One Week in Crime

Hangman William Marwood caused a sensation in Dumbarton when after hanging a prisoner outside the local prison on Tuesday, OCTOBER 19th, 1875, he submitted his expenses to the local council. He claimed for a dozen bottles of beer, two bottles of whisky and brandy, a bottle of sherry, and a bottle of port, most of

For a night-watchman 53-year-old widower Abraham Cullen was an unusual sort of chap. He was short, with a weak chest, and he was terrified of going on duty at the C&A department store in Oldham Street, Manchester, on account of recent break-ins. On the night of Saturday, OCTOBER 20th, 1956, he was seen in a

The scene was wartime London. And it was around 10 p.m. on Sunday, OCTOBER 12th, 1941, while waiting at a bus stop near Charing Cross station, that Maple Church probably met the soldier who killed her. Next day her partially clad body was found by children in a bombed-out house in Hampstead Road. She had

Mary Ann Cogan’s husband William used often to drag her out of the pub by her hair, a sight that always excited the locals, who would gather to watch. “Wait till I get her upstairs!” Cogan would tell them, causing a ripple of mirth. This familiar routine was repeated on August 2nd, 1861, but this

Was pretty Anne Norman ever unfaithful to her husband? He was convinced she was. He told her mother that he had forgiven Anne for a number of adulterous affairs, but when she started having sex with their landlord that was too much for him to take. So he stabbed her through the heart as she

Asked if he had anything to say before he was sentenced to death for murder, John Rusdell gripped the dock rail at Ruthin Assizes and replied: “There is another murder you may be interested in. I killed Mrs. Evans down at Coedpoeth four years ago. I was only 14 then. Regarding the motive for this

When 19-year-old Sarah Willett discovered that her fiancé, a French polisher, was supplementing his income as a burglar, she indignantly called off the wedding. “I’m an honest girl, and that’s the way I’m staying!” she exclaimed. Her boyfriend, John Parr, also 19, of Bethnal Green, brooded on his fall from favour. One night in August

Death stalked the Coverdale Kennels. They were established in 1929 by a Christchurch, Dorset, man to train sporting dogs. His first manager, William Steer, was found shot dead in a badger hole, with a 12-bore at his side, only months after taking the job. This, it was established, was an accident. Steer was succeeded by

While his seven children looked on, Henry Devlin, 45, furiously beat his wife Elizabeth to death at their home at Shotts, Lanarkshire, and for that, on September 2nd, 1890, he was sentenced at Glasgow High Court to hang. It was said that on the 90-yard walk to the gallows at Glasgow’s Duke Street Prison on

After the shots were heard the body in the car was passed and re-passed dozens of times for the best part of three hours before a policeman finally found it. The reason for the disinterest was that this was poaching country where shots were always being fired, and because the vehicle was parked in a