The Sleep of Reason: The James Bulger Case (3 page)

By way of recovering a perspective, this book begins with a catalogue of all the British cases I have been able to find of killings, or alleged killings, by children. With the exception of the first boy, the last child to be hanged, all were under the age of fourteen. The older records are the fruit of someone else’s research: in 1973 Patrick Wilson, spurred on perhaps by the Mary Bell case, wrote
Children
Who
Kill
,
a book long since out of print. The more recent examples I found filed in the news library of the
Sunday
Times.

The age of criminal responsibility in Britain was fixed at ten years by the 1963 revision of the Children and Young Persons Act. When implemented 30 years earlier, this Act had raised the minimum age to eight from seven, at which it had been fixed since the middle ages.

The law has also determined that a child becomes a young person on his or her fourteenth birthday. Between the ages of ten and fourteen children are presumed to be
doli
incapax
,
which literally means incapable of doing wrong. In practice, this means that the law presumes they are unable to understand the seriousness of their actions. To obtain a conviction the prosecution must rebut this presumption, proving to the court’s satisfaction that the child would have known the action to be seriously wrong, and not just mischievous or naughty.

*

In March 1831 John Any Bird Bell, aged fourteen, robbed and cut the throat of a thirteen-year-old boy who was collecting money for his father. Tried at Maidstone, Bell was found guilty of murder after two minutes’ discussion by the jury, who did not leave the box. The jury made a recommendation for mercy, on account of the dreadful state of ignorance he was in and the barbarous manner in which he had been brought up by his parents. The judge said it was his imperative duty to pass the death sentence. Bell was sentenced on a Friday and hanged on the Monday morning, outside Maidstone Gaol. Before he dropped, Bell cried, ‘All you people take heed by me!’ This to the crowd of 5000 who had come to see him go. There were 52 hangings in Britain that year. Bell was the last child to be hanged.

The earliest recorded killing by a child under the age of fourteen was in 1748, when William York, aged ten, was living in a Suffolk workhouse and sharing a bed with a five-year-old girl. He cut the girl with a knife and a billhook after she had fouled the bed, and stated in his confession that the devil put him up to committing the deed. Found guilty of murder and sentenced to death, York was granted a Royal pardon on condition that he enlist immediately in the Navy.

In 1778 at Huntingdon three girls aged eight, nine and ten were tried for the murder of a three-year-old girl. It was said that ‘the manner in which they committed this act was by fixing three pins at the end of a stick, which they thrust into the child’s body, which lacerated the private parts and soon turned to a mortification of which she languished for a few days and then died’. The girls were found to be
doli
incapax
and acquitted.

In 1847 in Hackney, a twelve-year-old, William Allnut Brown, stole ten sovereigns from his home, fired a gun near his grandfather, then poisoned the old man with his own arsenic. Brown was said to be a sickly and difficult boy. He was charged with murder and found guilty by the jury despite a plea of insanity. He was sentenced to death but reprieved.

In 1854, Alice Levick, aged ten, was living with an aunt and caring for the aunt’s baby. She was sent on an errand with the baby to collect some knives and forks. When found by a group of men, she was crying and carrying the baby, whose throat had been cut. She said a stranger had come up behind her in the woods and killed the baby. The inquest jury returned a verdict of wilful murder by Levick, but she was acquitted at her subsequent trial.

In 1855, in Liverpool, nine small boys were playing ‘cap on back’, a kind of leapfrog, in a brickfield. There was an argument over fair play between Alfred Fitz, aged nine, and a seven-year-old. Fitz hit the other boy with a half-brick. When he fell down, Fitz hit him again. Fitz called to John Breen, also aged nine, ‘Let’s throw him into the canal, or else we’ll be cotched.’ They carried the seven-year-old 40 yards to the Leeds-Liverpool Canal and threw him in, while the others watched. They all stood there until the boy disappeared. The body was found four days later in Stanley Dock. Fitz and Breen were tried for murder at Liverpool Crown Court. They were found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to twelve months at Liverpool Gaol where, the judge said, they would have a schoolmaster and a chaplain to instruct them, and be taught to earn their living.

In 1861, near Stockport, a two-year-old disappeared while playing near his home. His body was found the next day, a mile away in a field near Love Lane, face down in a brook and naked except for his clogs. A woman said she had seen two boys aged about eight walking with a child who was crying. One of the boys had been leading the child by the hand. She had asked them where they were going, and they had said they were going down Love Lane. Another woman had seen them in the field, when the child was
naked. She asked what they were doing with the child undressed, but they ignored her and moved away. Her son said he saw one of the boys hit the child with a twig.

James Bradley and Peter Barratt, both aged eight, were interviewed by a police officer. They admitted undressing the child, pushing him into the water and hitting him with sticks until he was dead. They referred to the child only as ‘it’. At Chester Assizes they became the youngest children to have faced a murder trial and the death sentence. Defence counsel said, ‘it must have happened in boyish mischief, they being unable to know right from wrong’. They were found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to one month in gaol, and five years in a reformatory.

In 1861, in County Durham, John Little, aged twelve and employed to do odd jobs at a farm, shot a young woman housekeeper with his master’s shotgun after an argument. He was charged with manslaughter, but acquitted on evidence that he did not understand firearms.

In 1881, in Carlisle, a thirteen-year-old girl was employed by a farming family to look after their three children. The two-year-old drowned suddenly, without explanation, and, not long after, the family’s baby drowned in some mud. At first the girl claimed a man had snatched the baby from her, but eventually she admitted, ‘I took the baby and put it in and nobody helped me.’ She was charged with murder and found guilty, with a recommendation to mercy. The death sentence was passed, then commuted to life imprisonment. No charge was ever brought over the death of the two-year-old.

In 1920, in London, a boy aged seven told a child he would drown him if the child did not hand over his toy aeroplane. When the child refused the boy pushed him into the canal and kicked his hands away while he tried to climb up the bank, until he drowned. The inquest returned a verdict of accidental death, and the truth only emerged later, when the boy was sent to a psychologist for the treatment of rages. There was no trial, and the boy was placed in care.

In 1921, in Redbourn, Hertfordshire, a boy aged thirteen beat his next-door neighbour to death with a hammer and a poker, while trying to steal money from her home. He climbed into a well to drown himself, but changed his mind and climbed out again. He was found guilty of murder and sentenced to be detained at His Majesty’s pleasure.

In 1938 a four-year-old girl disappeared while playing near her home. Her body was found the following morning in the conservatory of the house next door by the widowed mother of five children who lived there. The girl had been sexually assaulted and strangled. The widow’s 13-year-old son was questioned and denied involvement until his mother told him to tell the truth. He then admitted telling the girl to undress, and strangling her when she began to cry. He was said to be ‘retarded’ and a frequent truant. The trial
considered whether or not the boy knew that what he was doing was ‘seriously and gravely wrong’. He was acquitted, and placed in an Approved School.

In 1947, in a Welsh mining village, a four-year-old boy disappeared while out playing, and was found later that evening, drowned in the nearby river, his hands and ankles bound together. Three weeks after the killing, the boy’s nine-year-old playmate was questioned by police and said, ‘I tied him up with the cords of his shoes and threw him off the manhole into the river and he was drowned. I went home and was afraid to tell anyone.’ When charged, he replied, ‘I won’t do it again.’ He was acquitted of murder but found guilty of manslaughter, and ordered to be detained for ten years.

In 1947, in a Northern coastal town, a woman left her baby in a pram outside her husband’s shop while she was serving. When the pram and baby disappeared, a search was made and the baby was found drowned in a water-filled pit. A nine-year-old boy was questioned and admitted, ‘I took the pram from outside the shop. There was a baby in the pram and I threw it in the water. I just wanted to do it.’ The boy pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty of manslaughter, and was ordered to be detained for a maximum of five years.

In 1961, in a West London suburb, a twelve-year-old boy killed his 53-year-old mother with a knife after an argument, allegedly over a bacon sandwich. The boy was the youngest of three and home life was said to be ‘not entirely happy’. His parents had separated and reunited. At the time of the killing, his father, a taxi driver, was in hospital. Mother and son were said to quarrel frequently because of the boy’s violent temper. He was allowed to plead not guilty to murder and guilty to manslaughter, and was placed in the care of his local authority.

In 1967, in Crewe, a boy of ten was charged with murder after the stabbing of another ten-year-old boy in a school playground. The result of this charge is unknown. In Wakefield, a boy aged twelve was sentenced to seven years’ detention after pleading not guilty to murder but guilty of the manslaughter of a seven-year-old he drowned in a stream.

In 1968, in Islington, the coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death on a seven-month-old baby which had been battered to death. A pair of earrings were found in the baby’s eyes. The coroner said that two brothers, aged four and three, would have faced trial for murder if they had been older.

In 1968, in Newcastle, Mary Bell, aged eleven, and Norma Bell, aged thirteen, a neighbour but no relation, faced trial for the murder of a boy aged four and another boy aged three, whom they were accused of strangling. The first boy had been killed the day before Mary Bell’s eleventh birthday, the second two months later. Both girls pleaded not guilty to murder but, after hearing their evidence at the trial, the jury found Norma not guilty and Mary guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished
responsibility. Mary Bell was sentenced to detention for life. She was released in 1980, a week before her 23rd birthday, refusing at the time to change her name. She is now the mother of a ten-year-old child, living under a new name, with an injunction preventing its publication.

In 1972, in South Yorkshire, an eleven-year-old boy pleaded not guilty to the murder of a six-year-old he was said to have drowned. The accused was said to have suffered ‘organic brain damage’, and was acquitted after the judge directed the jury not to convict unless they were sure the boy knew that what he was doing was wrong. In Dundee, a girl aged thirteen was found guilty of killing a three-year-old girl she had suffocated while the child was in her care. She was sentenced to be detained for ten years.

In 1973, in Portsmouth, a boy aged twelve stabbed his mother and pleaded guilty to manslaughter. He was freed by the court after evidence that he had been under pressure from his parents over his schoolwork. He was placed on a three-year supervision order at his boarding school.

In 1973, in Liverpool, an eleven-year-old boy pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of a two-year-old child. He had hit the boy accidentally while throwing stones. Too scared to take him home, he held the child down in a pool of rainwater until he drowned. The boy was placed in the care of the local authority.

In 1975, in Sheffield, a thirteen-year-old boy beat an elderly woman to death with an iron bar. The boy lived near the woman, and sometimes ran errands for her. He had entered her flat to steal money for fireworks. He pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to be detained during Her Majesty’s pleasure.

In 1975, in east London, a boy of thirteen pleaded not guilty to the murder of a two-year-old girl, and the attempted murder of her five-year-old sister. He had stabbed the girls while they watched television alone in their flat. He told the police he was always getting the blame for teaching the girls to swear. He was found guilty of manslaughter and attempted murder, and sentenced to be detained for fourteen years.

In 1976, in Dunfermline, a thirteen-year-old boy stabbed and strangled a twelve-year-old girl. He later said he had joined the girl while she was fishing, believing her to be a boy. After urinating in some bushes, in full view of the girl, he had discovered she was female, and attacked her in anger and embarrassment. The boy admitted the murder and was ordered to be detained during Her Majesty’s pleasure.

In 1977, in Peckham, a twelve-year-old boy was the youngest of four people who attacked and killed a homeless man in a derelict house. One teenager was convicted of manslaughter, and the other three defendants were found guilty of murder. The twelve-year-old boy was ordered to be detained indefinitely.

In 1978, in Wolverhampton, two boys aged four and six were alleged to
have beaten to death an 84-year-old woman who lived alone in a flat. They were said to be among a group of local children who had previously been pestering and taunting the woman in her home. They were too young to face criminal charges.

In 1979, in Leicester, a nine-year-old boy admitted to police that he had killed his eight-month-old sister by attacking her with a penknife and a ballpoint pen as she lay in her cot. The boy was too young to face criminal charges.