Buckinghamshire – Death On My Doorstep

1/ Husband Keeps Wife’s Dead Body, High Wycombe. February 1910

A husband and wife and their five kids all lived in a “poor quarter”, and these conditions spread disease like wildfire. She lost her fight for life from blood poisoning due to the squalor she lived in, but the husband kept his dead wife’s body in bed with him for a day or two, when he finally died from pneumonia. Quite romantic or creepy?

2/ Thornton Hall near Buckingham, June 1885 (Vicar’s Suicide)

3/ North Crawley, (Killed by Reaping Machine) August 1889

4/ Padbury Vicarage, March 1892 (Vicar’s Suicide)

5/ Locks Fenny near Milton Keynes, February 1896 (Body in Chimney)

A burglar tried to come down the chimney of a tap-room at the Locks Fenny, Stratford. He climbed on the roof of some out-houses then made his way to the main roof, and down the chimney. Mr and Mrs Wodhams, who live there, woke up when the room filled with soot. They thought nothing of it and went back to sleep. Next morning they got a chimney sweep to sort out the problem and while up there he found the body of the would-be thief.

6/ Winslow Murder/Suicide, May 1908

Richard Warner, aged twenty-six, killed his father then shot himself in a bizarre murder/suicide in Winslow. The family was of good stock and was soon to have been confirmed, but his nerve failed him and his mind is said to have been unhinged recently. He shot his Dad in the house, then went to an outbuilding and took his own life.

7/ Moorend near Marlow, May 1901 (Child Murder)

The wife of James Titt, who lived in Moorend near Marlow, together with her five-month-old child, was found at the bottom of a well on her property. Somebody saw the body of the child floating on the surface, so it was recovered, then they found Mrs Titt at the bottom of the well. Before this tragedy, she had been chatting with neighbours quite normally, with no sense that she would kill herself or the child.

8/ Great Horwood Abduction, December 1885

9/ High Wycombe Tragedy, September 1902

A tragic accident took place at High Wycombe, in connection with the building of the new railway between Wycombe and London. At about two a.,m. the night shift was working in a tunnel between Loudwater and Beaconsfield when a huge amount of earth buried them. The men, eight in number, were 100-feet underground, in a 400-yard long tunnel. After several hours of digging they recovered six bodies, the names are -Walter Knight, George Smith and John Reed, who are miners, and Harry Moreton, James Palmer and William Palmer, all labourers. (The total number of dead?)

10/ Great Marlow Hanging, October 1899

In a woods at Skirmett, near Great Marlow, the body of William Lawrence, a blacksmith, was found hanging in a tree by his apron strings. He went missing five months ago and his corpse had been stripped clean of flesh. He left a widow and a large family to fend for themselves, and the whole affair is a complete mystery.