Crimes of passion vary so much in their nature and in the surrounding circumstances, that it is always hard to differentiate between the justness of a kind of thoughtless and spontaneous action against a loved one, and a planned assault. The details of evidence given by witnesses, as well as biographical factors, are always important. In this case, there was no problem in deciding on the circumstances leading to the murder of a beloved by the lover. That this happened in the quiet market town of Caistor is all the more surprising, but then, there has always been serious crime wherever emotions exist in dangerous and extreme forms.
William Wright sat in the Talbot public house in Caistor on 28 October 1919 and muttered the words, ‘Murder, black cap, three weeks, hanged by the neck, finished.’ It was very odd behaviour. But the words proved true almost to the letter. His crime was that he strangled his sweetheart, Annie Coulbeck, with a scarf. Annie was pregnant with Wright’s child at the time. He had walked into her home at Pigeon Spring, Horse Market, and killed her, apparently over a brooch she was wearing.
The words spoken in the hotel were spoken because his sweetheart was being discussed by the people with him. Later that night he went to her at ten o’clock and the killing was done shortly after that. He had seen a lot of life, having been in the army; and he had also been a tailor. But there was not much of his life left after that night.
Annie’s body was discovered the next morning by a neighbour. The door was open, and there she was, dead on the floor. She must have still had the brooch that was the cause of Wright’s irrational jealousy. That seems to have been the reason for the murder; Annie had told Wright that the brooch was given to her by her mother, but he had been convinced that she was lying, and that she had a lover. His statement, made later in court, was that after speaking about the jewellery, he strangled her, then went home after very blandly putting out the lamp.
Of course he was soon picked up by the police, and his only defence was that there was mental illness in his family. The question was, did the man commit a premeditated murder and was he of sound mind? Defence talked about the fact that Wright’s mother had been placed in an asylum the previous year, and that other members of his family had various illnesses, such as his sister who had a religious mania, and an uncle who had been in Lincoln County Asylum, and had in fact died while incarcerated there. Had there been any real substance in this line of thought as a defence ploy, there would have had to have been ample evidence that Wright’s condition was constant and profound, not something emerging on that specific day with that self-generated provocation. It was a crime in the Othello mould, but without the grandiose stature of that tragic hero.
But none of this was to any effect; the truth was that he had spoken of murder shortly before going to kill Annie. He was aware of what he was doing at the time, and witnesses heard him speak the words in the Talbot. There was an appeal, but it was easily dismissed, and his fate was sealed. Wright talked to the prison chaplain about the day of the murder, and at last stated openly that he had intended to do it. He knew that the punishment was just. The reporter writing for a local newspaper noted that, ‘As far as is known he showed no repentance for his foul deed.’
Mr Justice Horridge did indeed wear the black cap and all the efforts of defence counsel Emery were to no avail. The man’s prophecy had been correct in every detail, apart from the fact that he died five weeks after the trial, not three weeks.
There is considerable detail recorded about his death at the hands of Henry Pierrepoint at Lincoln gaol in 1920. Wright was cool; he gave no struggle when he was pinioned, and it took only thirty seconds for him to die after stepping from the condemned cell. It had been thirteen years since there had been an execution in Lincoln.