A discharged soldier who had co-habited with a Luton woman while her husband was a prisoner of war in Germany was jailed for five years with hard labour at Beds Winter Assizes on January 17th, 1919. Thomas William Wingrove, aged 41, a fitter of no fixed abode, had pleaded guilty to wounding Ethel Bliss, aged 30, of 118 Chapel Street, Luton, with intent to do grievous bodily harm, by cutting her throat with a razor, on December 23rd, 1918.

Details of what Town Clerk Mr William Smith described as “from beginning to end a very sordid, wretched and unsavoury story” were given at a committal hearing before Luton magistrates on January 8th, and reported at length in The Luton News the following day and in The Luton Reporter on January 14th.

“Notwithstanding, there is absolutely no justification for this man having assaulted this woman in the way he has done, which might, with a little more pressure, have resulted in his being charged with the most serious crime of murder. He has had a very narrow escape from being place in that very unpleasant position,” added the Town Clerk.

Wingrove was said to have been a married man living apart from his wife and having a separation order made against him in London in April 1918, for which there was a warrant out for his arrest. He had joined the Army as a shoeing smith at Biscot Camp and was a strong, athletic man with a reputation for being something of an amateur boxer. He was discharged from the army into munitions in February 1918, after being treated in hospital for several months for wounds.

Ethel, a native of Luton, had married Fred Bliss, aged 32, at St Matthew's Church on August 1st, 1908. There were no children of the marriage, but a 13-year-old boy was born to the couple before marriage. They ceased to live together around October 1914, and in December 1915 her husband, a former Waterlow's print employee at Dunstable, joined the 6th Bedfords. Ethel returned to live with her parents at 118 Chapel Street, and Fred was taken as a prisoner of war by the Germans on October 9th, 1917. The couple did not see each other again until December 16th, 1918, following Fred's repatriation, when he called to see Ethel's mother before going on to Houghton Regis.

Ethel had met Wingrove casually at the Albion pub in New Bedford Road, Luton, while she was living in lodgings in Cromwell Road, and Wingrove used to get weekend passes and stay with her there. After Wingrove went to France in September 1916, Ethel went to work in London and lived in Kentish Town. He was wounded in October 1916 and sent home to hospital at Homerton, where she visited him, and also later at the Wood Lane Orthopaedic Hospital, where he was a patient for nine or ten months before his discharge from the army.

Wingrove then went to live with Ethel in Fulham as man and wife. She remained there until about a fortnight before the signing of the armistice, when she returned to her mother at 118 Chapel Street. Two days later Wingrove turned up and they continued to meet after her husband's return. At a meeting in the George Hotel, Ethel alleged that Wingrove threatened her, as he had previously when he had had drink. He then said he would '”kill her stone dead” if she ever left him.

Prior to December 23rd, Ethel had arranged to meet Wingrove on the previous Saturday evening, but did not do so – her husband had returned that morning. At about 8 o'clock on December 23rd, there was a knock at the front door of 118 Chapel Street. Fred Bliss answered the door and there found Wingrove, whom he did not know, asking if there were any letters for him.

Fred called his wife, who appealed to Wingrove not to cause any bother, as her husband had seen enough of that in Germany. Wingrove confronted Fred about his marriage before turning his attention to Ethel, who was cleaning her boots.

Wingrove seized her with his left hand, and the next thing she knew she was feeling dazed and fell into the corner. When she picked herself up, she was Wingrove going towards the back door. She knew she felt ill in some way, but did not know she had been cut until she felt part of the handle of a razon in her hand, and then saw blood on her right hand and running down her clothes.

She ran through the front door into Chapel Street, followed by her husband, who tried to get her back into the house but refused, and was taken into 114 Chapel Street, occupied by Mrs Hughes.

Fred Bliss fetched towels from home, which baker Mr Westall, of Windsor Street, applied to her throat while a doctor and the police were sent for. Ethel was bleeding very freely, and Mr Westall's prompt action probably saved her life, the court heard. Dr Lewis said either of two main wounds would have caused death had the haemorrhage not been controlled.

When arrested later in the day, Wingrove at first gave his name as Barrett, but when being taken into custody said: “I know, I did it. Will you tell me how she is? If ever a chap's paid penance for what he's done, I have.” Charged at the police station, Wingrove burst into tears.

In evidence at the earlier hearing, Wingrove said he had been an instructor of boxing at Biscot Camp, and when he first met Ethel Bliss he was in strict training for a boxing contest in London. On his return to Luton he met Ethel in Edwards' Restaurant and she gave him a locket containing her photograph as a souvenir of having won his contest.

When he went to 118 Chapel Street on December 23rd, Wingrove asked Ethel if she did not think she ought to be ashamed of her treatment of him after what he had done for her. She laughed at him, and said it was all his fault, and with that he seemed to lose his head.

“I made a jab at her,” said Wingrove. “I didn't mean to do what I did; it was her struggling away from me that made me do it. I couldn't tell for the minute if I had cut her throat or not, but then I heard her screaming, and when she ran out of the front door, I ran out the back.”

In its report of the case at Beds Assizes at the Shire Hall, the Beds & Herts Saturday Telegraph (January 18th, 1919) Wingrove said he was “guilty, but did not mean to do her a lot of harm”.

Inspector Janes, of Luton Police, said that Wingrove had an accident as a young man that eventually set up brain fever and caused him to become an inmate of an asylum at Dartford, Kent. He had engaged in many forms of employment, including boxing and hall-keeper at a picture palace.

He joined the army and served overseas, and was was wounded in the left wrist on the Somme. He was substituted for munition work at Erith. No previous convictions were recorded against him.

Appealing for leniency, Wingrove told the Judge: “I think I had great provocation in that I was badly treated. After her husband returned from abroad she was arranging to leave him and come with me to Birmingham, or somewhere. When I went to the house on the Monday morning she laughed in my face, and I really don't know what happened afterwards.”

The Judge said the crime was one of a nature fortunately rare in this country. Prisoner apparently imagined that he had a grievance because the woman, after being with him, preferred to return to her husband. Prisoner had no doubt spent money upon her, but had meanwhile omitted to maintain his lawful wife.

He bought a razor and made a savage attack upon the woman. It was most extraordinary that he had not killed her, in which case he would would have been arraigned on the most serious charge on the calendar. Prisoner, as he had said, probably imagined he had a grievance. Actually, of course, he had none.

The Judge concluded: “I can give no sort of encouragement to crimes of murderous violence of this description, and the prisoner will go to penal servitude for five years.”

Wingrove appeared to be stunned when the sentence was announced.