Crimes of Dr Gramshaw

Rosemary Cook

Description

Dr Gramshaw was a successful family doctor in Yorkshire for thirty-five years, until his final desperate actions brought his professional and personal life crashing down around him. It was Easter 1908 when he called at the Glynn Hotel in York to attend to a young woman called Margaret Brown, who had been his patient before and who wanted his advice again. By the end of the month, Margaret was dead and a Coroner's inquest was uncovering a lot of uncomfortable information about the young governess and the doctor who tried to help her.This is a fascinating and shocking story of love and lust, success and deceit, crimes and lies, adultery, bigamy and insanity. The events in it are true, reconstructed by detailed research into public records. As the truth emerges about the lies, deceits and crimes that infiltrated Dr Gramshaw's life, we are left to wonder: did anyone know about these before the final tragedy occurred? Should his family have seen what was happening? And why, when he was so popular, successful and respected that even after his exposure 1000 people attended his funeral, did Dr Gramshaw throw it all away so recklessly?

Sujets

• True crime

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 11 septembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781800467262
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2020 Rosemary Cook

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

Matador
9 Priory Business Park,
Wistow Road, Kibworth Beauchamp,
Leicestershire. LE8 0RX
Tel: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]
Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador
Twitter: @matadorbooks

ISBN 9781800467262

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

Front cover photograh first appeared in the Yorkshire Evening Post on 9 May 1908.

For Alison, who has lived with
Dr Gramshaw for a long time now
Contents
Prologue

1. ‘The Sensational Case at York’
2. The making of Dr Gramshaw
3. The Gramshaws in Stillington
4. The ‘Village Doctor’
5. A flexible approach to the truth
6. Problems in Stillington
7. Trouble in York
8. The inquest witness
9. The Inquest: Day One – 28 April 1908
10. The Inquest:Day Two – 4 May 1908
11. The affair at Nottingham
12. The ‘clever woman’ Mrs Jennings
13. Inquest interrupted
14. A verdict
15. A village farewell
16. The end of the affair
17. Dr Shore and the two Mrs Shores
18. The widow, the dentist and the young lady’s teeth
19. Aftermath – the sons
20. The family in Merchant’s Quay
21. Hilda Gramshaw and Kenneth Allan
22. Amy the art student
23. ‘May they rest in peace and rise in glory’
24. Crimes and lies
25. The three wives of Dr Warder
26. The third Mrs Warder
27. Seeking Dr Gramshaw

Photographs
A word about sources
References/sources
Acknowledgements
Prologue
After his death, the Yorkshire Evening Post published a photograph of the late Dr Farbrace Sidney Gramshaw. In this image, he looks like the archetypal Victorian criminal. His hair is shaved close to his scalp, though he has a bushy black beard. Pictured in quarter profile, he stares straight ahead, unsmiling, his eyes deeply shadowed under prominent brows. He even wears a striped shirt reminiscent of prison-issue clothing.
But Dr Gramshaw was never in prison. He was never even convicted of a serious crime. The origin of this photograph – apparently the only remaining image of the man who was a family doctor in Yorkshire for 35 years – is unknown. But he did have a lot of dealings with the justice system, as witness and as defendant. And it is likely that it was only his own death that saved him from finally experiencing the reality of prison life; and maybe even the ultimate sanction of capital punishment.
This is a true story. It is put together from newspaper accounts, official records and local sources. Although the litany of love and lust, success and deceit, crimes and lies, adultery, bigamy and insanity has all the ingredients of a gothic novel, for the Gramshaw family – sons and daughters as well as the man at the centre of the story – it was stark reality with tragic consequences. This is their story.
Chapter 1
‘The Sensational Case at York’
Dr Gramshaw spent the last day of his conscious life in court. It was 4 May 1908 and outside the imposing edifice of the Law Courts in York, the city was dank and cold after an unseasonably snowy and cold period at the end of April. Inside the courtroom, five doctors, two solicitors, the Town Clerk (representing the Chief Constable) and nine witnesses were due to give evidence in what the papers were calling ‘the sensational case at York.’ This was the second day of the proceedings, and Dr Gramshaw had already given his evidence in a long session on day one. Spectators in court for the second session noticed that he seemed distracted and listless; he was described as seeming ‘more or less indifferent to the proceedings’. He even appeared to doze at intervals: later it would be reported that he said he had not slept for days. At other times, he was seen to be drawing and writing in a red-covered notebook. His solicitor sat with him and consulted him when the court asked if the doctor wanted to add to his previous evidence. Dr Gramshaw declined.
The case they were attending was the inquest into the death of a 19-year old governess called Margaret Eleanor Brown. The first day’s proceedings had taken place six days before, on 28 April, in front of the Coroner, Mr John Wood, the Chief Constable, the medical men and members of Margaret’s family. Her sister Alison Brown, who was seven years older than Margaret and also a governess, told the Coroner that she and her sister had arranged a holiday in York for Easter. Alison was working in Hurstpierpoint in West Sussex, and Margaret had a post in Thornton Watlass in North Yorkshire. The sisters were to meet in York, as Margaret said she could not afford the trip down to Brighton. The family had previously lived in York for many years, so this was familiar territory. Margaret had been born in the city, and the rest of the family, including Margaret’s two older sisters, had only left to move south in 1902. However, their plans for time together at Easter changed, when Alison wrote to say that she could not come up to York. So Margaret made the trip alone, travelling by train from North Yorkshire, with her luggage, so the proprietor of her hotel reported, in a Japanese basket.
Margaret’s destination was the Glynn Temperance Hotel in the cobbled road called Micklegate, leading from one of the ‘bars’ or gates in the city walls across the river into the city centre. Elizabeth Dennison, the proprietor of the hotel, was only 29 years old. She had taken over the hotel with her husband Luke on 4 April, and the booking for Margaret and her sister’s stay was made on 6 April, for their arrival on 15 April.
The booking was made by Dr Gramshaw, whom Mrs Dennison understood to be the young woman’s guardian. He told the inquest that he had known the deceased and her sisters very well and had attended them all. Margaret had written to him, he said, wanting to consult him about her health. Dr Gramshaw had suggested that she come to York and invite her older sister, Alison, to come too. In fact, he wrote to Alison himself, suggesting the arrangement. He called Mrs Dennison and engaged rooms for two young ladies. When Alison wrote back to say that she could not come, Dr Gramshaw asked Mrs Dennison book a front room at the hotel for Margaret, and ‘to be a mother to her’ during her stay.
Margaret arrived in York on Wednesday 15 April. Dr Gramshaw visited her that evening and told the inquest that she did not look well and was particularly depressed. She feared that she was pregnant, though the doctor said that ‘he very much doubted if she were.’ Dr Gramshaw visited again on the Thursday, and the next day, which was Good Friday, the start of the Easter weekend. On that day, he said, he found that she was about to miscarry. He sent for his nephew, a fifth year medical student at Newcastle currently staying with his uncle in York, who brought a medical bag and chloroform to the hotel. Dr Gramshaw also sent for nurses to attend to the girl and told Mrs Dennison that evening that Margaret had had a miscarriage. Over Easter weekend, Margaret’s condition worsened. By Easter Sunday, her temperature was 104 o , and Dr Gramshaw called another doctor, Dr Fell, who visited and advised on the case. Dr Gramshaw also wanted to call Margaret’s parents but, he told the inquest, she ‘absolutely refused’ permission for him to do so.
On Easter Monday, Dr Gramshaw wrote to the family who employed Margaret as a governess in Thornton Watlass about her illness. In fact, he wrote twice. His first letter said that she had ‘not much wrong with her’ on her arrival in York, but that she was not so well on the Thursday. Later, he wrote, she had had ‘a severe attack of blood poisoning’ starting on Saturday, with a temperature of 105 o , and he had had to get the services of three nurses. However, this letter said that ‘he trusted she would be quite well in a few days.’ His second letter spoke of a relapse, and that she was ‘very ill.’
On Tuesday 21 April, Dr Gramshaw telegraphed Margaret’s parents, and they and her sister Alison started the long journey from Sussex to Yorkshire. They arrived on the Thursday and endured a turbulent few days, with a stream of official and medical visitors coming in and out of the hotel bedroom. In spite of the best efforts of the doctors and nurses who attended, her family must have seen that the battle for the young girl’s life was being lost. Margaret died from acute peritonitis on Sunday 26 April. It had been nine painful days since she lost her baby.
Perhaps Dr Gramshaw was reflecting on this failure as he sat through the second day of the inquest, a week later. He was a well-known York doctor, a member of many medical and professional societies, who had practised his profession in the county for 35 years. At 54 years old he was in his prime, described by the papers as ‘a tall, fine-looking man with a bushy beard and whiskers.’ He was an impressive figure, accustomed to wearing a gold watch and chain, a plain gold ring, a signet ring and an engraved Indian ring. The only known photograph of him shows him with close-cropped hair but a full moustache and a beard down to his chest. He has a broad forehead a