantly, Katherine had a long criminal record. She had been in trouble with the law in Ireland and had been gaoled in 1867. Travelling to England, she persisted in her criminal career. On 4 May 1875 she was convicted at the Surrey Quarter Sessions for thirty-six robberies in the Kingston district, and was given a gaol sentence in Wandsworth prison of eighteen months. The gaol sentence failed to act as a deterrent, for on her release, she returned to her old life. Again, she was unsuccessful and on 6 February 1877 she was once again brought before the magistrates in Surrey; and was sentenced to twelve months for felony. She went by a number of aliases, her surname being variously Gibbs, Webb, Shannon and Lawler. Her activities in the next eleven months after her release are unknown, though we know she was working as a charwoman in Richmond at the beginning of 1879. She may have worked as a servant in Teddington.

  Katherine began working and living with Mrs Thomas on 28 January 1879 (her son was then living in Eccles Road, Richmond). We do not know much of life in the cottage or how the two women related to each other, but it is thought that Mrs Thomas soon realised she did not like living with Katherine and wanted to have a more amenable companion in the house. By the end of February, matters were not looking good. On 28 February, Mrs Thomas wrote in her diary (on the day that her servant had her monthly holiday, spent at Kingston with her son’s father), ‘Gave Katherine warning to leave’. This may have been on account of her servant’s drinking habits. Two days later, on Sunday 2 March, Mrs Thomas went to the Presbyterian service held at the Lecture Hall on Hill Street. She went both in the morning and again in the evening.

  Julia Nichols, a servant, also attended the same evening service and remembered seeing Mrs Thomas there, and behaving oddly. Apparently, ‘she came late, and did not occupy her usual seat. She made a statement to me, and was very excited.’ Mrs Thomas left at 7.30 pm. It would have taken her about fifteen minutes to walk home.

  On the following morning, Katherine was hard at work, washing clothes and hanging them out to dry. The copper (the laundry tub) was much in use. There were two callers for Mrs Thomas that day, but neither were able to see her. Firstly, William Dean, a coal agent called, but Katherine only opened the front door sufficiently enough for him to see her face. He asked her if Mrs Thomas was in, and when he was told she was not, he asked when she might return. Katherine abruptly told him she didn’t know when this would be. Mary Roberts, apprentice to her neighbour, called to tell her that a man would be coming to fix the roof at Mrs Thomas’ request, but Katherine told her this would no longer be necessary. She did not open the door, but spoke from an upper window.

  Katherine went to visit some of the Porters, who were old friends of hers, in Hammersmith, on the morning of Tuesday 4 March. In about 1873 she had lodged in a house on Rose Gardens (later renamed Cardoss Street), and had become friendly with the Porter family, but after a few months she had moved to Norland Crescent in Notting Hill, though she occasionally visited them until the end of the year and they had never seen nor heard from her until this day. Katherine told Mrs Porter, who was at home, that she had married a Mr Thomas, who had since died. It also seemed to Mrs Porter that her old friend had done well for herself, for she was wearing expensive clothes and jewellery.

  But because her husband, Henry, a painter employed by Mr Bird of Hammersmith, was out at work, as was Robert, her fifteen-year-old son, Katherine promised to return that evening when all the family would be at home. She did so, travelling by train, when it was quite dark, carrying a heavy black bag, weighing between 4050 pounds. Katherine also explained that her aunt, who had lived at Richmond was dead and her father had told her to sell the house’s contents. She asked if they could help her with her bag as far as Hammersmith Bridge. They did so, and parted at the Oxford and Cambridge pub, via The Angel in King Street. At the former pub, the Porters had refreshment. After a short time, Katherine parted with them, whilst she went towards the bridge, returning shortly, without her bag.

  She then asked if she could have the services of Robert, because she needed more help with her belongings in Richmond. The Porters consented, on condition that he returned home that night. The two went to Park Road. Leaving Robert standing outside, Katherine was some time in finding what she needed. Eventually she returned with a box, tied up with cord. It was now 11 pm and very dark. She said to the lad, ‘Here Bob, I want you to help me with this to the other side of the bridge.’ It was about three quarters of a mile to Richmond Bridge and they slowly walked there, taking time to rest when needed. On arriving there, she told him, ‘Now Bob, you run back – I’ll soon catch you. I’ve to meet a friend there.’ They had already walked half way across the bridge, so she did not have to carry the box by herself very far. The night was dark, it was a lonely place which the boy did not know
, so he stayed where he was. He then heard a loud splash. Robert and a passing man both peered over the bridge into the Thames, the latter remarking, ‘A barge, I suppose.’

  Oxford and Cambridge pub, 2009. The Author

  Katherine was soon once more at Robert’s side, and took him by the arm, saying, ‘Come along, Bobby, I’ve seen my friend, and I’ve left the box.’ By this time, it was too late to take the last train back to Hammersmith, so the two went back to Park Road. Robert did not want to go with her and wanted to take a cab back home, but did not have enough money. She talked to the boy between 1 and 2 am, giving him rum to drink and drinking alcohol herself. She made him a bed on the kitchen floor. Then, later that morning, Robert caught a train back to Hammersmith.

  Later that week, Katherine went back to her friends at Hammersmith. She explained to them that she needed to sell the house’s furniture, telling them that the house belonged to her aunt, but there was to be no public auction there. She needed someone who would agree to buy the furniture there. Porter introduced her to one John Church, a former soldier and a married man, who was publican of The Rising Sun in Hammersmith. It seemed that neither had met before. The three of them went to the house on Park Road several times in the next few days, driving around Richmond in cabs and spending not a little time in public houses, such as The Talbot and The King’s Head. Church and Katherine were thought to have been very friendly towards one another. Mrs Thomas’ neighbours found all this activity rather peculiar, especially as some of it happened late at night in this normally quiet residential street.