Family Respones to Murder in Yarmouth Rest Area

Lying peacefully in the sand, her shoes by her side and her neat plaits in ribbons – were information technology not for the stockings knotted around her neck, she might have been sleeping.

But Dora Grey was not asleep: the 18-year-sometime had been strangled, her death eerily like to that of another woman's in the aforementioned town only a decade earlier, a crime for which a man had hanged.

Could the aforementioned killer have struck again? Had an innocent man lost his life for a murder he didn't commit? Was a serial killer on the loose in Peachy Yarmouth?

Information technology was 4.35am, on July 15, 1912 in the carefree, exciting days before the Commencement Globe War claimed the nation'south immature men and William Smith and Daniel Docwra were in their horse and cart on their manner to work just minutes before sunrise.

As the pair passed the scenic railway at Great Yarmouth Pleasance Beach, which had opened just three years earlier, they saw someone lying in the sand.

The 150ft Revolving Tower on North Drive at Great Yarmouth beach, installed in 1897 and featured in a song the following twelvemonth - Credit: Archant

As dawn broke, they took a closer look, sure they would disturb someone sleeping off the excesses of the night before: what they saw chilled them to the bone.

There, on the beach lay a adult female, a shoelace and stockings tied in reef knots tightly effectually her throat. They rushed to fetch the constabulary.

After examining the scene and arranging for Dora to be taken by mortuary ambulance to the constabulary station, police surgeon Dr Thomas Letts appear the immature adult female had been dead no longer than five hours. The hunt for her killer began.

Built-in around 1894, Dorothy May Grey's life had been difficult from the very beginning. With no father and a female parent who abandoned her when she was merely nine-months-old, immature Dora lived with her aunts Selma and Harriet.

From an early age, the immature adult female learned to create her own truth. She told people her father was a doctor and her female parent lived in Sheffield or that she would soon be joining her bank managing director father in Canada.

In fact, she spent her days in a small-scale terrace house in Manby Route, merely a few minutes from the beach and when she wasn't with her aunts, she was working just six doors down the road for Mr Robert Henry Newman and his wife Louise every bit a 'twenty-four hour period daughter'.

The hours were long and the work was hard. Dora arrived at the Newman's house at 8am and would work until 7pm from Monday to Saturday every week.

Her duties involved looking after the couple's ii children and housework and she was, according to Mrs Newman: "A expert girl in the house, very willing and honest."

We have a photograph of Dora which was published in the Eastern Daily Press after her death, an enigmatic shot, her face in deep shadow, thanks to a hat with an exceptionally broad brim.

She wears the style of the day, a high-necked white blouse fastened with a brooch, a dark blazer and a dark brim. She is smiling, or rather in that location is the whisper of a smile on her lips.

Nosotros cannot see her optics, although reports tell us they were grey like her proper name, and nosotros cannot see the a distinctive molar mentioned at her inquest – or perhaps there is a suggestion of it, a unmarried molar where two should be.

The roller coaster at the Pleasance Beach in Great Yarmouth - Credit: Archant Library

Dora lived, it was said, for Sundays, her one day off each week.

On Sundays, she would cast aside all that was dull about her life: her clothes, her ribbons, fifty-fifty her name. On Sunday, Dora became Dolly Gray and went to see her friends, none of whom realised she worked in service.

In this second life, Dora kept the company of well-to-do friends and handsome young men who owned yachts and motor-cars and who could take her away from Yarmouth and to nearby towns or to Norwich.

It was a snapshot of the life that Dora wished for total-time, simply information technology was also a life that attracted its off-white share of disapproval from stuffy Edwardians: it was not 'the done affair' to be seen with lots of immature men, it was unseemly. Unladylike. Immoral.

At her own inquest, the doctor who commencement examined poor, common cold Dora told the courtroom that the immature woman "…had non led a blameless life".

And with those words he condemned her, almost suggesting that poor Dora had invited trouble, possibly even contributed through her behaviour to her own expiry.

Of course the surgeon'south opinion reflected the buttoned-up morals of the time and the Edwardian standards: only information technology's however hard to read. No one deserves to be murdered.

In the weeks that led to her decease, something unusual had been happening in Dora's life, for a showtime there had been a 'lost week' between June sixteen to 24, one during which she had been absent-minded from work without official leave.

Every twenty-four hour period during this period, she had left domicile every bit if going to work but instead, she had gone somewhere else. On 1 day, she was seen with five men in yachting gear and other witnesses said she'd told them she'd enjoyed several day trips.

Hubert, the son of the man who ran Yarmouth Yacht Station, recalled that she had repeatedly asked when a specific gunkhole, The Flame, was due in port: tragically, it sailed into Yarmouth just hours afterwards she was murdered.

Was Dora waiting for the man in a white drill adjust and cap pictured with her in a hugger-mugger photograph she'd hidden in her bedchamber?

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On Sunday, July 14, Dora transformed into Dolly for a night on the boondocks, wearing a blue serge dress, a blousy hat, pinkish ribbons, 2 large pink roses and her gold ring stamped with a 'D'.

She set out from Manby Road at 7.30pm and was spotted past various witnesses on Marine Parade, close to Britannia Pier and walking towards Due south Beach.

Dora was seen with a man in a grey suit who was wearing a hat, although other details regarding his summit, hair color and historic period differ. She was not seen alive after 9pm and it is believed she died at around midnight.

The facts of the case were scant. There had been no signs of a struggle, Dora's gloves were found almost 300m abroad, her friends and family couldn't shed any light on the instance and police were at a loss as to where to take the investigation.

More than than ten men came forward to claim they had killed Dora and all were ruled to take made fake confessions. Fifty-fifty the mystery man in Dora's photo was identified and ruled out – but never named.

Shortly afterward Dora'southward murder, a crudely-written note appeared on a stone shut to the place where her body was found which included her proper name and the words "may she exist revenged".

Buried at the Corporation'southward cemetery in Caister, with merely her two aunts and Louise Newman in attendance every bit official mourners, the others at the funeral carried notebooks and pens: local and Fleet Street journalists.

The press had latched on to the fact that Dora's murder bore a striking resemblance to the death of Mary Jane Bennett, who had been found in the dunes at Yarmouth, killed with a shoestring knotted around her neck in a reef knot 12 years earlier.

Mrs Mary Jane Bennett who was murdered on Cracking Yarmouth beach - Credit: Eastern Daily Press

Could the murderer be the same person? And if and then, had an innocent man been hanged for a crime he didn't commit?

Mary Clarke had married Herbert John Bennett in haste when she was 20 and he was 17. It was a familiar story - a young romance, an unplanned pregnancy and a marriage conducted in haste to prevent a scandal.

Merely scandal wouldn't evade the young newly-weds. Inside a few short years both would be dead past some other's hand. Tragedy tainted the Bennett'due south relationship from the very beginning. Their first child was stillborn, and their second destined to become an orphan before she turned four.

The pair worked together, their business organisation somewhat unconventional. They would buy cheap violins and sell them to unwitting customers, who had no idea of their real (lack of) value.

Herbert used the ill-gotten gains to buy a pocket-sized grocer's shop which mysteriously caught fire presently afterward the insurance premium was arranged and while the insurance didn't pay as much every bit the Bennetts hoped, the stock bought on credit was never paid for and gave the pair an acceptable profit.

Herbert Bennett, who was convicted of the murder of Mary Jane Bennett - Credit: Archant

In that location followed a mysterious trip to Due south Africa which no one ever discovered the reason for – their young daughter was left at dwelling while they made the long, arduous trip to Cape Town where they stayed for only four days.

By the time they returned to London, the first flush of honey had worn thin.

Their landlady recalls hearing Mary threatening Herbert that she could take him put away for 15 years while he told her that he wished she was expressionless: "…and if you're not careful, you soon volition exist!"

It wasn't long until the couple were estranged. Herbert took a chore with Woolwich Arsenal and met a new woman, Alice Meadows, a parlour maid.

Alice had no idea her sweetheart was married with a child and believed him to exist a homo of means who had inherited money from his late mother.

In August 1900, Herbert took Alice to Great Yarmouth – they visited in cracking style, travelling start class and staying in dissever rooms at The Crown and Anchor.

Herbert proposed and Alice, having no reason to recall her husband-to-be was anything other than an ethical gentleman with good prospects, accepted.

Meanwhile, and possibly hearing that her married man had been enjoying the bounding main air in Norfolk, Mary decided that she would come to Yarmouth for a short fall pause.

Travelling under a imitation name, Mrs Hood, Mary and Ruby took lodgings at Mr and Mrs John Rudrum'south boarding house in Row 104 off South Quay where she told the landlords that was a recent widow and was meeting her blood brother-in-police force in the town.

A clipping from the EDP reporting on the Herbert Bennett murder instance - Credit: Archant

She went out almost every evening during her eight-day stay, just no ane knows what she did and who, if anyone, she met.

Back in London, Herbert told Alice on September twenty that he was required to travel to Gravesend to attend to his dying grandfather: this was a lie.

Afterwards existence out afterward than usual on the evening of September 21, the Rudrum's girl overheard Mary talking with a human being who said to her: "You lot understand, don't you lot? I am placed in an awkward position just now."

Talking turned to kissing. Could Mary'south companion have been Herbert? Or had she met a different man for a tryst?

When Mary turned in for the night, she was given a alphabetic character that had arrived for her which some accounts claim asked her to meet the sender at 9pm the following night – whatever the letter'south contents, she was out again the next nighttime, September 22.

Wearing a long gilt chain along with her best jewellery and carrying a skilful sum of money in her purse, she was side by side seen in a Yarmouth pub with a homo who the owner would later place every bit her estranged married man.

An artist impression of Herbert Bennett while on trial for the murder of his wife Mary - Credit: Archant

At effectually 11pm, Mary was seen with a man on the beach by couple Alfred Mason and his girlfriend Blanche Smith who were sharing a private moment when their peace was shattered by a couple sitting near them.

A adult female cried out: "Mercy! Mercy!" – Alfred and Blanche assuming the pair were messing effectually and when they left 10 minutes later, they glanced over to see the woman on her back.

The human being with her looked straight at them and, fearing they were interrupting a liaison, the pair hurried away, red-faced.

Mary'south body was discovered on the sands by fourteen-twelvemonth-old John Norton every bit he arrived for an early morning dip – when police arrived, they established that she had been strangled with a bootlace tied in a distinctive knot.

Quickly identified every bit 'Mrs Hood', the mystery woman's holding were searched and a photograph was found of her with young Carmine. In the photograph she wore a long concatenation, a chain which was missing from the body.

In London, Herbert returned from his trip and visited Alice Meadows on the afternoon of September 23, afterwards collecting Mary's holding from her lodgings and catastrophe her lease, telling her landlady she was moving to America.

Alice benefitted from Mary'southward wearing apparel and jewellery which Herbert told her he'd been given by a relative.

Information technology took more than a month for Mary to be linked with 'Mrs Hood' when she was reported missing and a laundry mark on the murder victim's clothing was linked back to the unfortunate married woman of Herbert Bennett.

A Scotland Grand inspector went to find Herbert and one of his co-workers identified Mary from the beach photo: it was enough bear witness to atomic number 82 to Herbert's arrest.

The case against Herbert looked strong. They found jewellery – including a long chain - believed to be Mary's at his lodgings, a receipt from The Crown and Anchor, a wig and a false moustache and love letters from poor Alice.

The grave rock of Mary Jane Bennett who was murdered on Yarmouth Embankment in Norfolk - Credit: Archant

When he was arrested, Bennett claimed he had never been to Yarmouth, a statement which was quickly proven to be an untruth and the chain, missing from Mary and constitute with Herbert, helped to tighten the metaphorical, and and then the actual, noose.

At trial, Herbert's shady life was revealed alongside his distinctly suspicious behaviour immediately before, during and afterwards Mary's death – the evidence was damning, but the accused's barrister, Edward Marshall Hall, fought hard for his client.

He claimed the chain in Herbert'south possession was not the i in the photograph and produced a witness – albeit an unconvincing one – who said he'd been drinking with the accused in London as the offense in Yarmouth took identify.

In Edgar Wallace's book The Murder on Yarmouth Sands, written in 1924, he writes that it was Alice's testimony that caused Herbert the near business organization during his trial.

"When Alice Meadows stepped into the box, Bennett's eyes dropped; it was the simply menstruation during the trial that he gave prove of his discomfort," he reveals.

"Lower and lower sank his caput as she related, in that unimpassioned temper, the foolish stories he had told of his career, his prospects, his travels.

"Bennett's imagination ran riot when his audience was a woman: his gifts of invention were never so marked as in those circumstances. He could heed without flinching to the record of his horrible deed—more horrible than can be related in cold print; he could watch with a detached involvement the display of the trinket which he had taken from his married woman a few minutes before her decease, and could give his complete attending to the doctor's prove.

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"To Bennett, that was the least of his embarrassment. The real ordeal for him came when Alice Meadows exposed him every bit a braggart and a liar."

Herbert himself refused to accept the stand and he was establish guilty. He protested his innocence until his very concluding breath and was hanged on March 21, 1901 at Norwich Gaol, formerly on Earlham Road.

Information technology was reported in the EDP that Bennett struggled and twitched for 2 minutes after the trap doors opened.

When the flag pile carrying the black flag to signify an execution had taken identify snapped, information technology was said to be an omen that an innocent man had died.

Mary was buried in Yarmouth's nearly northern cemetery, between Kitchener and Estcourt Roads, her grave marked by a bury-shaped rock on which her name is inscribed.

And as for whether at that place was a miscarriage of justice, a horrible coincidence, a chilling copycat murder or that Yarmouth had a serial killer on the loose, sadly the truth may never exist known.

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Source: https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/when-were-the-bootlace-murders-in-great-yarmouth-7822686

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