TODAY’S forensic detectives are often painted on screen as glamorous, dashing figures operating in high-tech labs.
Yet long before CSI or Silent Witness brought sleek forensics into millions of homes, Bradford chemist Felix Marsh Rimmington was already putting poison on trial.
His story has a remarkable link to the Bradford shop that is still standing today. Walk past Rimmington’s on Bridge Street, with its heritage shop front and period fittings, and it is easy to see it as a charming relic of Victorian Bradford.
But it once belonged to a pioneering figure whose chemical expertise was called upon to investigate mysterious deaths, suspected poisonings and some of the most sensational crimes of his day?
More than 160 years ago, before police laboratories even existed, never mind DNA profiling, he was painstakingly using forensic analysis to shed light on murky goings-on and unravel sordid crimes and shed light on. In an era when pathology was still in its infancy, his findings helped police, coroners, and juries establish the truth behind scores of suspicious deaths, making chemistry a vital weapon in the Victorian justice system.
Rimmington & Son Chemist in Bradford (Image: Image submitted)
Born in 1818 at Gateforth, near Selby, Rimmington moved to Bradford when he was just four-years-old. Chemistry was a recurring thread in his family background, with both his uncle and younger brother pursuing the profession. As a teenager, Felix was apprenticed to a chemist in Huddersfield before relocating to London to serve as an assistant to Queen Victoria’s personal chemist. This rigorous early training positioned him at the very forefront of pharmaceutical and chemical practice.
Felix Marsh Rimmington. Image: Stamford Auction Rooms (Image: Stamford Auction Rooms)
By 1842, Rimmington had returned to Bradford to open his own chemist shop on Ivegate. His business prospered, allowing him in 1875 to move to the larger premises at 9 Bridge Street, virtually opposite present-day City Hall. The famous business retains much of the atmosphere of an old-fashioned Victorian pharmacy.
Rimmington attended nationwide pharmaceutical conferences, listened to leading figures in the profession, and presented original research papers of his own. As courts began to accept scientific evidence, coroners and lawyers routinely called upon expert chemists to expose skulduggery in complex cases. From the 1850s onward, Rimmington established himself as a sought-after expert witness in both civil and criminal trials across the region.
One of his earliest high-profile forensic assignments occurred in December 1857, following the mysterious death of a newborn baby, William Dinsey. The child was born in Bermondsey to Margaret Dinsey, an unmarried former servant whose brief relationship with a colleague had left her unemployed while the child’s father fled to Australia. When the infant died under suspicious circumstances, Rimmington analysed the evidence, searching for traces of toxin to determine whether dastardly deeds had taken place.
He found it but the physical evidence alone could not establish whether Margaret had deliberately administered the substance with murderous intent and the court set her free.
The following year, Rimmington was at the centre of one of the most notorious poisoning disasters in Bradford’s history. Over the weekend of October 30-31, 1858, peppermint humbugs sold by sweet seller William Hardaker in Bradford’s Green Market caused widespread illness, leaving roughly 20 people dead and more than 200 affected. Among the fatalities was seven-year-old Elizabeth Midgley, who died several days after eating two humbugs bought by her grandmother. In another household, on Croft Street, a visiting daughter and her two young children all tragically perished after consuming the sweets.
Punch Magazine illustration of Bradford poisonings, November 20, 1858 (Image: Punch Magazine)
The tragedy resulted from a disastrous chain of mistakes compounded by common food adulteration practices. Because pure sugar was expensive, cheaper substitutes known as ‘daff” (gypsum powder) were frequently used to reduce costs. Joseph Neal, the confectioner manufacturing the sweets on Stone Street, sent an employee to Charles Hodgson’s pharmacy in Shipley to purchase a supply of daff. Hodgson was absent, leaving his inexperienced assistant, William Goddard, to serve the customer. Stored near the gypsum was an unlabelled cask holding lethal arsenic. Goddard inadvertently supplied the deadly poison instead of the harmless mineral powder, and the arsenic was subsequently mixed directly into the confectionery batch.
Doctors treating the victims quickly suspected poisoning rather than cholera, and attention focused on the market sweets. Several families retained humbugs as evidence, and Rimmington was called upon to investigate. His chemical expertise quickly identified the presence of arsenic, helping unravel the cause of the disaster and trace the fatal chain of events back to the shop. The nationally famous ‘Humbug Billy’ case demonstrated the growing importance of scientific analysis, and that progress in forensics was not confined to London, but was actively happening in industrial cities like Bradford.
Treatise on food adulterations, 1820. Image: Wellcome Images (Image: Wellcome Images)
Rimmington’s story is just one fascinating episode in the much wider history explored in new book Bradford Murders and Misdemeanours. By trawling through court records, police reports, coroners’ inquests and contemporary newspapers, authors Adrian and Dawn L Bridge reveal hundreds of extraordinary true-life crime stories from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century.
The book delves into macabre and murky episodes of true crime (Image: Amberley Publishing)
Along the way, they uncover a whole spectrum of historic offenders, from stranglers and garrotters to beggars, vagrants, loiterers and pickpockets, rubbing shoulders with dollymops and white-collar criminals such as fraudsters, forgers and embezzlers. Together, these cases offer far more than an infinitely varied catalogue of wrongdoing. They provide a vivid window into a rapidly changing city defined by extremes of immense industrial wealth, desperate poverty and the sordid underworld of crime.
Garrotter about to be flogged in prison. Punch, 1872. Image: Wellcome Collection (Image: Wellcome Collection)
Bradford Murders and Misdemeanours looks back at a city that was a “breeding ground for crime”. Bradford Borough Police Force was formed in the 1840s, dealing with the ‘high crimes’ of murder and large scale robberies and frauds to ‘low level’ crimes such as petty theft, vagrancy and loitering. The authors also look at the effects of illegal gambling on crimes before the 1960 Betting & Gaming Act and the particular involvement of young people in crimes and their punishments.
This collection of true life crime stories from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries gives a vivid insight into life in Bradford in the past. Delving into macabre and murky episodes of true crime, it features a rogue’s gallery of villains, and their victims.
It will fascinate anyone with an interest in the history of crime or the history of Bradford.
* Bradford Murders and Misdemeanours by Adrian and Dawn L Bridge is published by Amberley Publishing (£15.99). Visit amberley-books.com