A Medical Argument
Or how to derail a prosecution
I’ve had a very busy few weeks with my sister’s wedding, and going to Durham to see all my besties at the SHS conference, and launching a WHOLE EXHIBITION.
The summer holidays start today, and that means a little break from murder stories for me so I can focus on my boys/writing papers. I’ll be back at the end of August, but I hope you have a lovely summer.
If you’re in or near Peterborough and wish to see me in the ACTUAL FLESH, I’ll be giving a talk at the museum on 19th August. You can book a ticket here.
This week’s story is from a village in County Durham, in 1856.
James Baxter was an inspector of excise. He was born in 1786 at Earsdon near Whitley Bay, into a coal mining family. Perhaps he ran away to the ports of Newcastle to avoid the pit, or perhaps he ran away to sea first. He married Margaret Ann at some point after 1820. She was fifteen years his junior, from Chester-le-Street. I cannot trace their marriage.
In 1851, James and Margaret lived in Ryton. In 1853, they moved to Greenside, a handful of houses by an old coal pit. James rented his house from the local surgeon, John Callender. James had a substantial pension - £250 a year. In May 1856, the Baxter’s servant left their service. In early August 1856, Margaret hired Catherine Davison as a servant, on a contract that expired at Michaelmas, the end of September 1857.
With nothing to do, no apparent children, no occupation, just a large sum of money to live on, the Baxters began to drink. Margaret was tall, taller than her husband, and a reasonably hefty woman. Her neighbours believed her to be much older than James, although she was fifteen years younger… Their marriage was miserable, violent and boring when it wasn’t violent.
James sexually harassed the servant, who was evidently counting down the days until she could leave the place. He told her he’d give her £10 to be his ‘housekeeper’. Catherine, acting in a way many women would recognise today, laughed it off and kept her head down.
Catherine saw how miserable the Baxters were together. She heard James called Margaret a whore, and threaten to put her out of the house, and she saw him pull and push her about. She saw Margaret run for the door when James got started. She saw how frightened Margaret was.
John Callender visited the house in late July 1856, and found Margaret very drunk. Two weeks later, he arrived and found James very drunk. In fact, the pair were drunk for the majority of August 1856, drinking copious amounts of gin and rum. They had a pint of gin in the morning, drawn from a huge stone jar in the cellar, and another pint in the evening. They did not rise. Margaret didn’t eat when she was bingeing - although she drank gin mixed into her cups of tea - but James did. The alcohol did nothing to improve James’ temper and on Monday 18th August, he hit Margaret with a bottle, bruising her arm.
On Friday 22nd August, the Baxters were in bed and the long-suffering Catherine Davidson was attending them. Margaret had been delirious, seeing people in the garden who weren’t there. At 8pm, she took in a bottle of rum - a bottle which subsequently disappeared - and then went to her bed, out of earshot.
Four hours later, Margaret called Catherine to her room, and rang the servant’s bell. Catherine put Margaret back in bed, as she’d ‘fallen’. Two hours after that, James called her into the room and said
“I doubt your mistress is dead, her hands are cold”
Catherine felt Margaret’s foot, found it to be stone cold, and ran to fetch a neighbour, Mrs Fawcett, who regularly attended Margaret when she needed medical help. James called after her to fetch Dr Callender.
Mrs Fawcett arrived first, and found Margaret was still warm on her back, suggesting she hadn’t been dead that long. John Callender arrived around 8pm and examined the body.
The inquest opened on Monday 25th August at the Black Horse pub. The coroner, John Milnes Favell, was neither lawyer nor doctor. He was a former East India Company officer. James was still drunk and doesn’t appear to have been present. John Callender, landlord and perhaps friend of James Baxter, gave his evidence. He thought Margaret had died of drinking too much, self-poisoning. He found some bruises, including a hand-print on her breast, but thought this was just from her falling about. He also found a lot of bruising on on shoulder, that was deep enough to ulcerate, and bruising around her neck. However, he maintained that she’d died of excessive drink.
The local police officer had heard the rumours of violence at the Baxters, and indicated to the coroner that he did not think it was drink. A police surgeon was called in to perform a post mortem, and the inquest was paused overnight to allow this to take place.
The police surgeon’s name was Benjamin Barkas and he came from Gateshead. He made a very thorough examination of Margaret’s body and his findings shocked the community. She was absolutely covered in bruises, all over her legs, bum, arms, shoulders and chest. There was also evidence that she’d banged her head very hard, and when he opened her skull, he found significant internal bruising, and clots. Her other organs showed sign of alcohol-related disease: an empty stomach, extremely degenerated liver and fatty kidneys. However, her lungs were engorged with blood, and her neck showed signs not just of strangulation, but that something had been tied around it. A ligature.
Benjamin Barkas concluded that Margaret had recieved a blow from a bottle to the head, and that she had then been strangled by a bedsheet.
Murder.
Catherine told the inquest that James had asked her again to be his housekeeper after the death of his wife. She sidestepped the conversation.
The jury were split. All but one juror thought the charge should be murder, with the outlier thinking it should be manslaughter. James Baxter was sent to the lockup in Gateshead, and a week later, James appeared in the magistrate’s court. Mrs Fawcett, the neighbour, told the court that Margaret had told her that she’d been beaten black and blue by James, and he’d hit her in the arm with a bottle, causing the strangely ulcerated wound. One of the previous servants of the Baxters was due to give evidence at this hearing, but did not turn up, so the hearing was adjourned for a week.
On 8th September, a special magistrates session was held at the police station in Gateshead. James was peevishly hungover at the hearing, so they gave him some more alcohol to cheer him up. The Victorian magistrates were... a rum bunch. This hearing rapidly became an argument about cause of death, degenerating into a bizarre medical debate, where it transpired that Margaret’s post-mortem examination had been attended by half the doctors in Durham.
John Callender repeated his evidence that he was sure Margaret, with her lungs full of blood, bruised neck and head injury, had died from delirium tremens. He told the court she wore a wig, as he described the extensive bruising he found when he examined her. He did, however, admit that he’d never examined a strangled corpse before.
John Callender told the court how he’d never seen the two argue, as if he was likely to witness such a thing.
Edward Callender, John Callender’s son, then popped up to say he HAD seen a strangled corpse, but it was two hanged men at Morpeth and this was not quite the same as a manual strangulation.
Benjamin Barkas was called again, but the fact three days elapsed between death and post-mortem was emphasised. He had also never seen a strangled adult, although he had seen a strangled child.
Edward Callender, who was unqualified at that point, was once again called, and said he didn’t think it looked like a ligature strangulation. And he had attended 50 to 60 postmortems at the RVI, but never one of strangulation.
Oh Edward Callender, what was the point of you?
And then, THEN, Michael Callender, son of John and brother of Edward, gave evidence. HE was a member of the Royal College of Surgeons and HE thought it wasn’t a strangulation. And then yet another doctor, who had also attended the post-mortem (which seems to have been a party) claimed that he DID think she’d been strangled.
At this point, the magistrates stopped the evidence, declined to hear any summing up, and discharged James Baxter.
They did not believe they had enough evidence to justify sending him to the assize.
After the case collapsed, a letter from the Baxter’s previous servant came to light. She had left their service on 1st May, after four and a half years. She said that Margaret never drank, although her husband constantly urged her to. The writer went on to state that James was regularly verbally and physically abusive to Margaret, threatening to kill her on many occasions.
But nobody cared, you see?
Margaret Ann Baxter was an old, sick woman, a woman who wore a wig and drank extraordinarily hard, and had the temerity to be tall and fat. She was not a sympathetic figure, at least not among the medico-legal folk of Gateshead. The focus was kept firmly on the strangulation, not the bruises; kept on the manner of death, not the circumstances.
Conversely, James Baxter was a rather small man who had previously held a responsible and respectable position: morose and quiet, terrified and shaking in court regardless of all the evidence that he was an abusive swine out of the public eye.
John Callender was a powerful man in Greenside. He owned property, he was a friend of Baxter and willing to testify to his character. He was not willing to see his own reputation ruined by supporting a murderer. He dragged in two of his sons to try and disprove the word of Benjamin Barkas, forcing the enquiry away from the behaviour of James and down a winding path of medical arguments. John Callender saved James from an assize trial, where the judge may not have known him and the jury may not have cared about his former status.
We don’t know how Margaret died. Maybe she had a stroke, like the doctors argued in the courtroom. Or maybe James smashed a bottle over her head, and when she was unconcious, wound a sheet around her throat until she stopped breathing, and then unwound it and laid it out nice and flat and looked surprised when she was dead… We don’t know.
James did not enjoy his freedom for long, although he continued to live in the same cottage at Greenside. He died in mid-July 1857, and is buried alone in Ryton. I do not know where Margaret was buried.
Margaret Ann Baxter
(c.1800-1856)