hissing of gas jets.
Mr Justice Lowther presided. Muriel was represented by Patrick Johnstone, probably the best defence counsel of his day; Robert by the scarcely less distinguished Nigel Walters. Both children pleaded not guilty to murder.
Cookson, whose evidence was crucial to the prosecution, proved to be a bad witness. The children, when they paused under the street lamp, had been standing beside a wall. Were they shorter than the wall, Johnstone asked, level with it, or taller than it? About level, Cookson thought. Then it could not have been Robert and Muriel Fanshawe. The wall measured five foot ten inches. Muriel, the taller of the two children, was five foot three, now, and she had grown since then. How much had Cookson had to drink? ‘A canny few,’ Cookson said. ‘A canny few,’ Johnstone repeated. Mr Justice Lowther intervened to say he could attach no meaning to the word ‘canny’ in this context. As far as he was concerned, it meant shrewd, thrifty or explicable in natural terms. ‘Were you the worse for drink?’ he asked. ‘No, my Lord, I was the better for it,’ Cookson replied. (Laughter.)
His quip did Cookson little good. Johnstone established easily enough that he had been in three or four public houses that night and had consumed ten pints or more of strong beer. Worse than that, he had been dismissed from Fanshawe’s works the previous year for drinking on the job. ‘You have a grudge against William Fanshawe, haven’t you?’ Johnstone said. ‘I know what I saw,’ Cookson insisted. But he was becoming flustered, and Johnstone moved in for the kill, thundering across the courtroom: ‘I put it to you that you saw what you wanted to see.’
It was apparent, even to those sitting in the courtroom at the time, that this was the pivotal moment of the trial. Proceedings dragged on for several more days, but it came as no surprise to anybody when the children were acquitted. The crowds who stood outside the courtroom as the Fanshawes left raised a weak cheer, but there were those who muttered, then and later, that money talked and that the Fanshawe children had got away with murder.
William Fanshawe never again spoke, or permitted anybody else to speak, of James’s death in his presence.
Bad luck continued to dog the family. Isobel, whose health had never been good, did not long survive her son. Robert was killed on the first day of the Somme. One of his brother officers wrote to William Fanshawe saying that he had seen Robert’s body impaled on the uncut German wire surrounded by unexploded British shells.
Muriel Fanshawe never married. On William’s death, Fleete House and the armaments factories, the bulk of his estate, passed to his nephew.
Robert’s last letter to Muriel, written on the eve of his death, survives. In it, he describes the columns of marching men winding along the summer lanes, singing as they went; and of how, as they passed the huge pits that had been dug in the fields on either side of the road, ready to receive the dead, the singing would falter, and for a few hundred yards there would be silence except for the tramp of feet, and then, gradually, the singing would start again. He goes on to write of the universal hope that a decisive breakthrough might be achieved, and, with a frankness unusual in such letters, of his fears that the losses would prove extremely heavy. For himself, he says, he would not mind so very much, ‘if it wasn’t for the thought of leaving you with Father and the memory of James’. The next sentence is underlined so deeply that the pen has cut through the paper: Remember how young we were .
Muriel, by contrast, always insisted on her innocence. After her father’s death she returned to Lob’s Hill. No attempt had been made to sell the house and it was never let, but kept exactly as it had been when James was alive. Like Mary Ann Cotton, Muriel was used as a bogey-woman to frighten naughty children into obedience. The neighbours avoided her.
Mr Justice Lowther presided. Muriel was represented by Patrick Johnstone, probably the best defence counsel of his day; Robert by the scarcely less distinguished Nigel Walters. Both children pleaded not guilty to murder.
Cookson, whose evidence was crucial to the prosecution, proved to be a bad witness. The children, when they paused under the street lamp, had been standing beside a wall. Were they shorter than the wall, Johnstone asked, level with it, or taller than it? About level, Cookson thought. Then it could not have been Robert and Muriel Fanshawe. The wall measured five foot ten inches. Muriel, the taller of the two children, was five foot three, now, and she had grown since then. How much had Cookson had to drink? ‘A canny few,’ Cookson said. ‘A canny few,’ Johnstone repeated. Mr Justice Lowther intervened to say he could attach no meaning to the word ‘canny’ in this context. As far as he was concerned, it meant shrewd, thrifty or explicable in natural terms. ‘Were you the worse for drink?’ he asked. ‘No, my Lord, I was the better for it,’ Cookson replied. (Laughter.)
His quip did Cookson little good. Johnstone established easily enough that he had been in three or four public houses that night and had consumed ten pints or more of strong beer. Worse than that, he had been dismissed from Fanshawe’s works the previous year for drinking on the job. ‘You have a grudge against William Fanshawe, haven’t you?’ Johnstone said. ‘I know what I saw,’ Cookson insisted. But he was becoming flustered, and Johnstone moved in for the kill, thundering across the courtroom: ‘I put it to you that you saw what you wanted to see.’
It was apparent, even to those sitting in the courtroom at the time, that this was the pivotal moment of the trial. Proceedings dragged on for several more days, but it came as no surprise to anybody when the children were acquitted. The crowds who stood outside the courtroom as the Fanshawes left raised a weak cheer, but there were those who muttered, then and later, that money talked and that the Fanshawe children had got away with murder.
William Fanshawe never again spoke, or permitted anybody else to speak, of James’s death in his presence.
Bad luck continued to dog the family. Isobel, whose health had never been good, did not long survive her son. Robert was killed on the first day of the Somme. One of his brother officers wrote to William Fanshawe saying that he had seen Robert’s body impaled on the uncut German wire surrounded by unexploded British shells.
Muriel Fanshawe never married. On William’s death, Fleete House and the armaments factories, the bulk of his estate, passed to his nephew.
Robert’s last letter to Muriel, written on the eve of his death, survives. In it, he describes the columns of marching men winding along the summer lanes, singing as they went; and of how, as they passed the huge pits that had been dug in the fields on either side of the road, ready to receive the dead, the singing would falter, and for a few hundred yards there would be silence except for the tramp of feet, and then, gradually, the singing would start again. He goes on to write of the universal hope that a decisive breakthrough might be achieved, and, with a frankness unusual in such letters, of his fears that the losses would prove extremely heavy. For himself, he says, he would not mind so very much, ‘if it wasn’t for the thought of leaving you with Father and the memory of James’. The next sentence is underlined so deeply that the pen has cut through the paper: Remember how young we were .
Muriel, by contrast, always insisted on her innocence. After her father’s death she returned to Lob’s Hill. No attempt had been made to sell the house and it was never let, but kept exactly as it had been when James was alive. Like Mary Ann Cotton, Muriel was used as a bogey-woman to frighten naughty children into obedience. The neighbours avoided her.
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