Grahame Farrell - A Mix of Murders

Published by Kembra Publications Ltd.

ISBN 978-0-9928356-1-3

All content in this publication is copyright K G Farrell 2012 all rights reserved.

First Publishing Date: May, 2012.
Second Impression: August, 2012.
Third Impression: December, 2012.
Fourth Impression: April, 2014.

Beyond the scope of fair-use, and without the express written consent of the author, this publication may not be reproduced, transmitted or stored in whole or in part by graphic, electronic, or other means.

Cover art, copy-editing and e-book file-generation by Richard Vaughan of Dodeca Technologies Ltd., for which the author is grateful.

Cover-art text set in Conviction, a free typeface created by Hasbarak that is available through www.dafont.com.

Cover-art depicts sunset over trees on Wandsworth Common in South-West London, within only a few miles of where Eileen Emms was murdered. See Chapter Fifteen, The Quiet Killer.

A Mix of Murders is an e-book released for Kindle [in May 2012] that features British murder cases from the twentieth century, from the early years of the century to the 1980s.

Author and librarian Grahame Farrell covers a really interesting mix (as the title suggests) of 15 crimes. The latest crime in the book is a chapter on Kenneth Erskine, known as The Stockwell Strangler who murdered elderly people in South London in the 1980s. This is a particularly disturbing chapter as Erskine was simply so brutal and dangerous. His victims so vulnerable.

Another intriguing case is the 1955 murder of Elizabeth Currell in the quaint and respectable commuter village of Potters Bar, South Hertfordshire. Mrs Currell was on her regular evening stroll on the local golf course when she was brutally attacked and murdered.

I enjoyed this book because the murder cases are ones that are lesser known and have a touch of Midsomer Murder to them. The book is Farrells true crime debut and its definitely worth a read.

truecrimereader.com

...Fascinating studies of human behaviour. Each story is well written and detailed, and progresses logically through the crime, arrest, trial to the final outcome. It was a book I enjoyed reading.

capitalpunishmentuk.com

Gaslight Villainy: True Tales of Victorian Murder

Dedicated to my father, Ken Farrell of Overton, near Wrexham

Life was lived at a slow and gentle pace in the Dorset hamlet of Gussage St. Michael early in the last century. To reach the nearest main road, from Blandford Forum to Salisbury, required a two-mile walk along a narrow lane. A twice-weekly bus service to Blandford and Dorchester was the only regular link with the outside world. The nearest town, Wimborne, was ten miles away, and although only fifteen miles separated the village from the outskirts of Bournemouth, the overall feeling was of quiet rural isolation. With a population of only one hundred and sixty, this was an insular community in which everybody knew their place and the horizons of most people were limited by their relatively low position in the social hierarchy, while a strict moral code held sway over their lives in sexual matters. It is hard to conceive of a semi-feudal society like Gussage St. Michael surviving into the second decade of the twentieth century, but most rural communities of the period bore these archaic features to a greater or lesser degree.

Despite its small size and sleepy character, Gussage boasted both a school and a post office. The standard of education in rural schools of the period can be gauged from the fact that the village postmistress, Mrs. Lillian Burton, was also the assistant schoolteacher.

The largest landowner in the village, and the local squire, was George Good, a gentleman farmer, of Gussage Manor. Among his staff was Mrs. Burtons husband William known as Bill who was employed as groom, gardener and rabbit-trapper. Mr. Burton, a well-built man with a clear complexion and a striking sandy-coloured moustache, was, at twenty-nine, a good twelve years younger than his wife. They had married in 1907, and had one daughter. Although the marriage provided him with the benefits of his wifes two incomes as well as the post office accommodation, she was, in his eyes at least, losing her sexual appeal, and he gradually acquired a reputation both for pursuing younger women and for bragging about his conquests. Several scandals resulted, but confrontations with irate husbands and angry fathers did nothing to encourage Burton to abandon his adopted role as village roue.

Eventually, along came yet another target, Winifred Mitchell tall, dark-haired, independent-minded (if a little naive), and twenty-four years old. She was the cook at Gussage Manor and therefore a workmate of William Burton. She was also a distant relative of his on her mothers side, and numbered his wife among her many friends and acquaintances in the village. After having previously been in service in Wimbourne, she had been taken on by Mr. Good in October 1912. On account of her job-title at Gussage Manor, she was known by the staff as Cookie, but by most other people as Winnie. Clearly, marriage to a local man had thus far held no appeal for her, and consequently she still lived with her parents in her birthplace, the village of Manswood, about one and a half miles from Gussage. It might be more accurate, in modern terminology, to denote the strong-minded Winnie by the term single woman than by the archaic and stuffy spinster. Burton judged her as being ripe for an affair.

Annoyingly for the rabbit-trapper, Miss Mitchell proved to be anything but a pushover, and for four months she played hard-to-get before finally yielding to his blandishments, whereupon, unbeknownst to Mrs. Burton, the two became lovers, with Winnie surrendering her virginity in return for promises of a new life with Burton in Canada.

In the Edwardian English countryside untamed, undiminished by suburbia privacy was even easier to find than today. On Squire Goods estate, and close to the Manor Farm itself, was a low hill on which lay a small wood called the Sovel Plantation. Mr. Burtons rabbit-trapping duties took him there every day, and he was very familiar with its layout. It was the perfect location for illicit sex with the now-willing Miss Mitchell, and they made good use of it.

Although a number of people had for a while been aware of Burtons interest in the young cook, no-one in the village knew the extent of their intimacy, with the exception of one person, Winifred Bailey friend and confidante of Winnie Mitchell. She was the parlour-maid at Gussage Manor, and acted as go-between for the two lovers, passing letters from one to the other, and helping to arrange their secret meetings.

Miss Mitchell may have regarded herself as Burtons mistress, and, with no marital ties herself, she was content to continue their clandestine relationship indefinitely, culminating in their life together in Canada, but as far as Bill Burton was concerned, she was just his current bit on the side. Things ticked along nicely, however. That is, until the day in March 1913 when Winnie came to him with bad news: she was showing signs of being pregnant.