HANGED IN ERROR?

In a chilling new series, barristers re-examine old murder cases to discover whether justice was done – or innocent people were sent to the gallows

Three days before Christmas 1935 farm worker Fred Bryant was suffering from excruciating stomach pains. He died in hospital the following afternoon. What had struck down a fit and active man so violently? An autopsy revealed arsenic in his body and the police charged his widow, Charlotte, with murder. The mother of their five children, Charlotte stood trial in May the following year and was found guilty. On 15 July, the woman dubbed Black Bess in her tight-knit Dorset community was hanged at Exeter Prison, aged just 33.

Now 81 years later, the case of Charlotte Bryant – along with nine others where the death sentence was carried out – is under review in absorbing new BBC1 series Murder, Mystery And My Family. Barristers Jeremy Dein and Sasha Wass examine the evidence using modern methods and, if they feel they have a new case, present it to retired senior judge David Radford, who passes judgement on the original conviction. ‘If he decides it was unsafe, this may give grounds for the case to be re-opened and re-examined by a court today,’ says Jeremy.

Direct descendants of the killers being present to aid the barristers adds a very emotional touch. In the first episode, we meet William, one of Charlotte and Fred Bryant’s three sons, along with their grandson David. William is teary when he visits his mother’s final resting place, at Exeter Prison. David is overcome as he’s shown a letter dictated by his grandmother from jail, pleading for mercy.

It would appear Charlotte had the means to kill her husband – the police found a burned out tin with traces of arsenic on it at the family home – but what was the motive? Jeremy Dein points out, ‘Why would she kill her husband when it would have meant her ending up in the workhouse?’

Other cases include Edward Devlin and Alfred Burns, who attacked 54-yearold Beatrice Rimmer in her home in Liverpool while looking for money in 1951; John Dickman, a bookie sent to the gallows for shooting cashier John Nisbet in a train robbery in 1910; and Herbert John Bennett, convicted of strangling his wife Mary on Great Yarmouth beach in 1900. How many of them should have been spared the noose?

The guilty verdicts clearly cast a shadow over the families of those hanged. Charlotte Bryant’s grandson David wasn’t told about his grandmother’s fate until he was in his 30s. Bronwyn, the daughter of Alfred Moore, a farmer hanged for shooting dead two policemen in Huddersfield in 1951, reveals how the

case involving her father was a taboo subject in her family for years.

Nikki, a relative of Edith Thompson, 26, a fashion buyer convicted of murdering her 29-year- old husband Percy in 1922, examines some of the 62 intimate letters she sent her 18-yearold seaman lover Freddie Bywaters, who knifed Percy to death. Do the letters prove – as the original prosecution suggested – that Edith incited Bywaters and was also guilty? ‘I’m determined to find the truth,’ says Nikki.

Some family members want the right verdict, even if it doesn’t clear their relative’s name. Charlotte Bryant’s grandson David says, ‘We want closure for the family to move on.’ Murder, Mystery And My Family is on weekdays from Monday at 9.15am on BBC1.

Seaman Bywaters stabbed his lover Edith’s husband Percy to death in front of her – but did she incite him? Charlotte was hanged for killing husband Fred (below) with arsenic. Their orphaned son is in the show.

A farmer put to death for killing police officers Duncan Fraser (centre left) and Gordon Jagger (near left) on his land. The last man to be hanged at Newcastle Prison, after he’d shot dead cashier John Nisbet (below) on a train.