Death of Bessie Cross 1917 – Temple Meads Bristol


Image by brizzle born and bred
Private Albert Cross of the ‘Glosters’ Regiment, appeared in court, charged with her murder.

This case involves a soldier returning to the front, who shot his wife at the station on October 15, 1917, as the early morning train to London was due in at Temple Meads’ busy platform five, waiting passengers and their friends were startled by the loud crack of a rifle. Then, with horror, they saw the body of a young woman lying slumped at the foot of a soldier.

The infantryman was immediately apprehended by the Military Police and blurted out: ‘I have shot my wife – she is in a certain condition by another man.’

The 27-year-old pregnant woman, Bessie Cross, died of abdominal injuries and shock within minutes of being admitted to the General Hospital. A few hours later her 32-year-old husband, Private Albert Cross of the ‘Glosters’ Regiment, appeared in court, charged with her murder. He pleaded not guilty. It’s hard for us, nearly 100 years on, to imagine what life was like in those far-off Edwardian days.

One year into the Great War, casualty lists were appearing daily in the local press, peppered with smiling studio portraits of the latest dead or wounded soldiers. But the public image of their menfolk’s noble sacrifice disguised a grim reality. Thanks to conscription, the enormous loss of young men’s lives and women’s war work, normal family life, for many people, lay in shreds.

There was a new type of woman, liberated from moral constraints by the war’s unexpected bonus of well-paid jobs, which has formerly been done by men.

The men in the trenches resented the way that women had taken their jobs, while the older generation, brought up under strict Victorian morality, were shocked by their ‘free and easy’ behaviour. Albert Cross, the one-time painter from Baptist Mills, became a symbol for the suffering of our brave lads facing the horrors of war.

Poor old Bessie was cast in many eyes as a loose, promiscuous, ‘new woman’.

The courtroom drama was acted out while the horrors of Passchendaele were unfolding, but the public were far too deeply involved with the morality of the ‘Albert and Bessie’ case to be overly concerned about the death and suffering of the ‘brave lads’ just 250 miles away.

Albert denied the charges and by the time he reappeared in court to be committed to Bristol Assizes a week later, the case had attracted so much attention that crowds of disappointed spectactors had to be turned away.

The prosecution outlined their case against him. After 10 days’ leave Albert had been about to catch the London train en route to France. Bessie – just like other service wives and sweethearts on the platform that morning – had gone to say farewell.

The couple had been through a great deal.

Two months previously, as Albert set off to the front yet again, he had received a venomous letter from a married man called James King, boasting of an affair with Bessie who, he said, was now carrying his child. Albert and Bessie had then exchanged piteous letters.

She begged his forgiveness and he finally accepted her pleas. Friends agreed that, during his leave, the couple seemed reconciled. Illegitimacy rates had soared during this period but the marriage looked set to survive a not unusual war-time lapse.

But there was no denying the witnesses who had seen Albert finger the trigger of his rifle before pointing it at Bessie. The private stayed silent throughout the committal proceedings. His defending solicitor, Mr Watson, told the court he would not put his client in the witness box.

He went on to say that it was up to the prosecution to make their case against the soldier, not for Albert to defend himself. He also signalled that the trial would be based on a tidal wave of sympathy for a ‘war hero cheated by his cheating wife’. As Mr Watson continued with his defence he seemed near to tears.

He said that in all his years as a criminal lawyer, he had never been so touched by a case.

One of the soldier’s letters to Bessie, he said, ‘deserves to be preserved in gold. I have never in my life heard such a noble act of forgiveness as Albert Cross displayed.’ Albert might have showed no emotion as he was committed to Bristol Assizes but he was one of the few people in the city to remain unmoved.

The evidence against him was damning – but the emotional tidal wave in his favour was overwhelming.

The jury found him not guilty of murder.

Why? Purely because Bessie had been pregnant with another man’s child. While Albert was bravely fighting for his country, said the moralists, his wife had been living as someone else’s mistress. The war had turned the old, established Victorian values upside down and, in uncertain and changing times, the citizens of Bristol were touchier about morality than they had ever been before. The city’s young women, with husbands and boyfriends boyfriends away at the Front and newly-liberated by well-paid war work, were relishing their new found freedom – both financial and sexual.

The three court cases which preceded Albert Cross’s offer us snapshots of this moral turmoil – two cases of bigamy and one of a maid who had concealed her baby’s birth and then hidden its dead body in an outhouse.

the accidental missionary


Image by greg westfall.
The Unlikely Missionary

By: Greg Westfall (text and photo copyright 2009, Voice for the Defense/Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association)

I went on a ten-day mission trip a month ago. To Africa.

It all started one Sunday when the priest of the African orphanage that our Episcopal church supports came here to make a presentation about progress at the orphanage. The orphanage is called "Amazing Grace" and it houses 72 girls whose parents have died of AIDS. I saw some pictures and it looked cool. So I asked Mollee and then volunteered us to go on the next trip.

I hear that people are "called" to go on overseas mission trips. To me, it felt like another in a long series of whims I have entertained throughout my life. Joining the army was another whim. I joined the US Army after about a second of thought when I was 20. Took me three years to recover from that one.

Mollee and I agreed in May to do the trip the last week of July. My job would be to teach the girls music and to take pictures. The kids didn’t go.

Once we hit crunch time I got on iTunes and started ordering "praise and worship" standards. I ended up learning and charting 16 praise songs which brought my entire praise and worship repertoire to … 16. Go Tell it on the Mountain. This is the Day (That the Lord Hath Made). Seek Ye First. Etc., etc.

We were laboring the entire time under some misconceptions. Mollee had heard that they don’t use toilet paper in Africa. So we stocked up on baby wipes (turned out to be wrong – they have lots of toilet paper – probably even had it before all the cell phones that everyone carries). We were also told to kiss anything we don’t actually carry on the plane (basically all our checked luggage) goodbye as soon as it hits Nairobi. It was for this latter reason that I decided there was no way in hell I was going to take one of my guitars to Africa. Through an African who was also on the mission I managed to source out an acoustic guitar. Of course, all the luggage made it fine.

For those thinking of going, be aware that it takes 20 hours to fly to Nairobi. Flying back took 24. Nairobi is 8 hours ahead of us time-wise. I got to see the sun set twice from a plane window on the way there.

Now, jet lag and me have a special relationship. It is a long-term relationship and we do so hate to say goodbye to each other. When Mollee and I honeymooned in London, I spent my days waking up around 4 and turning into a pumpkin at sunset. But I thought I had the solution this time – Ambien. The first night I got there I fell into an Ambien-induced stupor at midnight, only to bolt upright at 3:00am. And so it was the entire trip.

We worked 16 hours a day. I hear tell there are fancy animals in Africa, particularly in Kenya where we were. Lions, zebras, wildebeest, cape buffalo – the whole Wild Kingdom/Lion King thing. But while we were in Africa all we saw were chickens, roosters, domesticated turkeys, a handful of cats and dogs and many, many skinny cows. Everyone it seems, in addition to a cell phone, has a little herd of cattle that they drive on foot by the side of the road. The first three nights we were there, a litter of feral kittens screamed continuously through the night below our room, their mother apparently working the evening shift. About an hour before sunrise the roosters would take over screaming duty. I just laughed under my mosquito net and popped another Ambien.

Then there were the girls.

This orphanage has been around 5 years and houses 72 girls. In that time, there has been a turnover of exactly three. We took them to a cultural museum and got them shoes and in the afternoon we would go to the orphanage.

I handled the music in shifts – about 10 girls at a time. I taught them the American songs and they did their best. They were entertained. But at the end of the day, African music is different than western music and these girls were in no way used to instrumental accompaniment. I knew they sang, though. So on about the third group I set it down and asked them to sing me one of their songs. I was not really prepared for what I was about to hear..

These girls sing traditional African a cappella songs in four-part harmony. Imagine Ladysmith Black Mambazo (who did the traditional African vocalizations on Paul Simon’s "Graceland") done by girls from 8 to about 14 years-old. It really was amazing. These girls had no parents. They lived in an orphanage – an orphanage with Turkish toilets and, until recently, no running water. And they sang like angels. During the entire time I was with them, not once did I ever feel tired.

Magic can truly happen anywhere. In this case I found magic on a three acre patch of land at the bottom of the Rift Valley in one of the poorest nations on the planet. And it was worth everything we went through. Even the screaming kittens.

There are the common issues that Education Law covers. Some schools and other educational establishments are looking at the different ways to create more income by complying with education laws, income, and return on investment can be maximized; the educational establishments need to comply with discrimination laws and other workers and pupils rights; the schools that teach pupils with Special Educational Needs means need to ensure that they are fully compliant with the relevant laws; grants and loans; get interaction with the private sector; the pupil behavior has been increasingly in the news recently; the intellectual property rights is important in Education Law because can help advise on the legalities of work produced at school; students and admissions; some school, colleges and universities are increasingly either in need of more land and property.

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