Own a piece of Pace-case history...for only about £3 million

It has been announced that Gloucester Prison is now up for sale.

As the Gloucester Citizen reported today:

As a 3.5-acre brownfield site it could be worth more than £3million but its unique character could drive the price down – 122 bodies lie beneath it and its uses could be constrained by its history.

The Debtors’ Prison became a cell block on the west side and is Grade II listed, meaning the interior is protected too.

The oldest part, which retains features from the 1791 prison, is also listed.

Among other illustrious guests, Beatrice Pace was held in the prison during her trial in Gloucester in July 1928.

Here is an aerial image of the prison, coincidentally also taken in 1928, which also shows the Shire Hall, where the trial was held.

Source: Britain from Above

It's certainly a rather different way of getting on the property ladder.

Today in the Pace Case, 22 July 1928

Sunday, 22 July 1928: the second instalment of Beatrice Pace's life story appears in the Sunday Express.

Sunday Express, 22 July 1928, p. 11 (Click for larger image)

Beatrice wrote about some of her new experiences...

Now, I realise that what takes my breath away is only ordinary to other people.

The other day, while I was at Windsor, one of my new friends said to me after dinner, “Mrs. Pace, will you have some coffee?” I thought, “Well, now, I’ve never tasted it,” and I said so. Everybody at table laughed and looked surprised.

I felt quite silly as they watched me drinking it smiling at me. … I thought about it afterwards and I decided to tell about it here, so that you will understand how different everything is for me now.

...her late husband's strange behaviour....

When the mood was on him he didn’t care what he did.

I have already said that all the years we were together he never once looked me straight in the eyes or called me by a soft name. I think that was one of the worst things in my life with him. To be treated like a machine, and to bear his children, and to feel all the time that he only thought about me as something that was his, and that he never cared about me in myself—that did make me feel horrible.

...

Often after thrashing me he would throw down his stick and start whistling and singing.

What Harry sang after beating me was always the same song: “I’m Henery the Eighth, I am,” Henery the Eighth I am, I am,” and the rest of it.

I can see it sounds funny now, and it makes me laugh, but it didn’t at the time.

...and her inability to leave him:

I am sure you will all say that if Harry was mad, I must have been madder to stay by him and put up with it, but as I said at the beginning, Harry was my man, and I had to stick to him. I had loved no other man, and he was all I had. I was not then as sad and bitter as I grew to be as time went on, and I had hope.

Post-trial images

After her resounding acquittal in the closely watched murder trial, images of Beatrice and her children appeared in many British newspapers.

Here are only a few.

This is actually one of the first newspaper images I ever saw of the case, and it was one of the reasons I became so fascinated with it.

Daily Mirror, 7 July 1928

I like the emotion of joy and relief that is visible in these post-acquittal images:

Sunday Pictorial, 8 July 1928

Here are those photos in their full-page context:

Sunday Pictorial, 8 July 1928

And an advertisement for Beatrice's serialised life story:

Sunday Pictorial, 8 July 1928

 

Glimpses of the Pace case: 3 July 1928

An image of the crowds gathered in Gloucester on 3 July 1928 to witness the Pace murder trial.

The photo in context:

I find the advertising slogan 'Where dirt is a crime' to be a nice coincidental juxtaposition.... 

(Daily Herald, 4 July 1928)

Glimpses of the Pace Trial: 2 July 1928

A striking photograph of the crowds gathered in front of the Gloucester Shire Hall at the opening of the trial of Beatrice Pace for the arsenic murder of her husband, 85 years ago today:

Daily Sketch, 3 July 1928, page 1

What that scene looks like today from a similar angle:

Author's photo, June 2010

Today in the Pace case: 15 July

Sunday, 15 July 1928: The second part of Beatrice’s serialised memoir appears in the Sunday Express.

(Sunday Express, 15 July 1928, p. 1: Beatrice Pace, with Alice Sayes holding Jean Pace)

A lofty perspective on the Pace trial

Although I thought, at first, that they have nothing in particular to do with the Pace case (or with crime), these 1920s aerial views of London (gathered together by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) give a fascinating visual perspective on the period.

The pictures come from the project: 'Britain from Above', which I followed up on and joined (it's free).

Doing a quick search led me to photos which are relevant to the Pace case (and were even taken in the same year as the trial), such as this image of central Gloucester:

(Gloucester from the air, 1928. Source)

The Gloucester Shire Hall, where Beatrice's trial was held, is clearly visible in the lower part of the photo in the centre (other images posted on this blog of the Shire Hall are here and here):

This one is also interesting, as it shows Gloucester Prison, where Beatrice was held during the trial (the Shire Hall is now in the upper left-hand corner:

(Gloucester Prison from the air, 1928. Source.)

It was a very short distance to the Shire hall (also visible in the photo at the upper left hand), but Beatrice was ferried back and forth by car, usually to the accompaniment of raucous public demonstrations.

Glimpses of the Pace trial: 6 July 1928

Concluding the series of posts on the coverage by the Daily Mirror of the Pace trial, which, on 6 July 1928 was in its fifth and final day. Its events are perhaps best summarised by considering the front page of the next day's edition of the Mirror:

Daily Mirror, 7 July 1928, p. 1. (Left: crowds greeting the acquittal in Gloucester. Upper right: Beatrice Pace. Lower right: Norman Birkett, K.C. (Beatrice's barrister) and Mr. Justice Horridge (the presiding judge).

From an editorial in the same issue:

The Strange Case of Mrs. Pace

Mrs. Pace was acquitted yesterday after an ordeal (before Coroner and Judge) that has lasted for weeks and has been watched by a huge crowd with every demonstration of intense excitement.

Our readers will have followed the evidence in our news columns; while our pictures have illustrated the accompaniment of public emotion.

We need not deny that the result will be saluted with popular approval, though it is wise always to deprecate the attempt to weigh upon cool justice by ‘taking sides’ in violent clamour.

It was obvious from the first that this woman’s tragic story had deeply impressed the crowd.

And it is indeed a pitiable thing that she should have been subjected to a preliminary torture, which seems, after the stopping of the case yesterday, to have been avoidable, as the Judge suggested.

The facts were reviewed in their first aspect, as we have said, for months. The trial suddenly ends—there is ‘no case.’ Mrs. Pace’s ordeal is over.

But what can compensate a hunted human creature for the anguish thus endured?

Evidently, some such conviction of needlessly inflicted suffering urged an emotional multitude at Gloucester to clamour, which was human enough, though deplorable as a precedent.

(Daily Mirror, 7 July 1928, p. 9)

The scene outside the courtroom: 3 July 1928

A scene from the opening of the Pace trial, Gloucester, 3 July 1928:

Daily Sketch, 3 July 1928, p. 1

'My Dollies and Me'

One of the stranger newspaper stories published on the Pace case was the one shown below: written 'by' Doris Pace, Beatrice's eleven-year-old daughter, it considers the large number of dolls received by Doris from well-meaning strangers. (Click for a larger view.)

The People, 17 June 1928, p. 4.

The press and the 'tragic widow'

A typical page from the World's Pictorial News (which was among the more sensationalist newspapers of the time) with coverage of the Pace case, featuring pictures of Beatrice, Dorothy, Doris and Jean Pace (and an unnamed lamb):

World's Pictorial News, 13 May 1928, p. 10

Beatrice was, by the way, widely referred to as 'the tragic widow'.

This image comes from the period of the coroner's inquest, before Beatrice was charged with her husband's murder.

Free again

One of the many images of Beatrice Pace (pictured here with her daughter Doris) which appeared in the wake of her acquittal in July 1928.

This one is from the Daily Mail, 7 July 1928.

Today in the Pace case: 25 March

A newspaper story appears in The People, quoting Beatrice Pace and asserting that she was subjected to questionable treatment by Scotland Yard detectives while being questioned.

The article's claims are part of a series of accusations of 'third-degree' methods directed at the police in 1928.

The issue will later be discussed in Parliament.

Young Beatrice Pace

Nearly all the photos of Beatrice Pace that appeared in the press in 1928 were contemporary with the events of the case.

The one exception I found was this photo, which appeared on the front page of Thomson's Weekly News and purports to show Beatrice as a young woman 'in service'. (She had spent three years in London as a teenager during the Edwardian years as a domestic servant.)

Click for larger version.

It's an interesting picture. But I have to say the cat is a rather weird touch.

I'm still trying to work out whether it's real or not.

As I have noted, it's important to consider the context in which such images appeared. Thomson's Weekly News was at the more sensationalist end of the press spectrum at this period, and it specialised in 'tragic' stories, especially those featuring women.

Here's the front page as a whole:

Click for larger version.

In the story on the left, Mrs Cissie Nellie Reene tells of the travails she had suffered due to her husband's bigamy.

As I describe in the book, the image of Beatrice as a 'tragic widow' played a significant role in defining her public persona, a role that was enabled by a popular press that focused on sensational, melodramatic and sometimes simply prurient stories of women's suffering.

Relief and joy

These are actually a couple of my favourite photos from the case; unfortunately, I was only able to find them on microfilm, hence the relatively poor quality.

Still, I think the combination of emotions is very striking, and shines through.

They were taken in the wake of Beatrice Pace's acquittal, and the joy and the relief is quite plain. (Click for larger version.)

Sunday Pictorial, 8 July 1928, p. 26.

Left, we see Beatrice Pace herself; right, Doris and Leslie Pace, two of her five children.

Reasonable cause to suspect...

Having described the context in which the coroner's inquest into Harry Pace's death got under way, here a couple of more related details.

One of them is the relevant passage on the duties of the coroner from what was the main guide for coroners, known as Jervis on Coroners.

The duties of coroners were regulated by the Coroners Act of 1887, as modified by subsequent legislation (the most recent amendments before the Pace case had been in 1926, which had necessitated a new edition of Jervis the following year).

‘Where a coroner is informed that the dead body of a person is lying within his jurisdiction, and there is reasonable cause to suspect that such person has died either a violent or an unnatural death, or has died a sudden death of which the cause is unknown, or that such person has died in prison, or in such place or under such circumstances as to require an inquest in pursuance of any Act, the coroner, whether the cause of death arose within his jurisdiction or not, shall, as soon practicable issue his warrant for summoning not less than seven nor more than eleven good and lawful men to appear before him at a specified time and place, there to inquire as jurors touching the death of such person as aforesaid.’

 -- F. Danford Thomas, M.A. Sir John Jervis on the Office and Duties of Coroners with Forms and Precedents (Seventh Edition, London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1927), pp. 20-21

There were, in the event, nine jurors on the inquest jury.

To accompany this passage: a photo of the coroner who would handle the Pace inquest, Maurice Carter. (This is the only picture of him that I managed to find.)

Maurice Carter
Sunday Dispatch, 8 July 1928

Some aspects of the way that he handled the case became very controversial indeed.

At this point in our timeline, however, he was still waiting for a forensic report.

Harry Pace's funeral

While I'm laying out the initial order of events, I thought it might be appropriate to post this image, which is the only published picture that I found of Harry Pace's funeral, which took place in Clearwell, Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire.

Dean Forest Guardian (20 January 1928), p. 5

In search of lost timelines

One of the things that I thought might be an interesting feature to pursue on this blog is to lay out the actual series of events that composed the 'Pace case'.

Since the main occurences and key dates occurred from early January (with the death of Harry Pace) through August (with the final installment of Beatrice Pace's 'life story' in the Sunday Express), it occurs to me that this fits in quite nicely with the publication schedule of the book, which is due to be published on 20 August this year.

Of course, like most of my good ideas, I'm getting on this one a bit late.

But, better late than never, as the saying goes.

I won't be giving detailed discussions of each of the events on the blog (that's what the book's for, after all!), but I will be marking -- 84 years to the day -- some of the key milestones in the case as we go along this year.

As I think about it, this process might help to provide a sense of the scale of the case in 'real time'. As with any historical event, reading about it in retrospect makes it too easy to lose sense of the actual 'feeling' of the time as it went by. For instance, one of the key complaints of Beatrice's supporters was that she had been subjected to an 'ordeal' of grinding suspense as a result of a lengthy coroner's inquest. Perhaps pointing out some key signposts (or, perhaps 'timeposts') as we go along this year, might help to regain that sense of what they meant.

All the posts in this series can be called up by clicking on the 'timeline' label at the bottom of each post.

So, at first, a little catching up, as there was a flurry of activity in mid-January (that is, in a manner of speaking, over the last couple of weeks):

Tuesday, 10 January 1928: Harry Pace -- a quarryman and sheep farmer -- dies at his home ('Rose Cottage') in Fetter Hill, a small hamlet in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, after a long and mysterious illness that began the previous summer. His physician, Dr. Du Pré, confirms a death from natural causes.

Wednesday, 11 January: several of Harry's suspicious family (i.e., his side of the family) meet and decide to take their doubts about the naturalness of Harry's death to the police. The local police, stationed in the nearby market town of Coleford and led by Inspector Alan Bent, begin their investigations.

Inspector Alan Bent

Thursday, 12 January: Inspector Bent and Sergeant Charlie Hamblin visit Beatrice at Rose Cottage and inform her of their inquiries.

Friday, 13 January: Sgt. Hamblin tells Beatrice that Harry's funeral (planned for Sunday, 15 January) will have to be postponed.

Saturday, 14 January: A post mortem examination is carried out on Harry Pace (at his home) by Dr. Charles Carson. Blood samples are taken and several organs are removed and sent to Professor Isaac Walker Hall at the University of Bristol for analysis.

Sunday, 15 January: Several mourners, who were not informed about the delayed funeral, arrive in Fetter Hill, resulting in 'considerable consternation'.

Monday, 16 January: The inquest into Harry's death, led by the coroner, Maurice Carter, opens at the nearby 'George Inn'. A few necessary formalities are taken care of. Carter then adjourns the inquiry for a month, pending the results of the forensic analysis.

Tuesday, 17 January: Harry Pace is buried in the nearby village of Clearwell.

Wednesday, 18 January: Bent resumes his investigations, visiting a chemist in Coleford, who -- among many other things -- sold 'sheep dip'.

What followed was a bit of an official pause, as the inquest could hardly get going in the absence of forensic results.

But, as we shall see, this case was only getting started.

Fame, Fleet Street and the tragic widow

Along with being a book about crime and justice history, The Most Remarkable Woman in England explores aspects of the 1920s version of what today is known as 'celebrity culture'.

In many ways, clearly, the last couple of decades have seen a dramatic expansion in the ways for people to become 'celebrities', even if only briefly: 'reality' TV, casting shows and the Internet.

But while there is much that has changed in how unknown people now become well-known 'celebrities' overnight, the phenomenon itself is far from new. For example, the second half of the nineteenth century witnessed the emergence of a 'new journalism' which focused on dramatic, emotionally reported 'human interest' stories. This style was pioneered by the Daily Telegraph (founded in 1855) and the later growth of tabloids such as the Daily Mail, Daily Express and Daily Mirror. Here lay the origins of Britain's sensationalist (and prurient) press culture that has often gone under the shorthand term of 'Fleet Street'.* 

The 1920s and 30s were in some sense a 'golden age' of press reporting: newspaper circulations were growing rapidly (especially among women readers) and the press did not as yet face competition from radio and television news. By this time photography had become a common feature in the papers, which may have helped to establish a more immediate (though imagined) connection between readers and those reported upon. Crime -- the more sensational the better -- was a favourite topic, and probably the main vehicle whereby 'ordinary' people became nationally-known figures. This is, of course, something that remains true.

Whether the subjects of these stories became popular or merely notorious depended a great deal on the specific circumstances of the case as well as the ways that journalists decided to spin the case. Beatrice Pace was fortunate in that, although suspected of (and then charged with) murder, she was consistently depicted as a sympathetic figure, even before her eventual acquittal and the sale of her life story to the Sunday Express.

Why and how that was so is a rather long tale and a major focus of my book.

But this is a good example of how the case was presented to the public at the more sensationalist end of the press spectrum, in the World's Pictorial News. (Click on the image for a larger version.)

To give some context: this article appeared in the midst of the lengthy coroner's inquest into Harry Pace's death: Beatrice at this point was (officially) not a suspect in the case. As was often true, the papers didn't get everything right: for example, the caption referring to the lad feeding the lamb refers to 'Kenneth' Pace when his name was actually Selwyn (often called 'Teddy'). This sort of error recurred often across the year or so that the case was in the news. The story about the 'suddenly' interrupted funeral is also not entirely accurate (as I explain).

I aim to present further such images in the future, but I thought this time around I'd also give some background.

My research into the newspaper reporting on the case was one of the most enjoyable parts of writing the book, and it led me to other projects that I've been working on in recent years, such as a study of police powers, civil liberties and the term 'the third degree' in the 1920s: a couple of these articles can be seen here and here.

---
*Interesting overviews of this history can be found in Kevin Williams, Get me a murder a day! A history of mass communication in Britain (London, 1998) and Adrian Bingham, Family newspapers?: Sex, private life, and the British popular press 1918-1978 (Oxford, 2009)

Family history

One of the nicer experiences I had while writing The Most Remarkable Woman in England was having the chance to personally get to know -- first via email then in person -- a few of Beatrice Pace's descendants. I found them quite by chance via the Internet (how does anyone find anything these days otherwise?) when one of her...wait, let me get this right...great-granddaughters had made an offhand comment about her family history at a web forum on a completely different topic (a popular television game show, as I recall).

This is what led me to writing her.  

(After I became the member of an internet forum regarding a show I'd never at that point watched. My devotion to historical research, clearly, knows no bounds.)

In any case, emails were passed along and exchanged, and I was soon communicating with one of Beatrice's grandsons. After years of research via newspapers and official files, it was quite an experience to finally be in touch with someone who had personally known the main person profiled in my book. As 'Gran'. (Beatrice had a long life after her trial.)

A couple of trips of mine to Gloucestershire and the Forest of Dean followed, and I am very grateful, both for the information I received and the hospitality I enjoyed there.

Later, I corresponded with another grandson who provided me with a few of the pictures used in the book.

As to the information about Beatrice's post-trial life, you'll have to, as they say, read the book.

However, I thought I would share an aspect of how it came to be written.
 
When I first decided to get in touch, I had, I must admit, some qualms. In fact I debated with myself for some weeks before making initial contact. Of course, I wanted to find any relevant information for my book: most of all, I was aiming at filling in the story of what happened to Beatrice Pace after she disappeared from the headlines...and therefore from the historical record.

On the other hand, I wasn't quite sure what reaction to expect.

I mean: someone shows up out of the blue and says he's writing a book about your grandmother who was accused of murder? How would you react?

I am pleased to say that the family members I have dealt with have been nothing but friendly and have all been very supportive of the project, providing me with helpful details about the later life of the 'Tragic Widow of Coleford', as she was known in the late 1920s. In return, I am pleased to have been able to fill in many details for them about a striking aspect of their own family history.

That was nice enough.

However, a couple of weeks ago this story took another twist.

While we were on holiday, I was contacted by another of Beatrice's descendants: the grandson of a different one of her children than the people I had to this point spoken to. He had heard rumours of this book online last year and then found this blog.

Very kindly enough he sent me a few family photos that I hadn't yet seen, and, even more kindly, he said I could share them here on the blog.

Although I have very few details about either of them, I estimate that they're both from the mid-to-late 1930s. The first is of Beatrice with her youngest daughter 'Jean' (actually Isobel Jean). Jean, sadly, was a sickly girl and died during the Second World War aged 14. She had, as I describe in the book, been a prominent focus of coverage of the Pace case in 1928 and was frequently mentioned in letters Beatrice received from her supporters and admirers. (One of the aspects of the case that I consider was the way the public responded to press reporting of it.)

Along with any information that I received through getting to know the family the experience very much helped to bring something home to me: that history is about real people. This may sound banal, but when you spend large amounts of time getting to know people through reading documents (and even printed pictures) their reality becomes a bit abstract.

Speaking to people who had known Beatrice Pace personally -- had seen her, heard her voice, touched her -- certainly helped to give my own perspective on the case a new vividness.

One that I hope I have been able to impart.