‘The crowd, lined up in a queue outside the Assize Court, could only be likened to one usually seen outside a Picture Palace or a Theatre, instead of a Court of Justice, wherein the chief actor was fighting for his life. Once or twice the crowd rushed the doors and literally fought their way in, not caring so long as they could gain admission into the building.’

It was into this feverish atmosphere, as described above in the weekly Bucks FreePress four days after the trial ended, that the principal players filed for almost the final time. It was 10.30am on Monday, the jury having spent their day of rest attending Morning Service at nearby St Mary’s Church, followed by a drive in the afternoon round the district in a brake pulled by a pair of horses.

As the Judge took his seat, Bailey entered the dock. He bore, said observers, ‘unmistakeable traces of the ordeal; his face was drawn and white’. As the concluding act in this drama unfolded over the succeeding hours, he sat at times ‘with bowed head’, the confident, sometimes even perky, demeanour of the previous three days of the trial now completely, palpably, drained out of him.

Before he could begin his final speech for the Defence, Mr Johnston had some pieces of incidental business to conclude. These included entering into evidence the death certificate of Bailey’s father as a further and firm reminder to the jury of his cause of death – ‘acute melancholia and exhaustion’. He also recalled Bailey’s sister, Mrs Jennings, to the witness box to engage in this rather enigmatic exchange.

Mr Johnston asked, ‘Do you remember your brother coming to Swindon at the beginning of October?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you notice anything about his coat?’

‘There were a few stains on the back of his coat.’

‘Do you know what became of those stains?’

‘I handed him a brush, and he brushed them off.’

‘You say he brushed them off?’

‘Yes.’

Only the dead woman and the prisoner actually knew what happened at Barn Cottage on the night of 29 September, Mr Johnston told the jury near the outset of his three-and-a-half-hour-long address, effectively a plea for Bailey’s life. As his wife was beyond recall, Bailey alone could tell them what transpired, he suggested. It was not a question of for what purpose Bailey obtained poison but who, the jury would have to decide, crucially, actually gave it to Kate. The story Bailey had given them from the witness box was, said Mr Johnston, a true one: that his wife took the poison herself and committed suicide. What stronger proof of her intention and state of mind did they need than Kate’s agonised letter to her mother-in-law? It was a letter proved to be in her own handwriting, which Counsel pointedly read out again, slowly and deliberately, to a hushed court.

Mr Johnston then walked the jury minutely through Bailey’s life, detailing as much as possible of the good, such as his system of musical notation, for which he had such hopes, yet not shirking mention of the darker recesses of the prisoner’s past, including regular breakdowns of his physical and mental health, the latter occasioning a long stay in Banstead Asylum. Mr Johnston made it quite clear to the jury, however, that a defence of insanity was not going to be advanced on the grounds that ‘the prisoner was in no way responsible for his wife’s death’.

The jury was asked to consider this man who had a keen intelligence, above average as a boy and for the class – Mr Johnston was keen to emphasise – in which he was born. He’d written plays, poetry and brought out inventions; but, when failure beckoned, he’d also contemplated suicide on more than one occasion. But things seemed to be going well for him when he and his family arrived in Bourne End, and he was already much advanced on his musical aspirations hoping they’d earn him some extra money.

In fact, months earlier, Mr Johnston reminded the jury, Bailey had told his sister that the system was complete and he was planning to engage young women to further its cause. As for the notorious advertisement, Bailey had included the ‘over 16’ line not because he believed cynically that would somehow preclude him from ‘the meshes of the criminal law’ but because ‘those under 16 would be too young and would not make good teachers, canvassers and saleswomen’ of his system.

As for his purchase of poisons, that was explained by Bailey’s desire to get rid of ants and wasps at his respective rented properties in Bourne End and Little Marlow and also for his intended, legitimate, work as a farrier. Not, Mr Johnston averred, for the purpose of killing his wife so he could have free rein with young women ‘for immoral purposes’. Refreshing the jury’s memory of just why the Misses Edwards and Marks were invited to sleep over at Barn Cottage, Mr Johnston declared that the latter simply misconstrued Bailey’s intentions and had consequently invented her story.

Drawing to a close, Mr Johnston referred back to the letter from Bailey to the Coroner in which he’d written, ‘I gave her hers first; then I follow.’ This seemed a clear intention that the prisoner was contemplating suicide; but then fearing that Hollie would be unprovided for, he changed his mind.

There is, in fact, no actual record of either Mr Johnston’s or Mr Young’s speeches in the official Home Office files of the case, so their specific content and exact tenor may only be gleaned from contemporary news reports. One can then merely imagine the gravity with which Mr Johnston surely must have imbued his final entreaty to the jury: that, all through, it had been Bailey’s sole aim and ambition to remove the stain of suicide from Kate’s name.

It was getting on for 2.30pm when the Court was adjourned for a brief lunch interval after which Mr Young would try to begin to undermine the Defence case, while providing enough evidence ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ to secure a ‘Guilty’ verdict with its terrible consequences. The experienced Counsel’s deceptively mild opening – reiterating the necessity, albeit perhaps the inconvenience for both jury and prisoner, of Sunday’s hiatus, which had at least obviated the prospect of his starting his closing speech at 10.30pm on a Saturday evening – soon gave way to almost 70 minutes of quietly devastating argument carefully, bit by bit, ripping apart the case for the Defence.

‘Lying, lying, lying …’ was how Mr Young graphically summed up Bailey’s account and evidence – a pack of lies from first to last. From 20 September, when Bailey, fearing he’d lose his work with Mr Hall, absented himself with the fictitious story of a visit to the doctor, the lies really began in earnest, suggested Mr Young. From almost the outset, Prosecuting Counsel was eager to impress upon the jury that there had never been any suggestion that Bailey wasn’t responsible for his actions. Insanity had not been put forward as a defence, despite evidence offered about Bailey’s father’s demise and the prisoner’s own irregular mental problems.

It was clear that he knew about the nature of drugs, especially those that were in the house on the afternoon of 29 September. Did Kate commit suicide using the two drugs stramonia and prussic acid? Mr Young suggested firmly to the jury that she did not; that it was actually from her husband’s hand she received the fatal doses. The Judge, he said, would direct them as to the point of law regarding the question of a possible suicide pact and one party surviving. Yet, Mr Young was anxious to remind them, until they came into Court had they ever heard one word about Kate committing suicide?

Why the prisoner should have been advised to put forward that plea, after the difficulties he had to face, Mr Young said he couldn’t fathom. Why would Bailey sacrifice himself to a charge of murder to shield his dead wife if she committed suicide if he did not want anyone to know that she had committed suicide? So, repeated Mr Young, who gave Kate the drugs, and how were they administered?

After it was alleged that she had taken stramonia, the prisoner, said Mr Young, was very careful to wash up the tea things, in all probability destroying any drug he might have given her, either in her cup of tea or otherwise. Then when she had taken the stramonia, Bailey had told them that he wrote some letters. If what he said were true, added Mr Young, did that not demonstrate callousness on his part? Despite his wife’s condition, he not only sat down to write letters but also then left the house to post them.

As for the matter of Kate going to bed – who, asked Mr Young, actually suggested she do so? Once there, it was alleged she then died of prussic-acid poisoning. Who gave her that? There was only Bailey’s word for how that was administered. He had given evidence as to what he’d discovered yet never summoned any assistance, either from a neighbour, a doctor or the police. The jury had heard how Bailey had rushed downstairs, found some cotton wool which he doused with chloroform and then, ‘cruel as he was’, placed it on Kate’s nose to help ease her pain. Yet, Mr Young intoned gravely, he made no real attempt to save her.

Mr Young didn’t dispute the fact that Bailey truly believed in his system of musical notation, something that was to drive perhaps a terminal wedge in the marriage. In fact, said Mr Young, he was ‘crazy’ about it – but that didn’t make him insane. This growing rift seems to have been manifest in Kate’s letter to her mother-in-law. It was, he suggested, the outpourings of a broken heart. Meanwhile, Bailey had his own evil designs in relation to the young women he planned to hire for the alleged purpose of copying and demonstrating his system. When it became clear that the Bourne End house wouldn’t suit his real intention, he took Barn Cottage, advertised, gathered his poisons and then kept shuffling appointments and meetings with a clear intention of having an empty house while murder was uppermost in his mind.

A court reporter captured the climactic thrust of Mr Young’s speech in this vivid fashion: ‘The prisoner had been reckless in his own life and reckless in regard to others. He was a dangerous man, one who had knowledge of drugs – a man who was a danger to the public.’ On the evidence given, the jury would have, Mr Young concluded, no hesitation in declaring he was guilty of the charge.

Now past 4.00pm, the light, on what had been already an overcast day outside in Aylesbury with occasional drizzle and a squally wind whipping around the town centre, began also to dim in the court itself, so, as the Judge began his summing up, a couple of candles were placed on the Bench beside him, lending a rather spectral quality to the proceedings.

He began by outlining the law regarding murder and where it pertained to a suicide pact, especially if one of the parties backed out.

If the contents of the letter to the Coroner were true – that Bailey handed the poison to Kate – then he was guilty of murder. The Defence’s version was that, at the time he wrote that letter, Bailey claimed he was attempting to free the ‘memory of the dead woman from the aspersion [of suicide] that would rest upon her’.

What then of the ‘little green notebook’, Exhibit 79, upon which the main pillar of the Defence case, that Kate embarked on voluntary suicide, relied?

‘You must deal with it with care, because if it is the writing of his wife, if it is the real writing, and represents the real state of things, it will be of great importance. She says there, “I can’t stand it any longer.” Later on she says, “It will be the last time where I am concerned, for I shall take jolly good care it is the last time.”

‘Both Counsel, I think, have assumed that this letter points definitely to suicide, but you must not be so sure about it, as to whether it really points to an intention to commit suicide, and whether it points rather to an intention to leave the prisoner and to have done with him for ever. The word “suicide” is not shown in it. The word “poison” is not shown in it. You have got to consider whether this letter really points to suicide.

‘Now, assuming that the wording of the letter points to suicide, still you have got to ask: was this letter an intention, a real intention to commit suicide? This letter you have heard was laid upon a chest of drawers and it was found in August 1920. You must ask yourselves how this came into existence, because you will remember that if his story is right, that this woman committed suicide on 29 September, she left no written message then and this message was written, if at all, in August 1920, a month before.

‘Now, you must ask yourselves, does this represent any evident threat of suicide, does it represent any real threat of suicide, or was it merely written to frighten the man, and bring him to a better frame of mind?

‘These are rather important questions. Indeed, it may be asked as to whether this, at some time or another, might not have been written as a reality or as a dramatic piece by the woman at the request of the prisoner, in order that something might remain in existence which he could point to as an indication of intention by the woman to commit suicide.’

As if this wasn’t already a fairly damning, indeed damaging, piece of theorising on the part of the Judge, then he would surely compound it with the following:

The Judge then spent the next few minutes reacquainting the jury with almost every aspect of the case that suggested ‘voluntary suicide’ was the last possible explanation that could be adduced from the available – by which he seemed to imply genuinely reliable – evidence. And systematically, the Judge continued effectively to rubbish every piece of Bailey’s version of events:

In the wake of all this, the Judge’s next ‘what if’ scenario, positing instead ‘deliberate murder’, seemed almost superfluous.

After dealing minutely with Bailey’s attempts to obtain poisons and some of the alleged lies he told in pursuit of them, the Judge next moved on to questions of the musical notation, the advertisements, the girls, and the accused’s possible motives regarding each, and perhaps all, of them. These he would now lay out for the jury in strangely lurid, even occasionally lascivious, language unlike anything earlier in his otherwise cool, fairly impersonal, summing up:

As has been pointed out before, there is no available transcript of Mr Young’s closing remarks, unlike the Judge’s, which are meticulously recorded word for word in the Home Office files, so we can only assume – as court reporters also neglected to mention this in their précis of the Prosecution case – that Mr Justice McCardie uttered the following at Counsel’s prompting:

‘The case for the Crown is this. They say if you look at the way in which his musical system arrangements are made [referring to the wording of the advertisements] you will see deeply concealed the same sexual instinct. It matters not to my mind, you may take a different view, whether he believed in his system or not. It matters not whether the system of music was a good or bad one, whether he believed in it or not … something was necessary for getting girls into the house, touch their hands, watch their bodies and entice them to sleep there.’

The Judge then focused in on the crucial testimony of just one of those girls, Lilian Marks, who had arrived at Barn Cottage as Kate was dying and then spent what the jury had earlier heard was a long, terrifying night trying to resist Bailey’s alleged attempts to have ‘connection’ with her. If the nine men and three women hadn’t already been overwhelmed with her dramatic appearance in the witness box, they would be reminded of her supposed ordeal in almost purple terms by the Judge.

‘Miss Marks says he [Bailey] spent the night in efforts, in continued efforts, to procure her body. He says this is quite inaccurate, that he did nothing of the sort; all that he did was push her back in order that she should not go into the next room where the dead body of his wife was lying. Now, either the witness Miss Marks is telling the truth or not, either the prisoner is telling the truth or not.

‘The difference between them is vital, and if this man is telling a lie as to what happened between himself and Miss Marks, what becomes of his other testimony? Now, you saw him. Is the story Miss Marks has told the truth or not? Is her evidence correct? It is not one of those little points that may be passed in a moment.

‘A man may forget, but there are in the life of every woman great crises, and hours she does not forget. They are seared upon the memory, and never forgotten. Can you imagine that any young woman would pass the night, as Miss Marks has told you, trying to resist the efforts of this man to gain her body and make a mistake as to what took place? Why, the whole life and future of the woman was at stake.

‘It is not a mere question of attacks made upon her by pushing her by the shoulders and chest; it is the words that were spoken. If Miss Marks is right, he said, “I have come here for a purpose; will you be the mistress of this cottage; will you be the mother of my children?” Which could only mean one thing. Then Miss Marks asks, “Are you married?” He says, “No, I am not married, the child is my sister’s child.”

‘Then there is the curious phrase, which I should think a girl, or at any rate an unmarried woman, would never forget, and she would ever remember. You may be mistaken as to the actual movements on a night but you can scarcely be mistaken as to the phrase used by the man in the course of that night.’

As to any question of Bailey’s insanity, the Judge noted that Defence Counsel had made it clear it was not put forward, yet reminded the jury that Mr Johnston had said it was a matter which they ought to consider:

With the clock moving towards 5.30pm, the Judge, whose scarlet-and-white attire was the only spot of brightness in an otherwise dimly lit courtroom, finally arrived at his closing remarks, which, as was usual in capital cases, included the grave reminder about the enormity of the jury’s responsibility together with, on this unique occasion, timely recognition of the historic composition of the 12 men and women.

The media’s continuing fascination with the pioneering composition of the jury was expressed best by the Daily Mail whose entire coverage of the trial, especially the last day, was viewed, perhaps unsurprisingly, through the prism of its female representation:

Miss Stevenson – whom, you may recall, had been asked to be excused at the start of the trial – was the most striking of the three women, and indeed, glowed the Mail, she was the dominating figure of the whole jury.

‘Certainty’ and ‘firmness’, as requested by the Judge, not to mention the capacity for a blistering turn of speed, seem indeed to have been the residing characteristics of this dauntless dozen, for hardly had everyone taken time to draw breath after the momentous events of the fourth and last day than, just half an hour after Mr Justice McCardie had uttered his final words of guidance, the jury were suddenly back in an eerily silent courtroom. The Daily Express wrote: ‘His [Bailey’s] face was of a dead white paleness, but he stood firmly, his hands grasping the front of the dock. He looked keenly at the jury, particularly the women, whose eyes were downcast.’

As the Judge returned to his seat, there was now placed on the Bench to his left the black cap alongside a pair of white gloves. An equal sense of certainty about how the jury had found now swiftly resonated throughout this corner of the Assize even as the fateful words were being exchanged between the Clerk and the Foreman.

‘Do you find the prisoner guilty or not guilty of wilful murder?’

‘We find the prisoner guilty of wilful murder.’

‘And this is the verdict of you all?’

‘Yes.’

The Clerk then turned to Bailey who, it’s said, was now looking ‘deathly pale’, the final ounce of that initial confidence drained out of him, and asked, ‘George Arthur Bailey, have you anything to say why the sentence of the Court should not be passed upon you?’ To which he replied, cryptically and in, reportedly, low tones, ‘I am morally guilty.’ Or did he? That was how he was reported in the official shorthand trial transcript. The Bucks Free Press and the Daily Express, however, reported his actual words as: ‘I am not morally guilty.’ The Bucks Herald noted it simply as: ‘I am not guilty.’

The black cap placed upon his head, the Judge, now white-gloved, then passed sentence. ‘George Arthur Bailey. The jury have found you guilty of wilful murder. I agree with their verdict. It is my duty to pass sentence upon you according to law. The sentence of the Court upon you is that you be taken from hence to the place from whence you came and then to a place of lawful execution, and that you be hanged by the neck until you be dead, and that your body be afterwards buried within the precincts of the prison in which you last have been confined after your conviction. And may the Lord have mercy on your soul.’

The Chaplain standing alongside the Bench responded with ‘Amen’.

As if already resigned to his fate, Bailey quickly turned and disappeared below to the cells before even the warders with him in the dock could assist his passage.

Having dealt summarily with the main actor in this unfolding drama who had now exited below stage, as it were, the Judge next turned to the remaining assembled to draw, he said, their attention to a couple of other matters. First, he wished to commend the Prosecution on the way the case had been so carefully prepared and he singled out three members of the Buckinghamshire Police for special recognition – Supt Kirby (who would eventually become Deputy Chief Constable of the county), Inspector West and PC Poole.

Second, he said he wished to respond to a report contained in one of Saturday’s illustrated papers in which it was stated that the women jurors had taken a more ‘intelligent interest’ in the case than the men, further alleging that one of the male jurors had even been spotted asleep.

The jury, for its own part, had sent the Judge a protest against this allegation, signed by the Foreman, because they considered the insinuation detrimental to the ‘interests of British justice’. Mr Justice McCardie said he was glad to receive the note, which also prompted a paean of praise from him to both the men and women of this particular jury. ‘I am glad to express my hearty appreciation of the admirable manner in which every member of the jury discharged his or her duties,’ he said, while endorsing their protest about such a ‘shameful slur’. He then exempted them from further service for five years. The 12, as one, replied, ‘Thank you, my lord.’

The proceedings now concluded, the newspapers could reflect on its more unusual aspects without prejudice. Inevitably, the matter of women jurors and their performance was the one that seemed to preoccupy most column inches. Typical was the Daily Sketch of 18 January, which, beneath the headline ‘WOMEN JURORS MAKE GOOD’, reported: ‘Women at Aylesbury have disposed finally of the theory that the evidence in certain unpalatable cases is not fit for feminine ears.’

The paper’s Special Correspondent noted how, throughout the trial, the Court had been ‘crowded with women, most of them young’. He was, he wrote, ‘astounded to notice in the gallery a schoolgirl, with her hair flowing over her shoulders. During all the shocking allegations of the prosecution, the detailed examination and cross-examination of the girl witnesses who had dealings with Bailey, she remained in court.’ The image clearly remained with him as he later spoke to a woman usher after the end of the trial.

‘At first I was inclined to think it wrong,’ she confided to me, ‘that young girls should attend a case like this but, after all, I have come to the conclusion it may be useful experience for them. The fact that so many women replied to Bailey’s advertisement showed that parents are not plain enough with their children, and that girls, perhaps in their ignorance, are too eager to take work in suspicious circumstances. The evidence will open the eyes of the girls present.’

This intriguing little eye-opener from an anonymous court official – quite possibly Mrs Noble who had looked after the women jurors throughout the trial – was then scooped later in the same article by an even more fascinating insight into the mind of at least one of the women jurors, Miss Tack. She told the Sketch’s Special Correspondent, ‘I think our experience has been extremely interesting. It was my first appearance in a criminal court, and I felt a little – not exactly nervous, for I am not a nervously-disposed person – but a bit out of my element at first.

‘I soon settled down, though, and had no difficulty in getting hold of the trend of evidence. The evidence has been very sordid – extremely pitiful, but I don’t see any reason why it should not be given in the presence of women. It might be an ordeal to a nervous woman, though. We had to do our best to keep up the spirits of one of the women jurors; occasionally she showed signs of being overcome.’

Miss Tack was also interviewed by the Daily Mail for her opinion of the trial: ‘It did not upset me at all. I have looked after sick people, and I work with five brothers on a farm. I just listened to all I heard and used my judgement as well as I could. It has been a very broadening experience. I see no reason at all why women should not serve on juries, though I think they should be over 50. They have a settled mind then. There should always be more than one woman on a jury, but in a way, I prefer men. They get more to the point somehow.’

The Daily Express summed it up by saying: ‘The women showed unmoved faces and well-scheduled nerves while all the grim business of the Judge’s black cap and the Chaplain’s “Amen” to the sentence was in progress. They had strung themselves to that point with deliberate fortitude. They came through the ordeal of verdict and sentence as bravely as any one of the men.’

In its short account of the final day, the Times couldn’t resist closing with its own dry take on the mixed-jury phenomenon: ‘It was still noticeable today that Counsel have not yet become used to addressing a mixed jury. Mr Hugo Young KC, in his speech for the Prosecution, addressed them as “Members of the jury” at first but soon slipped back into the familiar “Gentlemen”. Occasionally, he remembered to refer to them as “Gentlemen … and ladies”. The Judge, on the other hand, referred to them punctiliously throughout as “Members of the jury”.’

The Judge still had one more important piece of trial business to conclude while the public and jury weaved their way homeward and as Bailey was being escorted by railway back to HM Prison Oxford. In the upstairs drawing room of the elegant Judge’s Lodgings, Mr Justice McCardie sat down to compose the following letter:

To The Home Secretary

Sir, R v George Arthur Bailey

I beg to inform you that this man was today found guilty of the murder of his wife on Sept 29/30 and was sentenced to death by me.

The case for the prosecution was that he administered prussic acid to her whereby she died.

It is clear she was killed through prussic acid. The case for the defence was that Mrs Bailey committed suicide without the aid or consent of the condemned man (cf exhibit 79 Aug/20)

The case is curious both in its facts and its psychology. The evidence was voluminous. The circumstances were complicated. The body of the dead woman was found by the police on Oct 2/20 and at a house occupied by the o/f and known as Barn Cottage. The o/f was arrested at Reading on the same day. He was charged with the murder of his wife. Neither then or until the trial did he say she had committed suicide.

Upon him (when arrested) were found 4 bottles of poison including a bottle of prussic acid of which a part of the contents had been used.

There was also found upon him a document (exhibit 48) in his own writing in which he stated that he ‘had handed the poison to his wife and that she had believed his statements’. He also said (in a later passage) ‘I gave her stramonia first and then hydrocyanic acidic prussic acid.’

The case for the Crown was that the statements in this document were correct and were corroborated by many other circumstances and documents. The o/f said in his evidence that the document was not correct and that his reason for signing the document was he had given the poison because he wanted to free the memory of his wife from the blot of voluntary and unaided suicide.

I think myself that the o/f wrote the document at a time when he intended to kill himself with the poisons in his possession. It was written about two days after the crime and just before his arrest. It was addressed to the Coroner.

For by now the o/f had become weary of his wife and wanted to get rid of her. He had described her as ‘common’. He had without valid excuse got diverse poisons from a chemist by means of false statements. He had formed, I think, a strong sexual desire for other women. It would take too long to detail the facts of this unusual case.

I am satisfied that the o/f did administer the poison to the dead woman and that he told her that he himself would commit suicide so that he might follow her to death.

The o/f is a clever, ingenious and plausible man. He has a bad criminal record. The defence of insanity was not actually raised. I think that he was perfectly sane at the time of the murder.

But he has a curious mental history – had several times tried to commit suicide, had suffered from sunstroke, had been in an asylum and had suffered from falls which injured his legs and his head.

The case is one of the most unusual which has been tried before me. I agree with the verdict of the jury.

I am

Yours faithfully

Later that week, the Bucks Advertiser and Aylesbury News, one of the longer established of the local papers that still flourished in those days, delivered its own verdict on the trial, calling it ‘one of the most remarkable heard in the old Courthouse of the County Hall’, and on Bailey, in particular: ‘No one present at the trial could quarrel with the verdict of “Guilty”. The prisoner, Bailey, in the witness box displayed a cool and calculating mind, which, considering the issue at stake, was most uncanny and repugnant. Listening to his evidence was like having cold water poured down one’s spine. It is hardly necessary to remind my readers that this was the first occasion on which a mixed jury of men and women has been empanelled to try a charge of murder. They must have been rather tired of being reminded of the fact in other ways.’