Fascinating stories of the grim and grisly: Almanac of the area’s dark past includes slaughter, murders, accidents -and boring executioners...IT is a dark diary probing into the most macabre moments of South Yorkshire’s 19th and early 20th century history. There is the murder of three children by their Rotherham mother who left a suicide note for her husband saying simply: ‘I am gone mad.’ There is the day in 1832 when troops fired on a Sheffield crowd waiting for election results to be announced and the 1841 Rotherham boat disaster which left more than 50 children drowned on a sunny gala day. These are just some of the ghastly incidents recorded in a new book on our region’s most dreadful days. For every date of the year there is a different crime, disaster or tragedy.
It is called A Grim Almanac Of South Yorkshire, and it more than lives up to its name. “It’s not necessarily easy reading,” admits author Kevin Turton, who grew up in Kimberworth Park, Rotherham. “But it’s fascinating stuff. “No-one likes the thought of crimes being committed or disasters happening but there’s still a deep interest in it somehow - there’s still a need to know about it. “But it’s more than just a book about crime - it’s a social history too. It’s not about kings or queens; it’s about real South Yorkshire people and how they lived. “It’s about poverty and struggling against the odds, and, in that way, it’s not just grim, it’s also quite sad.”
Perhaps the saddest tale of all is that of the Rotherham boat disaster. It was a July day which started with huge excitement over the launch of a new 70-ton ship from the town’s Masbrough Boatyard on Forge Lane. But it ended with untold agony for countless families. Hundreds of children were taken to the gala ceremony with many, as was tradition, allowed to board the vessel - the John and William - as it was rolled into the canal. But the boat was too large for the angle of the roll and it capsized as it hit the water. Those on board were thrown into the canal and were trapped beneath the rolling boat. Despite the rescuers’ best efforts more than 50 youngsters - half of them from Rotherham’s only public school - perished. “It’s a very moving story,” says Kevin, who has released 15 books, many of them about similar foul historical events. “It’s strange because it seems largely forgotten in Rotherham - certainly I wasn’t aware of it before I started my research - but it is incredibly significant. These were children from some of the town’s wealthiest families. It scarred the place for some time.”
In a similar vein the book recalls the 1908 incident in which 16 children, aged between four and six years old, were crushed to death as they tried to get into a cinematograph show at Barnsley’s Public Hall. “It is hard work to research incidents like that,” admits Kevin, 59. “But, perhaps because of how long ago it was you can detach yourself from it - you have to.”
Alongside such disasters - which also includes the Sheffield Flood of 1864 and the Silkstone Colliery disaster of 1880 - sit crimes which are equally as morbid. And equally as fascinating.
Perhaps more than most is the tale of Charles Peace, a charming Sheffield dandy, womaniser and one-time circus lion tamer, who led a double life as a killer and crook during the 1870s. Peace was executed when he was 47 years old but by that time he was already one of the most infamous men of his generation - adored by many for carrying out a life of crime while lodging respectably with a policeman, despised by others for the murder of two men including Arthur Dyson of Banner Cross. He committed countless robberies across the country including in Hull, Nottingham, Birmingham and London. And, although many times did he tell the few women who knew his secret that he intended to give up crime and live respectably, his addiction to life on the edge always got the better of him. He committed one crime too many and was caught in Blackheath, London, in 1879. He was executed on the scaffold. “In many ways he was a British Billy The Kid figure,” says Kevin. “For a while he really was that notorious. “There were several cheap court papers around at the time, almost comic-book in their writing and the way they would exaggerate and even romanticise criminals, and Peace was one of those stories which they picked up on. I suppose in that period of poverty there was something very appealing about a former steel worker becoming rich on the profits of robbing from the rich.”
The part-time college course advisor, who now lives in Northamptonshire, adds the idea for the book came while he was researching for a previous tome - Foul Deeds And Suspicious Deaths In Rotherham. “There seemed so many odds and ends I stumbled on while I was working on it - like the story of Peace - that I thought they had a place in a second book.” He spent six painstaking months in the libraries and archives of Sheffield, Doncaster, Rotherham and Barnsley putting together a nasty deed or disaster for every day of the year - sometimes a murder, sometimes a riot, sometimes a witchcraft trial, and on one occasion a public talk. That was September 6, 1879, when a crowd of more than 600 people turned up at a Sheffield lecture hall to hear William Marwood, the country’s foremost public executioner, speak. When, however, he refused to talk about his job, preferring instead to lecture on The Bible and the forthcoming election, a near riot broke out. He was repeatedly heckled, while many audience members walked out threatening violence if their money was not returned.
And perhaps, therein, lies the biggest clue to why A Grim Almanac Of South Yorkshire, now in its second edition after a first version was published in 2004, is expected to prove so popular. “I suppose those people went to the talk because there was that same fascination with the dark side of things,” says Kevin. “Perhaps there is still that fascination there now.”
- A Grim Almanac Of South Yorkshire, published by The History Press, is available now, price £14.99.
ISBN 0752456784 (2010)/ ISBN 0750938188 (2004)
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