Cambridgeshire Murders (13 page)

Justice Hawkins placed the black cap on his head and sentenced Horsford to death.

Later that day Horsford was transferred by closed carriage to Chesterton prison, 14 miles away, where he was to await execution. His execution was at 8 a.m. on Tuesday 28 June 1898 at Cambridge gaol where the hangman, James Billington, calculated that a 7ft drop would be required. According to a report in
The Times
Horsford ‘walked to the execution chamber firmly and apparently unconcerned'. The chaplain said a prayer and Horsford's death was instantaneous.

Just after his execution this notice appeared in
The Times
:

The St. Neots Murderer. We are requested by the Home Office to state that Walter Horsford, shortly before his execution, placed in the hands of the Governor of Cambridge Prison a written statement confessing his guilt and admitting the justice of his sentence.

Justice Hawkins received some criticism for the case. There was an accusation made that he had shown bias in his summing up and Horsford was said to have been convicted on circumstantial evidence. In 1904 the publishers Thomas Nelson and Sons produced a book entitled
The Reminiscences of Sir Henry Hawkins, (Baron Brampton)
. In Chapter 35 Sir Henry answers the criticism that he ‘had gone quite to the limits of a Judge's rights in summing up the case'. He described the detail of the case, then his summing up and the circumstantial evidence, then poses the question:

If a Judge may not deal with the fallacies of a defence by placing before the jury the true trend of the evidence, what other business has he on the Bench? And it was for thus clearly defining the issue that someone suggested a petition for a reprieve, on the ground that the evidence was
purely circumstantial
, and that my ‘summing up was
against the weight of the evidence
'. Truly a strange thing that circumstances by themselves shall have no weight.

But there was another strange incident in this remarkable trial:
the jury thanked me for the pains I had taken in the case
. I told them I looked for no thanks, but was grateful, nevertheless.

I have learnt that the jury, on retiring, deposited every one on a slip of paper the word ‘Guilty' without any previous consultation – a sufficient indication of their opinion of the
weight
of the evidence.

This was the last case of any importance which I tried on circuit, and if any trial could show the value of circumstantial evidence, it was this one. It left the identity of the prisoner and the conclusion of fact demonstrable almost to mathematical certainty.

A supposed eye-witness might have said: ‘I saw him write the paper, and I saw him administer the poison.' It would not have added to the weight of the evidence. The witness might have lied.

Throughout the investigation there appears to have been no mention of a young woman named Fanny James although her story appeared in the
St Neots' Advertiser
shortly after Horsford's execution in an article entitled ‘Singular Co-incidence'.

When he was in his late teens Horsford had courted James and they both lived at Stow Longa. In 1890 James decided to visit her sister-in-law and went by trap to Kimbolton then by train on to Kettering.

In December, some weeks after her arrival, she received a letter. After supper she took it to her room. When her sister-in-law eventually went to say goodnight to her she found James suffering convulsions – symptoms that fitted the description of strychnine poisoning. Just before her death she cried out, calling Walter Horsford by name.

An inquest was held on the following day but concluded that James had died ‘through eating a hearty supper'. Despite the misgivings of some of her relatives the police did not consider Horsford could be in any way responsible as he had been so far away in Stow Longa at the time of her death.

Interestingly she had been pregnant at the time of her death.

One of her relatives, known only as Mr James, worked for Horsford as a farm-hand. He commented to some of his co-workers that he suspected that his boss had been involved in Fanny's death.

Soon afterwards Horsford offered to buy him a drink. They visited a local pub and Horsford handed him a beer. Within minutes James was feeling ill. He hurried home but died very soon afterwards.

His death was not treated as suspicious, but after Horsford's conviction it was decided that this and other unexplained deaths should be investigated. The
Illustrated Police News
printed the stories of the deaths of both Fanny James and her relative as well as the following:

The third case of alleged poisoning is that of a servant girl at Peterborough who was know to be intimate with Walter Horsford, who was in the habit of visiting Peterborough market. It is alleged that this girl received a packet stated to be addressed in Horsford's handwriting, and died the same night with symptoms of poisoning. It is doubtful whether the document written by Horsford and purporting to contain a confession of the crime for which he was executed last week, will ever be made public, though it is understood that Horsford's friends will shortly be supplied with a copy of it.

Despite these rumours nothing else was ever proved.

The Horsford case became the subject of at least one street ballad. One entitled
The Execution of Walter Horsford
credits him with coming from St Neots. Perhaps it would have been more fitting for him to have been known as the Spaldwick Poisoner. Equally inaccurately the ballad seems to think that Horsford deserved some sympathy. As he acted neither in the heat of the moment nor after any great provocation and was certainly one of Cambridgeshire's most cold-blooded killers, any sympathy would be misplaced.

Notes

1 Strychnine occurs naturally in a variety of seeds and plants, especially the dog button plant, indigenous to India, Hawaii and other tropical countries. The fruits resemble mandarin and the seeds are large, and a velvety looking grey. Strychnine is colourless with a bitter taste and affects the central nervous system with symptoms that are very similar to those of tetanus. Medically it was developed as a stimulant and sometimes as an ingredient in preparations for the treatment of nausea. It was used most commonly as a rat poison.

2 Dover Powders or Dover's Powder: a powdered drug containing ipecacuanha and opium, formerly used to relieve pain and induce perspiration. After Thomas Dover (1660–1742), British physician.

3 Now St Neots' Museum.

4 Palliasse: mattress consisting of a thin pad filled with straw or sawdust.

5 A drachm is a unit of apothecary weight equal to 1/8 of an ounce or to 60 grains.

6 Neuralgia is acute spasmodic pain along the course of one or more nerves.

James Henry Hancock was executed for a murder committed on the evening of 4 March 1910. Hancock was a 54-year-old labourer, who had lived with a woman named Eliza Marshall for fourteen years. She was also known as Eliza Chapman and was a married woman living apart from her husband, at 22 Water Street, Chesterton.

Mrs Marshall, four years older than Hancock, earned her living by taking on casual work at fairs, travelling with a caravan in the summer, and in wintertime hawking coke in the Cambridgeshire villages.

Hancock was known by the nickname of ‘Sonny'. He had originally come from Sheffield and moved to Cambridge in the mid-1890s when the drainage work on the Fens was being carried out.

During the time that Hancock and Marshall lived together they had frequent rows and it is said that Hancock twice left and returned to Sheffield. But each time he came back to Cambridge, again to live with Marshall. Towards the end of their relationship however, Marshall tried to separate from Hancock, saying that she could not live with him any longer. She even went as far as to make a complaint to the police about him.

On 4 March Marshall and Hancock had arranged to go to Cottenham with a load of coke. At about 6 a.m. Hancock took their horse and cart and went to the gas works to pick up the load. Marshall met him there at just after 7 p.m. Hancock had loaded the cart by then and so they set off.

Shortly into the journey a quarrel broke out between them, the exact cause of which was unclear, but it was resolved with Hancock declaring that he would not go to Cottenham. Apparently Hancock wanted to sell the coke in Cambridge while Marshall wanted to adhere to the original plan and take it to Cottenham. When Hancock declined to go any further Marshall said that she would get her brother, Alfred Doggett, to go with her.

Doggett, aged about 60, lived in Red Barn Cottages in Old Chesterton. He came to meet them with a view to his taking over the cart. This possibility enraged Hancock and the two men began to argue. Hancock threatened Doggett with violence and took the horse home, to unharness it and put it in its stable.

When Marshall arrived home Hancock baldly stated that he wanted his clothes and that she would not have any more worry with him. She took this to mean that he was leaving again. Therefore she and her brother re-harnessed the horse and returned to the original plan of going to Cottenham. When they returned Doggett saw to the horse while Marshall went indoors. Hancock was still there and had made tea. He asked her to join him but she refused, being still annoyed with him. This renewed Hancock's bad temper and he slammed the door in her face.

She went across to the stable to help her brother with the horse, and after a few minutes Hancock joined them. A brief discussion ensued culminating in Hancock asking Doggett, ‘Have you got over your temper?' which was met by stony silence.

What happened in the next few moments is not clear; Marshall's story differed from Hancock's. However, with or without provocation from her brother, it is clear that Hancock struck Doggett and, as she saw her brother fall to the ground, Marshall realised that Hancock held a knife in his hand.

She pulled the knife away from Hancock, suffering a minor injury to her hand, and then ran from the stable. Doggett staggered after her with blood gushing from a wound to his neck. He managed to cross the road but then fell and died almost immediately. On examination the wound was measured at almost 5in long and was deep enough to have sliced the jugular vein and damaged bone.

Hancock made no attempt to escape and when Edwin Phillips, who worked for the university, stopped to ask him what he was doing Hancock said, ‘I'm sorry for what I've done but meant killing her.' He later repeated this claim to another witness when he said, ‘I killed him, but I killed the wrong one.' Then, on his arrest by a policeman, Constable Lander, he shouted, ‘Here you are, Mr Lander. I have done it, but it ought to have been old ‘Liza and all'. On the way to the police station he added: ‘I hope he's dead. I hit him hard enough anyway. I plead guilty, but I wish it had been the other old **** as well. I did try but the knife was not strong enough. I don't care. I shall get three weeks before I get my neck stretched, and then I shall have some beer.'

The following evening Hancock made a further statement to Constable Evans, which included: ‘She wanted me to go to Cottenham with her, but I did not want to go. He went with her, and when they got back old ‘Liza started swearing, and he started shouting. I soon stopped him and I should have soon stopped her if she had not soon got out of the way. I stopped him. I stuck the knife into him. They have always been against me. About fourteen years ago he kicked me in the jaw. She won't be able to fly to him in the future.'

At his trial on 28 May Hancock claimed to have had a legitimate reason for possessing the knife and claimed that he did not know how Doggett had been injured. He also swore that he had no recollection of the fight. Despite efforts by his counsel, Grafton Pryor, and his solicitor, G.A. Wootten, the judge, Justice Phillimore, found him guilty and passed the death sentence.

James Hancock was executed at 8 a.m. on 14 June 1910 despite about 500 signatures being obtained in an effort to obtain a reprieve. Henry Pierrepoint was the executioner and was assisted by his brother Thomas. Death was said to be instantaneous. In an ironic twist it was later discovered that Doggett had been one of the workmen who had helped to build the scaffold that was used for the execution of his murderer.

Subsequent to the report of James Hancock's execution the following interesting article appeared in the 17 June edition of the
Cambridge Independent Press
:

A C
ENTURY'S
R
ECORD

Previous Executions in Cambridge.

It is 12 years since the extreme penalty of the law was last paid within the walls of the County Gaol, so that Tuesday's execution is the first that has taken place here in the 20th Century. The last culprit was Walter Horsford, the notorious St Neot's poisoner, who was hanged on the morning of Tuesday June 28th 1898 for the murder of his cousin, Mrs Holmes. Prior to that date there was a long period during which the hangman was not called upon to perform his dread office within the county, for it was as far back as December 14th 1876, that the previous execution took place – that of Robert Browning, for the murder of a woman named Emma Rolfe, on Midsummer Common.

The last public execution in the county was on March 11th 1864, when John Green was hanged for the murder of a girl at Whittlesey. Shortly after this the law was passed putting a stop to executions in public, and the tendency since then has been more and more towards complete privacy, so much so that it seems somewhat difficult now to realise that not 50 years ago an execution was the occasion for the assembly of huge crowds of people who used to regard it very much in the light of a public holiday. There are not a few still living who can remember these grim exhibitions, when people flocked into the town from many miles around to see the unhappy wretch expiate his crime on the gallows. One gentleman remembers that when a boy at school at Huntingdon the father of one of his schoolfellows came to the school to fetch his son away for the day in order to take him to Cambridge to see an execution.