a few shillings to help her. When he
slept in her room, he emphasised, he lay
on the floor and was fully clothed.
On the day Irene disappeared, he had
given her £1 and asked her to call at
a shop to inquire if her new dress had
arrived. She had returned with a man
he saw follow her into the house, but he
did not see the man’s face.
He did not see them go upstairs,
but at about 10.30 a.m. he heard two
people come downstairs and leave the
house. Mrs. Hart then arrived and
asked where Irene was and he said she
had gone out with a man. She told him
she had a good mind to call the police.
“Why should the police be called in
because the girl had gone out?” asked
the judge.
“I cannot say,” Bagley replied.
He said he left the house shortly
afterwards. He went to Sheffield,
Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham
and Hucknall, but made no special
effort to avoid the police. He was
unaware that Irene was dead when he
left Hartington Road, and he did not
kill her.I
n reply to further questions, Bagley
said that Irene had shown him letters
which she had received from someone
signing himself “Tom.”
Two letters mentioned meetings on
August 29th and September 1st, and
he burned both of them because Irenedid not want her father to know about
them, fearing he would beat her with a
stick.
On September 10th another letter
arrived, Bagley continued. It asked
Irene to meet the writer the following
night, or alternatively at the Cosy
Corner at 9.30 a.m. on September 12th.
He did not know why Irene had shown
him the letters.
Summing-up, Mr. Justice Goddard
said the case was extraordinary only in
the disparity of the ages of the deceased
and the accused – Bagley was 62.
The only people in the house on the
morning of September 12th, according
to the prosecution, were Bagley, Irene
and Ambrose. The jury could leave
Ambrose out of the case, for he had
the strength and mind of a six-year-old
child and he could not have tied the
knot in the rope that was used to
strangle Irene.
It had been suggested, the judge
continued, that someone else had
entered the house, gone upstairs and
murdered Irene while Bagley was
downstairs. The jury might think that
would have shown a degree of courage
difficult to comprehend.
Mr. Justice Goddard went on to say
it was difficult to excuse anyone in the
house for permitting Bagley to sleep
in the same room as a girl who had
reached puberty.C
ommenting on Bagley’s objection to
Irene going to and returning from
a cinema with two young men, the
judge suggested that she found safety
in numbers. She had done no more
than go to a cinema and return home
at 9 o’clock, and if she had returned by
herself she might have been in some
danger from being alone with her
grandfather.
“Why this intense agitation on the
prisoner’s part because she had gone
out and come home with two men,
unless it was that he became jealous
that she should have young men friends
when he felt he had a proprietary
interest in the girl?”
Commenting on Bagley’s claim that
Irene had shown him letters from a man
named Tom, the judge asked the jury,
“Do girls show their love letters to their
grandfathers? You may think that there
was no such person as Tom and that
there were never any letters.”
That was what the jury did think.
After only 30 minutes’ deliberation
they convicted Bagley of wilful murder.
Sentencing him to death, Mr. Justice
Goddard told him:
“You have been convicted on
evidence which can have left no doubt
in the mind of any person that you are
guilty.”
On Wednesday, January 27th,
1937, Bagley’s appeal was dismissed
as “a complete waste of time.” Two
weeks later, on February 10th, the
hero-turned-killer was hanged
by Tom Pierrepoint and Robert
Wilson at Armley Gaol.Andrew Bagley is led to the gallows,
his appeal dismissed as “a complete
waste of time”