CHAPTER 22

The Madge Kirby Mystery

1904

The probable killer wrote taunting letters to the police …

his is a story with a dark and familiar scenario: children out alone, prey to psychopathic predators. We still read stories like this far too regularly in the daily papers. The most we can hope for is some kind of closure, but in this mystery, nothing was resolved and the probable killer wrote taunting letters to the police.

Little Margaret Kirby lived with her sister and father in Romilly Street in January 1908. Her mother had died just a few weeks before this very sad new year began. She was blue-eyed and with brown hair. On this fateful day she was wearing a black shirt and blue pinafore, and with a velvet bonnet and black stockings and boots. Madge and her friend Annie McGovern went out to play and as they walked in Farnworth Street a man approached and offered to buy them sweets. Little Madge accepted and went with the stranger. She was seen on several occasions after that; most clearly by Robert Woodside, who was working in a shop and saw her walking with the man. He had heard the news that she was missing and followed the pair, after calling out to her: ‘Come on Madge.’ This was while he was delivering goods to a house on Rupert Hill.

As Robert moved towards them and called out, the man restrained Madge and pulled her back to him. Robert made it to just three yards from them, but then the man chased him, and it seems that little Madge was so petrified that she stayed by some railings and made no attempt to escape. Robert did all the right things: he told his father and then went to the Bridewell at Prescot Street to let the law know what he had seen.

Months passed by and spring changed to summer. Then, on 15 August, the worst fears of family and police were realised when a girl’s body was found in a sack in Great Newton Street. A workman had seen it and cut it open. He must have been shocked when he found a decaying corpse inside – the body of a child almost naked. It seems as though the sack had only just been moved, prior to demolition work. It had been in a cellar for a long time, and advanced forensics would have made progress in the investigation quite swift, as there were handprints in the dust on the door-jamb. The report in the newspaper at the time said that these were being photographed, but nothing came of this.

Poor David Kirby, only a young man, had to take that terrible journey to identify the body at Princes Dock mortuary. He recognised her clothes immediately, but her body was in such a deteriorated condition that he could not be sure about that. The man was emotionally wrecked. He had to state that he was satisfied that what he had seen was his daughter. There was clearly a great deal of sympathy for the man, including that from Mr Sampson, the coroner.

After so long and after a long and fruitless search for her, Madge Kirby was buried at the Catholic cemetery. Large crowds of people came out to pay their respects and give support to the broken young man. But there was to be such horror still to come, as a letter from a man who claimed to be her killer arrived at the police station. The Weekly Mercury took up the tale with a reproduction of the letter: something with a tone very much like the Ripper letters and later, the Wearside Jack letters. The tone and content was meant to provoke and display some perverted egoism. Part of it reads: ‘I should like to throw a little light on the murder of my victim, Madge Kirby. Some years ago I was a lodger at 15 Great Newton Street so that I knew the house thoroughly. I am still in possession of a key to the front door …’