A Skeleton in the Catterall Cupboard

 

During our research into the history of our Catterall family in Great Harwood, we made one sad discovery, a murder involving one of George Holden Catterall's sisters. This discovery came about after we noticed that Melinda Catterall's husband, James Leaver, was probably the same James Leaver shown in the 1881 census records as a Broadmoor inmate. We searched the English newspapers from the period prior to the census and found that the story of “The Accrington Child Murder” was reported nationwide.

Melinda married James Leaver on the 22nd September 1872 in St. Bartholomew's church. James was the youngest of three brothers living in Great Harwood. His older brother John had married Melinda's older sister Esther in 1855. James was a member of the Great Harwood Cricket Club and had played in the first eleven.

A few weeks after their marriage James and Melinda went to America, but Melinda returned in 1874 and their first child, Henrietta Leaver was baptised on the 3rd June 1874 in Great Harwood. James returned to Great Harwood around 1879 but was not reconciled with Melinda until around September 1880 when he moved into 92 Water Street Accrington, where Melinda was boarding with her cousin Nanny Smith, wife of John Smith. By this time Melinda had given birth to another child, Albert, born in Yorkshire in 1878.

While James was in America he had been confined to a Boston lunatic asylum after inexplicably trying to strangle one of his roommates. Upon returning to the United Kingdom, he wandered the country and according to testimony from his brothers, was known to act strangely. He seemed unable to sleep and would get up in the middle of the night, sing and smoke and sharpen his pocket knife with which he seemed quite obsessed.

It was on the evening of 25 th January 1881 that Melinda and Nanny decided to go to the market, leaving James at home while Albert and Henrietta lay asleep upstairs. James had decided not to go saying he was tired and that he would go to bed early, as he needed his sleep. At about 7:40pm John Smith returned home from work to find James sitting in front of the fire with a bloodied pocketknife in his hand. James told Smith matter-of-factly that he had killed his daughter and, if he didn't believe him, to “go upstairs and see for yourself”. Smith went upstairs to the bedroom and found Henrietta still alive laying half off the bed with a deep wound to her neck. A small can had been neatly placed on the floor to collect the blood flowing from her neck; her brother Albert lay undisturbed, fast asleep next to her. The doctor was called but it was too late.

It is hard to know what drove James to murder his little daughter, of whom it was reported he seemed very fond. James Barr the surgeon at Kirkdale prison reported that since his incarceration James had shown no signs of insanity and had said he “slept better in prison than before he came there”. The jury found James not guilty of murder by reason of insanity; the foreman saying the jury thought his relatives were very much to blame for allowing him to remain at large.

James died on the 10 th July 1927, having spent the remainder of his life in Broadmoor Lunatic Asylum, and was buried in the Broadmoor cemetery. Melinda must have been pregnant at the time of the murder, as she gave birth to her third child, Ernest, in August 1881. She never remarried but in the 1891 census was living with William Rushton at 55 Dowry Street, Accrington, the ditto below Rushton's surname being crossed out on the census form and “Leaver” being squeezed in. She is buried in the Accrington cemetery along with William Rushton, her father James Catterall, and son Albert and his wife and daughter.

Christine Cramer (nee Catterall) and Eric Catterall

 

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John Broadley