Late
in the evening of 18 January 1899,
Mr Richard Smith of Stoke was walking along Bagnall Street, Hanley
alongside the Victoria Hall, when he was startled by the sound of a
gunshot nearby. There was no one else in sight, but he noticed that
across the road, a door beside a small medical dispensary was
standing part-way open. Peeking carefully through the opening into a
dark passageway beyond he spotted a body lying on the floor a pistol
in its hand. Alarmed, he dashed to the police office around the
corner in the Town Hall and returned moments later accompanied by an
inspector and several policemen. When they reached the passage they
found 51 year old Dr John Craig who ran the dispensary examining the
body of a woman who had clearly shot herself in the head. They could
make out little more in the dark, but when the doctor announced that
the woman was still breathing the police brought a stretcher and
together they carried her across to the police parade room.
Hardly had they got into the well-lit yard, though than Dr Craig let
out a cry having recognised the woman before him. The man was visibly
shocked and while a senior officer took him aside for questioning the
police searched the injured woman for clues to her identity.
Going through her pockets
they found numerous items: some money, a few keys, a packet of
arnica, a left luggage receipt from Stoke Station and several
newspaper clippings, one of which carried a few
lines from Tennyson’s poem, Sea
Dreams.
‘……. he that
wrongs his friend
Wrongs himself more,
and ever bears about
A
silent court of justice in his breast,’
There
were also receipts for recorded letters and a cryptic inscription on
a visiting card that indicated a strong connection with Dr Craig.
These along with the doctor’s own faltering statement soon
identified the woman as Catherine Devine, a 43 year old artist from
Chelsea. The doctor explained how he knew her and what he believed
had just happened here and why. The lady herself, though, did not
live to give an account of her actions, dying from her wound at 10
p.m., without regaining consciousness.
 |
| Present-day Bagnall Street, Hanley. |
The full story of the
connection between Catherine Devine and Dr John Craig came to light
two days later in front of a packed court at the coroner’s inquest
into her death. Here, Dr Craig revealed that he and Catherine had
known one another for about 25 years, having first met in her home
city of Edinburgh. It was there that John Craig had trained as a
doctor, being licensed in 1869 and shortly afterwards he had married
Ellen Macintyre a native of the Potteries, before moving to the area and setting up his
practice in Hanley. His wife had given him a son and
daughter, but in December 1874 she died at the age of 25, leaving him
a widower with two young children on his hands.
Among
his late wife's friends were Eliza and Catherine Devine of Edinburgh,
daughters of a well-known and wealthy family of Scottish artists.
Eliza had agreed to paint a posthumous portrait of Mrs Craig and
whilst visiting their studio in 1876 to see how work progressed, Dr
Craig had met and become so smitten with the younger sister
Catherine, that he had been contemplating asking her to marry him.
They corresponded for a time, but his marriage hopes had faded a
short time later, when Catherine and several members of her family
emigrated to New Zealand in 1878. Robbed of his potential bride the
doctor had little choice but to get on with his life as a single
parent and as the years passed he became very content with this state
of affairs.
Catherine
remained in New Zealand and later Australia for eleven years, carving
out a moderately successful career as an artist, but in 1889 she
returned to Britain. Settling in a studio flat in Glebe Street,
Chelsea, her skills soon saw her supplying artwork for several London
fashion magazines and eventually holding an exhibition of her works.
To this she invited several old friends including Dr Craig. This
restarted their acquaintance and they corresponded intermittently for
a few years until Catherine was invited to spend Christmas with the
Craigs at their house at Mossley near Congleton. During this visit,
Dr Craig innocently noted to Catherine in conversation that prior to
her departure to New Zealand he had contemplated asking her to marry
him, and was surprised when she immediately asked him why he could
not ask her now? The doctor replied that time had altered his
circumstances, that he was content and he now had no thought of
marrying anyone. Catherine seemed to accept that at the time, but the
remark had struck a chord with this brilliant but lonely woman and
she soon started to obsess over the matter.
Apparently oblivious to
what he had started, Dr Craig extended another invitation for
Catherine to stay once again a few months after this, but she soon
upset the situation by again urging Dr Craig to marry her. He again
refused and the next morning, whilst he was out, Catherine left the
house under a cloud. Returning to find her gone, Dr Craig was left
feeling very angry at her behaviour and that might have been the end
of the matter, but a few months later he received a conciliatory
letter from Catherine and he agreed to meet with her at her home in
London when he visited the capital for Queen Victoria’s Jubilee in
1897. After watching the festivities he did indeed call on Catherine,
prepared to let bygones be bygones, but when she again raised the
subject of marriage he left in disgust and vowed never to visit her
again.
Catherine then began to
bombard Dr Craig with a series of scathing letters on his conduct
that were followed more often than not by apologetic letters or
telegrams asking him to reply. The doctor did reply to some to try
and calm her down, especially when she began to threaten to kill
herself. However, staggered by the barrage of letters he began to
receive and the increasingly erratic mood swings of his would-be
paramour, Dr Craig started to burn many of the letters unopened.
This state of affairs had
carried on for the best part of a year, during which time Dr Craig
had attempted to maintain his distance from Catherine. The death of
her mother, though, in October 1898, seems to have made him
sympathetically disposed towards her once more and shortly afterwards
he met her again during a visit to London. He found her in a
miserable state and recalled that she was in tears most of the time.
Her one consolation was that she now wrung a promise from the doctor
that if he would not marry her then he would marry no one else, an
assurance he was happy to give. She also asked if she might be
invited for Christmas once more if she avoided the question of
marriage. Dr Craig told her that he and his daughter were in the
process of moving into a house in Hanley adjoining his practice and
would anyhow be in Northumberland visiting his mother over Christmas.
He promised her, though, that once they had moved in after New Year,
that she would be invited for a visit. Satisfied with this, Catherine
parted amicably with Dr Craig and eagerly waited for the invitation
to arrive.
Sure enough a few weeks
later a letter did come, but the news it contained flung Catherine
back into a rage. Dr Craig wrote to her saying that due to the work
needed on the new house and because his daughter would be going
abroad for a while, he did not feel that he could accommodate
Catherine before his daughter’s return in March; in effect, for the
time being at least, she couldn’t come. Stung by what seemed like
another heartless rejection, Catherine wrote a furious reply saying
that he had deceived her, adding ominously that she could not go on
like this. It was a threat she had voiced before, but this time after
all of the mental agonies she had suffered over the past year, it
seems that Catherine had finally snapped. In the notes discovered
after her death it appears that she wrote more letters to Dr Craig,
but, as before, finding himself pestered beyond belief, the doctor
had once again begun to burn the letters unopened. He was thus
completely unaware of what she now set out to do.
Nor would he be the only
one, as to most of her London friends the story of Catherine’s
violent passion for Dr Craig would come as a great surprise, as she
had displayed no outward signs of any great interest in men except as
friends. All noted that she had been ill over the past year, stricken
by a listlessness that her own physician, Dr Schorstein, put down to
anaemia, but otherwise she seemed to be the same kindly,
mild-mannered woman she had always been. As a result, none of them
were aware – or could even have guessed – that Catherine spent
early January 1899 preparing for her death, finishing a portrait of
her doctor and wrapping up her affairs.
On the morning of 18
January, Catherine paid a visit to her housekeeper, Mrs Stoner, who
had injured her wrist several days before and she now made sure that
the elderly lady had everything she needed. Catherine told her that
she would be going to Staffordshire for a few days, joking that it
would give Mrs Stoner a rest from her. Back in her flat, Catherine left a package with a letter in her writing desk laying the blame
for what she was about to do squarely on Dr Craig. Then she dressed
well, putting on a fashionable lady’s walking-out costume,
collected a nightdress she had wrapped up in brown paper (the police speculated that she brought the nightdress with her to be used as her shroud), a
travelling rug, an umbrella and her purse containing money and a few
notes to give the police enough clues to discover her story. She also
pocketed the small, silver five-shot revolver that she kept for
personal protection. Catherine then sent for a cab to Euston Station
to catch the 4 p.m. train to Stoke. As she left, Catherine waved
goodbye to her housekeeper and that was the last time that anyone who
knew her saw her alive and conscious; it thus became the job of the
police to reconstruct her last hours for the benefit of the inquest.
After a three hour
journey north, the train arrived at Stoke Station at 7.14 p.m., and
it appears that, after depositing most of her belongings at the left
luggage office, Catherine had walked from Stoke into Hanley. Never
having visited Dr Craig’s new house in Bagnall Street, she seems to
have taken the better part of an hour locating it. Once she had,
though, Catherine went into the gated entry where she removed her
right glove to give her a better grip and taking out the pistol she
placed the barrel against her right temple and pulled the trigger,
inflicting the fatal wound.
Because of Catherine’s
accusations against him, Dr John Craig found himself being closely
questioned at the coroner’s inquest in an effort to determine if he
was in any way morally responsible for what had taken place. Indeed,
the doctor feared so much for his reputation that he had employed a
solicitor to sit in on the inquest to represent his interests in the
proceedings. However, the coroner was satisfied with the explanation
that Dr Craig had given to the inquest; nor did the police see any
reason to pursue the matter any further. The jury thought likewise
and quickly returned the verdict that Catherine Devine had committed
suicide whilst of unsound mind.
The final act in this
tragic tale of missed opportunities and fatal obsession took place
the day after the inquest, on Saturday 20 January, when the remains
of Catherine Devine were interred at Hanley Municipal Cemetery. To
avoid undue attention, the funeral took place a day earlier than
advertised and the funeral cortège took a circuitous route to the
cemetery for the same reason. Two of Catherine’s London friends,
Miss Maud McCarthy and Dr Schorstein, who had appeared at the
inquest, were the only mourners and not more than a dozen people
stood around the grave in the pouring rain as the last rites were
performed. As this was a suicide’s burial, there would be no
headstone to mark her lonely plot, while the brass plate on the
polished oak coffin bore only the simplest inscription.
Catherine Devine
Died Jan. 18 1899,
Aged 43 years.
Reference: Staffordshire Sentinel 19 - 23 January 1899. Numerous national and international papers January - March 1899.
