23

‘Your wife is not going on as she ought to’

Camden Town, London, 1918

On 5 April 1915, nineteen-year-old Henry Stephen Canham married seventeen-year-old Gladys Amy Baxter at Southwark and, less than a fortnight later, Gladys gave birth to the couple’s son, Charles. At that stage of the First World War, the British Government was struggling to keep up recruitment rates for the armed forces and in October 1915 they appointed Edward Stanley, Lord Derby, as Director-General of Recruiting. He initiated what became known as ‘The Derby Scheme’, which guaranteed that men who voluntarily registered would only be called upon for active service if absolutely necessary. The scheme also promised that single men would be called up first and, for the newly-married Henry, this was an ideal opportunity to continue with his job as a sheet metal worker and enjoy his new family, while proudly wearing the grey armband with a red crown to show that he had volunteered to serve his country.

The Canhams started their married life living with Henry’s mother but when Henry was eventually called up for military service in April 1916, they took two rooms in a house owned by Georgina Davies in Wrotham Road, Camden Town. Initially posted to the Rifle Brigade, Henry only stayed at the house twice while he was on leave, before being drafted into the Machine Gun Corps and sent to France. Almost as soon as Henry left, Mrs Davies developed grave concerns about Gladys, who put baby Charles out to nurse during the day, telling her landlady that she had found a job working as a waitress in a restaurant. However, as well as working, Gladys seemed to spend a lot of her time fraternising with Canadian and Australian soldiers, finally prompting Mrs Davies to write to Henry in France.

‘Your wife is not going on as she ought to. She steps out at night and has sold up most of your things. She has left the baby by itself and the poor little thing cries all day. I have seen her out with Australians.’ Henry received more letters about his wife’s scandalous behaviour but whenever he wrote to Gladys, she dismissed his concerns and insulted him in her replies.

Eventually, Mrs Davies lost patience with Gladys, after she left her son unattended once too often. The landlady took the baby to Henry’s mother and gave Gladys notice to quit her rooms but the young mother didn’t seem unduly concerned by this turn of events. Only two hours before he was due to ‘go over the top’, leaving the trenches to engage in direct combat with the enemy, Henry received word in France that his wife had deserted their baby. He was forced to make urgent arrangements to have his army separation allowance transferred from Gladys to his mother, since she now had custody of baby Charles.

In the dangerous and highly stressful atmosphere of the battlefields, Henry fretted constantly about his wife, the state of his marriage and his son’s welfare, until he was finally granted leave for Christmas 1917, when he was determined to sort the situation out once and for all. He arrived back in England on 20 December and went to stay with his parents, while he tried to establish his wife’s whereabouts. He visited Mrs Davies, who was only able to tell him that she had last seen Gladys in the Strand some three months earlier, when she was laughing and joking with another woman and three soldiers.

Eventually, news that her husband was in the country and was looking for her reached Gladys and she sent him a telegram, asking him to meet her at her parents’ house in Blackfriars on New Year’s Day. Henry went, promising his mother that he wouldn’t be too late back and Emily Canham heard him come home that night and go into his bedroom. She heard nothing more until just before six o’clock the next morning, when she was awakened by a muffled gunshot.

Minutes later, Henry walked into her room, his head in his hands. ‘Mother, I have done it,’ he said tearfully and when Emily asked him what he had done, he led her wordlessly to his bedroom.

Seeing a woman in his bed, Emily asked her son, ‘Who is that you have brought in?’

‘Can’t you see, mother? It is Gladys and I have shot her.’

Henry sent for his father, who was working a night shift and, as soon as Mr Canham got home, Henry went to Somers Town police station and handed himself in. On hearing Henry’s story, Detective Inspector Neil and Sergeant H. Reed went straight to the Canhams’ home in Great College Street, Camden Town, where they found Gladys lying dead, a revolver on the bed beside her. She had been shot once in the chest, the bullet exiting her back. Neil returned to the police station, where he told Henry that he would be charged with his wife’s wilful murder. ‘Yes, I know,’ Henry replied calmly. ‘I shot her with my service revolver. I consider I only did my duty, as I did in France.’

He willingly made a statement, in which he explained the events that had led up to the shooting:

I went to France eighteen months ago and soon after I heard she had sold up my house with the exception of a few things, left the baby to be looked after by anyone and was living an immoral life. I have letters to prove it. I had to get her allowance stopped. I came home on leave last Thursday week. I was told she was staying at Swanage but I did not see her till last night. I received a telegram from her … asking me to go to see her at her people’s place at Blackfriars. I went and somehow she got round me. I said I would forgive her if she would give the life up and look after the child. She said she would. We then came home to my mother’s place and went to bed.

Having made love, the couple slept for a while until, according to Henry, his wife made a startling revelation. ‘During the night she said that she had got a complaint, which she thought she had received from an officer,’ Henry’s statement continued. ‘This upset me. I thought of the letters I had received. I got out of bed, got my revolver and shot her … If she had kept away another day it would not have happened because I was going back to France tomorrow.’

The self-confessed murderer was remanded in custody pending the inquest, at which Home Office pathologist Bernard Spilsbury, who had conducted a post-mortem examination, confirmed that the dead woman was suffering from venereal disease. The inquest jury returned a verdict of ‘wilful murder’ against Canham, who was later committed by magistrates to stand trial.

When the case came to the Central Criminal Court on 31 January 1918, Canham, pleaded not guilty to the charge of murder against him. However, it was agreed by counsels for the prosecution Sir Archibald Bodkin and Cecil Whiteley that, if Canham pleaded guilty to the lesser offence of manslaughter, they would offer no evidence on the murder charge.

Mr Justice Atkin informed the jury that he had read all the evidence and firmly believed that, under the circumstances, this was the proper course of action. At the judge’s direction, the jury found Canham not guilty of murder and Bodkin outlined the evidence for the prosecution on the revised charge of manslaughter, reading aloud the statement that Canham had made at the police station.

For the defence, Mr E.J. Purchase called Lieutenant Cuffley of the Machine Gun Corps, who testified to Canham’s good character, saying that his conduct was ‘everything that could be expected of a British Soldier’.

Purchase then told the jury that Canham had done his duty in an exceptional way, volunteering to join the Army and serve his country, even though he was in a reserved occupation, which was engaged on fulfilling government contracts and which would have exempted him from service. Purchase described the Canhams’ union as ‘a boy and girl marriage’, pointing out that the couple lived together perfectly happily until the husband was sent abroad. It was only when he was told that he may have just become infected with venereal disease that he lost his head completely and, momentarily deranged by the shock of the revelation, shot his wife in a way that was almost automatic and mechanical.

In summary, Mr Justice Atkin suggested that the Canham case was one of the most pathetic and graphic ever to unfold in the domestic courts, adding that it seemed perfectly obvious to him that while the defendant was doing his duty to his country, he was ‘terribly misused in his domestic life’. It said something for Canham’s character that he was willing to forgive his wife and give his marriage another try. It was also obvious that Gladys Canham was well aware that she had contracted venereal disease and yet she allowed her husband to make love to her, in the knowledge that he too would most almost certainly become infected. Atkin claimed to be unsurprised that her disclosure in the aftermath of passion created such bitterness and disappointment in her husband that, for a brief period of time, his reason was temporarily unseated and he killed his wife in hot blood.

Yet, continued Atkin, none of these mitigating circumstances amounted to justification for taking a life – what Canham did was still a serious crime and it must be clearly understood that his actions exposed him to punishment. Nevertheless, the facts of this case were unique and exceptional. Atkin hoped that the judgement he was about to make would never be taken as a precedent for any future case and stated that he acutely felt the responsibility that a person in his position should uphold the importance of the sacredness of human life. Yet even though he regarded the taking of a human life with the utmost seriousness, the judge confessed that he was equally mindful of the terrible mental sufferings the defendant must have undergone and thus he couldn’t find it in his heart to send Canham to prison. Atkin firmly believed that he was maintaining an important principle of ensuring that punishment did not go beyond reasoned and instructed public opinion and he therefore sentenced Canham to be bound over in the sum of £5 to come up for judgement if called to do so in future. Thus, Canham was effectively placed on bail and was discharged from court, free to re-join his unit in France.

Back on active service, he was taken prisoner by the Germans in May 1918 but survived to be demobilised in 1919, when his character was assessed as ‘very good’. He is believed to have married again in 1921 and to have died in 1950.