Drunken sailor killed woman he claimed was trying to rob him

Lawrence Prideaux used the old line about the evils of drink: "Oh men that should put an enemy into their mouths to take away their brains."

A mild man with an impeccable service character, Benjamin Eve, 23, appeared an unlikely defendant. But had this Dr Jekyll transformed into Mr Hyde when Caroline Simmons was battered to death? A cut finger opening a bottle of ginger beer at one pub was to link him with the crime.

His defence was simple - he had been provoked. "She had tried to rob me and paid for it," he was to tell detectives.

It was January 12, 1866, and Eve went on shore leave to frequent several watering holes. At some point, he and fellow armourer Henry Rose on the gunnery ship HMS Excellent left their comrades and within minutes met Simmons and Ellen Jerome.

Though engaged to be married, 27-year-old Simmons and her friend fell in with the sailors and visited a couple of other pubs in the neighbourhood, during which the increasingly drunk Eve became so aggressive he picked a fight with his shipmate and bloodied his nose, despite Simmons's futile attempt to intervene. With alcohol fuelling his temper, he snarled at her: "If you don't call me by half past six tomorrow morning, I will break your neck" - a reference to the fact he had to be back on his ship at day break.

Despite the ominous threat, she allowed Eve to accompany her to her home in Portsea where she lived alone.

Whether it was for sex or to rob him is unclear. However, at about 1.30am, neighbours were awoken by the sounds of fighting and shouting with a man's gruff voice clearly audible. Finally, screaming rent the air.

HMS Excellent

But it was not until the afternoon that two concerned women, puzzled why a lamp normally kept behind a door had been moved to a table, went to investigate and were horrified to see her body lying at the foot of the stairs. Her badly battered head lay in a pool of blood. Robbery, it appeared, had not been her assailant's motive as her purse and other items were scattered around the body.

A doctor, carrying out the preliminary post mortem into her death, estimated she had been dead for seven or eight hours, the cause of death being bleeding from her brain from a series of blows inflicted with fists as there were no facial wounds or lacerations.

Back on board the Excellent, Rose asked Eve where he had gone after they separated. "I hardly know where I went but I think I must have been fighting."

He then remembered he had gone to her house which was near a railway station and did not wake up until four or five o'clock.

"Did anyone call you?"

"No," said Eve. "When I woke up, I found myself lying on the floor with the lamp burning." He then nervously pleased: "Look at my hand. Do you see there is blood on it?"

Rose then posed the obvious question: "How did you get it?"

Portsea

Eve then confessed: "The woman tried to rob me and I paid her for it. I left her sleeping on the floor when I came away."

From inquiries, police soon knew who they needed to question, and it was DS Poole who went on board the warship to make the arrest. When charged with murder, Eve insisted he knew nothing about it. Poole then showed him a photograph of Simmons and Eve immediately admitted he thought he had seen her that night. His shirt with the name 'B.Eve' had specks of blood on it as did Simmons's clothing.

Eve was charged and committed for trial at Hampshire Assizes, charged with murder, but the time the case came before Mr Justice Channells on March 2, it had been reduced to manslaughter which he denied.

In his closing address, Prideaux principally posed two questions to the jury - had Eve used excessive force in preventing Simmons from stealing his money or had she died from not violence but apoplexy. He submitted: "There is an entire absence of conclusive proof that her death was caused by the blows which he gave her, but there is evidence that her constitution, habits and character were very likely to superinduce serious apoplexy and it is more than possible, in fact probable, that she died from this."

Portsea.

Jurors however convicted him within five minutes, the judge acknowledging they had returned the right verdict on the state of the evidence.

Jailing him for seven years, he remarked: "It is clear you had no intention to kill the woman. If you had, it would have been wilful murder. Nor did you intend grievous bodily harm. There is some reason for conjecturing you received some provocation. All these circumstances I take into account in your favour.

"On the other hand, the life of the most abandoned subject is precious in the eyes of the law by whose protection and defence we all live and breathe. There can be no doubt on this occasion the most unjustifiable violence was used. You were drunk at the time and that is no defence. Under all the circumstances, I cannot discharge my duty to the public without passing a severe sentence.