Cambridgeshire Murders (21 page)

Many many thanks for all you did for us when we were leaving. We shall never forget the services of a true friend. Here are things for you to do if you will be so kind. I enclose the pawn ticket for Gerald's watch. You can get it out of ‘pop' and wear it yourself, and sell it, pay a bill, and keep the rest for yourself. I enclose a letter, which perhaps you will be kind enough to post. Thanking you for my dress clothes. Pack them up and send the dress suit and the waistcoats to Stephen Morris Esq.
Poste Restant
, Charing Cross Post Office. Can you tactfully send to Mr and Mrs Newman – Gerald is quite safe in London.

Bolton decided to go to Mr Thacker, the censor of Fitzwilliam House,
¹
and tell him of the letter. Thacker told Bolton to go to Charing Cross Post Office, to find Potts and Newman and tell them to return to Cambridge. He said that they had overestimated the seriousness of the trouble they were in and in addition Newman needed to know that his father was seriously ill.

Bolton arrived at the post office at 9 a.m. on Tuesday morning. At 9.40 Potts walked in and was surprised to see him. Bolton told Newton and Potts that they should return to Cambridge, to which Potts said: ‘I am going back to Cambridge and I shall be putting my head into a hornet's nest.'

Bolton advised him to cheer up and encouraged him to believe that everything would be all right. He drove them back to Cambridge and, despite Potts's earlier comment, found him to be an extremely cheerful companion. They arrived in Cambridge at just after 1 p.m. and Potts left them outside Fitzwilliam House. In the few minutes that followed he met Wollaston and together they headed for Wollaston's rooms and their final ill-fated meeting.

Bolton was shocked when he heard of the shootings. He said he had always known Potts to be ‘brilliant but excitable' but had found him to be very calm on that day.

One of the final witnesses was R.J. Pearson, the Chief Constable, who told the court of the last entry in Sergeant Willis's notebook – it was the serial number of the Webley pistol that was to kill him.

Shortly afterwards the jury retired. It took them only thirty minutes to return with the verdict that Douglas Newton Potts had committed suicide during temporary insanity and that he murdered Wollaston and Willis during temporary insanity.

The funerals of all three victims took place on Saturday 7 June. Potts was buried at the borough cemetery in Newmarket Road, Cambridge at 9 a.m. His parents and Revd Church, who conducted the service, were the only mourners present.

In contrast the service held for Alexander Frederick Richmond Wollaston was at 2.30 p.m. in King's College chapel and was attended by a huge number of college staff and members of his family. Wollaston was cremated, and in a rare tribute to their lost tutor the ashes were later placed in the crypt of the chapel. The following brief obituary, which appeared in the next publication of the
Cambridge University Reporter
, does not express the great affection that was clearly felt for Wollaston.

‘Died at Cambridge on Tuesday, 3 June 1930, Alexander Frederick Richmond Wollaston, M.A., B. Chir, Fellow and Tutor of King's College, aged 55 years.'

The funeral for Sergeant Francis James Willis took place in his home town of Haverhill. His coffin was taken from his parents' house to the West End Congregational Church, and from there to the burial ground. On its journey it was followed by 120 police officers representing eleven different police forces. His wife was left with a widow's pension of £85 a year. A charitable fund was set up to help Willis's family and public donations exceeded £50.

Potts had been considered to be academically brilliant but it is fair to say that he was not realistic about how to behave or what he could achieve outside his academic life. Newman seemed to find Potts' behaviour to be normal and this may have helped Potts stray further from reality. When they went to London they soon discovered that they were incapable of being independent and their anxiety was compounded by lack of sleep. For Newton, the opportunity to return to Cambridge may have come as a relief; for Potts it clearly did not.

No doubt Mr and Mrs Potts must have spent the rest of their lives wondering what had triggered their son's final bloody outburst and whether it could have been prevented. Perhaps Mr Potts replayed the following exchange in his memory and wondered whether they had truly found the answer.

Counsel: ‘Do you think from your knowledge of your son that in an excitable moment, in a moment of great stress, with the responsibility of being faced with the shame of being taken to the police station and of having to confess to you, that he may have temporarily lost his balance?'

Potts: ‘I think that that is the true story of this – that he was afraid to face me, that he thought he had let me down.'

Counsel: ‘That is your considered opinion?'

Potts: ‘Yes.'

Counsel: ‘Was he always ambitious that you, his father, should be proud of him?'

Potts: ‘Yes, he told me he was going to try and get a fellowship at King's.'

Potts may have had lofty ambitions but Wollaston had realised many of his. He had not married until he was 48, and his chance to raise a family was most cruelly thwarted. In 1977 Wollaston's son, who had been only 4 years old at the time of his father's death, wrote an article for the
Telegraph
's Sunday magazine. In it he describes the loss his family suffered and the painful way his mother learned of her husband's death while spending a day in London:

The news rocked the college and raced through the town, and before the end of the afternoon it had reached the London papers. My mother, walking in Leicester Square, saw a terrifying headline across the front of the
Evening Standard
: U
NDERGRADUATE SHOOTS TUTOR DEAD
: A
MAZING DRAMA AT
C
AMBRIDGE
. She fumbled for a penny and gave it to the man. ‘Read all about it', he said, and she did.

Notes

1 The censor acted as Head of House for non-collegiate students attached to Fitzwilliam House. In 1966 Fitzwilliam House achieved collegiate status.

O
n Saturday 28 May 1932 Cambridge was rocked by a multiple murder that is probably better understood now than when it was committed.

Meads End is a large detached house standing on the corner where Hills Avenue meets Hinton Avenue in a quiet suburb of Cambridge. The house was owned by Herbert Tebbutt who lived there with his family; Helen, known by their staff as his wife, Helen's daughter Betty aged 12, and their young boys, Michael, 2 and 1-year-old Dickie.

Herbert Tebbutt had been educated at the Leys School in Cambridge and was a keen cricketer. While in his twenties, before the First World War, he had captained the Cambridgeshire County Cricket Team. Speaking shortly after Tebbutt's death an official from the Cambridgeshire Cricket Association had gone on record to say, ‘Mr. Tebbutt was one of the finest bats the county ever had. While at Leys he held the record for the greatest number of runs obtained in a season. Many years ago I played with him for the Y.M.C.A. and other teams.'

Tebbutt was only 46 years old but had already retired from Bailey and Tebbutt, the brewing business he had inherited from his father. He had been actively involved in the business before selling it to Messrs Greene, King and Sons in 1928. He had also inherited £20,000. His total inheritance made him a comparatively wealthy man.

He occupied himself with the leisurely pursuits of shooting, playing golf and motoring. He was also a frequent visitor to the Cherry Hinton Constitutional Club where until February he had been on the committee.

Helen was 38. She had been born in Hearn City, California and her maiden name was Jenks. After arriving in England she had married a man named Walter Williams with whom she had had two children, Bryan and Elizabeth, known as Betty. By the mid-1920s she was estranged from Williams and had taken the children to live with her aunt and uncle in Chirk near Wrexham.

She later moved to Liverpool where her mother was then living in 1928, when Bryan and Betty were aged 13 and 8, she left Liverpool and moved to Cambridge to take up the post of hotel manageress. Her daughter stayed with her while her son remained with family. It is not known why Helen chose Cambridge; there is no evidence that she knew Herbert Tebbutt beforehand and was thought to have met him shortly after she took up her new position.

The relationship between Tebbutt and Helen Williams developed quickly, but not without complications. Tebbutt was also a married man but soon after meeting Williams, he bought her a house called Little St Bernard's in Trumpington. He was open about the affair. His wife briefly attempted to save their marriage, but after discovering that Williams was pregnant she filed for divorce.

The divorce case was reported in the
Cambridge Daily News
of 5 December 1929 and stated: ‘in the Divorce Division yesterday, before Mr Justice Bateson and a common jury, Mrs Alice Tebbutt of Meads End, Hills Avenue, Cambridge petitioned for a decree nisi for the dissolution of her marriage with Mr Herbert Charles Tebbutt, on the grounds of his adultery with Mrs Helen Margaret Williams of Little St Bernards, Shelford Road, Cambridge, who intervened in this suit.

Both the respondent and the intervener filed answers denying the charge, but had now intimated that they would not contest the case further, and the suit came on as an undefended petition.

The parties were married in July 1913, the petitioner then being a widow of Ealing. They lived at various addresses and finally at Meads End. From 1921 to 1928 the marriage was unhappy and the respondent left his wife in April of that year.

Evidence was given by the petitioner and a private detective.

The jury found that the respondent and the intervener had committed adultery and his Lordship granted a decree nisi with costs.'

The decree absolute was granted on 3 June 1931. After the divorce Tebbutt found it difficult to regain possession of Meads End and its furniture from his former wife. This was eventually resolved and Tebbutt was ordered to pay her maintenance of £500 per year from his estimated annual income of £900. He appealed against this decision and the amount was reduced to £300 per year. Even with this reduction, his lifestyle and his family's living expenses were still eating into his capital. Between the time of the divorce and Tebbutt's death his solicitor, Mr Albert George Rickards Alexander, described the amount of alimony he paid out to his ex-wife as ‘a considerable amount'. Despite this Tebbutt was still in arrears by £250.

The finances surrounding his divorce seemed to anger Tebbutt rather than worry him, and he particularly objected to the section in the order that made provision for his ex-wife for her lifetime and meant that she would be paid from his estate in the event that he pre-deceased her.

Mostly, however, he focused his attention on his new family and was very fond of all three children and was often seen taking them out in his car. The family employed a gardener and two maids, Phyllis Henderson and Florence Southgate. Henderson lived in Oak Street, Cambridge but Southgate, who was a local girl, lived at the house with the rest of the family. She had been with the family for four years, while Henderson had been employed for the previous six weeks to help with the children.

Although Henderson was happy in her position she was due to leave as she needed to go into hospital. She hoped to return later, but in her absence the Tebbutts had hired a young girl from Downham Market named Olga Dudley.

In the weeks leading up to Saturday 28 May a few small and seemingly insignificant events took place. And certainly from the perspective of Henderson and Southgate nothing occurred that warned them about the fast approaching tragedy.

They perhaps thought it was strange that Dudley did not arrive on Wednesday 25 May, but then they had heard that her mother had telephoned and Tebbutt had jotted down the following message for his partner; ‘Olga ill, cannot come till tomorrow.' Maybe they assumed Dudley was still unwell when there was still no sign of her by Saturday.

The two maids were unlikely to be privy to conversations that Tebbutt was having with his solicitor. Tebbutt had been ordered to leave securities to cover half of the annual payments due to his former wife and he had failed to do so. On that same Wednesday Alexander warned Tebbutt that a writ of judgment was about to be issued against him. Tebbutt promised to drop the securities off at the solicitor's office on Friday, but never did.

Both the maids were aware though of the event which Southgate thought had distressed Tebbutt. He was keen on shooting and kept three dogs including a spaniel and a cross-bred retriever. He was particularly fond of the retriever, which he had owned for fourteen years, and that morning had asked Mr Bennett, a local vet, to put the dog to sleep. Bennett had come to Meads End and taken the animal away. Southgate was not absolutely sure that this had greatly upset her master, but noted that if anyone mentioned the dog being destroyed ‘tears came into his eyes and he could not speak for a few minutes'.

After the vet's visit Tebbutt drove into town and settled bills at the Rock Hotel and D.H. Halls, the boot-maker, where he collected two pairs of shoes that had been repaired. He also dropped in to the Cherry Hinton Constitutional Club where he was described as ‘cheery as ever' and had one drink, but refused a second that another member offered to buy.

The family were due to go to on holiday; Tebbutt had hired a bungalow on the golf estate at Gorleston-on-Sea and they planned to stay there for a few weeks. During the evening of Friday 27 May Tebbutt had telephoned to confirm that they would arrive at about 5 p.m. on Saturday 28 May. On the following morning he returned home at about 12.15, in time to drive the two maids to the station. It had been arranged that they would catch the 1.20 p.m. train while the family would travel to Gorleston by car.