Dorset Murders

by Sly, Nicola;

  On 27 March 1863, twenty-year-old Preedy stood at the scaffold in the company of Charles Fooks (see Chapter 5). Preedy was calm and contrite, wanting to shake hands with the prison governor and the under-sheriff and was visibly hurt when they snubbed him. A crowd of almost 5,000 people watched as Preedy took the drop, not dying instantly but instead kicking and convulsing violently for some time before finally becoming still. After hanging for an hour, the two bodies were cut down and buried within the confines of the prison walls.

  Portland Borstal Institution, 1930s.

  Convicts going to work at the stone quarries, Portland Prison, 1917.

  AFTERWORD

  Historically, the regime in Portland Prison was harsh and brutal. Opened in 1848, the death rate amongst inmates was unusually high, and suicides and attempted suicides were commonplace. During the 1870s an average of one inmate died every week. Preedy’s fatal attack on Warder Charles Evans is just one of several fatalities recorded among both guards and prisoners.

  On 23 March 1869, Jonah Dethridge, a native of Wednesbury, killed Assistant Warder Jospeh Trevett by striking him over the head with a steel-tipped pick. About three weeks previously, Trevett had reported Dethridge for insolence and Dethridge had been punished. On the morning of the murder, Dethridge, who was serving a seven-year sentence for theft, was one of a party of sixteen convicts engaged in building fortifications to the Verne Citadel, an Army barracks and prison on the Isle of Portland. Trevett reproached him about his work, to which Dethridge responded with a stream of bad language, saying that he would ‘work how he damned well wanted.’

  About an hour later, Trevett was standing on an embankment, when Dethridge was seen to creep up behind him. Before anyone could stop him, he swung his pickaxe and dealt Trevett a heavy blow to his head. Trevett was known as a humane and kind officer and the other convicts were quick to go to his defence. However, before they could reach him, Trevett toppled forward from the embankment and Dethrridge jumped down after him and hit him twice more.

  Convict quarries at Portland Prison, 1908.

  Trevett’s skull was fractured and he died in hospital later the same day. Dethridge was tried at the Dorset Assizes before Mr Justice Lush on 22 July 1869. Known as being both sullen and insolent, Dethridge showed little emotion throughout his trial, even smiling as he was found guilty and sentenced to death.

  He remained indifferent to his fate in the run-up to his execution on 12 August 1869, refusing to allow anyone to pray for his soul as he mounted the scaffold at Dorchester, where he reluctantly agreed to shake hands with Calcraft, his executioner. His death was instantaneous and, like Preedy, he was subsequently buried within the prison walls. Trevett was buried in the graveyard of St George’s Church in Portland, where his headstone simply records that he was ‘murdered by a convict in 1869’.

  Less than one year later, Assistant Warder Edward Love Bly met his death at the hands of prisoner Thomas Ratcliffe. Bly was in charge of a work party of seventeen convicts on 20 April 1870, also working on the fortifications. Like Dethridge before him, Ratcliffe had been reported and punished, and, on joining the gang that morning, had been heard to say that he intended to kill Officer Bly. Bly had been warned about this threat and had, as a consequence, tried to keep Ratcliffe out of reach of any tools that he might use as weapons. At about 2 p.m. Ratcliffe was given an order by Bly to move to a different part of the job, at which he picked up a shovel and moved towards Bly.

  Another convict shouted out a timely warning and Bly was able to duck, so that the vicious blow aimed at his head instead caught his shoulder. Bly staggered away, but Ratcliffe followed, all the while raining blows with his shovel on any part of Bly that he could reach. One particular blow caught Bly on his shin, slicing through the flesh to the bone.

  By the time other convicts had managed to subdue Ratcliffe and pin him to the ground, Bly was bleeding heavily. He managed to limp back to the prison, where he received treatment for numerous cuts and bruises, appearing to recover quickly from the assault. However, by 10 May it became evident that the wound on Bly’s leg was becoming infected and he eventually died on 13 June from blood poisoning.

  Ratcliffe was tried for killing Edward Bly at Dorchester in July 1870, before Mr Justice Willes. The main question at the trial was whether the charge against Ratcliffe should be one of murder or manslaughter. However, Ratcliffe rather sealed his own fate by testifying that, ‘I did assault the officer. I tried to take his life and should have succeeded had not the other prisoners prevented me.’

  Ratcliffe was found guilty of wilful murder and sentenced to death. Like Preedy and Dethridge before him, he was hanged by William Calcraft at Dorchester Prison on 15 August 1870.

  Portland Prison was converted into a Borstal in 1921, and in 1965 an officer named Derek Lambert was killed by an inmate, who was later sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder. The prison became a Young Offenders Institution in 1988.

  [Note: In various contemporary accounts of the murders of Portland Prison, the name of convict Thomas Moore is also recorded as John Moore. Prison surgeon William Houghton is alternatively referred to as William Hawler. Joseph Trevett’s surname is alternatively spelled Trevitt, while Thomas Ratcliffe’s name is alternatively spelled Radcliffe.]

  7

  ‘I HOPE THEY WILL PROVE THAT I DID IT’

  Hampreston, 1869

  Twenty-four-year-old Emma Pitt had been a schoolmistress at the National School at Hampreston for several years. She was a respectable unmarried lady from a good family, who was described as being of the most excellent moral character. Normally Emma did not live on the school premises, instead boarding with her parents in neighbouring Wimborne Minster, although there was a bedroom and sitting room over the schoolrooms which she could use if she wanted.

  By May 1869, tongues were wagging in and around Wimborne with the scandalous rumour that Miss Pitt was pregnant. Eventually one of the gossips, Esther Cook, could bear the suspense no longer and went directly to Emma to ask, ‘Is it true what all the people are saying about you – that you are far gone in the family way?’

  Emma was most indignant. Even though she was a slight, slender young woman and her condition was obviously visible, she categorically denied being pregnant and accused the villagers of lying and trying to blacken her character. However, just weeks later, on 15 June, she arrived at the school in the morning and, instead of going to her classroom as normal, went straight upstairs to the bedroom, saying that she felt unwell.

  A neighbour of the school, Mrs Elizabeth Parsons, firmly believed that Emma was pregnant, thinking her to be about six months into her term. Hearing that morning that she was ill, she went upstairs to check on her and realised immediately that not only was Emma definitely pregnant, but she was actually about to give birth. Knowing Emma’s prickly reaction to any suggestion that she might be expecting a baby, Mrs Parsons said nothing to her on the subject, although she did suggest that the school children were given a half-holiday and sent home. Emma wouldn’t hear of it, knowing that any such action would only serve to fuel the gossips. Hence the students were left in the charge of a pupil-teacher, Miss Julia Guy, and, after fetching Emma a cup of tea with a tot of brandy in it, Mrs Parsons went home. She checked on Emma several more times during the day, giving her more tea and brandy. Each time, Emma maintained that her illness was nothing more than a violent attack of sickness and diarrhoea. She asked Mrs Parsons for some ginger, saying that she was suffering from wind and also told her that she had taken gin and some tincture of rhubarb, but had been unable to keep them down.

  Mrs Parsons returned at about half past three in the afternoon to find Emma still in labour – and still vehemently denying the fact that she was pregnant.

  After the school day had finished at four o’clock and the children had all gone home, Miss Guy herself went upstairs to check on Emma, who begged her not to let Mrs Parsons come near her again. Accordingly, when Miss Guy left the building shortly afterwards, she made
sure that the front door of the school was locked behind her.

  Mrs Parsons came back at about five o’clock and, having tried the front door and found it locked against her, simply walked round the building to the back door. As she entered the school she was met by Emma Pitt walking down the stairs.

  Emma seemed quite put out at seeing her neighbour, asking her how she had managed to get in. Still obviously unwell and very weak, she made no protest when Mrs Parsons announced her intention of procuring a cart so that Emma could be driven home. As Mrs Parsons helped Emma into the cart, she noticed that the front of her dress was bloodstained.

  It was now obvious to Mrs Parsons that Emma was no longer pregnant. As soon as she had sent Emma on her way, she rushed straight upstairs to the school bedroom, accompanied by her daughter, Sarah Newman. Noticing some bloodstains on the bedding and the bedroom floor, they began a frantic search for the baby, which they eventually found concealed in a drawer beneath a patchwork quilt. The child – a boy – was dead, although still warm. He lay on his back, heavily bloodstained, his mouth wide open. His head was very bruised and the umbilical cord had been roughly torn several inches from his body.

  Mrs Parsons immediately sent for the police. The first officers to arrive were Deputy Chief Constable John Hammond and Constable Adams, who also noted the large amount of blood on the bedroom floor and the bed linen. The body of the infant was taken to the police station and placed in a locked cell until the surgeon could examine it. Meanwhile, Hammond went straight to Miss Pitt’s home and arrested her. He described her as talking rationally and of being capable of understanding what was said to her, although in a much weakened physical state.

  However, later that evening she was examined by a doctor, who found her to be in a very excited state and talking incoherently. There was no doubt in the doctor’s mind that she had recently been confined. A female superintendent was brought in to take care of her and it was not until 2 July that Emma had recovered sufficiently to be formally charged with the wilful murder of her baby. Her only comment was, ‘I hope they will prove that I did it’.

  On the day after the baby’s birth, the school bedroom was searched again In the same drawer where the infant’s body had been found was the child’s tongue, cut from his mouth and wrapped in a piece of rag, which had then been tied up with a blue ribbon. A large stone, usually used to prop open the bedroom door, was found on the stairs leading to the bedroom, heavily stained with blood.

  When the body of the baby was examined, it was discovered that the child’s jaw had been broken in five places and his tongue clumsily removed with some kind of sharp instrument. Dr Druitt, the surgeon, likened the severity of the damage to the child’s mouth to that which he would normally have expected to see from a shotgun wound. There was a deep cut on the side of the baby’s mouth and severe bruising on its forehead. Druitt believed that the baby was full term and had not been stillborn. He determined the cause of the infant’s death as suffocation due to congealed blood in the throat.

  Emma Pitt stood trial for the wilful murder of her baby boy at the Summer Assizes in Dorchester on 23 July 1869, pleading ‘Not Guilty’. Mr Justice Lush presided, with Mr Ffooks and Mr Nugent Bankes prosecuting, and Mr Collins acting for the defence. Because of the delicate nature of the case, the court was cleared of women and children before the proceedings commenced.

  The biggest question of the trial was whether or not the baby boy had ever had a separate existence to its mother. Two surgeons, Druitt and his assistant Mr Manning, were called to testify and it was their opinion that the wounds found on the child’s body had been inflicted while the baby was alive, meaning that it had definitely existed as a separate entity from its mother. In spite of a vigorous cross-examination by the defence, during which Mr Collins cited studies made by eminent surgeons, both of the medical witnesses stuck firmly to their opinions. Collins asked whether they had removed the child’s lungs to see if they would float in water, that being the test thought to prove conclusively whether or not the lungs had ever been inflated with air. Druitt maintained that he had not thought it necessary, since he believed that the bruising on the baby’s forehead, the rigidity of its body when it was found and the retraction of the muscles around the cut on its mouth were sufficient proof that the child had lived and breathed independently.

  At this point Mr Justice Lush addressed the jury and asked them whether or not they believed that the child had ever existed separately. If they did not believe that it had, then it would be futile to proceed with the trial.

  The jury debated for a few minutes before informing the judge that they would like to hear the case out.

  Mr Collins then argued strenuously for his client, telling the jury that the only evidence against his client was the opinion of the medical men, which he summarised as ‘altogether a matter of conjecture’. There was, he told them, ‘not a tittle of substantial evidence’ on which they could rely.

  Collins reminded them that no sharp instrument had ever been found, either in the bedroom or in Emma’s possession, with which she might have removed her child’s tongue and that although Emma’s bedroom was directly above the schoolroom, no cry from a newborn infant had been heard. (He neglected to mention that the evidence heard in court seemed to suggest that Miss Guy and all the children had left the school by the time Emma Pitt had actually given birth!) Collins presented Emma Pitt as the pathetic victim of the unnamed man whose lust had destroyed her virtue rather than as a murderess. He pointed out that she would have suffered extreme bodily pain and shame at her condition and asked the jury to consider whether, if Emma had indeed murdered her baby, would she not have disposed of the body after doing so, rather than leaving it in the drawer as evidence of her guilt, which would inevitably lead to her detection?

  Stressing that the charge against Emma Pitt was a capital charge, Collins implored the jury to think carefully before reaching their decision and to give her the benefit of any doubt that existed in their minds. They should remember that the life of a young girl was in their hands. Throughout Collins’s address Emma Pitt sobbed piteously, her gaze fixed steadfastly on the jurors, as it had been throughout the trial.

  After the defence counsel’s speech, Mr Justice Lush then summed up the case for the jury. The crux of the matter, he told them, was whether or not the child had ever been an inhabitant of this world. If it had had a separate existence and its life had been extinguished as a result of an act by its mother, then the jury should find the accused guilty of wilful murder. Otherwise there was not the slightest doubt that Emma Pitt was guilty of the lesser offence of concealment of birth

  The jury retired for only ten minutes before returning with a verdict of ‘Not Guilty’ of murder, but ‘Guilty’ of concealing the birth of a baby. Mr Justice Lush then addressed Emma, telling her that in his opinion this was one of the worst cases of concealment that had come before him. Her conduct during the day on which she was in labour, coupled with her constant denials of her situation to Mrs Parsons, proved conclusively what was her intention, at least with regard to concealment of the birth. For that reason he proposed to give her the maximum sentence allowed him by the law. Emma Pitt, whose face had visibly brightened at the jury’s verdict of ‘Not Guilty’, once again burst into noisy sobs as she was sentenced to two years imprisonment with hard labour. She was escorted from the dock to be taken to prison, moaning and crying hysterically.

  8

  ‘I TRIED TO SETTLE ONE LAST LEAVE AND I HAVE SUCCEEDED THIS TIME’

  Portland, 1891

  The naval training ship HMS Boscawen first arrived in Portland in 1862, replacing HMS Britannia, which then moved from Portland to Dartmouth to become the forerunner of the Royal Naval College. The original Boscawen was replaced in 1873 by HMS Trafalgar, which subsequently adopted the name Boscawen and remained in Portland until 1906, when she was sold.

  Life on a naval training ship in the nineteenth century was not easy for the boys on board, being taught the
many and varied tasks they would have to do as men at sea. They learned the rudiments of reading and writing, along with how to set rigging, use rifles, clean and maintain the ship, scrub and wash hammocks and make and mend clothes. They also took part in a punishing schedule of physical exercises and gymnastics. Fire being a great danger on a wooden ship at sea, the boys formed a fire brigade which, in emergencies, could be called on to assist with fires on land. On Sundays, every boy was expected to attend divine service. Discipline on the ship was harsh and in 1866 it is recorded that two boys each received twenty-four lashes from the birch.

  By 1891 there were 549 boys on board the Boscawen, most aged between twelve and seventeen years old, with each boy receiving weekly pocket money of around 3d. As the boys were often prevented from leaving the ship for long periods, due to bad weather or an infectious illness, for which the entire ship was quarantined, life on Boscawen could be confining and claustrophobic.

  The Boscawen training ship, 1905.

  On Sunday 15 November 1891, after attending the religious services, three of the Boscawen boys, William Groom, John Wise and Lawrence Salter, obtained permission to go ashore. Together they walked along the top of the cliffs at Portland towards Bow and Arrow Castle, enjoying a rare chance to stretch their legs, chatting and picking blackberries as they went.

  William Groom was about thirty yards ahead of the other two, half listening to their conversation about the Shambles lightship, a vessel that warned other ships about the treacherous Shambles sandbar between Weymouth and Portland. Suddenly, what Groom later described as a ‘groan’ interrupted the talking, and then the conversation abruptly ceased altogether. Turning round to see what had happened, Groom saw John Wise perched precariously on the edge of the 100ft-high cliffs on his hands and knees, peering over the top and laughing loudly. Groom rushed to see what was going on and, as he looked over the cliff, he spotted ‘a bundle of blue’ at the bottom and realised that it was Lawrence Salter.