Murder most foul at a pitman’s home

ON exposed Eldon Banktop, there is a thicket of trees. Their trunks are slender and their leaves are turning red. As a van passes, they flutter off, littering the road until another gust of tyre breeze blows them to the kerb, where they congregate around a name board.

“North Terrace”, it says.

Most of North Terrace has disappeared. Three houses on the right of the road remain, but on the left of the road, the little thicket of trees marks the spot where 35-year-old Ellen Mulholland was murdered in 1905.

“Killed by a bullet from a rifle discharged by James Garrigan, since deceased,” says her death certificate.

“Wilful murder.”

North Terrace is at the top of Cheapside, at the north end of Shildon, and Ellen’s sad demise only came to light when her distant family in North Wales requested her death certificate.

“It came as a shock,” said Marie St John, whose grandfather was married to Ellen at the time of the murder. “Nobody knew anything about this. It was never discussed.”

The Northern Echo’s headline of Tuesday, May 9, 1905, told of the violence of Ellen’s death. “Murder with a Lee-Metford”, it said. “A nephew’s crime at Old Shildon. The Murderer blows out his brains.”

Garrigan, 20, a miner, was lodging in 3, North Terrace with his aunt, Ellen, her husband, James, and their seven children.

“North Terrace is situated in the most pleasant part of Old Shildon,” said the Echo, “and the front of the houses have an extensive view of Auckland Park and the surrounding country district.”

At 3am on Monday, May 8, James left for work at Auckland Park colliery. All was peaceful until 6.30am when 12-year-old Francis Mulholland awoke to hear loud voices.

His mother said to the lodger: “Put that gun down, Jimmy, in the corner where it belongs.”

Garrigan refused and instead, loaded a cartridge into the Lee-Metford.

He spotted young Francis peeking down the stairs and said: “I dare you to come down another step. If you do, I’ll shoot you.”

Ellen said: “Oh, Jimmy, what are you going to do.”

She must have feared the answer because, wearing only her nightdress, she fled into her back yard and rushed round into her neighbour Mrs Ingram’s yard, shouting to her: “Oh, be sharp.”

Garrigan rested the rifle on the adjoining yard wall and took aim.

“The first shot missed, and the bullet lodged in the door beyond, to the depth of one inch,” said the Echo.

Ellen fell over in fright.

Garrigan reloaded. “He fired the second shot, this time hitting her in the breast,” said the Echo.

All was witnessed by poor Francis, who scurried out of the way as Garrigan returned to the house, loaded once more and went back outside.

“Going into the yard, he put the muzzle of the rifle to his ear whilst the butt end was on the ground,” said the Echo, sparing no detail.

“Garrigan then took his sock off and placed his big toe on the trigger. The rifle went off, and he fell dead in the yard on top of his little dog, which had followed him.

“Completely blowing his brains out, death was instantaneous.”

Ellen was clinging to life as Mrs Ingram carried her into her house. “Oh, Mrs Mulholland, what’s the reason of this,” she asked.

“But the deceased was too far gone to reply beyond asking if her children were all right,” said the Echo.

“She died about an hour afterwards.”

The report continued: “What the motive for the crime is there is, at present, not the slightest conjecture.

“Garrigan was the son of ex-Councillor George Garrigan, who for many years was a checkweighman at the Tursdale Collieries. He was also a volunteer, and had enlisted under the name of ‘James Jackson’.

“One peculiar feature about the affair is that Garrigan left behind him the following poetry, which he was seen to write by the little lad, Francis Mulholland, and which may possibly throw some light upon his mental condition, he apparently having been crossed by someone in a love affair.”

The Echo then printed the “love verses”, entitled I Loved You Better Than You Knew, which had been found on the dead man’s body.

REPORTERS in 1905 were operating in the pre-internet age. A quick Google search today and this lyric proves to be a fairly common US country song, although the first reported performance of it was not until 1928 when Miss Leone Duvall sang it in Pineville, Missouri.

The 1905 reporters were without the delights of YouTube because on there you can hear the first recorded performance of it by The Carter Family from Tennessee.

Despite the unhealthily maudlin nature of the lyric, the tune is not unpleasant.

The paper concluded its report: “Much sympathy is felt throughout the district with the sorrowing husband, who is left with seven children.”

Technology was, though, coming in. The following day, the Echo’s front page reported: “North Terrace, where the murder and suicide took place, continues to be invaded by numbers of people, several of whom have taken snapshot views of the house.” The fashionable now had cameras.

“The particular portion which claims the attention of the morbid and the curious is the backdoor from which Inspector Lowes extracted the first bullet.”

The authorities did not mess around in those days.

The inquests were held on May 10, about 60 hours after the tragedy.

The coroner heard that the incident had happened on the day before Garrigan’s 21st birthday, and that he had once been imprisoned in Wakefield Gaol for seven days for being drunk and disorderly.

A neighbour in North Terrace, James Stones, said he had given Garrigan five rifle cartridges because “he wanted to take them to pieces in order to make pocket-knives of them”.

Garrigan’s mother, Mary, came from Chester-le-Street to give evidence.

Her maiden name was Mulholland. She said her son was “not a steady man”, and that “on his father’s side, a cousin had been three times in Sedgefield Asylum”.

The jury concluded that Ellen had been murdered and that Garrigan had committed “suicide during temporary insanity”.

The Echo concluded its coverage of this sad story by saying: “The funeral of Mrs Mulholland and Garrigan took place at St John’s Church, Shildon, yesterday afternoon, and was witnessed by large crowds.”

AGED 40, James Mulholland was left a widower with five young children to feed (even though the Echo said seven).

James had been born in 1865 in Hardy’s Row, Shildon, where his father, an Irish immigrant, was a journeyman blacksmith.

In 1908, he remarried, to Mary Cooper who was 13 years his junior and a widow.

The 1911 census lists them as living at 74 Gurney Valley, a very poor mining community in the Dene Valley.

Crammed with them into their terraced house were James’ eldest sons, Daniel, 20, and Francis, 18, who had witnessed his mother’s murder. Both young men were listed as “poney putters in coal mine”.

Also in the small house were James’ other children, Dominick, 12, Robert, ten, and Ann, nine.

Plus his second wife Mary’s three children, who were aged from four to 13.

Plus Mary Alice, aged two, who was born a year after James remarried.

James was a hewer at Auckland Park Colliery and as such at the top of the mining food chain, working at the coalface and earning as good money as it was possible underground.

He died aged 72 in 1938 at 21, Brook Street, Coundon Grange.

■ If you are related to anyone mentioned in today’s Echo Memories, please contact either Chris Lloyd (details above) or James Mulholland’s family by emailing sarahst john@tiscali.co.uk With many thanks to Sarah St John for her help.