Charles Cowle - child r.a.p.ist and mu.rde.rer.

Charles Cowle - child rapist and murde

rer.

Charles James Cowle aged 18, was tried at Manchester Assizes on the 26th of April 1932 for the murder of 6 year old Naomi Anne Farnworth (known as Annie) at his parent’s home at 83 Kay Street Darwen, Lancashire.  He was prosecuted by Sir David Maxwell Fife and defended by Mr. T. M. Blackhouse.  The trial judge was Mr. Justice Humphreys.  His defence was insanity but the judge directed the jury that they could only find him guilty or not guilty.  They chose the former and he was removed to the condemned cell at Strangeways.  He was hanged by Thomas Pierrepoint three weeks later, at 8.00 a.m. on Wednesday the 18th of May 1932.  Cowle weighed 166 lbs and was given a drop of 6’ 8”.  The inquest was held before the Deputy County Coroner, Mr. Stanley Hodgson, and the governor, Mr. W. Young testified that the execution had been carried out expeditiously.  Roy Calvert, secretary of the National Council for the Abolition of the Death Penalty described the execution as an “outrage against humanity”, saying that “he was a mental defective with the mental age of a child.”

Annie went to school on Tuesday the 22nd of March 1932 and after morning lessons finished, left to go to another school for her free school dinner.  She was served with potato hash and was seen alive in a local fish and chip shop afterwards with one of her friends, Doris Sharples.  Doris was approached by Cowle who asked her if she had heard about a missing girl.  He allegedly told her “You will be next”.

Annie did not return home that evening and her distraught parents called the police and a search of the surrounding area was started. Cowle helped in this as did other local people.  The police were told by one of his neighbours that they had seen him with Annie and that she had run an errand for him, so Inspector Kay interviewed him on Thursday the 24th of March.  He admitted that he had sent her to fetch fish and chips but claimed that she had then returned to school. Later in the interview he suggested that he had shared some of the chips with her.  When the police probed further, he told them that Annie's body was in a metal trunk upstairs and that he had strangled her with a 6’ 6” length of string, coiled around Annie’s neck.  Her clothes were found in an alcove off the bedroom.  The post mortem showed that she had been raped as well as strangled and also revealed remains of the chips in her stomach.  He was thus arrested and charged with her murder.  

Cowle was claimed to be a mental defective and to have a split personality by Dr. Alexander Sturrock who appeared as an expert defence witness at the trial.  The prosecution revealed that he had attacked a two year old boy when he was nine for which he had been sent to an approved school. 

Charles Cowle seems to have been a very disturbed young man.  The law had little sympathy for child killers in those days and he could not prove insanity in accordance with the legal definition.  He did not bother with an appeal and the Home Secretary was advised against a reprieve.  He was examined by Home Office psychiatrists while in Strangeways under the terms of Section 2 of the Criminal Lunatics Act of 1884 and found to be legally sane.  This examination was reported in the press, presumably the Home Office deciding to release the information to counter the claim by Roy Calvert that Cowle’s sanity had not been examined.