In Doncaster, in September 1953, a woman walked up to a policeman brandishing a newspaper at him, saying, ‘I am the woman you have been looking for. I murdered her.’ The victim in question was her daughter, Lorna, and the killer was Mrs Eva Williamson, aged forty, who had been missing for over twenty-four hours since her husband had come to her home in Highcliff Gardens, Scunthorpe, and found the body of his young niece. This area is one of comfortable semi-detached homes, safe, peaceful and ordinary. The street would be the last place one would expect a brutal ‘domestic’ murder to take place.
This is a sad case. Remanded in custody and given legal aid, Eva was then taken to Manchester for specialist mental care. Something in her had snapped and an everyday domestic issue had led to her battering her daughter to death. Little Lorna, only fourteen, was a frail girl who went to Doncaster Road Girls’ School. On the fateful day she had been at home from school on holiday. A mood and an altercation, normally settled after an emotional storm, led to something much worse.
The girl was found on the floor of the living room, bludgeoned to death, and the body discovered by her father Harry when he came home from work. He was a paint-sprayer at Appleby Frodingham and had come straight home after his shift. A telling detail is that the curtains were drawn to, suggesting that Eva had had some small twinge of emotion leading her to cover and enclose the awful thing she had done.
The hunt for her was soon in progress, as her absence suggested either guilt or perhaps abduction. There were some signs of a scuffle, and this led to police being concerned that she might have been taken and abandoned in one of the quieter areas close to the edge of town. They even brought in dogs from as far away as Melton Mowbray. But then Doncaster CID phoned Scunthorpe to say the mother was in safe keeping, and Scunthorpe detectives went by car to collect her.