18

‘I am no more a fool than what you are’

Blackburn, Lancashire, 1893

In November 1892, twenty-eight-year-old chemist and druggist Walter Nielson engaged fifteen-year-old Edward John Williams to work as an errand boy at his shop in Whalley Range, Blackburn. Unfortunately, Nielson ultimately found Williams unsuitable for the position and by the following February, the boy had been given his notice to leave.

On 22 February 1893, Walter’s cousin, William John Nielson, visited the shop and found Walter counting out some silver coins, totalling 39s, which he then put into his pocket. The two men chatted until lunchtime then left the shop with Williams at just after 1 p.m., Nielson locking the door behind him. Nielson arrived home at 1.20 p.m. and ate lunch with his mother, leaving to head back to the shop at 1.50 p.m. At some time between 2.30 p.m. and 3 p.m., he visited a neighbouring shop for a bottle of soda water then, having spent the afternoon attending to customers, he was last seen at around 3 p.m. when he served Mrs Elizabeth Drummond.

Meanwhile, Williams was sent on an errand to Mr Gifford’s chemist shop. He arrived at 2.45 p.m. with two empty soda syphons and, when asked by Gifford’s assistant Louis Mossop if he wanted two full ones in exchange, he replied that he didn’t need them, as there were already two full ones back at the shop. However, by 4 p.m., Williams was back in Gifford’s shop, telling Mossop that he was supposed to have taken back replacement syphons after all. Mossop gave him two and, thinking that Williams looked rather flustered and red in the face, he asked him if Nielson had been grumbling at him for forgetting the syphons.

‘No,’ Williams replied.

‘Have you got toothache then?’ Mossop enquired and when Williams said that he hadn’t, Mossop asked him what was wrong with him, telling him, ‘You look funny.’ Williams explained that he had been weighing up chloride of lime, which was a very hard, dirty job.

Twelve-year-old errand boy John Frederick Slater had also noticed that Williams was very flushed when he saw him leaving Nielson’s shop at around 3.45 p.m., locking the door behind him. Slater asked where ‘The boss’ was and Williams told him that Nielson had just stepped out for ‘a bit of a walk.’

The shop adjoining Nielson’s premises was occupied by a barber, Hilary Kay. At about 4.10 p.m. Williams came into Kay’s shop carrying two soda syphons and asked if Nielson was there. When Kay said that he wasn’t, Williams asked if he might leave the syphons in Kay’s shop while he looked for him. Given permission to do so, Williams left but returned a few minutes later to say that Nielson was still missing. He sat down in Kay’s shop for a short while then went out again, returning to say that Nielson was now back and picking up the syphons. Two minutes later, he ran back into Kay’s shop screaming, ‘Come on, Mr Kay, be sharp, be quick, come and see.’ Kay followed Williams to the room at the back of his master’s shop, where Nielson was lying dead in a large pool of blood.

‘What’s happened? Who has done this?’ Kay asked, to which Williams replied, ‘Mr Nielson has shot himself.’ Williams asked if he should fetch a policeman but Kay told him to wait a while. Instead, Kay fetched Mary Leyland, a confectioner who kept the shop next to his. Mrs Leyland examined the body and told Williams to go and find a policeman.

At 4.30 p.m., Williams rushed into the Central Police Station at Blackburn and told PC William Henry Walmsley, ‘Come quick. Mr Nielson is dead in his shop.’ When Inspector Sharples pressed for more details, Williams told him, ‘There is a lot of blood about. He has shot himself or cut his throat or something.’ Williams explained that he had been sent on an errand by his boss and when he left, Nielson was sitting in a chair in the back of the shop reading a book. When Williams returned, the shop door was locked and he couldn’t get in. ‘I tried it several times,’ he insisted.

The police summoned Dr Fitzgerald and PCs Walmsley and Fisher went to Whalley Range, where they found several people milling about both inside and outside the shop. Having ordered everyone but Williams out, the policemen checked Nielson’s condition. The back of his head was practically a pulp, although there was no trace of any gunshot wounds and no obvious weapon in the shop. Walmsley asked Williams whether he had ever seen his boss with firearms and if Nielson had been particularly low-spirited of late and the errand boy replied no to both questions.

While still at the shop, Williams was asked to account for his movements that afternoon. He explained to Detective Sergeant Frederick Reuben Langstaffe that Nielson had sent him to pick up two soda syphons at 3.45 p.m. and when he returned about half an hour later, he found the shop locked. He went to Mr Kay’s to ask if he had seen Mr Nielson and left the syphons there while he went to search for his employer. He tried the shop door again, before heading a little way down Brookhouse Lane. Finding no trace of his boss, he retraced his steps, trying the shop door again as he passed and finding it still locked. He then set off towards the post office and Randall Street, returning to find the door still locked. Kay checked the door with him and he then waited for a few minutes in Kay’s shop, before checking the door again and finding it had been unlocked. Once inside, he found his employer lying on the floor, touched him once to try and rouse him and, on realising that he was dead, went straight back to alert Mr Kay of the situation.

A search of the body revealed a penny, three halfpennies and the shop key in Nielson’s left-hand trouser pocket and a book in his jacket pocket, which Williams said was the one his boss was reading when he left him to go to Gifford’s. The two pockets in Nielson’s waistcoat yielded a button hook, a watch key and two toothpicks, along with the dead man’s watch. As the police were searching the shop, a cat wandered into the back rooms and Walmsley told Williams to put it out. Carrying the cat, Williams went to the back door and Walmsley clearly heard him sliding open the bolts, opening and closing the door and then sliding the bolts closed again, suggesting that whoever had killed Nielson had entered and exited through the shop, since the back door was bolted from the inside.

By that time doctors had established that Nielson’s death was due to head injuries, consistent with having been beaten with a blunt instrument. With that in mind, Dr Fitzgerald asked Williams if there were any such things in the shop and the boy showed him a hammer and an axe in a drawer. It being a druggist’s establishment, there were also several mortars with large pestles, although none looked to have been recently disturbed. Fitzgerald examined the collection of potential lethal implements and, although he believed that the hammer was a likely candidate as the murder weapon, it was clean, completely dry and free from bloodstains. Police surgeon Dr Wheatley initially examined Nielson’s body in situ, at which time it was still warm. A post-mortem examination was conducted on the evening of 22 February, when Wheatley and his colleague Dr Dunbar noted several long, jagged cuts on Nielson’s head with corresponding skull fractures, including a deep depression with a star-shaped fracture radiating out from it. (It was also discovered that Nielson’s skull was slightly thinner than average.) Wheatley, Dunbar and Fitzgerald all concluded that all of Nielson’s injuries, but particularly the depression and star-shaped fracture, were caused by blows from a blunt instrument.

Williams was asked to go to the police station for further questioning, which he did willingly. He was cautioned by Langstaffe to answer the questions put to him very carefully then asked again to account for his movements that day. He dictated his statement exactly as he had already done at the shop and was asked to check and sign it. At that point, he told Langstaffe that there was one slight error. ‘I have made a mistake about Mr Kay and I trying the door together,’ he told the detective saying that he had seen Kay trying the shop door as he returned from Gifford’s with the syphons. With that point clarified, Williams was happy to sign his statement, at which point Langstaffe arrested him and charged him with causing the death of Mr Nielson. ‘That’s not so,’ protested Williams. ‘The door was locked when I came back from Gifford’s.’

With her son under arrest, Mrs Williams sought legal advice and on 1 March she arrived at the police station with solicitor Mr Riley and asked to see Edward. Riley spoke with him alone for about half an hour, before requesting an interview with the chief constable, Mr H.J. Lewis. With Mrs Williams present, Riley revealed to Lewis that Williams had decided to ‘make a clean breast of things’.

Riley produced a statement signed by Williams that read:

The deceased Walter Nielson sent me to Gifford’s druggists about 2.30 p.m. last Wednesday and he told me to fetch some Fenning’s Fever Cures. I told him when I got back that Gifford did not have the fever cures that Nielson required. He said ‘Why haven’t you brought the syphons?’ I said, ‘I didn’t know you wanted any’. He said ‘You must be a fat-headed fool for me to send you there with two empty syphons and you not to bring two full ones back.’ I said, ‘I am no more a fool than what you are,’ and on my saying that, he came and struck me. I struck him back on the side of the head and he fell against the corner of the counter. He rose and came at me again and I again struck him and knocked him down, his head striking the counter. In my temper, I seized him and banged his head against the floor. His forehead was cut with the corner of the counter. I got a canvas bag and laid it under his head. He was on the rug in front of the fire. I didn’t think he was hurt as much as he was or that he was going to die … After I had placed the bag under his head I washed my hands and face and went to Mr Gifford’s for the two full syphons. I locked the door and took the key with me. When I got back, I was mortified to find my master was dead. Up to the moment of the quarrel, I had no thought or idea of doing him any harm and I bore him no ill-will. I wish to add that I used no weapon and what I did was done in a temper.

In the light of Williams’s confession, the inquest held by coroner Mr Robinson concluded on 2 March with a verdict of wilful murder against the young man, who watched the proceedings with interest, occasionally laughing and joking with the officers who escorted him to the inquest and subsequent magisterial hearing. He was committed for trial at the next assizes and didn’t have long to wait to find out his fate, since the proceedings opened in Liverpool on 23 March before Mr Justice Wills.

Prosecution counsel Mr J.F. Leese QC MP opened by outlining the facts of the case for the jury. Some of the chief points of Nielson’s tragic death were still shrouded in mystery, said Leese and were likely to remain so unless the jury was able to accept the prisoner’s statement after his arrest, which was largely supported by the evidence that the prosecution planned to place before the court. Leese told the jury that he proposed to prove that there was generally one of two motives in a case such as this one. Usually, the person committing a crime was either desirous of gaining money or was actuated by a desire for revenge, yet, in this case, there was no real evidence of either motive.

The prosecution first called Nielson’s mother, Janet, who told the court that her son was a thin, short man, who she described as good-tempered, quiet and not at all passionate. She confirmed that, at the time of her son’s death, Williams was under notice to leave his employ but insisted that there was no animosity between the two men. Shown a letter, she confirmed that Walter had written it, after which it was read aloud:

This is to certify that Edward John Williams has been in my employ about six months and that he is leaving through no fault of his own. I have always found him straightforward, honest and diligent and anxious to do his best.

WALTER NIELSON

Mrs Nielson confirmed that Edward had been given notice because Walter’s previous apprentice wanted his old job back and was expecting to return to work on 27 February. However, she believed that her son had written the complimentary reference solely to avoid a confrontation with Edward, since Walter had told her that he had reason to believe that Edward was not honest. Finally, Mrs Nielson confirmed that she had searched her son’s room most thoroughly and found no trace of the 39s in silver that his cousin had seen him putting in his pocket immediately before leaving the shop to go home for lunch.

Nielson’s former apprentice, Albert Edward Hartley, corroborated Mrs Nielson’s testimony that there was only one key to the shop, which was found in Nielson’s pocket. He also confirmed that Nielson had only started closing and locking the shop at lunchtime after he employed Williams – prior to that, he would happily leave Hartley in charge while he went for his lunch.

The prosecution then called William Nielson, followed by a succession of proprietors of the neighbouring shops. Mrs Sarah Howarth, whose pork butcher’s shop was almost directly opposite Nielson’s, confirmed that she had seen the three men leaving the shop at lunchtime. At around 3.30 p.m. she saw Williams leaving the shop alone and noticed him closing the door behind him but didn’t believe that he locked it. Mrs Howarth also saw Williams returning at about 4.10 p.m. with two syphons, which he left in Mr Kay’s shop. She watched Williams trying the shop door several times and confirmed that it seemed as if it were locked against him.

Mary Ann Sharratt, whose shop was next to Nielson’s, on the other side from Kay’s premises, recalled Nielson buying a bottle of soda from her shop between 2.30 p.m. and 3 p.m. on the afternoon of his death. Crucially, she testified that she happened to glance out of her window shortly afterwards and noticed that the window blind at the rear of Nielson’s shop had been pulled down, although when she looked later, it was pulled up again.

Elizabeth Drummond recalled that Walter Nielson had served her at about 3 p.m. and although she hadn’t seen anyone else in the shop, she was certain she had heard someone moving about in the back room. Other witnesses called were Louis Mossop, Hilary Kay and John Frederick Slater, all of whom repeated the evidence they had given at the inquest, as did the various police officers involved in the aftermath of the murder. Hilary Kay’s assistant, eleven-year-old John James Morris, recalled talking to Williams about a week before the murder as he was sweeping the footpath in front of the shop. According to Morris, Williams asked him how his boss treated him. ‘Very well,’ replied Morris, ‘how does yours treat you?’

‘My boss is a bloody fool,’ replied Williams.

Before calling Dr Fitzgerald, Dr Wheatley and Dr Dunbar to give medical evidence, the prosecution read out Williams’s confession in its entirety, pointing out to the jury that his statement was made before either he or his solicitor could possibly have known what evidence the police had against him.

For the defence, Mr Collingwood Hope was aware of something in his client’s background that he was unable to share with the court. Williams had recently moved with his parents to Blackburn from Bristol and, in August 1890, he had been charged with shooting at a school boy, Albert Lawrence. Williams was then working as a billiard marker in a Bristol hotel and met Lawrence at Stapleton, where the boy was picking blackberries with some friends. An argument arose between them and Williams drew a pistol and threatened to fire. Lawrence threw a stone at him, which hit Williams on his head, causing a small cut. Furious, Williams fired several shots at the group of boys, one hitting Lawrence on the back of the hand. Lawrence spent several weeks in hospital, where his life was despaired of and he was left suffering from devastating fits. Although magistrates at Lawford’s Gate Police Court in Bristol committed Williams for trial for unlawful wounding he was found not guilty at the Gloucester Assizes in November 1890.

Hope had to content himself by telling the jury that the prisoner had been described as ‘a very passionate lad,’ adding that the material parts of Williams’s statement had been fully corroborated by the prosecution witnesses. Hope theorised that Williams had given way to a sudden outburst of passion when Nielson called him a fool and that his temper induced him to dash his master’s head against the floor in the way he had described.

In his summary, Mr Justice Wills advised the jury that this was a most simple case. When a man caused the death of another, by acts of great and cruel violence wilfully done, and the person doing them was well aware they were likely to cause death, that was murder. It might be reduced to manslaughter if the person did the acts without premeditation, in hot blood and upon the provocation of a blow or blows given by the person killed. The judge stressed that the provocation must be blows – mere words were not sufficient – and there must be some sort of proportion between the provocation and the retaliation.

Even though he was on the very threshold of life, the prisoner was not a child and was old enough to understand that violent passions and bad temper should not be given free rein. He was also old enough to know that blows, if dealt with heavy instruments and great force, were likely to cause death. The jury must consider whether the provocation Williams received was sufficient to reduce the crime from murder to manslaughter and, in making their decision, they must make due allowance for the hot temper and passionate nature with which the prisoner was sent into the world.

The jury did not feel the need to retire, pronouncing Williams guilty of manslaughter after a brief discussion. Wills stated that he would pass sentence in the morning but before this could be done, Detective Langstaffe was recalled to court.

During the search of Nielson’s premises on 23 February, a small key had been found beneath some paper in a drawer. This key was found to unlock a desk and in the desk lay a second shop key. Although the prosecution was made aware of the existence of the second shop key, it had completely slipped Leese’s mind during his argument for the prosecution and he had made remarks suggesting that, after brutally murdering him, Williams was sufficiently cold-blooded to replace the only existing shop key in the dead man’s pocket.

Mr Justice Wills determined that, had Williams been found guilty of wilful murder, this omission might have been more relevant than it was after the jury’s verdict of guilty of manslaughter. As it was, it was immaterial, although it apparently demonstrated that Williams was sufficiently cool and collected to search for the key to unlock the desk, place the shop key inside then lock the desk again, while his victim lay dead or dying close by. Whether this second key had anything to do with the matter, only the prisoner knew. Nobody else would ever know which of the two keys had been used to lock and unlock the shop door and so, except for the fact that it could be argued that there was less ghastliness in replacing a key in a desk than in a dead man’s pockets, the matter could be disregarded.

The jury had found the prisoner guilty of manslaughter, continued the judge and taking the most merciful view possible, Wills said that it was rare to find a lad of the prisoner’s age capable of such malignity and also capable of such cool and resolute conduct after such a tragedy as this. The boy has shown great care in planning the details and doing whatever he could to escape detection. He stood convicted of a cruel and horrible act of homicide that came very near to murder – he went into the matter with coolness, self-possession and power and acted with dissimulation in pretending to be distressed and astonished. With that, Wills sentenced Williams to fifteen years’ penal servitude.

It has proved impossible to discover what happened to Williams, although he is believed to have served his sentence in Walton Prison, in Liverpool. However, at the end of the trial, to quote prosecution counsel Mr Leese, ‘Some of the chief points of Nielson’s tragic death were still shrouded in mystery …’

It seems indisputable that Williams had the opportunity to kill his employer, since his time was unaccounted for between 3 p.m., when Nielson was last seen alive by someone other than his killer and 3.45 p.m., when he was seen leaving the shop. Yet, even if he had the opportunity, did he have a credible motive and the means for the murder?

Although the jury seems to have accepted Williams’s statement as a true account of what happened, the medical witnesses were all adamant that Neilson’s injuries could not possibly have been caused either by hitting his head on the shop counter or by having his head dashed against the floor. All were of the opinion that the injuries were caused by blows from a blunt object, such as a hammer or any other object with a prominent, rounded part, yet the only potential weapons found in the shop were clean, dry and free from bloodstains. In reporting the inquest and magisterial hearing, the local newspaper, the Blackburn Standard, made a point of reproducing a large line drawing of a hammer, with the caption: ‘Though the police have not made the hammer theory the main point in the prosecution, still that weapon has often been referred to in the case. Our picture is a near perfect representation of the hammer produced in court. Its head is very rusty and it looks as though it had been out of use for some time.’ In reality, no murder weapon was ever found, either in or near to the shop.

The medical witnesses urged caution, suggesting that Williams’s confession should be examined most carefully, since his story hardly accounted for the amount of damage done to the deceased. Even if Nielson really did fall and hit his head against the corner of the shop counter, as Williams maintained, that would only account for one or two injuries, certainly not for the actual number of wounds observed on Nielson’s head. If Williams and Nielson had physically fought, the doctors insisted that some ‘very bloodthirsty weapons of some sort’ must have been used. Given that Nielson had several scalp wounds, which are renowned for bleeding profusely and that he was found lying in a large pool of blood, only one small spot of blood was found on William’s trousers after the murder. This was in spite of William’s statement that, after Nielson’s head was cut by the counter, ‘In my temper, I seized him and banged his head against the floor.’

There was never any suggestion of a credible motive for Nielson’s murder by Williams. Two hours before his death, Neilson was known to have 39s in silver in his pocket, yet no trace of this money was ever found, either on his body, in the shop or at his home. When he was taken into police custody, Williams had 4s 5d in a purse in his pocket but had recently been paid his wage of 4s 6d. Nielson was described as a quiet, inoffensive man, who disliked confrontation and arguments, so much that he was prepared to write a glowing reference for a less than satisfactory employee. Yet, according to Williams’s confession, he had angrily called his assistant a ‘fat-headed fool’, before actually striking him. Not one witness had ever heard Nielson lose his temper and although Williams had disdainfully referred to his boss as ‘a bloody fool’, there was no real evidence of any animosity between them. Indeed, most people who knew them seemed under the impression that they got on very well together.

The shops in Whalley Range were all very close together and brick walls less than five inches thick separated Nielson’s shop from Mr Kay’s premises on one side and Mrs Sharratt’s on the other. Under normal circumstances, both Kay and Mrs Sharratt claimed to be able to hear noises and even conversations coming from within the adjoining shop, yet neither had heard anything on the afternoon of the murder. This suggested that Nielson was either killed or at least knocked unconscious by the first blow to his head, since nobody heard any screams, sounds of fighting or shouts for help and is inconsistent with Williams’s account, since he claimed that Nielson hit him, fell down, got up and hit him again. Although two people claimed that Williams looked ‘flushed’, even after supposedly battering a man to death he was able to hold normal conversations with errand boy John Frederick Slater and with Gifford’s assistant Louis Mossop and, considering he had spent much of the afternoon hurrying between his place of work and Gifford’s, it was perhaps hardly surprising that he was rather red in the face.

More than 100 years after Nielson’s murder, it is indeed apparent that it is still ‘shrouded in mystery’. Although it should be stressed that the only sources of information available now are the contemporary newspaper reports, the accuracy and completeness of which are questionable, it seems highly possible that, with Williams as a prime suspect in the murder of his employer, he was advised by his solicitor to make a statement, which was effectively a guilty plea to the lesser offence of manslaughter. The likelihood is that any jury would have baulked at passing the death sentence on so young a defendant and the opportunity to find Williams guilty of a lesser offence seems to have been seized almost too eagerly, irrespective of any notion that his confession didn’t fit the facts of the case.