A dark family secret
My maternal grandmother, Florence Margery Baxter, was born in Liverpool in 1905. She died when I was only 18 months old, so sadly I have no memories of her. I am told I used to terrify her by hauling myself up to my feet using her wheelchair and then rock a wheel back and forth spinning her around. Florence suffered from multiple sclerosis and had been wheelchair bound for many years. My mother, being the youngest child, remained at home to help look after her, and as a result of spending much time in her company during her teenage years, got to hear many of the family stories.
After a lot of digging by myself and cousins, these stories about Florence’s family have proved to be founded in the truth. Stories about her father being an American, owning a Ship’s Chandlers business in the Liverpool docks, and his name being painted in large letters on a wall there have all been found to be more or less correct.
I have found some confusion between stories about my grandmothers family and those of my grandfather’s family, which is understandable as they were third-hand by the time they reached me, and being born into the workhouse and raised in a children’s home, my grandfather’s background was a bit of a mystery to say the least.
The intriguing story that was hard to ignore though, was of my grandmother’s mother supposedly drinking all the profits of the Chandler’s business and then something darker. The full story was never revealed, but mum recalled one heated outburst during a typical mother / teenager row. ‘You will end up no good like your grandmother with that temper’ and then let slip something about murdering a child. No mention was made of it again, but it was one of those things that leave you speechless and unable to forget.
Years later, when asking other members of the family about the ‘murder’, enquiries were met with blank looks. If it were true, there must be a record somewhere. And it turns out there is. At the time it was in all the national newspapers!
This photograph shows Florence seated on the right, with her younger sister Edith, brother Harry and half-brother Frank Hallis. Florence’s sister Ida is not in the photo, but being nine years older, she had by then left home and married. Florence looks to me the spitting image of my niece when she was about the same age.
The fact that the children are together suggests that this is shortly after Florence’s Father, William Baxter had died, she had returned to live with her mother, who she apparently hated.
Also missing from the photograph are the two older brothers that Florence never knew. William Frederick Baxter, born in 1892, and Alexander Baxter, born in 1895, both died at the hands of their mother in 1896 in what became known at the time as the Sefton Tragedy.
Ida Maloney Baxter, in a moment of insanity, in what we would know today as post natal depression, cut their throats with a razor and then attempted suicide herself. It does not need me here to describe the terrible details, as a simple Google search for the Sefton Tragedy 1896 will easily find the full story. Florence’s sister Ida, then a new born baby, was left unharmed, sleeping upstairs in the cottage where the tragedy took place.
Ida Maloney pleaded guilty to murder at her trial but the Judge, surprisingly enlightened for the times, refused to accept the plea. She was put to trial and found to be insane. Rather than the prospect of facing the hangman’s noose for murder, she was instead sentenced to be detained at Broadmoor Hospital for the duration of Her Majesty’s pleasure.
Ida Maloney Fox had been just 18 years old when she married 30 year old William Baxter in 1890. The couple were married in Litherland, Liverpool, where William was operating as a Hay, Corn & Straw Dealer alongside the Leeds to Liverpool canal. (Not a Ships Chandler’s business or in the docks as the story had been handed down, but pretty close). A Victorian postcard image of the area shows William’s name painted high up on the gable end of the building. (Another memory validated).
The 1891 census lists the newly weds living at the business premises at number 8 Sefton Street and gives William’s birthplace as North America. Other documents give his place of birth as Indiana, but at present, no record can be found of his arrival in England. Interestingly, my own DNA analysis performed by Ancestry does show a linkage to early settlers of Ohio & Indiana.
By 1892 William’s business was made bankrupt with creditors owed £227 against total assets amounting to £120. William went to work for a local miller and took a cottage in Gorsey Lane. By 1896 William and Ida had three children. William, Alexander and Ida.
One morning, after William left for work, his wife for reasons unknown, cut the throats of the two boys and ran hysterical into the street while trying to cut her own wrists.
Up until that point she had apparently behaved entirely normally and was regarded as a loving mother. She was at times hysterical during the inquest and her trial, with her husband William giving evidence of her previous normal and loving behaviour.
She was spared being found guilty of murder and sentenced to detention at Broadmoor, a high security Mental Hospital. Records for Broadmoor tend to be ‘sealed’ until 100 years after the patients death but the archivist has been able to provide some scant details.
“On admission, Ida was described as a ‘tall, respectable looking strong woman’. She was diagnosed with ‘puerperal insanity’ [post natal depression], considered to have begun after the birth of her daughter in October 1895.
She was placed in the infirmary ward for the first two months of her stay, as she was considered to be a suicide risk. Thereafter she was placed on a permanent ward, almost certainly in the female Block 1, which was for convalescing patients. She wrote regularly to an (unnamed) cousin”.
You will notice that there is no mention of my grandmother Florence or her younger siblings yet. That is simply because they were born after her release from Broadmoor. Her husband William petitioned for her release via his employer. His first petition in 1900 was refused as the risk that she might fall pregnant again was too great. However a second attempt in 1901 was succesful and she was returned to the care of her husband to live in Great Crosby, Liverpool.
In 1905 my grandmother was born, followed by a sister, Edith in 1908 and a brother Harry in 1910. By 1911 the family was split. When the census was taken that year William was living in a small two up, two down terraced house, 21 Ismay Road alongside the canal in Litherland. Living with him are his daughters, Ida now 15 years old, Florence aged six and young Harry, just a year old.
Ida Maloney Baxter was living in Treherbert in the Rhondda valley in Wales. She is listed in the census as living with John Hallis and has falsely given her own surname as Hallis. She has her young daughter with her, but under the name of Edith Hallis rather than Baxter.
It was just a year later in 1912 that William Baxter died of heart failure aged just 52. Presumably at that point, all the children went to their mother in the Rhondda and that is when the photograph was taken of the children together. Ida continued to live with John Hallis, took his surname, but never married him. In 1913 the couple had a son together, Frank Hallis. The group photo was probably taken around 1916, when Florence would have been aged about ten and her older sister, Ida junior, had already married.
The relationship between the children and their mother was not good and Florence left home at 16, finding work as a domestic servant in the University at Aberystwyth. Her sister Ida married and then moved with her family to Luton. I have been told that those remaining in Wales were almost forbidden by their mother to talk to those who had moved away. The murders were not spoken about and the skeletons were firmly locked in the closet. Almost.
My grandmother left Aberystwyth to take up a domestic servant role in a private house in Nether Street in Finchley. It was in Finchley that she met my Grandfather who was a soldier at nearby Mill Hill barracks. A story for another time!
Her sister Ida wanted to avoid the danger of her sons having to work in the mines, so the family moved to Luton where her husband Evan Breeze found work in the Vauxhall factory that built cars and commercial vehicles. Ironically he was killed with many others when the plant was attacked in a surprise Luftwaffe air raid during the second world war.
The two brothers remained in Wales.
Ida Maloney Baxter / Hallis died in 1958, only 3 years before her daughter Florence (my grandmother). John Hallis had died in 1955.
In the 1950s, wondering if her mother was still alive, Florence wrote to the registry office in Tonypandy. (I think there was an insurance policy to be cashed) She was surprised to receive a letter back from her own cousin who was now the Registrar!
Had the judge in 1896 decided to accept Ada Maloney’s guilty plea to murder, then she would quite possibly have been hanged. If that was the case then I certainly would not be here today, nor would many cousins, aunts and uncles, nor all our children. What a thought!
Among her eventual many grandchildren Ada Maloney could count a professional cricketer (Michael Bear – Essex) and a rugby Player capped for Wales (Lyn Baxter – Cardiff RFC). Cousins that mum talked about, but we were never sure existed!