I noticed there was some interest over this tragic occurrence shown by members of the Stonnall Local History group on Facebook in the last few weeks. Thanks to the efforts of Peter ‘Pedro’ Cutler, we have located the following two news reports of the incident. I’m sorry, they’re a bit hard to read, but I don’t have the time right now to transcribe them. This was a terrible, terrible event, and it persists in the history with the cottages now being known as ‘Murder Cottages’, the use of which term prompted the original query.
From the Tamworth Herald Saturday, 27 April 1929. Click for a larger version.
From the Tamworth Herald Saturday, 20 April 1929. Click for a larger version.
I’d recommend you tune in to the group in question, but the admin has banned me from the group for committing the heinous crime of attempting to discuss an alternative view to some of his increasingly bizarre assertions about points of local history. A historian that cannot debate and engage with his peers in a friendly and sociable manner is a very unfortunate thing indeed. I personally put huge effort into publicising Julian’s work to a wider audience, yet my efforts to push his las two articles to Brownhills Blog readers didn’t even receive acknowledgement. The apparent loss of what was once good humour is a tragedy, and I feel very sad indeed that someone who wrote such engaging amateur research seems to be losing their way.
It’s impossible to recommend people join and post in a group where posts are arbitrarily deleted without warning and where people are frozen out for daring to question the view of the admin.