Courtroom Ghosts

Britain’s most prolific serial killer of the modern age, whose photo I will not be sharing here, worked for a number of years at The Surgery at 21 Market Street, in the small Tameside town of Hyde. The town has the unfortunate distinction of being associated with two of the 20th century's most notorious cases of serial murder, for it was here that Ian Brady and Myra Hindley were living at the time of their arrest in October 1965. Just under thirty-three years later, Harold Shipman, a popular local GP, was arrested for the murder of one of his patients by means of the powerful opiate diamorphine; like the Moors Murderers, Shipman would be handed a whole life order. Shipman was caught because he forged the will of a patient, making changes to award himself a great deal of money. The patient, Kathleen Grundy, was a well-known figure in the local community who had once been the Mayoress of Hyde, and who had died in June 1998 at the age of 81. When her GP, Dr Shipman, told her family t...

Violent crime  committed by women is extremely rare (more than 90% of homicides are carried out by men), and sexually-motivated murders involving female perpetrators are even more unusual. So much so, in fact, that the names of the few women who have been convicted of such offences take on an almost mythical status in the collective consciousness.  One such killer is Myra Hindley. Even after her death, the public fascination with her continues.  There is a Trevor McDonald  documentary on ITV that claims that Myra Hindley and Rosemary West had a love affair while both imprisoned at Durham. It seems that there is always another angle, something new to say. But really it is just the same mugshot displayed over and over again on a outraged, horrified loop. I think most people know her story and have seen her photograph, so I'm choosing not to include either here. As much as I find crime in general interesting, I am growing increasingly uncomfortable with the way true cri...

Before I begin, I should say this post is massively tainted by my own biases and opinions, but that shouldn't be a problem because I'm right about it all. This is Mrs Georgina Weldon, one of my heroes. Mrs Weldon was born Georgina Thomas in 1837. Her father had inherited a great deal of money and as a consequence, decided to dedicate his time to being a Conservative MP, as dreadfully rich people are sometimes wont to do. Most of Georgina's childhood was spent in Italy being a talented opera singer, but in her late teens she decided to marry a lieutenant called William Weldon. Georgina's father most certainly did not approve of the marriage and so he disinherited her. It turned out that Georgina's new hubbie, Mr Weldon, was a bit of an arse, who not only refused to allow his wife to perform professionally on stage, but also had a long-standing affair, complete with love-child. Georgina, meanwhile, remained childless. Horrible Mr Weldon Eventually, Georgina Weldon too...

Evaline Hilda Burkitt In April 1914, thirty-seven-year-old Evaline Hilda Burkitt (known by her middle name) and twenty-two-year-old Florence Tunks undertook an arson campaign. First, the pair set fire to two wheat stacks at a farm in Suffolk, causing £340 worth of damage. Next, they burned down the Pavilion at the Britannia Pier in Great Yarmouth. Finally, on 28th April, they attacked the Bath Hotel in Felixstowe. This last fire caused around £35,000 of damage. Nobody was hurt in any of the blazes and indeed the women had never intended for there to be any casualties. Instead, their arson campaign was part of a wider political struggle which by 1914 had developed a level of militancy which was utterly shocking by the standards of the day. Hilda and Florence were Suffragettes and their aims were simple - they would achieve Votes for Women, using Deeds not Words. Westminster Gazette , 30th May 1914 The two women were tried at the Suffolk Assizes in Bury St Edmunds and they reportedly spe...

William Cuffey, National Portrait Gallery Justice Huddleston, the judge who presided over the original trial of the cabin boy case last week, had a long career spanning the greater part of the 19th century. Before he was a judge, Huddleston worked as a barrister and in 1848 he defended a man named William Cuffey. Cuffey was born aboard a ship in the West Indies in 1788, and his family went on to settle in Chatham in Kent, where William Cuffey trained as a tailor. He was of mixed heritage, his father being a formerly-enslaved man from the Caribbean, and his paternal grandfather having been kidnapped from Africa. In the mid 1830s, Cuffey became politically radicalised when he lost his job and eventually moved up within the ranks of the Chartist Movement to become president of the London Chartists. Chartism was the first truly working-class movement for political change that the country had seen. The 1832 Reform Act had extended voting rights, but still only gave political franchise to ab...

The Illustrated Police News , 15th November 1884 Imagine this. It is 1884 and your name is Edwin Stephens. You are an experienced seaman, with a wife and children. You join the small crew of a yacht called Mignonette , which the captain, Tom Dudley, is transporting from Southampton to Sydney on behalf of a wealthy Australian lawyer. Alongside yourself and Captain Dudley, the crew consists of another seaman, Edmund Brooks, and an orphaned cabin boy named Richard Parker. On 19th May, you set off. Everything goes splendidly until the weather turns in the middle of June. The weather eases off at the beginning of July, but then by the 3rd, as you approach the Cape of Good Hope, a storm kicks up. The storm gets worse and worse until eventually, on the 5th, Mignonette is overwhelmed and terribly damaged and you cry out "My God, her side is knocked in!" With only a few moments notice, the four of you pile into a 13 feet long lifeboat, made of quarter-inch-thick boards. The Captain gr...

January 1804. Hammersmith, London. A group of young men had begun patrolling the streets, in search of a ghost that had been terrorising the local population for the past five weeks; a locksmith had already died of fright after seeing the ghost and two more witnesses were  reportedly at death's door . In one newspaper report, it was alleged that an elderly woman had been so terrified by the sight that it brought on "a dejection of mind" from which she did not recover. A brewers' servant named Thomas Groom later testified that "I was going through the church yard between eight and nine o'clock, with my jacket under my arm, and my hands in my pocket, when some person came from behind a tomb-stone, which there are four square in the yard, behind me, and caught me fast by the throat with both hands, and held me fast; my fellow-servant, who was going on before, hearing me scuffling, asked what was the matter; then, whatever it was, gave me a twist round, and I saw...

In 2017, England and Wales celebrated fifty years since the passing of the Sexual Offences Act 1967. The Act brought in a change to the law which had, according to many media reports, decriminalised male homosexuality, and brought in a new era of freedom in which gay men no longer had to fear arrest and prosecution. That is a lie. The decriminalisation was partial, stating that both parties had to be be over the age of twenty-one (the age of consent for heterosexual sex was sixteen), and that all sexual activity had to be conducted in private. I say 'both parties' because the law also stated that "(2) an act which would otherwise be treated for the purposes of this Act as being done in private shall not be so treated if done - (a) when more than two persons take part or are present". This notion of 'in private' was interpreted extremely narrowly, so that two men could also be prosecuted if they had sex in a locked room in a house where other people were prese...