62 Murder Most Foul “I Have To KIll Cathy Tonight”
J
OSEPH DEANS made a point of
letting it be known well in advance
that murder was on his mind. He
told his intended victim he was going to
kill her and he told his friends about it
too.
The intended victim, Catherine
Convery, a 51-year-old widow who had
been Deans’ lover, merely shrugged.
The friends were more alarmed, but
there wasn’t a great deal they could
do about it. They shook their heads in
disbelief as Deans showed them his
murder weapons, an axe and a razor,
and discussed what he was going to do.
There probably hasn’t been a murderer
who has better made known his
intentions than Joseph Deans...
It is difficult to reconcile Deans, the
premeditating killer in middle age, with
the Deans who, at the age of 25, set out
from his native Sunderland to make his
fortune in South Africa. His well-to-do
family had connections in that country
and Deans, young and fancy free, was
tired of life in England.
And in South Africa there was the lure
of gold. For 17 years, punctuated only
by a short break as a soldier in the South
African Army, he toiled away in the gold
minds on the Rand. He didn’t exactly
make a fortune, but he did make some
money and unlike many an unmarried
gold miner, he was prudent with it.
But gold mining in the first decades
of the 20th century was an unhealthy
occupation. The dust in the mines
wasn’t extracted, and in that hot, dry
climate it had nowhere to settle except
in the lungs of the miners.
Deans, frequently gasping for breath,
guessed that the rigour of gold mining
was shortening his life. If he hadn’t
much longer to live, he decided, it would
be better to go home and die in his own
country.
So it was that in 1914, as Britain stood
on the brink of the First World War, he
bade farewell to the sunny shores of
South Africa and set sail for rather less
than sunny Sunderland.
The reward for his sacrifice was that
he would never again have to work for
his living if he chose not to. He had
savings of more than £600, a South
African Government pension of £2
a week for life, and a South African
Army pension of 10 shillings a week for
life. By today’s standards, therefore, he
was had enough for a single man with
modest aspirations to live on.T
he country in which Deans
disembarked was much different
from the Victorian country he had left
towards the end of the previous century.
The streets were bustling with men
waving their call-up papers, the stationsand the ports were ringing with farewell
cries from wives and sweethearts.
Deans stood and stared at it all. The
Great War was to marginalise him
because of his respiratory trouble and
because of his age – he was 42 when
he arrived back in Sunderland. As the
town emptied of men gone off to the
war, Deans, who was good-looking
and who liked to dress in the best style,
was quickly noticed by the women left
behind. They must have thought that
not all was entirely lost as they eyed the
former gold miner, now a gentleman of
leisure, up and down.
Certainly Catherine Convery thought
so. Her eye alighted on Deans at the
very same moment that his eye alighted
upon her. Soon they were going out
together. By day they walked the town
arm in arm, in the evenings he wined
and dined her, at night he slept with her.
Catherine cooed over her good luck.
She had two teenage children living with
her at her tenaced house in Devonshire
Street who still needed her support, and
she was desperately hard up. In a town
suddenly bereft of eligible men she hadSunderland TragedySunderland Tragedy