Introduction

hanges in county boundaries over the years always make it difficult to know exactly what qualifies as ‘staffordshire’. For example, until recently it included parts of Wolverhampton. Historically, even suburbs of Birmingham were part of the old shire. Boundaries change, and for the sake of keeping to a tight geographical area, I have chosen to use the modern county of Stafford, with the unitary authority of Stoke-on-Trent, as the area covered by this book.

The northern extremity – what is loosely called Stoke-on-Trent by those from outside the district (inaccurately, to local minds) – was once an area of coal mines and the manufacture of pottery. The towns that made up the area each had its own separate identity – still recognised by those who live there, but which is not apparent to the casual observer. Just as Georgian London was segregated from nearby Islington by farmland, so were these bustling industrial centres separated by fields – long since gone as one town gradually blended into the next.

Elsewhere in the county, Stafford was a shoemaking town, Lichfield a busy Cathedral city, Burton-on-Trent famed for its beer, and the Staffordshire part of the West Midlands dominated by engineering and heavy industry. However, large swathes of Staffordshire were, and still are, largely rural, especially the Moorlands, which fringe the Peak District. Staffordshire has always mixed industry and agriculture, and to the extent that these two activities exist anywhere in modern Britain, still does to this day.

The canals brought prosperity to the Potteries, ceramic goods being less prone to breakages when transported by water than by packhorse. Then the railways opened the whole world to Staffordshire goods and industry, many of which – such as Wedgwood Pottery and Burton Ales – became world-renowned. The canal and the railway both feature in different crimes in this book, which essentially covers misdeeds committed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

In those days, the detection of crime was a haphazard business. Until 1842, Staffordshire had no professional police force, such as we would recognise, and relied on a system of ‘constables’ that had essentially sprung out of the Norman system of government. And when the county did get a police force, it was not the crisp, efficient, well-oiled machine one might have expected. The 200 men originally recruited for the new force had been reduced by almost half, mainly through discharges and dismissals, within the space of two years. To say that it was a force above corruption, or even the suspicion of corruption, would be generous in the extreme.

Alongside this new form of policing various associations sprang up, largely consisting of local dignitaries (the ‘great and the good’, or if you prefer the ‘rich and the noisy’), whose members were dismayed by the ‘upsurge’ in crime and encouraged the reporting of criminals to the authorities by offering rewards. Some of these existed into the early part of the twentieth century. Burslem’s Association for the Prosecution of Felons aimed ‘to bring Offenders of every description to condign punishment.’ If someone you reported for stealing coal from carts was convicted, you could earn £5 5s (over £300 in modern money). But reporting a highway robbery was much more lucrative at £20 (over £1,000 today).

How effective these incentives were is open to conjecture. One suspects that many unpopular innocents were reported for the good money on offer, if indeed they were reported at all. In fact, the Staffordshire Sentinel of Saturday, 31 January 1880, records a quiet year for one Potteries’ Association in the following terms:

The Hanley Association for the Prosecution of Felons has had nothing in particular to do this year except dine – which it did on Thursday in a thoroughly efficient and satisfactory manner. The fact that the Society has had nobody to prosecute during the year no more proves that it has existed in vain than the fact that a man’s house has not been burnt down, proves him a fool for having insured it.

It’s good to know the fear of coal being stolen from carts didn’t upset their digestive systems!

The dispensing of justice was quick, if not always just. Often a complex murder case would be heard in a matter of a couple of hours. Hearsay, opinion and conjecture were often enough to convict. Juries (all male, of course) might take only minutes to come to a verdict. Interestingly, the trial of William Palmer (see Chapter 11) was the first case to be tried elsewhere in the country to avoid local bias.

At the centre of any history of criminal misdeeds in Staffordshire is Stafford Gaol. At least 106 hangings took place at the gaol between 1793 and 1914. The crimes for which men, women, and even children were hanged included horse stealing, ‘uttering forged note’ (counterfeiting money), house-breaking, assault and robbery, as well as murder – although in Sarah Westwood’s case (see Chapter 8), this was relegated to ‘administering arsenic’.

Until the mid-nineteenth century, hanging took place in public. If this was to discourage others, it never worked. The hangmen were often themselves criminals and less-than-competent. They drew large crowds that blocked Stafford’s roads, eager to catch a glimpse of the latest victim of the hangman’s noose. Among the crowds were ballad-sellers, purveying abominable doggerel that told the tale of the wrongdoer’s misdeeds, often pretending they were telling a cautionary tale but really muckraking in the great British tradition. As spectators jostled for the best view of a hanging, they were regularly worked over by pickpockets. Until 1861, if caught, they too faced capital punishment: although in practice this was often commuted to transportation or imprisonment. So much for deterrence.

This book contains stories that include serial killing, crimes of passion, petty domestic disputes with spectacularly tragic consequences, self-harm, wrongful arrest and miscarriages of justice. Some of the stories have been written about often. William Palmer, the Rugeley Poisoner, is well-known, and became the subject of a TV drama a few years ago. Similarly, the story of Christina Collins (see Chapter 6) formed the basis of one of Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse novels. The George Edalji Case (see Chapter 19) was recently used in a novel by Julian Barnes, and while well-documented, it does not have the notoriety it perhaps deserves. The case was an appalling miscarriage of justice, based purely on racial intolerance. It was, in essence, the British equivalent of the Dreyfus case, and should be part of the National consciousness. Interestingly, Palmer (a hard-drinking serial killer) and Edalji (a hard-working lawyer) attended the same small school, although they were not contemporaries. Other protagonists are less well-known, but include perverts, swindlers, cheats, psychopaths and victims of injustice. Many of the crimes were born of alcohol abuse, madness, mistake, greed, fear and jealousy. Several of the misdeeds in this book are typical of those committed in any large urban sprawl where overcrowding and living hand-to-mouth are the norm. Although many of Staffordshire’s large employers were enlightened by the standards of the day, poverty was routine when many of these crimes were committed. However, crime is not the preserve of the urban poor. There are three murderous doctors in this book, and many of the events described took place in villages – tiny hamlets even – where their effect must have been felt for generations.

Open today’s paper and you’ll see the modern equivalents. You’ll also see the same platitudes on the cause of crime and how to contain it as you’d find in newspapers from over a century ago. Plus ça change…

Nicholas Corder

2006