The Life and Death of Charlotte Bryant

CHARLOTTE BRYANT

In 2009 the Derry Journal published a story on their website about the execution of Charlotte Bryant in 1936. It reported that thousands of protesters had lined the streets outside Exeter prison as the Derry woman, a "lusty adulterer" nicknamed 'Black Bess', was led to the gallows for the chilling murder of her husband.

 

The woman they were writing about was described as “notorious arsenic killer Charlotte Bryant” and the article headlines claimed the “Execution of the Derry 'sex kitten' sparked massive protest”. The language used in this 2009 report immediately gives the reader a mental picture of Charlotte as a highly sexual and immoral woman.

Charlotte would go on to die at the gallows in the hands of Thomas Pierrepoint, assisted by his young nephew Albert, who would later become the UK’s most renowned and last public executioner.

Charlotte Bryant's execution was one of the most high profile hangings in the history of Exeter prison but despite all of this, the names of Charlotte and Frederick  Bryant have all but been erased from history and have only come to light again after family members took part in a recent episode of the BBC TV Series Murder, Mystery & My Family. This is where I first discovered the hidden herstories of both Charlotte Bryant and Mrs Violet Van Der Elst – the eccentric anti-death penalty campaigner who championed Charlotte's case. 

After doing some research into Charlotte Bryant online, I quickly discovered that contemporary written accounts of Bryant’s case don't paint a very pretty picture of her either. She is often portrayed - by male writers - as an illiterate, drunken, prostitute and adulterer, who was forced to leave Ireland and was the subject of sexually degrading gossip in the small rural village where she lived with her husband and children. Researching Charlotte’s story further and looking at old press articles, I came to my own conclusion as to why she is not a household name and why her story has been buried and silenced for so long. 

Although Charlotte Bryant was born in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, on St. Valentine’s Day in 1903 to Labourer John McHugh and his wife Sarah, her life was far from romantic. She lived and grew up in a troubled place in Ireland where she was in the minority for being a Catholic - and female.

By the age 19 Charlotte was an attractive young woman with raven black hair and dark brown eyes. Like many other girls in the town, she often fraternized with the British soldiers in the Province and was nicknamed "Darkie" by them because of her Celtic looks. She was very poorly educated, could not read or write and she had already gained a reputation for being sexually promiscuous. Her only future prospects were marriage and motherhood. Her activities with the soldiers were strongly disapproved of by the Republicans in the area and she was threatened with tarring and feathering - a fate that befell quite a few girls who went out with British soldiers during "The Troubles."

In 1922, she met Frederick Bryant who was eight years her senior. Frederick was serving as a military policeman in the Dorset Regiment. He had served in the army during the 1st World War in Mesopotania and India. He must have seemed like a very exciting figure to Charlotte, but in reality he was just a simple country lad, bought up on a farm, who had joined the Army and who had survived a war. He immediately fell for Charlotte and she saw a chance for them to have a future away from Ireland. When Frederick's tour of duty ended, he returned to England and Charlotte went with him. 

CHARLOTTE BRYANT

They married a little while later at Wells in Somerset. During the 13 years they were man and wife, Charlotte gave birth to five children, although whether Frederick was the father of the youngest child could be open to question. Ernest Samuel was born in the winter of 1923; Lily Elizabeth was born two years later in 1925, George Alfred in 1928, and William John in 1931. Edwin Frederick was the last child to be born in the winter of 1934, after Mr Leonard Parsons had moved in as a lodger.

After leaving Ireland, Frederick Bryant had resumed civilian life as a farm worker. Back in 1925, when he was newly married with 2  children to support, he was working as a cowman at a farm near Yeovil, in the village of Over Compton. Like most small rural villages there was very little to do and even less excitement to be had. Social life for most of the villagers revolved around the local Inn. 

Charlotte seemed to be a very unhappy person, and spent much of her time drinking at the local pub. This led to gossip and speculation about her character. She was known in the area as Black Bess or Killarney Kate and was generally thought of by the villagers to be a drunken immoral woman. Her alleged promiscuous nature was a regular topic of gossip with villagers who inferred that sex could be purchased from her for the price of a drink. Whether this was based on any real facts can be disputed. It is more likely that as a poor, bored, Irish immigrant who seemed to drink heavily, she was already distrusted by the locals before her trial for Murder. The “men” that she was accused of sleeping with as a prostitute, could have easily been legitimate paying lodgers staying at her home.

Frederick also seemed indifferent to the rumours about his wife. He once told a neighbour :

"I don't care what she does. Four pounds a week is better than the 30 shillings I earn as a cowman". 

 It may indicate that her husband did not seem to  object when she brought other men back to the house that they shared with their four children – but this statement only confirms that he welcomed the extra cash - not that he knew how his wife was supposed to be earning it. Times were difficult financially and if Charlotte did earn money from casual prostitution, then it would be primarily down to the fact that she needed to feed and clothe her children, rather than because she wanted to enjoy the sex for any personal pleasure. 

In December 1933, Charlotte met Leonard Edward Parsons, a gypsy horse trader and peddler, and invited him back to the farmhouse to have Christmas dinner with her and the family. Frederick, apparently feeling especially charitable because of the season, listened to Leonard’s complaints about sleeping on the road and impulsively invited Parsons to stay with them.

To Charlotte, Leonard represented everything that her husband Frederick was not. Parsons was a swarthy, world-savvy traveller whose wild nomadic lifestyle and unconventional view on relationships was in sharp contrast to Frederick’s stay-at-home, simple  traditional complacency. Charlotte fell in love with Parsons and began sleeping with him. In 1934, Frederick Bryant was sacked from his job as a farm labourer, as his employer was not happy about what was going on in his tied cottage. 

Bryant and Charlotte then moved to the village of Coombe, near Sherborne, where again Frederick found employment as a farm labourer. The move did not change their domestic circumstances however, as Parsons simply moved with them and he and Charlotte continued sleeping together.

Parsons did not live there on a permanent basis but stayed at the Bryant home between business trips. He also had a common law wife, Priscilla Loveridge, by whom he had fathered four children. 

Initially Parsons and Frederick Bryant appeared to get on quite well and were often seen drinking together in the local pub. It seems highly feasible that Frederick Bryant could have initially not been aware his lodger was sleeping with his wife, and once he knew the real truth, he was reluctant to do anything about it because Parsons was paying for his bed and board as a lodger. What Bryant may not have possibly tolerated for much longer was the deep-seated feeling of being undermined when his wife openly transferred her affections to Parsons and tried to leave Frederick. He was unwilling to play the role of cuckolded husband when his rival had the bare-faced audacity to move in and share his home along with his wife’s bed. 

Eventually, he could stand the situation no longer and ordered Parsons to leave his house. Charlotte did not want to stop seeing Parsons, so she left Frederick, taking 2 of her children with her. She and Parsons rented rooms in Dorchester, but she returned to the family home 2 days later saying she was worried about the 3 children she had left behind.               

A few days later all three adults had a private meeting but what was really agreed upon is not known. Charlotte was evidently forgiven by Frederick Bryant and Parsons was again allowed back into the house as a paying guest. It is possible that Frederick gave them both an ultimatum and only allowed Parsons back into the house if he stopped having sex with wife.  

Charlotte was still besotted with Parsons, and though he enjoyed her sexual favours, he did not love her and their relationship had already begun to cause a lot of problems for him at this point. He was not the sort of man who wanted to take on responsibility for another man’s wife or children, especially when he hadn’t done that for his own illegitimate family. Charlotte gave birth to her youngest son in November 1934 – he may have been fathered by Leonard Parsons or by Frederick Bryant.

In May of 1935, Frederick, who was by then 39 years old, was taken ill for the first time, immediately after eating the meat pie Charlotte had cooked and left for his lunch. He had severe stomach pains and was helped by a neighbour who induced vomiting. The doctor came to see him and diagnosed gastro-enteritis, and after a few days, Frederick Bryant returned to work. A further attack followed in August 1935 and again Frederick made a full recovery. 

In November 1935, Parsons dropped a huge bombshell into Charlotte's life by announcing that he was leaving her. His stated reason was the lack of work in that part of Dorset but it is just as feasible that living with his Mistress, her husband and her children - possibly one of which he had fathered himself - was no longer appealing to him. He had lived with another woman out of wedlock and fathered other illegitimate children before meeting Charlotte but his sexual promiscuity was never ever questioned. The next time she and Parsons saw each other, Charlotte would be in the dock, accused of murdering her husband and Parson’s would be giving evidence that led to her conviction.

On December the 11th, 1935, Frederick was again taken ill with severe stomach pains from which, once more, he recovered. Charlotte continued to search for Parsons in the local pubs but without success. She did, however, form a new friendship with a woman called Lucy Malvina Ostler who was a widow with seven children. Lucy moved into the Bryant's home soon after Parson’s left and she was a key witness to Frederick's final attack on the night of December the 22nd, 1935. He once again suffered extremely severe stomach pains and he as he writhed in agony, Lucy Ostler claimed he was “saying there was something inside him like a red-hot poker that was driving him mad.” He was sent to Sherbourne Hospital for treatment, but died a few days before Christmas.

Frederick’s doctor, who had treated him through these mysterious bouts of gastric illness, was suspicious: the symptoms the dead man had complained of corresponded exactly to arsenic poisoning, and like everyone else in the area he too believed the rumours and gossip that Charlotte was not a good wife. The doctor refused to sign a death certificate and notified the police of his suspicions. 

Arsenic was frequently used as a household poison and pesticide. It was still quite readily available in 1936, particularly in the agricultural and leather tanning industries where Frederick Bryant had worked for over 11 years. The poison’s register had to be signed when arsenic based weed killers and rat poisons were purchased from chemist's shops, but it was one of the most common poisons to be found in the home in the 1930’s. 

Arsenic could also be easily administered to a murder victim, little by little over a long period of time, rather than in one large dose. It builds up in the tissues and particularly in the hair and nails of the victim. By 1936, it was easily spotted by forensic scientists in murder cases. A century earlier in 1836, English chemist, James Marsh, had developed a reliable test for arsenic in body tissues. His process was very sensitive and could detect as little as a fiftieth of a milligram of the substance. 

Frederick Bryant’s death was regarded as suspicious by the doctors and therefore a post mortem was carried out by Home Office pathologist, Dr. Roche Lynch. He was given Bryant’s complete organs, including the stomach and contents, small and large intestines, urine in the bladder, vomit and excreta, complete lungs, portions of skin and hair, brain and nails. In addition, samples of soil were taken from above the coffin, below the coffin and from the adjacent ground. More samples were taken from sawdust in the coffin, and from a portion of the dead man’s shroud. 

Dr. Roche Lynch, found 4.09 grains of arsenic in the body.  The Scotland Yard analyst later had a look at Charlotte’s coat and found arsenic dust in the right-hand pocket at 58,000 parts per million. He said this was a huge amount in comparison to what he expected. 

THE BURNT TIN

Dorset Constabulary  removed Charlotte and the children to a workhouse in Sturminster Newton while they conducted a minute search of the Bryant's cottage and garden. Of the 150 samples later sent to the Home Office laboratory, 32 contained arsenic. Among the items recovered was a burnt tin which had contained an arsenic-based weed killer and was found among rubbish at the back of the Bryant house. 

Armed with this vital piece of information, the police systematically visited all the local chemists shops to try and establish where the weed killer had been purchased and by whom. Their efforts bore fruit and they discovered a Yeovil chemist who had sold a tin of the weed killer to a woman who only signed the poisons register with an X because she could not write. The chemist, however, was unable to identify either Charlotte or Lucy Ostler in a subsequent identity parade. The chemist said he knew the woman who came in to buy the poison but claimed that in spite of this, he couldn’t identify her to police. He may have been trying cover himself from being prosecuted as it was illegal at that time for a chemist to sell arsenic to anyone they didn’t know. 

Lucy Ostler also had a good motive for wanting Frederick out of the picture so she could remain permanently in the home of her brand new friend Charlotte. Lucy’s own husband had died 4 years ago in in suspicious circumstances which were not proved in his port-mortem or inquest.

During the unrecorded 8 consecutive hours that Lucy Ostler later spent making her statement to the police she changed her story several times and could have easily been persuaded to do so by the interrogating officers. She may have been frightened that her own husband’s death would be under scrutiny again or she may have been protecting herself from being a viable suspect. If Lucy Ostler was involved in the murder in any way - by purchasing, or administering the arsenic with or without Charlotte’s knowledge – or whether she simply put the idea of killing him into Charlotte’s head by a casual remark about her own experiences  – the truth is that her witness statement was unsound and unreliable and was almost certainly made under duress. 

Lucy Ostler eventually told police that she had seen a tin of the Eureka brand Weed killer in the Bryant home. Her description of the tin matched that sold by the chemist. She said she saw the tin a second time when she was cleaning out the ashes beneath the house’s steam heater. She told Police that she had heard Charlotte say

“I must get rid of this … If nothing is found, they can’t put a rope round your neck!”. 

 The use of the word “Your” was originally interpreted as Charlotte referring to herself, but it could also indicate that Charlotte was trying to protect both her and Lucy from being being accused and held responsible.

On February the 10th, 1936, Charlotte was formerly arrested at the workhouse in Sturminster Newton and charged with the murder of her husband. She is reported to have told the officers that arrested her:

 "I haven't got poison from anywhere or from people I know. I don't see how they can say I poisoned my husband.".

 Leonard Parsons was questioned about Frederick’s murder but he had an alibi and was immediately cleared of any suspicion by police. Later, the court were to hear that Parsons was the only person actually seen by a witness to be handling arsenic in the Bryant home. 

Charlotte Bryant’s trial opened on Wednesday, May the 27th, 1936, at the Dorset Assizes in Dorchester before Mr. Justice MacKinnon. It was to last just four days, which was by no means unusual in capital murder trials in those days. As it was a high profile poisoning case, the prosecution case was led by the Solicitor-General, Sir Terrence O'Connor. Charlotte was defended by the well-known barrister Mr. J.D. Casswell KC. 

Mr Casswell stressed the heavily circumstantial nature of the evidence and warned the jury not to take Charlotte’s promiscuity or her bad character into account when making judgement on her guilt. She was on trial for murder, not for her sexual activity he declared. No one had seen Charlotte actually poison any food or knowingly give poisoned food to her husband, and the chemist still couldn’t or wouldn’t identify her as the same woman who bought the weed killer at his shop.

At first, Charlotte was seemingly unable to follow the court proceedings. She protested throughout the trial that she had been on very good terms with her husband and she was not guilty of his murder, but a succession of witnesses for the prosecution, went on to refute this claim. 

A Mr Tuck, testified that he had met Charlotte when she was returning from the hospital immediately after her husband's demise. Mr Tuck was an insurance agent with whom Charlotte had previously tried to insure her husband's life. He said that she told him "Nobody can say I poisoned him". This evidence did Charlotte no good at all in court, since the prosecution said that no one else knew at that time that her late husband had been killed by poisoning, and this immediately pointed to her guilt in their eyes. If Lucy Ostler had warned her friend that she may be the prime suspect in her husband’s murder, a view that she would have held, based on her own personal experiences, then Charlotte may well have been worrying about this on her return from the hospital – guilty or not. 

The prosecution argued that the case was a classic eternal triangle and that Charlotte poisoned her husband in order to continue a sexual relationship with her lover. They could not show direct evidence that Charlotte had either bought or administered the arsenic herself although the circumstantial evidence supported this theory. Parsons had left the home and the relationship was also clearly over before Frederick died. 

Lucy Ostler testified against Charlotte and told the court that on the night Frederick died, Charlotte had made him a Beef drink and that he was violently sick after taking it. She also related how she had explained to Charlotte what an inquest was – knowledge she clearly gained by the suspicious death of her own husband. Lucy alleged that Charlotte had told her that she hated Frederick and only stayed with him because of the children – but this does not make Charlotte a murderer. She told the court about the tin of weed killer and how Charlotte had said that she would have to get rid of it – but interpreted differently, that statement could also point to the fact that Charlotte had been made aware by Lucy Ostler of the kind of evidence which could be used against her – guilty or not. 

Lucy mentioned how she had found the remains of burnt clothing in the boiler and then discovered the remains of the tin amongst the ashes which she had thrown into the yard where the police discovered it.  Mr. Casswell was unable to shake Lucy Ostler, who stuck to her damning allegations against Charlotte throughout the trial.  

Leonard Parsons' testimony did not help Charlotte’s case either. He told the court how they had had sexual intercourse on numerous occasions. Nowadays, this may not seem so shocking, but in 1936, promiscuity and adultery were considered socially unacceptable and this information had the effect of painting Charlotte as a "scarlet" woman - something that must have born considerable weight with the jury, despite being warned by the Judge and the Defence Lawyers that it wasn’t proof that Charlotte had committed murder. 

Leonard Parsons committed the ultimate betrayal of his former lover, detailing their sex life in Public, and encouraging the jury to see her as a woman who had committed adultery and was disloyal towards her husband. Lucy Ostler, either because she was frightened or had her own dark secrets to hide, turned her back on her friend and landlady and spoke against her for her own self-preservation. 

Forensic evidence was presented by Dr. Roche Lynch who had analysed the various samples taken from the Bryant's home, the victim’s body and the burial site. He demonstrated to the court how arsenic could be dissolved in an Oxo beverage and not be spotted or tasted by a person drinking it. He also told the court that he had found that the ashes from the boiler in which Charlotte was alleged to have tried to destroy the weed killer tin contained 149 parts per million of arsenic whereas ashes normally contained around 45 parts per million. Thus, he explained, something containing arsenic was burned beneath the boiler. Later, the judge, in his summing up, advised the jury that this appeared to him that someone had obviously tried to destroy the evidence – the tin - and in his mind there was a “fair assumption” that this person was Charlotte. 

Mr. Casswell called Charlotte as a witness with some trepidation, but in fact she did much better than he expected at giving evidence. She denied knowing about poison or possessing any weed killer. She also demonstrated to the court that an old coat in which traces of arsenic had been found and which it was alleged that she had worn when she bought the weed killer, did not fit her at all. Charlotte pointed the finger of blame on Lucy Ostler. She claimed she had gone to bed at 7 p.m. on December 21 and that Lucy had been the one to care for Frederick during his last night on Earth. She also told the court that she was pleased rather than heartbroken when Parsons left their house because she had actually lost interest in him, rather than the other way round.

Charlotte's older children gave evidence next, but their testimony was in fact very damaging to their mother's case. Ernest, her older son, related how she had asked him to dispose of some blue bottles in late December. Her daughter, Lily, told how she had seen Parsons with a blue bottle whose contents had fizzed when poured onto a stone by Parsons in front of Charlotte. The children also confirmed the occasional irregular sleeping arrangements of their mother and the lodger but the fact that Parsons also clearly had access to arsenic whilst living in the Bryant’s home was never taken into account or questioned. 

Once all the evidence had been heard and the closing statements had been made by both sides, Mr. Justice MacKinnon commenced the summing up. He asked the jury to consider two principle questions only - was Frederick Bryant poisoned with arsenic and if so, was that arsenic administered to him by Charlotte Bryant?. He noted that Charlotte had been present in the house on each occasion her husband had been taken ill and that two of the 3 bouts of sickness had occurred before Lucy Ostler had come into the household when Leonard Parson’s had also lived there. 

Altogether 30 witnesses had testified for the prosecution and all of them had painted a dire picture of the woman in the dock bur it is quite possible that despite all of this she was innocent and lost her life simply because she couldn’t prove it in a court of law. 

On Saturday the 30th, the jury after deliberating for just an hour returned a verdict of guilty against Charlotte. When asked if she had anything to say before sentence was passed, she replied in a calm voice "I am not guilty."

 

Mr. Justice MacKinnon had the black cap placed upon his wig and then passed the only sentence the law permitted back then in 1936. He sentenced her to be taken hence to the prison in which she had been last confined and from there to a place of execution where she was to be hanged by her neck until she was dead. Her body was to be buried in the precincts of the prison in which she was last confined. To which he added the customary rider "and may the Lord have mercy upon your soul" There was considerable emotion in the court and Mr. Justice MacKinnon seemed to have difficulty saying these dreadful words to her. On hearing her sentence, Charlotte broke down and was led sobbing from the dock.

After the trial, Mr. Caswell received a letter from a Professor Bone who had read about the case in his Sunday paper. He told Mr. Caswell that far from the 149 parts per million of arsenic that Dr. Roche had found in the ashes being on the high side, it was actually on the low side for ashes. Professor Bone later provided the defense with a signed statement to this effect. He argued, the normal arsenic content of British household coal was never less than 140 parts per million and often reached levels of 1,000 parts per million. This makes the evidence the original pathologist gave very questionable indeed. 

Charlotte's appeal was heard on the 29th of June at the Appeal Court in London. Amazingly, the Appeal Court refused to hear the evidence of Professor Bone and concluded that even if the jury had been correctly advised by Dr. Roche - the outcome of the trial would have still been the same. Thus her appeal was denied and her sentence stood. At this time, it would have been unprecedented for the Court of Appeal to admit any new evidence - it just concerned itself with the conduct of the trial. However, one could argue that Professor Bone's statement was not new evidence but rather a correction of flawed evidence that had already been given at the original trial by the prosecution's so called “expert" witness.

Charlotte spent almost six weeks in the condemned cell.  It was reported that her once raven hair had turned completely white, presumably due to the stress of her situation. She decided, after much agonising, against seeing her children again as she felt now she had lost her appeal it would be too much for them to bear. She was visited regularly by Father Barney, a Catholic priest, who prayed with her and had a small altar set up in her cell.

She began to learn to read and write with the help of the female warders who looked after her round the clock. She was able to dictate a moving and poignant telegram to the King asking for clemency. She also wrote a letter in which she said

 "It is all the fault of ............ that I'm here. I listened to the tales I was told. But I have not got long now and I will be out of my troubles. God bless my children."

The Home Office obliterated the name mentioned in this note but it is very feasible that Lucy Ostler or Leonard Parsons was the person who Charlotte thought was really responsible for her imprisonment. 

A lot had been going on behind the scenes to try and save Charlotte from the Gallows. Sir Stafford Cripps, at that time a Member of Parliament, had applied to the Home Secretary to declare a mistrial and order a new one on the grounds of the flawed evidence. Questions had also been raised in the House of Parliament about the case and petitions about her case had been signed to have her sentence reprieved. 

There appeared to be an unwritten rule at the Home Office that no poisoners of any sex should be reprieved and this practice was followed to the letter in Charlotte's case. On the Tuesday before her execution, the Home Secretary, Sir John Simon, declined on the advice of his officials, to grant her a reprieve or a new trial. The prison governor had the unpleasant job of communicating this to Charlotte and telling her that the execution would take place, as planned, the following morning.

CROWDS GATHER FOR BRYANT'S EXECUTION

Charlotte Bryant was neither confined nor hanged at Dorchester prison in the county in which she was convicted and sentenced. Instead she was sent to Exeter jail, in neighbouring Devon, to await her execution.

 Charlotte was led to the gallows at 8.00 a.m. on Wednesday, July the 15th, 1936 by public executioner Tom Pierrepoint. He was assisted by Thomas Phillips and Pierrepoint’s nephew Albert. 

The LPC4 form states Charlotte’s height as 5' 0 1/2" and her weight 123 1/2 lbs.  She was given a drop 8' 5".  Measured afterwards it was 8' 7” from her heels to the top surface of the platform.  Her cause of death was stated as "Definite dislocation of the cervical spine".

As was the norm, by 1936 Charlotte's execution was an entirely secret affair and there were no reporters present. However, she was attended by a Catholic priest, Father Barney, who was not bound by Home Office rules of secrecy. He later described her last moments as "truly edifying." "She met her end with Christian fortitude." He reported, however, that she never confessed to the murder and protested her innocence to the very end. In accordance with her sentence, her body was buried in the grounds of the prison, probably at lunch time, that same day.

Charlotte had learned to write her name in jail and her will was the first legal document she had signed with her name on it rather than her mark. Charlotte left a pitiful estate worth 5 shillings, 8½ pence to her five children who were now orphaned. They were taken into the care of the county council, becoming the legal wards of the Dorset Public Assistance Committee. At this time, they were aged between 18 months old and 12 years. 

The wealthy, publicity driven  anti-capital punishment campaigner Mrs Violet Van Der Elst was reported in the press as being very keen to adopt all five children, although it seems that what she really wanted to do was pay to send them to a convent abroad to provide for their education and welfare. She was concerned that going into council care would condemn the children to the same lowly life as their mother had led: ‘The County Council have no right to take these children. They are going to be taken to awful orphanages or children’s homes, and there is nothing worse.’ She said (Sheffield Independent, 18 July 1936).

She later told a reporter that she would find the children foster parents, and would pay for their maintenance and education; in addition, she would start a fund, giving it an initial £50,000, to ‘provide for the children of people who have been murdered or executed’ (Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 17 July 1936). Van der Elst later featured this case among numerous others in her 1937 book On the Gallows.

Before Charlotte had been executed, there had been an attempt by the NSPCC to take the children to one of their homes, but Charlotte had refused permission for that via her solicitor, wanting them to stay near to her geographically. She had presumably hoped, at this point, before the appeal, that she would evenually be freed and found innocent, and could go back to taking care of her family once again. (Gloucestershire Echo, 11 February 1936)

After Charlotte’s death, an inquest was carried out to ensure that she had been ‘judicially and humanely executed’. The prison governor had suggested that the coroner’s jury might wish to donate their fees to the Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society; when the jurors expressed a wish, instead, to give their fees to Charlotte’s five children, they were discouraged; the coroner stated that the fees were only small, and that ‘provision had already been made for the care of the children’. (Northern Whig, 16 July 1936)

Mrs Van Der Elst had stated publicly that she wanted the children to be educated abroad ‘so that the circumstances of their parents’ death will never be known to them’. However, the eldest 2 children already knew about what had happened because they had given evidence at their Mother’s trial. Charlotte had also requested to see her children whilst being held in prison, and that request had been granted but she did not see them after she lost the appeal. The younger children were not aware of the true nature of their parent’s death until they found out for themselves many years later. Charlotte’s son, William, found out about his mother’s trial and execution when he read about it in a newspaper in 1964. William did not tell his own son, David the truth, until David was in his 30s. William had never seen his brothers or sisters again, after he had left the the home where he eventually first met his wife Margaret, who had also been a resident there. 

In view of the seriously flawed forensic evidence, should Charlotte have been granted a re-trial? The incorrect evidence supplied by the Pathologist surely made her conviction unsafe and unsatisfactory. Flawed evidence leads to a lack of public confidence in the justice system. The witness evidence and circumstantial evidence remains strong but it is still uncertain that the right decision was reached. 

One wonders how much Charlotte's lowly status and acknowledged promiscuity played in the decision to neither reprieve her nor grant a new trial. Sadly, Britain was very much a class ridden society in 1936 and Charlotte was considered virtually “at the bottom of the social pile” by people at the time and was also portrayed as a typical female sexual deviant of her age, by those who subsequently wrote about her case. People like her were simply expendable and their well-publicised executions were considered a good lesson to other women not to stray from the "straight and narrow" paths of morality – a view perceived, created, and maintained by a male dominated society that had only given women the right to vote less than 15 years before . 

Charlotte Bryant’s case has now been highlighted once again in a fascinating new BBC series Murder, Mystery and My Family.

In the first episode, two of the UK's top criminal barristers, Sasha Wass and Jeremy Dein joined forces with a variety of specialist experts alongside Charlotte’s son William and his son David to re-examine the crime, the evidence and the trial.

While the barristers employed modern forensic techniques to ask whether the original conviction was safe, William and David Bryant explored the social and historical context of the crime, and their parent’s life. The Intimidation of key witnesses like Lucy Ostler, along with the mostly circumstantial evidence that was provided was a big cause for concern for both the barristers. 

Many murder cases of the late 19th and early 20th centuries continue to be infamous, with books, films and television programmes devoted to them. Charlotte Bryant’s story was relegated to obscurity after it faded from the headlines - but it should have had a lasting impact on our consciousness. She was young – only 33 – when she was hanged for murder. She was a female murderer who had killed her husband after becoming dissatisfied with her marriage and had started an affair with her lodger.

Yet Charlotte Bryant does not feature in any books or movies today – she’s been the subject of the odd local newspaper or crime website article, but even Wikipedia remains strangely silent when it comes to her. 

CHARLOTTE DURING HER TRIAL

There are many possible explanations as to why Charlotte’s story has remained hidden for so long. There appears to be only one photograph of her taken during the court case, and far from portraying a ravishing seductress,  it shows a beaten-down woman whose once youthful good looks have significantly diminished due to a life of poverty and alcoholism. During her trial, it was noted that she turned her head away, or covered it up, whenever she saw the press photographers gathering like vultures nearby. 

Her trial was not held at the Old Bailey in London, but in the relatively isolated south-west of England, at the Dorchester Assizes. Charlotte was a working-class woman, who married a humble cowman, and had an affair with a traveller. She was a mother of five young children, and was poorly educated and illiterate. She was not a romantic figure, but a rather plain and pathetic one to both the press and the public. She was not moneyed or glamorous like other infamous murderesses – Ruth Ellis or Alma Rattenbury for example,  who went on to be remembered way after their deaths. She was what she was: a poor unhappy woman who had been accused of poisoning her husband with weed killer when the romance – if there had ever been any to begin with – had died, and she felt stifled by the monotony and grinding poverty of her daily life. Charlotte was the obvious main suspect to the Police and the easiest to arrest for the crime but it doesn’t prove her guilt. 

Criminal behaviour on the part of women in the 1930’s was still wrongly believed to partly due to an excessive and dangerous sexual appetite. There was clearly a double standard in operation within society and the law, as men were not castigated or punished for similar sorts of behaviour. Sexual impropriety was often used to demonstrate early signs of criminality or deviancy in a woman – this included women who simply had affairs as well as women who were paid to have sex. Any woman who had sex with a man who was not her husband was regarded as a sexual deviant. 

No trial report of the time actually described Charlotte as an ‘illiterate, immoral slut’ or stated that she worked as a part-time prostitute. People who have subsequently written website articles about her and her case may have implied this as a direct interpretation of how they believe 1930s England would have seen her. No actual press coverage of the trial or its aftermath refers to Charlotte as engaging in promiscuity or prostitution; indeed, the focus is always on her status as a mother, desperate to know that her children are being looked after, as she awaits first her trial, and then her execution, only gaining comfort from the church.

Looking at the actual press coverage of Charlotte’s case from the time, there is a much more sympathetic, more nuanced, tone than other more recently articles imply. For example, on the morning of her execution, she was described as making a ‘despairing last-minute plea to the King’ via telegram, repeated in full in the Birmingham Daily Gazette, in which she refers to herself as the King’s ‘lowly, afflicted subject’. Rather than being described as a ‘slut’, she is simply named as ‘Mrs Charlotte Bryant, the 33-year-old mother of five children’ by the newspaper. (Birmingham Daily Gazette, 15 July 1936).

Even when damming allegations were made about Charlotte’s sex life, it was as a transcription of what someone else had said in court about her – for example, when the Sheffield Independent stated that Parsons ‘was the father of Charlotte’s youngest child’, it was directly quoting Lord Hewart comments in announcing that Charlotte’s appeal was being dismissed. (Sheffield Independent, 30 June 1936) There was an overall factual tone to all of the information given, concerning Charlotte’s sexual relationships, rather than a condemning one.

In addition, when, in court, attempts had been made to highlight that Charlotte had been Parsons’ mistress, the Solicitor General had objected to them, acerbically commenting to the Jury, “You are not a court of morals.” (Coventry Evening Telegraph, 27 May 1936)

Although Charlotte’s affair was brought up in court, it was mentioned as the main part of a prosecution case to suggest that because Charlotte was in love with another man and wanted to marry him, she was subsequently motivated to kill her husband. This would be a common motive for murder in most cases, and thus an obvious approach for the prosecution to take. 

Charlotte’s class was a huge also a huge factor in how she was treated and viewed. She was unable to read or write; she had to have it explained to her what an ‘inquest’ was.  During her trial, she had to ask the prison wardresses to help explain procedures to her. She was and had always been a vulnerable woman, perhaps easily suggestible or influenced when drunk. She was an easy target to pin a crime on by anyone who was remotely cleverer than she was. 

She suffered from a lack of education and that gave her no great prospects in life, and yet she was clearly an intelligent woman. When given the opportunity to improve herself during her time in jail, she made the most of it, taking only a short amount of time to learn to write letters; and she surprised the court when she appeared on the stand and gave a coherent, strong account of her actions - not something usually associated with lies and guilt. 

The coverage of her execution in the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette made no mention of her adultery or sex life, but focused instead on her lack of education and poor background, and told readers that in the hour before her death, she had received the Sacraments in her cell:

    ‘During those last moments on earth, this uneducated and illiterate woman, who had never been taught to read or write or spell, recalled the faith which she learned when a child attending the Roman Catholic Sunday School in her native Ireland, and she murmured the responses to the Litanies in a low voice.’ (Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 17 July 1936)

The jury did not appear to convict Charlotte of murder because she was immoral, or a slut, or because they thought she was a prostitute. The most they appear to have heard in court about her sex life was that she was the mistress of Parsons, who may have possibly fathered her youngest child. This appears to have been the only sexually-related information about Charlotte and her family life that was actually heard in court.

Charlotte was convicted because the circumstantial evidence against her at the time was overwhelming. She had talked openly about her hatred of her husband, and of her wish not be married to him anymore. She had spoken of her desire to run away with Parsons; she also feared that his feelings towards her had cooled. She was known to have had a bottle of what could be weed killer and arsenic; even her children had said so in Court. She had been insistent on her husband drinking and eating certain food and drink even when he was ill and was reluctant to do so. It was evidence such as this that convicted Charlotte. The jury had been warned not to act as a court of morals, but as a court of law.

Charlotte’s case when it is has been written about in recent times, focuses a lot on the public rumours and speculation about her unusual sex life, and assumes bias or prejudice on the part of her contemporaries towards her sexuality. 

In fact, in looking at press coverage from the actual time, it appears that her life may not have been as salacious as some contemporary sources might suggest to us. If it was, then that was not something that was brought up in court, covered in the press, or used to convict her of murder. It was only one specific relationship that was focused on – Charlotte’s and Parson’s - and that was in order to build a convincing motive for the Prosecution as to why she might have attempted to kill her husband. The evidence provided in court by both Parsons, and Ostler that led to the conviction, could have just as easily concealed details of either of their individual involvements and made Charlotte into the perfect scapegoat. Comments made to Ostler by Charlotte may have been said in a very different context, or have been totally misinterpreted by Ostler, the Police and the Jury at the time. The fact that arsenic may have been used in the house or in the back garden for killing rats must also be taken into consideration too. Frederick may have also been exposed to it on a regular basis as an agricultural worker, so there is an outside chance that his poisoning and subsequent death was partly also due to prolonged contact with arsenic over a number of years.  

Biases against female murderers such as Charlotte Bryant are not necessarily always of their time. If we assume that our forebears always demonstrated prejudice against certain types of lifestyles, behaviours and classes of people, we also assume that those convicted of murder must be more wicked or immoral than they actually perhaps were. Charlotte may have been a working-class woman who took drastic, ill thought out action because she thought she was in love; but that did not make her a slut or a prostitute, either then or now. If she really did not kill her husband and was genuinely innocent as she claimed, the fact that she hung for that crime when it was not proven beyond all doubt is much more than just a mere miscarriage of justice.

Finding out that their mother and grandmother had been hanged for a murder she may or may not have committed, has haunted Charlotte’s children and grandchildren’s lives and had a huge effect on all the members of her family ever since. That was very evident from the reactions of William and David Bryant on the recent BBC TV programme. By re-examining the case again, both men have at least begun to try and come to terms with what happened to their ancestors.