The house in Back Lane. (Author’s collection)
There was a gap of three years between the first execution Billington conducted in August 1884 and the second in 1887, but from then until the end of Berry’s reign in 1891 Billington established himself as the executioner for Yorkshire.
This regional role served as an apprenticeship for his subsequent arrival as number one. Through this period the executions increased in both frequency and complexity, culminating in a final case that was described by the judge as, ‘one of the most frightful atrocities that had ever been made public.’
Billington conducted eight executions during this period, beginning with the hanging of fifty-four-year-old Henry Hobson on 22 August 1887.
Hobson had been in the army for fourteen years, during which time he had been awarded three good conduct badges. After leaving in 1875 he took up employment at a Sheffield engineering works owned by the Stothard family. He held the position of engine tenter until September 1886 when Mrs Stothard dismissed him for ‘drunkenness, incapacity and neglect of duty.’ Over the following ten months he found it impossible to hold down regular employment. He started to drink more heavily and began to focus his bitterness towards the Stothard family.
John Henry Stothard was the son of the owners and married to Ada. John had his own business manufacturing horns but Ada was a familiar face at the Stothard works and knew Hobson by sight.
At just after half-past ten on the morning of Saturday 23 July 1887, ten months after Hobson’s dismissal, Ada was at home, her baby was asleep in its crib and she was busy working with her servant, Florence Moseley. The two women were in the kitchen when Hobson knocked on the door, asking for a drink of water.
Ada handed him the drink and added, ‘We haven’t anything else.’
He replied, ‘A drink of water will do,’ but returned fifteen minutes later asking for a piece of string. Ada went to find some, but as soon as she had left the room Hobson pulled out a knife and attacked Florence. She put her hand to her throat in an attempt to protect her neck, an action which undoubtedly saved her life, but left her with severe cuts to the shoulder and cheek and an almost severed thumb.
Ada was alerted by Florence’s screams and rushed back into the room. Hobson immediately abandoned his attack on the young girl and turned on Ada.
Florence ran through a passage that led from the house into the street and attracted the attention of Mr Hardy, a local greengrocer, who ran back into the passage and met Hobson coming towards him. Hobson pointed back into the house and said, ‘He’s just gone upstairs.’
Hardy and several neighbours entered the house and found Ada slumped in a corner bleeding heavily from three gashes to the throat. The baby was unharmed, but Ada died before she could receive any help. The police immediately launched a manhunt and posted some of Hobson’s former work colleagues, including a man named Pursglove, at local railway stations to help with identification.
At half-past one Hobson turned along Furnival Road. He had changed his coat and vest and was calmly walking towards Sheffield’s Victoria station. Pursglove spotted him and Hobson was arrested and charged.
At the subsequent trial Hobson pleaded ‘not guilty’. The only known motive for the crime was revenge for the loss of his job. However, the evidence against him, which included the testimony of Florence Moseley, was conclusive. He was found guilty and sentenced to death but continued to claim to be innocent until the end.
He was hanged at Armley Gaol, Leeds; Billington allowed a drop of 7ft 4in and death was instantaneous.
The year 1888 had the potential to be Billington’s busiest year to date when he was engaged to execute three murderers; Mary Holloway on Monday 21 May, followed by Dr Burke and James William Richardson in a double execution on the Tuesday morning. On his arrival in Leeds, Billington was informed that both Burke and Holloway had been reprieved.
In a parallel to the Hobson case this execution was also the result of a work related dispute. Richardson had worked for the Brick & Carbon Works in Barnsley until 21 March when he was dismissed by the foreman William Burridge. In a rage he went home and returned armed with a pistol, he asked to speak to Burridge and the two men went out into the works’ yard. A witness reported that Richardson was ‘highly agitated’ and moments later heard three shots.
Two of the bullets hit Burridge, one in the lower body and the second lodged in his skull. Richardson immediately commented that he ‘must’ve been mad’ and went willingly to the nearest police station. Burridge’s head injury proved to be fatal and he died on 1 April.
Despite Richardson’s remorse, the campaign to save him failed and the execution went ahead as scheduled. Richardson left behind a letter telling his wife that he loved her.
Billington conducted three executions in 1899, one on the first day of the year and his first double on the last. The men, Charles Bulmer, Frederick Brett and Robert West, had all committed similar crimes under similar circumstances: each had murdered his wife whilst drunk, and in each case the murder weapon was a knife. This was a blueprint for many of the Billington cases, usually triggered by the catalyst of either money troubles or jealousy. Often such domestic killings made minimal impact outside the local area but Brett managed to buck this trend. He cut the throat of his wife, Margaret, and on his arrest was widely quoted as saying, ‘I was only acting at Jack the Ripper.’ His apparently casual remark spawned minor headlines in newspapers as far afield as America. The Brett and West execution was Billington’s first double; he carried it out with no assistant and again without any hitch.
Billington’s next visit to Leeds was on 26 August 1890 for the execution of yet another wife murderer, James Harrison, who had beaten Hannah Harrison to death with a poker. Harrison was executed at the same time as Berry was hanging Frederick Davis in Birmingham.
There was a total of seventeen hangings during 1890, but it was an equally eventful year in James’ private life. Alice died; she was just forty years old and left James with six children to care for at their home in Manchester Road, Farnworth.
There is no indication that his personal problems led him to turn down any opportunity to officiate at an execution and on 30 December both Billington and Berry were again conducting simultaneous executions. Berry was in Liverpool to hang Thomas McDonald, an habitual offender found guilty of the murder of a schoolteacher, while Billington was engaged at York for the execution of thirty-two-year-old Robert Kitching.
The Kitching case was followed closely by national as well as regional papers. The victim, Sergeant James Weedy, was a policeman with twenty years’ service and a reputation for bravery. He was also a married man with nine children who had died as the result of a trivial event.
Kitching, Weedy and both their families lived in the village of Leeming Lane, on the border between Durham and York. On 19 September 1890, Kitching was drinking at the Leeming Bar public house when Sergeant Weedy noticed that Kitching had left his horse and cart unattended outside. Weedy went inside and spoke to Kitching, but Kitching was far too drunk and became abusive, threatening Weedy as well as other people before going home. At around 10.30 p.m. Kitching’s wife took herself and their children to a neighbour’s house for protection and shortly afterwards she heard a gunshot.
Weedy’s body was found the following morning close to Kitching’s house, he’d been shot through the neck from close range. Kitching had gone to some lengths to move the body and dispose of the weapon, but was arrested at Richmond Market later in the day. In many ways the case was straightforward, however a policeman dying in the line of duty coupled with the detailed accounts of Kitching’s attempts to cover his tracks gave Billington his first taste of a high profile case.
For a time Berry and Billington’s paths seemed linked by little more than a few coincidental dates, but it was a week and a day and five executions in August 1891 that saw the change in fortunes for both men’s hanging careers.
Four of these five executions were Berry’s: on 18 August he was engaged at Chelmsford, at Wandsworth on the 19th, then at Liverpool on the 20th and finally at Winchester on the 25th.
The man due to be hanged at Kirkdale Prison, Liverpool was John Conway, a ship’s fireman convicted of the murder of a ten-year-old boy, Nicholas Martin, whose body had been recovered from a bag found floating in Sandon Basin, Liverpool Docks.
The murder was horrific, but so was the execution.
Conway was sixty years old, and weighed 11st 2lb. Berry claimed that he had intended to allow a drop of 4ft 6in, but that he had been over-ruled by the prison doctor, Dr Barr. According to Berry, Barr preferred the long-drop and wanted Conway to be given 6ft 8in. The final compromise was a drop of exactly 6ft; enough to rupture the blood vessels in Conway’s neck and coming close to decapitating him. The ensuing spectacle was reported in detail, with Berry taking the brunt of the blame. One report in the Liverpool Daily Press stated:
The rope, looked at from the brink of the scaffold, was embedded deep into the flesh of Conway’s neck, like a saw in a piece of timber through which it has almost cut. It would have been better perhaps had a less drop been given, for Conway was an old man, and some allowance should have been made for wear and tear of human muscle …
… The sight was one of the most horrifying descriptions that has ever been seen at any execution at Kirkdale. The scene at the scaffold was enough to shock even those who are well-accustomed to those awful legal tragedies. There was a painful interval after Father Bronté had ceased to speak. The outpouring of Conway’s blood could be heard distinctly all over the room, and the pit became like a shambles.
Berry was deeply upset by what had occurred and left Kirkdale before the inquest at which the prison Governor, Major Knox, insisted that everything had been handled without a hitch. Conway was buried within the prison precincts on the same day but the press, who had not been allowed to view the body on this occasion, continued to vilify Berry. He was said to have hurried Conway’s execution, behaving in a ‘rude, officious and cruel’ manner, even that he had pinioned the prisoner too tightly. After that execution Berry decided to resign, but he was left with one English execution to which he had already committed himself. Berry executed wife murderer Edward Fawcett at Winchester on 25 August, then retired, leaving the path clear for James Billington to fulfill his longtime ambition of being number one.1
The only Billington execution during those fateful eight days took place at Leeds, and the crime which precipitated his final execution as Yorkshire hangman was possibly only matched in horror by that which had precipitated the first.
Barbara Whitham Waterhouse was the daughter of David and Elizabeth Waterhouse and was five years and five months old. The family lived in Alma Yard in Horsforth. Saturday 6 June 1891 started the same as many others with Barbara eating breakfast at around 9 a.m. then going out to play in the yard. She was described by her mother as healthy, strong and well nourished. Her mother saw her at around noon but shortly afterward realised that her daughter was missing. She was not immediately alarmed but began searching for her straight away. Barbara had never strayed before and as she had no money when she disappeared it seemed unlikely that she would attempt a trip to the shops. Barbara was not particularly fond of sweets and Elizabeth felt it was very unlikely that someone could have enticed her daughter away by offering her anything.
Elizabeth and David Waterhouse spent the afternoon scouring the neighbourhood and informed the police. They searched any unlocked yards that Barbara might have wandered in to, but saw no sign of her.
As news spread of her disappearance people came forward to report sightings. Elizabeth’s cousin, Joshua Witham, had seen Barbara at about 12.45 p.m., she had been walking away from her home, and in the direction of some of the shops. When he’d seen her she was almost outside Dean’s Boot Shop, he described her as ‘alone and quite cheerful.’
Butcher’s son, Thompson Bussey saw Barbara at 1.30 p.m.; he was a school monitor and recognised her. When he noticed her she was standing outside the grocer’s shop with a little girl named Ethel Witham. From there he saw them walk towards the post office and the last thing he noticed was the two girls stopping outside.
Later, Eleanor Pointon, a trustworthy but vague witness, recalled that she had last seen Barbara on either 5 or 6 June, and at either 10.30 a.m. or 1 p.m. Eleanor had been working behind the counter in her father’s sweet shop at the time and Barbara had come in to buy one or two ham sandwiches, while another child had been waiting outside for her.
Thompson and Eleanor’s information was tied together by Mrs Witham, mother of a child named Emily. Thompson had been mistaken about the second child’s name and Eleanor had been vague about almost everything else, but Mrs Witham explained that she had sent her daughter, who was only three years old, on an errand to buy sandwiches from Mr Pointon’s shop. The Whithams lived near the Waterhouses in Alma Yard, and they knew Barbara. It was in the days after her disappearance that Emily told her mother that ‘Barbara went with me.’ Mrs Witham said that her daughter had left home at about 1 p.m. and had returned within ten minutes.
There were no other sightings of little Barbara.
As her mother searched the streets there was one person that she remembered seeing on several occasions, a local woman that she knew only by sight. Her name was Mrs Ann Turner and she lived with her son, Walter, at 1 Back Lane, Horsforth. Mrs Waterhouse had no recollection of seeing Walter that afternoon and no one searched the Turner’s yard, which was always kept locked. In those first hours there was no reason for suspicion to fall on the Turner family.
Walter Turner was a thirty-two-year-old mill worker. He had started renting the house in Back Lane in March 1891, which was when his mother began to live with him. Ann was a widow and Walter was separated from his wife Helen. The house was a former pub and stood out because it still had the bracket on the wall from which the pub sign had once hung.
Neither Ann nor Walter was happy with the accommodation and complained about damp and rats. On the morning of Barbara’s disappearance one of Mrs Turner’s visits was to Mary Ann Robinson, wife of Abraham Robinson, who was the owner of the Back Lane property. When Mrs Turner stopped by at 12.30 p.m. to pay her rent, she also asked whether she could look at another house that the Robinson’s had available. She viewed this and told Mrs Robinson that she would speak to Walter and let her know on Monday.
Ann then made the six-mile trip into Leeds to visit her daughter’s family and also a friend, Mary Cotterill. Ann’s daughter, Jesse Maria, was deaf and married to a deaf and dumb man named Thomas Joy. He was a bookbinder by trade and had a small workshop at their home in Crown Street, Leeds. Jesse and Thomas had been married for almost fifteen years and had a son, George.
Ann arrived just after 3 p.m. and spent the afternoon with the family, shopping with her daughter before leaving for home at about 5 p.m. She brought George back with her and the two of them arrived in Horsforth around 8 p.m.
Walter was home and everything seemed normal, although George noticed that the settee was not in its usual position but had been moved across the cellar door. At 10 p.m. they went to bed, George sharing a room with his uncle and Ann taking the other bedroom.
When George woke in the morning, Walter was already downstairs with a fire burning in the hearth and extra coal in a coal box near the cellar door. George couldn’t remember seeing the Turners use a coal box before, but with his uncle lying on the settee and the settee blocking the cellar door he assumed this was just a more convenient way of tending to the fire.
When Ann woke she took her grandson for a walk to the nearby woods. They were gone for about two hours, during which time they assumed Walter stayed at home. In fact, Walter’s whereabouts could not be confirmed during that period or, more importantly, throughout most of the previous day. It seems Ann had no suspicions at this point, even though the Turner family was keeping a very telling secret about his past.
On Saturday 6 June Walter Turner had not turned up for work, the last time his co-workers, Elizabeth Kemp and Sarah Jane Gaulter, had seen him had been on Friday the 5th when, as usual, he had worked at the next loom. He hadn’t seemed unwell and they had no idea why he had not arrived for the Saturday shift.
Turner was later described as bearded and ‘considerably under the average size, and slight of frame; but his head is large, and his forehead especially high.’ He was slightly cocky by nature, but not in a talkative way, rather someone who remained detached and unconcerned. He had previously been in court on a relatively minor charge in 1889 and reporters at the time observed that he appeared cool and indifferent.
In fact his calm appearance in 1889 hid the fact that his private life was in turmoil and in the summer of 1890 his wife, Helen, left him. She fled to America, preferring to start a new life there after Walter had attempted to murder her. No charges were brought, but Ann and Jesse were both well aware of the violent streak that Walter Turner possessed.
Mrs Turner returned to her landlord and landlady first thing on Monday 8 June and asked for the key to the new house, telling Mrs Robinson that she and Walter planned to move their things in that afternoon. At around 3 p.m. Walter and Ann were seen moving a tin trunk between the two properties.
On Wednesday 10 June Ann Turner visited Mary Cotterill, the two women had known each other for almost twenty years and Mary was someone that Ann felt she could confide in. While Mary’s children were still in the room Ann stayed silent, but Mary could tell that something was distressing her friend and sent them out to play. She asked Ann what was wrong several times before Ann replied, ‘There’s been nothing less than murder in our house.’
‘Is it the missing child at Horsforth?’ Mary asked.
‘I suppose it isn’t or it is,’ was the cryptic reply.
Knowing Ann had been in Leeds on the previous Saturday, Mary stated, ‘It is impossible for you to have had anything to do with this.’
‘I am as innocent as you are,’ Ann claimed.
She then went on to explain that she had gone into her coal cellar early on Monday morning and found a ‘bundle’, she touched it and realised in horror that it was a body. Walter heard her scream and assured her, ‘It is nothing I have done.’ He claimed the murder had been committed by someone named Jack with whom he’d been drinking.
Ann said that although she had kept it secret she had neither eaten nor slept, and to Mary’s horror told her that she had purchased some chloride of lime which she had placed on the body to mask the smell. She then said, ‘We’ve brought it down in a tin box to Tom’s shop in Leeds.’
Mrs Cotterill and her husband advised Ann to contact the police and, although promising to do so, she in fact returned to the Joys’ house just after 9 p.m. and had another conversation with Walter.
Jesse could sense that her mother was distressed and, using sign language, asked her what was wrong. Ann spelt out her reply: ‘I won’t tell you, it’s worse than Helen.’
In the end Walter and Ann then carried the trunk through the centre, towards the Town Hall. Ann hung back as Walter abandoned its contents at the gates of the Municipal Buildings in Alexander Street. They returned to the Joys’ house. The next morning George was offered the empty trunk, but he said he didn’t want it. Ann then cleaned it thoroughly with a duster which she then burnt.
Barbara Waterhouse’s body was discovered by PC William Moss at 11.40 p.m. on Wednesday 10 June. She was wrapped in a shawl. Her body was carried to the Town Hall and the police surgeon was summoned. He noted that the child was fully dressed, and that the clothes had not been cut or disarranged in any way. Despite this, her body had suffered substantial knife wounds.
By 12 June it seems that the stress of keeping Walter’s terrible secret had become too much of a burden for Ann Turner. She arrived at the Leeds detective office and made a statement to the officer on duty, Inspector Sowerby, which read:
I have a son named Walter Turner, thirty-two years of age, a weaver by trade who works at Messrs Lonsdale’s Mill, Horsforth. On Monday last I noticed a bundle in the coal-house under the stairs in my house. It was wrapped in the shawl shown to me now, which is my property. I was from home on Saturday last. On Monday I asked my son what was in the bundle. He replied, ‘I’ll tell you sometime. It’s nothing I have done.’ I did not look inside the bundle though I touched it. I thought something was wrong. I had used the shawl on my son’s bed. My son Walter was in Leeds some time on Wednesday evenings. On Wednesday night I was with him. We brought the bundle with us and left in the street in the heart of the Town Hall. We then walked home, and arrived about 1 o’clock. We brought the bundle in a tin box to Leeds and left the box at the railway station. I have not seen it since.
Inspector Sowerby and a colleague, DS MacKenzie, took Mrs Turner to Midland station where they found the tin box, they then returned via the Municipal Buildings where she also identified the spot where the body had been left. As a result of this both Ann and Walter Turner were arrested. When she was charged Ann said, ‘There is no doubt it was done on Saturday, I have no hesitation in saying so, but I know no more about it than any of you.’
The trial of Walter and Ann Turner began on 30 July 1891 at Leeds Assizes with Mr Justice Grantham presiding, Mr Charles Mellor, leading counsel for the defence, and Mr Harold Thomas, counsel for the prosecution.
Mr Charles Mellor initially argued that there was insufficient evidence to charge the prisoners with murder and suggested that the charge should be altered to being ‘accessories after the fact’. After some debate the judge decided that they should be first tried with being accessories and if found guilty they could subsequently be tried for murder. Mr Mellor persuaded the judge that the prisoners should be tried separately, and Ann Turner was tried first on a charge ‘that she did feloniously receive, harbour, maintain and assist the murder and removal of the body’. That Ann Turner knew that there was a body, firstly in her house and secondly in the trunk that she and Walter were moving, was never disputed.
During the trial, Mr Cotterill’s statement showed that Ann Turner’s admission to the police had not been wholly brought about by the burden of keeping Walter’s secret. She had visited the Cotterills on 8 June and for a second time on 10 June. On the first visit she had promised to contact the police so, on 10 June, when she admitted to Mr Cotterill that she had done nothing, he told her that she had to go immediately to the police otherwise he would. There was a gap of only a couple of hours between his threat and her arrival at the police station.
Ann Turner also claimed that part of her reason for trying to conceal the crime was the fear that local people would lynch them if they heard that she and her son were involved. There was no evidence put forward to support this. She had taken an active part in disposing of Barbara Waterhouse’s body, so it was a doomed argument from her defence counsel, who tried to convince the jury that her only offence was allowing her ‘great maternal love’ to motivate her into trying to protect her son.
After Ann Turner was found guilty the judge told her that she had been ‘found guilty of one of the most serious crimes known to the law. This was aiding and abetting in one of the most frightful atrocities that had ever been made public.’ He disagreed with the recommendation for leniency that had come from the jury and imposed the full penalty of penal servitude for life.
Some members of the public applauded, while Ann Turner herself appeared shocked by the severity of the sentence and had to be helped back into a chair by a female warder. The Leeds Evening Express inaccurately stated that Ann Turner was due for release in August 1892; she died in prison.
The following day Ann Turner was brought before the court again, this time on the charge of murder. She was asked to choose whether or not she was prepared to testify against her son; refusal to do so would incriminate her, but her co-operation would guarantee that she would be acquitted. She agreed to testify and the murder charge against her was immediately dropped.
Walter Turner chose to plead ‘not guilty’ and a new jury was sworn in. Prosecution counsel, Harold Thomas, admitted that the evidence was largely circumstantial but impressed upon the jury that they needed to be completely satisfied that Walter Turner was the only person who could have committed the murder.
When Ann took the stand she avoided giving direct answers to most of the questions put to her and her testimony added nothing further to the case against her son. This new jury then heard from the Cotterills, the Joys and several other witnesses who had given evidence at Ann Turner’s trial. One new witness was Mr Ed Ward, the police surgeon who, for the first time, detailed the injuries to Barbara Waterhouse.
There were forty-six different cuts and stab wounds to the chest, but only three of these showed any sign of bleeding. One of these, a deep wound of between 15in and 18in long, extending from the neck down through the front of the body, had been the cause of death. Initially, the time of death was thought to be less than sixty hours before the discovery of the body, i.e. just a few hours before Ann discovered the body in her own home. However, after an examination of the Turner’s cellar and consideration of the weather at the time, it was decided that Barbara’s death could have occurred almost immediately after her disappearance.
Mr Ward went on to say:
On the surface of the body and the clothing and in some of the wounds was a soft white substance which was found to be chloride of lime. The muscles were completely divided in each groin, and there was a long wound on the inner side of each thigh. There were some wounds in the liver which must have been done after the body was opened. Externally the private parts of the body were mutilated almost out of recognition. There was a large wound beginning at the root of the neck which went along the middle line of the body, completely dividing it. This had the appearance of a continuous wound but had probably been inflicted in two cuts. There were two stabs over the region of the heart which might have bled. The wounds might have been inflicted with a knife having a blade two inches long, half an inch wide and having one sharp edge.
In the stomach of the child was part of an orange, which did not seem to have been in the stomach more than an hour before death. From the wounds there must have been 3lb of blood, which would be nearly half a gallon, and there must have been a great quantity of blood left somewhere. The cause of death was haemorrhage from the large wound in the chest.
Mr Ward had examined floorboards taken up from both of the Turner houses and did not think that Barbara Waterhouse could have been killed at either; in his opinion it would have been impossible for the killer, certainly a lone killer, to have avoided substantial bloodstains. He felt it was far more likely that the murder had occurred elsewhere. If it had taken place outside he felt confident that the killer could have acted alone. One stained floorboard from the Turner’s house was examined; it had been scrubbed but still bore a dark red stain, possibly in the shape of a boot print. Unfortunately the mark was too faint for the forensic tests of the day to determine whether it was made by blood.
Mellor summed up in Turner’s defence. He asked the jury to consider three major deficits in the prosecution’s case. Firstly, that there was no proof that Turner had had any contact with Barbara Waterhouse before her death, Turner was not known to the girl and there was no reason to believe that he had given her the orange to eat. Secondly, numerous sightings of Barbara proved that she was still alive and well after lunch on 6 June, but the prosecution could not produce a witness who could show that Walter Turner had left home at all after 10 a.m. Thirdly, no motive had been put forward for the crime.
This final point was not completely accurate, the prosecution had raised the point that one particular wound had been inflicted in the genital area, either as part of a sexual assault or by a knife.As the knife may have caused the wound, they were not totally confident in assuming the motive had been sexual. They did not offer an alternative motive.
The great lengths that Turner had gone to in order to hide and dispose of the body convinced the jury that he was guilty and the judge passed the death sentence. Turner remained unemotional until the end, neither protesting his innocence nor confessing.
James Billington arrived in Leeds on Monday 17 August, he immediately reported to the Governor, Major Lane, and together they made an inspection of the scaffold. The following morning at 8 a.m. Turner took the short walk from the condemned cell to the gallows. Press representatives were not permitted at the execution, just gaol officials and three borough justices. Billington allowed a drop of 8ft and death was instantaneous. Turner supposedly left behind a note claiming that he had been drugged with beer and that someone else had committed the murder, but no credibility was ever attached to this.
Endnote
1 This was Berry’s last execution in England, but he went on to conduct one further execution in the British Isles.