John William Thompson

John Thompson was convicted of the murder of Lily Tindale 13 and sentenced to death. He cut her throat at Constitution Hill Farm, Molescroft, near Beverley on 15 February 1917. John Thompson had been a shepherd. Lily Tindale had lived with her father, a farm bailiff at Constitution Hill Farm and John Thompson had worked there, living in the farmhouse, since May 1916. He cut her throat with a razor, severing everything from the skin to the spinal column. Lily Tindale was last seen in the stack yard at the farm at 2.10pm chopping wood by her mother. When she didn't return a search was made for her and she was found hidden beneath some straw near to some straw stacks. Her hair was matted with blood and her eye was blackened and bruised as though beaten and her throat was cut clear through to the spine. It was noted that whilst her clothes had been disarranged and her knickers taken off and clothes fully pulled up exposing her legs and parts, that it was not thought that she had been violated although when she was found her legs were wide apart. On the inside of each knee there were bloodstains apparently caused by the pressure of ribbed clothing such as the trousers that John Thompson had been wearing at the time. Her bodice was also open and under one side of the opening lay a quid of chewed tobacco. John Thompson had been seen earlier in the day at the Molescroft Inn between 12pm and 12.30pm which was about half-a-mile away from the farm. He then bought some twist tobacco and was seen at about 1.30pm going towards the stack yard and was not seen again until he was arrested later that day at 6pm in Beverley. When he was arrested his fingers were still covered with blood and there was blood on his clothes, pipe and clasp knife. In particular his trousers were heavily blood stained around the knees. He said that the knife that was found in his pocket that had blood on it was bloodstained from bleeding a sheep. He said, 'The knife found in my pocket which has bloodstains on it was done bleeding a sheep. I put the razor down a hedgerow as I went down the Leconfield Road.' However, forensic analysis of the blood showed that it was human blood, it being heard that whilst the corpuscles of human blood were 1-2500th of an inch in diameter that those of sheep blood were exactly half that size, and the farm bailiff, Lily Tindale's father, said that John Thompson had never had anything to do with bleeding sheep and that the last sheep that was bled was on 14 December 1916 whilst John Thompson had been away. The police followed boot prints in the mud through fields from the murder scene to the point on the Leconfield Road where John Thompson hid his razor. It was covered in blood and was in part of a case, the other part of the case being found under Lily Tindale's body. The razor was identified as John Thompson's property that he normally kept on his mantelpiece and the prosecution said that when he took it from the mantlepiece he did so with the intention of killing Lily Tindale. Lily Tindale's mother said that since John Thompson had started working at the farm that he had always been quiet and well behaved and had never given any trouble. At the trial his defence said that the act had been committed in a moment of homicidal mania, in support of that being the absence of motive and the peculiarly brutal circumstances of the murder. However, the medical officer certified him to be of sound mind. When he was convicted there was no recommendation to mercy and he made no appeal. The police report stated that there was no doubt over his guilt and that it was a horrible murder in connection with an attempted outrage and that there should be no question of any interference. Before his execution John Thompson confessed to the murder. John William Thompson was a forty three year old shepherd who was convicted of the murder of thirteen year old Lily Tindale, who was found with a cut throat in a stack yard at Beverley, Yorkshire on the 15th February. He was sentenced to death by Mr Justice McCardle at York Assizes. He confessed to a priest in the cell and was hanged by Thomas Pierrepoint and William Willis in Leeds on the 27th March 1917.