o most of those who knew him, James Holden was a regular family man. Quiet, steady and industrious, he was a conscientious worker at the Butterley Iron Company where he had been employed for several years, and a devoted husband and father when at home. Now aged forty-five, he had a good name among his neighbours in the mining village of Jacksdale, where he shared a house on Laverick Road with his wife and one of his two grown-up sons. All the same, circumstances would lead James Holden to carry out a brutal attack on those closest to him, which would end with him being brought to trial for murder.

Mrs Holden, it seems, was the root of the problem. At forty-two, she was three years younger than her husband, and having lost a leg following a railway accident, she was able to walk only with the aid of a stick or crutch. Despite her infirmities, she appears to have been able to get out and about to visit her neighbours, and took every opportunity to socialise with them. While such activities were harmless enough in themselves, the indications are that Mrs Holden had grown discontented with life with her husband and had begun  to look elsewhere for fulfilment of her needs. Unluckily for him, her fancy fixed upon her young neighbour, George William Barlow.

Willie Barlow was a collier who lived with his parents and several brothers and sisters in the family home on Laverick Road. Living close to each other, it was natural that the Barlows and the Holdens should meet socially, each visiting the other’s home. While David Holden, a twenty-one-year-old grocer who lived in with his mother and father, was later to claim that there was no particular friendship between the two families, he also admitted that Willie Barlow visited their house regularly to play dominoes with the Holdens, and others would testify that Mrs Holden often went round to the Barlow residence in the company of her female friends.

There is little doubt that Mrs Holden was besotted with the young miner, who at twenty-two was only a year older than her son, and was eager to enter into a physical relationship with him. Just how far her feelings were reciprocated by Barlow is difficult to judge. According to the later testimony of his father, Willie Barlow was embarrassed by the attentions of the older woman, and did nothing to encourage her. Others, including David Holden, were less convinced of his innocence, and suspected that Barlow and Mrs Holden were indeed having an illicit affair. The unlikely couple had often been seen alone together, usually late at night, and this and other rumours led James Holden to believe that his wife was being unfaithful to him with a younger man.

By the late summer of 1908, Holden’s suspicions were fully aroused, and he began to monitor his wife’s movements and those of young Barlow. The miner still made regular visits to the Holden house, and on the surface he and James Holden appeared to remain on friendly terms. This state of affairs could not last for long, however, and matters came to a head on Friday, 23 October, when Mrs Holden went out that evening. She met one of her friends, Mrs Annice Parkin, and the two women returned to the house on Laverick Road, where they found James Holden and Willliam Barlow, apparently enjoying one another’s company. Barlow then bade them all ‘goodnight’ and left the house.

Shortly afterwards Mrs Holden and Mrs Parkin went out again, accompanied by the Holdens’ servant girl Ruth Stuart, and the three women visited the Portland Arms. They stayed outside in the yard of the public house, and after a while Willie Barlow came up to join them. Mrs Holden called him over to her, and Barlow went into the pub and returned with a pint bottle and a glass from which he, Mrs Holden and Mrs Parkin drank in turn. Mrs Holden was aware that her husband was keeping an eye on her, and told Mrs Parkin to ‘look out for the master coming. If he sees us here we shall catch it.’ While Mrs Holden was still drinking, James Holden appeared, and informed her ‘I have been watching you.’ Taking hold of her by the arm, he said: ‘Let us have you home, and not standing here. This is not your place.’ He escorted his wife away from the group, and back to their house.

Once inside, in the presence of their son David, Holden demanded an answer from her about her relationship with Barlow. Listening, David heard his father address his mother with the words: ‘Which is it to be, either me or him? If you want him, go with him, and if not I want you to stop and have nothing to do with him again. I have caught you this time proper.’ Mrs Holden made no reply, and the angry husband demanded: ‘Give me an answer.’ She responded defiantly that she would not ‘give him or anyone else an answer.’ Holden then told her that if he caught them together again, he would ‘put my foot round him in a form.’ There the conversation ended, but the anger and resentment that had for so long smouldered underground had now broken to the surface, and worse outbursts lay ahead.

The following Monday Willie Barlow and his father were coming home from work at the colliery. As they turned up Laverick Road, Mrs Holden opened the window of ‘an empty house’ and shouted to the young man: ‘Willie, I want to speak to you!’ Both men halted, and Willie told his father: ‘Dad, I wonder what that silly old woman wants me for. I am fair ashamed.’ He crossed the road and spoke to her for a few minutes, but did not go inside the house. When he came back, he informed the older man that: ‘She has been wanting me to go away with her. I know nothing about her, and I am ashamed of her talking to me. There is nothing between us.’ The next evening, Mrs Holden intended to go to an animated picture show in the yard behind the Portland Arms, and had obtained tickets. On Holden offering to go with her, she changed her mind, telling him to go with their other son James William while she and Ruth Stuart remained at home. To this, Holden replied sharply: ‘No! If I go out of this house, the light goes out, and you go with me.’ He then extinguished the light, and they all went out together. The day after the incident, Wednesday, 28 October, Holden interrogated Ruth Stuart in private, asking her to give details of his wife’s movements, and urging the young girl to tell the truth. What she told him seems to have confirmed his worst fears, and it was clear that another confrontation was approaching.

The storm broke the following evening, on Thursday, 29 October. Holden had paid Ruth Stuart her wages, and had again spoken to her about the conduct of his wife before the girl left. At 10.30 Mrs Holden had come home, and David and their lodger Samuel Beardall had both retired to bed, leaving husband and wife together. At about the same time Willie Barlow parted company with his father, telling the older man ‘I shall not be many minutes.’ According to Barlow’s testimony as repeated later by his father, he was going up the street when Holden came out and stood in his path, telling him to come into the house, as he wanted to speak to him. Holden’s version was that he saw Barlow hanging around outside the house and confronted him.

Once inside, Holden locked the door, and Barlow saw Mrs Holden sitting in a chair, apparently busily engaged with her knitting. Holden demanded of him point-blank: ‘Willie, what is there between you and my wife?’ This was Mrs Holden’s cue to interrupt them both, and she urged the young man: ‘Don’t tell him anything, Willie!’ Barlow replied to her, telling her he would not. A fierce argument broke out, in the course of which either Barlow or the woman called Holden a liar. This proved the final straw for James Holden. All the bitterness and suppressed anger he had held back for so long finally erupted, boiling over into murderous action.

A hatchet stood beside the fireplace. David Holden had used it to break coals for the fire earlier that day, and had left it there. Now the household implement was put to a far more terrifying purpose. Seizing the hatchet, Holden launched a vicious attack on young Barlow, who had turned back towards the door in the vain hope of escape. He was already too late. Holden struck him several heavy blows to the head with the hatchet, and Barlow fell to the ground. Holden now went in pursuit of his crippled wife, who fled stumbling away towards the stairs, screaming for help.

Upstairs David Holden heard the noise of the argument, and after it the voice of his mother crying out: ‘Dave! Dave!’ He rushed down the stairs, closely followed by the lodger Beardall, who had also been awoken by the woman’s cries. Arriving downstairs, David saw his father moving towards his mother as though he intended to do her harm. The young man interposed himself between them, putting his arms around Holden and urging him not to hurt his mother. As he did so, he was aware that his father was holding something in his hand. David was also shocked at the expression on James Holden’s face, which made him look ‘mad, like a lunatic’ and totally unlike the kindly, loving father he knew. Holden told him: ‘I am not (going to hurt your mother). Get out of my way!’ Taking David by surprise, he trod on his foot, tripping him. The young man fell, and while he was down Holden caught up with his luckless wife and rained a series of blows at her with the hatchet. Hit several times over the head, Mrs Holden collapsed on the stairs. Beardall was in time to meet her as the blows were struck, and saw her fall but, as it was dark he could not see what happened. Only later did he see that she was bleeding from wounds to the head.

David got to his feet and, helping his mother up, asked his father why he had done it. Holden, who by now appeared to have ‘quietened down’ and realised the terrible thing he had done, answered that David knew the reason, it was ‘all through Billy Barlow’. He told his son that he was going down the street to surrender himself to Constable Hickling, and asked David to ‘go through to the kitchen’, as ‘there is one there that wants looking to. I have served them both alike,’ David went into the kitchen, to find Willie Barlow lying in a pool of blood and with severe head wounds. Going back, he told Beardall to give the injured man a drink, and sent for the doctor. Beardall tried to help the injured man up, but was unable to raise him from the ground.

James Holden laid the hatchet on the kitchen floor and left the house, walking to the home of Constable Hickling, who lived only a short distance away. He told the policeman he had come to give himself up, and when asked why, replied: For killing my wife and Willie Barlow.’ Hickling, who had known Holden for the past three years, and always found him to be steady and good-natured, was shocked by what he heard, and asked the other man if he realised what he was saying. Holden replied that he did, that he had ‘killed both of them with a hatchet. They were both dead when I came to you.’ He told Hickling he had been watching Barlow and his wife for the previous three months, and had invited Barlow into the house to confront him. Holden and the constable returned to the house together.

On the way there they were seen by a young labourer, Frankland Deuxberry, who lived across the road from the Holdens and had been awoken by the screams of Mrs Holden about 11pm. He followed them into the house, where he saw Barlow lying in his blood on the floor. Seeing Deuxberry there, Holden turned and spoke to him and to David, who was also present, telling them: ‘There is only God and myself knows what I have had on my mind for this last two months. They called me a liar, and I could not help it. I saw them together last Friday, and I leave you to judge.’ Deuxberry, who had never seen any impropriety between the two victims, said nothing.

Meanwhile William Barlow, Senior, had been given the dreadful news by a neighbour, and came to the house. He arrived to find his son sitting in a pool of blood in the kitchen, and leaning against a chair which had been placed to help keep his head up. Barlow saw at once that the young man’s head was horribly battered and bleeding, and demanded: ‘Who has cruelly treated you like this?’ Unable to speak, Willie Barlow looked at his father, and then towards Holden, who nodded his head. William Barlow then noticed that Constable Hickling had a blood-stained hatchet in his belt, and cried out in horror: ‘Oh God, has it been done with a weapon like that?’ Hickling suggested that the overwrought father should leave and tell his family, and Barlow, ‘very much upset’ at what he had seen, prepared to leave. Before he did so, he pleaded with the constable: ‘If he has got to die, will you bring my son home and let him die there?’ Dr Pounden of Ironville, who had arrived while Barlow was there and was attending to the victims as best he could, told him to go home and get a bed ready for his son. Barlow left and Willie was taken home under the doctor’s supervision, while Mrs Holden remained in the house to have her wounds tended. James Holden was taken into custody, where he was held to face a possible charge of attempted murder.

Over the next few weeks it became clear that Mrs Holden had been less seriously injured than Willie Barlow. Holden had dealt her six wounds in the scalp with the hatchet, but had evidently not struck her hard, and while the injuries were ugly and disfiguring, they did no lasting damage and she gradually recovered from them Perhaps, even at the height of his rage, love for his wife prevented Holden from striking her with a killing blow.

Young Willie Barlow had not been so lucky. After the attack he had lapsed into unconsciousness, and it was obvious to Dr Pounden that he had sustained serious injuries. Examining his patient two days later, the medical man found that in addition to a scalp wound on the forehead, Barlow had suffered ‘a large, lacerated and contused wound’ on the left side of the skull, from which ‘brain matter was exuding’. Pounden called on Dr Leary for assistance, and on 8 November the two men carried out an operation on the unfortunate young man, in the course of which they discovered that Barlow had sustained ‘a compound, comminuted and depressed fracture of the skull.’

For the remainder of that year, and into January, Barlow remained unconscious, his condition worsening in spite of the best efforts of the doctors. By then it came apparent that a further operation was required if he were to survive. Operating on 22 January 1909, the doctors found that an abscess had formed around the skull fracture, and ‘matter was removed.’ Pounden and his colleague were aware that the patient’s brain had been damaged, and that much would depend on small bone fragments coming free ‘of themselves’. Afterwards Barlow seemed to recover and to be much better, but later that day he succumbed to his injuries. Holden, who had been remanded in custody several times, now faced a far more serious charge.

District Coroner D Whittingham held an inquest on the dead man on Tuesday, 26 January at the Portland Arms. Delayed by fog, he eventually arrived to hear evidence from David Holden, Samuel Beardall, Frankland Deuxberry, Annice Parkin and Ruth Stuart. Constable Hickling gave details of Holden’s arrest, and Dr Pounden provided the results of the post-mortem carried out by himself and Dr Leary. This had revealed additional damage to poor Barlow: ‘an extensive fracture of the skull running from the posterior part of the seat of injury across the vault to the base of the skull, just behind the ear. There was also a fracture of the skull on the left side just over the ear. Both fractures had united. An abscess had formed at the seat of that injury and spread downwards into the substance of the brain, and this eventually spread over the surface of the brain.’ The injuries were consistent with blows from a hatchet, and it was Pounden’s view that the back of the weapon had been used to deal the blows.

William Barlow informed the jury that, although his son had been paralysed down the right side and had trouble speaking, he had recovered consciousness in his last days and in a conversation with his father had given his version of events. Young Barlow had pleaded his innocence of any improper conduct, often crying and telling his father: There was no fault on me, Dad!’ According to him, he had been stopped in the street by Holden, who had called him into the house and challenged him to explain his relationship. Mrs Holden had ‘said something’ which Willie claimed not to have heard, and he then tried to get away, but was struck down from behind. William Barlow also recalled their conversation when Mrs Holden had shouted to his son from the open window, and relived his harrowing experience at the Holden house after Willie was injured.

Ruth Stuart and Annice Parkin testified to the incident outside the Portland Arms on Friday, 23 October, and the servant girl admitted that Mrs Holden often went round to the Barlow house, leaving Ruth in the house alone all day, while Willie Barlow visited the Holdens ‘as a friend’, but stated that she had never seen anything improper between them. She also remembered the conversation she had with James Holden, and the questions he had put to her. David Holden, Beardall and Deuxberry gave their recollections of the events of the night of 29 October, and a letter was read from James Holden, written from prison on 20 November and addressed to William Barlow. In it Holden expressed the hope that Willie would recover, and asked for his forgiveness, reminding the bereaved father that ‘God will forgive all those who ask for forgiveness of their sins of Him’. And signing himself’ yours in sorrow and repentance.’

In summing up, Mr Whittingham informed the jury that they must decide whether Holden was guilty of a premeditated and ‘maliciously committed’ attack, in which case the verdict must be wilful murder, or if he had acted under provocation and while in the grip of ‘a sudden passion’, which would mean he was guilty of manslaughter. After a four-hour inquiry, the jury returned a verdict of manslaughter against James Holden.

The funeral of Willie Barlow took place next day, when affecting scenes were observed. The mourners had gathered outside the house, and as the coffin was borne to the hearse they began to sing the hymn: ‘Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom / Lead thou me on.’ This proved too much for many of the family, who broke down in tears as it was sung. The grief-stricken relatives were driven by carriage to the Selston churchyard, followed on foot by other sympathising friends. At the gateway of the church, a crowd of spectators watched as the coffin was carried inside. After a moving service conducted by the vicar, Reverend C Harrison, Willie Barlow was buried in the churchyard, and several wreaths were laid.

Meanwhile, the case against James Holden had undergone further developments. The police, having communicated with the Treasury, had been informed that there was a case to answer on the charge of wilful murder, and the prisoner appeared to answer the charge before the Mansfield magistrates Thursday 28, January 1909. He was remanded in custody – for the fifteenth time – until the following Monday, when he was once more brought to court. Mr D H Prynne of London conducted the Prosecution, and Mr R A Young of Nottingham represented Holden. Once again the attack and the events leading up to it were detailed, and evidence was heard from the witnesses who had previously testified at the inquest, more than one of whom spoke to the previous good character of the accused. The only new witness, Nottingham Prison warder Walter Cook, confirmed that he had provided Holden with writing materials for the letter read before the inquest jury.

At the conclusion of proceedings the magistrate’s clerk charged Holden with wilful murder. Replying for the prisoner, Mr Young stated that his client pleaded not guilty to the charge, as he was already committed for trial on the manslaughter charge on the Coroner’s warrant. Holden was then committed for trial at the next Assizes to face the capital charge. There, on Tuesday, 23 February, he was found not guilty of murder, but guilty of manslaughter, and sentenced to seven years’ penal servitude.

The sentence sparked feelings of outrage in the village of Jacksdale, where James Holden was well regarded, and sympathy for his plight was expressed by others further afield. Whether or not Willie Barlow had been involved in an adulterous affair with Mrs Holden, the general view of James Holden was that of a wronged husband, of excellent character, driven to violence under extreme provocation. On Tuesday, 28 March 1911, with the prisoner having already served two of his seven years sentence, a public meeting wad held in the Providence Schoolroom at the neighbouring village of Pye Hill, in order to organise a petition on his behalf. Mr Charles Green presided, and explained the reason for the meeting having been called. He reminded those present of Holden’s ‘blameless life and exemplary conduct’, and the ‘sympathy extended to him’ by the people of Jacksdale and Selston parish, which had been shown by contributions made by 1,400 local people to raise money for his defence costs. It was the aim of Mr Green and his supporters to forward the petition to the proper authorities in the hope of obtaining the prisoner’s release or a reduction of his sentence. Procedures were set in motion, and a large number of volunteers undertook the collection of signatures. Within two months the petition had gathered 4,000 signatures, including that of Mansfield MP, Arthur B Markham, and was forwarded to the then Home Secretary, Winston Churchill. The man who would later lead his country in its resistance to Hitler in World War Two proved unsympathetic on this occasion. The petition was rejected, and the prisoner served out his full sentence of seven years.

Tormented by jealousy at the thought of his wife’s betrayal, and her adulterous affair – whether real or imagined – with a man young enough to be her son, James Holden lost control, making a murderous attack on the woman he loved and the young miner he saw as his rival. Those few moments of beserk rage cost Willie Barlow his life. Was he an innocent victim, as he claimed? Or did Holden have reason for his suspicions, as he and many others felt at the time? We may never know the answer.

James Holden, too, was scarred by the events of that October night in 1908. He paid for his crime with years spent in prison, a painful and shaming experience for one formerly regarded as a model citizen, and though in time he returned to that former life, one suspects that he was a changed man afterwards. It is most unlikely that he ever forgot the terrible crime he committed on the night of 29 October, when he struck out in a killing rage at his wife and younger man.

If anyone  knows the author of the above account please let us know as we would very much like to give him credit for this intriguing article....  Special thanks go to Jean Berrisford for transcribing this gristly tale.