Grahame Farrell - Blood on the Cobbles. A Victorian True-Murder Casebook

Published by Kembra Publications Ltd.

ISBN 978-0-9928356-5-1

All content in this publication is copyright K G Farrell 2014 all rights reserved.

First Publishing Date: May, 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 modelling services and props provided by Ccile Dubuis, for which the author is also grateful.

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Please note that older e-readers/e-reader-software may not align correctly the text that follows the illumination device used at the start of each chapter (the hangman's scaffold graphic).

A Mix of Murders: Fifteen Historic English Cases from the Twentieth Century

Gaslight Villainy: True Tales of Victorian Murder

Cyflwynedig i bobl Cymru, Cernyw a Llydaw.

ow did the British police solve a murder in an age when the vast resources of forensic science enjoyed by todays police forces were unavailable, and when detection methods were still at a rudimentary level? This is what transforms Victorian murder mysteries from what today might be mundane exercises in forensic analysis into fascinating and quirky factual tales.

Added to this is the very eccentricity of some Victorian cases: a dying woman thrown from a railway carriage, but with no sign of her attacker in her compartment, when his escape should have been impossible; a mans voice shouting Murder! from a womans flat, but with no sign of the victim when he is known not to have left the scene of the crime; a chief prosecution witness at a murder trial who suddenly finds himself with a lot of explaining to do; two bank employees, one fatally and brutally injured, but the other with only the slightest of injuries, and nothing stolen. How were Nineteenth-Century criminal investigators to unravel such convoluted affairs?

Quite often, the policemans best weapon was his instinct, based on experience, but, with surprising frequency, he was also able to take advantage of the fatal assumption on the part of the murderer that he or she can pull the wool over the eyes of the world. One simple mistake is often all it takes for a murderer to put a noose around his own neck.

The murderer has exercised his god-like power by committing the crime. From then on, he is powerless; he can only watch and wait while the murder is investigated, hoping that the vital clue will be overlooked. It is to the credit of Victorian detectives, with their limited resources and limited experience, that more often than not, they didnt overlook that vital clue.

he demand for coal during the Industrial Revolution had made the city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne one of the greatest coaling-stations in the world, almost rivalling the Welsh port of Cardiff as the nexus of Nineteenth-Century coal-based wealth in the United Kingdom. Newcastles new prosperity, unequally distributed, and later to be augmented by ship-building, was reflected, in particular, in the magnificent new Central Arcade, a series of grand and imposing buildings, one of which was the Newcastle Savings Bank.

The staff of that institution in 1838, the year in which this first case is set, included the actuary, a kind of senior clerk but with a quainter job-title, one Archibald Bolam, now in his sixteenth year with the bank. He hailed from the Northumberland village of Harbottle but had long been resident in the city. Forty-two-year-old Mr. Bolam, a former schoolmaster, was both competent at his work, and respected looked up to, even in his local community.

Like many of us, he had a good side and a bad. The positive side was manifested in his liking for children, his readiness to donate to charity, and his generosity to friends in need the very pattern of Pickwickian kind-heartedness.

Among those needy friends was Joseph Millie, at fifty-four years of age an older man than Mr. Bolam, and who, on the sudden death of his wife, had found himself faced with the responsibility of caring for the four children of the marriage, the eldest of whom, a daughter, was only fifteen years old. This eldest girl, having been propelled into the role of unofficial mother, was doing her limited best, but the loss of the real mother had been compounded by Joseph Millies straitened financial circumstances; he had previously been in the hardware business in nearby South Shields, but, the enterprise having failed, he had been out of work for some considerable time, and the family were now experiencing dire poverty.

Enter, Mr. Archibald Bolam; well-disposed both towards the four Millie offspring and towards Mr. Millie himself, he had used his influence at the Savings Bank to secure for Millie the temporary role of second actuary (for which, read junior clerk), and in that role Joseph Millie had acquitted himself well, with the result that the job became a permanent one. In consequence, the familys financial situation and standard of living had slowly but noticeably improved. Bolam would also regularly invite Millie to dine with him at his home, and was liberal in the buying of presents for the Millie children, as well as arranging for food to be sent to them until their father was firmly back on his feet financially.

Although friends, Messrs. Bolam and Millie were very different personalities. Joseph Millie was mild of temper, and had survived his recent poverty with an uncomplaining smile. That mildness was reflected also in his respectful attitude towards his superiors at the bank (including, of course, Mr. Bolam), and in his affectionate treatment of his children.

Archibald Bolam, on the other hand, had a darker side to set against his better qualities. While he could, as we have now witnessed, be kind, and also charming, friendly and affable, he lived almost in a world of extremes; unflinchingly generous one minute, he was prone to sudden outbursts of anger and offensiveness that contrasted sharply with the even flow of Joseph Millies temperament. Bolam could at short notice be roused to abusive diatribes against anyone who crossed him, but, when the dark cloud lifted, he would quickly become the friendly and likeable figure whom people had grown to respect.

Unlike Millie, Archibald Bolan had never married, and there is one very good reason why he was homosexual, in an era when acting on such a predilection was a criminal offence. Had the manager of the Savings Bank known this, of course, then Bolam would have been shown the door, and arrangements made for the termination of his employment, but the manager knew not. Mr, Bolam, while enjoying surreptitious and intimate physical encounters with other like-minded men (and occasionally, perhaps on payment of a bribe or in some cases a fee, with teenage boys), had become practised at keeping his sexual orientation firmly away from the gaze and condemnation of the mainstream world.