Flashback: 100 years since the Basingstoke Cornfield murder

As far as I can tell it was the first murder in Basingstoke since the Hackwood Road axe murder of 1802.

On the morning of August 14, 1924, a couple were strolling along a footpath that led through a cornfield towards Sherborne St John. At a spot which would now be in the grounds of Vyne School, they saw the bloodied body of a woman lying in a patch of flattened wheat.

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Left: Daily Mirror, August 16, 1924 Right: Leeds Mercury, August 18, 1924 (Image: Contributed)

The horrified couple rushed to the railway station and told the stationmaster to telephone the police. When the police arrived, they found that the woman’s face was battered out of recognition.

From the contents of a handbag that was lying nearby, the police were able to establish that it belonged to Mrs Lucy Fisher, aged 42, who lived with her husband and three children at 50 Lancaster Road.

Lucy’s murderer, William Matthews, was aged 24. He was unmarried and lived at 58 Queen’s Road with his widowed mother and his older sister, Edith.

At the time of the murder, he was supplementing his small army pension with what he could earn as a jazz pianist at dances and hotels in Basingstoke.  

On the night of the murder, Matthews arrived home shortly after 11 o’clock and called for Edith. He told her he had killed a woman in a cornfield.

The next day, having heard that a woman had been murdered, Edith went to the police station in Mark Lane to report what her brother had told her.

Superintendent Wyatt and Sergeant Ayres then went to 58 Queen’s Road and took Matthews to the police station along with a set of bloodstained clothes, a pair of bloodstained boots, one of which had a piece of bone stuck in the heel, and four letters addressed to Matthews from Lucy Fisher.

At Lucy’s inquest in the Rising Sun, a witness told the coroner that Matthews and Lucy were drinking together in the Great Western Hotel on the Wednesday night where Matthews played the piano.

When the pub shut, he saw Matthews and Lucy walking arm-in-arm up Vyne Road. He had frequently seen them together in the Great Western.

Lucy’s husband told the coroner that she usually went out in the evening, but never told him where she was going. On that Wednesday evening, Lucy told him that she was going for a stroll.

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The Illustrated Police News, August 21, 1924 (Image: Contributed)

He waited for her to come home until half past 10 when he went to bed. Thinking she would be home after breakfast, he went to work at eight o’clock.

Later that morning a workmate told him that a man’s body had been found in a wheatfield. Shortly after, someone said it was a woman and she had been murdered.

He told the coroner: “This gave me a great shock. As they said it was a woman, my wife came to my mind at once."

He said Lucy had not stayed out on a single night before, but she had been away from home on two occasions for a fortnight at a time without telling him where she was going.

At the hearing in the Town Hall on 29 August, her husband underwent further humiliation when Lucy’s letters were read out in court. Here are some extracts: “Come and meet me at about 12 tomorrow dinner time. We will have a good day… I do all I can to give you a good time."

Many newspapers reprinted the letters either in part or in full, accompanied by sensational headlines hinting at the adulterous nature of the relationship.

They also made the most of Matthews being a jazz musician. This was at a time when the papers pandered to those who associated jazz with decadence and immorality. They also emphasised the disparity between the ages of the two lovers.

A full account of this tale of madness, adultery, jazz and journalism set against the background of Basingstoke in 1924, The Basingstoke Cornfield Murder, has been published by the Basingstoke Archaeological and Historical Society and is available from Bahsoc.org.uk or the Willis Museum.

This article was written by Bob Clarke