TRUE CRIME FROM WHARNCLIFFE Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths Series Barking, Dagenham & Chadwell Heath Barnsley Bath Bedford Birmingham More Foul Deeds Birmingham Black Country Blackburn and Hyndburn Bolton Bradford Brighton Bristol Cambridge Carlisle Chesterfield Cumbria More Foul Deeds Chesterfield Colchester Coventry Croydon Derby Durham Ealing Fens Folkstone and Dover Grimsby Guernsey Guildford Halifax Hampstead, Holborn and St Pancras Huddersfield Hull Jersey Leeds Leicester Lewisham and Deptford Liverpool London’s East End London’s West End Manchester Mansfield Mansfield More Foul Deeds Wakefield Newcastle Newport Norfolk Northampton Nottingham Oxfordshire Pontefract and Castleford Portsmouth Rotherham Scunthorpe Southend-on-Sea Southport Staffordshire and the Potteries Stratford and South Warwickshire Tees Warwickshire Wigan York OTHER TRUE CRIME BOOKS FROM WHARNCLIFFE A-Z of Yorkshire Murder A-Z of Yorkshire Murders Black Barnsley Brighton Crime and Vice 1800-2000 Durham Executions Essex Murders Executions & Hangings in Newcastle and Morpeth Norfolk Mayhem and Murder Norwich Murders Strangeways Hanged Unsolved Murders in Victorian & Edwardian London Unsolved Norfolk Murders Unsolved Yorkshire Murders Warwickshire’s Murderous Women Yorkshire Hangmen Yorkshire’s Murderous Women Please contact us via any of the methods below for more information or a catalogue WHARNCLIFFE BOOKS 47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS Tel: 01226 734555 • 734222 • Fax: 01226 734438 Tel: 01226 734555 • 734222 • Fax: 01226 734438 email: [email protected] website: www.wharncliffebooks.co.uk Contents Introduction Acknowledgements Chapter 1 An Assortment of Crimes and Foul Deeds in Barnsley & District, 1854-1995 Chapter 2 Animal Matters, 1860-2007 Chapter 3 Suicides, 1876-1989 Chapter 4 Suspicious Deaths, 1865-1948 Chapter 5 A Stabbing, Silkstone Common, 1854 Chapter 6 Fatal Fight at the Shepherd’s Rest, Barnsley, 1864 Chapter 7 The Slaying of Norfolk Tom, Platts Common, 1856 Chapter 8 Attempted Murder and Suicide, Barnsley, 1892 Chapter 9 A Mother’s Murder of Innocents, Kendray, 1942 Chapter 10 Women’s Land Army Girl Murdered by Glassworks Engineer, Barnsley, 1943 Chapter 11 The Green Linnet Murder, Wombwell, 1955 Chapter 12 The Springfield Street Murder, Barnsley, 1962 Chapter 13 Lucky Escape for a Killer, Monk Bretton, 1962 Chapter 14 Acts of Violence by Demolition Worker Ends in Tragedy, Wombwell, 1962 Chapter 15 Convicted Sex Offender Rapes and Kills Teenager, Pilley, 1972 Chapter 16 Blame it on Poor Little Charlie, Wombwell, 2003 Sources and Further Reading Introduction True crime and foul and sinister goings-on seem to make fascinating reading to a large number of people. Despite the often horrific content of some accounts, particularly involving murder, the public is ever thirsty for more and more gruesome details of what man is capable of doing to his fellow man, or indeed to the animals in his charge. This is my fifth book involving true crime. My first four featured crimes, mostly murders, committed in London. This is my first book involving crimes perpetrated around the area where I grew up. Sometimes a particular crime sticks in one’s mind above all others for one reason or another. Growing up as I did, firstly in Elsecar and afterwards in Hoyland, then as now at the epicentre of important historical events and surrounded by magnificent countryside of unsurpassed beauty for many a mile around, I was sheltered from some of the more sensational crimes of the late 1950s and 1960s that took place during my formative years. We had television of course but my family didn’t spend an inordinately long time viewing because there was always something else far more interesting to do. The occasional cartoon, film, variety show, nature programme, important royal or national event was our preferred choice and my father would tune in to watch the racing, wrestling and football results on Saturday afternoons if he wasn’t off angling somewhere. Sometimes I watched the news but didn’t take much notice of events that seemed so far removed from the goings on in my own locality. Crime, particularly murder, was confined to the odd gangster film (I remember Edward G Robinson and James Cagney being firm favourites) or the early James Bond films I managed to get to see at Elsecar’s Futurist cinema. Apart from vague recollections of hearing about the Kennedy assassination in 1963, the first real murders I can remember being aware of were the Moors Murders of 1965, and I think that was because they involved children, and the names of Hindley and Brady were on everyone’s lips. I can also remember the Braybrook Street Massacre the following year. From an early age I was an avid reader but my reading rarely extended to the columns of our daily newspaper, the Daily Mail, or indeed the local weekly journals, which my mother read with great interest. It was to be the murder of a local girl in 1972 that eventually grabbed my attention, and which subsequently encouraged me to take an interest in crime and the darker side of human existence. Since that time both the name and the image of the unfortunate victim, a strikingly pretty, fourteen-year-old schoolgirl, has remained imprinted on my mind. She lived less than two miles from my own home in Hoyland and the tragic circumstances surrounding her rape and murder rocked not just Barnsley and district but appalled the sensibilities of the entire nation. Researching the case of Shirley Boldy, that unfortunate victim of rape and murder, brought memories flooding back of the closing years of my schooldays. A more recent case included here involves one of my fellow classmates at Kirk Balk School. She murdered her husband and it certainly sends a chill down one’s spine when one is writing about a person one knows or knew. Indeed, a short while ago in my book The A to Z of London Murders I had occasion to write about the savage and as yet still unsolved murder of a personal friend. I did not find it an easy task. Writing about the long dead is not nearly so harrowing as when writing about more recent cases. I have tried to deal sensitively with the subjects I have chosen and, in some cases I have written about highly emotive events which can be deeply upsetting to the relatives of victims of crime or indeed the relatives of the criminals, or those affected by the perpetrators of the many foul deeds included here. Ultimately these cases are a matter of record and I have drawn from many sources in order to present as true an account as possible. I apologise unreservedly for any omissions or errors. It is perhaps a little insensitive to say that Barnsley and the surrounding area has a rich history of crime. When one writes or talks about something having a rich history one is not as a rule thinking about the darker side of existence. Nevertheless the fact remains that since greater documentary evidence exists from the closing years of the eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century right up to the present day, it is apparent that there has been a considerable number of killings and serious crimes committed throughout the area; those I have been able to include here are quite literally the tip of the iceberg. I have selected a cross section of serious crimes and foul deeds, some seemingly petty incidents, others more quirky, in order to give the reader a varied sample of Barnsley and district’s darker past.