Tales of a father killing his children – or his wife and children – make the newspapers more than they should in modern times. They are newsworthy because they are so abhorrent: we still have traditional views about a father’s role as loving protector of his family, working hard to ensure that they are safe, so when he subverts this stereotype to destroy his family, the press and public alike are both repelled and fascinated.

Husbands and fathers resorting to such a step is not, though, a modern phenomenon. We sometimes ascribe reasons for their actions to financial insecurity and worries, or to jealousy about their wives. It has always been so. In 1905, for example, a horrific crime took place in the town of Fleetwood, near Blackpool, as a result, allegedly, of a husband’s jealousy towards his wife. Yet his revenge for any imagined or real actions on the part of his wife also resulted in a horrible injury being inflicted on his own young son.

Edward Hill was a 29-year-old labourer who lived at Gamble Road, Thornton, near Fleetwood. On the night of 7 April 1905, he had hit his wife and strangled her until she lost consciousness, leaving her for dead on the sofa. He then went to the bedside of his five-year-old son, John Edwin, and slit his throat with a razor. Little John seems to have attempted to defend himself, as he also received a wound to the back of his left hand. Edward then tried to cut his own throat with the same razor he had sliced at his son with.

Amazingly, all the family survived their injuries; in fact, the alarm had been raised when John Edwin had staggered down the stairs from his bedroom bleeding from his neck, and found the family’s lodger, named Campbell. He was taken to hospital, and received several stitches. Edward was duly charged with felonious wounding with intent to murder, as well as with attempting suicide – for suicide, of course, was still a crime at this time. At Liverpool Assizes in May 1905, it was heard that Edward had told the police that he was jealous of his wife, had been ‘deceived’ by her, and in a fit of this jealousy had decided to kill his wife and children.

On the night of the attack, Mrs Hill had gone to her mother’s house, but her husband, who had been drinking, had followed her and ordered her to return home. Perhaps fearing her husband’s tone of voice, and the fact that he had been drinking, she obeyed, but he had struck her as soon as they reached home. He had then tried to strangle her and attack his son, all in the presence of the lodger. After Mrs Hill and John Edwin had been taken to hospital, Hill ‘fastened’ the doors and windows, and when the police arrived, they had to force entry – finding Hill bleeding in a bedroom.

Although found guilty, it was of the lesser charge of wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm, and Edward was sentenced to just 15 months in prison. The jury heard that his wife had described him as a ‘good husband and fond father’, and that he had only committed the acts of violence while ‘in a state of delirium tremens&helli; insanity’. He was upset, the argument went, by the death of a man he had been sitting with a few days earlier, following several fits – an act that saw him need drink to cope. Yet this didn’t square with her other comments that he had been drinking too much all week, and had been so violent on an earlier occasion that his mother had had to hold him down. On the night of the attack, Edward’s brother John had been called to the house by Edward’s wife, because he was behaving ‘like a madman’ – Walter and another brother had had to sit on Edward until he became quieter, having previously rolled around scratching the floor tiles for no reason.

If we, as historians and genealogists, simply relied on birth, marriage and death records, we would have no idea as to this horrific event in the Hills’ marriage. They were married young, and were married until they died; they had several children, and saw them married. It is only by looking at the evidence of newspapers that we learn of the violence and drinking that marred the lives of the Hills. What the BMDs do show is that Widnes-born Edward Hill had married Ada Ann Jones on 5 August 1899 in Thornton. He was 24 at the time, working as a labourer, and the son of a fellow labourer named John. Ada, four years his junior and perhaps ironically born on Valentine’s Day, was the daughter of Edwin, a fitter. John Edwin, their first son, was named after their respective fathers. By 1901, they were living at 46 Gamble Road, where the census records Edward as an ammonia distiller. Such a job could be dangerous, and accidents could occur, in addition to the risk of being suffocated by fumes.

After the court case, Edward was sent to prison, but probably did not serve the whole 15 months of his sentence, which would have seen him released in October 1906. In this month, Ada had another child – Gladys, who was born on 6 October, suggested that she had been conceived in January that year, just eight months following her father’s conviction. However, the Hills then moved – in 1908, another daughter, Susan, was born in the Warrington area – and this might have been in order to get away from gossip, to live nearer their families, or for a new start. By 1911, though, they had returned to the Fylde coast, where daughter Ellen was born. Where Edward was at the time of the census is not known, but Ada Hill – misrecorded as Edith – was listed as boarding with the Cooper family in Thornton, together with her children John Edwin – now 11 – Walter, 9, and toddler Susan.

The marriage survived, although we can’t be sure of how happy it was. Divorce was not a common occurrence for working-class families, and Ada would have been on difficult grounds economically if she left Edward. It’s clear from the trial reports that she had a husband who both had an alcohol problem and could be violent, scaring her, but also that she had some sympathy for him as an otherwise ‘good husband and fond father’. It also seems that like many women, she relied on family involvement to help her when her husband became difficult to live with – and she had Edward’s mother and brothers to help her. This help may have disappeared, however, when she and Edward relocated from Lancashire across the Pennines to Yorkshire. They had settled in Huddersfield by the time war arrived, and the 35-year-old Edward now put his violence to better use by enlisted for short service with the Yorkshire Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery. He gave his address as 61 Upperhead Row, and detailed his children: John Edwin, Walter, Gladys, Susan, Ellen and Edward. However, he was clearly not made for army work: his record notes that although he was posted as a driver in April 1915, a month later, he forfeited several days’ pay for being absent, and then, in June 1915, was discharged as he was ‘not likely to become an efficient soldier’ due to medical reasons. This was because he had paralysed muscles in one hand due to a wound above his wrist, meaning that he found it hard to do ‘anything that requires detailed work’.

By the 1930s, Edward was working as a builder’s labourer in Huddersfield, and still living with his wife. He died in 1945, aged 68. Ada had just 12 years to live without her temperamental spouse, dying in Huddersfield in 1957 – more than half a century after he had tried to kill her.