Leeds Mercury (22/Aug/1891) - Murder of a Servant Girl Near Huddersfield: Arrest of Two Men on Suspicion
MURDER OF A SERVANT GIRL NEAR HUDDERSFIELD.
ARREST OF TWO MEN ON SUSPICION.
(From our Correspondent)
This afternoon a dreadful murder was committed at the Ivy House Inn, on the Manchester Road, leading from Huddersfield to Marsden, in the township of Linthwaite. The victim is a domestic servant, named Catherine Dennis, aged sixteen years, whose parents live at Flint, North Wales, but who the perpetrator of the deed is has yet to be determined. About two o'clock in the afternoon Mrs. Brook, the landlady, left home to go to Huddersfield on business, and left in charge of the house the deceased, a quiet, hard-working girl, who never gave the customers a wrong word. At that time there were two teamsters from Golcar in the house having dinner, and there was also a mechanic-looking stranger in the taproom having a glass of beer. Subsequently John William Iredale, and some other people from Linthwaite, were in the house ; but they left, and there would then appear to he nobody but the stranger in the house. At half-past four a butcher's boy, named David Beevers, called with the week's meat, but found no one in the house, and he at once acquainted a man named Hoyle, who was at work in a field close by. Hoyle and Beevers went to the house, but failed to make any one hear. They called in a neighbour named Mrs. Bailey, who lives near, and she going upstairs found on the landing the girl Dennis, with a wound in her neck, which was bleeding freely. She ran down stairs and raised an alarm, and immediately the police were informed of the case, and Police Constables West and Kempston and Sargeant McCawley were soon on the spot. A telegram was despatched for Superintendent Pickard, at the County Police Office at Huddersfield, and he and Detective Willis, of the borough police force, hurried off to Linthwaite to make inquiries. Drs. Haigh and Leslie were driving along the road, and they were at once called in and examined the body and pronounced life to be extinct. There was a stab wound on the right side of the neck, which must have proved fatal in a very few minutes. That the girl had been murdered there was no doubt, and her wrists bore black marks, as if she had been subjected to very severe pressure ; but beyond the injury to the neck and wrists there were no other indications of physical injury to the body. No robbery appears to have been committed, for although there was plenty of money in the house, nothing appears to have been missed. On the landing there was found a sweeping brush and a sawdust pan, and it seems very likely that Dennis was going to sweep out the long room, which had been used on the previous night by the Linthwaite Brass Band, which practises at the house, though Mrs. Brook, the landlady (who has kept the house for about twenty years), told Dennis that she need not do the work that afternoon, but leave it till the following day. What the motive for the crime can be is shrouded. in mystery. Two men have been arrested on suspicion by the police.
LATER.
The men whom the police have arrested are Joshua Lockwood, Emmanuel Terrace, Lockwood, and George Famham, Pear Street, Lockwood, photographers' canvassers, in the service of a Huddersfield firm. Both of them are under middle age. The coats of both men were stained with a green colour similar to the colour of the walls on the landing of the stairs, but whether these are the men who actually committed the deed, the police are unable to say.