A five-day period in October, 1911, was a murderous time in England, with two double-murders and a triple-murder.

On October 2nd a girl of 16 and a child of four had their throats cut in Kidsgrove, Staffs, by a German farm labourer who was sent to Broadmoor. On October 6th a man killed his wife and her supposed lover in Slough before committing suicide.

In between these two events, on OCTOBER 4th, Alexander Ingram, 27, a barman, cut the throats of his wife Margaret, 33, and his two stepdaughters, Bertha, 9, and Ethel, 7, at their home in Welbeck Road in Newcastle’s East End.

While Ingram was in custody in Newcastle Prison awaiting trial, police discovered that he had been married for only a year, and that a year before that, in January, 1910, Mrs. Ingram’s first husband was also murdered by someone who cut his throat.

The day after this was revealed, Ingram asked permission to leave his cell to write a letter. In 1911 most British prisons did not have safety nets, and Ingram leapt over the rail to his death on the flagstone floor below.