James Clitheroe, the culprit in this remarkable case, suffered death on Saturday, in front of the Kirkdale gaol, near Liverpool, though efforts had been made to secure a reprieve. The circumstances in connexion are of a somewhat peculiar description. Clitheroe was a married man with a family, but his affections appear to have been divided between his wife and Mary Woods, a poor paralytic woman, who earned a living by keeping a school and selling small beer. The prisoner was in the habit of sharing the murdered woman’s bed, and as his neighbours knew of this he was twitted by them, in the intensely acrimonious manner peculiar to vulgar and uneducated people, as to “the poor cripple Mary Woods” being enciente by him. This seems to have annoyed Clitheroe very much, and his mortification and chagrin acting upon a morbid temperament prompted him to murder. On the night of the 28th of December last he visited Mary Woods’ house, and went to bed with her as was his wont, but early next morning he cut her throat and his own too, though the wound was only fatal in the case of the woman. Later in the morning the school children were unable to gain admission to the house as usual, and, as no one answered the door after repeated knocks, an entrance was effected at the rear of the premises, and an investigation took place. In an upstairs room the police found Mary Woods and the prisoner in bed together—the woman quite dead, and with her throat cut, and the man in an exhausted condition, with his throat cut also. The blood upon the woman’s throat was dry, and she had evidently been dead for several hours; whereas the blood upon Clitheroe was fresh, and his wound must have been recently inflicted, because the blood was flowing freely from the arteries of the neck when the police first entered. The prisoner, when asked what he had been doing, stated that he and Mary Woods had agreed to cut their throats, saying, “We made it up to cut our throats, She told me that the razor was in the drawer, under the looking-glass. I fetched the razor, got into bed, and first cut my own throat.” The prisoner never deviated from this account of the transaction, either before or after the trial, but it must have been untrue in point of fact, because the strong and irresistible probability is, that the woman’s throat was cut at five o’clock in the morning, and that she was dead several hours before the prisoner made the attempt upon his own life. When the prisoner was on his trial, Mr Justice Willes directed the jury that if the prisoner counselled, assisted, or directed the woman to destroy herself, he was guilty of murder.
THE EXECUTION.
The culprit, who was pinioned by Calcraft in the usual way, struggled hard. To the last he persisted in the story of suicide. The crowd was not so great as had been expected.
After hanging the usual time, the body was cut down, and the crowd soon after dispersed.
J. Harkness, Printer, Preston.
HORRID
MURDER
OF
A GENTLEMAN,
IN A
RAILWAY CARRIAGE.
