Black Death

A Respectable Sort of Horror

If you came to my Brighton talk on Tuesday, THANK YOU! I don’t get to do public talks very often, and it was delightful to see you there. A recording is going on youtube, and I will share the link when it’s live.

If you managed to come, you’ll have heard about this case. The tale of a coroner’s son committing multiple murder is so deeply in my interests that I couldn’t not retell the story here, with all the details I couldn’t fit in the talk. Let’s go back to Brighton…

David Black was born in Dysart in December 1817. His father, Peter, was a naval architect who worked in the Tsarist court of Imperial Russia, and died in Riga in 1831.

David trained in law, and made his way to Brighton, along with the rest of his family. Brighton was a genteel resort in the 1840s: it had partly lost its royal connection with the death of George IV but had not quite become a holiday destination for all. David set up a business on Ship Street. In 1849, he married Clara Maria Patten. Clara was seven years younger than David, and very well connected - her father was Prince Albert’s personal portraitist.

David and Clara settled on Ship Street for the rest of their lives. Eight children were born: Arthur, in 1851, Clementina Maria in 1854, Ernest in 1855, Emma Louisa in 1857, Robert in 1860, Constance Clara in 1861, Grace Amy in 1864 and Catherine Lucy in 1866. It’s likely that Arthur’s birth was difficult - it went unregistered, there was a long pause before their next baby. It seems that Arthur was born with shoulder dystocia, and he had a perpetual weakness in his right arm.

In 1854, Brighton was recognised as a borough, and awarded the right to hold its own quarter sessions. With that came the right to appoint its own coroner. David was sworn in on 1st January 1855, and served as the borough coroner for the rest of his. He had a lot to do - Brighton borough had a population of anything up to 100,000 in the summer season, and David oversaw up to 150 inquests per year. This included famous cases like the Chocolate Cream Poisoner and the Clayton Tunnel disaster (next time on the Friday Murder newsletter…)

At home, the family grew. The Blacks put a lot of effort into educating their children. The boys were sent to Brighton College. Arthur, the eldest, went on to University College London. He initially studied law, but discovered a talent for mathematics and mechanics, and was taught by William Clifford.

In August 1873, David suffered a stroke which paralysed him for the rest of his life. He was no longer able to work as a solicitor or coroner, and was nursed by his family. In August 1875, Clara died. One source claims she died after a heart attack, while lifting David.

Arthur graduated a year after his mother’s death. He returned home to Ship Street, and taught mathematics to private students, while working on his own theories. In 1881, one of his student’s won a Whitworth mechanical engineering scholarship. He went into business with Robert Garnett, brother to Edward, and therefore (eventually) brother-in-law of Arthur’s sister.

Jessie Kelly is an enigma. According to the sources, she was born in Pimlico in 1868. Her father, Abraham, was a bootmaker, a rather humble occupation, ad dead in any case. Jessie does not appear on any census records. In 1886, Jessie lived in Kew. The witnesses of the marriage were Emanuel Harris, a policeman in the Kew Gardens special force, and William Granger, a storekeeper at Kew Gardens. The men lived close together, on Cumberland Place and Cambridge Road. It seems likely that Jessie either worked or lived at Kew Gardens.

Jessie and Arthur Black married by license at St Anne’s in Kew on 29th January 1886. We don’t know how they met. Kew was an artist’s haven, and it’s not impossible that she met Arthur through his mother’s family: his uncle, Alfred Patten was an artist. Alfred lived in Brighton but almost certainly had links to Kew. It’s also possible they met in Brighton, a very common destination for daytrippers, holidaymakers and convalescents.

We don’t know how their relationship blossomed - was this a genteel courtship, meeting respectably in drawing rooms, or something more torrid? Jessie was only eighteen, and Arthur was thirty-four. After their marriage, they moved to Hove, and rented 77 Goldstone Villas. Arthur continued to privately teach young men maths and mechanics, and lecture in Brighton.

Jessie had her first baby, Gertrude, on 14th October 1887. She was still only about nineteen. She suffered postnatal depression after the birth, and there was a long gap before she had her second baby, Walter, in October 1891. Again, she suffered postnatal depression.

Jessie seemed singularly unprepared for domestic bliss. Her lack of ability when it came to housework, cooking and taking care of children seemed to surprise the men in her life, suggesting that she had come from a life of domestic service. Arthur’s brother was shocked when he visited and Arthur prepared their breakfast. The obvious thing to do would have been to engage servants to help: indeed, it is very odd that Arthur did not do this. He grew up in a household with servants, including nurserymaids. The house they lived in was built with space for servants: both in the basement and attic. He appears to have expected Jessie to take care of everything. Instead of live-in servants, he paid Elizabeth Eastwood, a local woman, to ‘char’ for them. She came in irregularly, although she nursed Jessie through a long period of mental instability after Walter’s birth.

Jessie’s main unstable trait was…screaming. Screaming and screaming and screaming. She told Elizabeth that she didn’t know why she screamed, only that she felt she was being strangled. She was paranoid of everyone around her. The men around her blamed this on drink, but there’s no evidence that Jessie was actually a big drinker. Arthur was teetotal.

Arthur did not call a doctor in. Perhaps he was embarassed by his wife’s instability. Perhaps he thought she was faking it. Perhaps he thought she’d be taken away. You see, Arthur and Jessie were obsessed with each other, both jealous of any infringement on the other’s company, although Jessie’s was more overt. She would ask guests to leave because she wanted Arthur to herself. Arthur’s jealousy was more insidious. He appeared to love his children, but he made them sleep in the basement because he didn’t want them anywhere near the marital bedroom. Jessie was said to be jealous of his affection for their children: she didn’t seem to feel much for them at all.

At Christmas 1892, the Black family met up. Arthur and Jessie seemed well, but Clementina Black was horrified by the state in which her niece lived. Clementina was single, and unlikely to have her own children at this stage in her life, and begged Arthur to let her look after Gertrude. Clementina and her talented sisters had been raised and educated remarkably well, and she may have wanted the same for her niece. She took Gertrude away before the end of the year.

On 11th January 1893, Arthur went to his brother Ernest’s house for dinner, alone. He seemed a bit miserable, and very tired. Work was drying up, although he was in no financial distress. He was due to recommence work at the Brighton School of Science and Art for the start of term on Tuesday 17th January.

On 14th January, Elizabeth Eastwood went to the house to clean. Arthur seemed quite…unwell. He had a wild look, and when Elizabeth commented on how altered he looked, he said:

I am! I have had enough to make me!

Elizabeth went to the workhouse to try and get the Blacks a servant - the workhouse would provide young women (usually in their early teens) for service work at a reduced rate. When she came back to the house on Wednesday, nobody answered.

Jessie was last seen alive on Monday 15th January. The following morning, at 7:20am, the woman who lived in the house next door heard two muffled gunshots from the Black’s bedroom, which shared a party wall with her own. She heard no screams, and no sounds of a disturbance.

Another woman claimed she had seen Arthur walking towards Hove Town Hall on Wednesday evening looking very ill.

Arthur failed to turn up to work on Tuesday or Wednesday, and by Thursday, the faculty were concerned. They sent a man to check on Arthur, and when this man couldn’t get in, he went to the police.

The police entered the house through the basement window, and immediately found Walter’s body. The officer moved through the house. Jessie lay dead in a room on the ground floor. Arthur was dead in his bedroom on the second floor.

I spent a long time carefully reading the inquest reports from several different newspapers to reconstruct what happened. The inquest itself was not much help: Arthur Black’s father was still alive, still in position at Brighton’s coroner. The East Sussex coroner sent a deputy to manage the inquest, because he knew David Black. But Joseph Bush, deputy coroner for Brighton and close friend of the Blacks, represented Arthur at inquest and did his best to derail the inquiry, and place the blame on Jessie.

Arthur appears to have tied a petticoat around Jessie’s throat - possibly as part of sex - and then shot her in the throat, as she lay in bed. All she had on otherwise was a nightgown. The pillowcase was covered in blood and scorched.

Jessie did not die. Arthur had a weak right arm, but not a weak grip. She appears to have pushed the gun aside when he went to shoot her again. The bullet went through his thigh. This wound baffled the attending doctors, who could not understand how the wound had been acquired unless Jessie had done it or the bullet had ricocheted.

Jessie went downstairs, apparently not making a noise - but then, she’d been shot through the throat. She appears to have been going to fetch her baby. Arthur went after her, catching up to her in the hallway. He hit her across the side of the head, knocking her down, and then battered her to death with a coal hammer.

Walter was in the basement, on a mattress with a bottle of milk. He was also killed, apparently by being stabbed in the neck with a bread knife, and then battered with a coal hammer. It’s not entirely clear when this second murder happened: the coal hole was in the basement, so it’s possible that Arthur killed Walter when he went to fetch the coal hammer, between shooting and battering his wife.

If the witnesses are to be believed, Arthur then sat in this charnel house for thirty-six hours, with the lights out and the blinds drawn. He briefly left on Wednesday evening - to hand himself in, perhaps. But then he went back.

He gathered every medicine in the house, sixteen bottles in all which seems a remarkable number for a man resistant to calling in a doctor, and took them to his bedroom. He turned the bloodstained pillow over. He arranged the medication beside the bed, along with the murder weapons. He wrapped chloroform up in a piece of paper and swallowed it. He appears to have then bashed his face, giving himself a nosebleed. He died.

His nose was still bleeding when his body was discovered, suggesting he died not long before he was discovered.

He left no note.

Joseph Bush argued strongly that actually, Jessie had done all the killing. It was all her fault, a man like Arthur would never have killed his wife or child if not for her ceaseless provocation. And maybe, if Arthur DID do it, it was all her fault.

Everyone at the inquest ignored the petticoat around Jessie’s throat, and the evidence that she’d been shot in bed. The doctor who examined the bodies didn’t even probe the wound in her throat to see if it was fatal.

Nobody cared, you see. A man (who meant something in Brighton)’s honour was at stake.

The jury decided Arthur must have been insane, and returned two manslaughter verdicts against him, and a third verdict of “suicide while in a state of temporary insanity”.

They were all buried together, with Jessie and Walter in the same coffin.

---

There were several witnesses at the trial: Ernest Black, Arthur’s brother, Elizabeth Eastwood, three other women who’d seen or heard something around the time of death, the police officer who found the body, the doctor who examined them in situ, and a second doctor who knew and admired Arthur, and performed the post-mortem. Neither of the doctors paid much attention to Jessie, with her brains splattered across the floor.

Nobody spoke for Jessie.

Nobody talked about why she might have needed a drink. Nobody talked about how she might have been abused in her marriage. Nobody talked about why Arthur didn’t want the children on the same floor of the house as him at night. Nobody talked about how strange it was that she feared being strangled, felt herself being strangled… when Arthur’s attack initially focused so strongly on her throat.

Everyone commented on what a shit housewife she was, and how mad she was, but nobody commented on her apparent lack of resources, or support. Nobody commented on how unmanaged her apparent mental illness was. She appears to have had no family, except for her judgemental in-laws, and her only friend was a servant.

Nobody spoke for Jessie. It was easier for everyone that mattered if nobody spoke for Jessie.

David Black, longstanding invalid coroner of Brighton, died four months after the tragedy. Not one of his obituaries mentioned it.

Jessie and Arthur’s daughter was raised in London by her pioneering aunt, Clementina Black, and occasionally alongside her other aunts: Grace Human, schoolmistress in Sri Lanka, Emma Mahomed, wife of Rev James Dean Kerriman Mahomed, Constance Garnett, translator of Russian literature. She perhaps saw less of her youngest aunt, Catherine Clayton.

It’s not surprising to learn that their daughter became a pioneer in her own right, first as a (not very successful) politician and then as a public affairs staffer at the RSPCA. Gertrude Speedwell Black (also Massingham and Croft) lived well until she died in 1963.

Jessie Black

(1868-1893)

Walter Black

(1891-1893)