Edmund Reid

tirades against himself; he was worried that soon, she would
leave him, for good.
On the evening of 18 February 1914, Will Pitcher decided
to act. He made his way to No. 24 Seafield Road, where Sarah
Brockman was unwise enough to let him in. Whether she had
provoked him by one of her sarcastic jibes is not known, but
Will grabbed one of the dining room chairs and belaboured
her head with such force that later, splinters were found
embedded in the soft felt hat she was wearing. When she had
fallen to the floor, he used her apron to gag her, and a rope
to tie her up. She died from suffocation aggravated by severe
shock and multiple injuries to the head.
When Alice Brockman returned home, the demented Will
Pitcher was ready for her. He wrapped a paraffin-soaked cloth
round her head, tied her up, dragged her upstairs and raped
her. He then showed her the body of her mother, gloating that
she was dead. He asked Alice if she would go on the run with
him, but understandably given the treatment she had been
given by the frenzied murderer, she refused. When Will was
unlocking the front door, Alice ran through the kitchen and out
of the back door, to take refuge with a neighbour. Will also left
the murder house, but since he did not have any money, he did
not fancy his chances escaping. When Constable Champion of
the Ramsgate Borough Police came up to the murder house,
Will meekly gave himself up, and confessed to the murder.
When Will Pitcher appeared at the Maidstone Assizes on 21
June, before Sir Charles John Darling who had sentenced the
desperado Samuel Henson to death eleven years earlier, there
The murder house at No. 24 Seafield Road
was no doubt that he was the guilty man. The only thing his defence team could try was playing the ‘insanity card’: they
had got hold of a ‘tame psychiatrist’ who testified that there was insanity in the family, and that one of Will Pitcher’s
sisters was an epileptic and a mental defective. With must have been a very narrow margin, the jury returned a verdict
of Guilty but Insane, and Will Pitcher was committed to Broadmoor until His Majesty’s pleasure be known. This would
not happen in a hurry: Will remained at Broadmoor for many decades, but it appears that he was either released or
transferred to another asylum in his old age, since he is recorded to have died in Canterbury in 1975, aged 80. 4
4 W H Bishop in Bygone Kent, December 1990, W H Johnson, Kent Murder Casebook (Newbury 1998), 42-51;
Times 20 and 24 February 1914.
The Murder of Margery Wren, 1930
Margery Wren was born at No. 3 Charlotte Street, Broadstairs, in 1850, daughter of the house-painter William Wren
and his wife Elizabeth. She had at least one sibling, the five years older sister Mary Jane. Margery Wren went to London
to become a servant, and the 1871 Census lists her as being in service in Islington, whereas the 1881 Census finds her
living with her parents at No. 42 Spencer Street, Clerkenwell, and working as a maidservant. In 1891, she was still
servant to a London merchant, but a few years later, an old lady named Mrs Wroughton died in Ramsgate. She was
related to the Wrens, and Mary Jane and Margery inherited a sum of money and an old confectioner’s shop at No. 2
Church Road, Ramsgate.
Mary Jane and Margery were quite happy to escape the London drudgery, and they set themselves up in their new shop.
The Church Road house was far from a luxury dwelling, containing the shop and a small parlour on the ground floor, and
two bedrooms on the first floor, but the two Wren sisters were used to cramped and insalubrious living conditions. There
was no bathroom, and the toilet was out in the yard. The 1901 Census lists Mary J. Wren as a Confectioner, and head of
the household, and the younger sister Margery as cook. In 1911, the Wren sisters were 65 and 60 years old, respectively,
Ripperologist 147 December 2015 39