A former soldier, Charles Samuel Dyer subsequently became a hawker, living with Martha Simpson to whom he was devoted. On learning that she had been seeing another man, however, he became enraged and on FEBRUARY 3rd, 1904, he cut her throat, killing her instantly.
His defence that he was drunk at the time cut no ice with the jury. Convicted of murder, he was hanged at Birmingham on April 5th, 1904, by William and John Billington.