Mystery of the murdered bank clerk’s dying words: “It was the tall man that did it”

Reaching for the cereal, Mrs Bryan remarked that she’d had a nightmare in which her lodger had been murdered.

William Abbey with his landlord’s daughter, Elizabeth, shortly before he was murdered “That’s odd,” replied Mr Abbey, 31. “I dreamt that I was being murdered and that my assailant tried to quieten me but could not kill me. They got hold of my throat and I felt a terrible sensation of choking. They came for me two or three times but they could not get me.”

Mrs Bryan’s daughter, Elizabeth, shivered at the table. “We’re having breakfast with a man risen from the dead,” she said.

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But, said Mr Abbey, murder in the bank was impossible. “If anyone came at me, I’d throw a paperweight through the window. There’s always such a crowd about that the crash of glass would bring them in and prevent any man from getting away.”

Four days later, this is almost what happened.

The Black Bull pub in Ferryhill before a branch of Lloyd’s bank was opened in its wing to the leftAt three o’clock on the afternoon of Thursday, February 16, Mr Abbey was inside the bank, as usual, cashing up, ready to catch the 3.40pm bus to Spennymoor. His was a one-man branch, so his money was to be taken so it could be locked away in the bigger branch for safe keeping.

The first anyone knew that a “dastardly outrage” had occurred was when a brass paperweight came crashing through the bank window, propelled, as he had predicted over Sunday breakfast, by Mr Abbey.

Four men rushed in.

A crowd gathers outside Lloyd’s bank in Darlington Road, Ferryhill, after the murder of bank clerk William Abbey in 1928“They saw Abbey staggering behind the counter with blood streaming from him,” said the Echo. “He collapsed almost at once and died within a quarter of an hour.

A police investigation showed that the assailant had first struck him a heavy blow to the head with a blunt instrument. Then, to complete the deed, the attacker had plunged a cobbler’s knife into Abbey’s throat, inflicting another terrible wound.

“Just before he died, Abbey managed to gasp: ‘It was a tall man who did it’,” said the Echo.

Beside the body was a distinctive cobbler’s knife with a black handle upon which was stamped: “Made in U.S.A. , South Bridge, Mass.”

The Northern Echo’s image of the cobbler’s knife which Norman Elliott used to kill William Abbey in Ferryhill, in February 1928Suspicions immediately centred on a chocolate brown Rover car with two heavy brass lamps on the front. Its tall driver had had a cup of tea in the cafe opposite the bank before entering it with his overcoat over his arm.

He emerged minutes later, wearing his overcoat (allegedly to cover the blood splatters).

“He then entered the hooded body of the car, which was a two-seater dickey, and moved away,” said a police statement. (A dickey was a folding outside seat at the rear.)

Just as he left, said witnesses, the paperweight came crashing through the window.

Police locked down the North-East to prevent the tall man from escaping. Roadblocks were set up in Durham, Northumberland and North Yorkshire and brown Rovers everywhere were stopped. Railway and bus stations were searched. Ports were scrutinised. An armed cordon was thrown around South Shields, South Tyneside, as a man in a brown Rover was rumoured to be heading to sea.

Over the weekend, though, the brown Rover turned into a red herring.

A commercial traveller from Benwell told police he’d been in Ferryhill, in his brown Rover for much of Thursday. He’d had a cup of tea. He’d gone to the bank.

But he’d left at 2.40pm.

The Echo’s representation of the crime scene in Ferryhill with a brown Rover with a dickey seat drawn onto the picture on the right as it fled the sceneReported Monday’s Echo: “The police are convinced beyond all shadow of doubt that not the slightest suspicion is attached to the man whose public spirited action has completely negatived the idea that the murderer escaped in the Rover car.”

An inquest was held into the death of Mr Abbey.

He was born in Durham City. His parents had given him the middle name Byland. He had attended Durham Choristers School and had sung in the cathedral choir. He played the organ in several churches. He’d joined Lloyds Bank straight from school. After national service in Seaham, the bank had given him his own branch in Ferryhill.

Bishop Auckland Coroner JT Proud concluded: “There are indications in bruises and wounds that Mr Abbey must have put up a good fight. These injuries also show that very real violence must have been used, and that his assailant, in his fixed intent to plunder and rob, must have become a ferocious wild beast.”

William Abbey’s hearse passes Lloyd’s Bank in Ferryhill where he was murderedThe inquest allowed Mr Abbey’s funeral to be held on Monday, February 20. Up to 6,000 people lined the streets.

Blinds were drawn and shops were shut.

The horse drawn hearse left Parker Terrace and travelled the stone’s throw into Main Street.

“An especially tragic moment was when it paused for a short time opposite the bank where the crime was committed,” said the Echo.

About 500 people walked behind, including Mr Abbey’s 81-year-old mother, from Gilesgate, his two sisters and three of his four brothers.

“A pathetic figure in the procession was Miss Bell, of Dean Bank, to whom Mr Abbey was engaged to marry,” said the Echo.

So many people were there that at the last moment it was decided to hold the funeral service in the market place rather than inside the Baptist church.

The amazing scenes in 1928 as William Abbey’s funeral is held outside, near the war memorial in the town centre, due to the enormous crowdYet, “sensation after sensation”.

As the hearse left Parker Terrace, three senior policemen arrived in Kelloe, a handful of miles away, where they arrested and charged 23-year-old Norman Elliott with the murder.

Norman ElliottElliott lived in Winterton Hospital as a male nurse. His mother had died when he was 13 causing his father, a police constable, to take his own life on the railway line at Easington Lane. He’d grown up in Spennymoor where his grandfather had been the town’s respected police inspector.

A month before the murder Elliott had married in West Cornforth. His wife, Elizabeth, was the daughter of the landlord of the Turk’s Head, in Kelloe, and was already pregnant.

He was arrested as he waited for a delivery of furniture at the house he planned to share with his bride. He was taken to the asylum where, in his locked drawers, was found blood-stained clothing and 63 ten shilling notes taken from the bank.

He was committed for trial at Durham Assizes on June 27, a queue forming outside the courtroom at 5am, such was the public interest.

In his defence, Elliott, a heavy gambler who had led an otherwise blameless life, introduced a character called George Sinclair. He had met Sinclair at racecourses around the country and had agreed to accompany him to Ferryhill on the day in question as he had “some business to sort out”.

The Black Bull, in Ferryhill in 1975. William Abbey was murdered in the wing on the leftIndeed, Elliott was outside the bank at 3pm when Sinclair – “who was the taller” – popped inside.

When Elliott heard a commotion in the bank, he popped his head around the door and bumped into Sinclair who was exiting rapidly. Sinclair, he said, thrust bloodstained banknotes into his pocket.

Then Elliott went over to check the cashier, whom he knew well, getting blood on his clothes.

His defence counsel, Arthur R Linsley, explained that this was a “terrible predicament in which this unfortunate boy found himself”: innocent, but alone in a robbed bank, covered in blood, with a dying cashier and a pocketful of stained notes. Should he stay amid the incriminating evidence or flee?

He fled.

Mr Linsley, who explained that Elliott’s post-murder spending spree on furniture was funded by a big win on the horses, said: “There has not been called a single witness who could speak to any blow being struck or any struggle or who can directly associate the prisoner with the murder.”

Police, he said, had failed to connect the defendant with the Massachusetts cobbler’s knife. They had failed to find the blunt weapon. They had failed to find all the money. They had failed to find Sinclair.

To which the judge, Mr Justice Mackinnon, replied in exasperation: “Where is anyone who has ever seen Sinclair in the flesh?”

The Black Bull in Ferryhill with the site of the branch of Lloyd’s bank on the left. Picture: Google StreetViewIt didn’t take long for the jury to find Elliott guilty of murder.

As Mr Justice Mackinnon donned the black cap, he asked if there were a reason why he shouldn’t pass the death sentence.

“Yes,” said Elliott, referring to the one great mitigating mystery of the case. “My Lord, I am quite agreed with the verdict of the jury in regard to your summing up, but I think you omitted evidence which we largely depended upon – the fact that Mr Abbey and I lived close together, that he knew me well and knew my name, which was very important. That is all, my Lord.”

Why, having summoned aid with the paperweight, hadn’t Mr Abbey said “it was Elliott that did it”. Instead, with his dying breath, he said at least twice that “it was a tall man who did it”.

Did this suggest he did not recognise his killer? Did it suggest there might have been two men in the bank at the time: a taller man who struck the fatal blows and a second, smaller man – perhaps Elliott – who was not involved?

Or had Mr Abbey’s last words been misheard? As he gurgled his last, he wouldn’t have been able to enunciate clearly, so perhaps instead of saying “it was a tall man who did it”, had he said: “It was Norman who did it”?

Mr Justice Mackinnon was certain. He ordered “that you be hanged by the neck until you are dead”, causing Elliott to swoon and cry out “oh, mother, mother”.

“He was carried below like a log, but his cry continued to reach the ears of all in court, many of whom, and women in particular, were visibly affected by the scene,” said the Echo.

On death row Elliott continued to protest his innocence. He was visited by his wife, Elizabeth, and, on one occasion by his son who had been born during the trial.

It was said that when Elizabeth got home, she burned all the clothes the infant was wearing.

Some sources say a lucky black cat strayed into Elliott’s cell, but they didn’t mess around in those days.

Sixteen days after his conviction and less than six months after the murder, he was hanged in Durham Gaol by Thomas Pierrepoint.

“On the stroke of eight he was upon the drop, and just as the clock was striking a white cap was drawn over his eyes, the noose adjusted, and the ankle straps placed in position,” said the Echo of August 11. “In a second, Pierrepoint had drawn the lever and Elliott disappeared. He had paid the ultimate penalty for his foul deed.”

The murder of William Abbey gave strength to a campaign to end the practise of single manning banks, and, because of it, Lloyd’s introduced a rule by which their branches were always double staffed. Other banks followed suit.

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AND TOMORROW: PART 2: WAS A MURDER IN SPENNYMOOR FOUR YEARS EARLIER CONNECTED TO THE FERRYHILL BANK JOB