Walter Smith

Walter Smith murdered Catherine Mary Cross 25 who he shot to death at Abbots Factory, Forest Street, Hyson Green on 2 December 1893. She died on the 6 December.

Catherine Cross was a nurse in Liverpool and had been to Nottingham to see her mother arriving on 25 November. On 28 November she went to see some friends and met the mother of Walter Smith who invited her to her place for tea and whilst there she met Walter Smith for the first time by chance.

Walter Smith had met Catherine Cross who already had boyfriend who she was planning to marry a while before she was murdered. The boyfriend was planning to also come down from Liverpool on 2 December at stay at her mothers too. She had agreed to meet him on the 2 December at the railway station at 12.30pm. Walter Smith brought a revolver a few days before the murder on 30 December for 30s from Jacksons. He had no experience with guns before that.

At some stage he arranged to meet with Mary Cross on 2 December at his factory to show her a Chenille machine for lace making that he was building and had patented. It was susggested that she had agreed to look in at the machine because it was on her route to the station where she was to meet her boyfriend at 12.30pm. When they got there around 11.20am he locked the door behind them. They were in there for over an hour when 3 shots were fired at 2-4 second intervals and Catherine Cross burst out through a door at 12.50pm wounded and went down some steep steps to be aided by a man in a local cottage, with her clothes all torn up. She died 4 days later.