Cambridgeshire Murders (11 page)

Browning was interviewed by the Inspector of Prisons, Dr Briscoe, and given the chance to put forward his case. The inspector's report concurred with Justice Lush's sentence and its findings were passed on to the Home Secretary.

The sentence stood therefore. Shortly before 8 a.m. on 15 December 1876 Browning was led to the gallows. Before his execution he made a full confession which included the following statement: ‘Having promised the girl a shilling, we walked together on to the common and scarcely spoke a word, when, without provocation on her part, I committed the foul deed, feeling at the moment that I must take away the life of some one.'

According to
The Times
:

He slept comfortably during the night, and rose a little after 6 o'clock, when he partook of breakfast – bread and butter and cocoa. He walked from his cell, accompanied by the chaplain and officials, to the scaffold with a firm step but crying and sobbing. At 8 o'clock the bell of St Paul's Church and that of the prison announced the fatal hour. The prisoner said nothing, but listened to the chaplain. Marwood, with his usual expedition, performed the execution, and in a minute or two the unhappy man ceased to live. He was heard to exclaim ‘Oh!'

Marwood had allowed a drop of 6ft 10in because Robert Browning was of ‘light stature'.

Browning was the first person to be executed within the walls of Cambridge Gaol. Several street ballads were composed and this is the chorus of one:

Poor Emma Rolfe,

Thy fate was dreadful,

For vengeance now,

Your blood it cries.

We hope your precious soul's in heaven,

Far away in your blue skies.

And this, to the tune of ‘Driven from Home', was circulated while Browning was in gaol awaiting trial:

Poor Emma Rolfe had no time to repent

On Midsummer Common to Eternity sent

Robert Brown (sic) was her murderer, in prison he's cast

From virtue she strayed to be murdered at last.

A
t the time of his conviction the
Daily News
described Walter Horsford as ‘the greatest monster of our criminal annals'. It had not taken long for him to gain the soubriquet of ‘the St Neots Poisoner' despite his never having lived in the town. Although he was arrested and convicted of just one murder, he was suspected of committing at least two more. Even before his arrest in 1897, there had been rumours that he was responsible for some sudden and unexplained deaths in the area.

He was born in 1872 and as a teenager lived with his parents in Stow Longa, a small village situated just outside Spaldwick. By the early 1890s Horsford was described as ‘a respectable farmer' who tilled land not far from his home. In 1897 he was having an affair with one of his first cousins, Mrs Annie Holmes, who was twelve years his senior. She had been married to a coal and corn merchant from a village just outside Thrapston in Northamptonshire, but was widowed in the mid-1880s at the age of 25. For two years, until October 1897, she lived in Stoney, near Kimbolton, Huntingdon-shire with her son Percy and daughter, also called Annie. While at Stoney she gave birth to another son but it is not known who his father was.

Horsford was a fairly frequent visitor, but on 14 October Mrs Holmes moved her family to rented accommodation in East Street, St Neots. It is not known what prompted the move, but just twelve days later, on 26 October 1897, Horsford married a young woman named Bessie.

A drawing of Annie Holmes.
(St Neots Advertiser)

The relationship between Holmes, now 38, and Horsford, was almost at an end, although he did make at least two visits to her at her new address. During December she wrote to inform him that she was pregnant. In his reply he advised her to see a Dr Mackenzie at Raunds. Although she wrote to this doctor she does not appear to have visited.

At the turn of the year Horsford contacted her again, this time by letter, which she received on 5 January. He wrote:

Dear Annie, Will come over Friday to see you if I can come to an arrangement of some sort or other, but you must remember that I paid you half a crown, so if I thought well not to give you anything you could not get it, but still, I don't want to talk and hear that it is by me, if you really are so.

Don't write any more letters as I don't want Bessie to know.

On the day of the arranged meeting, 7 January 1898, Holmes seemed anxious. Her daughter said she seemed as though she were waiting for something, but instead of a visit from Horsford she received a letter. In the evening Holmes fed her children (Percy now aged 15, Annie 14 and the baby aged 1) and went to bed with the baby. As she had spent the day feeling unwell she took a glass of water with her.

Mother, daughter, and baby shared a bed, and when young Annie joined her mother she noticed that the glass standing on the chest of drawers was virtually empty. Her mother still did not feel well and asked her daughter for a ‘sweetie' which she sucked upon. A short time afterwards, probably within the next twenty minutes, Holmes's daughter noticed that her mother was ill, ‘struggling and kicking as if suffering convulsions'. Firstly the neighbours, Mrs Fisher and Mrs Ashwell, were called and then Percy ran for the St Neots doctor, Joseph Herbert Anderson.

Dr Anderson found Holmes suffering convulsions, with her face and lips livid and her eyes strained and rolled up towards the ceiling. Dr Anderson later explained that his instant assumption was that she had been poisoned and he therefore asked her what she had taken.

She replied, ‘I have taken a powder to procure an abortion.' She continued to reply to his questions between convulsions and despite her pain she was totally coherent and added: ‘I believe I am poisoned.'

The doctor prepared an antidote but Holmes died before it could be administered. Although it was the first case of strychnine poisoning
¹
he had seen he was immediately clear that it was the cause of the symptoms. The antidote he prepared was choral and bromide of potassium. Although he knew she was about to die he hoped that he might be able to alleviate some of her symptoms.

The police were contacted and, at 11.40 p.m., John Allen Purser, an officer from St Neots, arrived and spoke with the victim's daughter. He decided to search the house and started, aided by a Sarah Hensman, in the bedroom. Almost immediately they found a plain sheet of paper under the head of the bed.

Moving through the house, Purser found seven packets of Dover Powders
²
that Holmes had kept in her workbasket downstairs. On completion of his search, at approximately 1.30 a.m., he locked the house and left it empty, returning at 10 a.m. the following morning. He searched the bed as well as he could without disturbing the body but despite lifting the mattress discovered nothing else. He left again at 11.15 a.m. leaving young Annie and a Miss Mary Agnes Busby in the house. He arrived back at 2 p.m., shortly before Dr Arthur Cromac Turner, a St Neots surgeon, who was to undertake the post mortem.

Doctors Anderson and Turner carried out the post mortem where it was confirmed that Holmes had died from strychnine poisoning. All her organs were in good health and she was found to be not pregnant.

The inquest was held the same day. The coroner was Charles Robert Wade-Gery. Dr Anderson gave his findings, which were corroborated by Dr Turner.

One of the witnesses called was Horsford, whose signed deposition stated: ‘I live at Spaldwick. Cousin of the deceased. Have known her all my life. I have never written to her all my life or sent her anything either by post or messenger. I have been to see her twice since she lived at St Neots, but there has been no familiarity between us at any time.'

However, on the 8th, when Holmes's body was being laid out, three papers were discovered under the mattress. One was the letter Annie had received on 5 January, the second was a packet with the words ‘One dose, take as told', and the third a note which said, ‘Take in a little water; 'tis quite harmless. Will come over in a day or two and see you.' All three papers bore Horsford's handwriting and the packet contained no fewer than 30 grains of strychnine.

On Sunday 9 January Constable Elmore joined Purser at Holmes's house. They made another search, but no other poisons were found. The only unidentified substance in the house turned out to be baking powder; it appeared that the strychnine could only have come from the packet under the mattress. Purser was also present at the inquest and when the inquest statement was read out and signed by Horsford.

On Monday 10 January the coroner issued a warrant for Horsford's arrest. Purser drove to the accused's farm at Spaldwick and detained him on a charge of wilful and corrupt perjury. Purser said, ‘I hold a warrant for you for perjury at the inquest on Annie Holmes on the 8th inst.'

Horsford replied, ‘Perjury : I don't know what it means.'

‘It means you told a lie when giving your evidence.'

‘I don't understand it.'

As Horsford was cautioned, Bessie said: ‘I believe it is all about that woman Annie Holmes,' and then asked whether her husband would be able to come home again that evening. Purser was non-committal but said that he hoped it would be possible.

However, Horsford remained in custody and, at St Neots Police Court
³
on 27 January, he was brought before magistrates having been charged with both perjury and wilful murder. Holmes's body had been exhumed from Stow Longa on 26 January and a Home Office analyst, Dr Thomas Stevenson, was conducting experiments on the organs with the assistance of Dr Anderson. Because of the nature of the tests Dr Stevenson warned that it would take up to a month for the results to be available. The case therefore was adjourned.

Walter Horsford drawn by a Leader artist.
(The Leader)

The case finally came before the south-eastern circuit Assizes on 2 June. The judge was Mr Justice Henry Hawkins, with Mr J.F.P. Rawlinson, Q.C. and Mr Raikes standing for the prosecution and Mr E.E. Wild and Mr Barrett presenting the defence.

Dr Stevenson's results were made public at the second day of the Assizes, on 2 June 1898. From the stomach contents he had extracted 1.31 grains of strych-nine. He had conducted multiple tests – including testing some of the poison on animals – but no other toxins had been detected. The paper marked ‘one dose, take as told' held 33.75 grains and another paper marked with blue and red lines also showed traces of strychnine.

The exhumation of the body had occurred nineteen days after death and there was rigidity in the fingers and lower limbs which in his experience was another clear indication of strychnine poisoning. He confirmed that all the organs appeared healthy, although all also contained the poison. By his calculations this meant that Holmes had consumed somewhere between seven and twelve grains of strychnine although the 1.31 grains found in her stomach would have been a fatal dose. He confirmed that the victim had not been pregnant either recently or at the time of her death.

He stated that he could imagine ‘no more terrible mode of death' than by strychnine; the afflicted person remained in complete possession of their faculties and normally died within thirty minutes after the onset of the symptoms, but in an extreme case up to six hours later. Death would either occur through exhaustion or suffocation caused by the chest going into spasm. If taken in water most of the poison would have settled and a smaller quantity would have remained suspended in the liquid. Once drunk it would circulate in the victim's system very quickly and one of the first symptoms would be stiffness in the back of the neck followed by spasms.

Under cross-examination by the defence he admitted that it was not uncommon for pregnant women to use strychnine in an attempt at abortion or suicide, although he stressed that strychnine could never be a successful way to produce an abortion.

The first of the neighbours called as a witness was Mrs Fisher, who along with Mrs Clara Ashwell had gone to the house at the request of Holmes's children. Although Fisher had been unable to stay for long she had seen that Holmes was in deep distress, writhing around and shouting. At one point, according to her testimony, Holmes had called out to her daughter, ‘I am so bad.'