I have touched on Inge Street in this blog before, and despite the general sea change of the environment, it is one of the few places in the city centre where the setting of this murder story remains intact. I have also touched on modern-day sex work in this area: some things don't seem to change, yet it seems to be a Birmingham thing that back to back houses have vanished completely from the environment. They give an impression of being part of ancient history, yet I have lived in one myself, when I lived in Leeds, where there are still rows of them. I have a feeling, though, that that the ones in Leeds probably started off better quality than the ones in Birmingham and don't usually face into inner courts the way the remaining ones in Brum do. The National Trust Back to Backs are on the corner of Inge Street and Hurst Street, and the illustrations to this post are intended to give an idea of where this murder took place, and while the 'court' of back to backs illustrated was actually on Hurst Street round the corner, it gives an idea of what back to back life really was like.
The victim of this murder was Martha Elizabeth Simpson, a 21-year-old prostitute, known as Pattie, who lived at Number 2, Back 21 Inge Street with her lover Charles Samuel Dyer. On the evening of Wednesday, February 3rd 1904, Martha her friend Margaret Moran went out for a drink while Charles went out separately. Martha picked up a customer and took him back to Margaret's home in Birmingham Place, where business was transacted as it were, then Charles arrived to take her home to Inge Street. Around midnight Charles returned to Margaret Moran's house with blood streaming down his fingers and said, 'Oh, Maggie! I've done it. Save her if you can.' Margaret went to Inge Street with her two lodgers, where they found Martha Simpson dying in a chair, a gaping wound in her throat, and blood pouring down her clothes, and beyond the possibility of being saved.
Dyer confessed to a policeman who had seen him running away from the scene, and who took him into custody at the police station in Moor Street, that he hit Martha on the head with a poker then drew a razor across her throat. At the inquest on February 5th, 1904, a verdict of murder was given against Dyer, and on March 17th, 1904 he was tried on the capital charge. It was heard that Dyer and Martha were both very drunk, an argument broke out between them in which they were already physically fighting before returning to Inge Street, and despite his defence claiming that he had been provoked and that Martha had hit him first with the poker, he was found guilty of murder.
Dyer was hanged at Birmingham Prison, Winson Green, at 8am on Tuesday April 5th, 1904, by hangmen John and William Billington. A crowd of 7-800 people gathered outside the prison, and Dyer's body was buried in a plain black coffin within the prison precincts.
Credits: I have rewritten this account from 'Immoral Earnings' in John J Eddleston's Murderous Birmingham: The Executed of the Twentieth Century (Derby Books, Derby, 2011).
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