CHAPTER 20

A Shooting in Great Newton Street

1904

It was a case of rabid jealousy, and he had a revolver in his hand

n 26 February 1904, Mary Pike had an unwelcome visitor at her home in Great Newton Street. This was thirty-nine year old William Kirwan, a sailor. He was Mary’s brother-in-law and he was in a savage mood that day. His wife was there with her sister and William raged at her, saying that she had been sleeping with another man, and in that very house. Both sisters insisted that there was nothing going on and that the man’s suspicions were totally unfounded. But he had gone there in a foul mood, and he was ready to fire a gun.

Kirwan had it in his head that the two women were using the house as a brothel; what led him to those suspicious thoughts is not clear. But he was so deranged on this occasion that the slenderest scrap of suspicion would enrage him. We know nothing about the origin of all this: jealousy has its own inner language, its grammar of hatred and irrationality – the green-eyed goddess who drives men to kill the objects of their affection.

It was a case of rabid jealousy, and he had a revolver in his hand; Kirwan fired four shots, two at each woman. A man called Russell (a lodger) was the hero of the hour; he dashed in to find Kirwan dazed, gun in hand, pointing the barrel upstairs. Somehow, Russell managed to take Kirwan’s wife and children outside to temporary safety in the cellar, and again went back for Mrs Pike, taking her down there as well.

Russell had now gone down to join the women and children in the cellar and he opened a window and started shouting for a policeman.

At that point, Kirwan had reloaded the gun. What happened next was like a scene from some border town in the wild west. The madman got up from the doorstep and fired shots in the air. The street must have cleared in seconds. After that he stood across the road from the house, as if waiting for act two of the drama. But as so often happens in acts of distraction like this, when a police constable approached to arrest him, the man gave in. But here we have the tragic turn of events that also tends to happen whenever guns are involved; Mrs Pike emerged into the street and pointed across at Kirwan, saying, ‘That is the man!’ She had walked towards them, and the police officer had not yet managed to disarm Kirwan, who had one hand in a pocket. When he saw Mrs Pike coming close he pulled the gun and fired at her from very close. She collapsed, mortally wounded. We know very little about the victim; even her age is unknown.

The policeman completed the arrest and restraint, and at that moment Kirwan said to him: ‘I intended to kill the both of them. I’m sorry I didn’t. I meant it well enough.’ The revolver was taken from him very easily.

Later when charged with murder, he said: ‘I was driven to it with great provocation.’ It took a few days for Mrs Pike to die, so of course the charge was wilful murder and Kirwan was sentenced to hang. It must have been one of the jury and judge’s easiest decisions. There was hardly any doubt in the matter. He had killed the woman right in front of the officer arresting him. Mr Justice Bucknill put on the black cap, as he would do again just one day later for Ping Lun who shot his friend in Frederick Street.

His appointment with death was at Walton Gaol on 31 May 1904, was in the hands of executioner William Billington, with Henry Pierrepoint in attendance as assistant. Billington had really had to prove his professional mettle as a hangman just three years before, when he hanged three women within a year – Emily Swan at Leeds, for the murder of her boyfriend, and two women for baby-farming at Newgate: Annie Walters and Amelia Sach. The Billington dynasty were impressively skilful. A journalist, Patrick Watson, met William and called him ‘an excellent workman’ who ‘gave the most perfect satisfaction to his clients.’ A man of many quirks, Billington called the guillotine the ‘gelatin.’ He was to become well acquainted with Liverpool in the first years of the twentieth century, first as assistant and then as hangman proper.