THE TERRIBLE STORY OF SUSAN NEWELL THE SENSELESS MURDER.

 Susan Newell - a senseless murder.

Susan Newell was born in 1893 and lived a hard life in poverty in a rented apartment in Coatbridge near Glasgow.

 

She had a vicious temper and a history of violence. In June 1923 she had assaulted her husband John giving him two heavy blows to the head which he reported to the police.

The following day they had another violent argument over his attending his brother's funeral and he left home going to his sister's house that night.

On the evening of Wednesday, June the 20th, 1923 around 6.45 p.m., 13 year old newspaper boy, John Johnson, knocked on Susan's door to see if she wanted the evening newspaper. She told him to come in and took the paper from him. 

However, John insisted he had to have the money for it. At this, Susan lost control of herself and strangled the poor little boy. Her daughter was to see the boy's body when she came in from playing, lying on the settee. Janet had to help her mother wrap it in an old rug. Susan had the age old problem of what to do with her victim’s body. She slept on this problem and by the morning had decided how she would dispose of it.

The body stayed in the flat overnight and then next morning Susan and Janet carried it down stairs and put in on an old pram still covered by the rug. She sat little Janet on top of the bundle and they set off together towards Glasgow.

 A passing lorry driver offered them a lift and took them to Duke Street in Glasgow. As the cart was being unloaded the bundle containing John's small body came undone and a foot was seen sticking out of one end and the top of his head at the other end.

This was witnessed by a lady who was looking out the window of her house in Duke Street and she decided to follow Susan and Janet. She also informed the police who were soon able to arrest Susan as she tried to dispose of the body in a courtyard. She attempted to escape by climbing over a wall only to find a policeman waiting for on the other side.

Susan had already worked out her story if she was caught and had primed Janet as well. She told the police that her husband had killed the boy and that she and Janet were forced by him to dispose of the body.

Both she and John Newell were charged with the murder but the case against her husband collapsed as he could prove that he was not in the house when the murder took place.

The judge freed John immediately saying that he should never have been brought to trial.

In court Janet said that it was her mother who had strangled the boy and that it was her mother who had told her to lie about the murder.

Her defence team tried to convince the jury that Susan was insane which they rejected.

Surprisingly in view of the weight of evidence she was convicted only by a majority verdict.

The jury reached their verdict after only half an hour but unanimously recommended mercy for her. 

Inevitably she was sentenced to death and taken back to Duke Street (yes, the same Duke Street) where Glasgow's prison stood at the time.

No woman had been hanged in Scotland since 1889 (Jessie King) and there were considerable efforts made to secure a reprieve for Susan.

The Secretary of State for Scotland decided that she was not to be reprieved and she was found to be legally sane when examined in prison. Execution was set for Wednesday the 10th of October 1923.  She was attended in the condemned cell by the Rev. Fr. Culley.

She was hanged by John Ellis, assisted by Robert Baxter who together had also hanged Edith Thompson 10 months earlier. Ellis seemed to always had trouble with his female prisoners.

Ellis decided to use the leather body belt that he had had made for Edith Thompson which had an additional strap to go round the thighs. This was necessary because as skirts got shorter over the years, there was concern that they would billow up as the prisoner dropped. 

On the gallows, Susan allowed Baxter to strap her legs and thighs without protest but was able to get her hands free from the loose wrist straps on the body belt and defiantly pulled off the white hood saying to Ellis, "Don't put that thing over me."  

Rather than risk another trying scene, Ellis decided to proceed without it, as the noose was already in place and so he simply pulled the lever and Susan went through the trap with her face in full view of the small number of officials who were present. 

She became the last woman to hang in Scotland and was said to be the calmest person in the execution chamber accepting her fate with both courage and dignity, although she never admitted her crime.

There seem to be few mitigating factors in Susan's case - both she and John Johnson were the victims of her violent temper.