Perhaps Richard persuaded her it was all lies, as it seems Mary calmed down; certainly enough to be convinced to go to the races with him. Upon returning, they were soon quarrelling again and Mary went back to the Howells (who now lived in Linen Street), taking fourteen-year-old Lily and baby Dolly with her. They stayed the night, but, once again, Richard was there in the morning to take them home. This time Mrs Howells accompanied them.
Arriving at the house, Mary, with the baby in her arms, went into the kitchen with Mrs Howells and Richard went into his workshop. A little later he called out, using his pet name for Mary, ‘Polly! I want you a minute.’ When she went in, still carrying the baby, he shut the door and locked it, taking the key out of the door.
‘Where have those clothes gone out of the box upstairs?’ he asked.
Mary said she had pawned them, although she admitted afterwards she hadn’t. Then she saw Richard pick something up from the counter, saying, ‘I want satisfaction,’ as he moved towards her. Then she felt a knife on her neck. Screaming, she tried to get out of the front door but it was locked. Richard grabbed her and she felt the knife again at her throat. She heard a window smash and Richard say, ‘If you come here I’ll serve you the same.’ Then the kitchen door flew open and she collapsed and didn’t remember any more until she was in hospital.
Linen Street as it is today.
The doctor described the injury as ‘a large jagged wound on the left side of the neck, extending from the back of the neck just below the ear to near the angle of the mouth. It was deeper at the back than at the front.’ The cut had practically reached the bone and had just missed the arteries, but she had also lost a lot of blood and was in a ‘very collapsed state’.
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‘a large jagged wound on the left side of the neck
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Their daughter Elsie had heard her mother’s screams, and when she found the kitchen door was locked she had broken it open to find her father holding the knife at her mother’s throat. She had grabbed the baby from her mother and tried to push her father away. Then she saw him cut his own throat. In the meantime, Lily was at the front door, which also led into the workshop, trying to break it open while her father was shouting at her, ‘I will serve you the same.’ By this time Hannah Howells had rushed out to find a policeman.
Jane Gilks, a neighbour at No. 38 Albert Street, was coming home from work when she saw Mary being helped out of her house; ‘Blood was flowing from her throat but she was not screaming,’ she said.
Jane went into the house and saw Richard with the knife to his throat. He said, ‘This is all through other men,’ and went out into the back yard. Phoebe Tarver of No. 30 Albert Street saw Richard in the back yard with blood dripping from his neck. She helped tie a scarf around his neck and said he was saying, ‘Where is she? Is she dead?’ When told she wasn’t he said, ‘I wish she was.’
He was admitted to the hospital at the same time as his wife and the doctor said his was ‘a superficial wound on the left side of the throat’. Police Constable Savage was in charge of Richard while he was in hospital and at ‘about 12.45 a.m. on March 31’ he made a statement, which Savage took down in writing:
How is my wife? If she gets well I will take care she does not go near Joe Howells again. I fetched her from Linen Street yesterday. She had been drinking with Howells at his house. I asked her to come home to fetch me some leather. After some persuasion she went with me. As soon as we got into the house I asked her if she was going to keep away from Howells. She said ‘No! I love him, and always shall do.’ She got me into such a pitch that I said, ‘Then it is you and me for it. You shall not go with him again.’ I had made up my mind to knock her brains out first, but I picked up my leather knife in the shop and did it with that, and then tried to do myself in, but could not manage it. My home is all broken up through that scamp and my wife going out drinking and whoring with him. I had got into that form that I did not care what happened to me, but I am sorry now for what I have done. It was done in temper. I thought I had killed her. She drove me to it, and I intended doing it. She is a disgrace to her children. If I had taken the knife with me to Linen Street I should have shoved it through Howells, but if I ever come across him with my wife again I will give them both something so that they will not get away. I am worried to death. About a week ago I drank some oxalic acid, but my daughter Elsie gave me some milk and I brought it up. That was one night that my wife was away from home all night.
Police Constable Savage read the statement back to Richard, who he said was quite calm when he made it. However, in court Richard claimed that Savage hadn’t read it back to him and that he was so weak he didn’t know what he was saying. Nevertheless, Richard was committed to the assizes for attempted murder; he was also charged with attempted suicide but this was withdrawn. There was a third charge, for ‘committing an unnatural offence against his daughter Elsie’.
At the assizes on 14 July he was charged with both the attempted murder of his wife and with performing acts of incest between March and November 1910. He pleaded guilty and was given five years’ penal servitude for each offence, which were to run consecutively.
The Leamington Spa Courier on 29 November 1907 announced the publication of the will of Mrs Elizabeth Wilkes of Craven Lodge, Leamington. She had died on 11 October and her will had been written on 17 May 1902. As well as the bequests she made to her children and other family members, she left both her butler, Arthur Jackman, and her cook, Sarah Watson, £100 each. She had never changed her will but in actual fact Arthur Jackman and Sarah Watson had married not long after the will had been written. At the time of the 1911 census, Arthur and Sarah Jackman were living at Guy’s Cliffe Farm in Warwick. Jackson was now, at the age of forty-one, a farmer.
Arthur had been born in Graveley, Hertfordshire. He was the son of Cornelius Jackman and his wife, Sarah. Cornelius was employed as a coachman and by 1891 Arthur had also gone into service. He is found in the 1891 census to be employed as a footman at Newport Lodge in Melton Mowbray.
Perhaps Arthur and Sarah used their inheritance to establish themselves at Guys Cliffe Farm, perhaps they also had savings. Whatever the circumstances, it appears that for a couple of years Arthur was discontented and bad tempered.
At lunchtime on Saturday, 26 August 1911, William Harry Choat, a dairyman of No. 52 Emscote Road, was in the Dolphin Inn talking to the landlord, Mr Inglefield, when Arthur came in. Arthur went straight up to him and demanded £5 from him. Choat ignored him so Arthur shouted out, ‘You defy me, you ginger-headed ______, you are a ______ waster, and I will give you a ______ hiding if it costs me £5.’ Inglefield asked him to leave and the landlady gave him a push to get him outside. But Arthur didn’t go away, he stood on the step outside, shouting, ‘Wait till you come outside, I will pounce on you like a lion.’
Choat waited for half an hour, before taking another route home; once there, he reported the matter to the police.
John Morris of No. 44 Avon Street was also in the Dolphin Inn and when he left he said Arthur was still outside and shouting, ‘Wait till the _____ comes out. I will give him a ______ good hiding.’ Arthur then accosted Morris in Coventry Street while he was serving customers. Eventually, Arthur was arrested for being drunk and disorderly.
At the Police Court, Arthur’s defence, Mr Coleman, said there had been nothing underhand in the threats and that he hadn’t threatened grievous bodily injury with a weapon – it had all been open threats. It seems that the two men had been on unfriendly terms for the past two years, following an incident after Arthur’s father-in-law’s death – Choat had written to his customers saying he could supply them with milk.
Arthur was bound over ‘to be of good behaviour for six months’, and was advised ‘to be very careful as to his future conduct’.
Almost two years later, on 21 January 1913, Arthur William Richardson, an AA patrol man, had been hired to control the traffic around Eastgate in the centre of Warwick. He lived at No. 34
Paradise Street and had been placed on duty between three o’clock and five o’clock in the afternoon.
He saw a horse and two-wheeled vehicle coming up Smith Street, going through the arch on the right-hand side of the road. Richardson signalled to the driver to keep to the proper side but the driver took no notice. That driver was Arthur Jackman.
Eastgate today.
Richardson told him he was on the wrong side of the road but Arthur replied, ‘What the ____ has that to do with you?’ Richardson told him that he had been put there to direct the traffic but Arthur ignored him and carried on up the street. Then he stopped, turned around, and whipped up the horse, shouting, ‘You _____; I will run you down,’ and drove straight at Richardson. Richardson had to grab hold of the horse’s head to push it away.
* * *
‘You _____; I will run you down’
* * *
Arthur then continued up The Butts but stopped and got out. Leaving the cart, he went up to Richardson, saying, ‘You have no right to direct traffic on that corner, I’ll fight you,’ and took a fighting stance. Richardson refused, explaining that he couldn’t fight while he was on duty and asked Arthur for his name and address. Arthur pointed to the cart saying he could take it off that. All that was on the cart was a sign saying ‘Jackman Warwick’.
The Butts today.
At the Police Court on Friday 31 January, Arthur’s defence counsel was once again Mr Coleman and newspaper reports said that Arthur ‘behaved in a somewhat extraordinary manner, and complained that he had not had time to arrange for his defence’. He asked for an adjournment, adding that, ‘in this time of enlightened law he ought to get one chance’. He was given two hours. Later, he was fined 5s and costs for using obscene language and 5s for the assault, with costs of 18s and 6d.
Arthur died on 19 April 1960 at Waverley Lodge, St Albans in Hertfordshire, aged ninety.
COPYRIGHT
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First published in 2013
The History Press
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© Vanessa Morgan, 2013
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