6

‘Look what you made me do’

St Budock, Cornwall, 1859

Stephen Banfield Lovell Bell worked as a medical officer at Weston-Super-Mare Infirmary in Somerset and rarely visited his mother and two spinster sisters, who lived in a cottage in St Budock, near Falmouth in Cornwall. Even though Bell was fifty-three years old and held down a highly paid job, he was still dependent on his mother for financial support until, for reasons known only to herself, Bell’s eighty-eight-year-old mother Charlotte stopped her son’s regular allowance.

On 23 June 1859, Charlotte and her daughter Mary Ann were in an upstairs sitting room at their cottage, while another sister, Charlotte junior, busied herself in the kitchen. It was the maid’s evening off, so when the doorbell rang at about 6 p.m., Mary Ann ran downstairs to answer it. Having not seen her brother Stephen for more than a year, she was surprised to find him on the doorstep and immediately ran back upstairs to where she had left their mother in the sitting room. Stephen followed her and spoke to the old lady, who became agitated and distressed at the sight of her son.

‘How could you come and agitate my mother in such a manner?’ Mary Ann asked her brother, pushing past him to go back downstairs and fetch her sister. Stephen went with her and the three siblings began arguing in a passage outside the kitchen. Both Charlotte junior and Stephen became very angry and eventually Charlotte stormed off, telling her brother and sister that she was going to fetch someone to throw Stephen out of the house. Meanwhile, Mary Ann ran back upstairs and locked their mother in the sitting room to prevent Stephen from further upsetting the old lady.

Charlotte junior returned within five minutes with a neighbour, James Caddy. Seventy-two-year-old Caddy was a retired Ship’s Master from the Royal Navy and was known to all as ‘Captain’. He was lame in one leg and somewhat frail but gallantly came to the aid of the Bell women without a thought for his own safety.

In an attempt to defuse a tense situation, Caddy walked into the Bells’ cottage and announced to Stephen that he had come as a friend of the family. Stephen invited him into another room, where they could talk privately but Caddy declined, saying that he didn’t wish to hear any personal information. Instead, Caddy went into the drawing room with Mary Ann and discussed how best to evict her brother from the house. Although Stephen was still very excited and angry, his anger was directed at his sisters and he showed no animosity towards Caddy. However, when Mary Ann and Charlotte asked Caddy to fetch a policeman, Stephen’s rage boiled over and he rushed into the hallway, where two ten-foot-long ornamental Indian spears hung on the wall. He dragged a chair along the passage and stood on it to enable him to reach one of the spears, which he removed from the nails on which it hung. He then broke the ebony shaft across his knee and threatened to run the spear through the first person that approached him.

At that time, Mary Ann and Caddy were in the drawing room, while Charlotte was alone in the dining room. Deciding to go and fetch a constable herself, she made her escape through the dining room window, while Mary Ann made a dash for the front door and retreated to the garden gate, where she waited for a few minutes, expecting Caddy to join her. When he didn’t appear, Mary Ann went back to the house and as she reached the front door, she saw Caddy staggering towards her. As he tottered onto the porch and slumped against one of the pillars, Mary Ann realised that he was bleeding heavily from a wound in his groin.

‘I am hurt,’ he told Mary Ann, who rushed forward to help him, while her brother stood impassively in the passage, watching the scene through the open door and making no effort to administer any first aid to the injured man.

Drawn out of their homes by the commotion, several neighbours hurried to Caddy’s assistance. Robert Constantine Pender fashioned a makeshift tourniquet from his handkerchief and used it to bind Caddy’s upper leg, from which blood was pumping so rapidly that he was in real danger of bleeding to death. Surgeon Frederick Charles Bullmore arrived within minutes and ordered bystanders to carry Caddy indoors and lay him on a sofa in the Bells’ dining room. Having established that Pender’s treatment was successfully stemming the old man’s haemorrhaging, Bullmore risked returning to his home to fetch a proper tourniquet, while Pender continued to put pressure on the wound with his fingers and reapplied his handkerchief, which had loosened as Caddy was carried indoors.

When the surgeon returned, Captain Caddy was fading fast. Bullmore detected a faint heartbeat and, after giving Caddy a wineglass of brandy, he managed to get him breathing again, although the old man was still unresponsive and had no discernible pulse. Bullmore tried to administer more brandy as a stimulant but the old man could no longer swallow and it dribbled ineffectively from the corners of his mouth until, barely an hour after first leaving his home to come to the rescue of the Bell women, Caddy died.

After pronouncing life extinct, Bullmore turned to Bell and told him contemptuously, ‘I hope you will get your desserts.’

‘You are not talking in a Christian spirit. You are adding fuel to the fire,’ Bell admonished the surgeon, who immediately retorted, ‘You have not acted in a Christian spirit, taking an old man’s life.’

A post-mortem examination conducted by Bullmore revealed two wounds on Caddy’s upper thigh, one of which had divided the old man’s femoral artery, causing him to bleed to death. In undressing Caddy prior to examining his body, Bullmore noted two distinct holes in his trousers and concluded that the deceased had been stabbed twice. The point of the ornamental spear was bent and covered with fresh blood and Bullmore was certain that it was the weapon used to stab the deceased and had caused his fatal injuries.

An inquest was held by deputy coroner Mr E.T. Carlyon where, without exception, all of the witnesses agreed that Bell was both sober and sane at the time of the stabbing. The chief witnesses were Mary Ann and Charlotte Bell junior, who told the inquest that they were very frightened of their brother ‘on account of the great state of excitement he occasionally got into.’ Both sisters gave identical accounts of the events of the previous evening, claiming that their brother had arrived at the house unexpectedly and demanded money, which they refused to give him. At this, Stephen flew into a rage and the terrified and intimidated women sent for Captain Caddy to eject him from the house. Both sisters related that their brother was very angry and excited and that he had threatened them with violence but both were adamant that Stephen showed no animosity towards Captain Caddy in their presence.

Superintendent Henry Brice, who was one of the first police officers on the scene, also described Stephen Bell as ‘very much excited’. When Brice arrived at the cottage, Bell was pacing up and down agitatedly, saying over and over again, ‘It is a bad job.’ Brice informed the inquest that Bell told him, ‘I did it. It is no use to deny it. I have lost my character and practice. It is a bad job.’

According to Brice, Bell explained that he took down the spear to defend himself after Caddy threatened to call the police to have him put out of the house. ‘Captain Caddy sprang on me and it must have happened then,’ elaborated Bell when the policeman asked him how the stabbing occurred. At the time of Bell’s explanation to Brice, Caddy was still alive and neighbour William Alex Rose remarked that he might yet make a statement confirming that the stabbing was accidental. However, being a surgeon, Bell was well aware that the old man was in a critical condition. ‘My dear sir, it is of no use. He is a gone man,’ he insisted to Rose.

The inquest jury returned a verdict of wilful murder against Stephen Bell, who was committed for trial at the next assizes on the coroner’s warrant. Immediately after the inquest, Bell made an appearance before magistrates, who followed the coroner’s lead in committing him for trial.

Bell appeared before Mr Justice Crompton at the Cornwall Assizes of August 1859. The case was prosecuted by Messrs Cole and Cox, while Messrs Coleridge and Kingdon acted in Bell’s defence.

Cole opened the proceedings, telling the jury that it was their job to determine whether or not the death of an elderly gentleman, who was held in high regard by his entire community, could be placed at the hands of the defendant. Controversially, in the time between the inquest and magisterial hearings and the trial, a woman named Loveday Jennings had come forward, claiming to have witnessed the killing of Captain Caddy. Cole assured the jury that Loveday would testify to the fact that Bell had deliberately stabbed Caddy without any prior provocation, meaning that the crime was nothing short of wilful murder.

Cole continued to say that he expected Bell’s defence counsel to argue that Caddy’s death was no more than a tragic accident. On the contrary, claimed Cole, it was a wanton, wilful and deliberate act. Bell took down a spear from the passage wall to use as a weapon and his first act was to break the shaft over his knee to make the spear less awkward to handle. He was heard to threaten to ‘do for’ the first person who attempted to evict him from the house, after which he inflicted not one, but two stab wounds on Caddy, one of which ultimately proved fatal. The medical evidence suggested that even simply pressing a finger on Caddy’s femoral artery might have stemmed his bleeding sufficiently for a repair to have been surgically effected. Yet Bell – himself a medical man – made no attempt to help the victim of this so-called tragic accident, not even to offer any words of advice to those trying desperately to save his victim’s life.

One of the first witnesses to testify was barmaid Mary Jane Glossop, who worked at The Green Bank Hotel in Falmouth. She recalled Bell arriving on the mail coach from Truro on 23 June and drinking a glass of gin and water in the hotel, before walking off in the direction of his mother’s house. Although Bell spent less than five minutes in the hotel, Mary Jane was able to tell the court that he appeared to be sober and calm and that she had noticed nothing irregular in his manner.

The next witness was Mary Ann Bell, who repeated her testimony from the inquest. However, whereas she had stated before the coroner that her brother had asked for money and that a refusal had precipitated his rage, she now stated that the argument between the siblings was about ‘family affairs’ and insisted, ‘money wasn’t mentioned at all.’

Charlotte followed her sister into the witness box and described going to Captain Caddy for help to deal with her brother, who was becoming increasingly angry and excited and threatening her and her sister with violence. She described Caddy as being very calm in the face of her brother’s fury, recalling that the old man first suggested that Bell leave the house quietly, which Bell refused to do. At that point, Charlotte asked Caddy to go for a policeman and Caddy warned Bell that he would not hesitate to do so, if he didn’t leave. ‘My brother was in a great and violent passion and I was so very afraid,’ Charlotte explained, attributing the cause of the argument between the siblings as ‘mere family differences’.

The next witness was Loveday Jennings, who claimed to have been an eyewitness to the stabbing. Loveday told the court that she was a servant and on 23 June, she was sent on an errand to deliver some strawberries to the home of Captain Bentley, a near neighbour of the Bells. Being unsure of the precise location of Bentley’s residence, she was walking around when one of the Bell sisters came out of her house and asked her to fetch a policeman. However, Loveday’s attention was attracted by the sound of raised voices and rather than do as she was asked, the maid stopped and watched events unfolding through the open front door. She claimed to have seen Stephen Bell walking towards Caddy and jabbing at him twice with the spear, insisting that the old man never raised a hand to his killer and that the stabbing was completely unprovoked. ‘If he had raised his hands, I would have seen it,’ she stressed to the court. After the stabbing, Loveday stated that Stephen approached one of his sisters and told her, ‘It is your fault I am come to this. Look what you made me do.’

Several neighbours, surgeon Mr Bullmore and the police officers all gave evidence, before the prosecution rested, leaving the floor open for Mr Coleridge to speak on Bell’s behalf. Coleridge began by describing Captain Caddy as a ‘generous and peaceable old man’, who had apparently been precipitously slain in the midst of a kindly and well-intentioned attempt to settle a family dispute. Admitting that it was only natural that the jury should feel compassion for the victim, as well as anger and hatred for the man accused of killing him, the defence counsel reminded the court that the events of 23 June had been written about extensively in the newspapers and had been the talk of Cornwall since they occurred. He urged the jury to try and put aside anything they had read or heard about the case, asking them to ignore any prejudgements they might have made and focus solely on the evidence they had heard in court. If the prosecution had failed to establish Bell’s guilt beyond reasonable doubt, the jury must not rely on their own fancy, suspicion or supposition to convict him, particularly since he was being tried for a capital offence.

Consider the facts of the case, Coleridge asked the jury. Consider the high words, the undue provocation, the angry passions, the doubt and the difficulty, the manner in which Bell was treated and the sudden and unpremeditated way in which the act was committed. Where was the malice aforethought necessary to support a charge of murder? The witnesses all spoke of strong and overpowering passion, which suggested that Bell was guilty of manslaughter at worst.

As Mr Cole had suspected, it was the contention of the defence that the circumstances of Caddy’s death left Bell free both from moral guilt and any illegality. Coleridge thought it best to draw a veil over the subject of the familial differences that originally prompted the argument between the Bell siblings, saying that he would rather leave such matters in merciful silence than drag a dispute between brother and sisters into court, when it had most probably been long forgiven and forgotten by all involved. However, he reminded the jury that Stephen Bell had made a special visit to Cornwall to see his mother, an old lady who was most likely not long for this world. Mrs Bell had been given no choice about whether or not she wanted to see Stephen and unless she specifically asked for him to be thrown out he had just as much right to be in the house as his sisters, who had no authority to act as they did towards him. Both of the Bell sisters testified that money was not involved in the dispute, so imagine how indignant Stephen must have felt when his sister locked his mother in her room and denied him access to her. While words and emotions were running high, it occurred to one of the sisters that they needed a man to deal with their brother’s fury and so Captain Caddy was sent for and, although anger and passion is not right in any man, surely Bell’s indignation and frustration were excusable under the circumstances.

There had been no dispute among the witnesses that, from first to last, Bell treated Caddy with great civility and no unkind, discourteous or violent word ever passed between them. Bell initially invited Caddy to discuss things in private and, even when Caddy refused, he evidently recognised that the old man was acting with good intentions and treated him properly, as one gentleman would treat another. It was only when it was suggested that a policeman should be fetched to turn him out of his own mother’s house that Bell’s passion began to gain the upper hand.

Having taken down the spear to defend himself, Bell’s attitude became one of ‘touch me at your peril’, although arming oneself in self-defence was hardly illegal. It was said by the prosecution that Caddy had two stab wounds, but in actual fact, one was little more than an abrasion. However, be that as it may, when the Bell sisters left the house, a fatal blow was struck and it was for the jury to decide if this blow occurred in such circumstances that might constitute murder or if it was a melancholy, but entirely innocent, accident.

Only Loveday Jennings claimed to have actually seen the mortal blow and Coleridge told the jury that he found it incredible that, before her appearance here in court, nobody had heard anything of her in connection with the case. She had not appeared before the coroner, nor before the magistrates, even though, if her evidence was to be believed, at least one of the Bell sisters and several of the dead man’s neighbours spoke to her on the evening of Caddy’s demise.

The fact that she was not at the inquest meant that Bell had no opportunity to cross-examine her or to challenge her evidence, yet Coleridge maintained that there was much to be challenged about her testimony, which contradicted several known facts about the case. The Bell sisters had stated that Mary Ann left the house by the front door, while Charlotte climbed out of the dining room window. Yet, according to Loveday Jennings, after one sister left by the front door, she was followed soon afterwards by the other. There was a large pool of blood at the far end of the passage in the Bells’ cottage, suggesting that this was where the attack on Captain Caddy took place. Yet Loveday Jennings would have the jury believe that Caddy was stabbed at the other end of the passage, close to the front door. Not only that but she described the old man staggering out of the house and collapsing on the gravel path outside, making no mention of Mary Ann, who actually ran to the porch and assisted Caddy down the path. Furthermore, Loveday claimed that a woman named Mary Price was with her at the time, although she admitted that Mary had not actually seen the stabbing. Where was Mary Price today, asked Coleridge? Why was she not in court corroborating Loveday Jennings’s testimony?

The prosecution had made much of the fact that Bell did not offer any assistance to Caddy as he lay lethally wounded before him, continued Coleridge. The agonised expressions used by Bell in the aftermath of the tragedy were wrung from him by the realisation of the terrible calamity that had occurred, a calamity with the prospect of bringing poverty, misery and utter ruin to Bell and his wife and family. Even so, nothing was said by Bell that could conceivably be construed as an admission of guilt to the charge of murder against him and he had made no attempt to run away and evade justice. The fact that he offered no first aid to Caddy was understandable, given that he was overwhelmed and distracted by the enormity of his situation and its likely consequences.

On arrival at the police station Bell had been in a state of shock, repeating, ‘Poor Captain Caddy,’ and crying for his wife. Bell had claimed to have been injured while scuffling with Caddy, complaining of a sore leg, yet none of the policemen had thought to examine him after his arrest. Had they done so, it might have shown that, once out of sight of the Bell sisters, Caddy was not entirely passive that evening.

Concluding his speech, Coleridge advised the jury to disregard Loveday Jennings’s evidence, adding that, in his opinion, the prosecution had failed to prove their case beyond reasonable doubt and asking the jury to find his client innocent of the charges against him. Coleridge then proceeded to call a number of character witnesses, all of whom described Bell as a kind, humane man.

It was left to Mr Justice Crompton to summarise the evidence for the jury and he began by explaining that, in normal cases of murder, there must be a degree of premeditation and malice aforethought. It was evident in this case that Bell held no malice or ill-will towards Caddy, yet the jury must decide whether it was Bell’s intention to cause him grievous harm when he struck the fatal blow with the spear. Both the prosecution and defence agreed that Caddy died from the effects of a blow from a spear and that the fatal blow was struck by Stephen Bell. Thus, the only question for the jury to consider was whether that blow was accidental or intentional.

If intentional, the jury must recognise that it was unlikely that such a blow could be struck with such a weapon without causing grievous harm. Yet the jury must also decide whether Bell was provoked into striking the blow that killed Captain Caddy, whether it was struck during a momentary weakness of passion, arising from heat of the blood. The law made allowances for human weakness and infirmity and if a fatal wound was inflicted during the heat of passion, the offence could be reduced from murder to manslaughter. Yet, by default, the offence was legally assumed to be murder unless considerable provocation could be irrefutably demonstrated.

Crompton advised the jury to consider what the prisoner did at the time of the killing, rather than before or afterwards. It was accepted that Bell broke the spear to make it easier to use but it did not appear as if his intention at the time was to injure Captain Caddy. Rather he was preparing himself to face the police, or indeed anyone else who might interfere with him. It was also accepted that Bell made no effort to offer medical aid to Caddy, yet it could be reasonably argued that he was in too dreadful a state of shock and agitation after the stabbing to render any useful assistance. If the wound was caused by accident, continued the judge, Bell could have been expected to try and help Caddy. Or did it occur as Loveday Jennings described it? Although she might have made one or two mistakes in her testimony, if the jury believed her, they must find the defendant guilty of wilful murder.

The jury retired to deliberate their verdict and returned to court within twenty minutes with a verdict that Bell was guilty of the lesser offence of manslaughter.

The judge turned to Bell and asked if there was any reason why sentence should not be passed and Bell replied that he would very much like to go into the evidence against him.

‘It is too late for that now,’ Crompton advised him but Bell simply ignored him and launched into a wild, rambling speech during which, according to the contemporary newspapers, he became so excited and vehement in his anger that he gave the impression of being quite insane.

Bell insisted that Loveday Jennings’s evidence was entirely false, saying that had he been given the opportunity, he could have proved it. Declaring that Caddy’s wound arose from an accident, Bell emphasised his innocence, insisting that the real culprits were his two sisters, who had conspired against him. Claiming to have acted as a father to Mary Ann and Charlotte, Bell told the court that he had fed and clothed them in times of difficulty and healed them when they were sick. Solely through their greed and avarice, they had turned their dear mother into a monster and successfully swayed her mind against him. If Captain Caddy were able, he too would say that this was an accident, pure and simple, ranted Bell, before verbally attacking Reverend Frederick Henry Scrivener, who had supported Charlotte and Mary Ann in court, accusing the minister of encouraging his sisters to speak falsely against him. ‘I stand before my God an innocent man and have no fears about meeting Caddy in heaven,’ Bell continued, labelling his sisters criminally wicked for trying to bring about his personal ruin for their own gain.

When Crompton got the chance to speak again, he told Bell that, had the jury been privy to his display of unbridled, bitter and malevolent passion before they gave their verdict, he doubted if they would have been as lenient. Personally, the judge claimed to have found Loveday Jennings’s evidence highly credible, adding that it was his belief that, in confronting Caddy, Bell gave way to the kind of malignant and unbounded passion he had just exhibited in court.

‘I have never before in my life heard such an outburst of black and wicked thoughts or seen such a blasphemous display of malignant passion as you have just exhibited against a minister of religion and your own sisters, on whom you have brought deep affliction and distress,’ Crompton admonished Bell, adding that it was extremely fortunate for him that he had made up his mind about sentencing before being witness to his outburst. The judge then sentenced Bell to penal servitude for life, adding that he should be transported to such place beyond the seas that Her Majesty may think proper and kept in slavery for the rest of his days.

It has proved impossible to trace Bell’s fate in the immediate aftermath of his trial, although he is believed to have ended his days living in Exeter with his wife Harriett, before his eventual death in 1871.

Note: There are numerous variations in the spelling of Bell’s names in the contemporary newspapers and official records. His second name is alternatively written as Bamfield, Banfylde and Bamfylde, while Lovell is also written as Lovall.