Murder of the Black Museum 1875-1975: The Dark Secrets Behind a Hundred Years of the Most Notorious Crimes in England

by Honeycombe, Gordon

  On the day after the double murders, Constable Hacchus, who had helped carry Seaman into Number 31 after he dived off the roof, was endeavouring to give the patient some milk when Seaman allegedly said: ‘I know what’s in front of me, and I can face it. If a man takes a life he must suffer for it. I don’t value my life a bit. I have made my bed and I must lie on it.’ On 17 April, PC Hacchus was helping a nurse to wash the patient, when Seaman said: ‘Never mind washing anything else, as I shan’t be here long … I don’t want to hide anything, and I shan’t try to. I did it. I’ve been prompted to do it thousands of times. I knew the old man had been the cause of all my trouble, and I would like to kill myself now. I’m sick of life.’

  Earlier, on 11 April, PC Bryan was present when Seaman remarked: ‘I suppose old Levy is dead and buried by this time.’ ‘I don’t know,’ PC Bryan replied. ‘I’m glad I’ve done for him,’ Seaman is said to have continued. ‘I’ve been a good many times for the money, amounting to £70, and the old man always made some excuse. I made up my mind to do for him. I’m not afraid of being hanged.’ The next day, Seaman allegedly said, on waking up: ‘If the old Jew had only paid me the £70, the job would not have happened. You don’t know what I’ve had to put up from him. But this finishes the lot …’ On another day he said: ‘I’ve been crushed since I was nineteen years old. I’ve done fourteen years and two sevens.’

  On Friday, 1 May, Seaman appeared at the Thames Police Court to be charged. The Times noted: ‘The prisoner was lifted into the Court seated on an armchair and was evidently suffering considerable pain. Seaman, who was undefended, was on Thursday night interviewed by Mr Bedford, solicitor, but declined that gentleman’s service.’

  Seaman was charged with larceny, as well as with the two murders. He chose to question none of the witnesses, only asking both PCs Richardson and Wensley, as if to prove their lack of observation: ‘You saw only one hole?’ He complained strongly, however, when the various voluntary statements attributed to him were read out in court. Referring to PC Bryan he said: ‘The whole lot of his statement is a complete fabrication. I never had anything to say to him. Or the other one. They are the last two officers I should speak to. He and his companion were always questioning me. The rest of the evidence by the other witnesses is correct, but there is no truth in this.’ He was then committed for trial.

  This took place at the Central Criminal Court by Newgate Prison on Monday, 18 May 1896, a year after the second trial there of Oscar Wilde, convicted of gross indecency (which implied ‘homosexual acts not amounting to buggery’) and sentenced to two years’ hard labour in prison, a sentence that he was currently serving in Reading Jail.

  Seaman’s trial was the first of the May sessions in 1896, which were formally opened by the Lord Mayor of the City of London attended by various aldermen, sheriffs and officials. Ninety-one persons were to be tried during the sessions: five for murder, one for manslaughter, two for attempted murder, two for rapes and assaults on girls, one for arson, seven for bigamy, eleven for burglary, eleven for larceny, and seventeen for unspecified misdemeanours. Other charges in fact included forgery, libel, letter stealing, perjury, receiving stolen goods and one robbery with violence.

  The judge at William Seaman’s trial was Mr Justice Hawkins. Mr CF Gill and Mr Horace Avery appeared for the prosecution. There was no counsel for the defence, and Seaman turned down the judge’s offer of a barrister to act as a watching brief. He was indicted for the wilful murders of John Goodman Levy and Annie Sarah Gale, but only tried on the first charge.

  Mr Gill detailed the prosecution’s case and called witnesses in support. All Seaman did was to refute some of the statements he allegedly made in hospital. These included his own (alleged) account of the murders. Mr Gill said that the accused, on the morning of 4 April and after breakfast at his Millwall lodgings, went out between 8 and 9 am, having a hammer, chisel and knife in his possession. Reading from a statement allegedly made by Seaman and written down by PC Bryan, Mr Gill told the jury: ‘The prisoner said that on that morning he went to the house and knocked at the door. Mr Levy opened it and he walked in. Mr Levy said the girl was upstairs. The prisoner, continuing, said: “I then went upstairs and found her in her bedroom. She then had her dress on and was leaning over the bed. When she saw me she shouted and began to struggle. But I soon stopped her kicking. I then got downstairs and soon put the old Jew’s lights out.”’

  Why was Mrs Gale the first to die? And why did Levy apparently do nothing about escaping from the house while Seaman ran up the stairs and killed the housekeeper?

  PC Bryan’s statement, which had also been read earlier, at the Thames Police Court, reported that Seaman also said: ‘After the job was finished, I heard someone knocking at the door.’ Whether this was done by the little boy or Miss Laughton was not revealed. As Mrs Gale was surmised to have died some two hours before her body was found (i.e., at about 11.30 am), what was Seaman doing in the intervening time, and where was Mr Levy? It was thought that he had died about 1 pm. Why did he not flee from the house?

  If what Seaman is alleged to have said is true, Levy opened the door to him about 11.30. Did an argument then take place, during which Mr Levy was struck with the hammer and left for dead? Did Mrs Gale then appear, see what had happened and run screaming up the stairs to her bedroom, pursued by Seaman? Did she try to put her bed between them, whereupon he hit her with the hammer more than once? Having silenced her, did Seaman, thinking that Levy was dead below, spend some time ransacking the bedroom, and possibly other upstairs rooms, before finding that Levy had disappeared, having crawled away and hidden himself in the outhouse lavatory? Although Levy was ‘very deaf’, it seems inconceivable that he would potter about downstairs, not trying to escape, knowing that Seaman was in the house.

  It seems likely that the old man was attacked in the hall of Number 31 and hit by several blows of the hammer. Left for dead, he revived, and despite his fractured ribs and fractured skull was able to drag himself out of the house and hide in the outhouse. Perhaps in his condition he was unable to reach the front-door handle or latch and accordingly headed for the back door of the house, which may have been open, it being a warm spring day. Unable to attract any neighbour’s attention, he then may have locked himself in the lavatory in the outhouse. When Seaman came downstairs, to find that Mr Levy’s body was not in the hall, a trail of blood and the open back door may well have led him to the outhouse, where he cut the old man’s throat.

  At the conclusion of the prosecution’s evidence, the accused man, when asked what he had to say to the jury in his defence, instead complained about prejudicial remarks about him in a weekly newspaper. The judge then asked Seaman if he had anything to say with regard to the charge against him. Seaman replied that he had nothing to say and no witnesses to call.

  Mr Justice Hawkins, during his summing-up, said that there was no evidence to support the accused’s statement that Mr Levy owed the prisoner £70. The jury found Seaman guilty and he was sentenced to death.

  A few days later, on 21 May, Albert Milsom and Henry Fowler were also sentenced to death by Mr Justice Hawkins, and it was decided, probably to save time, trouble and cost, to hang them along with Seaman. These two, in the course of a burglary in Muswell Hill, north London, in February, had battered and killed another wealthy old man in his home. During their three-day trial, Fowler, a heavily built man, had tried to strangle his partner, Milsom, in the dock. So, on the scaffold, Seaman was placed between them. ‘It’s the first time I’ve been a bloody peacemaker,’ he said to the chief executioner, James Billington.

  The triple execution within Newgate Prison was carried out on 9 June 1876. Seaman’s weight, reduced by his hospitalisation and physical suffering, had fallen to 138 lb. Indifferent to the exhortations and prayers of the chaplain, Seaman was hanged with Milsom and Fowler at 9 am.

  MILSOM AND FOWLER

  THE MURDER OF HENRY SMITH, 1896

  The phrase ‘partners in crime’ has a special
meaning when that crime is murder. For there seems little doubt that the intense association of two persons, often criminally inclined, acts as a catalyst, so that one of them, becoming grossly exhibitionistic, kills a third person as a result. In the following case as in several others of a similar sort, the victim was old and feeble, and the attack both needlessly brutal as well as cowardly.

  Henry Smith, aged seventy-nine and a widower, was a retired engineer who lived alone, although attended by servants, in Muswell Lodge, a decaying mansion at Tetherdown, off Fortis Green in north London. Wealthy Mr Smith was apprehensive about being robbed, and his gardener had obligingly set up man-traps and alarms in the grounds of the house, trip-wires that were supposed to trigger guns into firing a warning shot.

  On the night of 13-14 February 1896, no gun-shot was heard, but on the morning of Friday the 14th, the gardener, Charles Webber, discovered the body of Mr Smith in his nightshirt, lying on the kitchen floor. There had been something of a struggle before the old man died from repeated blows on his head – twelve in all, probably delivered by two people. His arms had been tied to his body by strips of a tablecloth, part of which, with a towel, had been wrapped around his head. Pieces of rag had also been used as a gag. Two penknives, employed to rip the cloth, lay one on each side of the body.

  Two penknives suggested two men, and from the start a pair of burglars was sought. It was evident they had tried to force the sitting-room and scullery windows with a jemmy before entering the house through a kitchen window. The noise of their entry had clearly awakened Mr Smith, who on coming downstairs to investigate had been bludgeoned to death in the kitchen. The safe in his bedroom had been opened and ransacked. But apart from the pair of penknives, the only clue was a toy lantern found near the body of Mr Smith.

  Police investigations revealed that two men had been seen lurking in the neighbourhood of Muswell Lodge two days before the murder, and a detective who had been keeping a watchful eye on an ex-convict out on parole noticed that the man had vanished from his usual haunts. This was a large brute of a man, Henry Fowler, aged thirty-one, whose known partner in petty crime was a small, mean crook called Albert Milsom, aged thirty-three, who lived in Southern Street, King’s Cross. Both were labourers by trade.

  Their families were questioned, and the brother of Milsom’s wife, a fifteen-year-old youth called Henry Miller – who used to call Fowler ‘Bunny’ – added certainty to suspicion when he positively identified the toy lantern as his own.

  A warrant was obtained for the arrest of Milsom and Fowler, who in the meantime had disappeared. A postmark on a letter eventually led to their apprehension on Sunday, 12 April 1896, in a shop in Monmouth Street, Bath. Fowler resisted arrest and was incapacitated by several blows to his head from a police revolver. In the intervening weeks he and Milsom had been to Liverpool, Manchester, Cardiff, London and Swindon as well as Bath, part of the time with a travelling show, in which they had purchased a partnership, calling themselves Taylor and Scott.

  Milsom made a statement admitting the robbery but denying any involvement in the murder, which he said had been committed by Fowler while he, Milsom, was outside. He told his brother, Fred – ‘Fowler killed the old man. I begged and prayed of Fowler to save the old man’s life, and I ran away and Fowler ran after me. Fowler fetched me back, and Fowler went and done the robbery.’ He also told the police where in the grounds of Muswell Lodge the pair had buried their tools.

  Fowler claimed that his partner, Milsom, ‘a dirty dog’, had killed the old man. He said: ‘He first put his foot on the old man’s neck and made sure he was dead.’

  Their three-day trial at the Old Bailey began on 19 May 1896, before Mr Justice Hawkins. Mr CF Gill and Horace Avory appeared for the Crown. Milsom was defended by Mr Hutton and Mr Rooth, and Fowler by Mr Woodfall and Mr Abinger. The evidence was overwhelming – a £10 note stolen from the Smith residence had also been found in Fowler’s possession.

  While the jury were out considering their verdict the two accused remained in the dock, and Fowler, determined that Milsom should die – if not hang – fell upon the other man. He almost succeeded in strangling Milsom before he was forcibly subdued by attendant warders and policemen. A correspondent from The Times wrote:

  The constables climbed into the dock from the body of the Court to aid the warders. In the course of the struggle part of the glass partition which is on one side of the dock was smashed. Meanwhile there was great excitement in the body of the Court and in the gallery, both of which were crowded to excess. The members of the bar present and the rest of the spectators rose in their places in order to obtain a better view of what was going on, many of them standing on the seats.

  Sentenced to death on 21 May, they were hanged together in Newgate Prison on 9 June 1896, sharing a triple execution with the Whitechapel murderer, William Seaman. The executions, timed for 9 am, were attended by about two dozen officials and warders, but not by any newspaper reporters, who were not admitted on the orders of the High Sheriff. Nonetheless, reporters were able to piece together an account of events from what they were told. The correspondent from The Times correspondent noted:

  The condemned men, it is said, passed a restless and disturbed night, but Fowler ate a hearty breakfast. The bell of the prison began to toll at a quarter to 9 o’clock, by which time a large crowd had assembled outside the gaol … The men wore the clothes in which they were tried. A procession was formed and made its way to the scaffold, which is situated under a shed in a yard of the prison, the chaplain reciting the first portion of the Burial Office … Seaman was placed between the Muswell Hill murderers. As 9 o’clock struck the executioner withdrew the bolt, and the drop fell. The execution was over less than four minutes after the first man was pinioned. Prior to his death, Milsom said he was innocent, Seaman said he had nothing to say, and Fowler made no statement at all. As the black flag denoting the sentence had been carried out was hoisted on the roof of the gaol, the crowd in the precincts cheered.

  What The Times correspondent apparently did not know was that a horrid accident had occurred at the hanging. To prevent any strife between Milsom and Fowler, or any resistance from all three, James Billington, the chief executioner, had been given three assistants – one of whom was William Warbrick. Four warders also stood in close attendance. One of the warders happened to obscure Warbrick from Billington’s view as he knelt down on the trap-door to pinion the feet of one of the doomed men. Warbrick was still thus employed when Billington, acting hastily on the stroke of nine, withdrew the bolt that released the trap-door below the three condemned men, catapulting his assistant into the pit. Warbrick instinctively managed to grab the legs of the man in front of him. He ended up swinging below the bodies of the three dead or dying men.

  This scaffold, described by Billington’s successor, Harry Pierrepoint, as ‘the finest scaffold in the whole country, being fitted to hang three persons side by side’ was moved to Pentonville Prison in 1902, when Newgate Prison was demolished. The first hanging at Pentonville took place on this scaffold on 30 September 1902, an event that was also marked by the discontinuance of the practice of flying a black flag when an execution occurred. Instead, a bell was tolled.

  In 1903 the number of people executed for murder in Britain rose to its highest level for over seventy years – twenty-seven people being hanged. This, however, was below the average for the years between 1811 and 1832, when about eighty people were hanged every year – and far less than the average rate of executions which, in the brief reign of Edward VI (1547-53), reached record heights, about 560 people being executed each year at Tyburn alone.

  It was in 1903 that building on the site of the demolished Newgate Prison began, concluding three years later. The new edifice, topped by a large bronze figure of Justice, was the imposing Central Criminal Court, soon to be known by the name of the street in which it stood: the Old Bailey.

  MRS DYER

  THE MURDER OF DORIS MARMON, 1896

  Some
sorts of murder in the nineteenth century arose out of the economic and social conditions peculiar to that age. They could never happen now, having been eliminated by social progress and improvements in housing, wages, hygiene and the status of women. Baby-farming was a peculiarity of late Victorian England, when unwanted or inconvenient babies and children, whether illegitimate or merely burdensome, were farmed out to women acting as foster mothers who were paid to ‘adopt’ the infants or to look after them for months or years. Such a surrogate mother was Mrs Dyer, who killed at least seven children, and in her twenty years as a baby farmer may have killed many more. Mrs Dyer also has the distinction of being the oldest woman to have been hanged in Britain between 1843 and 1955.

  Anative of Bristol where she was born (in about 1839), brought up and married, Mrs Amelia Elizabeth Dyer was a member of the Salvation Army. She began acting as a midwife and foster mother about 1875 if not before. In 1880, she was jailed for six weeks for running a baby farm in Long Ashton, a village south-west of Bristol. Between 1891 and 1894, she was thrice admitted to lunatic asylums for a month or so – twice, it is said, because she had tried to commit suicide while in prison. In June 1895, she left Barton Regis workhouse with an old woman called Granny Smith and went to Cardiff, where the pair lodged with Mrs Dyer’s married daughter, Mrs Mary Ann (Polly) Palmer, for a few months. During this period, Polly Palmer had a baby that died of ‘convulsions and diarrhoea’ and probably neglect. Her husband, Arthur, was twenty-five and unemployed. Mrs Dyer’s husband, William, whom she had left many years earlier, worked in a vinegar factory in Bristol.

  In September 1895, evading creditors and the police, the Palmers, Mrs Dyer and Granny Smith absconded from Cardiff and travelled east to Caversham, a village outside Reading. Here Mrs Dyer, using an assumed name, advertised her trade, and children for adoption or boarding began to arrive. She was assisted in this business by her daughter and presumably by Granny Smith; Arthur Palmer remained out of work.