Walter Lewis Turner

On 6 June, Barbara Waterhouse, a young girl of six, disappeared while playing outside her house at Horsforth, Leeds. Despite a frantic search of the area, police could find no sign of her. Four days later her mutilated body was discovered in a tin trunk left outside Horsforth Town Hall. The body had been wrapped in a shawl and had its throat cut. On 12 June, a Mrs Turner was questioned after the shawl had been traced to her and she confessed to helping her son dispose of the body. He denied murdering the child and claimed that a quarryman called Jack had asked him to dispose of the trunk. He wasn't believed, and both he and his mother were charged with murder. They were tried at Leeds Assizes with the conclusion that Turner was sentenced to death, his mother to life imprisonment. Thirty two year old Turner was hanged by James Billington on the 18th August 1891 at Leeds.