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Practically every day of the year is a landmark of some sort in the annals of crime. Here’s where you can find out what happened this week in years gone by... Stories from the week beginning July 2nd. Ice-Cream Man With A HatchetJoseph Calebrere’s young wife had “given way to drink,” and this, it was said, preyed on his mind. In what was later described as “a fit of ungovernable fury” in April, 1904, Calebrere, an ice-cream merchant, killed his wife and three children with a hatchet at their home in Kilbirnie, North Ayrshire. At Glasgow Circuit Court on JULY 5th he was sentenced to death, but this was commuted to life. In August, 1914, he was released by a government with weightier matters on its mind. Payday Came EarlyJohn Harrison had no hesitation in sacking one of his employees who refused to obey his orders. The employee, William Cooper, told friends, “I’ll get my revenge.” So when, two months later, on JULY 5th, 1940, John Harrison was found in a hut in Seven Acre Field, Thorney, Cambridgeshire, with his head battered in by a broken soft drinks bottle, Cooper was the prime suspect. He was arrested and charged with robbery with violence. Some days later Harrison died in Peterborough Memorial Hospital, and the charge was amended to one of murder. Cooper remarked: “I didn’t think it would turn out like this.” At his trial at Cambridge on October 17th Cooper said he knew that Harrison went regularly to the hut to feed his chickens, and he had followed him there to ask him to explain the abrupt dismissal. Harrison, he said, started pushing him about, and tried to hit him with a hammer. In retaliation he struck out with the bottle. The prosecution, however, suggested that Cooper knew that because it was Friday Harrison would be carrying his employees’ wages, and went to the hut to ambush and rob him. The irony of that was that for the first time ever Harrison had paid his men on Thursday that week. Cooper was hanged at Bedford Jail on Tuesday, November 26th. Britain’s last hangman, Harry Allen, was present at the execution as part of his training Life For Daphne’s KillerA “sex urge” came on Ernest Bailey, 43, a Royal Artillery gunner stationed at Aldringham, Suffolk, when he saw Daphne Bacon, a well-built girl but only 14, walking along a path besides a cornfield near the village. He came up behind her and hit her with a heavy stick. Daphne died later that same day, JULY 8th, 1945, from her injuries. A post-mortem revealed that she was a virgin and there was no evidence that sexual intercourse had taken place. Two doctors testified at his trial in November that Bailey had been mentally defective since birth. He was sent to prison for life. |
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