Did He Kill Her? (The Ramsgate
Mystery).
Who
murdered Sarah
Noel?
That’s what the packed courtroom was
desperate to know.
Who had entered her home on Sunday
afternoon, 14th May 1893, and shot her at close range in the head?
Was it, as Ramsgate Police strongly believed, her 43-year-old husband William?
Or had this foul deed been perpetrated by an anonymous assailant?
Justice William Grantham took his seat at
the Bench. Indefatigable and a shrewd judge of character, Maidstone’s summer
assizes would be his first his first encounter with Kent’s criminal fraternity.
Grantham had spent the weekend
painstakingly going through the prosecution’s case, and he was far from happy.
The investigation had been less than professional, and now the 57-year-old
judge had to decide whether or not the accused should be committed for trial.
The evidence was far from conclusive; at best it was barely circumstantial.
Nevertheless, Grantham had carefully and impartially considered the facts…
Just before 4 p.m. on the day in question,
William Noel had returned home to find the house locked and his wife seemingly
out.
The couple ran a successful butcher’s on
Grange Road, Ramsgate, and lived, quite comfortably, in a two floor apartment
above the shop. William was also a Sunday school teacher at the nearby St
Lawrence Wesleyan Chapel, some twenty minutes’ walk away. Getting no reply he
was about to leave, intending to go for a short stroll, when he noticed one of
his students, 16-year-old Nelly Wilson, who also happened to be the family’s
domestic servant.
‘If you see Mrs Noel, Nelly,’ he said, ‘tell
her I can’t get in.’
Nelly confirmed that she would indeed
pass the message on should she see her mistress. But when he returned some
fifteen minutes later the house was still locked. The family’s black Labrador
“Nep” barked as Noel again hammered the doorknocker.
With still no reply, and soliciting the
help of a neighbour’s ladder, William climbed to the first floor kitchen
window. He sees his wife lying on the floor and Nep sitting next to her. Forcing
the window he frantically clambered in.
Grange Road,
Ramsgate, at the time of the murder.
Around the same time Matthew Saunders – a
town councillor and neighbour – was heading down Grange Road, on an afternoon
stroll with his two daughters. As he passed the butcher’s William Noel hurried
out. ‘Saunders,’ he exclaimed nervously, grabbing the councillor’s arm, ‘I believe
my wife is dead!’ Noel’s words were overheard by another neighbour, James
Harman, who immediately came to offer his assistance, and together the three
men hurried in.
Inside they found Sarah Noel (56) lying
dead on the kitchen floor. The body lay on its back, surrounded by blood, some
of which had trickled into the passage. The victim’s spectacles also lay near
the body. Nep, reported as being ‘very attached’ to his mistress, emitted a low
menacing growl at Harman and Saunders.
‘Be quiet, boy,’ Noel instructed. The dog
immediately complied, but nevertheless kept a wary eye on the two strangers.
While Harman rushed to fetch a doctor,
both Noel and Saunders search the premises. The apartment appeared to have been
ransacked. Cupboards and drawers had been opened (some wrenched open with a
poker); their contents strewn on chairs, the floor and the bed. Noel also found
that a cashbox used to store the firm’s takings had also been forced. The
victim’s purse – containing five sovereigns – was also missing. At first sight
it looked as if a violent robbery had taken place. Had Sarah Noel awoke from
her customary afternoon nap to find an intruder or intruders? Was that why she
had been shot?
William Noel seemed to think so. At the
magistrates inquest Saunders later recalled how the butcher repeatedly voiced his
opinion that they had been robbed. But as the police would later point out,
there were a number of problems with this theory.
The body was examined by Doctors Fox and
Cotton who placed time of death sometime around 2.30. Death was caused by a
single gunshot, fired four feet from the victim, from a revolver ‘of somewhat
large calibre’. The bullet, conical in shape, entered the victim’s head just
below the right temple and exited through the left. It was later found lodged
in woodwork in the kitchen. Sarah Noel also had a black eye, but as Dr. Fox
later informed the coroner this was as a result of the bullet entering the
victim’s head.
Police-Inspector Robert Ross was the
investigating officer. The 31-year-old Scot had previously served with the
Lancashire Constabulary, where he had worked on ‘several important cases’
before transferring to Canterbury. Then in October 1891 he transferred again,
this time to Ramsgate, where he was given the rank of Inspector. According to
the Thanet Advertiser he was a man of
‘remarkable ability and intelligence’ and ‘greatly valued by his superiors’.
Initially Ross too believed the Noels were victims of a violent burglary, but
as he examined the crime-scene he soon felt that it was, as he put it at the
coroner’s inquest, ‘a get up’. Some jewellery had not been taken. A bowl
containing ten shillings in loose change was also untouched. As too were Sarah
Noel’s pocket watch and chain, and jewellery she was wearing. But strangely the
thief had taken a Post Office savings book containing £24, which was worthless to
them as it would prove difficult to cash without raising suspicion. Ross also
believed that a burglar would not target a tradesman’s premises. Nor would he
use such violence against ‘a poor defenceless woman’. There was no sign of
forced entry, and Ross was strongly of the opinion that criminals only used
firearms to gain their liberty. Besides, it was well known around the town that
William Noel banked the business’ takings on a Saturday afternoon.
Then there was Nep.
Described by the Illustrated Police News as a ‘ fierce-looking, stump-tailed,
heavy-headed retriever’, as Ross later explained to the coroner, had the dog
been shot and the woman knocked senseless he would be more inclined to believe
the robbery theory. But Nep had not been shot, and furthermore, despite his
fearsome reputation for aggression against all except his master and mistress,
had done nothing to raise the alarm. Why? According to Noel, he’d had left the
dog shut in an upstairs room, before leaving to give his Sunday school lesson.
The butcher later conjectured that the thieves must have inadvertently let the
Nep out while ransacking the premises. But Ross was still unconvinced, and to
him the dog’s lack of intervention in protecting his mistress meant he knew and
trusted Sarah Noel’s murderer. This, along with his belief that the crime-scene
had, at least in part, been contrived resulted in William Noel becoming the
investigation’s prime and only suspect.
Ross then made a grave error. Instead of
finding the evidence to support his theory, he does the opposite. And from here
on Ramsgate’s police force embarked on nothing sort of a witch-hunt. Other
lines of inquiry were either quickly dismissed or simply not followed up, as
the investigation fell into farce.
Inspector Ross failed fully to establish
whether any firearms of a similar calibre had recently been sold in the town. A
second-hand shop in Kings Street had sold such a weapon four days earlier, and
the same individual had also purchased a box of .442 cartridges from a gunsmith
in the High Street. The identity of this
person was never established. All the police learned about this potential
suspect was that he looked in every respect ‘a perfect gentleman’.
On the day of the murder George Palmer,
who ran a grocer’s store on Grange Road, recalled seeing a ‘well-dress lady’,
fairly short in stature and attired in a dark dress, loitering at the rear of
the Noel’s house. The identity of this woman wasn’t looked into neither, even
though William Noel, himself, indirectly gave them a clue to her possible
identity.
Another possible clue ignored was the
discovery of a jemmy and ‘other burglar’s tools’ found in Tomson’s Passage,
about a quarter of a mile from the crime-scene. Ross gave them little
consideration as they were, in his opinion, too far from the murder site. (A
walk from Tomson’s Passage to Grange Road will take you ten to fifteen minutes
at most). Instead of pursuing these potential lines of enquiry the police, and
Ross in particular, devoted most of their time in trying to prove rumours of
William Noel’s improprieties with younger woman, which they saw as a motive.
Police-Inspector
Robert Ross (sketch by Kyle Llewellyn Roberts).
Under Inspector Ross’ guidance the police
searched the couple’s apartment, but no firearm of any description was found.
However, with William Noel, even in the earliest stages of the investigation,
becoming the main suspect, Ross did not authorise a search of the St Lawrence
Wesleyan Chapel, a potential hiding place for the murder weapon. Nor did he conduct
a personal search of Noel himself. Ross and his constables did have a poke
around the drains outside – again a possible hiding place – but a more thorough
search was not conducted. Nor did Ross and his officers do themselves any favours
by pinching, during their search of the crime-scene, a couple of bottles of
Noel’s beer. In an attempt to save face Ross offered to reimburse the butcher. But
Noel considered the matter of no importance.
In fairness to Robert Ross, William Noel
didn’t exactly help in allaying the inspector’s suspicions against him. In
regard to the mysterious woman seen loitering at the back of the house, Noel,
though unaware of what George Palmer saw, did indirectly give the inspector a
possible motive and suspect.
Two days after the murder Noel sent word
for Ross to call on him. Inspector arrived to find the butcher looking very
pale and behaving in an excited manner. ‘I have found the murderer!’ he exclaimed.
When Ross asked for a name, Noel replied: ‘My wife’s sister. I don’t know her
name, but she’s a very bad woman, and living with a man now [meaning they lived
together but were not married]. Her maiden name is Saunders’. This sister,
according to Noel, had been married twice and fallen out of favour with her
family. When Ross asked why she, Noel gesticulating wildly said: ‘I have had a
presentment, I feel it, I can’t help feel it!’ Pressed when he had last seen
this sister, the butcher replied: ‘Eighteen years ago at Southsea. She was then
residing with my wife at the lodging house there, and they had rowed over
something before she [the sister] left.’ Ross then asked if Noel had seen her
recently or heard she was in the neighbourhood. ‘No,’ Noel replied ‘but I feel,
can’t help feeling that it must be her’. When asked where and when he had last
seen the sister, Noel confessed that he had actually never met her.
Inspector Ross then asked Miss Alice Simm,
Sarah Noel’s nice, (who had travelled down from Twickenham, South West London, the
day after her aunt’s murder) when she had last seen her wayward aunt. ‘Four
years ago in Hastings, Inspector,’ she replied. ‘I believe she now resides in
Bexhill’. Alice then corroborated Noel’s account about her estranged aunt being
a ‘very bad woman’, but did not offer an opinion as to her uncle’s theory
regarding the murder.
(A Bexhill local paper tracked down the
wayward sister, Mrs T. Harris. She explained how she had been forced to care
for her invalid husband, a former gardener, until his death in 1886. She wasn’t
in regular contact with Sarah Noel, but claimed this wasn’t as a result of
ill-feeling. Mrs Harris also spoke of how, not long before Mrs Noel’s murder,
she had experience a number of nightmares in which a death occurs in the
family).
Nine days after her aunt’s murder, Alice
made a discovery that only enhanced Ross’ suspicion against her uncle. As she
later explained to the coroner, and then again a month later before the
magistrates, she was putting away some clothing in a chest of draws. The draws
were untidy, where they had been search by the police. In one of them she found
Sarah Noel’s missing purse, which slipped out from between the folds of a
pillow case. William Noel, who was adamant it had been in the cashbox,
immediately sent word to Inspector Ross; the purse’s contents – five sovereigns
– were still inside. For Ross this was further evidence of Noel’s guilt, but
when asked by the magistrates Alice Simm said she believed it was possible it
could have been missed during the police search. At the coroner’s inquest she
was also asked how the dog behaved towards her. Alice replied that Nep was
always very friendly and affectionate with her.
For Robert Ross, Nep was the key piece of
evidence that proved William Noel’s guilt. A number of witnesses testified
before both the coroner and the magistrates of Nep’s hostility towards
strangers. Surely he would have attacked any intruder? Ross even discharged a
revolver in the animal’s presence to gauge its reaction. After firing two
blanks Nep simply rose from his mat and wagging his tail approached the
policeman.
After hearing nine days of evidence the
coroner concluded that Mrs Sarah Noel was the victim of murder by person or
persons unknown. But Inspector Ross wasn’t prepared to see the man he believed
guilty walk free, and literally minutes after the verdict he arrested William
Noel. What followed was a long protracted magistrates hearing, lasting 16 days.
Full of pantomime and farce every detail of Noel’s life, in particular his behaviour
around young women, was examined.
The prosecution believed the butcher had
murdered his wife because she objected to his adulterous habits. The couple, it
was said, argued regularly about it. One of Ross’ own men, PC Hooker, testified
that he’d heard the couple arguing some four years back, while he sheltered
from the rain in Noel’s shop front. When pressed on what was actually said,
Hooker confessed that he couldn’t make out actual words, but he was sure it was
over another woman. The Noels relationship, it was implied, had become so
unhappy and strained they occupied separate bedrooms. Two attempts to raise a
family had failed with the children dying shortly after birth. And while William Noel was a strikingly
handsome man, with a full head of black hair, married neatly with his beard and
moustache, his wife – ten years his senior – was beginning to show her age. She
had false teeth, wore glasses and her hair was greying.
Robert Ross was determined plumbed every
depth in order to prove William Noel a morally reprehensible libertine, who,
after killing his wife in cold blood, had ransacked their apartment to make it
look like a violent robbery had occurred. In court he tried to use PC Hooker to
tarnish Noel’s reputation, by having the constable recount how, some years
earlier, he’d seen Mr Noel in the company of a young woman walking up Edith
Street (just around the corner from his shop). It was also established that the
young lady in question had since emigrated to Canada. Ross even brought one of
the butcher’s former customers, Sarah Louise Cook, over from Ireland. In fact,
Cook’s evidence was considered so sensational that all woman and girls were
instructed to vacate the court.
Cook had been a resident of Edith Road
with her husband, a customs officer, until August 1891. She told the court how
she had gone to buy some meat or pay a bill – she couldn’t remember which – and
found the shop empty.
‘I went to the office window and looked
in,’ she explained.
‘What did you see there?’ asked Mr James Emery,
acting for the prosecution.
‘Noel and the girl, Miller,’ replied Cook
disdainfully.
‘Who was the girl?’
‘The book-keeper.’
‘And where were they?’
‘Together on the floor.’
According to the Thanet Advertiser, the witness then ‘proceeded to describe the
positions of the prisoner and the girl’. However, this being Victorian Britain
anything more graphic – in print at least – would have been considered in poor
taste!
The murder site today.
Noel’s solicitor, Mr Walter Hills,
objected to this blatant character assassination, but was ignored. Later in his
summing up of the facts he described Cook’s evidence as ‘absolutely irrelevant
to the charge’. And of Ramsgate Police, Hill believed it was ‘monstrous’ that
they should put forward such evidence in a ‘case of this importance’. But there
was more irrelevant gossip to come.
Henry Marsh, a farmer from Worth, was
another of Robert Ross’ star witnesses. He told the court how two years
previously Noel had called on him to collect some lambs. ‘Did anyone come with
him,’ enquired James Emery. Marsh said the accused had been accompanied on one
occasion by a woman in her twenties. After the farmer had loaded the lambs into
the cart Noel and his lady companion stayed in the area for about an hour. ‘[They
were] along the dyke shore,’ Marsh recalled. ‘She was sitting down. He was
kneeling down along the shore and appeared to be gathering wild flowers.’ The
distance between them appeared close and intimate. This revelation seemed to
have caused uproar with the court, forcing the chairman of the magistrates,
John Kennett, to restore order with a strong rebuke.
Marsh was recalled a couple of days
later. ‘We understand that on the last occasion you did not give all your
evidence,’ remarked Kennett, ‘because someone had intimidated you. Is that so?’
Marsh confirmed that was correct and was instructed to tell all. The farmer
recounted his previous story regarding William Noel’s visits. Only this time
the butcher appeared to have his arm around the young lady, and was kissing
her. Marsh and his wife observed this for about ten minutes. Later in the
Salutation Inn, located in Sandwich, they discussed what they had seen.
Under cross examination from Walter Hill,
it was established that Marsh was a good distance away (‘There was sixteen
acres of land between him and us’). And that he’d only seen Noel picking wild
flowers. It seems Ross may have coerced the farmer into embellishing his
evidence. But the Inspector, as it turns out, was not Marsh’s intimidator.
There was considerable laughter among the public when it was revealed that agent
provocateur was the landlady of the Salutation Inn, Mrs Holness. Marsh
explained to her and his wife that Inspector Ross had called and to the purpose
of his visit.
‘What a nuisance,’ complained Mrs Marsh.
To which Mrs Holness suggested: ‘Mine
what you are saying – don’t say too much, only say what you are asked!’
‘Do you mean the Bench to believe that
these few words intimidated you?’ ask Hill incredulously.
‘Yes,’ replied Marsh embarrassed.
‘How old are you?’
‘Thirty, I think.’
‘Are you indeed!’
The resulting laughter became so much
that Kennett was again forced to restore order.
As it happened Sarah Noel was fully aware
of her husband’s female companion. In fact she waved them both off as they
left. It was also established that the Noels never argued. In her evidence
Alice Simm recalled how her aunt Sarah also spoke affectionately about her
husband. William Noel’s staff and neighbours also spoke of how the couple were
devoted to each other. And the magistrates themselves saw nothing untoward in
the butcher accompanying the young lady up Edith Road as far as the field where
he kept some sheep and pigs.
And as to the crime itself, none of the
witness could agree when the fatal shot was fired; the time ranging from
between 2 p.m. and 2.45. Some even mistook it for a door slamming!
Nevertheless, despite the flimsy evidence, the magistrates found William Noel
guilty and remanded him to Canterbury Prison, to await trial at the next
assizes in Maidstone. For Inspector Ross victory, and justice, was now close at
hand, and for the accused man the hangman’s noose beckoned!
But what were the facts? That’s what Justice
William Grantham was only interested in. What evidence – good hard evidence –
was there to prove William Noel a murderer?
On Sunday 14th, after the
family had dined, around midday, Sarah Noel cleared away the dinner things. She
was washing her hands when Nelly Wilson left via the back door for her Sunday
school lesson. The time was 2 p.m. William Noel claimed he had left the house
no later than 2.15 p.m., again via the back door, which he left unlocked. This
was so he could get back in, as Sarah would be having her customary afternoon
nap. But before leaving he shut away Nep in an upstairs room.
Nelly arrived at the St Lawrence Wesleyan
Chapel at 2.45, and finds Mr Noel already there preparing for his class. The
lesson begins at 3 p.m. After class, she saw the butcher walking down Chapel
Row, heading home. They next meet shortly after 4 p.m. on Grange Road where
William informs her he’s locked out.
Was there really enough time for Noel to
murder his wife and then ransack their apartment? Walter Hill didn’t think so. Neither did
Noel’s friends, who were putting together a defence fund. They saw the violent
intruder as a more logical reason. And to be fair Robert Ross’ attitude that
burglars never use violence or rob tradesmen’s homes is a bit ignorant, if not
naïve. Charles Peace, for example, was a very successful and elusive
housebreaker, and not above using violence.
He was executed in Leeds some 14 years earlier for a double murder. Was
it such a stretch of the imagination that an intruder had entered the property,
perhaps believing it empty, found Sarah Noel and shot her? Perhaps in a panic? Then
as he or they ransacked the apartment they open a door, only to be confronted
by a barking and snarling Nep?
William Grantham did not hold back in his
criticism of Ramsgate Police or its handling of this investigation. In his
opinion there ‘was not enough evidence to hand a dog!’ he told the Grand Jury.
Never before, in the whole of his experience, had he seen a prosecution case so
fully of ‘impropriety, incompetence and illegality’. Mr Noel was charged with
murder, but after 16 days before the local magistrates there wasn’t enough
evidence to ‘be compressed into one small piece of paper’. Inspector Ross, he
said, instead of locating the murder weapon and who had fired it, had wasted
time and resources muckraking into the accused’s past. The actions of the
accused years earlier were of no relevance to the inquiry, and it was not the
job of a policeman to ‘act as a bad-bred bloodhound’.
The judge made it quite clear that his
criticism had nothing to do with whether he believed Noel guilty or not. But
should the accused man be sent to trial and found not guilty then he could not
be retried, should more substantial evidence establishing his guilt later be
found. Then again, if he were found guilty and the real murderer should later
be identified, then an innocent man would have paid the ultimate penalty for a
crime he had not committed. Grantham concluded by stating that the accused had
suffered a ‘miscarriage of justice’, because the evidence used against him had
nothing to do with the crime.
It
took the Grand Jury most of the day to reach a verdict. At 4.30 p.m. they
concluded that there was ‘no true bill’, and the case was thrown out. The
butcher’s friends were jubilant, and at 5 p.m. William Noel was released from
Maidstone Gaol. It had been his intentions to return to his shop on Grange
Road, but in the end he travelled with his solicitor to London. He would never
set foot in Ramsgate again.
Entry in the Crown Minutes Book,
held at the National Archives, Kew.
As for Robert Ross, in an interview with
a London newspaper he described the judge’s remarks as ‘cruel in the extreme’.
‘I do not deserve the harshness with which the judge reserved for me,’ he
complained bitterly. But he need not
have worried. On the 15th July the Thanet Advertiser published a testimonial in which a number of
gentlemen gave their ‘formal expression’ of appreciation of the ‘manner in
which Inspector Ross discharge a public task of great difficulty and delicacy,
in connection with the recent criminal investigation’.
‘We congratulating Mr Noel on his
release,’ it went on, ‘[however] we confidently assert that he has himself
alone to blame for the perilous position which he has lately occupied.’
And although the undersigned of the
testimonial had the upmost respect and regard for Mr Justice Grantham, they
were convinced that he had made a grave error of judgment. Robert Ross was
later presented with an inscribed watch and pipe, and a sizable amount of
money. Four days after Grantham’s scathing criticism a pistol, similar in
calibre to that believed used, was discovered by a labourer on a nearby beech.
It was deemed by the police as the work of a practical joker, and having no
connection to the murder of Sarah Noel.
Shortly after the Grange Road Mystery, as
many of the London papers called the murder, Robert Ross returned to Scotland. He
would eventually become Edinburgh’s Chief of Police.
As for William Noel, his fate is a little
more obscure. It was reported in the Thanet
Advertiser that he was to sail (one would hope with Nep) to New Zealand.
But a search of incoming passengers in the New Zealand press records no one of
that name entering the country.
For the residence of Ramsgate, the Grange
Road Mystery was the next big murder case after the Southey murder of 1865. It
created fierce debate regarding William Noel’s guilt within the town. Did he
really kill her? Today, as with the Southey murders, it is all but forgotten;
superseded by the greater horrors the town suffered during two world wars. The
identity of who killed Sarah Noel was never established, leaving the case forever
unsolved.
© copyright
Martin Charlton, 2018
