Background
Forty-two-year-old Margaret Allen was a transgender lesbian who dressed in men’s clothes and preferred to be called “Bill.” She lived in a two-room dwelling at 137 Bacup Road in Rawtenstall, a former police station.
Margaret was born in 1906, the 20th of 22 children in her family, and since her early 20s had rejected her femininity and wanted to be a man. She claimed to have had a gender change operation in 1935, which is unlikely, but afterward behaved as a man—cutting her hair short and wearing masculine clothes.
Her mother died in 1943, and she took the loss very hard. She smoked heavily and did not eat properly. In 1945 she received medical treatment for attacks of dizziness and depression.
She had worked as a bus conductress for the local Rawtenstall Corporation bus company but was dismissed for rude and aggressive behaviour toward passengers. At the time of the murder, she was unemployed.
The Crime
Around 9:20 a.m. on the morning of Saturday, August 28, 1948, sixty-eight-year-old wealthy but eccentric neighbour Nancy Ellen Chadwick called at Margaret’s home, wanting to borrow a cup of sugar. The two women did not get on well; Margaret found her irritating.
At some point, Margaret battered Nancy to death with a coal hammer, leaving bloodstains on the wall inside the front door. She put Nancy’s body in the coal cellar, then went out with her only real friend, Annie Cook. Later, she had a couple of drinks in the Ashworth Arms before going to bed.
She couldn’t sleep, thinking about the body in the cellar, and finally got up and decided to drag it to the road at the junction of Fallbarn Close and Bacup Road, where it was noticed by Herbert Beaumont, a passing bus driver, at 3:35 a.m. on Sunday, August 29. Nancy was lying face down with her grey coat drawn up, partially covering the head wounds.
Another bus driver, Arthur Marshall, told police the body had not been there when he passed 15 minutes earlier. Had it been placed there in the hope that authorities would believe Nancy was the victim of a hit-and-run accident? A post-mortem was carried out by Dr. Gilbert Bailey of Blackburn.
Police responded to the discovery of the body and noted that Margaret was taking a keen interest in their search. She pointed out Nancy’s handbag floating in the River Irwell across the street. It was noted that Nancy’s purse was missing.
Margaret was formally interviewed by Detective Chief Inspector Stevens of Scotland Yard on September 1, when bloodstains were discovered in her home. She confessed to the murder, telling officers, “I didn’t do it for money, I was in one of my funny moods.”
She said, “I just happened to look around and saw the hammer in the kitchen. Then, on the spur of the moment, I hit her with it. She gave a loud shout and that seemed to start me off more, and so I hit her a few times more, I don’t know how many.”
She was arrested and appeared before the local magistrates’ court on Thursday, September 2, 1948—her 42nd birthday.
Trial
The magistrates remanded her in custody, and she was committed for trial at Manchester Assizes. The trial, before Mr. Justice Sellars, took place on December 8, 1948, and lasted just five hours.
The prosecution, led by A. Dennis Gerrard, put forward robbery as the motive and relied on Margaret’s clear and lucid confession. Her defence, led by William Gormann K.C., was one of insanity, but this was rejected by the jury after just 15 minutes of deliberation.
Margaret chose a man’s suit for the trial—an action that did her no favours with the jury. A petition to commute her death sentence, organised by her friend Annie Cook, received only 162 signatures.
Annie Cook visited Margaret in Strangeways on Monday, January 10, and found her cheerful and still expecting a reprieve. On Tuesday, January 11, it was made known that the Home Secretary, Mr. Chuter Ede, saw no grounds for clemency. The decision was communicated to Margaret by the governor, Mr. C. T. Cape.
Execution
Margaret was hanged by Albert Pierrepoint, assisted by Harry Kirk, on Wednesday, January 12, 1949. This was the first female execution in Britain for over 12 years (since Charlotte Bryant in 1936) and only the third female hanging at Strangeways Prison in Manchester.
Margaret was not permitted to wear her preferred men’s clothing and was given a prison dress instead. It was reported that she kicked over her breakfast, exclaiming, “I don’t want it, and no one else is going to enjoy it!”
The chaplain of Strangeways, the Rev. Arthur Walker, who witnessed the execution, testified before the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment in 1950 that Margaret had met her end bravely but that he felt no woman should be hanged. The execution had taken a serious toll on his health and that of others present.
Support the Archive
If you have found this article useful and would like to help preserve and maintain this historical archive, please consider supporting the site.