Hello! How was your break? Did you get one? I turned 39 and stared at the sea for a few days, thinking about lighthouses and Grace Darling.
Also, weirdly, sheep maimers.
I am very pleased to announce that I am doing an online talk for Curious Histories on 18th June. It’s at 6:30pm, about Victorian inquests (obvs) with some case studies from Brighton. I’m excited!
Today’s case is UNSEASONAL. It’s Edwardian, not Victorian. It’s a similar case to the last: a woman with a past, killed in front of her daughter by a jealous boyfriend. But the outcome was different.
Hannah Maria West was born in April 1879 in Leeds, and usually known as Maria. She was the seventh of nine children born to Francis and Sarah Ann West. Francis and Sarah had met working in London, and settled in Leeds by 1870. Francis was a drayman, a brewery delivery driver, and the family lived in Hunslet.
Maria left Leeds in the 1890s and moved to Halifax. She went there to work in the carpet mills - Dean Clough alone employed more than five thousand people - but she also became estranged from her family at this point. She met George Edward Whitley (sometimes spelled Wheatley) there. He was six months younger than Maria. He was born in Bishop Auckland, but his father was from Halifax. He was orphaned by 1900, and moved to Halifax to live with his aunt. He was an ironworker, who occasionally worked on Wild West themed shows. He had several hundred pounds of ready money, and married Maria in early 1903, both aged twenty-three.
However, the money was soon gone, and George abandoned pregnant Maria within six months of their marriage. Their daughter Evelyn was born on Christmas Eve that year. Maria and Evelyn lived in the hive of streets between Great Albion Street and Broad Street, a labyrinth of courts and alleyways. This area was cleared for a bus station, eventually.
George was rumoured to have gone to America, but it’s more likely that he went to work in Barrow in Furness. Maria may have been able to secure some maintenance from George, but divorce was still a few years off being a viable option for working-class women.* Maria resumed using the surname West when it became evident that George wasn’t coming back. She may have worked in the mills, but she principally earned her living as a prostitute.
Enter Ernest Hutchinson. Ernest was five years younger than Maria, and he was Halifax born and raised. He came from a respectable family, and his father was a wool sorter. By the age of sixteen, Ernest was a butcher’s apprentice. He probably completed his apprenticeship in 1905, and opened his own shop. His mother died in 1906.
Ernest lost his shop, and started working as an assistant to another butcher in 1907. He met Maria as a punter in 1907, at the King’s Head pub, and carried on paying for her company intermittently for some months. Ernest and Maria began living together in April 1908, initially on Mount Street. He persuaded her to come off ‘the game’ to be his common-law wife, and she agreed. However, it was not a happy relationship. On 13th November, Ernest and Maria were both arrested after a fight in Mount Street. A policeman heard Ernest swearing at Maria, and Maria screaming
“He’ll kill me, Oh! let me out, let me out”
The policeman knocked on the door, and Maria rushed out fully dressed. Ernest followed in his nightshirt, calling her every name under the sun. Ernest was arrested for using bad language, and told the police officer that he’d rather be arrested than ‘live with her’. He was fined, but the fine was not paid.
They left Mount Street very soon after, and took possession of a tiny house on Great Albion Street, where Maria had lived for several years. Things became more strained in early December, after Ernest hurt himself at work, and the wound became infected. Although he was getting sick pay from work and from a sick club, it was sixteen shillings a week. Money became tighter and the arguments more frequent. Maria started working the streets again, with little Evelyn telling Maria’s friend than “mummy had been out all night”. Maria reacted badly to this, calling her daughter ‘a little bitch’. A few days later, he same friend witnessed Ernest hit her with no apparent provocation.
Christmas Eve 1908 was, you may recall, Evelyn’s fifth birthday. Maria and Ernest had an argument that afternoon, and Ernest was seen to storm out. He went to the pub. The landlords of Halifax were generous on Christmas Eve, holding a lock-in, giving beer away to avoid the licensing laws and encouraging carol singing. Ernest seemed miserable, but drank ten pints, a mixture of beer and stout. A talented organist, he spent the evening playing piano despite the gloom around him.
After leaving the pub, he suggested to a friend that the friend come back to his, possibly planning to sell Maria to him. The friend declined, and Ernest went home, arriving at 11:45pm.
Maria had also been to the pub, although to different ones. She was seen drinking small measures of spirits, paid for with her own money, although she was not drunk. She got home around half an hour before Ernest.
He immediately kicked off. The neighbours all heard him, heard Maria screaming, heard glass break. There were a lot of children - mostly adolescents - out in the streets, despite the late hour, playing mouth organs and singing. The children noticed blood running from Maria’s door, and went to tell their parents.
Emily Oldfield, a neighbour, was concerned. She knew Maria well, and often babysat Evelyn. She knew Ernest knocked Maria about, she’d seen Maria with bruises and black eyes, and on one occasion, she knew, Ernest had bitten Maria’s face so hard that she bled. She knew Ernest had broken Maria’s nose. Emily had given Maria shelter when she waited for Ernest to calm down. She had heard Ernest tell Maria that he would “do for you, you heifer”, meaning that he would kill her, and he would hang for it. She knew Maria never fought back, just waited for the storm to pass.
And on this Christmas night, Emily was so worried that she went to the house and saw the broken window panes, saw a little blood on the step. She bravely knocked on the door. The gas light in the kitchen immediately went out.
Another neighbour told Emily to go in, they’d clearly settled down, no need to worry. Everyone knew Ernest knocked Maria about, no need to worry. Against her better judgement, Emily went home. Caroline Kershaw actually saw Maria’s hand break the window glass, and heard Evelyn crying
“Mammie, mammie!”
But also did nothing.
Christmas morning broke, and the streak of blood on the step was now a pool. Evelyn was knocking on the upstairs window. A crowd gathered, hammering on the door, calling out to Maria.
Ernest appeared at the window, a ghastly spectacle, throat cut and blood everywhere. He tried to tell them Maria was dead, but couldn’t speak. Then he went away from the window, and seems to have allowed Evelyn downstairs.
A teenager tried to enter the house through the broken window. Caroline Kershaw’s husband followed him, and rescued Evelyn, passing her out of the broken window. Mr Kershaw found Ernest sitting on the stairs, and asked him where Maria was. Ernest pointed into the passage. She was dead. Ernest was taken to Huddersfield Infirmary, where he recovered quickly. He moved to police custody on 3rd January.
The inquest opened on Boxing Day, which fell on a Saturday. Alice West, Maria’s sister, identified her and the inquest was then adjourned. It resumed on 11th January, in Halifax’s dedicated coroner’s court.
It seems that Maria had money, Ernest did not. Ernest wanted the money; presumably he felt entitled to it as Maria’s pimp/protector. Maria refused to hand it over. Ernest attacked her, and she lunged over the kitchen table to smash the windows for help - Ernest had previously locked her in for a battering. This attracted the neighbourhood children’s attention. The blind was drawn down, but only made of paper, a thin thing for privacy. Ernest then pulled Maria back from the window, bruising her arm, most likely already brandishing a weapon as Maria had defensive cuts on the palm of one hand. Maria tried to get out of the front door, and Ernest stabbed her from behind, repeatedly. He used a large knife, one that belonged to Maria for cutting meat. He stabbed her in the head and neck, with such force that she died from one of the wounds penetrating her heart. She died in the passageway, against the door, holding tightly to her remaining cash.
Her blood seeped away under the door, down the step and into a drain.
Ernest then took a razor, again belonging to Maria, and cut his throat, standing over her. He dropped the razor, but didn’t die. He went up to bed, and appears to have attempted to gas himself using a short hose. The hose was too short to reach the bed. Ernest appears to have collapsed, exhausted, waiting to die.
Death did not come.
The inquest found a verdict of wilful murder, and the magistrates committed him for trial. Justice was swift, the trial commenced on 12th February 1909 at Leeds. Ernest pleaded not guilty, and his defence claimed it was self-defence. He claimed that Maria had struck him with the razor, and he stabbed her defending himself. Miraculous really that Maria would be able to cut his throat in the same way as a self-inflicted wound, and that, like Mr Tickle, he could reach over her head to stab her from behind.
The audacity.
Ernest took the stand. He claimed Maria had just let a man out of the house when he got home, which may well have been true. But then he claimed that Maria had threatened to cut her daughter with a razor when Evelyn had ‘told tales’ on her. He painted Maria as a woman quick with a razor, and claimed she cut his throat first.
Evelyn was not called to give evidence.
The prosecution told the jury that Ernest’s story could not be true. Maria’s fists were tightly clenched around money; she was stabbed from behind; he was the only person who could have turned the gas on to kill himself.
The jury found him guilty, but recommended him to mercy on account of his youth. He was duly sentenced to death.
*In the 1920s, Leeds was one of the first courts to allow divorce hearings outside London. Many of the couples who took advantage of that were in Maria’s situation.
A petition was immediately raised to try and save Ernest, pinned to the church doors like he was Martin Luther. He had never claimed to be mad, so this was wholly based on youth rather than sanity. Ernest had fallen in with a bad crowd, it was all alcohol and women’s fault, nothing to do with him. And, naturally, the petition referenced his very respectable father because as we all know, respectable fathers cannot have felonious sons. Not only did the petition ask for a reprieve, but for a shortened prison sentence. The respectable citizens of Halifax did not think Maria worth dying for, nor worth a life sentence. Ironically, the JP who presented the petition was surnamed Whitley.
The Home Secretary, Ernest Gladstone, thought Maria was worth dying for. Ernest was scheduled to die privately at Wakefield on 2nd March. Henry Pierrepoint executed him. His death was quick and clean, unlike Maria’s.
If he confessed, it was not publicised.
Unusually, a picture of Maria has survived, printed in the trial report. It appears to be a mugshot.
Emily Oldfield refused to state in court that Maria was a prostitute. She told the defending counsel that she “never saw [Maria] do anything wrong in my presence”. Maria was surrounded by women who were willing to protect her reputation, assuring the courtroom that she was an excellent and devoted mother, making sure the court knew that no man had been seen to enter or exit her house that fateful night, no man but Ernest. Maria’s story is peppered with references to a strong and tight network of women, babysitting, washing their clothes together, living in and out of each other’s houses and turning a blind eye to moral ambiguity.
But they also turned a blind eye to the casual violence that was part of their normal neighbourhood culture, and left Maria to die while her daughter watched, on Christmas night, on her birthday.
Evelyn Whitley was raised by her grandparents in Leeds. Her father was killed in action in 1917. She died in 1983, just before her eightieth birthday.
Hannah Maria Whitley
(1879-1908)
This case reminds me of the 1935 Rattenbury case, when Alma Rattenbury and her teenage lover George Stoner were charged with murdering her husband, Francis (Stoner actually committed the murder). Alma retracted her confession, Stoner was sentenced to death, but this was commuted to a life sentence when 300,000 people signed a petition for clemency. While Stoner only served seven years, Alma committed suicide days after being acquitted. The public, almost 30 years after Hannah's murder, this time apparently felt the young man had been manipulated by a predatory older woman and should not be executed… In both cases the public seemed to devalue the victims.
I read once that modern criminologists refer to this sort of case as a "victim involved homicide." The rest of us call it a tragedy.