Diss Family History Group

On the 31st May 1902, the Treaty of Vereeniging was signed at Pretoria bringing an end to the Second Boar War, and that evening “A Very Edwardian Murder” took place in Peasenhall.

These pages are the result of an extremely interesting talk given to the Diss Family History Group by Nick Woods and has stimulated several members to do some research into this.

Report on the D.F.H.G. Meeting on 17th April 2024

Nick Woods gave us a comprehensive account of the circumstances surrounding the murder of a young woman in Peasenhall in 1902, and asked us to decide who the guilty party was. He explained that investigators always look for MMO (the means, the motive and the opportunity) but this is not sufficient to gain a conviction. The murder of Rose Harsent has fascinated historians and criminologists for over 120 years and many books have been written, but it remains unsolved. One person was tried twice for the murder and not convicted.

(Rose Annie Harsent)

As a cold case, the evidence is largely circumstantial and pretty much a random mishmash of supposition and conjecture. There are a few hard cold facts but no witnesses and no conclusive evidence to enable a satisfactory answer.

The population of Peasenhall in the 1900s was about 700 people living in 180 houses about 10 miles from the coast at Dunwich and about 7 miles north of Saxmundham. In 1901 many men worked in Smyth’s Seed Drill Works and attended the Primitive Methodist Chapel in neighbouring Sibton. The choirmaster of the chapel was William Gardiner and the choir members included 22 year old Rose Anne Harsent, a domestic servant employed by Mr and Mrs Crisp at Providence House in Peasenhall.

(Providence House (now Stuart House))

Stuart House (previously Providence House) was originally built in the 15th/16th century and stands at the corner of Hackney Road and Church Street in Peasenhall.

At 8.40 am on Sunday June 1st 1902, William Harsent (father of Rose) came to Providence House to bring fresh linen, milk and bed clothes for his daughter. As he approached the house from the rear through the yard into the conservatory (which led into the scullery where Rose worked) William noticed it was still very dark. This was unusual because Rose would usually be preparing the house for the day. The window into the conservatory was blocked with a shawl of some kind. In the corner, William saw his daughter lying at the foot of the stairs which led up to her bedroom. Her head was against the bottom of the step and her feet were facing the door where he’d just come in. When he touched her, she was quite cold and there was a lot of blood on the floor. There was a strong smell of paraffin and burning about the room. William covered Rose with a rug and went to get help. As he was going outside, he bumped into James Crisp who had come to make an early morning visit to his brother, who was still in bed upstairs.

James Crisp went to find Dr Lay who confirmed Rose’s death. William Harsent went upstairs to tell the occupants that Rose was dead in the kitchen. Mrs Crisp said that she had spoken to Rose about 10 pm to wish her a good night. She thought that she had heard Rose cry out in the night but her husband had dissuaded her from going downstairs. There had been a terrific thunderstorm in the village that night.

At first Dr Lay considered that this was a terrible accident, maybe even suicide; maybe the girl tripped coming down the stairs and cut herself on the glass from the oil lamp that she was carrying. However examining the body, the deceased had wounds in her upper chest, her neck and her hands. There was a broken medicine bottle on the floor which had previously held camphorated oil but now contained paraffin. The doctor and PC Eli Nunn collected all the parts of the bottle and sent them to the Home Office for analysis. A small piece of woollen blue cloth and a spent matchstick were found amongst the broken parts of the bottle and it was ascertained eventually that the label showed the bottle had been prescribed for William Gardiner’s children some six months earlier.

Once PC Nunn had noticed the position of everything in the kitchen, he and the doctor both went up to the deceased’s bedroom. The bed had not been slept in, although there was a depression on it suggesting that someone sat on it for a while. Next to the bed was an envelope addressed to the deceased with Peasenhall and Yoxford postmarks. It contained an unsigned letter. In the chest of drawers was a bundle of around 20 letters: some were from family, some were from local men. There were also two letters from William Gardiner, the married Methodist minister who lived in the village. Dr Lay still thought that this was a suicide or an accident. However PC Nunn sent for senior assistance from Halesworth (seven miles away) and the body was taken later that day to the Swan public house and locked in a barn behind the building. A post mortem taken a couple of days later soon determined that the wounds were not self inflicted. The throat had been cut; there was an attempt to burn the body; and the deceased had been six months pregnant.

The unsigned letter found in Rose’s bedroom by PC Nunn had been delivered during the afternoon of Saturday May 31st. It stated the following:

DR, I will try and see you tonight at 12 o'clock at your place. If you put a light in your window at 10 o'clock for about 10 minutes then you can take it out again. Don't have a light in your room at 12 as I will come round to the back.

The envelope was marked Peasenhall near Saxmundham which suggests that the writer wasn’t local but was this a ruse to disguise the fact that the writer was actually a local person?

Rose wasn’t short of male admirers; one of them being Frederick Davis who lived in the middle part of Providence House, between the part lived in by William Crisp and the part owned by his brother James Crisp. Frederick Davis was several years younger than Rose and he often wrote her poems and suggestive letters.

The main suspect of the crime was William Gardiner. He was arrested and taken into custody by local police on 3rd June 1902. Rumours surrounding his relationship with Rose had begun the year before in May 1901 after two young men, Alphonso Skinner and William Wright, overheard a conversation between Rose and William Gardiner at the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in Peasenhall, known as ‘The Doctors Chapel’. Mrs Crisp, Rose’s employer, attended this chapel and Rose’s tasks included cleaning there.

It was alleged that Gardiner was the father of the unborn child. He lived on the main street of Peasenhall with his wife and six children, in a small semi-detached cottage, within sight of Providence House where the murder was committed. He had been seen by a neighbour at about 10 pm on the night of the murder outside his cottage from where he could see the upper window of the gable of Providence House at the same time a light was seen burning in it. At 7.30 am on the morning of 1st June 1902 he was seen at his cottage going into his back yard where a fire was seen to be alight in the wash-house.

A piece of evidence came to light concerning footprints. A gamekeeper named James Morriss passed through the main street of the village about 5 o’clock on the morning of the murder. He declared that he had noticed a series of footmarks in the wet soil following the rain which led from Gardiner’s cottage to Providence House. Morriss was aware of the stories that had circulated in the village concerning William Gardiner and Rose Harsent. He thought that the prints had been made by rubber-soled shoes. It was subsequently discovered that Gardiner possessed a pair of rubber soled shoes which would match the imprints that Morriss had seen. In addition, the police found a pocket knife belonging to William Gardiner that had recently been scraped and cleaned but traces of recent mammalian blood were found in the hinge.

William Gardiner was tried twice at Ipswich Assizes. Both times the jury was unable to reach a verdict. It was said that at the first trial the jury was split eleven to one in favour of guilty, and the second eleven to one in favour of not guilty. Gardiner is one of the few people in English history to have been tried for murder and to have no verdict ever returned. He died in 1941.

By Amanda Park, 2024