Another compare-and-contrast case this week, with another wife-murder in Cheshire. This case took place in December 1876, three months after Patrick Wall killed his wife, but the outcome was rather different.
Rebecca Bradley was born in Stalybridge in October 1840. In her early years, she lived on Demesne Street (now Demesne Drive) and her parents - Ephraim and Maria - probably worked at the mill on the junction with Oxford Street, long since demolished. Rebecca, born when her mother was about fifteen, was an only child.
Ephraim died in 1851. Maria then married a man named Lester, although the marriage did not last. Maria and Rebecca moved to Ovenden, near Halifax, and Rebecca began working in cotton mills in childhood. She gave birth to a daughter, Nancy, in 1863, but illegitimacy was nothing unusual in mill towns. She worked at Lee Mills, on the outskirts of Halifax towards Ovenden, making worsted. This was a vast complex of mills, dye vats and ponds squished between the railway line and Old Lane, but it was dwarfed by neighbouring Dean Clough.
James Bannister was born in Hyde, a few miles from Stalybridge, in 1837. He spent some time in the Cheshire Militia, and took a blow to the head while training in 1859. This left him with occasional dizzy spells. He left the militia, and moved to Halifax, and started working in Lee Mills as a weaver. Rebecca worked in the same room as him. Rebecca’s mother was from Hyde; they had things in common, and a courtship began. Their engagement was announced in late summer 1865, and they married at St John the Baptist church at Halifax on 16th December 1865.
They settled down between Ovdenden and Halifax, after their marriage, living near Shroggs Park. They both continued to work in Lee Mills, and Nancy lived with them. Rebecca’s mother, separated from her second husband, lodged next door. A daughter, Sarah, was born in 1867 but only lived a few weeks.
James began to drink, and when drunk, he began to mistreat his wife. Pregnant again, and frightened to death, she ran away to Hyde. Their second child, also named Sarah, was born there in early 1869. James found her and persuaded her to come home. The newspapers reported that they had no idea why Rebecca chose to go to Hyde, but it’s likely she was seeking refuge with her mother’s family.
The second baby Sarah died in 1871, and James’ behaviour worsened. Once more, Rebecca fled to Hyde. For a while, James stayed in Halifax, drinking himself to death. Once he’d sold and pawned everything he owned for drink, he gave up the house and followed his wife to Hyde. They reconciled, although whether this was because Rebecca wanted to, or simply because she had run out of safe harbours, it’s impossible to know. They moved into lodgings on George Street. Rebecca’s mother followed them to Hyde, and often experienced her son-in-law’s wild temper. Rebecca, James and Nancy all worked at Thornley’s Mill on Market Street. Two more children were born in the next few years, but neither survived long enough for their births to be registered.
James joined the Good Templars, a temperance movement that modelled itself on the Freemasons. He started earning more money, and they established themselves in their own house for the first time since Halifax, living on Mottram Road. James was promoted within his temperance lodge to Inside Guard. Things seemed to be going well.
In 1874, James was fined for having an unlicensed dog, and got drunk. Initially, he tried to claw back his sobriety, but gave up fairly quickly. He drank away their savings, and once again, sold up all their furniture. They lost their home, and moved to a much cheaper house on Thomas Street. James was violent to his neighbours, and horrific to Rebecca. Most of his abuse was verbal, but on one occasion, he tried to throw her from their bedroom window.
June 1876, and longer able to afford the house on Thomas Street, they moved to Russell Street. They lodged here with a carpenter named Elisha Grayson, his wife and three children. James and Rebecca slept in a space at the top of the stairs, given some privacy with a wooden screen. Nancy slept in the Grayson’s bedroom with their children. It was not a happy house: Mrs Grayson noticed that James did not like Nancy, among his many other character flaws.
James’ behaviour did not improve. He suffered regular bouts of delirium tremens, treated with sedatives by his doctor, but kept drinking. By mid-October 1876, he had become convinced that Rebecca was sleeping with other men, and was wildly, delusionally jealous. He questioned her if she left the house, but didn’t believe anything she said. On one occasion, this argument took place in the shared sitting room at the Grayson’s, and Mrs Grayson tried to get James to leave. He refused to leave without Rebecca, so Mrs Grayson turned Rebecca out. James went after her.
Their arguments spilled over into work. They worked in the same room at the mill. James’ friend and colleague Henry Harrop saw Rebecca hitting James with a weaving shuttle at work. Henry couldn’t hear the argument over the noise of the loom but asked James about it later: ironically, this row was about a married woman that James was spending too much time with.
James said, to several people in various states of sobriety, that he would kill Rebecca.
He asked a policeman to lock him up before he did something he regretted.
In November, he tore their marriage certificate to shreds, and threw the shreds in the chamber pot. Rebecca stitched the shreds back together, and gave them to her mother for safekeeping.
Rebecca told James that either he sobered up, and signed a temperance pledge, or she would leave. Accordingly, they went to sign up on 9th December. Even fourteen-year-old Nancy signed the pledge. James took some persuading… but it was all for nothing. He was drunk again the same evening. Mrs Grayson, having finally had enough of all the fighting and aggro and stress, gave the couple notice to quit her house.
Their eleventh wedding anniversary fell on December 16th, in a week of crisis for the Bannisters. James had been on a drinking binge for a week and lost his position at the mill. Rebecca had also left work to look after him, and was also struggling with some unnamed illness, possibly early pregnancy or a miscarriage. They were under notice of eviction with no income aside from what Nancy was bringing in.
On Thursday 14th, James went out in the morning to try and get work at a different mill. He came home at 6pm sober, and asked Rebecca to mend his vest. Rebecca said that she was very ill, too ill to do it, but she did do it, “because then there’ll be no more bother about it.” James left the vest with her and went back out.
He met his friend Henry Harrop, and Henry bought James a couple of drinks. He also took the opportunity to ask him why Rebecca had been hitting him. Henry told James that Rebecca seemed a hard-working woman, and he replied:
“She is a bitch; you don’t know her. Something tells me that I shall have to kill her.”
At home, Rebecca mended the vest and went to bed. James came home around 9:30pm, with a mug of beer. He gave Rebecca instructions for his breakfast, and Rebecca went back to bed. James followed ten minutes later, and took the beer with him.
Elisha Grayson and his wife slept in the room that opened onto the landing where the Bannisters slept. They heard the pair talking on and off, but no screams and no fights. Mrs Grayson was up half the night with her baby, and heard a loud thud at 2am. She poked her husband awake and said “Do you hear owt? Yon man’s doing something”, but suddenly, James called out “ELISHA”, and Mrs Grayson went through.
Rebecca sat in bed clutching her head in her hands, pouring blood everywhere. James had cut his throat and was similarly bleeding everywhere. There was a hatchet - an axe for firewood - and pocket knife nearby. The hatchet was normally kept downstairs in the coal scuttle. Mrs Grayson, only really noticing James’ injuries, went back to her husband and told him that James had cut his throat. Elisha went directly to fetch Maria, Rebecca’s mother, who lived nearby.
“Yon man has cut his throat”
Maria initially didn’t notice Rebecca’s injuries either, thinking she was spattered with blood from James’ throat. Once she realised her daughter was injured, she said:
“I am here, bless you, this is what I have long expected”.
Various doctors and policemen attended the scene. Initially, neither were expected to survive, and Rebecca made a death-bed statement. There was no hospital in Hyde, but James was taken to Manchester infirmary at lunchtime on the 15th. While he waited, he told the police officer guarding him that he had no idea why he’d done it, and blamed the devil.
He had cut his trachea, but none of the arteries of the throat, and he was sewn up in hospital. It was widely expected that he would die of a chest infection because of the cold air and the large wound, but he did not. However, he became quite mad with grief and pain, and was restrained.
Rebecca’s injuries were so dreadful that she was initially left to die in her bed, but proved remarkably resilient. She was transferred to Stockport Infirmary on the evening of the 15th, and became comatose on the 17th. She held on until 1pm on 18th December. The inquest was held at the infirmary on the 20th. For the first time, Rebecca’s injuries were described.
James hit her on the head from above, with an axe, while she was half-asleep. According to her testimony, he told her that he was going to end her suffering before striking her, but she saw nothing and assumed he had done it with his fists. She had been beaten with the back of the axe and the sharp edge. Her skull was split, her brains protruding. Her survival for more than 72 hours is astonishing. Each wound was wide enough to admit the doctor’s finger, and must have been inflicted with a terrible force.
The inquest was adjourned over Christmas, and reconvened on 28th December. Meanwhile, Rebecca was buried at Hyde church on the 23rd, and her funeral was attended by almost everyone in Hyde. The vicar took the opportunity to give a sermon on the evils of drink. At the second hearing of the inquest, the jury returned a verdict of wilful murder against James. James remained in Manchester infirmary, sharing a room with two other men who had attempted suicide, all three guarded by a policeman day and night.
James was discharged from hospital in early February, moved to the lockup in Hyde, and formally charged with Rebecca’s murder on 8th February 1877. A great crowd assembled at the hearing, which took two days, and James took the opportunity to cross-examined his mother-in-law. He was undefended, but trying to establish an insanity defence, asking Maria whether he or not he often paced, and asked to be taken to the infirmary. Maria responded:
“I have seen you many times to pretend to be out of your mind when you were not in drink.”
The magistrates committed James to a murder trial. The next Chester assizes opened on 10th March, and his trial was held on the 14th. An effort was made to blame his terrible actions on delirium tremens. And perhaps, if James had not taken the hatchet up to bed with him, he would have been found guilty of manslaughter. If he’d used what he had to hand to kill his wife, it could have been called a crime of passion…
But James stealthily slipped into the coal scuttle by the bottom of the stairs, and picked up the hatchet and took it to bed. Then he brutally attacked his wife when she was half-asleep.
Perhaps if Rebecca had also been a drunk, mercy would have been shown to James… but she was not.
The jury took fifty-five minutes to find James guilty. The judge sentenced him to death, commenting that:
“You will have more time allowed to you [to prepare for death] than you allowed your poor wife.”
James spent his time in Chester castle writing doggrel verse about drink and mercy. A petition for mercy was raised, with Henry Harrop being one of the main petitioners. The petition pointed out that executing a man with a gaping wound at the throat would cause a god awful mess. Harrop approached Hyde magistrate’s bench looking for signatures, but the magistrates refused to sign it, saying “Oh no, I hope he will be hung.” Six hundred people signed, to no avail. Nobody visited James, although he wrote letters while he waited to die. He was convinced he would be reprieved.
The date of execution was fixed for April 2nd. He was hanged in private at Chester castle, the first execution there since 1866. He refused breakfast, although he greedily drank a draught of sal volatile in water. He was taken to the scaffold by William Marwood at 8am, and died two minutes later. A sturdier rope than usual was used to avoid any unpleasantness with his neck wound. As it was, the wound reopened, but only superficially.
James blamed delirium tremens for his actions, but it’s noteworthy that he killed her after she hit him in public, and attention was drawn to it by another man. James did not react well to shame: his trigger for falling off the wagon in 1874 was being hauled up in court for a minor infraction. And this may not have been the first time the couple had fought in public, but she hit him with a weaving shuttle, a fairly large piece of wood. James told Henry Harrop that he’d 'have’ to kill her… and then went home and did just that.
What struck me as I read through this long litany of misery is how little help was available to Rebecca, how little help anyone offered her. James was not once summoned for abusing his wife, not even when he tried to shove her out of a window. Their landlady tried to separate them, but failed. Rebecca’s mother expected him to kill her, following the couple around the country, keeping an eye out, but utterly powerless to change anything.
Rebecca lived a rollercoaster of a life, losing her father young and then going from single parent, to abused wife, to fleeing wife, to relative affluence, back to abused wife. She watched her husband drink away their home, their possessions… twice. She slept on a landing behind a screen for six months, with no privacy, where everyone knew her business. She worked to provide for herself and her daughter, but was forced to stop work every time her husband went on a ‘spree’. She was accused of adultery, when it was James who was trying to cheat. She lived under a torrent verbal abuse, with no security, in fear of her life.
And then, when she was in bed, at her most vulnerable, he murdered her with a hatchet.
Rebecca Bannister
(1840-1876)