It’s finally October! To celebrate I thought I’d come back and share some more awful stories from my home city of Hull.
Hull Prison opened in 1870, which if I know anything about history was a rubbish time. I can say that because everyone who was there is dead. Over the years HM Prison Hull has been home to riots, an execution and some of the most notorious criminals in history, some of who (whom? who?) we’ll be looking at here.
Michael Gordon Peterson
AKA: Charles Bronson
Hull Prison Inmate: 1975
A rose by any other name still smells as sweet and this certainly holds true for Michael Gordon Peterson, if by “rose” we mean shit and by “sweet” we mean shit. Most people will know him as Charles Bronson, mustachioed madman and one time holder of what I can only assume is a photobooth prop tambourine.
If you didn’t know who Bronson was and saw his picture, you may assume that he had come to Hull to try our many craft beers, buy flannel from our vintage stores and tell everyone how his graphic design course was going. Alas, he was a bellend of a different sort.
Born in Luton, Bedfordshire on 6 December, 1952, Peterson appears to have had an alright childhood. That said, do remember that childhood in those days only lasted until you were about seven and a half. Not only was his mother named Eira - friendliest old lady name ever - but his aunt and uncle were actually Mayors of the town during the 1960s/70s. They were close too, with Bronson’s aunt stating: “as a boy he was a lovely lad. He was obviously bright and always good with children. He was gentle and mild-mannered, never a bully: he would defend the weak.”
Unfortunately, Peterson moved away from his totally unbiased aunt when he became a teenager, relocating to Ellesmere Port, Cheshire. Not long after he joined a gang of robbers and was reprimanded in juvenile court for stealing, because 13 year-olds should not be trusted with big jobs.
After leaving school - which he definitely didn’t attend very regularly - Peterson moved back to Luton. He tried a number of jobs including a stint at Tesco where he could only bear his manager for two weeks before beating him up. He was then arrested for smashing some parked cars up following an argument with his girlfriend’s dad. For some reason he was only fined and given probation, which is a real goof in hindsight. The decision allowed Peterson to continue pursuing his passion of assaulting randomers on nights out and dabbling in petty crime.
One time, he stole a lorry and crashed it into a car but was again given fines and probation. At just 19 - imagine that’s in capital letters for emphasis - he was convicted of a smash and grab but received a suspended sentence. It wasn’t until 1974 that Peterson and his perfectly groomed sideburns were eventually sent to Walton Gaol prison after committing armed robbery.
While there he attacked two inmates so everyone decided Peterson should be sent to Hull Prison, It was here that he went on to build his reputation as the most violent prisoner in Britain, yaaaaay! He refused to work, completely ruined a perfectly nice prison workshop and had a row with a prison officer. All of this landed him in the punishment block with a syringe of chlorpromazine and six months added to his sentence. He also didn’t make very many friends and got no gold stars on his prison chart.
One of his biggest offenses while at HM Hull Prison though, during which he glassed John Henry Gallagher with a jug, would land him with a further nine months added to his sentence. It also caused him to be transferred to Armley Gaol and so the era of Bronson in Hull came to an end.
Peterson now goes by the name Charles Salvador and is married to Paula Williamson of Coronation Street and Emmerdale… “fame”. When asked about her totally quirky marriage, Williamson said “even I can’t believe I’m marrying Britain’s most notorious prisoner”. Isn’t she just the wackiest.
Robert Maudsley
AKA: Hannibal the Cannibal
Hull Prison Inmate: Not a Clue
If anyone deserves a biopic, it has to be this dude. In fact, I was so fascinated by this man while researching his life that I had to pinky-promise my boyfriend that I wouldn’t start writing to him. Since he’s already friends with Bronson and wants to study a degree in music theory, I have to agree that’s for the best.
Maudsley was born in June 1953, the fourth child of a volatile, awful lorry driver and I’m assuming he also had a mother. Before he even reached the age of two, Maudsley and his three siblings were all taken into care and sent to Nazareth House, a Roman Catholic orphanage in Merseyside. Worryingly, this seems to be the best part of the siblings’ childhoods as Maudsley’s brother has stated they regarded the nuns as family and never experienced any physical abuse.
Unfortunately, the kids’ parents kept visiting and at 8 Maudsley was taken home. Turns out Mr and Mrs Maudsley had a great time while their kids were away and Robert was now one of twelve children, each of which received beatings in turn as if they were on a horrendous rota system. After being locked in a room for six months and receiving regular beatings (according to schedule) from his dad, Maudsley was again taken into care and spent the rest of his childhood in a series of foster homes. His dad told everyone else in the family he had died, which is a questionable choice at best.
Not a lot is known about Maudsley’s 1960s experience, but we do know that like many others at that time he developed a drug addiction. By the end of the decade, he was in London working as a prostitute to support his habit. After attempting suicide on several occasions he was forced to seek psychiatric help and told doctors that he could hear voices telling him to kill his parents. Ngl, I’m sort of with the voices.
The mental health services in Britain have never been good so in 1973, Maudsley was out on the streets when he was picked up by John Farrell. For some absolutely baffling reason, Farrell had been taking pictures of kids he sexually abused and then proceeded to show said pictures to 20-year-old rent boy Maudsley. Farrell was subsequently garrotted by Maudsley, who was soon caught and sent to Broadmoor Hospital where he became known as Blue.
In 1977, Maudsley got a new nickname when he and fellow nutjob David Cheeseman locked themselves in a cell with convicted paedophile David Allen Francis, torturing him over nine hours. Maudsley was then known as Spoons, having left a spoon sticking out of the molester’s skull like he was a nasty yogurt. There was also a rumour that part of the bloke’s brain was missing, leading people to think Maudsley had eaten it.
The following year, having been done for manslaughter and sent to Wakefield Prison, Maudsley decided to have yet another crack at murder. This time he garrotted and stabbed Saleny Darwood, prowled the corridors for a bit and eventually murdered Bill Roberts by hacking at his skull with a shiv.
Prison authorities decided that Maudsley just wasn’t a team player and in 1983 built a two-cell unit in the basement of Wakefield Prison to hold him. The structure is around 5.5m X 4.5m, with huge bulletproof windows which make it look like Hannibal Lecter’s cell in Silence of the Lambs. Inside, there’s a table and chair made out of cardboard, a toilet and sink bolted to the floor and a concrete slab that Maudsley uses as a bed. A single solid steel door opens into a small cage encased in perspex, with a slot at the bottom for food and that.
To this day, Maudsley is kept in that cell in the Monster Mansion for 23 hours a day. He is only allowed out between 2pm and 3pm to exercise in the yard, with six guards watching him at all times. He has unsuccessfully attempted to have the terms of his solitary confinement relaxed, to be allowed to commit suicide by cyanide, to have a pet budgie and to play board games with the prison officers.
You may be asking: when was Robert Maudsley in Hull Prison? Well, the only evidence of this I could find was in the Hull Daily Mail, which I believed when I started writing. In my defence, Robert Maudsley is also listed as a notable inmate on HM Prison Hull’s Wikipedia page and you know what, do you have a proper degree in journalism? No, well neither do I it’s a foundation and let that be the end of this witch hunt.
Frank Mitchell
AKA: The Mad Axeman
Hull Prison Inmate: 1962
Frank Samuel Mitchell was born in Limehouse, East London in 1929 and had an absurdly small forehead. In fact, he looked a bit like he’d been drawn wrong and brought to life by that machine in Spy Kids. At 9 years-old he stole a bicycle from another child and faced juvenile court, though he was put on probation because he was 9 and only nicked a bike, calm down.
By the age of 17, Mitchell was known around town for being exceptionally strong, something he liked to demonstrate by lifting grand pianos and grown men. These are well documented hobbies for typical East Londoners of the early 1900s, as well as selling rats masquerading as strawberries at markets and hitting each other with umbrellas (which were also rats in costume).
Mitchell’s other pastime was shop-breaking, which landed him in prison quite often. During every sentence, Mitchell was incredibly violent (presumably throwing grand pianos at grown men and vice versa) and in 1955 he was diagnosed as “mentally defective”.
Mitchell was sent to Rampton psychiatric hospital, where he finally discovered his true purpose in life: escaping. Two years into his stay, he fled with another inmate, attacking a passer-by with an iron bar and stealing his clothes. He was eventually recaptured and sent to Broadmoor, where he also escaped from. He broke into the home of Mr and Mrs Peggs, holding the couple hostage with an axe – hence the nickname – before being recaptured again and given a life sentence.
It was in 1962 that Mitchell found himself in HM Prison Hull, where he was just as batty and mean as usual. During his stay he apparently attacked a prison warden during yet another escape attempt but we weren’t having none of that.
That same year, Mitchell was sent to Dartmoor prison where he had a whale of a time. He kept budgies, was part of the honour party and was allowed to work outside prison walls with minimal supervision. He would often roam the moors and feed wild ponies, even visiting local pubs on occasion. Possibly the only reason he didn’t attempt to leave was because the governor had promised that he would recommend Mitchell was given a release date if he stayed out of trouble.
However, after four years Mitchell began to doubt the governor and on 12 December 1966 with the help of his friends the Krays twins he – you guessed it – escaped.
It literally took 12 days for the Krays to become sick of Mitchell’s antics, so they led him into the back of van and shot him. Mitchell’s body was then tied with chicken wire, weighted down and dropped in the English Channel. A classy demise for a classy man.
Frederick Deeming
AKA: Jack the Ripper (maybe)
Hull Prison Inmate: 1890 - 1891
Unlike others featured on this list, Deeming was actually kept in Hull Prison before he went completely off the rails. Also, Wikipedia described him as an “English-born Australian gasfitter and murderer”, which might be the strangest sentence I’ve ever read and actually sets the tone for this bloke’s life.
Deeming was born 30 July, 1853 in Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire to brazier Thomas and his wife Ann. By all accounts lil’ Fred was a difficult child and at 16 he went to sea, where he should have stayed. Instead of limiting his commotion to the ocean though, he went on to Australia where he stole money and goods from a number of employers. In 1881, Deeming returned to England and married his first wife Marie who then accompanied him back to Australia the following year and had two daughters.
Between 1888 and 1889 it is thought that Deeming and co. spent time in Cape Town, though what he was doing there no one really knows. The family then returned to England and Marie gave birth to a third child in Birkenhead, which we know because Deeming was involved in a diamond mine swindle at that time. In the November of that year, Deeming visited Hull pretending to be a retired sheep farmer from Queensland, despite the fact no one gave a shit who Fred Deeming was in the first place.
During his time here, Deeming managed to woo 21-year-old spinster Helen Matheson and on 18 February 1890 they married. A month later he bolted from his bigamous marriage and returned to his first wife Marie who now had four children (???). He announced that the six of them would move to South America, but first he had to go rob a jeweller on Whitefriargate in Hull. He made it all the way to Montevideo before he was captured, extradited to England and kept in Hull Prison for nine months.
Upon his release in July 1891, Deeming travelled to Rainhill, Merseyside and settled in at a village hotel under the name Albert Williams. His wife and children often visited but he referred to them as his sister and her children. Somehow, he managed to get another wife while in Rainhill and married Emily Lydia Mather on 22 September 1891. Two months later, Deeming took his new wife to Australia and on Christmas Eve of that year murdered her, burying her under the hearthstone in one of their bedrooms. When her body was eventually found it was clear her throat had been slit, and newspapers soon connected her murder to those that had recently taken place in Whitechapel, London.
Meanwhile, Deeming had gone on to Sydney and found another possible wife under his totally real name Baron Swanston. Fortunately, Kate Rounsefell didn’t accompany Deeming to Southern Cross where he was captured on 12 March 1892. It was at this time that the news of the Rainhill murders reached Australia. Deeming had murdered Marie and their four children on one of their visits, burying them beneath a concrete floor. He was subsequently hanged and to this day remains a suspect in the Jack the Ripper case.
Ethel Major
AKA: Bitchin’ Strycnine Ethel (citation needed)
Hull Prison Inmate: 1934
Finally, we have the only woman to ever be hanged at HM Prison Hull and kids; it’s time to put on your dumb-dumb hats.
Around the time Deeming was at peak bastardman levels in 1891, Ethel Lillie Brown was born. Though she was one of four children, Ethel was the only daughter and was loved by her father, a Lincolnshire gamekeeper for Sir Henry Hawley.
After leaving school, Ethel trained to be a dressmaker and was said to be very talented. However, in 1914 she found herself pregnant outside of marriage like a proper Hull lass. To hide her shame from the goats who lived on the estate, Ethel’s mother was tasked with bringing the child up as Ethel’s sister instead of as her daughter.
Four years later, Ethel met Arthur Major, a war hero who had been badly injured. I’m assuming in the brain. Ethel instantly fell in love or whatever and the two married on June 1 1918. The next year, Ethel had a son and the family moved to Kirby-on-Bain where Arthur became a lorry driver. No one ever mentioned Ethel’s daughter and Arthur just assumed the girl, named Auriel, was Ethel’s sister.
It wasn’t until 1934 that Arthur began to hear rumours to the contrary. He decided to confront his wife, who by this time had become a hag, and Ethel told her husband the truth. Following this, Ethel and her son would spend only a few hours with Arthur a night before returning to Ethel’s father’s to sleep.
Soon after, Ethel began accusing her husband of having an affair with Rose Kettleborough, who in fairness was probably hotter and nicer than Ethel. She even produced letters to prove Arthur and Rose were writing prose back and forth, but most people agreed Ethel herself had written them. When spring rolled around, Arthur began to suspect his wife was trying to poison him, spitting his lunch on the ground one day only to watch the bugs that gathered to feast die around the sandwich. It was a massacre.
On May 23 1934, Arthur returned home saying that he felt unwell. Soon after Doctor Smith was called and found him sweating, convulsing and completely unable to talk. Apparently, Ethel simply said she’d given him some corned beef and that Arthur had been having fits for years so shut up she didn’t do anything. Doctor Smith was really gullible and diagnosed Arthur with epilepsy. Ethel’s husband died that night.
The very next day police received a note stating:
Sir,
Have you ever heard of a wife poisoning her husband? Look further into the death of Mr. Major of Kirkby-on-Bain. Why did he complain his food tastes nasty and throw it to a neighbour’s dog, which has since died? Ask the undertaker if he looked natural after death. Why did he stiffen so quickly? Why was he so jerky when dying? I myself have heard her threaten to poison him years ago. In the name of the law, I beg you to analyse the contents of his stomach.
Fairplay
The police quickly sent parts of the dead dog’s body to Dr Roche Lynch of St. Mary’s hospital in Paddington, London because no one kills a dog and gets away with it. The Home Office pathologist quickly found that the dog had died from strychnine poisoning and everyone was distraught. Oh, also Arthur’s body was sent and he’d also died from strychnine, which is a nightmare to spell.
Ethel was escorted to the police station where she exclaimed she didn’t even like corned beef, Arthur made his own sandwiches and he probs had food poisoning. That time she was sent back home, but upon her return to the station she told Chief Inspector Hugh Young that she didn’t even know her husband had died of strychnine poisoning. Then Young was like “lol, you probably shouldn’t know that ‘cause I never told you” and then Ethel was like “aw balls, this man’s a genius”.
Her house was searched but nothing came up, so instead the police contacted her father. He stated that he did indeed keep strychnine around to kill mice and wouldn’t you know it, he’d lost a key for the cupboard he kept it in TEN YEARS AGO. The same key was found in Ethel’s house and she was promptly arrested to appear before the court in November 1934.
She was found guilty and hanged at Hull Prison on December 19, 1934, making her the first, last and only woman to ever be executed at the prison. It is said that her ghost still haunts the cell she once inhabited and the gallows where she once stood. It is total horseshit.
Dishonourable Mentions:
Rough the Dog (1891) - Possibly helped kill Mary Jane Langley alongside his owner John Rennard.
Joseph Dawber (1891 - 1898) - a Hull solicitor who defrauded landbuyers out of thousands.
Tony Lambrianou (some time between 1967 and 1982) - A member of the Krays’ firm, took part in the murder of Jack ‘The Hat’ McVitie.
Frankie Fraser (1973) - a violent gangster who spent some of his 42 years in prison at Hull.
