Child's imagined murder rocks Bramley: Police investigate allotment for missing body

The police investigation which was under way had created a tremendous sensation, which was being amplified by the rumours spreading about the village.

There were small groups of people gathered in the doorways of houses and in the streets.

They talked of the search for the body of a woman who used to live with her husband and children on Wadsworth Road. This was correct.

Detectives were digging on allotment land at Flash Lane. They had started the unenviable task at about midnight but by noon still had made no discovery.

What made these circumstances more remarkable and pressing was that information passed to the police had come from an 11-year-old girl.

The youngster, who had been living with some friends in Rotherham, told her guardians on that Monday that her mother had been brutally murdered and buried in an allotment.

The girl described in graphic detail the fatal assault on her poor mum who, it was alleged, had been involved in a quarrel with her dad at Wadsworth Road.

The youngster and two other children had been living at the address with dad, who was cohabiting with another woman there towards the end of 1922.

Mum would send the children chocolates, and on Boxing Day she travelled from Leeds to see them.

On this occasion, the mum became involved in an argument with the dad and his new partner. This turned violent, according to our young witness.

The girl told how her mother was subjected to an assault and then murdered — the manner of which the child very vividly described.

Later the same night, said the girl, she saw her father remove the body of her mother in a wheelbarrow to an allotment at the rear of their home.

A few days later the child was in the garden and noticed some soil which had been newly turned over, she said.

Curiosity prompted her to dig down and — according to her story — she came across the discoloured face of her mother a short distance below the surface.

The family had then left Bramley and there was no mention of this story... until the 11-year-old girl related the tale to the guardians with whom she was living in spring 1923.

At 9pm on Monday, March 26, they took her to the Rotherham Borough Police Office, where she repeated the statement without any variation whatsoever.

She told police of the exact spot where they would find her mother’s body.

Officers in Rotherham alerted the West Riding police who covered Bramley, who were sparked into action.

The first job was to get hold of the mum’s estranged husband — our main suspect in the alleged killing. He was swiftly detained by a detective who called round that night.

By midnight, the Flash Lane allotments were home to an excavation party, described by the Advertiser as “small in numbers but very businesslike”.

The newspaper’s article that week said: “They began operations on an allotment formerly belonging to a resident, but who some time ago told a woman called Mrs Vials, who lives in Wadsworth Road, that he was leaving Bramley and wished to dispose of his allotment as quickly as possible.

“She stated in an interview that she gave him £1 for what was in the garden, and he seemed quite satisfied.

“Where he had gone to she did not know. She had not cultivated the garden and had not the faintest idea that there was anything in it.”

The digging operation began at the Wadsworth Road end of the vast patch of allotments, but with no sign of a body, the young girl was brought to the scene.

She readily pointed out the spot where she remembered seeing her mother’s remains. Then she fainted while disclosing the tragic details.

Despite the darkness and dense fog, officers honed their search on the area pointed out by the troubled youngster.

Still this brought no result.

Having found nothing in Mrs Vials’ section of the allotments, police turned their attentions to the corner of the field and a well, from which water was drawn for the gardens. The well was checked and no body was found.

That the girl had repeated her story so intelligibly and with such clarity — without the slightest hesitation or variation — meant the matter was taken to the top of the police force.

By morning, Colonel d’Coke, chief constable for the West Riding, and his colleague Supt T Horton had motored to the scene.

It was not known whether the mum was actually missing — but neighbours said they had not seen her recently. Enquiries were being made as far apart as Barnsley, Leeds, Ashton-under-Lyne and Taunton.

The child, meanwhile, stuck to her story.

As often as she was tested, she adhered unwaveringly to the details she had given from the very beginning.

With the digging efforts proving fruitless, there were various theories being discussed as to how the woman’s body might otherwise have disappeared.

But that afternoon, the mum was found safe and well in Barnsley. Dad — who had strongly protested his innocence since being arrested — was promptly released.

The whole thing had been the figment of an 11-year-old’s imagination.

These hallucinations had instigated a massive police investigation literally overnight.

“That a child should be able to imagine, as this child apparently did imagine, such a story as that which she told the police seems incomprehensible to the average mind,” the Advertiser reflected.

“The child stuck tenaciously to her original statement, which was told with such clearness and coherence that even the far-seeing police and the most suspecting person must have been convinced of its veracity.

“In most vivid fashion the child told the police how her mother, then living apart from the father, paid a visit to her children and how, while carrying out this very natural act of visitation, her father returned home, thrashed and, with the aid of the woman with whom he was cohabiting, murdered the child’s mother.

“Some credence was given to the story by the absence of the mother, who was one of the chief figures in this village melodrama, the parts of which the inhabitants of Bramley believed were being put together when they saw police officers at work with picks and spades on the allotment.

The paper’s comment column added: “Happily, there was no gruesome discovery.

“No body, not even that of a dead cat, was dug out of that allotment in Bramley’s Flash Lane. There had been no murder — no tragedy.

“What most people will be unable to understand is how a child of such tender years could imagine or concoct such a plausible story.

“Had she read similar stories in the newspapers or had her young brain been turned or unduly impressed by what she had seen at some picture house?

“The preparation of the story did her credit, but — and this is a big but — her facts were fancies, and in consequence somebody has suffered and the police have been put to a considerable amount of trouble.”

A week later, the Advertiser reported that the cause of the drama was being linked with spiritualism.

It was believed that the youngster had attended a seance and then imagined the gruesome and unfounded story.

By this point, the girl was under the care of Mrs Haslam, the police court missionary. The hallucination that her mother was dead had not entirely disappeared — but the girl was beginning to realise the fact, this paper reported on April 7.

The suggestion of spiritualism led to an angry letter the following week, the writer of which said it appeared to have become fashionable for the press to blame all manner of ills on the school of thought.

“I wonder they don’t accuse it of being the cause of the late war,” added F Cook, of Harpur Street.

“When will the press realise that we are living in times when people are more broadminded than ever before and are prepared to hear both sides of a question?

“There are good and bad in spiritualism, the same as any other ‘ism’. If we cannot see eye to eye with everyone, let us at least be tolerant and seek the good in all things.”