110 Moss Street - Part 2

On Tuesday 28th March 1876 seven-year-old Emily Holland set off from her home at 110 Moss Street* in her Sunday Best to go to St Alban’s RC School.  There was a Government Inspector coming that day and she wanted to look her best.  However, little Emily never made it home that day and her father James Holland searched frantically for her on the Tuesday evening and on Wednesday morning the police were called.  Emily was described as having a pale complexion and dark hair.  She was wearing a black dress, a black hat, boots and a purple and white scarf when she was last seen. The locals suspected the man responsible must have been known to Emily because she was a clever child who wouldn't have gone off with a stranger.

Emily had been seen talking to a scruffily dressed man who her friends had seen in the street at about the time she disappeared.  He was described as about 40 years of age, shortish at about 5' 6" and looking like a navvy. He had dark hair and was wearing a dark coat, vest and trousers. His description was sent out across the north of England and men were arrested as faraway as Leeds. However, the man seen in the street was eventually found and was discovered to have had no involvement.

Finally on Thursday, shortly before noon, a lady found a parcel in a field at the end of Bastwell Terrace, just off Whalley Road.  The parcel was wrapped in newspaper and contained the torso of a child.  PC Rostron was called and he took the parcel to the Police Station.  In 1876 there was no Forensic Science Service and very few detectives, none of whom were available to Blackburn’s police force.  Three doctors were asked to help; Dr Martland, Dr Cheesbrough and Dr Patchett.

  
The identity of the body was confirmed by Emily’s Aunt from a white birthmark on her back. The townspeople were horrified by the discovery and the search began for the missing body parts.  On Saturday the legs of the missing girl were discovered by Richard Fairclough in a culvert at Lower Cunliffe, also wrapped in newspaper, but even though thousands of people joined the search on the Sunday, the head and arms remained missing.

More people were arrested, including the local tobacconist on Birley Street, even though he was nowhere near the scene when Emily vanished.  A breakthrough in the case came when Dr Martland found hairs of varying lengths and colours when examining the body of Emily.  Some of these turned out to be men's whiskers.  He told the police that the body must have been dismembered on the floor of a barber's shop.

This new evidence led to the Police searching all of the barbers shops in Blackburn.  Nothing was found but the police’s suspicions were now focused on two local men – Denis Whitehead whose shop was on Birley Street, and William Fish whose shop was at 3 Moss Street.  Both shops were searched but nothing was found.  Whitehead was arrested but but was able to provide an alibi. When Emily's funeral  passed by William Fish's shop he was sat on the doorstep smoking his pipe.

A second search of 3 Moss Street also turned up nothing but then the police were offered the use of a bloodhound and decided to search both premises again.  This was done on Easter Sunday with the shop on Birley Street being searched first. The dog found nothing and was taken to Fish's shop. The building was a two-up two-down brick built terraced house and the front room, downstairs, was the shop with its barber’s chair and mirror, there was a fireplace in this and every room. The back room had a shallow sink and a pile of coal under the stairs. The two rooms upstairs were probably bare as Fish lived at 162 Moss Street with his family.  The dog lingered around the sink downstairs,but but no traces of blood could be found. William Fish, his wife and the Chief Constable accompanied the dog upstairs where the animal had no reaction in the back room, but in the front room it ran straight to the fireplace and started barking.  The dogs owner, startling the assembled people thrust his arm up the chimney and came out with a parcel in his hand.  In this, wrapped in a copy of the Manchester Courier, they found the charred skull of the girl and “some other bones”.

Fish must have known that the game was up and he said nothing as the parcel was opened.

Outside a large crowd of several thousand angry people had started to gather.  The police realised that if they got hold of Fish he would be killed and so Chief Constable Potts stood in the front doorway and talked to the crowd whilst his other police officers got everyone else in the house away down a back street.

When Potts told the crowd of their discoveries a huge cheer went up.

The next afternoon Fish told the police where the rest of the clothing was and that he wanted to make an confession “so that the innocent would not suffer.”

Fish’s Confession

I told Constable William Parkinson that I burnt part of the clothes, and put the other part under the coal in my shop; and now I wish to say I am guilty of murder.  I further wish to say that I do not want the innocent to suffer . At a few minutes after five o’clock in the evening, I was standing at my shop door, in Moss Street when the deceased child came past. She was going up Moss Street, I asked her to bring me one half–ounce of tobacco from Cox’s shop.  She went and brought it to me.  I asked her to go into my shop.  She did.  I asked her to go upstairs, and she did.  I went up with her.  I tried to abuse her, and she was nearly dead.  I then  cut her throat with a razor.  This was in the front room, near the fire.  I then carried the body downstairs into the shop; cut off her head, arms and legs; wrapped up the body in newspapers, on the floor; wrapped up the legs also in newspapers, and put those parcels into a box in the back kitchen.  The arms and head I put in the fire.  On the Wednesday afternoon I took the parcel containing the legs to Lower Cunliffe; and, at 9 o’clock that night, I took the parcel containing the body to a field at Bastwell, and threw it over the wall.  On Friday afternoon I burnt part of the clothing.
On the Wednesday morning, I took part of the head which was unburnt, and put it up the chimney, in the front bedroom.
I further wish to say that I did it all myself; no other person had anything to do with it.
The foregoing statement has been read over to me, and is correct.  It is my voluntary statement, and , before I made it, I was told that it would be taken down in writing , and given in evidence against me.
(Signed) WILLIAM FISH
Witnesses, Robert Eastwood, Superintendent
William Read, Superintendent
 Joseph Potts, Chief Constable

Fish came to trial at Liverpool Assizes in late July.  Even though Fish had confessed and told the police where to find the rest of Emily's clothes, the Judge, Justice Lindley, instructed that a plea of ‘insanity’ was entered on Fish’s behalf and appointed a lawyer, Mr Blair, to defend him.  After all of the evidence had been heard and summed up by the judge, the jury were asked to consider their verdict.  They didn't even bother to leave the Jury Box but conferred briefly amongst themselves and within a minute the Foreman of the Jury returned a verdict of “GUILTY.”

Fish’s last words, before the Judge passed the death sentence on him were “I never had such a thing in my head when I sent her for the ’bacca.”  William Fish was hanged at Kirkdale Goal on 14th August 1876.  Uniquely for a  nineteenth century murder case, there was no attempt to raise a public petition asking the Home Secretary to show mercy.

The murder of Emily Holland was, in its time a notorious case and raised some interesting issues which still resonate today.  It was the first time that a Bloodhound had been used to help detect evidence of a crime.  Later, in the most infamous crime of the nineteenth century, the Jack the Ripper murders, bloodhounds were used because a policeman remembered their successful use in the Emily Holland case.  The lack of police detectives in Blackburn at the time of the murder is also noteworthy as a very early example of the use of forensic science by the doctors assisting the police.

After his execution some of William Fish’s family history came to light, facts which of course didn't excuse his actions but maybe went some way towards explaining them. William’s mother died when he was three years old and his father then ran away leaving his children to be put into the Workhouse.  One day, whilst playing on the workhouse roof, William fell forty feet and landed on his head. It was astounding that he wasn't killed and he had to have three pieces of bone removed from his skull, which left his head misshapen and probably caused brain damage.

Today, very little survives to remind us of this terrible crime; the murder of a lively, bright and intelligent little girl on her way home after winning a prize at school.  The houses on Moss Street were all demolished in the late 1960's but Emily’s grave survives and can be found in Blackburn Cemetery.

*When researching this story, I found differing addresses for the Holland family, but as I first found out about Emily in a printed book which quoted the address as 110 Moss Street, that's the one I believe.