Murder and Mayhem in Sheffield

Coco.

Introduction

n this book I have attempted to give the reader an insight into some of the chaotic disturbances, acts of violence and dreadful murders that have been committed in Sheffield by Sheffielders and incomers, from the eighteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century, when, in 1947, the last Sheffielder to be judicially hanged committed murder. Many of the locations are still familiar to us in the present day; others are but distant memories, such as the site of the exotic sounding Sands Paviours, covered today by the City Hall, which opened in 1932.

In my efforts to bring these cases to the printed page I have delved through countless books, documents, newspapers and manuscripts, as well as drawing on the extensive research on the history of Sheffield I have undertaken over almost two decades. Some of the murder cases I have covered I have provided only the bare bones to the events surrounding what are, in some instances, fairly complex affairs. Other murders are dealt with in greater depth.

I apologise unreservedly for any errors or omissions.

CHAPTER 1

Sheffield’s Broad Canvas for Murder and Mayhem

A band of young men numbering

from 100 to 200, armed with sticks,

brooms and rolls of bills torn off the

walls, began parading the streets at

a trot . . .

Sheffield has for centuries enjoyed an enviable world-wide reputation for the high quality manufacturing industries on which the city has developed. Its cutlery industry was first mentioned in Geoffrey Chaucer’s (c.1340 – 1400) The Canterbury Tales, when, at the beginning of The Reeves Tale, Chaucer mentions ‘A Sheffield thwitel [whittler] baar he in his hose’. Sheffield has remained the world leader in the cutlery industry and, from the late seventeenth century onwards, it also became the most famous area in the world for the production of high quality steel. As the area has evolved into the modern city we know today many changes have taken place. With few exceptions, the oldest buildings to survive intact in the city centre date from the early Georgian period, although many street names stand as reminders of Sheffield’s medieval past.

Unfortunately, the finest examples of medieval buildings were situated around the site of Sheffield’s ancient castle and their remains lie buried beneath the modern Castle Market. In other parts of Sheffield, large numbers of medieval buildings were torn down during the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Sheffield Castle itself, a once magnificent structure, had Norman origins. It was destroyed in 1649 – 50, when Parliament ordered that all castles that had been fortified by the Royalists during the Civil War should be demolished.

In A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724 – 27), Daniel Defoe writes of Sheffield:

The town of Sheffield is very populous and large, the streets narrow, and the houses dark and black, occasioned by the continued smoke of the forges, which are always at work.

In 1736, not long after Defoe’s visit, the population was 10,121, with a further 4,410 living in the rural parts that comprised the extensive parish of Sheffield. When one compares the population of other towns and cities at that time, Sheffield would have indeed been considered large, as the entire population of England amounted to less than 6 million. London had, for the time, an enormous population of 500,000 but the next largest city, Norwich, had a population of around 30,000. So Sheffield, although still a town, and with an ever-increasing population, soon overtook many cities and county towns in size. Sheffield was at the centre of Hallamshire, a district within a district – being situated with Yorkshire’s West Riding, yet contained within an enclave that for generations has been referred to as South Yorkshire. Hallamshire, a district of 72,000 acres, broadly speaking comprised the then parishes of Sheffield and Ecclesfield and the Chapelry of Bradfield. The parish of Sheffield was incorporated as the borough of Sheffield in 1843 and the town was granted City Charter in 1893. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Sheffield has a population of more than 500,000.

The growth of Sheffield and its industrial expansion was largely due to its geographical location. Like Rome, Sheffield is built on seven hills. It was, however, not its hills that made Sheffield a great industrial centre but its water supply. Sheffield is blessed with five river valleys, the rivers being the Don, Loxley, Porter, Rivelin and Sheaf (the river from which the name Sheffield is derived). The plentiful supply of water, combined with the rich beds of iron ore and ample timber available locally, hastened the development of the iron and steel industries. Scores of dams were built in the river valleys to hold water to turn hundreds of water wheels. Timber was turned into charcoal for the smelting and forging industries, making Sheffield a great centre of industry long before the Industrial Revolution came along, after which coal became the main source of power for Sheffield’s industries.

By the time of the first official census in 1801, the population of the parish of Sheffield had risen to 45,755, of whom 31,314 resided within the central township. Rapid expansion continued and fifty years later, the population numbered 135,310. The increase in population resulted in extensive building throughout Sheffield. In the centre, the changes to Sheffield’s buildings have been more concentrated. The houses that once proliferated in central Sheffield during the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have largely disappeared, as more and more people moved to the suburbs. Buildings have replaced buildings, sometimes several times over, and often they have left little trace of the thriving communities of Sheffielders that once lived and worked in the locality. Within the present-day streets there are, however, some reminders of the city’s past.

It was during the reign of Queen Victoria that the foundations of the Sheffield we know today were laid. During that period a commercial quarter was created in the central area and the township was extended westwards, north-westwards and eastwards as new middle-class estates and working-class suburbs were developed, far beyond the boundaries of the ancient township. In the eastern portion immigrants came from elsewhere in Yorkshire, some from Derbyshire and smaller numbers from Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire and various other English counties, and they soon filled the terraces that had been built to accommodate the new workforce. Some immigrants came from Ireland and settled mostly in the northwestern quarter of central Sheffield. A few people came from Scotland, and even fewer from Wales. There were also some German immigrants during this period.

A view of Sheffield in the 1830s from the south-east. (Author’s collection)

During the second half of the nineteenth century the steel industry surpassed cutlery making as the area’s major industry. The need for high quality steel for railways, ship-building and armaments meant that the Sheffield steel barons no longer looked to the cutlery industry as their major customer. Although industry in Sheffield was booming, the downside was that the concentration of heavy industry resulted in the townscape changing dramatically and, some residents thought, unfavourably. Large numbers of Sheffielders connected with the cutlery industry emigrated, particularly to the United States of America, and they became employed in the cutlery industry there. Some returned but many former Sheffield families settled permanently overseas. During the second half of the twentieth century, industrial production methods changed and hundreds of acres of steelworks and factory buildings were demolished as they became surplus to requirements, as did the workforce. Thousands became unemployed. At first the recovery was slow but Sheffield remains a forward-thinking city and expansion has taken place in other areas, providing diverse forms of employment. Sheffield still remains the world leader in the cutlery and steel industries. Modern production methods mean that considerably fewer people work in these industries today, yet although the steel industry employs less than 10 per cent of the workforce it did in the early twentieth century, more tons of steel are currently being produced in Sheffield than at any time during its history. Today, Sheffield is England’s fourth-largest city. It is also the greenest and is situated right at the centre of Britain. More than 9 million people live within an hour’s drive of the city, and 20 million within two hours’ drive.

The 1790s saw a period of considerable unrest in Sheffield. Following the Cutlers’ Company losing its ancient right to regulate admissions into its trades in 1791, rioting and, on occasions, mob rule became the order of the day for some contingents in various communities within Sheffield. That same year, rioters were able to stall the enclosure of Crookes Moor until, on 27 July, a company of Light Dragoons arrived from Nottingham. A large crowd of sightseers gathered in the town centre to welcome their arrival. Within hours the sightseers had expanded or virtually been replaced by a mob that had swelled to several hundreds. They immediately singled out the nearest symbol of local authority to attack, the town gaol, in King Street. They broke down its doors, shattered the windows and freed the prisoners. Then the shout went up: ‘To Broom Hall’, the residence of the town’s chief magistrate, the Reverend James Wilkinson, who had been responsible for obtaining an Act of Enclosure for Crookes Moor and other areas of waste and common land amounting to 6,000 acres. On arrival at Broom Hall they proceeded to break all the windows, destroy some of the furnishings, damage or burn Reverend Wilkinson’s library and set fire to his haystacks. The mob dispersed when the Dragoons arrived, and back in the town centre broke the windows at the house of the Duke of Norfolk’s Agent, Vincent Eyre. Other acts of violence were perpetrated and rule was only restored the following day after the arrival of reinforcements from York. Five rioters were arrested and committed to York Assizes. Four were eventually released, but one, eighteen-year-old apprentice John Bennett, was found guilty of rioting and arson and was hanged on Saturday, 6 September. In consequence of this rioting, Sheffield was granted its own garrison. Work began in July 1792 at a site at Philadelphia, beyond Shalesmoor, and when completed held 200 officers and men. These buildings were replaced in 1849 by Hillsborough Barracks.

Like many of England’s manufacturing towns that were either inadequately or not at all represented by a parliamentary seat, several reformers and some agitators were active in Sheffield. Disappointment followed the Reform Act of 1832 and a new campaign for parliamentary reform focussed on six points of a charter of demands. The movement for these reforms became known as Chartism, and its followers as Chartists. The more sober-minded operating within Sheffield, such as Ebenezer Elliott and Isaac Ironside, advocated ‘moral force’ as a means of achieving their aims but there were other factions who saw ‘physical force’ as the way forward. These uglier factions of Sheffield’s would-be reformers comprised a few well-meaning but probably disillusioned individuals, swelled by a contingent of men who were little more than thugs, many of them being in it for the fight but couldn’t care less about the cause. Clandestine meetings were held by torchlight and plots were hatched. Then, in January 1840, Samuel Holberry, an ex-soldier who was Nottinghamshire born and raised but by then resident in Sheffield, plotted to lead an uprising in which he planned to seize the Town Hall and the Tontine Inn, murder the watchmen and set fire to the houses of magistrates and many other prominent Sheffield citizens. The plot was betrayed and, in March, Holberry and seven others involved in the plot were tried at York for ‘seditious conspiracy’.

Sheffield’s old Town Hall, Waingate, photographed by Keith Atack in the present day. Sheffield’s first town hall stood in the south-east corner of St Peter’s churchyard and opened in 1700, with make-do court facilities and three cells. The Town Hall seen here that replaced it opened in 1808. Its distinctive tower was added in 1866. The building provided court facilities from its opening until the 1990s. (Author’s collection)

The Tontine Hotel, depicted here in 1830. Sometimes known as the Tontine Inn, along with the Town Hall, seen in the previous image, they were the intended targets for the failed uprising planned by Samuel Holberry and his associates, in 1840. (Author’s collection)

All were found guilty. Holberry was given the longest sentence – four years in Northallerton House of Correction. There he was badly treated and his health deteriorated until, in September 1841, he was moved to York Castle. Suffering from consumption, he was moved to a hospital ward and died in June 1842. He was twenty-seven years old. Holberry was buried in Sheffield General Cemetery. Thousands lined the streets to watch his funeral cortège pass by.

The Sheffield Outrages, as a series of incidents that occurred in the late 1850s and 1860s became known, were the result of Sheffield’s success in cutlery production and heavy industry. Many of those involved in the steel industries were obliged to work long shifts in often desperately unpleasant conditions. Industrial disease was rife and one particular disease, known as ‘Grinders’ Asthma’, was suffered by many workers in Sheffield’s cutlery industry. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Sheffield became one of the main centres for agitation and trade union organization, and industrial unrest culminated in a small group of militants carrying out these outrages, which involved attacking ordinary working men for non compliance and physical attacks on employers, culminating in a series of explosions and even murder.

A practice known as ‘rattening’, by which a grinder who had fallen foul of his workmates might be disciplined, had been common practice for a considerable time before these outrages took place. Rattening involved the removing or destroying of bands connecting the grindstone with the revolving shaft, making it completely inoperable. Rattening increased during these outrages, as did violent attacks. These incidents included the murder of saw grinder James Linley, in 1859, and an explosion in a house in Acorn Street, which caused the death of a female lodger. The outrages continued, resulting in the Government deciding to hold a Royal Commission on the trade unions and an inquiry into the Sheffield Outrages.

The findings of the commission showed that of the sixty trade unions in Sheffield, twelve had resorted to outrage. Over a ten-year period they had gathered information concerning 166 rat-tenings, and twenty serious outrages, in addition to cases of intimidation and twenty-two threatening letters. The most violent of the unions had been the Saw Grinders’ Society. The outrages came to an end but rattening continued after the Royal Commission’s findings had been published, and over the following twenty years, fifty-six cases were reported, a third involving saw grinders.

On Wednesday, 18 November 1868, the Sheffield and Rotherham Independent reported:

The members for Sheffield in the new Parliament are Mr Hadfield re-elected, Mr Mundella elected vice and Mr Roebuck, ignominiously defeated yesterday.

The day was a regular November day, dull and drizzling, but the heaviness of the weather was by no means reflected in the spirits of the townsfolk. Eight o’clock saw hundreds upon hundreds of men eagerly wending their way to the various polling places, with the gravity of men on a serious and solemn business. The arrangements at some of the polling booths were as bad as they could possibly be, men being kept half and three quarters of an hour before they could record their votes. In one place a crowd was jammed for half an hour into a passage 12ft long, with two policemen at the further end to prevent their admission into a spacious room, except one at a time every three or four minutes. All this, however, was patiently borne, and the inconvenience to which the voters were put only found utterances in a few mild jokes ... In the centre parts of town business proceeded as usual for an hour or two, but about eleven o’clock the gathering crowds in the area and the growing excitement caused the more timid, or the more prudent shopkeepers to put up their shutters . .. Towards twelve o’clock a wild and semi-criminal element began to show itself. A band of young men numbering from 100 to 200, armed with sticks, brooms and rolls of bills torn off the walls, began parading the streets at a trot. After they had carried on this game for some time, they gained courage to rob, and broke into a shop in Paradise Street, to steal cigars, and into the shops in Sheffield Moor, and other places. Their numbers grew from time to time, and the rapid closing of the shops showed that danger was expected . . . The stock of fish in the shop of Mr Langley, Gibraltar Street, was promptly confiscated, and the fish were stuck on sticks and poles and carried off in triumph ... This enterprising band of ragamuffins proceeded up Scotland Street, where they soon attacked another fish shop . . . The mob then moved off to a fruiterer’s shop across the way, and soon apples and nuts were rolling by scores down the street . .. As the time drew on for the closing of the poll, excited crowds thronged the central streets, and he who got 100 yards without losing his hat had reason to believe himself born under a lucky