← My Victorian Nightmare
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Now streaming. Disney invites you to go behind the scenes with Taylor Swift in an exclusive six episode docuseries. I wanted to give something to the fans that they didn't expect. The only thing left is to close the book the end of an era and don't miss Taylor Swift. The Eras Tour, the final show featuring for the first time the tortured Poets department. Now streaming only on Disney. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying Big Wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying. No judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com hello and welcome to My Victorian Nightmare. I'm your host, Genevieve Mannion, and I'm here to talk about mysterious deaths, morbid fascinations, disturbing stories and otherwise spooky events from the Victorian era. Because to me there's just something especially intriguing, creepy and oddly comforting about horror and mayhem from the 19th century. So listener discretion is advised. Hello friends, and welcome to this, my 90th episode. And heavens do I have an upsetting and fascinating show for you. Today. In the heart of Denver, Colorado, you will find a park with rolling hills and tweeting chickadees. But beneath the picnic blankets and flying Frisbees lie thousands of forgotten graves. They say the ground there shifts. Old plots reveal themselves in the grass and something restless lingers just below the surface. And on a bright Sunny Morning in 1895, a young 13 year old boy in Plaistow, East London, woke up beside his mother. He got dressed, he tied his shoes. He then pulled the knife from out her chest before he locked the door behind him. The newspapers would call this the Pleistow Horror. A crime so chilling, so shocking, that it shattered Victorian ideas of childhood innocence forever for you. Today, dear listener, I will discuss the terribly haunted Cheeseman park and the unthinkable murder of Emily Harrison Coombs. I'm just gonna keep doing these dramatic intros. They're just so much fun to make. I really hope that you're enjoying them as much as I am. So yeah, today's episode will be very disturbing and I can't wait to share all of this terrible information with you. But first, thank you to everyone who has joined the Patreon I usually like to list you all individually but since there is now a free trial, it's not so easy to see on Patreon who has officially joined versus who is just getting a samp. So I will say thank you to everyone who has joined. If you would like to receive the show ad free a day early. You like witchy stuff, more Victorian true crime extras or some dark poetry? Go to my Victorian Nightmare to find out how. And real quick. I was looking through comments on Apple podcasts and this is from a couple of weeks ago back in February. But how sweet is this? This comment from Australia219 says hi Genevieve, longtime listener and prob. Definitely one of your younger members of your audience. Just wanted to let you know that your show inspired me to invite my crush to do a Valentine's seance on Friday the 13th. Plans fell through, but thank you for the idea and hopefully if I ever get her interested in podcasts, this will be the first one I recommend. Love from the Midwest. End quote. Okay, if anyone invited me for A Friday the 13th Valentine's Day seance when I was in high school, I would likely still be married to them. That is the most precious date idea I have ever heard of and the fact that the plans fell through breaks my heart. So I need an update. Were you able to reschedule? Have you gone on any other dates? I'm so invested now. I personally don't go on dates anymore, not with humans anyway. But I am looking for cool things to do with Toby this summer in the evenings when I'm able to go outside. What are some cool goth dog date ideas? Let me know in the comments. One of the biggest misconceptions about me is that folks think I'm a vegetarian. I am not. I am a vampire that also eats meat. But that doesn't mean that I eat meat super often. If I do, I want it to be high quality. Actually grass fed, but it's hard to find that in the grocery store. Or at least to trust it in the grocery store. That is why I simply love Omaha Steaks. They sent me a big box of the highest quality beef, pork, salmon and chicken. All frozen at peak freshness, flavor and quality. The delivery was so fast I just stacked it all in my freezer and now I am set. For months they sent me the world's greatest pre shaped burgers. I thawed them out and I stacked two of them on a bun. Not that they weren't big enough for a perfectly reasonable human sized, delicious burger already. I just I'm an animal. I added blue cheese, lettuce, tomatoes and jalapenos, took 30 pictures and sent them to a friend to make her jealous, which she very much was. Everything I have tried so far is incredible, but that double decker burger was a work of art. Omaha Steaks delivers premium protein right to your door and dinners can be made in minutes. You also get a 100% satisfaction guarantee so you can order with confidence that you're getting the highest quality meats out there. Taste the Omaha Steaks difference and never settle for grocery store proteins again. Get flavorful, high quality proteins delivered by visiting omahasteaks.com/35 off when you use promo code Victorian at checkout. That's omahasteaks.com code Victorian terms apply. C site for details okay, let us have our first segment with their own eyes where I discuss Victorian haunting. I am broadening the segment to include the hauntings of not only Victorians, but the hauntings of other people by Victorian ghosts. And goodness gracious, I need to thank a listener named Brianna for emailing me@myvictorianightmaremail.com to request that I dig into the terrifying aspects of Cheeseman park in Colorado. This place is reportedly crawling with Victorian ghosts and for a very good reason. Remember how in the movie Poltergeist it was impossible to fully cross over all of the ghosts in the house because the entire neighborhood was built on a graveyard where the bodies weren't first removed. It is said that this park inspired that film. This beautiful park was built over thousands of unclaimed, undisinterred graves of people, many of whom died in terrible ways. Executions, horrible diseases and extreme poverty. The 1800s In 1858 General William Larimer established the town of Denver and set aside two hundred and eighty acres of land for a graveyard that was to be called Mount Prospect Cemetery. Allegedly, one of the very first folks to be buried there was a man executed for murdering his brother in law, a man named John Stoffel. I was not able to find more info about this particular guy. I checked, but I was able to confirm that indeed the cemetery was used to bury executed criminals and because of this, more affluent Victorians chose to bury their loved ones elsewhere. By 1866 there were about 626 bodies buried there, mostly of lower class poor and folks who died of a great number of diseases. At the time, Denver was a rapidly developing frontier town and and the more densely it was populating, the quicker disease spread. I looked up which were the most prevalent ones at the time and it Was so. Tuberculosis, smallpox, typhoid, cholera, dysentery, scarlet fever, pneumonia and whooping cough. Think about how difficult life was with just Covid. Imagine eight COVIDs at once, these poor people. Because the cemetery was considered only for lower class folks and criminals, it was often vandalized. It fell into disrepair and grew over. Cows were even allowed to graze among the graves. The ownership of the land was dubious. It was officially legally owned by the United States government because of a signed treaty with arapaho natives in 1860. But the town of Denver petitioned the government to purchase it in 1872 so that they could deal with it and continue to use it. Many people were still rapidly dying there of diseases, but they also had the Civil War and they needed the real estate to keep up with demand. So the deed was signed over to Denver in 1872. It was cleaned up and back in business. It was divided between Catholics, Jewish folks, Masons, Civil War veterans, Chinese folks and other segments of the population. Interestingly, when it comes to Masons, the oldest fraternal brotherhood in the world, which dates back to the building of the pyramids, these folks would often purchase sections of graveyards for member burial. They ranged in religious affiliations, nationalities, etc. But the reason why they had their own sections was because Masonic burial rituals were a key part, and perhaps still are, of Masonic tradition. I read that even in these highly segmented cemeteries, which most Victorian cemeteries were highly segmented by religion, class, etc. Even within themselves, Masonic temples would vie for very specific slices of graveyards within the Masonic sections. And I read of of different Masonic lodges vandalizing other lodges graves because they claimed certain portions of the graveyards and in this specific graveyard as well. So there may still be Masonic ghosts fighting to this very day. The cemetery was also home to mass graves specifically for people dying of diseases. They didn't get their very own plots. There was a nearby asylum hospital nicknamed the Pest Place, and they utilized mass graves for their patients who died of smallpox. They also used a mass grave for the physically challenged and elderly who would be sent there by families who could no longer care for them or who didn't want to. So, so sad. But within less than a decade, the cemetery again fell into disrepair. It grew over, it wasn't maintained. And by 1890, the United States Congress decided it would be best converted into a lovely park. Families of buried people were informed that they had 90 days to disinter and move their family members themselves. There were no federal funds devoted to the removal of the bodies. Many of which had been there for 30 years and so most of the bodies were not moved at all. Literally thousands. It is believed that there are up to 2,000 bodies still there. Shortly after all of the headstones were removed and only a few of the bodies bodies were taken, people in the surrounding area began to report confused looking, wandering ghosts. Now, I cannot substantiate any of this. I tried looking for articles about this, but I could not find them. It is also said that the doors of nearby homes would be knocked on in the middle of the night and some folks allegedly claimed to see ghosts looking through windows and the ghosts of children wandering the grounds. I will continue looking for the sources of those claims because I really want to find them if they exist. Folks on Reddit, however, who currently live nearby claim that in the spring the grass grows in differently over grave shaped rectangles covering the entire park. They claim that you can see the outlines of the graves. Someone specifically said that it also happens when the weather is dry. They said the grave outlines are the first to die. This is horrifying. Like, I spend a lot of time in cemeteries. I've had numerous picnics in cemeteries. I'm very comforted by them. But there's something so disquieting about a forgotten graveyard to me, like discovering that you're sitting atop someone's final resting place by noticing the outline of the dead grass around you. It's like the difference between being invited into someone else's home versus waking up in someone else's home. Graveyards with stones mean you're welcome, you're being invited to read epitaphs, leave flowers, contemplate your own immortality. Removing all of that just makes it so sad and frightening to me. Ugh. Okay, so the situation gets much worse. So people are dealing with free roaming, confused, wayward specters. And people are really upset that the government did less than nothing to properly deal with the situation. They are also understandably upset about the disrespect for the dead and the families of the dead. So the city of Denver hired a man, an undertaker named E.P. mcGovern, to remove all of the unclaimed bodies. He was provided with a fresh box for each body that he removed. He would be paid $1.90 for every coffin that he filled and successfully transferred to Riverside Cemetery, which was another graveyard nearby. Now, I found articles from the day about this situation that say something different than a few common online sources. It is often said that the undertaker, to cheat and get more money out of the situation, hacked up bodies to spread them across more boxes so he would make more money. But I found a few articles from the time that say something a bit different. In the Denver Republican from March 1898, an article called the Work of Ghouls, it states that this man was only provided boxes big enough for babies. Essentially, he wasn't given boxes big enough for grown human people, so he had to hack away at them just to fit them in the boxes, which ultimately cost the city far more than if they simply provided him with realistically sized boxes. Also, their family members were being hacked into bits. So again, I saw numerous retellings of this situation that made it sound like the man was unscrupulous and a cheat, and perhaps he was in on a fraudulent scheme with other people in the government. But it just looks like the city cheaped out on boxes and ended up spending far more than they would have if they just gave him properly sized boxes. Whether he had anything to do with how that happened is uncertain. Certain. All that being said, bodies were being hacked to pieces and strewn asunder to fill them in the tiny boxes by this undertaker, and body parts were being found all over the grounds. Plots were left wide open and souvenir hunters and graverobbers began looting the rings off of fingers left behind, etc. God Almighty. This process did not remove all of the bodies. It appears that the project was eventually stopped because of gross risisManagement. Funny enough, CheeseManPark.org says that it is only popular folklore that claims that all of the bodies were not removed. But articles from the day contradict that claim. So do current articles. In 2010, the Denver Post reported that four preserved full skeletons were unearthed during irrigation work. So these were just folks found by accident in only one one small part of the property. Those four individuals were reburied at Mount Olive Cemetery. I was happy to read that note. So yes, there are still bodies there, contradicting the official claims of the park organization. And as mentioned, it is believed that there could be at least 2,000 bodies still remaining, whole or in part, after the very sloppy, potentially corrupt sounding attempt to relocate these folks. But by 1910, the park was officially opened and named after a real estate tycoon named Walter Cheeseman. He did work to establish the city's railway and water systems, so the park was named in his honor. So let's now discuss the spooky park hauntings that reportedly continue to this very day. There are still reports of transparent children roaming around the grounds at twilight hours, and some claim that if you get too close to them, they disappear. Some have also claimed to see a female spirit who walks around the park at night singing to make it extra spooky. But just like with the children, if you approach her, she vanishes. Another strange phenomenon. And this creeps me out the most. I think many people report that if they lay down in the park, they experience a kind of temporary paralysis. They have a hard time sitting back up. They go stiff. They say that it can happen even if you lay down for only a few few minutes. So it's not like when I lie down on my couch to watch all of the conjuring movies for hours. I need another four hours to actually get up. That is so creepy to me. I read a lot of articles from the spiritualist newspaper about spirits taking over the bodies of mediums. And I wonder if you lay down upon a grave, whether you're a medium or not, if a spirit still connected to their bodies under you can get into your bones a little. There is a specific story about a ghost more detailed than just the lady ghost that is simply horrifying. I found an account of a ghost that is nicknamed Slackjaw. He's described as a pale, thin man with a broken jaw wearing a blood soaked hospital gown. I found this account of someone who claims to work a few blocks from the park. One night he and a friend were walking through the park and as they walked across the South Lawn Pavilion, he heard a rattling chain that his friend said he didn't hear. They walked further into the grass and sat down to have a cigarette. Then saw something very strange. A man with a clearly broken jaw in an old timey hospital gown and a boy on an old bike riding in circles around him. As he walked toward this dude and his friend, this kid had a chain dangling from his pocket. And the guy realized that was what must have heard. The man walked up to them and asked for a cigarette. With his broken jaw, the dude said, shouldn't you be in the hospital? And the man lifted his hospital gown to show that he had been stabbed numerous times. He said, they let me go because I had no money. And then he warned them to be wary of them, the men that attacked him. The boy continued to ride in circles around them. As the man turned away and walked slowly, slowly back into the bushes, he appeared to disappear into the darkness. The guy said that he and his friend ran home terrified and were convinced that what they saw weren't living people. Now, to be fair, this sounds like a Wednesday in Prospect park in Brooklyn, but I'll just take this guy's word for it he believes that this ghost is out there looking for his killers. Oh my God. I love this spooky stuff so much. Thank you again, Brianna for pointing me in this direction. Action. That was just a little bit about the supremely haunted Cheeseman park in Denver, Colorado. This episode of My Victorian Nightmare is brought to you by Alloy Health. As a Lady in my 40s, I am beginning to experience all kinds of upsetting, inevitable realities. Sleep isn't as easy as it used to be. The brain fog, the weight gain, perimenopause and menopause are inevitable. But that doesn't mean we have to suffer. The symptoms are true treatable. 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Head to myalloy.com and use the Code Victorian and tell them all about your symptoms. And you'll get a fully customized treatment plan and unlimited messaging with your doctor. Plus, you'll get $20 off your first order today. Head to my a l l o y.com and use code VICTORIAN to get $20 off your first order. Okay. Let's now discuss one of the most disturbing, bizarre and saddening Victorian true crime stories I had yet to hear of that in some ways has a happy ending. This one is a rollercoaster. Thank you to Siobhan, a member of the fam coven who recommended this story. I cannot believe I hadn't heard this one before. This is the murder of Emily Harrison Coombs, otherwise known as the playstyle horror. On July 15, 1895, a concerned woman named Emily Coombs, the s sister in law of another Emily Coombs, came to demand her whereabouts. This Emily had married the brother of a man named Robert Coombs. This is why the two ladies shared the same name. This man lived with his wife and two boys, Nathaniel and Robert, in a small, pretty yellow brick house in Plaistow, a suburb of East London. Robert was the chief steward for a steamship company. So he would be gone for weeks, if not months at a time time. But he always left enough money for his family to be secure while he was gone. And he had already been gone for almost two weeks at this time. Emily Coombs, the sister in law, was not the only person concerned with the whereabouts of Robert's wife. Neighbors hadn't seen her for at least 10 days and Robert, only 13 years old, and his younger brother Nathaniel, only 10, were seen all by themselves coming and going from the home without her. Neighbors had asked the boys where she was and they just said she was in Liverpool. They knew their father was also not home. And when they asked who was taking care of them, they wouldn't answer straight and would simply run off. The Coombs were a well respected family in the neighborhood. Described by neighbors as very pleasant, cheerful. And Mrs. Coombes was especially regarded for her kindness to others and attentiveness to her husband and children. So again, it was strange that no one had seen her with them for almost two weeks. Her only fault, as reported by neighbors, was that despite how much love and affection she showed to her boys, they were kind of miserable kids. They were known to be sullen and morose. Some also said they were dishonest and deceitful. To be fair though, if your dad was also there for a fraction of your childhood, regardless of how nice he was, that might affect you negatively. Emily had already come to the home days earlier when told by a neighbor that the boys appeared all alone and a terrible stench was emanating from the front door. They were concerned that the boys were all alone and that the boys weren't taking care of sanitation in the house. So their aunt came, banged on the door, but no one answered. So she came back a couple days later and she was now determined to break the door down if she needed to. She banged on the door and a 40 year old man answered the door. A man named John Fox, someone she had never seen before. She said, who the hell are you? Where is my sister in law and where are my nephews? He said simply, Emily was in Liverpool. And then he slammed the door. At that moment the two boys came walking up the road. She went up to them and asked who the hell is in the house right now and where the hell is your mother? They told her that around rich aunt died and that their mother went to Liverpool to get a whole lot of money and she would be back any day now. And what happens next is insane but understandable in the context of Victorian's disconnect with reality when it was easier to just hope for the best. A phenomenon that I have discussed from time to time. The boys told her that they ignored her question about the 40 year old guy in the house and simply scrambled off into a group of kids running back down the street and she went home. She clutched maybe one pearl at the notion that she didn't get the answer she came from and friggin banana split. It took her two days to be like maybe they were lying and maybe that guy shouldn't be there two days. So after two days she went back to the house clutching maybe three pearls this time. Time. And in a later testimony about how things unfolded after she banged on the door again she said when the door was opened, quote unquote it was a man I think I could not be sure. Christ. No concern really about this random dude in the house. Utterly forgettable. This time she didn't wait for any explanations, didn't ask any questions. Luckily she just barged right in and went straight to the back parlor where she found her two nephews use playing cards and they scrambled quickly to their feet in the terrible smelling place. She demanded again to know where their mother was and they now said that she was round Ms. Cooper's house and she should go find her there a number of towns away. At this point little Nathaniel tried to make a break for it. He scrambled out the back window into the garden. She said she believed that their mother was actually in the house and stormed over to Emily's room with Robert running after her. Her. The smell was terribly overpowering but that didn't stop her from trying to open the door which was locked. She demanded that Robert give her the key but he said that he had no idea where it was. She didn't waste any more time with this kid. She knew the landlady would have a spare. And if you would follow me down this lovely little street in Plaistow, East London, I would want to show you something. It is a glistening July afternoon in 1895 and oh, don't you love the floral wrought iron little gates around outside every precious home. This isn't a wealthy neighborhood. Solidly middle class but ever so quaint. The details on even the most simple houses look so elegant. Imagine having a cup of iced lady gray tea with a little honey and lemon among these precious abodes. You don't have to imagine it, of course. I brought us some. I even carefully packed us pretty teacups. And I have a little lemon slice just for you there. While we walk down the street toward that house there. A little history about the neighborhood. Play Stow's name originates from the name Plague Sty which sounds like it was named after a plague, but no, it was derived from the old English word plague which meant sport or play. And stow meaning place. It was a place known for miracle play performances in the 1200s. Some of the earliest biblical reenactments of Holmes. Excuse me please. You are excused. You assure to hurry. That somewhat burly gentleman was Mr. John Fox who came out of that house right up there. Number 35. Hail later dazed the moment Ms. Emily Coombs busted her way through the door. And as you can see, she is now burst back out of the door. She is going to go get a key from the landlady next door and we are going to clandestinely sneak around the corner of this house into this thin alleyway here, duck down a bit and look with me through this window. The curtains are drawn to but not quite enough. You can see quite clearly through the sides there on the bed is the two week old corpse of Ms. Emily Coombs. You can also see the photographs of her two young boys there beside her bed. Oh, and it sounds like her sister in law and the landlady have come back into the house and they have opened the door. Oh God. Absolute tragedy. Emily is telling the landlady to run for a constable here. Let's step away and we will start from the beginning. Eczema is unpredictable, but you can flare less with epglis, a once monthly treatment for moderate to severe eczema. After an initial four month or longer dosing phase, about 4 in 10 people taking EBGLIS achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing. MGLIS Lebricizumab LBKZ, a 250mg injection, is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema, also called atopic dermatitis, that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. Epglis can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to Epglis. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Severe eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with Ebglis before starting Eglis. Tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Ask your doctor about eglis and visit eglis.lilly.com or call 1-800-lilyrx or 1-800-545-5979. Robert Coombs, the 13 year old boy was born in 1883 and was a forceps birth. Even at his age he had two pronounced marks on each temple where the forceps clamped around his little little skull at birth. He suffered terrible headaches from around 3 years old and doctors warned his parents never to beat him on the head. It goes without saying how terrible it is that a doctor would give parents suggestions on where specifically not to beat their child. At around 10 years old, young Robert became deeply interested in the Jack the Ripper murders and he became obsessed with penny dreadfuls, the bloody, gruesome, some murderous and very disturbing little comic books for children that I discussed at length in episode four. He was obsessed with these and his parents didn't try to discourage him from reading them, no matter how much time he spent poring over them and discussing them and obsessing about them. He was described by his headmaster as exceptionally intelligent, but he missed a lot of school days. His mother was contacted when he didn't show up for a while. He had told the headmaster that he was going on a long sea voyage and the headmaster said okay, bon voyage. But much like the kid's aunt, a couple days later the guy thought it might be a good idea to follow up. Turns out young Robert was attending the murder trial of the South End murderer James Canham Reed. I'm probably going to do a true crime extra episode on that guy on the Patreon. That man was found guilty and hanged later that year. So young Robert had a fixation on death, crime and murder. He had a significant head injury, but he didn't show any signs of malice, lack of empathy, indifference to suffering, no known issues other than the ones mentioned. People thought he was a bit sullen, morose, deceitful at times, but no more than your usual 13 year old kid. That's exactly as you could have described me at 13. Maybe not as deceitful and I didn't have like a serious head injury, but I was just getting into grunge and riot girl, I was dying my hair green, etc. But Robert again had a fixation on murder. And one day he, according to him, decided to kill his mother. It was, as he put simply, a decision that he made. He felt compelled to do it, so he did. He bought a knife with the intention of using it to kill his mother. Mother. He hid it in a dustbin in the backyard, then an unused chimney in the house. According to both Robert and Nathaniel, on the night of Sunday, July 7, Emily punished Nathaniel, the younger brother, by beating him. And that's when he decided he would kill her. That night he asked his mother if he could sleep with her in the bed that night. She said yes. At about 3:45am after lying away and after having placed the knife and a club next to the bed before she came in earlier, he sat up, grabbed the club and struck her over the head in the dark. He then grabbed the knife and stabbed her in the heart twice. It's unclear if she died quickly or slowly, but Robert stayed there in the bed and fell asleep next to her. When he was done, he woke up at 8:30am Cam locked the door behind him and told his brother that he had killed their mother. Nathaniel didn't believe him, so he asked to see. Robert, took him back to the room and Nathaniel would later say that he still heard her groaning. But this may not have been possible. By that time she had been stabbed twice in the heart five hours earlier. What a horrifying detail that even if she wasn't grown groaning, his little mind thought he heard her. Robert covered her head and locked the door again behind him. He took some money from his mother's purse and then he took it to the landlady to pay the rent. He told her that his mother was away and she didn't suspect anything was wrong. It is kind of wild to understand that no one would have been that concerned that a 13 year old and a 10 year old were all alone in a house. Certainly not for like at least a week now that I come to think of it. Thirteen year olds were working in model, they were sweeping chimneys. Many 13 year olds and even younger were working full time jobs at that point in their lives. So that's not that strange to imagine that no one suspected anything was wrong. At least not for a while. Robert paid the rent, then took his brother to go watch a cricket game. The next morning he purchased quicklime. He brought it home and covered his mother with it, likely having learned about that by Attending the murder case the year before. The next day Robert went down to Royal Albert Dock where he found Mr. John Fox. It's unclear how he already knew Robert, but he did. John was a very mentally challenged man who had once worked on ships. But one that he worked on had caught fire and sunk. He was one of the few remaining survivors. He was too afraid now to work on ships. So instead he did dock work for little pay. Young Robert asked if he would look after he and his brother while while his mother was away in Liverpool. And asked if he would pawn some items for him. The pawn shop wouldn't believe that he didn't steal them. So he needed a grown up to do it for him. And he would let him keep some of the money for himself. Robert had also forged a letter from his father saying that his wife was very ill with Bright's disease and had a heavy doctor's bill to pay and requesting an advance of £4 to pay the bill. He took the letter to his father's company. They requested a doctor's note. So he forged that too and got some more money. Mr. Fox came back to the house and took one of the bedrooms on the top floor at Robert's request. It's unclear why he asked him to stay with them. Perhaps he thought that he might need him to make explanations. Maybe for more grifts. It doesn't seem like he was going to frame this guy. But maybe it entered his mind. It's very likely that this man wasn't aware that Robert had killed his mother despite the growing odor coming from her room. Again, he was fairly mentally challenged and police didn't believe that he knew anything after later interviewing him. About two weeks had passed and as mentioned in that time, Robert and Nathaniel's aunt had come to the home looking for her sister in law. And after after storming in, she found her. While the landlady was running to find a policeman, Emily the ant collected Nathaniel who was hiding in the bushes outside, took him back into the house and sat him down next to Robert. She reprimanded the boys and demanded an explanation. Robert confessed to everything, including asking Mr. Fox to pawn his father's watches. His mother's room also had all of the drawers pulled out. He had returned to look for more things to pawn as the police and coroner arrived. It was a shocking scene to say the least. Mrs. Coombs was covered in maggots and the room was full of flies. John Fox was picked up in the neighborhood and brought back to the house to testify to the coroner. And police. The body was removed and described as quote unquote horribly decomposed. The sheets were covered in dry blood. And the blood covered knife was still laying nearby the box. Both Mr. Fox and Robert were officially arrested. Mr. Fox was charged as an accessory after the fact, but later acquitted. Robert was moved to Holloway Prison on the 18th of July and stayed there until his trial. He was visited by a physician who believed that he was a danger to himself. He recommended that he be moved to a padded cell. Robert told him that he had heard voices telling him to kill his mother. And felt an irresistible impulse to kill her. It doesn't seem like he was instructed by any legal counsel to say these things. The doctor also noticed that Robert's pupils would wander unequally during headaches that he experienced while in the prison. And Robert talked about how excited he was for his very own murder trial. Just like the one he had seen two years earlier. So this boy clearly had some psychological issues. Incidentally, contemporary analysis of his mental state. Which in any cases of contemporary analysis of anyone who is no longer alive are always just theories and assumptions. But contemporary analysis of what Robert might have been experiencing could have been homicidal mania brought on by adolescent brain damage. It's believed that his fascination with murder and penny dreadfuls wasn't the cause cause of his fixation on murder. But because he already had a fixation on murder. He was just attracted to those things. And even without reading about killing or going to a murder trial, he still would have had the same compulsions. His biological neurological instability coupled with the absence of his father and what sounded like, at least at times, a mother who may have been physically abusive could have been exasperating back factors in his untethering from perceptions of consequence reality. He's not believed to have been psychopathic or sociopathic or even psychotic. While awaiting his trial he wrote a letter to a neighbor. And this is what it says. It actually. It really breaks my heart a little. Dear Mr. Shaw, I received your letter on last Tuesday. I think I will get hung, but I do not care as long as I get a good breakfast before they hang me. If they do not hang me, I think I will commit suicide. That will do just as well. I will strangle myself. I hope you are all well. I go up on Monday to the Old Bailey to be tried. I hope you will be there. I think they will sentence me to die. If they do, I will call all the witnesses liars. I remain. Yours affectionately, R.A. coombs. He also drew him two pictures. The first one was a picture of. Of himself being pushed towards a scaffold and another one of himself on the scaffold being hanged with like a word bubble. And within it, it just said goodbye. He then wrote a miniature will, leaving thousands of pounds to various people. So you can get a sense that he just wasn't quite tethered to reality and vacillating between such intense emotions. Suicidal, hopeful, obsessive, fantastical. The death penalty, incidentally, was not even considered. There's little information about the father's reactions to when he returned and found all of this out. I do not believe that that means that he was indifferent or anything. There just isn't much in the papers about his reaction other than his testimony in court. He was called to testify about his son's forceps, birth and medical issues that he suffered as a result throughout his young life. But I can only imagine how that man must have felt returning to discover all of this. Ugh. So horrifying. The jury was asked to consider that even though the murder was clearly premeditated, he was deeply disturbed. He didn't truly understand what he had done. He was obsessed with death and murder to the point of mania. Unlike the contemporary belief that penny dreadfuls and murder cases were not the cause of his dark fascinations, his defense team blamed the pernicious literature that he was allowed to read. And his doctor claimed that he suffered from homicidal mania with lucid periods, as he described it. In other words, like a kind of temporary insanity. The jury came to agree with the defense. He was found not guilty for reasons of insanity and sentenced to an indefinite period of time in Broadmoor Hospital for the criminally insane. The time would be based on if he improved or not, and was left to the discretion of the doctors there. He was the youngest inmate there at the time, which must have been horrifying for him him. But he was released 17 years later at the age of 30 in 1912, and once released, he moved to Australia. He enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force and became a war hero. He fought in the First World War and won the military medal for conspicuous bravery as a stretcher bearer in 1916. After the war, he worked on a four farm. He taught music to children in South Wales. He then started a garden market. He never married, but he adopted a son. He died at the age of 67 in 1949, leaving everything to his adopted son. Despite the premeditation. Like the ways that he tried to cover things up, tricking an older man into helping him get money after the murder, I can't feel any anything other than sadness for this boy and his brother. These are complicated feelings. Sometimes we feel like we're not respecting victims enough if we're not condemning their killers. I certainly can't speak for Emily Coombs, his mother, but as it was said by everyone that knew her, she loved her children. I really hope that her spirit was able to to witness her son heal and grow, and I really hope that he was able to forgive himself before he met her again on the other side. 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