“The poor pollis. He is killed.” Sensation as sergeant is stoned to death

It was no exaggeration. Acting Sergeant William Smith had been stoned to death, left with one of his eyes hanging out of its socket, in a crime – the death of only the second Durham policeman in the line of duty – that incensed the district.

Three local men were quickly arrested. Two were convicted and sentenced to death, but only one hanged, and he died protesting that the guilty man was getting away with murder.

Indeed, as the case unfolded, gossip, rumours and indignation swept the area as the clamour grew over the flimsiness of the evidence that was sending a man to the gibbet.

The victim, Sgt Smith, was, by all accounts, universally liked in the Gaunless Valley. He was originally a shoemaker from Stokesley, but had been in the Durham force for 16 years. He had served his early years at Barnard Castle and Egglestone, and had spent eight years stationed at Woodlands.

Two months before the fateful night he had been promoted to acting sergeant and given the Butterknowle beat, which included policing the pubs. Closing time on Saturdays was 10pm, and on the night in question – February 23, 1884 – he was patrolling to ensure landlords were abiding by their licences.

It was a dark, moonless night. “It was raining fast,” said one witness.

The Diamond Inn, Butterknowle, where, in 1884, the three miners had been drinking much of the day before the murder. Picture: Google StreetViewSgt Smith had just checked the Diamond Inn, on the main street in Butterknowle, where the day’s pigeon shooting competition had just wound up. He then proceeded down the steep bank towards the Stag’s Head in The Slack. On the side of the road stood the engine house of the abandoned Diamond Colliery, its huge pitheap overshadowing it. There he met his end.

“The distinctive features of the place where poor Sgt Smith met his doom must remind the spectator of the favourite murder scenes of the modern sensational novel writer,” reported a newspaper.

“A wild country is the dreary expanse known as Cockfield Fell. As the visitor emerges from Cockfield village, a stupendous panoramic picture is opened up before him. The fell is in two huge parts, and at the bottom of the declivitous sides is a rivulet, taking a serpentine course far into the distance.

“Clouds of white steam shoot continuously from occasional colliery chimneys; gaunt pit-shaft gear stands out conspicuously from the face of the valley; and the flame-emitting, conical-capped coke ovens of the Butterknowle Colliery Company add their quota to the singularity of the scene.”

The Northern Echo didn’t have a photographer in 1884 so an artist drew the scene down Diamond Bank from Butterknowle where Sgt Smith was stonedOn the night of the murder, Dr John Jamieson Middleton, physician and surgeon of Woodlands, was returning home with his assistant George Bowker Gorrick.

Mr Gorrick was slightly ahead of the doctor as they toiled up the bank, and was startled when, in the shadow of the old engine house, he stumbled upon a sobbing man.

“The poor polliss,” sobbed the man. “He is killed.” Then he fled.

A stone with a mark on it on Diamond Bank is said to be the spot where Sgt Smith fellMr Gorrick called Dr Middleton and, a few yards further up they came across Sgt Smith. Bricks and stones were strewn across the road, and Sgt Smith was barely breathing. One report said a piece of his skull came away in Dr Middleton’s hand and one of his eyes was hanging from its socket.

Hearing movement on the pitheap, Dr Middleton looked up. In the bright light of one of the coke ovens, he claimed he saw three distinct silhouettes.

He went towards them, calling for help. Instead, he too was stoned, receiving “a staggering blow” to the chest.

He turned and ran to the top of the bank screaming: “Murder!”

The Slack seen from Cockfield Fell. Diamond Bank winds up the middle of the picture towards Butterknowle past the Diamond Colliery. It was from the colliery pitheap that Sgt Smith was stonedDespite the wet weather there were many people out that night, and a small group helped Dr Middleton and Mr Gorrick load Sgt Smith onto a door. They carried him back to his house near the Diamond Inn where, in the presence of his wife and with his six children still sleeping, he expired. He was 40.

Police from Cockfield, Staindrop and Barnard Castle were quickly on the scene. Among the stones, teeth and blood, they found a pearl button, and within hours made three arrests.

How The Northern Echo reported the attack on Sgt SmithJoseph Lowson, 25, and his brother-in-law William Siddle, 25, were found in bed together at Lands. Lowson had a speck of blood on his cheek and a pearl button missing from his shirt. Siddle was widely known to have been heavily fined the previous year for drunkenly attacking Sgt Smith at Woodlands Gala.

The two were charged with murder, and Lowson allegedly whimpered: “Is he dead?”

The third was Joseph Hodgson, 20, of Dent Gate, Langleydale. His clothes lay before the fire, various parts of them having been washed.

All three were miners. All had been drinking most of the day in the Diamond.

“There ought to be few difficulties in running the criminals to earth,” said the Darlington and Stockton Times, showing how emotions were running high against the perpetrators. “Butterknowle is not London; the means of escape from justice are few. Several arrests have been made but, unless the police are tolerably certain that they have caught the bastards, there ought to be no hesitation whatever in placing every house in the entire district under strict surveillance.”

An inquest was held at the Royal Oak, just up the road from the Diamond Inn. The three men were committed for trial for murder at Durham Assizes – “I mean to say that man’s telled nowt but lees,” shouted Siddle as he was led away.

The body was released for burial, with the funeral being held a week after the murder.

The grave of murdered policeman Sgt William Smith in St John’s Church, LynesackThousands watched the procession, a quarter-of-a-mile long, wind its way from Sgt Smith’s house up to St John’s Church, in Lynesack. At its head was the Woodlands Band, playing the funeral march; then came 82 policeman taking turns to carry the coffin. They were followed by Sgt Smith’s 70-year-old father, struggling along, while his mother, wife and children rode in a carriage.

Sgt Smith’s headstone can still be seen in the churchyard. He was buried with his daughter, Elizabeth Jane, who died two years earlier.

The trial began on May 1 before Judge Sir Henry Hawkins with the three prisoners in the dock.

“Lowson is by far the most repulsive looking man of the three,” reported a newspaper. “This morning he was dressed in a dirty brown Tweed suit, his black hair was cut close and his small menacing eyes were dull and heavy. Siddle, on the other hand, although bearing physical signs of having laboured hard, has by no means an unintelligent expression of features. Hodgson is a tall, silly-looking sort of lad who, when in drink, would readily come under the influence of evil companions.”

The court heard that at 9.50pm on the night in question the prisoners had “smurted”, “snittered” or “sneatted” with Sgt Smith outside the Diamond Inn – the newspapers had trouble with the local dialect word for a verbal confrontation.

It was alleged that Siddle, who had previous with the policeman, had been “fresh with liquor” and had been overheard to say: “If he follows us down I will lace him…let’s go back and rib the polliss.”

The county analyst, William Stock of Darlington, confirmed that blood on Lowson’s coat bore the “strongest possible resemblance” to human blood – although it could also have come from a pig!

In his defence, Lowson called witnesses who had seen him that day cradling his young daughter who had a split lip.

Looking up Diamond Bank where Sgt Smith was murderedMr Stock also confirmed that the pearl button could have been ripped from Lowson’s shirt, but the defence pointed out that it was the commonest kind of button on the market.

Then the medical men took the stand.

Dr Middleton’s evidence began to fall apart when he identified the prisoners from the silhouettes he had seen in the light of the coke oven. But, pointed out the defence, no ovens were visible from the banked road.

Dr Middleton and Mr Gorrick had been drinking. They had started at 3.30pm in Bishop Auckland and had arrived on the 8.10pm train at Cockfield Station. They had nipped into the Stag’s Head for a snifter but, despite having had five beers and a couple of whiskies, they claimed they were sober when they staggered up the bank at 10pm.

The defence called witnesses from the Stag’s Head who begged to differ, because they had seen the medical men boxing and sparring with each other on the tables in the bar.

The jury deliberated for two hours. To a packed courthouse, with hundreds outside on the street, they announced that Hodgson was innocent and Siddle and Lowson were guilty.

Justice Sir Henry Hawkins, who heard the case. One legal historian described him as “probably the worst judge on the English bench in the 19th Century”. Picture: wikipediaMr Justice Hawkins donned the black cap and passed sentence: “William Siddle and Joseph Lowson, you have been convicted of the crime of wilful murder. It was a cruel, cold-blooded, cowardly murder. Without one single moment’s hesitation or warning you struck down your poor victim and hurried him to his end without any provocation.

“The sentence upon you is that each of you be taken from the place where you now stand to the place from whence you came, and from thence to a lawful place of execution, and that there you, each of you, be hanged by the neck till you are dead. And may the Lord have mercy on your souls.”

Siddle and Lowson erupted, blaspheming in the dock.

As Siddle was led away, he shouted to his friends: “They have sworn away my life lads; the thundering bloody liars and bastards.”

“Losing all control of themselves when found guilty, Siddle and Lowson conducted themselves in a most extraordinary and abominable manner, leaving room for no pity to be extended to them,” said the Echo.

“Foiled in their assertion of innocence, they gave vent to the most fearful imprecations against the Deity and the Court. The scene made all present shudder, Siddle calling forth the most blasphemous exclamations.”

How the Illustrated Police News depicted the stoning of the policemanThe condemned cell at Durham jail was already occupied by William Smith, of Darlington, recently convicted of murdering his wife in Stockton, and so Siddle and Lowson were housed nearby. The date for their execution was set for May 19, the traditional three Sundays away from the verdict.

Yet despite their foul language, and the foul nature of their crime, doubts were soon setting in.

The D&ST reported: “The violent behaviour of the convicted prisoners will confirm the belief that they are ruffians of a very coarse type, and just the men to do the deed for which they are condemned to suffer.

“The finding of the jury, however, is a strange one and those who read the evidence closely will have some difficulty in discovering the grounds on which they have decided. From the first, the case has been shrouded in mystery and the only evidence obtainable was circumstantial.

“And so weak did some of the links in the chain appear that no surprise would have been felt had the jury hesitated to pronounce a verdict. There is no evidence as to who participated in the attack, who struck the fatal blows, yet the jury have sought out one man as innocent and sent two to the gallows.”

The day after the verdict, the colliery district was up in arms. West Auckland held the first ‘Indignation Meeting’; 1,000 gathered at Willington, 600 at Bishop Auckland; Cockfield Fell was full for an open-air meeting. All denounced the “weak and contradictory nature” of the evidence and “condemned the action of the court”.

The Echo’s sister newspaper, the Evening Echo, printed a purported interview with the freed man, Joseph Hodgson, in which he claimed to have seen Lowson and Siddle stone Sgt Smith. But it was fake news. The interview was a hoax. Hodgson was keeping his own counsel; he had seen nothing and now said nothing. The Echo’s name quickly became mud and its reporters were threatened.

Looking up Diamond Bank from The Slack. The murder was perpetrated just around the bend in the road, near the Diamond CollieryGradually, through letters from prison, Siddle’s case became known. He proclaimed his innocence, saying that he had tried to protect his sister’s husband, Lowson, who had become a father for the third time while in custody.

Such was the profound excitement in the Durham coalfield that, just one day before the execution, the Home Secretary, Sir William Vernon Harcourt, stayed it and sent a counsel, Mr Cliffe, to Darlington to review the case.

The first witness Mr Cliffe heard in the King’s Head Hotel was a new one, Edward Wilkinson, an elderly coffee shop owner from Middlesbrough, who was a well known local fantasist.

But the information he collected from more reliable sources enabled the Home Secretary to make a sensational intervention: on May 22, he pardoned Siddle.

It was practically unprecedented: of the 180 people sentenced to hang in Durham in the previous 70 years, 100 had been executed and only two, in 1832, had received a free pardon like Siddle.

What made it truly sensational was that Siddle had been fined the previous year for assaulting Sgt Smith, and it had been widely assumed that he was the most guilty of the trio. But he had gone free.

The next development was that Lowson, in prison, suddenly named Hodgson, who had been cleared by the court, as the perpetrator. This also caused a sensation because Hodgson was the youngest of the three and it was widely assumed he had been led astray.

But Lowson wrote: “I am not the man that started with him (Sgt Smith) first. Hodgson is him that started first. They cannot hurt him now. He is right enough if they do destroy my body.”

And they – the authorities – were determined to destroy his body. There is a real feeling that the authorities were determined to find someone to pay for the murder of the policeman and the miners were almost a sub-class who could afford to lose one of their number.

Lowson saw his wife, Jane and children, including the baby, for the last time on May 24.

“The prisoner could not forbear exhibiting symptoms of the depression which the knowledge of his rapidly approaching doom has inspired in him, as he lifted up his smiling and unconscious little ones and kissed them again and again,” said the Echo.

Executioner James Berry, who pulled the lever the wrong way when trying to despatch Joseph LowsonOn May 26,executioner Joseph Berry arrived on the afternoon train at Durham having just seen off the Boston poisoner, Mary Lefley, at Lincoln. He was mobbed as he walked through the streets, one member of the crowd asking him if there would be a mishap.

“No, I hope not,” replied Berry, “and no baby business. I hung a woman this morning and she cried and shrieked just as if she was going to be murdered!”

Lowson was already going through agonies in his cell.

“Although to all appearance wishful to become a brave hero and face death with impunity, he is downcast and occasionally trembles somewhat violently, more especially when he is dressing himself, knowing that tomorrow morning he will dress for the last time on this earth,” said the Echo.

Lowson was 25, powerfully built and 5ft 7in tall. He had been married five years, worked at Copley Colliery and, “like many of his class”, was a keen gambler. He was an eldest son, his mother having died when he was 14.

“A few years ago his father, Robert, died under remarkable circumstances,” reported the Echo. “He had got out of bed one night to get a drink and by mistake swallowed a quantity of acquofortis which he had in a cupboard. The effect of the poison was to some extent neutralised by the appliances of a medical man, who was at once in attendance, but the organs of the stomach were so weakened and impaired by it, that a short time afterwards he was choked by a piece of meat sticking in his throat.”

Lowson awoke at 6am on May 27 and took a good breakfast.

At 7.45am “the harsh clang of the passing bell reverberated through the morning air, striking to the very soul of those within hearing”.

He was brought out of his cell at 7.55am and pinioned by the executioner. It was to be Berry’s third execution at the start of his seven year career in which he ended the lives of 131 convicts.

And none, he said in his memoires, left such an impression as Lowson, who calmly joked as he pinioned him: “In a minute or two, I’ll know more about (the afterlife) than any of you.”

The Northern Echo’s special edition notes the composure of Lowson, which unnerved executioner Berry“Amid a silence, unbroken save by the tolling of the passing bell, the party proceeded upon their mournful journey, their footsteps sounding painfully distinct as they walked with slow and measured tread along the gloomy corridor,” reported the Echo.

“He walked with a firm and determined step, and seemed to have made up his mind to meet his fate without a murmur.

“There was something awful and impressive in the solemnity of the occasion. The scene was one which a beholder can never forget. It was sad to contemplate that a young man just arrived at manhood’s estate – a vigorous and healthy man – should be put to a violent and ignominious death.

“Into the open air the procession passed. There in the middle of the gaol yard stood the grim scaffold, with the rope dangling from the beam.

“On reaching the scaffold the culprit immediately placed himself in position and his cool, resolute bearing surprised all present. The executioner quickly adjusted the leg straps. As the white cap was placed over his face he said, in a calm voice: ‘I wish to say that Hodgson struck the first blow and then I helped him. I hope that the country and the Crown will look after Siddle and see him safe home again’.

“The executioner immediately pulled the lever and the unhappy man was launched into eternity. The length of drop was eight feet, death being instantaneous.”

Executioner Berry later remembered a different sequence of events. He had been so unnerved by Lowson’s nerveless composure that he pulled the lever the wrong way, sweat pouring off his brow as he tugged at it, until one of the warders pointed out the error of his ways.

“Pulling it in the other direction, the doors went down with a clang and, still clinging to the lever, I saw Lowson plunge backwards and then disappear,” he wrote. “Releasing my hold, I dashed towards the wall and, panting for breath, I leaned against it.”

An hour later, Lowson’s body was cut down, placed in a plain coffin and taken inside the prison for an inquest before burial. The Echo’s reporter was present.

“The face wore a perfectly calm, even smiling, expression and, but for being of a somewhat darkened hue, presented no appearance of his having died anything but a natural death,” he wrote.

“On the shirt neck being unfastened and turned down slightly by one of the jurymen, a narrow black indentation round the neck of the corpse where the fatal noose had been adjusted was all that indicated that death had been of a violent nature.”

Ten years later William Siddle died in the Winterton asylum at Sedgefield, aged 35. After being pardoned he worked at West Auckland Colliery.

“Latterly he suffered considerably from a severe attack of influenza which so affected his mental condition as to necessitate his removal to the asylum where he died on Wednesday morning,” said the Echo.

He left a widow and family.

In 2020, Lowson’s great-great-nephew Peter Lowson appeared, with Memories, on the BBC’s programme Murder, Mystery and My Family, and tried to convince two high court judges that his ancestor was innocent. They concluded that from this distance of time, it was impossible to say.

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