Cambridgeshire Murders (17 page)

Although the doctor, McRitchie, agreed with the defence on this point he maintained that he could not envisage the fatal wound being self-inflicted.

When Seekings himself finally took the stand he admitted that he was the worse for drink ‘or I should not have done such a thing, if I did do it. I don't remember doing it.'

The prosecution asked the jury to accept that the evidence showed that the wound had not been self-inflicted and that Seekings, while showing some signs of intoxication, was not so drunk that he was not aware or responsible for his actions. The defence, on the other hand, argued that in a charge of wilful murder there must be malice aforethought or premeditation, and without this the charge must be manslaughter. He asked the jury to apply the lesser charge if indeed they did decide that Beeby had died by Seekings' hand. He asked them to consider Seekings' drunkenness as a mitigating circumstance and sought to play down claims by Stocker and Wood that Seekings appeared sober: as Stocker was the landlady's son and Wood was her employee they both had an interest in maintaining the good reputation of the pub. He also asked the jury how many sober people fell three times in quick succession.

In his summing up Justice Bray directed the jury away from the possibility that the victim had taken her own life. He said that if they concluded that Seekings was responsible that they must also consider that killing a person by cutting their throat is an effective method and therefore demonstrates the intention to kill.

On the subject of drink he added that a man might do things while drunk that he would not do when sober, but that made no difference to the outcome of the case. Only if they decided that Seekings was so drunk that he was too muddled to understand that attacking the woman with a knife was likely to cause death could they return the verdict of manslaughter.

After retiring for fifteen minutes the jury returned a verdict of guilty. Asked whether he had anything to say Seekings replied that he did not know whether he was guilty or not.

Bray placed the black cap on his head and intoned: ‘The jury have found you guilty of murder. I have no choice as to the sentence I pronounce. I desire to say as little as possible on the subject. This is one of the many crimes caused by drink and the sentence of the court upon you is that you be taken from hence to the place from whence you came, and from thence to a lawful place of execution, and there be hanged by the neck until you be dead, and that your body be buried within the precincts of the prison in which you be confined last. And may the Lord have mercy on your soul.'

On Monday 3 November 1913 Seekings was visited by his father and brother. On the following morning he was executed. Aside from his last visitors Seekings' execution attracted little interest from either his acquaintances or the public. Thomas Pierrepoint carried out the execution in the execution shed. Although a few curious people hovered around the prison gates, no bell tolled and the black flag was not hoisted. The only outward signs of the execution were the official notices posted on the gates later in the day which informed the public that the execution had gone ahead in the presence of the county under-sheriff, prison governor and the prison chaplain and that the prison surgeon, Edward Izard, had subsequently pronounced Seekings dead.

Both the rector of Brampton, the Revd Knowles, and the Earl of Sandwich had unsuccessfully written to the Home Secretary requesting that Seekings be spared the death penalty. But aside from their efforts it seems that the murder of Martha Beeby and the subsequent execution of Frederick Seekings evoked little sympathy at the time. He stands out more for his place in history as Cambridgeshire's last execution than for any criminal notoriety.

C
ambridgeshire's most famous unsolved case is known as the Cambridge Shop Murder that occurred on 27 July in the summer of 1921. It bears marked similarities to another case, the 1919 murder of Mrs Ridgley, a shopkeeper from Hitchin. Although no conviction was made in either case the crimes were not connected.

In the 1920s King Street was narrow and busy. No. 70 was a general store selling a variety of items including tobacco, bread, cheese and margarine and was run by a spinster named Alice Maud Lawn. Miss Lawn was about 50 years old and the shop had been hers for at least twenty-one years. Although she lived alone with her cat she had relatives nearby. Her youngest brother, a motor mechanic named Horace, lived directly opposite at No. 79. She also had another brother and sister-in-law living in Cambridge.

Miss Lawn's shop was an end terraced two-storey property backing onto a green called Christ's Piece.
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It had originally been a private house before being converted into a shop. There were two first floor bedrooms but Miss Lawn used the attic bedroom. A narrow alley called Milton Walk ran along the side of the building, with a pub called Champion of the Thames on the opposite side of this passage. There were two entrances to her property from Milton Walk; the first was a side door to the private part of the property and the second a gate to the rear garden.

Running along the back of the terrace was a public footpath that separated the gardens from the tennis courts on Christ's Piece. Miss Lawn's garden was fenced by trellis and according to the local paper it was easy to get a good view of the garden from this path. The shop was small but well stocked with one door leading from the street and a second internal door, which allowed the proprietor access to the shop from her sitting room. She seemed to live happily in King Street; she was a quiet and gentle person but popular and much respected by her neighbours.

Although Cambridge already held a market, on Market Hill, a second Wednesday market was being held in King Street. The only concern Miss Lawn seemed to have was that this market and other events attracted a large number of strangers. She was not overly confident with men and felt nervous when bands played on Christ's Piece. She told a customer: ‘When the band performances are on there is such a rough crew who come here that they worry me. They rush into my shop for all sorts of things and make me very nervous indeed.'

She felt similarly worried about the Wednesday markets, which attracted strangers from as far afield as London. It was part of her routine to keep her back door locked and she would have been particularly careful on a market day. Another habit she had developed was to go out at idiosyncratic times during the day. No regular customers would have found it odd if the shop had been closed during opening hours, they would have assumed that she had just popped out for a while. If Miss Lawn planned to go out for more than a few minutes she would tell her brother or sister-in-law living opposite.

So when, at about 11.30 a.m. on Wednesday 27 July 1921 the shop was found locked it caused no real surprise. The husband of a neighbour noticed that the shop was still locked after lunch and notified Mrs Horace Lawn. She was not aware that her sister-in-law had gone out and with some apprehension contacted her husband who was working nearby.

At about 3 p.m. Horace and his next-door neighbour, Mr Kirkup, went to investigate. They entered through the back door and immediately noticed a cupboard door open and clear signs of disturbance. Within seconds they found her body; she was lying at the foot of her stairs in a pool of blood. She had been dead for some time and had suffered a violent assault. There were savage wounds to her head and a gag hung loose around her neck.

The police were called. First on the scene was Constable Alfred Flint, an officer who had been on point duty outside a nearby post office. By the time he arrived Horace thought he had heard some noise coming from upstairs. Flint made a thorough search of the first floor and attic rooms but found nothing. The only thing of any note was a bowl in the scullery sink that contained water, dyed a colour consistent with blood being washed from something. A nearby tea cloth was also marked with similarly coloured smears.

The borough coroner, Mr G.A. Wootten, opened the inquest on 29 July at the Guildhall in Cambridge. After hearing the basic details of the case and hearing Horace Lawn identify his sister's body the inquest was immediately adjourned for ten days.

At this stage the police were not prepared to comment on their lines of enquiry. They had made no arrest and none looked imminent although popular opinion was that an outsider must have committed the crime. A local reporter clearly supported this view and went as far as to state: ‘The police are satisfied that the murder was not the work of a local man. Jews and foreigners frequent the town, and it is possible that the man for whom the police are searching was one of the market day crowd of strangers. If the crime had been premeditated then the assailant had evidently waited for market day, when, owing to the noise in the street, any cry his victim might have uttered would have been drowned.'

The Cambridge police were quick to call for assistance from Scotland Yard; two CID officers arrived on the evening of the murder.

In the days after her death two theories were discussed, the first was that the killer had gone to the shop, posing as a customer, and had asked for something that would have required Miss Lawn to go through to her sitting room. While she was out of sight the outside door could then be locked before she was followed. The second theory was that the killer had gained access through the rear of the property and hidden there until he had had the opportunity to attack.

Meanwhile, on Saturday 30 July 1921 Miss Lawn's funeral took place at the cemetery in Cambridge's Mill Road.
The Cambridge Chronicle
and
University Journal
estimated that 1,000 people attended; the family mourners were her sisters, Mrs Lincoln from Great Yarmouth and Mrs Charlton from Hendon, and her two brothers, Ernest and Horace Lawn, and their wives.

On Friday 5 August a man calling himself Jack Varden handed himself into Tottenham Court Road Police Station and claimed he was the Cambridge Murderer. He signed a statement and was then interviewed by Chief Inspector Mercer who immediately realised that the confession was a hoax. It was apparent that Varden had never even been to Cambridge. He later retracted his statement, claiming he was really called Ernest Shaw Watson and had just needed food and shelter.

When the inquest reopened on Monday 8 August the coroner first asked for post-mortem details. Dr Henry Buckley Roderick, the police surgeon, described the injuries to Miss Lawn's body: ‘On examination – of course the woman was quite dead – I could see a wound on the forehead extending from the inner side of the left eyebrow upwards to the right. It was two inches long and reached down to the bone.

Her hair was matted with blood and there was obviously – although I did not examine the body at the time – a number of wounds to the scalp. The exposed parts were quite cold and as there were no signs of rigor mortis I should say she had been dead something under four or five hours.

Her head was on the mat and on the first step there was a considerable amount of blood and some had trickled down to the corner formed by the doorway into the angle at the foot of the stairs. There was of course blood on the mat and underneath the head as well – a considerable amount.'

At that point he had neither looked for nor seen a likely murder weapon and he next arranged for the body to be removed to the mortuary. It was on the following morning that he performed the post mortem. He reported:

In addition to the wound on the forehead there was another star-shaped wound about an inch above that, in the middle line of the top of the head. There were also several other wounds on the right side of the parietal
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region, as if several blows had been struck. All of these were down to the bone, and must have been caused by considerable violence. Under one of the wounds there was an obvious depression of the skull, as though the bone had been broken, smashed in by some instrument.

The wounds must have been caused by some blunted instrument. There were other wounds further back and contusions of the left hand.

The coroner asked whether, in Roderick's opinion, the blow to the forehead was the first struck to which the doctor replied, ‘from its appearance I should say it was.' But despite this he did not think it was the cause of death:

. . . it did not crack the skull. But on further examination of the skull I found a depressed fracture extending deeply into the cavity of the skull. There was a considerable depression on the side of the fracture. The first blow would have stunned her but the second one wound have stunned her a good deal more.

I should think after the first blow she was stunned – it was not an absolutely knock out blow, but stunned her for a time, and she came round, or would have come round, I should say – and then the subsequent blows were given. There was an interval between them.

She could have moaned – it was quite possible. The other blows were all made about the same time (as one another), several of them at the back. After the second and the blows at the back she would not have moaned.

Her eye suffered a light hemorrhage. It was of no importance.

I removed the gag and examined the mouth. The gag had been forced into the mouth very forcibly, so much so that it broke one of the teeth – a molar tooth – not a very strong one – smashed it off at the base and pushed the denture forward in front of the gag. Some of the lower teeth had been loosened and the tongue had been torn, lacerated, probably by the teeth.

All the internal organs were healthy, the heart and lungs showed no evidence of death by suffocation. The cause of death was hemorrhage to the brain.

Wootten, the coroner, asked whether Roderick had been shown a small chopper. Roderick replied that he had and their exchange continued with Wootten asking, ‘Do you think the chopper could have inflicted the wound you have described?'

The doctor responded: ‘Yes, because the back of the chopper would have given the long wound on the forehead and the others on the skull. The same instrument could have done both injuries.'