Shocking murder at Ingleby Greenhow 100 years ago this week

It told how Frank Ward, 68, who for 40 years had worked as a brakesman on the railway line leading to the Rosedale Ironstone Mines, had failed to return home on Friday night after his weekly visit to the Dudley Arms in Ingleby Greenhow.

The Dudley Arms, Ingleby GreenhowHis frantic daughter, Violet, whom he lived with at Bank Bottom, had waited up all night for him and at dawn had raised the alarm.

His bloodied body was soon found in a nearby haystack with his skull caved in, his throat cut and his pockets rifled.

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The D&S said he had never reached the pub and that “it is stated locally, he was in the habit of carrying most of his money about with him, and it is believed he had anything between £60 and £100 upon his person”. He didn’t trust banks, his cottage had been broken into some months earlier and some cash had been stolen, so he now carried his life savings with him for safety.

“When the body was found there was no money in the pockets,” said the D&S.

The police’s investigations quickly took them to Poultry House Crossing, the home of Hubert Ernest Dalton, 38, a platelayer on the railway for 12 years and friend of the dead man.

Dalton, who was known as “Jerry”, was not at home, but he had been in The Dudley Arms the previous evening, and the police found incriminating evidence in his house, including the dead man’s purse in which was a railway ticket made out to “Frank Ward” as he and Violet were due to go on holiday that very day to Whitby.

As the police left the house, they spotted a figure lurching about in a field – it was Dalton, bleeding heavily from a throat wound. Dr Murray was called and stitched up the wound, and a search of the field discovered a blood-stained razor and a blood-stained hammer.

The police already had their case: Dalton knew of Mr Ward’s habit of carrying his money and so, on that dark walk to the pub, he had murdered him with the hammer and rifled his pockets. Fearing he had not finished the job, on his return from the pub, he had returned to the body and cut the throat.

When the police arrived at his property, he had turned the razor on himself, perhaps in an attempt to convince them that he, too, had been victim of a robber with a throat-cutting modus operandi.

St Andrew’s Church, Ingleby Greenhow: “The little ivy-covered church was too small to accommodate all those who attended” the funeral of murder victim railway worker Frank Ward 100 years ago this weekMr Ward’s funeral was held five days after his body was discovered. “People came from Stokesley and other of the more populous parts of this quiet Cleveland Dale, and from the hamlets on the sides of the well-known hills which run up to the famous Roseberry Topping,” said the D&S.

Coffinbearers – many of them railwaymen – arranged relays so that, 13 at a time, they could carry him on their shoulders from the Dudley Arms to the “little ivy-covered church, which was too small to accommodate all those who attended”.

Dalton faced two trials for murder, where his defence was insanity. In the first in York, in April 1925, the jury failed to reach a verdict; in the second, in Leeds in May, the jury needed just five minutes to find him guilty. There was no appeal, and he was hanged at Hull on June 10, 1925.

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