Henry Thomas Gaskin

Henry Gaskin was convicted of the murder of his wife, 23-year-old Elizabeth Gaskin and sentenced to death.

He strangled and battered her to death in woods at  Hednesford Hill, Staffordshire, on 19 February 1919. He then decapitated her and started to dismember her body and hid it in a pond at some gasworks.

Henry Gaskin had fought in the Great War and when he returned he became a miner. They had married in 1913 and Elizabeth Gaskin had had a child two months later but it wasn’t Henry Gaskin's. She also had two or three other illegitimate children while he was at war but only one survived.

Henry Gaskin was sent to jail in 1914 but two years later he was released so that he could join the army. His wife received an army allowance but that was later stopped, possibly because of her character.

Whilst on leave from the war in September 1917 they rowed.

After Henry Gaskin returned from the Great War on 1 February 1918 he and his wife decided to separate and Elizabeth Gaskin moved out of the house they shared in Bridgtown, Cannock and went to live with her parents in Hednesford in winter 1918.

It was heard that Elizabeth Gaskin had made some effort to get Henry Gaskin to return to her, but that he would have nothing to do with her. It was further noted that Henry Gaskin and his mother had both seemed to have taken some steps with a view to getting a divorce.

On 19 February 1919 Henry Gaskin sent a note to Elizabeth Gaskin asking to see her and she went to meet him. They were seen walking past the colliery at 2.30pm talking loudly as though arguing but she was never seen again.

Her parents went to see Henry Gaskin and asked where she was but he said that she didn’t turn up. A search was made for her but she wasn’t found.

A week later Henry Gaskin broke down and confessed to her murder. He showed the police where her dismembered body was. He had dropped parts of her down the well of a gasholder. He said they had met as planned and they had gone to his home where he asked her to come home with him for good but she refused and asked for a divorce so she could be with her new lover, a soldier that she had been walking with and who was the father of her last child who she had given birth to two months earlier. He said he became irate and later strangled her in a wood after which he dragged her 20 yards out of the wood and then carried her 8 yards to a culvert where she was first hidden and he decapitated her, and the next day he took her to a place near the gasworks and threw her in some water.

Blood was found on his clothes and on his pocket knife.

When he was arrested, he said that on 19 February 1919 that he sent Elizabeth Gaskin a note, asking her to meet him by a pool near a small plantation. It was heard that when Elizabeth Gaskin had got the note that she had immediately put on her hat and coat and gone out to meet him.

He then induced her to go into the plantation with her where he murdered her.

After killing her he went home at 4.30pm and then went to the cinema with his brother after which he returned to the plantation and cut Elizabeth Gaskin’s head off and nearly cut off her left leg.

He then hid her body in a culvert and carried her head and clothes down to the gasometer and threw them into the water surrounding the gasholder.

Henry Gaskin said that he then got a barrow and started with the intention of wheeling the body down, however, he came to the conclusion that the tracks of the barrow in the snow would be traced, and so he abandoned that project and went home to bed.

The following morning Elizabeth Gaskin’s mother went to see Henry Gaskin and asked him where Elizabeth Gaskin was, but he denied any knowledge of her or that he had seen her the day before.

Elizabeth Gaskin’s mother then went to the police.

Henry Gaskin then went to work at the mine at 4pm and when his shift ended at midnight, he was met by two policemen who asked him where Elizabeth Gaskin was, but again denied any knowledge of her.

However, it was heard that the questioning made him uneasy and that he went back to the plantation and took the body from the culvert and carried it down to the gasometer where he ran a 6ft long one inch diameter iron gas pipe through her body, from the neck downwards, and then flung it into the water.

The following day he went to Birmingham where he wrote, or caused to be written, a bogus letter to Elizabeth Gaskin’s mother from a William Brooks, saying that Elizabeth Gaskin was all right and was with her and that they were going to London.

However, Henry Gaskin was arrested later that evening and on Sunday 23 February 1919, he told the police where Elizabeth Gaskin’s body was, where he had killed her, and later made a detailed confession.

He had said, ‘She is in the fields. I cut her head off and tried to cut her leg off, but the sinews held it together’.

At the trial it was heard that the only defence was one of insanity, but there was no evidence in support of it and he was convicted of her murder and sentenced to death.