William Newton Allnutt
The pre-teen killer profiled in the last chapter came from a violent American home – but several years earlier in Britain, William Newton Allnutt was born into a British household that was equally damaging.
William was born in 1835 to a farmer and his wife. He came into the world to find that he already had five siblings. His mother was deeply distressed at the time of his birth as she’d borne the brunt of her husband’s temper for many years. But she was used to raised voices and fists as her father had also been a violent and tyrannical man.
William was a low-weight baby who was often ill. Several of his brothers and sisters were also poorly. Nevertheless his mother went on to have another two children after his birth.
When William was eighteen months old he fell against a ploughshare and the resultant injury was so severe that the doctor warned there might be brain damage. No such mental change was noted during these pre-school years but the abused little boy understandably became an increasingly sad and sullen one.
His father had by now become an alcoholic who kept terrorising his wife and all eight of his children. As a result, William sleepwalked and had terrible nightmares. The household was religious so sometimes these nightmares were filled with religious imagery.
He was an intelligent and articulate child who did well in his schoolwork and achieved a high standard of literacy. But he showed the disturbed behaviour that children from violent households invariably show – everything from fighting to truancy – so his teachers were often upset with him.
When William was nine years old his father became so cruel that he was considered insane. Mrs Allnutt at last found the courage to leave him. She sent all eight children away to boarding school or to stay with friends. (Within a year of their separation, her husband had developed epilepsy and within three years, at the age of thirty-seven, he would die.)
She now moved in with her father, Samuel Nelme, and his second wife who were both in their seventies. They had a palatial home in the Hackney district of London with its own grounds. Samuel had been a successful merchant in the city so the family were able to afford a live-in maid.
Unfortunately William’s ill health continued, and his boarding school decided to send him home. And so the small, pale boy came to live with his mother in his grandfather’s deeply religious and all-adult household. It was a cheerless life without his siblings or schoolfriends for company. Samuel Nelme had always been quick to anger – and this anger was now often directed at William when he got up to everyday boyish pranks.
In September 1847 William committed a more serious act, stealing ten sovereigns from his house. His grandfather thrashed him and lectured him endlessly about the importance of honesty.
By now William – like many beaten children – was fantasising about killing his tormentor. If his grandfather died he, William, would be safe for the very first time. The cause of the twelve-year-old’s nightmares would be over and he would be able to relax during the day with his mother. He would have a childhood at last.
William had been taught all his life that people should use violence to get their own way. After all, he’d regularly watched his father hit him, his mother and his siblings. And now he was living in a second household where the man of the house solved disputes with a weapon or with his fists.
Deciding to kill his grandfather, William somehow acquired a pistol. The next time they were walking in the garden he lagged behind and aimed the weapon at his grandfather’s head. The bullet missed and William immediately dropped the gun into the bushes. He blamed the incident on a passerby, though no such man could be found.
William continued to suffer at his grandfather’s hands. The old man found the twelve-year-old boy untruthful – but William was presumably afraid to tell the truth in case it led to further verbal or physical abuse.
One day his grandfather struck him so hard that he went flying and hit his head on a table. The pain was terrible. Worse, his grandfather said that he would almost kill him next time. The underweight and undersized boy was no match for the well built adult and may well have feared for his life.
He watched the household’s rats being poisoned by arsenic and realised he could use this to get rid of his batterer. He added the white powder to the sugar bowl, knowing that his grandfather craved sweet foods.
Over the ensuing week, every adult in the household became increasingly ill, vomiting violently. Samuel Nelme was the worst affected as he added sugar to so many of his drinks and meals. For the next six days his stomach and bowels voided their contents over and over. The doctor who was summoned found him writhing in bed and suspected he was suffering from English cholera. Ironically, each time he felt slightly better his daughter would give him some sweetened gruel to tempt his appetite. After six days spent in increasing agony, he died.
An autopsy showed that Samuel Nelme had ingested arsenic on several occasions. The police were called in to question the family and his mother admitted that her son had asked her about how arsenic worked. More damningly, he’d told the maidservant that he thought his grandfather would die very soon.
William refused to admit that he’d put arsenic in the sugar so was initially arrested for stealing his grandfather’s watch. But whilst in Newgate Jail he was visited by a Chaplain who suggested he admit his guilt to save his soul.
The twelve-year-old then wrote a letter to his mother saying that he deserved to be ‘sent to Hell.’ The child clearly had no inkling that the violence he’d suffered for so many years had, in turn, made him violent. Instead he said that he wished he’d listened to his mother’s religious teachings and that ‘Satan got so much power’ over him that he’d killed the elderly man.
On 15th December 1847 he was tried before a jury at the Old Bailey. The counsel offered an insanity defence and four doctors testified that William’s head injuries and a hereditary taint had driven him to madness. His mother testified that the boy heard voices telling him to steal.
But the judge said that the child was sane and found him guilty of murder. At this, the twelve-year-old almost collapsed and the wardens had to hold him up. The judge sentenced him to death but the sentence was almost immediately lifted, after which William Allnutt disappears from the record books. He may have been transported or given life imprisonment as young prisoners were treated very harshly in those unenlightened times.