The Infamous Tales of Three Lancashire Criminals

By Sarah Ridgway

Lancashire is famous for its stunning coastlines, beautiful green spaces, good food and its impressive heritage. The region is also home to some notorious criminals’ people may have heard of and others not.

The area was also home to the most famous hangman in the country’s history, Albert Pierrepoint. Pierrepoint grew up in Oldham then part of Lancashire and executed over 600 people including Ruth Ellis the last woman to be hanged in Britain, in 1955 and several Nazi war criminals. After retiring from the profession, he ran the Rose and Crown pub in Much Hoole, Lancashire. Rounded up below are the stories of three Lancashire criminals whose stories need to be read to be believed, and they all met their fate at the noose of Albert Pierrepoint. The Blackpool Poisoner

Louise May Merrifield was born in Wigan then Lancashire in 1906. At the time of her death, Merrifield had been married three times and wed her third husband Alfred Edward Merrifield in September 1950, he was 68 years old. Merrifield had six children with her first husband Joseph Ellison but two died in infancy. Her second marriage to 78-year-old Richard Weston was short-lived and he died 10 weeks after their wedding of a heart attack. Merrifield had a chaotic employment history, and in the last three years before the murder had held twenty jobs typically in the domestic sector and was often fired due to her poor attitude. In 1946 Merrifield served time in prison for ration book fraud, during which she lost custody of her four children.

On 12th March 1953, Merrifield and her husband Alfred began their positions as live-in housekeepers and companions to seventy-nine-year-old Sarah Ann Ricketts at her bungalow in Blackpool. Sarah stood at just four foot eight inches tall and was known to have a temper, she was a widow, and both her husbands has died by suicide. Sarah was soon unhappy with the level of care she received from the pair, as Louise was more focused on drinking instead and was well known in the Blackpool pubs. Despite Sarah’s dissatisfaction, the pair muscled their way into her favour, resulting in Sarah making a new will leaving her bungalow to the husband and wife. Sarah was known for her love of sweet jams which she ate directly from the jar with a spoon. With sinister motives firmly in place, Merrifield began adding Rodine, a phosphorus-based rat poison to the old lady’s jam.

On the 12th of April a month after Louise had commenced employment she had a candid conversation with her friend Mrs Brewer, which would

Louise May Merrifield

later prove to be her undoing. She spoke of having to go home to lay out an elderly woman, when the friend asked as to who had died, Louise said, “She’s not dead yet, but she soon will be. ‘Two days later Sarah died but Louise held off calling a doctor for two days. After reading about the death in the newspaper Mrs Brewer reported the strange conversation to the police who ordered a post-mortem. The results concluded that Sarah had died from poisoning and a quick search at the local pharmacies found Merrifield’s signature on their poison register after purchase. Two weeks later Louise and Alfred were arrested, although Alfred was later acquitted but would still inherit half of Sarah’s bungalow and live to the grand old age of 80, Louise was found guilty and the judge called her crime “as wicked and cruel a murder as I have ever heard.” Her request for an appeal was thrown out and she was executed by Albert Pierrepoint at Strangeways Prison on 18th September 1953 she was forty-six years old and the third to last woman to be hanged in the UK. The Savage Surgeon of Lancaster

Buck Ruxton was born Bukhtyar Chompa Rustomji Ratanji Hakim in Bombay, India in 1899. He was born into a wealthy middle-class Parsi family of Indian French origin. He was a very intelligent individual and grew up with an interest in a career in medicine. Ruxton studied medicine at the University of Bombay and after completing his training worked at a local hospital specialising in medicine, gynaecology, and midwifery. In 1925 Ruxton married Motibai Jehangirji Ghadiali, a Parsi woman through an arranged marriage. However, Ruxton relocated to the UK the following year and left his wife behind and made no mention of her once he arrived. In 1926 Ruxton took some medical courses at a London university under the new identity of Gabriel Hakim, he then moved to Edinburgh in 1927 in the pursuit of obtaining a Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons. The young doctor failed the entrance exam but was allowed to continue practising medicine based on his qualifications from Bombay, he also changed his name via deed poll and became Buck Ruxton. Here Ruxton met Isabelle Van Ess who ran a cafe in the city, despite Isabelle being married but separated from her Dutch husband the pair began courting. The couple moved to England where Ruxton worked as a locum in London and later moved to Lancaster in 1930 with their first child Elizabeth. The pair never married but Isabelle took Ruxton’s last name. They took up residence at two Dalton square in the centre of the city and the doctor established a medical practice there and was popular as he often waived medical fees for those who could not afford them. In 1931 their second daughter Diane was born but things were not well behind closed doors as they had different personalities. Ruxton suspected Isabelle of cheating on him, but a son was born in 1933 and the family hired a live-in housekeeper named Mary Rogerson. During this time arguments at the home led Isabelle to leave the home and take the children with her back to her previous home in Edinburgh on multiple occasions and later complained to the police that Ruxton was beating her. Ruxton was paranoid and convinced Isabelle was having an affair due to her frequent trips to Scotland and it all came to a violent conclusion on the evening of September 14, 1935, after Isabelle had returned from a trip to Blackpool illuminations where Ruxton strangled her, after beating and stabbing her body. The housekeeper Mary who must have witnessed the attack was also killed to silence her.

The next day the children were taken to stay in Morecambe while Ruxton dismembered the bodies in the bathtub. It is believed the task would have taken up to eight hours to cut the corpses into over 70 different pieces and the killings became known as the Jigsaw Murders. Ruxton then wrapped up the body parts in four different packages and travelled to Scotland where he dumped them in the river Linn. The body parts did not stay hidden for long and were spotted on the morning of September 29 by a local woman named Susan Johnson who saw a rotting human arm in the water. The police were quickly on the scene where they found more grim packages of human body parts. The remains were taken to the mortuary where Professor John Glaister Jr identified that the two women had been dismembered by someone with expert knowledge. The police also believed the killer was not local due to the bad choice of dumping area and concluded that they had travelled up from England. Ruxton

Buck Ruxton

had also made the rookie error of wrapping the bodies in the Sunday Graphic newspaper, a souvenir edition from September 15 only printed and circulated in Morecambe and Lancaster. The investigation was now focused on Lancaster and police began looking at missing person cases around that time. Ruxton reported his wife missing on September 24 saying she had left him again and told Mary’s family the housekeeper had gone with Isabelle to get an abortion. Mary’s family were suspicious and filed a missing person report after which things quickly fell into place. Mary’s family identified her clothing from the packages from the river, and Ruxton’s cleaners gave a damning statement that the house was a mess when they arrived, and they were instructed to clean the bathtub. Ruxton was arrested for the killing of both women and Isabelle’s skull found a month later, was proved to be hers after an X-ray of the skull was superimposed onto a photo of Isabelle. The jury took just one hour to find Ruxton guilty, and he was sentenced to death by hanging by Albert Pierrepoint. The First Murderer of Rawtenstall

Margaret Allen was born in Rawtenstall in 1906 and grew up in a large Catholic family of 22 siblings so one can imagine it would be easy to be overlooked. From a young age, Allen preferred a masculine identity dressing as a male and taking jobs that were usually reserved for men such as a labourer and loading coal. Allen was known to swear frequently and would act aggressively, which could be presumed to appear more masculine. In 1935 Bill claimed to have undergone a sex change to change from a man to a woman, this was false due to the first unsuccessful reassignment operation in Germany on Lili Elbe five years previous resulted in the patient’s death. This type of surgery would not be performed again in the UK until 1951. After the claims of having surgery in 1935, Allen cut his hair short, wore men’s clothing and drank at working men’s clubs and became known to all as Bill. At this time Bill met Mrs Annie Cook and Bill was interested in pursuing a relationship. Sadly, the romance was halted after the pair went on a holiday to Blackpool together where Annie refused to have sex with Bill which deeply offended him. In 1943 Bill’s mother died which brought on bouts of depression and led to Bill isolating himself and excessive smoking and not eating properly. During the Second World War Bill worked as a bus conductor for the Rawtenstall Corporation Buses but was fired in 1946 after passengers complained of his abusive and violent behaviour toward them. Being unemployed, single, and living an unconventional life in a small Lancashire town would have been difficult, to say the least. In 1947 according to Bill’s friend Annie, due to depression, he tried to end his life on several occasions.

In 1948, Bill came into the acquaintance of Mrs Nancy Chadwick, an eccentric and unpopular 68-yearold who was very wealthy. Nancy was known to carry around lots of cash on her person and distrusted banks preferring to keep her wealth at home. A week after meeting, Nancy bumped into Bill and told him she had run out of sugar. Bill offered to lend her some sugar but despite visiting Nancy’s home a few times did not bring the required sugar. On the morning of August 28, Nancy turned up at Bill’s home and requested an invitation to Bill’s home, this request was rejected, and the door was closed in Nancy’s face. The next day in the early hours of the morning, Nancy’s body was found outside 137 Bacup Road. When the police arrived at Bill’s address, they saw blood stains on the wall near the doorway and more blood and hair from the victim were found on Bill’s clothing. Bill was arrested and he admitted to killing Nancy telling the police “I was in a funny mood…. she seemed to insist on coming in.” At this time Bill was in debt and with no employment had been threatened with eviction which might explain the motive for the murder. At the court where Bill was referred to for the first time in years as Margaret Allen, he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death by hanging, he was executed by Albert Pierrepoint on January 12, 1949.