Joseph Holden

Joseph Holden was convicted of the murder of his grandson John Dawes 8 and sentenced to death. He drowned him in a quarry at Limefield, Bury, Lancashire on Wednesday 5 September 1900. He had gone to collect the boy from his school pretending that his mother required him to go on an errand. He was later seen with the child on the road to the quarry and said that he first threw him into the quarry and then into the water. The master of Bury Workhouse said that he looked upon Joseph Holden as being simple minded. He had been admitted to Bury Workhouse in 1897 for 14 days on a magistrates order for being of unsound mind and had been an ordinary inmate there six times later. The question of whether he resented his children for not supporting him was raised but his eldest daughter said that he had never complained about not being supported by them. He had been living in the workhouse until a week before the murder when he went to live with his daughter and her son John Dawes. After he went to the police station and said, 'I threw the boy down on the rocks, and he went on some soft stuff. I took him by the neck and breaches and threw him down the quarry. I then went down into the quarry and threw him into the water'. John Dawes was found in six feet of water. It was noted that on 21 August 1900 he had also taken another child to the quarry where he had thrown a rock at him causing him injuries from which he wasn't thought to recover from. Joseph Holden had pleaded guilty at his trial. Following his conviction the police report to the Home Secretary stated that the main point for consideration in his case was that the whole issue was not before the jury, only the question of whether he was fit to plead. It was noted that five medical men had examined Joseph Holden and that three of them had given evidence at the assizes. It was noted that two of them in a joint report had summed up their opinion by saying, 'We consider him to be of a low mental type, but we are unable to find any evidence of insanity'. However, the third doctor had considered him to be of unsound mind, both at the time of the trial and at the time of the commission of the crime. He added that he had showed characteristic signs of mental and physical degeneration, exhibiting callous and indifferent manner and that he had talked freely of the crime for which he offered no excuse except that he had long felt compelled to do it, and concluded by stating that he was of the opinion that the brain disease that Joseph Holden was suffering from would sooner or later lead to complete dementia. However, he still thought that he was fir to plead. It was further noted that the other two doctors who didn't give evidence at the Assizes stated that they were both of the opinion that Joseph Holden was neither insane nor irresponsible for his actions in the present and that they found no grounds for believing that he had been insane or irresponsible for his actions at the time he murdered John Dawes. The police report stated therefore that they had four opinions that Joseph Holden was sane against one, but that if the case had been tried that the one doctor that had felt that he was insane and who was a medical man with much experience and who was at the time employed by the Treasury and who had previously been employed by the Home Office, would have probably had great weight with the jury who then might have recommended him to mercy or even found a verdict of guilty but insane. Additionally it was noted that there was the fact that Joseph Holden's father and two brothers of the father had all committed suicide although it was not known from what cause. It was also noted that Joseph Holden had himself been committed to the workhouse three years earlier for 14 days as an insane person, although that, according to the report from the workhouse doctor was in all probability merely an attack of delirium tremens brought on by drink. However, it was additionally noted that Joseph Holden himself repudiated any idea of insanity. Evidence was considered from the chief warder who said that when he read over the doctors evidence to Joseph Holden that Joseph Holden had said, 'My mind is all right. I am weak in the body, but not in the mind'. However, he was also noted as having said, 'Whoever says I am soft is mistaken, because I was aggravated to it'. The police report stated that on looking through Home Office records, it was found that there were many cases where prisoners pleaded guilty to murder and who were left for execution, and a list was provided, it being noted that in many of the cases listed that, as with the present case, that the please in favour of the prisoner were not adequately brought out because of the plea of guilty. As such, the police report stated that the difficulties of the case should be laid before the judge in an official or informal letter and consideration made after his opinion sought or even a meeting, it being noted that the judge was in London at the time. Cases referenced as having a similar guilty plea leading to the sentence of death were: 1863 - Alfred Holden: Cut his 11-month -old child's throat. He had said that he was tired of life and wanted to leave his wife without a burden. Executed. 1865 - Constance Emily Kent: Murder of her 4-year-old half-brother. Commuted. 1867 - James Bacon: Murdered wife in fit of passion. Commuted. 1869 - William Sheward: Confessed to murdering his wife 18 years earlier. Executed. 1871 - Claud Scott Wooley: Confessed to killing a potman but at his trial he denied the confession. Commuted. 1877 - William Hussell: Murdered his wife by stabbing her in several places with a butchers knife. Judge tried to persuade him to withdraw plea but he refused. Executed. 1879 - Jonathan Gaydon: Murdered old lady at Chingford and robbed house in June 1857 and gave himself up 22 years later. Commuted. 1880 - Henry Harman: Murdered old man six years earlier. No evidence save his confession. Not thought safe to hang. Commuted. 1883 - George White: Stabbed and kicked his wife to death. Executed. 1886 - David Roberts: Murder of farmer for sake of robbery. Executed. 1887 - Thomas Leathesbarrow: Murder of woman he lived with by beating and kicking. Utterly callous in dock. Executed. 1887 - Tomas Payne: Murder of sister-in-law who had a child by him after he became jealous at her breaking off their intimacy. Executed. 1895 - Joseph Canning: Cut his sweethearts throat. Executed. 1899 - Alice Robinson: Murder of 12-month-old infant child after destitution and miserable life with husband. Commuted. However, Joseph Holden was executed at Manchester by James Billington on 4 December 1900. Until the beginning of September 1900, Joseph Holden had lived in the workhouse at Bury. In due course he moved in with one of his married daughters, who lived in Nuttall Street, and repaid her kindness by killing her son, John. Late on the night of Wednesday, 5th September Holden walked in to his local police station and confessed that he had drowned John Dawes in a quarry, at Limefield. Holden went on to describe how he had first thrown the boy on to some rocks and then had grabbed him by the neck and breeches and thrown him into the quarry. He had then gone down into the quarry himself and thrown the child into the water. The body was later discovered, in six feet of water, exactly where Holden had said it would be. Medical reports would show that the child had still been alive when he was put into the water and that death had been caused by drowning. Police investigations soon showed that Holden had also attacked another of his grandsons, George Eldred of Ingham Street, on 21st August, whilst Holden was still living in the workhouse. He had taken this child to a different quarry, at Birtles, not far from Limefield, and told him to cut some tobacco. Whilst the boy was engaged in this task, Holden had picked up a large stone and thrown it at the child's head. He would later say that this had been an accident, saying that he had thrown the stone and hit the child by mistake. It may well have been this incident which caused Holden's daughter to invite him to live with her in the hope that a more stable family life would make her father more content. At his trial, at Manchester, Joseph Holden, looking far older that his fifty seven years, pleaded guilty to the charge of murder. The defence was one of insanity and the jury had first to determine if Holden was in a fit medical condition to plead. After due consideration, Holden was found to be fit to plead and again said that he was guilty. After being sentenced to death, Holden left the dock showing no concern for his fate. Later, in prison awaiting his execution, Holden would express remorse for what he had done, but no real motive for the crime could be suggested. On 11th December, seven days after Holden had been hanged, a question was asked in the House of Commons, by Mister Harwood, the Member for Bolton. He sought confirmation that all had been done to inquire into the sanity of Joseph Holden. Mister Ritchie, for the Home Department, replied that two eminent gentlemen, experts in the field, had made a full investigation and he had decided, on their findings, not to interfere with the due course of the law. Holden was hanged at Manchester on 4th December 1900. This morning in 1900, Bury ironturner Joseph Holden was executed at Manchester’s Strangeways Prison for the murder of his grandson. “The convict’s sanity had been in some doubt,” in the bloodless words of the next day’s London Times. To read it a century later is to see a man deeply in need of help. It was his married daughter Mary Dawes who tried to give it to him by taking him in under her own roof after Holden was reduced to living in a workhouse. In August of 1900 he took another of his grandchildren — not by Mary Dawes — to a quarry to cut tobacco, then hurled a stone that hit the child in the head. George Eldred was badly injured, but survived. The mental deterioration betokened by such behavior must have put Mary Dawes or any other kin with an interest in the patriarch’s well-being into a terrible bind. What resources of state or charity could they have called upon, short of consigning him to the miasma of some gaol? At 57 years of age, Holden was already 10 years past the male life expectancy for the time and looked still older thanks to the ravages of alcoholism. Maybe Mary thought that having him at her hearth would stabilize him well enough to dignify whatever little measure of life remained to her father. That is nothing but a speculative assessment of these bare and tragic facts: Mary Dawes took her father in; days later, on September 5, Mary’s father took Mary’s son John to a quarry and drowned him. Hampshire Advertiser, September 12, 1900. Holden’s only defense — practically the only one really available to him — was insanity. But Holden wasn’t starkers; his mind perambulated that foggy wilderness between lucidity and dementia and this was simply insufficient disturbance for the then-prevailing legal standard of madness, the M’Naghten Test. Basically, if he could understand what he’d done, he was sane enough to hang. Still to this day the basis of competency assessments in much of the English-speaking world, M’Naghten offers only a narrow ground for avoiding the full measure of criminal responsibility. And Holden was clearly competent enough by that test; indeed, he had complained of his treatment in Mary’s house, hinting at a real motive. Although Holden’s death sentence was automatic upon the unhelpful sanity assessment of the doctors,* he was thought a prime candidate for a reprieve from the Home Secretary. This too did not materialize; Holden’s own contrition and resignation to his fate in the days leading up to the execution might have contributed to the judgment that he was in fact sane enough to die. That’s some catch: the best there is. A murderer named Oscar Mattson — a Russian sailor who had slain a young English prostitute named Mary Ann Macguire in a rage over stolen money and rebuffed advances — did win a Home Secretary reprieve on the same day that Holden hanged. * It was only necessary for doctors to find him competent enough to make his own plea. When they did so, he simply pleaded guilty. Drowned his grandson John Dawes aged 8 at Limefield, Bury, Lancashire on Wednesday, 5th September, 1900. 1900 December 4th: Joseph HOLDEN (57) Manchester An unemployed turner and father of seven, convicted of the murder of his grandson, John Dawes (9), whom he threw into a quarry at Bury on 5 September. Holden had been lodging with his daughter until she asked him to leave because of his drinking. In revenge, he killed the child and told the police he had done it to get even with his daughter. Sentenced to death by Mr Justice Darling at Manchester Assizes on 12 November, he was hanged by James Billington and William Warbrick.