"A more secluded spot could hardly have been chosen," all were agreed when the bodies of the Rev Alfred Ernest Constable and his wife of just two months were discovered in Derbyshire. The sinuous River Derwent flows south through the county on its way to join the Trent. In Burley Hill, a village some little way north of Derby, Samuel Raines farmed some land running down to the Derwent. From his home, on Saturday, 22 June 1895, he saw something "black" on the bank but paid it no mind. Sunday morning, he put his field classes on it and decided to investigate. Farmer Raines came upon the body of a woman lying on the ground. She appeared to have been pulled out of the water and covered with a greatcoat; her head was resting on a clergyman's hat. The farmer went for a constable and the two men, believing "there's got to be a man around somewhere," soon located the second body, face down in about three feet of water. The bodies were taken by cart to the Red Cow public house in Allestree for an inquest. The story soon to be revealed was "as mysterious as it is tragical."
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| St. Mary's Burley-in Wharfedale |
The Rev. Mr. Constable was identified by a soaked packet of visiting cards found in his pocket. He was not yet thirty; he'd been ordained in 1890 after leaving university in Durham where he was an excellent and popular student, famous for his feats of athleticism, more remarkable because he had been totally blind since a childhood disease. He spent three years as a curate at St. Mary's, Burley-in-Wharfedale, near Leeds. He was then assigned to Thornton Watlass, a remote village in North Yorkshire but he returned to Burley frequently to continue his acquaintance Miss Mary Ellen Naylor, whose family of considerable means resided at Elmgrove. Mr. Constable was delighted then when he was called to be curate in Guiseley, Wharfedale, where by the rector of St. Oswald, he was married to Miss Naylor on 23 April 1895. They left for their honeymoon in the Channel Islands.
Whilst they were away, however, "the tongue of scandal had connected their names with indiscretion before marriage." The Bishop of Ripon had been presented with enough information to suspend the Rev. Mr. Constable and to expect the young clergyman to defend himself upon his return to the diocese.
The police determined the Constables spent their last night at an inn in Worcester and had purchased railroad tickets for Leeds but they got off the train in Derby. They walked up the Duffield Road and along the river until they found a suitable location. Near the woman's body on the bank were found two earthenware cups and an empty packet, the cover, in large red letters, read: INFALLIBLE VERMIN DESTROYER. Dr. Ernest Davis of Derby reported that the gentleman died from drowning, although he had taken some of the poison, made up mostly of strychnine. Perhaps he had fallen into the water. The woman died from the poison. She had been in the water but apparently carried out, placed on the bank and covered with the coat. There was great excitement when the doctor added that his postmortem further revealed that "had she lived, she would at no distant period have become the mother of a male child." She had been married just eight weeks.
The father of the deceased, also a clergyman, headmaster of Thorne Grammar School in Doncaster, had arrived. He described his son as given to fits of depression, but he had latterly seemed very happy. His wife seemed as happy as he was. The elder clergyman had never suspected Mary Ellen might have been in the family way. W Harvey Whiston, the coroner, declared it a pitiful tale. This young couple chose not to wait until their marriage and their "great trouble" would soon be made clear by her confinement. They could not face the scorn, the shame brought on their friends and the likely end of Rev. Constable's clerical career. Thus, they were induced to commit this rash act, with no evidence of careful advance planning. Therefore, he ruled their deaths were due to suicide during a state of temporary insanity. The jury followed Mr. Whiston's instructions.
A short time after the inquest, the bodies of the Rev and Mrs. Constable were laid to rest in Allestree. The burial of suicides remained controversial; the verdict of "temporary insanity" allowed for some leniency. The services in Derbyshire were "of the quietest character," attended only by the dead man's father and two brothers of the late Mrs. Constable. She was 24.
NEW: Peter Grinham of the Burley Local History & Archive Group has kindly shared with me some new research on this double tragedy done by Andy Thurman of Allestree. Mr Thurman has an alternative theory. He believes this wasn't a double-suicide. "I think the strychnine was intended to induce a termination. Hence Mary Ellen was partly in the river. It went wrong and she died so (Rev Constable) committed suicide." Remember, however, two china cups were found at the scene. That doesn't rule out Thurman's theory. Mysterious and tragical it remains. There is more at https://www.facebook.com/groups/711412013140436/posts/751924715755832
