The Tank Tragedy in Stetchworth, near Newmarket: Investigating a 120-year-old mystery that claimed the lives of two lost souls
It is a 120-year-old mystery that sent shockwaves across the country. Head of News Paul Derrick investigates
Nearly 120 years ago, a shocking discovery in a quiet corner of countryside dominated the nation’s headlines.
On the edge of Stetchworth, near Newmarket, stood a water tank capable of storing 20,000 gallons.
But for a brief whisper of time it held the secrets, burdens and last moments of two lost souls.
On Thursday, March 30, 1904, a police officer climbed a ladder inside the dimly-lit waterworks to find, submerged in the depths, the bodies of two young men.
They were bound together with ropes.
The pair were Lewis Wallis, 22, and John Bert Norton, 19.
An inquest found the pair had committed suicide while ‘temporarily insane’.
It ruled the men to be of ‘very weak intellect’.
Back then, the law and public opinion pulled no punches on those who took their own lives.
In a further twist, the inquest jury decided that ‘each must be regarded as legally guilty of the murder of the other’.
It was dubbed the ‘tank tragedy’ - an act laced with mystery, with no apparent motive, that rippled across the country and attracted significant press attention.
On Saturday, April 9, the Newmarket Journal reported that ‘two of the enterprising halfpenny dailies which devote special attention to sensational occurrences sent representatives down from London to make investigations, but these gentlemen were able to find but little scope for the exercise of their talents’.
Since then, much has changed.
The way we, the press and society, cover and approach suicide is more compassionate than a century ago.
Using press reports from the time, we have re-examined the case to show, with a 21st Century lens, who these men were and how they were portrayed in the wake of their deaths.
This is their story.
The men in the tank
According to the Newmarket Journal, Lewis was employed by Newmarket Rural District Council as an engine driver at the waterworks.
John was a letter carrier at the Stetchworth post office.
The young men, who were close friends, lodged in the same house and spent much of their time together.
The Norwich Mercury reported that both were given excellent characters and neither was in trouble of any kind.
John was regarded at the post office as thoroughly trustworthy.
One witness told the inquest that, when they had the time, they were nearly always together.
The jury ruled that both were ‘naturally of weak intellect’ and shared an opinion, which was supposedly generally held in Stetchworth, that ‘possibly monotonous lives and want of sufficient occupation may have induced in the young fellows a morbid state of mind which resulted in the tragedy’.
But was there more to it?
The Journal report alludes to a deep connection.
And they were literally bound together in death.
Were the pair struggling to be their true selves in less accepting times?
Or was it something else entirely?
Could they see no escape from what could have been mundane rural life?
We will never know but they are valid questions in a different age.
There were also hints of mental health struggles for Lewis.
His mother Ann Wallis told the inquest that her son had a good deal of illness and suffered from his head a great deal all his time.
She was surprised he had apparently taken his own life.
“He always seemed so harmless that I always felt he never wanted to hurt anybody nor yet hurt himself,” she said.
Asked if he could read or write, Ann answered: “No because he was always ill, all his schooldays.”
Another witness said he was ‘sometimes funny through drink’.
The Journal reported that John had been heard during the last week or two to speak of drowning himself in the tank.
His bricklayer father John Norton, of St Philip’s Road, Newmarket, said his son was ‘pretty quick’ when asked about his intelligence.
He said he thought his son had been lodging at Cross Green, in the parish of Dullingham.
Asked when Mr Norton Snr left Stetchworth, he said he had been away about three years.
His son visited him sometimes and they last saw each other about three weeks ago.
The inquest
An illustration of the water tank, published in a national newspaper, shows it standing isolated and alone in a field.
A massive watery grave which held the answers to some of the questions the inquest was trying to solve.
The inquiry into the deaths of Lewis and John was opened by Mr A. J. Lyon, coroner for the County of Cambridge, at 5.15pm on Saturday at the Marquis of Granby Inn in Stetchworth.
Having been sworn in, the jury proceeded to view the bodies, enclosed in coffins, which lay in the engine room of the waterworks, a short distance away from the inn.
Alfred Simpkin, a carpenter in the village, told the inquest that he knew both of the men quite well and last saw them alive at about 10pm on Wednesday when, together, the pair came into the tap room of the very pub where the inquest was being held.
They looked sober and Mr Simpkin said he didn’t see them drink anything at the inn.
They followed him up the road and he saw them turn up towards the waterworks as they wished him goodnight. That was the last he saw of them.
He said he had known Lewis for about three years since Mr Simpkin moved to the village from London.
Mr Simpkin said Lewis looked funny sometimes when he had a little drop of drink.
He used to meet John every morning coming from Dullingham.
It was put to him that PC John Seamer had understood that Mr Simpkin recalled one of the men told him: “We are going up to the tank. Will you come with us?”
He replied: “They might have said so. I forget.”
When pressed on the matter, Mr Simpkin said he couldn’t remember whether he had told the policeman this.
No search was made until the next morning when John failed to attend the post office at his usual hour to collect letters for delivery.
PC Seamer, private constable on the Earl of Ellesmere’s estate, said he received information at about 11am on Thursday and went to the waterworks.
The door was locked but a key was obtained from the working yard.
He noticed nothing wrong in the engine room so went to the top of the tank.
“Only one man could pass up and down the ladders at a time,” he said. “On going to the top of the tank I found a hurricane lamp tied to the handrail of the ladder, about two feet into the tank, and quite close to the ladder. It was still burning.”
He held the lamp over the water, which he saw had been disturbed.
A man brought some ‘creepers’ and the police officer dragged the water, which was about 11ft deep.
Eventually Lewis’ body was brought to the surface.
With help from the working yard on the Stetchworth Park estate, both bodies which were attached together, were hoisted out of the water and lowered down to the engine room.
There was some blood on Lewis’ face.
On Lewis’ body were a pocket handkerchief, a prayer book and hymn book combined, a pocket knife and the key of the engine room but no letter or writing of any kind.
John was also searched but nothing was found ‘that would throw any light on the subject’.
The inquest heard there was a wood beam across the tank which the men might have sat on.
It was also said that they could have sat on the edge of the tank and tied themselves together.
In summing up, the coroner did not think there could be any other opinion than that the pair drowned in a tank.
He said there was no sign of a struggle, which would probably lead the jury to suppose that the pair tied themselves together for the purposes of some concerted action.
He did not think one man could drag another up the ladders.
On the law, the coroner said that if two men conspired together to take their own lives, and counselled and helped one another to take their lives in that way, each one was guilty of the murder of the other.
He asked the jury to decide whether the men were of sound mind or insane.
The coroner suggested the only reasonable and proper verdict was that each man murdered the other and - unless the jury had from their own knowledge of the men some just and reasonable ground for believing otherwise - that each did take his own life, while he was of sound mind.
The Journal reported that the jury deliberated in private for a few minutes and returned a verdict.
The foreman said: “The verdict of the jury is that in their opinion each of these two men was of very weak intellect naturally, and that there is nothing to show that on the day they committed the act they were any more intelligent than they usually were; and we believe them to have been temporarily insane.”
The aftermath
On the day of the inquest, The Daily Illustrated Mirror noted that no satisfactory explanation is yet forthcoming to account for the ‘sensational discovery’.
It said that as far as is known to their friends, neither of the men had any reason for taking their own life.
The mystery lives on more than a century later.
Were these two young men more than friends, with no hope of ever being able to live openly? Were they fed up with their rural lives, with no bright future in sight? Or was there some other reason?
We will never really know.
But what we can do is reflect and reassess, with a compassionate eye, the nature of how such cases were treated legally and ethically back then.
There was even a faint gesture of such an approach days after the inquest.
On April 11, 1904, The Daily Illustrated Mirror published a follow-up story, dubbed ‘Death Tank’s Disclosures’.
It reported that since the bodies were found, the villagers of Stetchworth refused to use the supply from the tank, which was demolished in the late 1960s/early 1970s.
By the order of Newmarket Rural District Council, the tank was emptied, cleaned and repainted.
But as the water seeped away, the bottom of the tank revealed a previously unspoken glimpse into John’s life and what might have been.
There, lay pieces of wood cut in ‘curious shapes’. It appeared a carving of the tank house was meant for a small box.
It said John, referred to in the article by his surname Norton, was undoubtedly a very clever amateur carver, and after having finished his duties at the village post office often devoted his time to the craft.
One of the items he made was a pipe cut from a hedgerow stick.
Carved clock hands were ‘favourite examples of his handiwork’ and some of these were found at the depths of the tank.
The report added: “Some time ago, out of such unpromising material as a cart wheel, an old wheelbarrow wheel, a broomstick, some boards, and pieces of iron he made a bicycle, which, after being used for a time, he sold to a visitor for 5s. It was subsequently exhibited at an exhibition.
“His friends point to these achievements as evidence that he was by no means the half-witted youth that some people alleged him to be as an explanation for his suicide.”
It is a glimmer of lost potential and a life not lived.
But also a recognition of a talent gone far too soon.
For confidential support on an emotional issue, call Samaritans on 116 123 at any time.
With thanks to Stetchworth Community Archive for use of their images.
