The Unhappiest Event (I)

First, the murder

Oct 11, 2024

I recently read a couple of books in a series set in 1890s London, books with murder at their heart. And although the writer had taken care to get everything right, and one of the books was full of the intricacies of a magistrate’s court, there were no inquests. Not the writer’s fault: the English inquest is curiously absent from existing work on the 19th century courts, which I am doing my best to correct, one angry conference paper at a time.

It’ll be a little while before I can get my work published (one must, apparently, finish it first) but… do ask if you’ve got any questions about homicide prosecution protocol between say, 1837 and 1926. It really is my jam.
If you just want an overview, you can see me talking about inquests here.

I teased this week’s story in my last Friday Murder. It is striking because so many people ended up dead because of one man… This is a two parter, so let’s go back to Nottinghamshire, back to 1844.

William Saville was born in Arnold in 1812. His father, Thomas, was in the army at the time. His mother and two brothers were dead by the time he was six, so his father left the army and worked as a framework knitter. Thomas Arnold was a drunkard and let his children- William and his sister Sarah - raise themselves. William appears to have avoided education, as he was illiterate, only able to recognise a few words. He initially trained as an agricultural labourer, and didn’t enjoy framework knitting, but knitting was the better paid job at the time. In 1822 or 1823, he moved to Daybrook with his father, and lodged and worked with a family named Lynch.

Ann Ward was older than William, born in 1802.She was from Crowland in Lincolnshire, but had few ties to her hometown. She was one of ten children, and reasonably well educated. Her older brother, William, was a reasonably wealthy farmer in Long Sutton, but Ann does not seem to have benefitted much from that.

Ann had lost an eye in her youth through infection, which made her very recognisable in Nottingham. From 1827, she worked as a housemaid to a man named Buchan on Long Row. She had at least one child during this time, of uncertain parentage: William believed she had a second child, but I have not been able to confirm this.

In early 1835, she went to Daybrook with her boss and met William. By February, Ann was pregnant for the third time.

William had no intention of marrying Ann. According to him, the marriage was a conspiracy. Two women, Ann’s sister Harriet Brownsword and a Mrs Hart, came to see him in November 1835 and threatened to kill him if he didn’t marry Ann. They arranged for their banns to be read without William’s knowledge, got him very drunk on the Sunday and took him to church on the Monday morning.

The marriage certificate actually backs this up: they did marry on a Monday in Sneinton and Harriet Brownsword witnessed the marriage. Another person named Martin also witnessed the wedding, and this was who Ann lived with after her marriage. However, it seems that William was not coerced, but demanded that Ann’s family pay for their house together as a condition of marriage: Ann’s brother sent £10 and a new silk gown.

William refused to live with his new wife: he didn’t have enough money to keep her and didn’t want to raise her eldest child. He went back to his father’s, worked as a framework knitter and took money to Ann every Saturday. Ann gave birth to her baby shortly after the wedding, and they began living together. The baby died in April 1836 - according to one source, William regularly beat the baby and was alone with the baby when it died. Ann was too afraid to accuse William of killing the baby, but told her friends she believed he’d “bent the baby backwards”. There was no inquest.

William and Ann then set up their own home, and William’s father moved in with them. Ann’s eldest child, whose name, age and sex are never mentioned, lived with them and William was paid 4/- a week by either the workhouse or the child’s father to maintain it. The child was probably born in 1833, and around two years old. William beat the child horribly. If it wet itself in the night, William left it standing in the cold with wet clothes on and wouldn’t let Ann go to it. Harriet Brownsword rescued the little one from William and sent it to be nursed. Harriet lost her job soon after and couldn’t afford to pay the child’s nurse fees. William took the child back, but refused to let Ann feed them, saying he wouldn’t allow his money to feed a bastard.

Their domestic setup didn’t last long. Ann left William, taking her child with her, to work as a shoe binder. William regularly took her wages from her, leaving her with almost nothing. She went back to work for Mr Buchan for a while, and her child was found abandoned in Nottingham marketplace. The child went to live in the workhouse.

Ann’s mother died in September 1836, and William went to Long Sutton to try and get money out of the Ward family. Ann’s brother gave him £5, after making him promise to look after Ann. William found Ann when he got back to Nottingham. She was heavily pregnant, and William beat her regularly to try and produce a miscarriage. It didn’t work, but William never believed the baby - Mary - was his.

They lived together again, although William spent four months in prison from November 1837 for stealing a coat. Ann later described the time he was in prison as the happiest in her life.

For the next few years, they lived in miserable poverty, moving every few months to escape rent debts. In 1841, William left her to go on the tramp, and she went to the workhouse. While she was there, her eldest child died. When William returned, the Board of Guardians sent him to prison for abandoning her. They reunited, although William never forgave her for ‘allowing’ him to be sent to prison. They moved to Derby where she had another baby in 1842. Ann’s brother once again stepped in to help, arranging for William to open a greengrocer’s shop on Waterloo Street in Derby. William squandered the business, and abandoned Ann to go back to Nottingham.

In December 1843, William put Ann and the children back in the workhouse. Ann told the Board of Guardians that her husband had abandoned her and that she had no idea where he was. It’s probable that she said this to stop them prosecuting William for desertion again. Ann and the children were all filthy and all had scabies. Ann also had a disease in her leg, possibly caused by an infection.

While she was gone, he sold all their property, raising 27 shillings. He intended to use this money to go to America, but he didn’t go. He used the money to pay some debts and buy some new clothes: William liked to look well-turned-out. He took lodgings in Alfreton Road, working as a framework knitter, and told the family he lived with, the Suttons, that he was a single man. He told people who knew he was married that Ann had gone to Lincolnshire to live with her brother.

In March, William started courting Mrs Sutton’s sister, Elizabeth Tate, who he was trying to persuade to marry him. He hoped she would marry him, and then they could go to America. Meanwhile, their baby, Lucy Ann, died in the workhouse in February 1844. The remaining children were Mary, aged seven, Harriet, five and Thomas, four.

On 19th May 1844, Harriet Brownsword found out her sister was in the workhouse again. She went to the workhouse and gave Ann five and a half shillings so she could leave. She also gave her some tea and brown sugar. Ann requested permission to leave to find her husband, but the Workhouse Master would not let her go unless she took the children with her. Ann left, with the children, on Monday 20th May.

She didn’t know where her husband was, so fetched Samuel Wardle, a man she’d known for several years, to help her. Samuel knew where William was, and went with her to the Suttons house - they took Mary with them, and Harriet and Thomas stayed at the Wardles house. William wasn’t home. Samuel and Ann went to the pub, and spotted William walking past.

William wasn’t happy to see Ann at all. He was furious that she’d left the workhouse, didn’t acknowledge his daughter at all, and left them with Samuel.

When William got back to his lodgings, Mrs Sutton told him that a one-eyed woman had been to see him. He denied she was his wife, and said that she was someone who ‘kept some things for him’. Mrs Sutton didn’t believe him, and told her sister. Elizabeth had already heard all about it from the neighbours: everyone knew each other’s business in this part of Nottingham. William repeatedly denied that he was married to Ann, but it was his failure to support his children that Elizabeth couldn’t tolerate.

Ann spent Monday night with the Wardles at their house on Gedling Street. She wrote a letter to her brother in Long Sutton that night, presumably asking for help. He wrote back, sending ten shillings, but the money arrived too late for Ann.

On Tuesday 21st May, William collected his wife and children from the Wardles. He was impatient to get going to Carlton. He told Ann that they had been invited to dinner with his family there, and they left the house at 10am.

Ann stopped briefly to speak to Mary Miller in Wood Street. She told Mary where she was going, and that she didn’t know William had relations in Carlton. She told Mary that she was very uneasy in her mind, and arranged to have tea with Mary that evening.

William was back by 1pm, without Ann and the children. He arrived in a rush, and claimed Ann had ‘turned nasty’ and left him in Sneinton Street. He told another man they’d left him in Derby Road. But by 6pm, he was telling a different story - he was worried they’d drowned. Lucy Wardle, Samuel’s wife, knew something was up. She did not believe Ann would hurt the children and asked William what he’d done with them.

William went to see Elizabeth Tate, who ended their relationship. He got drunk, and spent the night with the Suttons, and did not mention his family.

The next morning, he saw his sister’s daughter, who enquired after her aunt. He lied that Ann was very poorly and he’d left her in bed. Meanwhile, Mary Miller went to see Lucy Wardle, and unsatisfied with William’s account of events, they went to the police. William told the police a confused story, but his bloody clothing and muddy trousers told another. A packet of arsenic in his belongings suggested he had planned to kill someone. He was charged with destroying his family.

Meanwhile, the bodies of Ann, Mary, Harriet and Tommy were found in a wood between Carlton and Colwick, close to Colwick weir. The extensive railway works near Carlton were yet to be built, so this was an isolated and rural spot. There was some space between the children and their mother. All four had cut throats and Ann had a bloody razor in her hand.

The inquest commenced on Friday morning at the constable of Colwick’s house. The bodies were displayed in a nearby barn, and William went in handcuffs to identify the bodies.

It was very clear that this was not a murder-suicide because Ann’s body had been dragged away from the children’s bodies and laid a little way off. They were well off the footpath: the man who discovered them thought they could have gone weeks without detection had he not nipped into the trees to get some rabbit fodder.

Several people had seen the Savilles walking along the path near Colwick. William was carrying Tommy, and Ann and the girls walked behind, holding hands. Ann had stopped to pick some blossom for the girls. It would have been a pretty domestic scene if William had not looked so miserable. One woman saw William, alone and furious, about half an hour later standing by the woods. He walked into the wood after she passed by. Nobody heard any screaming, or any struggle.

The inquest was adjourned for a while, to recommence in the County Hall in Nottingham on 27th May. As soon as the adjournment was called, Ann and her children were placed into coffins and buried together at Colwick churchyard.

The resumed inquest took two days to go through everything. One of the key pieces of evidence linking William to the murder was not just his razor in Ann’s hand, but the fact he’d taken a packet of tea and sugar from Ann’s body. Ann, like many women, kept her belongings in a pocket tied underneath her skirts. There was a man’s handprint that matched William’s on her petticoat. Although he changed his clothes after killing his father, he put the packet in his trouser pocket, where it was found after he was arrested. The inference was that he had rummaged through Ann’s pocket after she died, taking the tea and sugar, and the four shillings she had left from her sister.

There was also blood in patches on his trousers, although William appears to have been careful to cut the children’s throats so they bled into the ground, not on him. Ann’s head was positioned downhill so the blood would run away from the body. William claimed the blood on his trousers was from a nosebleed.

The surgeon who examined the bodies said it was possible that Ann had inflicted her dreadful wound herself, but she would not have been able to scream, or move afterwards. Mary had a bruised cheek and forehead and wound on her thumb, suggesting she had tried to get away. Harriet and Tommy had died without a struggle. All four had been killed with one cut each.

William denied killing them, denied going to Colwick despite multiple witnesses identifying him, and maintained that he had not seen Ann or the children since Tuesday morning in Nottingham city centre. He denied the tea and sugar was Ann’s. The coroner advised the jury that either Ann killed herself and the children, or William did it. The jury returned a verdict of wilful murder.

While William waited for trial, more evidence came out, chiefly around the razor, which was identified as definitely belonging to William - it was stolen from the Lynch family. While William had been in the lockup before the bodies were found, he’d told his cellmate that he had killed Ann in revenge for getting him locked up for desertion. He told this man he killed the children because they screamed when they saw him kill their mother. He asked this man not to tell anyone… but he gave evidence at the trial.

William stood trial on 25th July 1844. He pleaded not guilty. A chain of evidence connecting him to the crime scene, establishing a motive of wanting to marry Elizabeth Tate, and the impossibility of Ann killing herself and then moving across the grass by herself took hours to relay. The bloody clothes of the victims were shown in court, as was evidence of blood on William’s clothes.

William’s defence attorney was horrified at this testimony, most of which he’d not been aware of on taking the case. He focused on the murders, and the short time frame in which they were done, saying it was impossible for William to have killed them within ten minutes. He also pointed out that Lucy Wardle noticed no blood on William when he came back from the murders. AND ALSO, Ann was an old woman with only one eye so of course he was looking elsewhere for company.

Sigh.

He suggested that Ann had become deranged with jealousy on finding out William was courting Elizabeth Tate, and destroyed her children and herself because she was mad. And also, Elizabeth Tate was so lovely and virtuous that merely FALLING IN LOVE WITH HER was proof of William’s good character.

I swear one day, I will write a book about Bullshit Homicide Defences.

The jury took eighteen minutes to return a guilty verdict.

William was sentenced to death, taken down to the cells. And we shall leave him there for now.

This is a two-part story because although it doesn’t end here, all the victims deserved to have their stories told in full.

Before he died, William ‘confessed’ that Ann had killed the children and he killed her. His ‘confession’ was designed to paint Ann as a whore, a scold and a drunk. His confession was a load of old shite, but does hint at the order in which things happened.

It seems that William originally planned to drown his family in Colwick weir, and concocted a story to get them in the vicinity. He killed the children while Ann was relieving herself in the woods. He probably killed Tommy and Harriet first, although Tommy took longest to die. Mary resisted, but not for long. Ann came back to find her children dead. She fell to her knees, and William pushed her backwards and cut her throat. Ann put her hand to the wound and died. He then dragged her body away a little, and placed the razor in her hand. He seems to have wanted to present a tragic tableau: if it appeared that Ann killed the children and then herself, he’d be free to marry.

He washed his hands in the river, took what he wanted from Ann’s pocket and went back to Nottingham. It probably took less than five minutes.

William was a horrible person. A bad drunk, a liar, a thief, violent, verbally abusive, a bully. He never took responsibility for any of his own errors, and couldn’t even tell the truth about how his family died. He needed Ann gone so he could marry Elizabeth Tate and go to America. Her unexpected reappearance in his life on Monday 20th May appears to have been a catalyst to kill her. He made up a story about a family dinner in Carlton to get his family in an isolated spot, and even though every alarm bell was ringing in Ann’s head, she went with him.

Ann’s life was spattered with misfortune. She lost an eye, she appears to have fallen in love rather too easily, and she found herself yoked to a man who didn’t really like her, let alone love her. He beat her, left her, used her, and probably killed their first child. She may have had a sexually transmitted disease, and seems to have spent most of her life ill in some way. Her children were unbaptised, so I am not sure how many she actually had, but at least three died in infancy.
But she loved them, and she looked after them to the best of her ability, working hard to try and provide for them.
She couldn’t protect them from her husband.

Her last hour with them was spent wandering through a lane by the Trent, picking flowers and trying not to let the kids pick up on her deep unease.

William took everything from Ann. Her eldest child, her freedom, her furniture, her money. Then he took her life, her children’s lives, and stopped for just long enough to take the last few shillings from her corpse, along with some tea and sugar.