James Phipps

Background

James Phipps was a 21-year-old unemployed Winsford painter.

Eliza Warburton was a 10-year-old schoolgirl.

Phipps had lost one eye in a schoolyard accident many years earlier and had a white scarf tied over one eye socket.

The offence

On 12th October, ten-year-old Eliza Warburton was one of a number of children playing on Station Road, Winsford.

Phipps approached the children and said that if one of them would fetch him some cigarette from a nearby shop he would give them tuppence. Eliza volunteered.

When Eliza returned, Phipps asked her if she knew where there was a local lamplighter and if she would show him the way.

At around 7.30pm, Phipps and Eliza were seen on a footpath heading toward some wasteland.

When Phipps was next seen an hour later, he was alone and minus the scarf.

The prosecution claimed that Phipps lured Eliza into the field, sexually assaulted her, knocked her into a ditch, and drowned her in a pool of muddy water.

Investigation

Eliza Warburton’s father had been told of her errand and set out to find her when she failed to return home.

He was accompanied by a score of locals in the search, and they came across Phipps on the path.

Seeing the advancing crowd, Phipps fled only to be arrested by the police and held on suspicion.

In a cell, he confessed that he had been teased about his missing eye and had stones thrown at him by a group of children.

He said he chased them, caught hold of the girl, then drowned her in a shallow pool.

A search quickly revealed Eliza’s body.

Phipps was charged with murder.

Arrest

Phipps was arrested by the police and held on suspicion after a crowd found him on the search path.

Trial

So intense was local feeling against him that his Chester assizes trial before Mr Justice Lawrence was convened for 19 October, barely a wee after the crime.

Phipps pleaded not guilty through insanity.

The prosecution claimed that he had lured Eliza into the field and after sexually assaulting her knocked her into a ditch and drowned her in a pool of muddy water.

Phipps’s defence claimed that his story about the children teasing him was false but argued that the lies were concurrent with the symptoms of insanity.

The jury took only seven minutes to find him guilty.

Sentencing

He was hanged one month after the murder.

Outcome

Phipps was hanged by Henry and Thomas Pierrepoint on 12th November 1908 in Knutsford.

Aftermath

Henry and Thomas Pierrepoint carried out the execution at Knutsford, Cheshire.