Channel Island Murders by Nicola Sly

Author:Nicola Sly
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780752493831
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2013-04-10T00:00:00+00:00

CASE THIRTEEN 1889

‘A FRIENDLY FEELING EXISTED AMONG US ALL’

St Peter Port, Guernsey

Suspect:

Edward Francis Bourke

Age:

Unknown

Charge:

Murder

In 1889, soldiers in the 2nd Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment were stationed at Fort George in St Peter Port. If the men weren’t on duty, they were allowed to leave the barracks after three o’clock in the afternoon and, on the quiet island of Guernsey, there was very little for them to do to entertain themselves apart from frequenting the local public houses.

On 29 April, twenty-year-old Lance Corporal Lewis James Picken and Private John Anquetil began drinking at The Guernsey Arms, where Anquetil enjoyed a pint of beer and Picken a glass of rum. Picken confided to Anquetil that he had already ‘been on the booze’ that afternoon, although the pub landlord, William Jehan, believed at the time that both men were sober. Meanwhile, twenty-one-year-old Private Ernest Hobbes was drinking in The St Martin’s Inn with Privates Albert Bashford and Edward Francis Bourke (or Burke). Bashford had arranged to meet Picken at The Half Moon Inn, in the parish of St Martin, Guernsey, so all five soldiers convened there and enjoyed numerous glasses of beer and spirits until around nine o’clock in the evening, when they left the pub to return to barracks.

As soon as they left the pub, Hobbes fell down and, thinking that he was just drunk, Bashford and Bourke hauled him to his feet and half carried him as far as Morley Chapel Lane, where he collapsed again. Knowing that they were late returning to barracks, Bourke and Bashford dragged Hobbes under the hedge out of the way of any passing traffic and left him there while they rushed back to barracks for roll call. They then returned to fetch Hobbes, who was still unconscious and was taken straight to the Infirmary.

When Hobbes was admitted to the hospital, he was completely unresponsive. He was blue in the face, which doctors took to indicate an absence of any circulation of blood and the pupils of his eyes were reduced to mere pinpoints. As the medical staff fought to revive him, his pupils gradually dilated and his eyes became fixed in a glazed, upward stare. Sergeant Hugh Bradley of the Medical Staff Corps applied hot water to Hobbes’s legs and gave him twenty minims of compound spirit of ammonia, which seemed to help with his breathing but although all the normal restoratives were used in treating Hobbes, he died shortly after half-past ten that evening, without ever having regained consciousness.

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