Halfway through the holidays, and I’m back to work. My kids are bored. Are you bored? You might enjoy Hazel Perry's blog about the shooting of her great-great aunt in Nottingham. You might also enjoy Claire Richardson's challenge to the dating of Peterborough Museum building, which I entirely agree with.
But you subscribed for homicide, so here we are. The Friday Murder club will reconvene in earnest in September, but here’s a short one from the same assize as Serafin Manzano.
Henry Cox and Hannah Rose married in Steeple Ashton in 1810, and spent their lives there. Henry worked on the land, and they had a family of seven: six boys and a girl. The boys were William (1810), George (1811), James (1814-1823), Richard (1817), John (1819) and Harry (1826). Hannah, the only girl, was born in 1822.
Their eldest son, William, moved away to Nottinghamshire. John married in 1840, but was widowed in 1845. George, John, Richard and Harry were regularly caught trespassing in search of game. In 1846, John, Richard, Harry and nine other men went poaching in Melksham. They were caught by the gamekeeper, and Richard shot at the man, then beat him. The next day, the police arrested the brothers at their house - Harry had a black eye, and was bathing it by the fire. The three were tried in March 1846, found guilty of malicious shooting and sentenced to twenty years transportation. The brothers left England on a ship called the John Calvin on 9th May, and arrived in Australia on 21st September. They served their time at Norfolk Island.
At a stroke, the family were cut in half. The Cox household was reduced to Henry and Hannah, George and Hannah, and John’s two little boys came to live with them. Hannah senior died in early 1851, and the household shrank again. Hannah the younger never married, perhaps because she had a brother and elderly father to look after, as well as two young nephews to raise.
At some point in the 1850s, probably in 1853*, news arrived from Australia that Richard had died. Richard left his pocketwatch to his sister Hannah.
George Cox was a violent man, with numerous convictions for assault. He never married. For some reason, on 8th August 1859, he wanted Richard’s pocketwatch. He probably wanted it to pawn: with their ageing father to support and a general disinclination to work, anything pawnable was fair game. But Hannah said no.
George responded by beating the crap out of her, hitting her repeatedly in the head and then kicking her around the house.
Two hours after this assault, Hannah had a seizure and died. A post-mortem showed that she died of a brain haemorrhage. The inquest, which was only briefly reported in the press, found a verdict of manslaughter against George and he went to wait for trial in Devizes.
Unusually, he had to wait for more than six months. He was not tried until the Lent sessions, held at the end of March 1860. He pleaded guilty, perhaps understanding that he had no real defence. He had killed his only sister, and he had done it out of greed.
But the surgeon gave a most peculiar statement at the trial, saying there were no marks of violence on Hannah, and that she’d died of apoplexy. The seizure and brain haemorrhage were dismissed as natural, a coincidence. Hannah was a
“…very stout, muscular woman, very excitable and apt to make a little too free.”
The judge said that Hannah’s conduct had been
“Extremely irritating and provoking: she had used language and so conducted herself towards the prisoner as to rouse and provoke him considerably”
And as we all know, to kill an irritating woman is no crime at all.
George pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to one whole week in prison.
Was Hannah Cox an irritating and provoking woman? Without the inquest report, it’s very difficult to know what really happened here. But Hannah had been raised alongside her violent, hard-drinking, law-ignoring brothers and it seems she was far from a blushing flower of a girl. She did not attract much sympathy in the court.
Nothing she said or did could have warranted the fatal beating her brother gave her.
Henry Cox was about seventy-eight years old when his son killed his daughter. He’d lost his wife, three of his sons had gone to Australia, one had died there. His eldest son had moved far away. Of his seven children, only George was left (when he got out of prison). The two men lived together until Henry died in 1867.
John and Harry do not appear to have ever returned to England after their sentences ended. George lodged in Steeple Ashton after his father died, and eventually went to Westbury workhouse. He died there in 1886.
*Harry and John were both granted tickets of leave in 1854. Richard was not, and the last entry in his convict record is 1853. I cannot find a record of his death, but it’s the summer holidays, so I may have missed it.
Hannah Cox
(1822-1859)