17

‘To kill is one thing; to commit murder is another’

Woodhouse Mill, near Sheffield, South Yorkshire, 1893

At just after thre o’clock on the morning of 16 February 1893, George Bradshaw was awakened by a scream from the room directly below his bedroom in his lodgings at Woodhouse Mill, near Sheffield. Bradshaw got out of bed and went to the top of the stairs, calling out, ‘What’s amiss, Ted?’ to the occupants of the room.

‘Nowt,’ was the terse reply from miner Edward Hemmings and, knowing that Edward’s wife Annie suffered from occasional fits, which sometimes caused her to scream out loud, Bradshaw reasoned that her husband was coping with whatever problem had arisen and went back to bed. He was briefly woken again by the sound of a door slamming, at which the thought crossed his mind that Hemmings might have gone for a doctor for his wife but then Bradshaw slept soundly until it was time for him to get up for work. Bradshaw would always knock on Hemmings’s bedroom door to wake him when he went past on his way downstairs but this morning there was no response. Concerned that Annie might need assistance Bradshaw continued to tap on the door but could hear no signs of life from within the room. After calling out ‘Annie’ several times, Bradshaw opened the door and peered into the bedroom. In the semi-darkness, he could just make out someone lying on the floor, covered with bedclothes taken from the bed. Bradshaw pulled the covers aside, recoiling in horror when he found twenty-one-year-old Annie Hemmings in a pool of blood, her head almost severed from her body.

Bradshaw roused his landlord and landlady, as well as the two other lodgers, Frederick Ravendale and Benjamin Rowley, sending Rowley to fetch the police and a doctor. Surgeon Arthur William Scott arrived at the house at 6.30 a.m. and determined that Annie had been hit hard on her forehead above her left eye, fracturing her skull and leaving a gaping hole, through which her brain protruded. Not only that but Annie’s throat had been cut from ear to ear, severing her windpipe and Scott noted another small cut on her neck and one on her right cheek, along with deep cuts on her fingers, as if she had grasped the blade of a sharp instrument. The entire room was awash with blood and Scott gave the cause of Annie’s death as haemorrhage, due to the severing of all the major blood vessels in her throat.

Having ascertained that Hemmings had not reported for work that morning, the police immediately began a search for him, during which a small hatchet was found in a water-filled ditch on his normal route to Treeton Colliery, his place of employment. Hemmings’s landlady, Eliza Kennington, identified it as one that usually hung on a nail in her kitchen and was used for chopping wood. When compared with the hole in the victim’s forehead, the axe head corresponded exactly with the size and shape of the wound.

Meanwhile, Edward Hemmings walked to Rotherham and on to Doncaster, where he spent the night on the tramp ward in the workhouse. He then walked to Featherstone, where he had a wash and something to eat at a friend’s house, before continuing to Normanton in Derbyshire, where he and Annie were married less than a year earlier, on 4 June 1892. On the evening of 17 February, he arrived on the doorstep of a house where he used to lodge before his marriage and spoke to his former landlady, who had read about the murder in the newspapers and told him that the police had already been to see her at 4 a.m. that morning.

‘Oh, Ted, I never expected to see you alive again,’ Mrs Charlotte Fox exclaimed. ‘I thought you would have drowned yourself.’

‘I think too much of myself to do that,’ Hemmings replied.

Since he claimed to have eaten nothing all day but a turnip he pulled from the ground, Mrs Fox made him something to eat, before asking him if he really had killed his wife.

‘I did,’ he replied, asking if he might have some tobacco. He showed Mrs Fox a cap, claiming that it belonged to Annie, telling her that he had brought it with him so that he might have something of hers to remember her by. ‘I loved the ground she stood on,’ he said, questioning Mr Fox about whether or not she thought that he ought to turn himself in to the police.

Mrs Fox told him that there were so many policemen looking for him that he was bound to be caught before too long and so Hemmings went to the Normanton police house, which was occupied by Inspector Turton and his family. Since Turton was out, Hemmings promptly handed himself in to Mrs Turton and when the inspector returned, he found Hemmings sitting waiting for him.

‘Hello Ted. What are you doing here?’ the surprised policeman asked.

‘I’ve given myself up to your wife,’ Hemmings informed him and was immediately formally charged with murdering Annie. Although cautioned not to say anything that may be used in evidence against him, Hemmings continued to talk, claiming that he had no regrets about killing his wife. ‘I thought it well over before I did it and I will go to the scaffold like a man,’ he stated, adding, ‘If ever a man loved a woman, I loved her.’

‘She was a bit bad tempered at times,’ Hemmings admitted, as he was handcuffed and taken by train to Sheffield. ‘I struck her but I didn’t think of killing her,’ he told Turton, while they were travelling, ‘but then I thought I should get five years, so I might as well finish her off.’

While Hemmings was detained in Burngreave police station, coroner Mr D. Wightman resumed an adjourned inquest at The Junction Hotel in Woodhouse. The coroner expressed surprise that Hemmings was not present and suggested that he should have the opportunity of questioning the witnesses, if he so desired. Superintendent Beilby disagreed with the coroner and after some discussion between them, Wightman agreed to proceed without Hemmings.

The first witness was George Bradshaw, who told the inquest that, on the night of 15 February, Annie Hemmings was in the communal kitchen, shared by all of the lodgers in the house. There were several people present and Annie was chatting to them as she prepared bread and bacon and cold tea for her husband to take to work the following day. After describing being woken in the middle of the night and recalling his horrifying discovery the next morning, Bradshaw was asked about the relationship between Annie and Edward Hemmings. ‘I have never heard them quarrel,’ he stated.

The evidence of Annie’s sister Annice Jones revealed a little more about the couple. Annice agreed that her sister and Edward had never had any serious quarrels, ‘no more than man and wife do have words between themselves.’ Yet Edward was very jealous, especially of a man named Thomas Kelly, who was Annie’s brother-in-law. Annice told the inquest that Edward didn’t like his wife talking to other men but Annie got on particularly well with Kelly and was very friendly with him. Annice was asked if Hemmings had ever threatened or hit her sister but she answered no to both questions, stating that Hemmings always appeared very fond of his wife. Annice revealed that the couple had separated briefly in September 1892, only three months after their wedding, although they were reconciled by the middle of November.

At the time of Annie’s death, she and Edward had been living in the lodgings in Woodhouse Mill for about five weeks. Annice was asked if Edward was jealous of the other lodgers and she replied that he didn’t like his wife going into the communal kitchen and talking to them, especially if he was sitting alone in their room. I told him to just call her to come in and be with him, Annice concluded.

Surgeon Mr Scott listed Annie’s injuries, stressing that there was no possibility that her wounds could have been self-inflicted. He also described comparing the head of the hatchet to the hole in her forehead and finding them a perfect match.

The next witness was the Hemmings’ landlady, Eliza Kennington, who stated that she had heard the couple arguing in their room just two days before Annie’s death. Although she had not listened to the quarrel, she did hear Annie berating her husband for being idle and not working. Mrs Kennington said that Annie later claimed that her husband had hit her but added that the young woman seemed none the worse for it. On the evening of 15 February, Mrs Kennington went into the Hemmings’ room to ask if Annie wanted to go out but Annie refused, saying that she felt too tired. At that time, Annie was sitting in a chair knitting, while her husband stood behind her.

‘Are you learning to knit, Ted?’ Mrs Kennington asked.

‘Yes, I’ll make you a pair of stockings tomorrow,’ he joked.

Mrs Kennington last saw Annie alive at between 9.30 and 10 p.m. on 15 February, when she claimed that Edward and his wife seemed cheerful and very comfortable together. She was asked if Annie was in the habit of chatting to the other lodgers in the kitchen and replied that she was.

‘Did you ever hear her husband order her to go out of the kitchen and into their room?’ asked the coroner.

‘No, never,’ replied Mrs Kennington.

The police officers were called to describe their dealings with Hemmings, including PC Cole, who was the first constable on the scene after the murder. Cole caused a frisson of horror by producing Annie’s undergarments, which were now so completely soaked in blood that very little of their original white colour remained. He also produced numerous garments belonging to Hemmings, including the striped shirt and trousers that he was seen to be wearing on 15 February, all of which were stiff and black with dried blood.

Two workmen were next to testify, both having seen Hemmings on 16 February, standing close to the ditch where the hatchet was discovered. They were followed by PC Calthorpe Potter, who actually found the weapon.

The final witness was collier William Handy (or Hundy), a colleague of Hemmings, who claimed to have held a conversation with him as they walked to their work on 9 February. According to Handy, Hemmings told him that he had quarrelled with Annie about his drinking, after she found that he had withdrawn £1 from a ‘money club’ and spent most of it on drink. ‘I shouldn’t have come to work today if there were any left,’ Hemmings said, telling Handy that he couldn’t stand his wife’s ‘gab’ much longer and would ‘put an end to it before long, one way or another’.

Superintendent Beilby was about to call the next witness when the coroner stopped him. Hearing that the next person waiting to testify was William Jones, the husband of Annie’s sister Annice, Mr Wightman deemed his evidence unnecessary.

‘He can swear to threats that Hemmings uttered against his wife,’ protested Beilby but the coroner had made up his mind. ‘The case is as clear as daylight,’ he instructed the jury, advising them that since the deceased could not have inflicted her own fatal wounds, it was their task to decide who had and there could be very little doubt about the answer to that question, in view of the evidence they had already heard. As far as Wightman was aware, there was no suspicion against any other person other than Edward Hemmings.

Hemmings had threatened in the past to ‘finish’ his wife for some reason or another and she had been found ‘finished’. Hemmings immediately absconded and, if anyone else had killed the woman, there would be no reason for him to flee. Unless the jury could see their way clear to reducing the verdict to manslaughter – a verdict that the coroner did not believe could be justified by the evidence of the case – then the only possible verdict was one of wilful murder against Hemmings. After discussing the case for a few minutes, the jury agreed.

At the conclusion of the inquest, a ontemporary newspaper interviewed Annie’s brother, Arthur Hague (or Haigh), who had been conducting some enquiries of his own. Hague had traced a former girlfriend of Edward’s, who claimed that when she tried to end their relationship Edward grew so violent that, when leaving meetings of the Salvation Army, of which she and Hemmings were both members, she was forced to seek protection against him from two young men. Hague described Edward as surly and monosyllabic in his conversation, which chiefly consisted of the words ‘yes’ and ‘no’. By contrast, Annie was a steady and independent young woman, who grew used to making her own way in the world after the death of her mother when she was twelve or thirteen years old. She had confided in her brother that her husband was heavily in debt and was angry that he had not told her this before she married him. Almost everyone who knew Edward Hemmings described him as hard working and very industrious but, according to Hague, his sister despised her husband’s tendency to go out drinking instead of going to work. Annie was ambitious – she wanted a place of her own rather than having to live in lodgings – yet she despaired of that ever happening when her husband didn’t even earn enough money to pay off the outstanding credit on the few pieces of furniture they had purchased together.

After the interview with Hague had appeared in the local newspaper, one of Edward’s brothers and one of his brothers-in-law visited the newspaper’s offices asking them to print a rebuttal. They claimed to have contacted the former girlfriend mentioned by Hague, who denied that there was any truth whatsoever in his story and authorised them to deny it as strongly as possible. The men told the newspaper that they had visited Hemmings at the police station and found him in excellent spirits and delighted to learn that a solicitor had been engaged by his friends and relatives to defend him.

Newspaper reports of his appearances before the magistrates seem more concerned with his demeanour than with giving an account of the proceedings. Hemmings is described at great length as looking pale but extremely composed and showing not the slightest trace of emotion. ‘There was not a quiver of any kind on his expressionless face,’ wrote one reporter, who went on to write that Hemmings’s posture was ‘easy and unaffected’. Another publication asserted ‘There was no sign of sorrow or remorse about him, nor was there any perceptible air of bravado. He seemed like a man who had made up his mind to a terrible crime without compunction and, having accomplished it, looked back without compassion and regret.’

Regardless of Hemmings’s lack of emotions, the magistrates joined the coroner in committing him for trial at the next assizes and on 15 March 1893, he appeared at Leeds before Mr Justice Bruce charged with the wilful murder of his wife. The case was prosecuted by Cyril Dodd QC, MP and Mr A.W. Bairstow, while Walter Beverley acted as defence counsel.

The prosecution opened by outlining the facts of the case, calling all of the witnesses who had already appeared at the inquest. This time, William Jones was allowed to speak and explained that Edward Hemmings was exceedingly jealous of another brother-in-law, Thomas Kelly, believing that Kelly and Annie were far too friendly. On one particular occasion, Hemmings challenged his wife about her behaviour and she immediately threatened to tell Kelly that her husband was jealous of him. True to her word, Annie went straight to Kelly and complained of Edward’s jealousy. Consequently, when Edward met Kelly and his wife at William Jones’s house, a furious argument ensued, during which Edward accused Mrs Kelly of spreading lies about behind his back and told her to shut up or he would make her. Kelly took exception to the threats against his wife and offered to fight Edward. The two men were prevented from fighting by Annice Jones but Edward remained upset, saying that he should like to meet anyone who could truthfully say that he was idle and did not work. Edward claimed to hand over every penny of his earnings to Annie, saying that he was lucky if she gave him sixpence back for pocket money.

When William Jones was cross-examined by the counsel for the defence, he admitted that he was well aware that Edward loved his wife dearly and was usually good and kind to her. However, Edward was a very taciturn man and, whenever anyone spoke to him, he would take his time answering, which annoyed and irritated his wife. William told the court that he had never heard Edward complain about any aspect of his wife’s conduct, with the exception of her bad temper. William admitted that he had heard Annie say that she wished her husband was dead and that, in the past, she had told Edward in his presence that she didn’t care for him and could do precisely as she liked. Annie was self-willed and high-spirited, and many a time William had heard Edward trying to gently coax her into doing as he wanted.

Annice Jones recalled that Edward did not like his wife talking to other men, adding that she had never seen her sister do anything that might cause him to be jealous. At this, Hemmings suddenly stood up in the dock and said, ‘Be careful what you are saying, Annice, else I shall have to contradict thee. Be careful and tell the truth; don’t tell any lies.’

‘I am not doing so, Edward,’ Annice responded calmly.

‘She is telling nothing but lies,’ Edward argued, earning himself a sharp rebuke from the judge for interrupting.

Annice did concede that her sister would fly into a rage whenever her husband stayed away from work. She was followed into the witness box by her brother, William Hague, who told the court of an occasion when Hemmings drunkenly produced a razor and threatened to cut his sister’s throat because she would not do as she was told.

The final witnesses for the crown were Elizabeth Webster and Jemima Wilkinson, both of whom were landladies. During her brief separation from her husband, Annie Hemmings lodged with Elizabeth at Beighton. The landlady recalled that Edward visited his wife several times to ask her to come back to him but Annie’s usual dismissive reply was, ‘No, Ted, I can’t go into lodgings again.’

Jemima was Edward and Annie’s landlady for two months immediately after their marriage and described Edward as a good husband and a steady and industrious man. He used to hand over every penny of his wages to his wife, who bought him only tea, bread, butter and a little sugar to take to work for his meal breaks. Although Edward earned about 7s 6d a day, the couple always seemed short of money and on one occasion, Annie even pawned Edward’s Sunday suit for 15s. Jemima was adamant that Edward was not jealous, although she had seen Annie give her husband plenty of cause to be. Annie once took a week’s holiday in Rotherham without her husband and, on her return, told her landlady that she had been going out for walks with her cousins and her friends and had taken off her wedding ring in order to pass as a single woman.

Cyril Dodd then summarised the case for the prosecution, explaining that there was no doubt that Annie Hemmings died at the hands of her husband but disclosing that the crux of the prosecution’s case was the remarks made by the accused to Inspector Turton, after handing himself in. If it were true that Hemmings told Turton, ‘I thought it well over before I did it and I will go to the scaffold like a man,’ and, ‘I struck her but I didn’t think of killing her; but then I thought I should get five years, so I might as well finish her off,’ this proved beyond any doubt that the murder was a most deliberate one. Taking this into account, Dodd informed the jury that he could see nothing about the case that gave any grounds for reducing the offence from murder to manslaughter and urged them to find Hemmings guilty as charged.

Mr Beverley then stood up to speak in defence. ‘To kill is one thing; to commit murder is another,’ he told the jury, agreeing with the prosecution that Hemmings had undoubtedly killed his wife but questioning whether the killing was premeditated and done with malice aforethought. Edward Hemmings was widely believed to be a respectable man of irreproachable character – then he got married and unless the jury could accept that his crime was manslaughter rather than murder, the marriage licence would become his death warrant. A more ill-suited union than that between Edward and Annie could not be imagined, continued Beverley. Although Edward loved his wife dearly, he was of a jealous turn of mind, whereas Annie was quick-tempered and feisty, often defying her husband and insisting that she could do precisely what she wanted, irrespective of his feelings and wishes. When Edward complained about Kelly, Annie took Kelly’s part in the argument, telling Edward it served him right. She often told him that she didn’t care for him, from which Beverley was sure that the jury could infer that the deceased was not quite the wife she ought to have been.

Many things had been mentioned in court to show that Hemmings was very fond of his wife. Only hours before the murder, the couple’s landlady had testified that he was bending over his wife affectionately as she sat knitting – that was definitely not the conduct of a man who was at that moment contemplating destroying his wife’s life. The fact that Hemmings had recently purchased a razor was irrelevant, seeing as he used one to shave with every single day of his life. And, as for the remarks made to Inspector Turton, Beverley reminded the jury that Hemmings was in deep shock after killing his wife, and was also exhausted and hungry after his long walk to Normanton.

On the night before the murder, Annie Hemmings was laughing and joking with the lodgers, leaving her husband alone in their room brooding. Beverley asked the jury to try and put themselves in the defendant’s place then perhaps they would be able to understand the amount of provocation that Hemmings felt and understand how the fiery spirit of his wife might serve to increase his anger.

At this, Mr Justice Bruce interrupted, instructing the jury that, no matter how contemptuous or degrading, mere words could not be considered sufficient provocation in law to reduce murder to manslaughter if a deadly weapon was used in the killing. Beverley suggested that it might be otherwise in exceptional circumstances but the judge would accept no arguments, saying that he was bound to advise the jury according to the law.

Beverley then theorised that in the privacy of their bedroom, Annie may have subjected her husband to even greater provocation and might even have used a weapon against him. There was absolutely no evidence to show what took place behind closed doors, in that bedroom, on that fateful morning.

The judge interjected that every killing was considered a murder unless evidence was given to prove otherwise.

Malice has not been proved, continued Beverley. There might have been a serious quarrel in the bedroom and, in the heat of the moment, Hemmings probably snatched up the nearest thing to hand and struck his wife. Concluding his speech to a round of tumultuous applause from those in court, Beverley likened his efforts on behalf of the prisoner to trying to save a drowning man and begged the jury to assist him in trying to correct any deficiency in his handling of the task.

Mr Justice Bruce told the jury that they had a heavy and onerous duty ahead of them, balancing the requirements of the law with the need for justice for both the prisoner and his victim. Much had been said about the absence of malice but, in law, every man had to take the consequences of his action. When a man struck his wife or anyone else on the head with a deadly weapon, he must realise the potential for harm in his act hence there was malice in the eyes of the law. Thus, it was not for the jury to seek evidence of expressed malice – that was implied by the prisoner’s actions. If a man killed in self-defence, it was no crime. If the killing was done under great provocation, although it was not justifiable, the crime might be reduced from murder to manslaughter. However, it was highly improbable that this woman’s death was caused by a person in a momentary fit of passion, induced by provocation. Here, there was not just a blow to the head but the terrible gashing of the throat. Annie Hemmings did not die with just one mark on her body and the judge did not believe that her fearful injuries could have been done as a momentary reaction to some provocation.

The jury took around thirty-five minutes to return a verdict of wilful murder against Hemmings, although they disagreed with the judge, recommending mercy on the grounds of provocation. Before Bruce could pronounce the death sentence, Hemmings asked if he might say a few words.

Given permission to speak, Hemmings launched into a long, somewhat rambling speech, in which he tried to further explain his wife’s behaviour with Thomas Kelly. Hemmings swore that he was not idle and that he handed over every penny of his earnings to his wife but said that she was never satisfied. Annie Hemmings wanted her own house and her own furniture but, more than that, she wanted her own way and whatever he tried to do was never enough to please her.

At that point, tears overcame Hemmings and he paused momentarily in an effort to regain control of his emotions. Thinking that he had finished, the judge put on the black cap and was about to pronounce the death sentence when Hemmings asked if he should continue speaking. Told to stand quietly, he listened intently as the judge sentenced him to death and was then taken from court before he had the chance to finish his speech.

After the trial, it was hinted in the contemporary newspapers that the jury had felt very sympathetic towards Hemmings on account of the provocation he received at his wife’s hands. A petition for clemency was raised, in which it was pointed out that Hemmings was a man of excellent character, a sober, industrious and most affectionate husband, who had never before been charged with any offence. The petition, which attracted more than 5,000 signatures countrywide, suggested that the murder was committed when Hemmings was ‘in a frenzied mood occasioned by jealousy’, which caused him to lose the balance of his mind and kill the wife he so ardently loved but, after due consideration, Home Secretary Mr Asquith could see no reason to interfere with the course of justice. Twenty-six-year-old Hemmings was therefore executed at Armley Gaol, Leeds, on 4 April 1893 and was said to have died instantaneously at the hands of executioner James Billington.

Although Hemmings was said to have left a written confession, a friend revealed after the execution that he had received a letter from the condemned man asking that a sermon should be preached in church on the Sunday after his death on the subject of ‘What would a man give in exchange for his soul’.

‘If ever a man tried to do what was right and tried all as ever he knew how to live a Christian’s life, I tried to live one,’ wrote Hemmings, revealing that immediately after the murder was done, he would have freely given 10,000 worlds to undo it, if they had been his to give. ‘The truth was not spoken at the trial and I shall be able to prove it when we come to stand before the judgement bar of God … Thank God the truth will have to be told up there.’