Miles McHugh

Miles McHugh was convicted of the murder of his 24-year-old girlfriend Edith Annie Swainston and sentenced to death.

He cut her throat in a passage between Church Street and Fleetham Street in Middlesborough on 24 January 1920.

Miles McHugh had been a labourer and married with two children and had been lodging at 56 Grange Road West in Middlesborough.

He had enlisted voluntarily in April 1915 and was invalided from Salonika after an attack of malaria in December 1916. He was then attached to a Labour Corp and stationed at Middlesborough where he was discharged in January 1919.

About two years before the murder he became intimate with Edith Swainston, a single woman who worked at a sugar factory in Middlesborough, however, he didn't tell her that he was married.

Edith Swainston had lived with her parents at 45 Milton Street in Middlesborough.

In May 1919 Edith Swainston gave birth to a child by him, but the child was put out to nurse and was apparently finally disposed of on a payment of £25.

It was thought that Edith Swainston had had another illegitimate child about five years earlier.

However, sometime in December 1919 Edith Swainston appeared to have taken up again with a man to whom she had previously been engaged to several years before. The man had been in the army and had known nothing of the birth of the child in May 1919.

Miles McHugh resented Edith Swainston keeping company with the other man and on 24 December 1919 he made a scene at Edith Swainston's mother's house, seizing Edith Swainston by the throat with both hands and leaving finger-marks on her neck.

Following that it was noted that both Edith Swainston and her friends were anxious that her connection with Miles McHugh should cease.

On the evening of 19 January 1920 Edith Swainston and the man were waiting in a theatre queue when Miles McHugh kept staring at them. The man told him to go away, whereupon Miles McHugh said to him, 'I want fair play, that girl has had as child to me'. Miles McHugh also whispered something to Edith Swainston, and it was said that it could be fairly inferred that he told her that he was going to give away to the man the fact that she had had a child.

On 24 January 1920 at about 4pm Edith Swainston called to see Miles McHugh at his lodgings. A witness said that she asked Miles McHugh for five shillings and that he gave her some money. However, it was noted that Miles McHugh later claimed that Edith Swainston had come to persuade him to stop in Middlesborough and not go home to his wife and family. It was later submitted that that was not altogether improbable, but that it was more likely that she had been upbraiding him for having given her away to the other man and had been asking him to leave her alone.

They then left the house together in the direction of Edith Swainston's home and when they reached the archway not far from her home, Miles McHugh appeared to have seized her head from behind and forcing it back, cut her throat from ear to ear, almost to the bone.

The route they had taken from 56 Grange Road West was thought to have gone along Harris Street, Rushford Street and then across Fleetham Street and then along the narrow passage way to the back arch between Fleetham Street and Church Street.

Miles McHugh then went off and threw the razor on to a manure heap about 30 yards from the archway.

Edith Swainston's body was found a few minutes later by a passer-by.

There was no blood on her hands and a handkerchief without bloodstains was found tightly rolled in a ball in her right hand.

The wound on her neck appeared to have started below the left ear and to have then severed all the soft structures before finishing very deep on the right side below the right ear. It was noted that the wound would have been impossible to have been self-inflicted at all, and had almost severed her head from her body.

When Miles McHugh was arrested later that night at about 8pm he was found to have many bloodstains on his clothes.

He made two statements to the police, in one of them he said:

'I was on the point of leaving her at the back arch behind Fleetham street. I got about two yards away when I heard a bit of a scream. I turned back and saw her with a razor in her hand and before I could get at it she drew it across her neck. I took the razor from her. She was then standing on her feet. I then walked away from her down the back arch and threw the razor away. I did not hear any more of her until I was arrested'.

However, the police report stated that his story was utterly incredible, not only from the nature of the wound itself, but because it would have been quite impossible for Edith Swainston to have remained standing after such a wound had been inflicted.

When Miles McHugh was severely cross-examined as to why he was content to merely take the razor away for her and leave her there unattended, he said he, 'thought that she would be able to proceed home'.

However, he was convicted of murder with no recommendation to mercy and sentenced to death and his appeal was dismissed.

The police report stated that although Miles McHugh bore a good character as a workman even though he took a good deal of drink, that the murder was a particularly cruel one, it being noted that Edith Swainston's mother had already told him that, 'he had caused trouble and sorrow enough', and that he had been doing his best to prevent Edith Swainston from regaining her position by marriage with the other man, and they could see no reason for interference in the sentence.

Miles McHugh was executed at Leeds on Friday 16 April 1920.

All of the housing that was between Church Street and Fleetham Street has since been demolished and the area redeveloped.