CHAPTER 3

Death in Chelsea, 1920

he read Buxton’s hand and told her that she would meet a violent end – and now she is murdered

Mrs Frances Buxton, aged 53, was the landlady of the Cross Keys pub on Lawrence Street, Chelsea. She had been married to one Frank Charles Buxton in Toronto, Canada, in 1888, and they had had at least one married daughter by 1920. This was Mrs Gwendolin Wehrle of Phene Street, also in Chelsea. In about 1908, Frances had separated from her husband. This was due to his dislike of her political views (she favoured the suffragettes and, worse still, socialism) and also because he had had an affair in America and passed a venereal disease onto her. She did not see him again until August 1919 and at this time, he was the landlord of the Sussex Hall, Sidley, at Bexhill on Sea. He never saw her again. Mrs Buxton had been the licensee of at least three pubs; the old George at Kensington, the Star at Isleworth and, since 1914, the Cross Keys. When she was at the Star, she took on a partner, a younger man called Arthur Cutting, and he was her partner at the Cross Keys, too. This was not an unmixed blessing. One Henry John Penn, of Stern Street, Shepherd’s Bush, a ball finisher’s assistant and an old friend of Mrs Buxton (since at least 1910), recalled, ‘I remember on one occasion Mrs Buxton came to my place at Shepherd’s Bush and asked me to come over and stay the night at her house to protect her, as this Mr Cutting had attacked her and held her down.’ We shall hear more of Cutting later.