Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in and around Halifax by Stephen Wade

Author:Stephen Wade [Wade, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: TRUE CRIME / General
ISBN: 9781783037865
Publisher: Wharncliffe
Published: 2004-02-29T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 26

Death of Two Lovers 1888

The sad story of Harry Evans and Ann Pickles is one of those cases which is open to several interpretations. Evans lived with his parents at Springfield Street and Ann was a farmer's daughter from Jug Head. They were both eighteen years old, had been in love, and both were found drowned, but in different places. His body was found in a reservoir near Black Dike Mills, and she in a water-trough with an apparent suicide note. The note is what the extreme doubt of the case rests on, making it uncertain whether she drowned herself or whether Harry killed her. This is the note:

When you find me, read this to my mother. I told harry what you said and you heard about him but you did not like it and said it wasn’t right. It caused him to say he would not go with me and this drove me mad But tell him to forgive me for what I have done for I couldn’t help it. Harry You’re the first that's ever gone with me and you shall be the last.

Now, according to the girl's father, she had never been to school and was illiterate. The errors in spelling and punctuation here indicate someone either with a basic literacy and able to use sentences, or a complete forgery. In other words, it was most likely written by Harry. It was found on top of a wall, under a stone, near where Ann's body lay on its back in the trough.

The trigger for some kind of passionate argument was almost certainly the fact that Harry was about to become a father – but the mother was a young woman from Thornton who had been causing problems. Harry had refused to see this girl again, and wanted only Ann. He had been seen in the streets with other young men as normal; he was upset on the night that the Thornton girl had visited and caused a row, and he had left the house, not returning, saying that he would ‘take action in the matter.’ His body was dragged from the reservoir in the early hours of the next day.

The woman who laid out Ann's corpse only reported purple marks across the waist. No mention of any marks incriminating Harry was made at the inquest at the King's Arms Inn, Queensbury in front of Mr Barstow J P. But no decision could be made about the cause of her death. The open verdict leaves no end of questions, and the suicide note was perhaps most logically the product of Harry. However, one has to note that drowning in a horse-trough could easily be done to someone with very little pressure and no marks would necessarily be evident in those times of no real forensic testing. This all seems most likely if the woman's illiteracy were true. Her sister said that there was never a pencil in the house, and that Ann used to spell out the letters of words in the newspaper and her brother would tell her the meanings.

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