Maisie Violet Lees was born in Walsall on the 2nd January 1917 to father Arthur Edmund Lees, a Filer from Wednesbury, and mother Ellen Lentus Lees (nee Smith) from Walsall, daughter of Sarah Jane Molineux of the wealthy and prominent Wolverhampton Molineux family.
The eldest of 5 children, Maisie married long- distance lorry driver James Bagnall (aka Jimmy the Gent) from Walsall on 30th July 1935 when she was just 18 years old and they went on to have 3 children together. James Bagnall was my maternal great-uncle, and Maisie would have been my great-aunt.
In 1942 Maisie was working with her sister-in-law Florence Benton (nee Bagnall) as a barmaid and cleaner at The Stand Tavern public house in Newport Street, Walsall just a few doors away from where she and James rented the front sitting room and a rear bedroom of a house belonging to the Cooper family, and it is in that sitting room that on 28th August 1942, police discovered the body of 25 year old Maisie Bagnall slumped across the sofa. She had been strangled.
At some time between 11:00pm and 11:30pm on 27th August, Maisie left The Stand Tavern along with Florence and the relief licensee, at which point Maisie quickly called back home before both she and Florence said good night to the relief licensee and made their way to Florence’s home just around the corner in Little Newport Street. Maisie left for home a little before Midnight and had at no time mentioned anyone being in the front sitting room of the house when she called home earlier that night. James was working away at the time.
At 1:55am on the 28th August, it is reported that 23 year old Thomas Ford, a Caster from Walsall, and a known associate of the Bagnall’s, walked into Walsall Police Station and said to one Police-Sergeant Boothby, “I want a cell, I have just killed somebody”, but owing to the casual manner in which Ford had spoken, Boothby asked Ford, “Do you mean that?”, to which Ford replied “yes!”. Boothby quickly cautioned Ford before going on to ask him who he had killed, where?, and how?, to which Ford replied, “A woman, In Newport Street, I strangled her”, Boothby then asked who the woman was, Ford’s reply?, “Mrs Bagnall, I think it’s number 5, there’s a light on and the doors open”. It’s at this point that Boothby called for Police-Inspector Vallance and Ford was asked to repeat what he had said, which he did, but again, owing to Fords casual manner, Vallance asked if he was joking, to which Ford answered “No, I have killed a woman in Newport Street, if you go you will see for yourself”.
Police-Sergeant Bennett and Police-Constable Carlisle were quickly dispatched to the property, where upon entering, Bennett stated that he saw ‘the body of a woman which was fully dressed except for her stockings, lying partially across the seat of the couch, but as he began to walk towards it, it began to slip to the floor. Tied tightly around her neck there was a red handkerchief which he at once removed, but the woman appeared to him to be dead. The clothing was not disarranged and the room was in order’.
At around 2:10am that same morning, Deputy Police-Surgeon Dr M G Robinson arrived at the address where he quickly pronounced ‘life extinct’. Upon seeing Maisie’s body, Dr Robinson stated that ‘it was still warm. Around the neck there was a depressed mark, and there were also marks which could have been caused by fingers’.
At approximately 11:20am, after an official statement had been made, Ford was charged with the Wilful Murder of Maisie Bagnall. A post-mortem examination of her body which was subsequently carried out by Dr J M Webster, Director of the West Midlands Forensic Laboratory led to the conclusion that ‘the cause of death was strangulation’.
The report read that ‘there was a broad furrow completely surrounding the neck, on and above the Adam’s apple and that had been caused by a ligature applied during life’, and that ‘Internally he found all the signs of asphyxia’, but strangely, there was ‘no evidence of Tuberculosis’, why so strange?, strange because James Bagnall later reported that between February and March of that year, Maisie had spent around a month in Walsall Manor Hospital where ‘she was suffering from Tuberculosis’, and then ‘visited the hospital for 2 days a week afterwards, and for quite some time’.
Whilst on remand at Walsall Police Station, Ford asked to speak to one acting Detective-Sergeant Samuel Dallow directly, who coincidentally was previously married to one Florence Molineux, a first cousin once removed of Maisie’s. Ford told Dallow he wanted to tell him the ‘whole story’ to which Dallow agreed.
Ford informed Dallow that everything started when he first went to live with his sister in Newport Street around 4 years earlier, and that that’s when he got to ‘know Mrs Bagnall’. He told him that Maisie had invited him back to the house one night whilst her husband was away with work as there was ‘a bother in the yard’, and that she was ‘frightened to stop in the house by herself’. Ford went on to tell Dallow that he stayed with Maisie until around 4:00am the following morning, and that he’d been in the house a bit when she ‘got fussy’ with him, Ford reported that after that, he saw Maisie almost every day, and that he visited her at her home many times, even when her husband was away. He stated that it got to the stage where ‘he couldn’t stay away’. According to Ford, Maisie had said on many occasions “I wish Baggy (Maisie’s nickname for James) would get killed, I could go with you then”, and that she “wished he was out the way” so that she could then live with him.
Ford went on to tell Dallow, “She started to think she had got me round her little finger, and then started to tell me about other chaps she was going to see, she tried to make me jealous and when I tried to find out for myself that she was going with other chaps, she used to lie to me about it, and I used to tell her I would kill her if she did not stop playing me, but this used to make her do it all the more”.
He said that on the night of Maisie’s death, he went to her home at around 10:00pm, and that around 10:30pm Maisie entered the sitting room for no more than a couple of seconds and placed a bottle of milk by the door, and that she didn’t see him sitting on the sofa. He went on to say “I stayed in the house until about 1:30am, Maisie came in then, I asked her where she had been and she said “on the bridge”. She started leading me up the path again and we started rowing, then I said I’ll strangle you. She closed her eyes and stuck out her neck in front of me. I took her own handkerchief out of her hand, I put it around her neck, and I started pulling at it. When I thought she was dead, I tied it in a knot and just left her. She never struggled at all”. He also told Dallow that he had intended to kill Miaise the night before, but that someone had come downstairs, and stated that “She had asked for it all along. She was definitely a bad woman”.
In a brief hearing at Walsall Magistrates Court on Friday 11th September 1942, Ford was remanded back into custody until Tuesday 29th September, at which time the case was adjourned to the Staffordshire Assizes to be heard on Wednesday 25th November.
At the hearing, James Bagnall gave evidence that Ford was ‘on friendly terms with both he and his wife’ and that ‘he had no reason to suspect that there was anything wrong between the accused and his wife’. He went on to state that on Wednesday 26th August, both he and Ford where in a public house together, and that he had informed Ford that he ‘might be away for a couple of days’, after which, and during cross examination, Bagnall told Mr Gilbert Griffiths, acting on behalf of the defence, that he had ‘always found Ford to be a quiet, decent young fellow’, to which Mr H Maddocks appearing for the prosecution stated, ‘That is the case for the prosecution’.
Griffiths than called Ford to the box who took the oath in a firm voice. He displayed no trace of nervousness, except that some of his replies were not very audible.
During questioning, Ford told the court that ‘he had known Maisie Bagnall for around 5 years’ (not the 4 years he had reported to Dallow), and that ‘he had visited her house frequently’. He said that on the night of the 27th August ‘he went there about 5 o’clock’, and returned again ‘after having four or five half-pints around 10:00pm’ (something he failed to tell Dallow). He told the court that he had sat on the step talking to the Coopers for about half an hour before going inside and laying down on the couch. He went on the state that Maisie returned home about an hour later (not at 10:30pm as he had previously told Dallow), and placed a bottle of milk on the chair (he told Dallow she left it by the door). At no time did Police-Sergeant Bennett mention a bottle of milk anywhere in the sitting room when he attended the scene, something which may have looked a little odd just placed on a chair.
He said that the room was in darkness and that Maisie had left the house again straight away, returning home around 1:30am and waking him from his sleep. Ford stated that he asked her where she had been, to which she replied “with another man” (again, this is not what Ford had previously told Dallow). “What happened after that?” asked Griffiths, to which Ford replied “she brought it up again that she had been with another man, and I told her I was fed up with that and I was going to leave her, she said that she would follow me. I said I would strangle her if she came after me again, she started laughing and put her neck out. I had put my hand around her throat on previous occasions to frighten her but with no intention of hurting her. On this occasion I took her by the throat like I had done before, she smiled at me and I loosed her, then I took her own handkerchief out of her hand. She was lying on the sofa and I was leaning over the arm”. He then told the court that Maisie had ‘plagued him about her association with other men’.
Griffiths went on to ask Ford, “what was your idea when you took the handkerchief?”, to which Ford replied, “I wanted to frighten her more, there was no struggle, and I did not think I was hurting her”. He then asked Ford, “what happened then?”, to which he replied, “I saw her changing colour and I was frightened. I got up and went straight away to the Police Station”, failing to inform the court that he had in fact taken the time to tie the handkerchief in a tight knot first, as per his statement to Dallow.
Prosecutor Mr Maddocks asked Ford, “If you did not want to kill her, when she began to change colour why didn’t you take the handkerchief from around her neck?”, Ford replied “I was too scared”, he then asked, “why did you tie it in a tight knot if you did not mean to hurt her?”, “I don’t know” answered Ford, and finally, “Why didn’t you tell the police you only intended to frighten her?”, the which Ford simply replied, “I was too upset at the time”.
During the hearing, Mr Griffiths for the defence asked acting Detective-Sergeant Samuel Dallow his thoughts on Maisie Bagnall, to which he replied, and without any reported evidence, that “Mrs Bagnall was to his knowledge a woman of loose character”.
In his closing speech for the defence, Mr Griffiths said that if the jury accepted Fords evidence, they would be justified in returning a verdict of ‘Death by Misadventure’, but even if they considered he intended to cause harm to Maisie Bagnall, which was ‘the case at it’s worst’, then their verdict should be ‘one of Manslaughter’ only.
In summoning up, his Lordship Mr Justice John Edward Singleton said, “Whether this woman was in the highest position in the land or the lowest, she was entitled to live, and no one was entitled to kill her. Every man was assumed to know the natural and ordinary consequences of pulling that handkerchief tight”. In his closing words to the jury, Mr Justice John Singleton said, “You have to make up your own minds which is more likely, whether he (Ford) is telling the truth today, or when he made that statement to Detective Sergeant Dallow”.
In a hearing that lasted for almost exactly 2 hours, the foreman of the jury, which was made up of 10 men and just 2 women, both of whom were absent for almost 25 minutes whilst a verdict was considered, announced that the jury had reached a unanimous decision, arriving at the decision that Ford was ‘NOT GUILTY’ of murder, but of manslaughter instead, saving him from a sentence of death by hanging.
In response to the verdict, his Lordship Mr Justice John Edward Singleton turned and spoke to Ford directly, stating, “You have found a merciful jury. On your own statement to the police, it would have been difficult to have had a clearer case of murder”. Ford was sentenced to 10 years penal servitude.
In conclusion, it is of my own personal opinion that Ford should have in deed been found guilty of the pre-meditated and wilful murder of Maisie Bagnall, a murder Ford himself confessed to committing, and this is an opinion I will continue to voice, hence the title of this post, but whether you agree or not, it is true to say that there are just as many questions regarding this case left unanswered, as there are answers given.
For example… If Maisie was cheating on her husband with Ford, or anyone else for that matter, where was the evidence to prove this?, how could anyone be certain that Ford wasn’t just obsessed with Maisie?, stalking her and living in a world of fantasy rather than reality?, after all, no one but Dallow is reported to have come forward to give evidence aginst Maisie’s character at any time during the case, and had any other member of the Bagnall family, many of whom lived in that same area of Walsall gotten wind of Maisie cheating, they would have most certainly put a stop to it immediately. Did the jury simply base their verdict on the word of just Ford and Dallow alone?.
Why did Fords statement to the Police and then later to Dallow differ so much from the evidence he gave in court under oath?, and why weren’t his self-confessed threats to kill and previous assaults on Maisie taken seriously by the jury when it’s evident that even Mr Justice John Edward Singleton presiding believed that Ford had, or was lying?, what was it that persuaded them otherwise?, especially with Ford confessing his intent to kill Maisie the day before, had he not been disturbed, then to go back the following night to do just that, how much more pre-meditated could it have been?
Why did Fords timescale of events change?, was it because he was lying about what had gone on that night?, or could it simply be he wasn’t too good at telling the time?
Why did Ford ask to speak to Dallow after he had already given his statement to police?, could it be that the two men knew each other on a personal level?, was Ford asking a friend for help?
And finally, where was Maisie for that month that James reported her as suffering from Tuberculosis in hospital, If the post-mortem that was carried out found no evidence of the infection?, and where was she going for that 2 days a week afterwards?, could it be that she was in hospital being treated for something else instead, or could there be more to this story?, I guess we’ll never know.
All of these questions leave me feeling that Maisie’s murder wasn’t taken seriously by the jury on the day of the hearing, and that Maddocks, acting on behalf of the prosecution no where near pressed Ford hard enough for answers during his cross-examination, and it’s to my belief that whether or not any of what Ford had to say in his defence, whether true or not, Maisie didn’t deserve to die that night, and I feel that he did literally get away with murder.
Rest in peace Maisie Bagnall…
Killer Thomas Ford (left) on his wedding day in January 1957. (Right) his Lordship Mr Justice John Edward Singleton (circa 1949).
The now derelict Starting Gate Pub, Newport Street, Walsall, formerly known as The Stand Tavern where Maisie Bagnall worked.
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