The Oxford Murder

By Michael Tanner

The Oxford Murder that gripped the country in 1931 would grace any episode of Inspector Morse. Yet it was horrifically real. Annie Kempson was a defenceless widow bludgeoned and stabbed to death in her own home for the sake of a few poundsa despicable crime for which the killer could expect no mercy. Following a nationwide man-hunt, career criminal Henry Seymour was arrested by Scotland Yards Lucky John Horwell. And thanks to renowned pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury a guilty verdict was returned.

This truly was an Oxford murder from beginning to end. The crime was committed in Oxford. The trial was held in Oxford. The execution was carried out in Oxford.

But did the Oxford murder result in a miscarriage of justice?

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Sep 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504990851

Michael Tanner

Michael Tanner is Dean of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he lectures on philosophy. He is the author of Nietzsche and reviews regularly for Classic CD and the Times Literary Supplement.

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© 2015 Michael Tanner. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

The author acknowledges with thanks the assistance of Steve Fielding, Julian Munby and Paul Kyberd.

Published by AuthorHouse 10/02/2015

ISBN: 978-1-5049-9084-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-9085-1 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Preface

One: A Killer Calls

Two: Man On The Run

Three: ‘Ubridled Ferocity’

Four: All Is Darkness

Five: Chinks Of Light

Six: Closing The Case

Seven: Trial: Case For The Prosecution

Eight: Trial: Case For The Defence

Nine: Verdict & Appeal

Ten: Eight O’clock Walk

Acknowledgements

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The Boundary – scene of the crime and since demolished.

Annie Kempson

Upper St Clement’s

Henry Daniel Seymour

Annie’s Note

‘Lucky John’ Horwell

Annie Kempson’s final resting place.

House-to-House Enquiries

Spilsbury - ‘incomparable witness’.

County Hall

Mr Justice Swift arrives at court.

Oxford’s Assize Court

Seymour’s Underground Route from Prison to Court

Oxford Prison

Holding Cell beneath the Dock

‘C’ Wing

Thomas W Pierrepoint.

The Drop Today

Former Graveyard of Executed Men

IMAGE1.jpg

The Boundary – scene of the crime and since demolished.

PREFACE

I’ve been intrigued by the Seymour case for half a century.

I was born and raised in Oxford, the backcloth to Henry Daniel Seymour’s execution for the murder of Annie Louisa Kempson in 1931. Growing up in the age of capital punishment ensured any young boy frequent access to one sordid murder story after another concluded by the killer going to the gallows. I recall, for example, a trip with my grandmother to the Oxpens for market day which took our bus past Oxford Prison and she assuring me ‘a bad man’ was about to be punished inside. That was in the summer of 1952, some 21 years after the Kempson-Seymour case. It was to be the last execution carried out in Oxford Prison. Nevertheless, Oliver George Butler’s story never seized the imagination like Seymour’s.

Revisiting these and other Oxford murders as an adult shed gradual light on plausible reasons for the Seymour case leaving such a mark. From first to last it was truly ‘The Oxford Murder’. The crime was committed in an unassuming semi-detached house in St Clement’s called ‘The Boundary’. The subsequent trial was held at the Oxford Assizes in County Hall. And the man found guilty of the crime was hanged in Oxford Prison next door. As Butler had killed near Banbury and been tried at Stafford his story failed that test. As did those of the quartet executed between Seymour and Butler and the two murderers who preceded Seymour in the 20th century. Indeed, one must go deep into the past before unearthing a precedent.

In addition to its Oxford setting there was one other factor about the Seymour case that refused to go away. Despite the jury returning a guilty verdict after a mere 38 minutes deliberation, and the Court of Appeal finding no grounds for reversing that verdict, there remains a nagging question mark over Seymour’s fate – and even his guilt.

The prosecution mounted a well-marshalled case based on circumstantial evidence. It assembled evidence of opportunity, of motive, of preparation, of flight. It pointed to signs of guilt, suspicions of guilt. That was all. When produced one after the other, however, the whole created something more than grave suspicion. The pieces of the jig-saw began to look as if they truly did fit together.

Nevertheless, there were enough forced fits in the puzzle for the defence to prise apart. The murder weapon was never found; nor even verified. The time of the murder could never be precisely established. The defence produced numerous eye witnesses who insisted Annie Kempson was still alive hours after Seymour was supposed to have killed her. And at those times he’d a cast iron alibi. Above all, there was not one single fact proved in evidence directly linking Seymour to the crime. No property missing from the murder scene was traced to him. No bloodstains were found on him. No one could swear they saw him at the scene. There was no shred of direct evidence connecting him to the crime. Nothing at all.

The jury faced a straight choice between the mute voices of numerous inanimate objects and the sworn recollection of no fewer than nine human beings. The judge’s opinion was made plain in his summation. The jury sided with the inanimate. The man in the dock went to the gallows. And if there was someone at large who knew another man had paid the penalty for a crime he had committed, then that individual walked free to live with his conscience.

Was the verdict unsafe? Did the judge’s summing-up unfairly influence the jury? Did enough ‘reasonable doubt’ not exist to warrant a reprieve from the Home Secretary? Did Seymour get a rough deal?

Even if the pages that follow suggest Seymour might’ve been harshly judged, one thing remains irreversible: at 8am on Thursday, 10th December 1931, Henry Daniel Seymour kept his appointment with the hangman.

IMAGE3.jpg

Annie Kempson

ONE

A KILLER CALLS

Time was fast getting away from Annie Kempson.

‘I must get on!’ she muttered under her breath. Her eyes were fixed on the copy of The Interrupted Kiss she’d been reading over breakfast that still lay open on the table. She snapped the book shut and picked up a cup. ‘I can’t leave crockery and cutlery lying about like this! And there are the beds to be made!’

Annie Kempson’s home was her pride and joy. Called ‘The Boundary’ owing to its proximity to the ancient city boundary, it was a neat semi-detached residence on St Clement’s, one of the main roads running out of Oxford to the east. This was a vibrant working class neighbourhood replete with its own range of self-supporting shops and tradesmen, just like the Cowley Road that ran parallel to it. In 1931 the many side streets linking the two thoroughfares were home to people struggling to eke out a living. Indeed, St Clements’ still held a Christmas hiring fair the like of which Thomas Hardy described in his Wessex novels. However, town temporarily surrendered to country once St Clement’s gave way to London Road and climbed the sylvan rise of Headington Hill – finally to reach Headington where signs of the village’s ultimate absorption into greater Oxford were already making themselves abundantly clear.

The widow’s free hand ran across the top of her head. ‘My hair’s still in curlers! I must look a sight!’ This was a woman who took as much pride in her own appearance as in her home.

She put down the cup and wiped her hands on the patterned pinafore that protected a black dress. ‘There’s still Billy to visit!’

Every Saturday without fail Annie Kempson took the five-minute walk up the street to the churchyard of St Clement’s, just past the Headington Hill turn, to clean the headstone and change the flowers on the grave of her late husband, William.

All these chores and obligations had to be completed before she could even think of travelling up to London where her life-long friend, Mrs Annie Smith, was waiting to entertain her in West Hampstead over the August Bank Holiday.

She took a bite of bread and butter and sipped her tea. It was now past nine in the morning. Her cup rejoined its saucer next to the ten shilling note her lodger Eleanor Williams had left on the table as rent.

Milky sunlight slanted through the French windows of the back parlour that doubled as the dining-room onto a 58-year-old described locally as ‘a little inoffensive old lady, too generous in the opinion of some’. Those of longer acquaintance remembered a tall, fine-looking woman with firm jaw-line and piercing eyes. And she still looked 20 years younger than she was. Some female gossips, doubtless fired by jealousy, thought her rather vain; a woman easily charmed, with a weakness for elevating the slightest male compliment into the realms of courtship. If the widow was to be believed, she was forever being wooed by one suitor or another. Why, she’d even dropped hints about a recent proposal of marriage.

The doorbell rang. It failed to register with her. She was hard of hearing. The chimes rang again.

She heard them with a start. Her house had lately been subjected to a spate of burglaries, nothing major, more nuisance, someone playing pranks in her opinion. Items of clothing were stolen from her bedroom while she slept. She smiled to herself at the recollection of the neighbour who subsequently went over the house on her behalf before retiring in order to satisfy himself that there was no intruder concealed under her bed.

‘Don’t be so silly, it’s broad daylight,’ the widow reassured herself. ‘You’re perfectly safe. It’s only the front door. Nellie must’ve forgotten something.’

She tutted. Her lodger Nellie Williams had only left on her own holiday earlier that morning.

‘And I’ve put the Yale lock on!’

She walked down the hallway. ‘No!’ she exclaimed. How could I be so forgetful! It’ll be Ruth, with my new shoes!’

She edged past the dustbin that was partly blocking the front door. ‘I’m coming! I’m coming!’

She released the latch on the Yale lock recently installed as a consequence of the burglaries. She opened the door as far as she could to find standing before her a man with a light coloured mackintosh slung over his left shoulder.

‘Oh… it’s you!’ she spluttered, covering her embarrassment with a thin smile. ‘I must look a sight!’

His expression showed like surprise. Not so much at her appearance as that she’d appeared at all. He doffed his hat. ‘Oh, I’m sorry if I’ve disturbed…’

She patted the knot of hair at the nape of her neck. ‘I’m in a terrible hurry! I’ve so much to do before I can get away…’

‘Get away? You’re going away somewhere?’

‘Yes, I’m going up to London to stay with a friend for a couple of weeks.’

The caller dipped his head. ‘May I come in for a minute?’

‘Well…’ she stammered.

He inched his mouth closer to her ear. ‘There’s much I’d like to say.’

She blushed. ‘Of course, if you must.’

Annie Kempson began retracing her steps. Her visitor squeezed past the dustbin. He slipped the Yale back onto locked and slid the raincoat from his shoulder. His right hand delved into a pocket.

‘Come in,’ she said on the threshold of the dining-room. ‘We can talk in here. I must apologize for the mess. I’ve not had time to clear away breakfast.’

It would’ve annoyed a house-proud woman like Annie Kempson, who normally had a room looking nothing less than spick and span, that this was how she was going to leave it. But, thankfully, she did not know it. Suddenly her world assumed the blackness of eternity.

She’d felt something strike the back of her curler-covered head with all the force its holder could muster. The shock caused her arms to fly back and catch him a glancing blow on the temple. He lashed out again, hitting her just behind the right ear as she toppled forward. She collapsed headlong into the dining-room. Her head struck the floor between table and sideboard. She lay on her back stunned and defenceless. He knelt down and struck her a third blow in the centre of her forehead. The skull was perforated to the brain. But the noise akin to a squashed peach failed to unsettle him.

Some sort of primal electricity crackled through him. More elation than sorrow. Things couldn’t have been more straightforward. He’d acted so swiftly she’d no opportunity to scream. The widow was out of the way.

Her assailant was now free to locate the hoard of money he was convinced she kept secreted in the house. But not before he’d stuffed Miss Williams’s ten shilling note into his trouser pocket.

The blackguard strode purposefully back down the hallway, and climbed the stairs. He negotiated each step on the balls of his feet to muffle any noise. ‘The Boundary’ was a semi-detached house and he didn’t to attract the attention of the next door neighbour.

The widow’s bedroom at the front of the house, overlooking the street, was his first destination. His brain buzzed with ideas as to where he should begin the search. But time was passing and along with it his composure. He ransacked the wardrobe and the dressing table drawers. Empty. A trunk was opened and its contents rifled. A deed box was forced open, its documents scattered. Bric-a-brac was dashed to the floor. Nothing announced itself as an obvious strong box full of cash. Boxes there were a-plenty, but each one yielded nothing other than family papers and photographs. Items of sentimental value were the last thing on his mind.

He moved hastily to the adjacent bedroom, barely glancing at the cupboard on the landing: on it stood a large china crucifix atop a work-box covered with a piece of ornamental crochet-work. That was no use to him. It was money – not jewellery or precious artefacts or family heirlooms – that he sought.

But Miss Williams’s possessions bequeathed no richer plunder. More drawers were turned out, and their contents strewn around the floor. He grew angrier as futility piled on futility. He came back down the stairs.

The intruder swept through dining-room, kitchen and scullery in vain quest of the widow’s treasure trove. His temper grew hotter. After a whirlwind of frenzied activity the sum total of his haul amounted to the contents of three purses - just a few pounds. This wasn’t what he’d anticipated. He stared at the bloodied head of Annie Kempson. ‘Where’s the money?’ he snarled.

She moaned. He recoiled. Was that a noise? Surely not. Was she trying to answer? Impossible. He must be hearing things.

He knelt beside her, and put an ear to her mouth. The sound was faint, but it was unmistakeable. She was still breathing. The man cursed the day