Since last we spoke, I gave a paper at the British Crime Historian’s conference and met Hallie Rubenhold (who spoke about her forthcoming book on the Crippen murders) and had such a good time among my people. There is nothing on God’s green Earth like musing about the absence of battered babies in the 19thC while you settle in to watch a paper on girls in institutions in the early 20thC.
Now, let’s go to Godalming for this week’s case, in January 1889.
Content warning: rape.
Emily Joy was born in Surrey on 20th December 1869. Her parents, William and Mary Ann, had been married for six years when she was born. She was their fourth child, but only two of her older siblings survived infancy, Mary Ann and Elizabeth. A brother, John, followed two years later. William was a gardener’s labourer, and the family moved around to wherever he could get work. They lived in Godalming, Hounslow, Shalford and Bishopstoke. William died in 1879, in a London workhouse, and Mary Ann took her children back to Godalming.
The two older girls went into service aged eleven, and Mary Ann took in lodgers to support herself and the younger two children. She also worked as a cleaner. Emily completed an apprenticeship as a dressmaker, and was working for a dress shop by the time she was eighteen. The family home was on Church Road in Farncombe.
In 1888, Emily met a man named Ebenezer Samuel Wheatcroft. Ebenezer was an artist, and a liar. His real surname was Jenkins. He was born in early 1868 in Lindfield, and Wheatcroft was his mother’s maiden name. Ebenezer arrived in Goldaming in early 1888, and worked in a boot factory - his father was a shoemaker. In April, his parents joined him and they lived together. Ebenezer left the shoe factory and set himself up as a painter. He claimed to be a Fellow of the Royal Society of Art, but he wasn’t. He was, in fact, rather rubbish. His main income was in stage scenery painting, although he was also available for document copying, and his father covered the rent. However, Ebenezer liked the social cachet that came with being an artist, and used his business card to tour the workhouse in Godalming.
Ebenezer had (free) use of a summerhouse on Brighton Road in which to paint. He represented himself to Emily - a very beautiful young woman, despite her poverty - as moderately rich, a successful artist, a budding author, but this was all a lie. Nevertheless, Emily allowed Ebenezer to begin courting her, although it appears to have been a chaste and respectable courtship: walking out, taking tea with her mother, talking. Ebenezer never introduced Emily to his parents, although they lived in Godalming, knowing perfectly well they would immediately expose his lies.
Emily and Ebenezer became engaged in late autumn 1888 and planned a March wedding. On Christmas Day, Ebenezer produced a rather remarkable document to recognise the occasion:
I, the undersigned, agree to marry Emily Joy at any time she may state and I can further state that I, the undersigned, is in a position to marry, and that I have a standing income beside my small capital, which amounts to in cash £500 10 shillings and 0d and that I will swear. I will never give said Miss Joy any reason to complain of any unhappiness. I further state that when I reach the age of thirty I have an amount in cash, namely £600 which I shall recieve in quarterly payments. I have no further capital. I will also state that since I have with the said Miss Joy I have never been in company with any young lady and that I have never in my life committed any offence upon any young lady and that I was never married during my past life and I agree to make said young lady happy all her life.
All I have said I will swear to on oath.
Doesn’t exactly scream romance does it? However, Mrs Joy gave her consent and Ebenezer began staying with the Joys on a regular basis… albeit sharing a bed with sixteen-year-old John. He promised to pay £1 a week in rent, but didn’t.
Ebenezer then began to try and convince the Joys that he was rich. On 5th January 1889, he forged a telegram from the bank promising money in February. On Monday 7th January, he told Emily that the landlady of the coffeehouse he’d been lodging in owed him £14, but would only pay up if Emily was with him. Emily agreed to go and sign a form so he could collect the debt, and they left at 7pm. Emily was not dressed for an evening out, she clearly expected to return home.
The form was in the summer house.
At 8pm, a man walking on Butts Lane heard a couple of screams, but did not investigate.
An hour later, Ebenezer turned up in Sun Inn on the High Street. He seemed fine, paid for his beer with half a crown and told another man in the pub he was thinking of going to Egypt.
Not long after he left the pub, he met a boy called Pennycot and appeared wildly deranged, saying he was going to drown himself. God knows what happened between his calm drink and this chance meeting… perhaps the realisation of what he did struck him. But he proceeded to a pub at Milford, slept in a pub in Mousehill.
Meanwhile, Mrs Joy was beside herself in terror. Emily was simply not the sort to run away: she loved her family, she loved her friends. The Joys checked the summer house and found it locked.
On Tuesday afternoon, Mrs Joy recieved a letter from Ebenezer declaring “Emmie and I have gone away forever” asking that they be buried together. But Ebenezer was not dead. After waking up, he had walked to Hindhead and gone to the Punch Bowl pub.
He was in a strange state at the Punch Bowl, and told the landlord he had planned a suicide pact with his girlfriend by drowning, and she was dead but he “didn’t have the pluck” and wanted to give himself up to a policeman. The landlord - quite bravely considering how wild Ebenezer seemed - accompanied Ebenezer by train to Guildford and on arrival, Ebenezer turned to him and said:
“I have told you lies. I murdered the girl myself. I strangled her.”
Ebenezer confessed all to the police, who went to the summer house and found a ghastly scene.
Emily had been raped. There was no evidence of any consent: she was fully clothed except for torn and bloodstained undergarments, although the top of her dress was partly unbuttoned. She had suffered internal injuries. Emily had fought, biting Ebenezer’s fingers, and he had shoved a handkerchief in her mouth to stop her. He broke her nose and battered her face on one side. Then he used a boa, made of a long-haired fur, to strangle her. He stole her brooch, which had half a crown in it, and spent the money in the pub.
Ebenezer couched his confession in terms of endearment, in romance. In his first confession, he didn’t mention the rape at all. In the second, he said he had ‘seduced’ her. He claimed she said “Goodbye my darling, I am dying” as he strangled her. It was a bunch of self-aggrandising lies.
Justice was swift. The inquest was held on 10th January at the Three Crowns in Crownpits, and the verdict was a foregone conclusion. Ebenezer was taken before the magistrates on 12 January and sent for an assize trial. Emily was buried on the 14th, and the costs of her funeral were met by public subscription.
Murder was not terribly common in the Surrey assize, at least away from London, but Ebenezer was not the only murderer on trial. Another man went first, and was found guilty of manslaughter against a gamekeeper.
Ebenezer pleaded not guilty. He turned up with no legal counsel, and was assigned a defence lawyer. Ebenezer seemed surprised by this turn of events, and his trial was postponed until the following morning to allow the defence a little time to prepare. The trial recommenced on Valentine’s Day, and the gallery at Guildford court was crammed with women. These women were sent out for the description of the body: despite the press publishing all the details, these were too shocking for delicate lady ears.
The evidence was the same as the inquest, albeit in a more chronological order. Ebenezer offered no defence, despite pleading not guilty. Various doctors testified that Ebenezer was not insane. Ebenezer’s lawyer made a very weak case for convicting him of manslaughter, rather than murder, but seems to have recognised the futility.
It took the jury twenty-five minutes to convict Ebenezer of murder. He was duly sentenced to death.
Ebenezer fainted.
If anyone tried to petition for mercy for Ebenezer, it failed. He continued to deny raping Emily throughout his imprisonment, and claimed he never hit her. He was simply incapable of honesty.
On Wednesday 6th March, the month Emily would have married him, he was executed at Holloway.
We know this story, don’t we? We’ve heard it all before. The press characterised it as a romantic murder: what could be more romantic than being killed by the man you love?
And Emily was in love with Ebenezer. She believed he was who he said he was, an acclaimed artist, a man with money to come.
I’m not sure Ebenezer was in love with Emily. Ebenezer’s house of cards was about to fall. The money was a lie, and his parents would have to come to the wedding. If not, they’d hear about it anyway. He had nowhere for them to live, and no way to properly support a family.
The bizarre quasi-legal statement that he made about their engagement, aside from being a pack of lies, claims that he had never committed any offence on a young lady. But he had. When he was still in school, he got a girl pregnant. Perhaps he was worried that his past was coming back to haunt him.
But I think the most likely reason for writing it was that he just really wanted to have sex with Emily, before he was exposed, and thought this statement would act as a key.
And when it didn’t work, he lured her to his summer house and attempted to seduce her: he admitted in court that it was his intention all along.
But however much Emily loved him, she wasn’t about to surrender her virginity. Perhaps she had doubts about his financial situation, or perhaps she was angry because he’d got her into the summer house on false pretences. Perhaps she just didn’t fancy getting it on in a freezing cold shed when she believed she was two months out of setting up her own home.
She said no.
So, he beat her, raped her, killed her, robbed her.
Tale as old as time.
Emily Joy
(1869-1889)