Free The Cretingham Murder by Sheila Hardy Page A

where they were and everyone else had to leave. One imagines that the witnesses and spectators had to stand outside until after ‘a short interval’ they were readmitted to hear the foreman of the jury deliver the verdict of ‘wilful murder’.
    In reading out the verdict, the coroner, Mr Brooke, named the prisoner as Arthur Edgar Gilbert-Cooper. Arthur corrected him, pointing out that his second name was Edward not Edgar. The coroner, having made the amendment, explained that the jury had found him guilty of wilful murder.
    Prisoner : The jury have?
    Coroner : Yes.
    Prisoner : (contemptuously) Oh. I can only say it was not wilful.
    Mr Brooke advised Arthur to say nothing more. The warrant for his committal for trial was made out and he was ordered back to Framlingham.
    These accounts taken from the Suffolk Times and Mercury can be taken as reasonably accurate since they correspond with the handwritten testimonies produced at the inquest and now lodged at the Public Record Office at Kew. With the statements there is also a handwritten list of the coroner and jury members. Beside each name is written the sum of £8, the fee received for their service. There is also a bill headed the Crown Hotel, Framlingham – Family, Commercial and Posting House. Made out to Supt Balls, it is for the hire of a brougham, to and from Cretingham for 7 s 6 d . A further 2 s was charged for the driver and horse.
    This was the carriage used to transport the prisoner, which itself became the focus of attention. At the conclusion of the inquest, a large and mainly hostile crowd had gathered in the street outside The Bell. When it was thought that Arthur was to be brought out, the crowd surged around the carriage with shouts of ‘hang him!’ Fearing the mob might take matters into their own hands, the police kept Arthur back, put a decoy into the brougham and ordered it to drive off as fast as possible. With the angry crowd pursuing it, Arthur was brought out; the carriage did a rapid turnabout back to The Bell, picked up its passenger and his guards and was smartly off before the crowd realized they had been duped.
    The village was slowly coming to terms with being a centre of macabre interest. By the time the inquest had been reported in the local press, the nationals were on to it and by Thursday when the Magistrates’ Court took place, journalists had descended on the area from The Times , the London Reporting Association , the Pall Mall Gazette , the Pictorial News and The Illustrated Police News as well as those from Norwich and surrounding areas. Other newspapers around the country took their stories from one or other of these sources. The Cretingham murder was the talking point of the moment.
    The local daily papers were, of course, at an advantage but one can’t help sympathising with the weekly Suffolk Chronicle and the Framlingham News which had to wait until Saturday before they could apprise their readers of all that had taken place. A reporter from the Ipswich evening paper, the Star of the East , managed a scoop. He was in the village for the inquest and on the following day, Tuesday, he sounded out the locals for their reactions. They were, he declared, very divided on Mr Juby’s line of questioning. There were some who no doubt felt that village gossip should remain there, in the village, and not be blazoned abroad for all to share. Strolling up through Cretingham, the reporter ventured to the vicarage itself where he was fortunate to encounter one of the late vicar’s sons walking in the grounds. This, he stated, was Mr William Henry Farley whose address was given as Walton-on-the-Naze in Essex. His proximity to Suffolk may account for why he was the first of the family to arrive. He obviously had little of any importance to relate and so, somewhat surprisingly, directed the press representative to Mrs Farley herself.
    Under the pretext of finding out the time of the funeral, he was ‘accorded a courteous reception’ by