An update on John Walker
Before I delve into my theories on what might have happened to Frederick George Bull, I first want to announce something: I believe I have found the John Walker who remained elusive and mysterious for so long.
It took hours and days of hunting records on and off Ancestry.com. I simply couldn’t bring myself to give up on the hunt for this man who provided such a family history enigma. In my last post, I discussed the numerous questions spinning in my mind as to why I couldn’t find him. One of the possibilities I posed was that John Walker wasn’t even from Essex. Or from England. Before I began hunting outside of England, a daunting and expansive search I wasn’t looking forward to, I began hunting through John Walkers in England who’s father died before 1924.
I spent hours sifting through National Probate records, hunting through who knows how many John Walkers for one with a wife, Theresa, as the recipient of his estate, if in fact he named her such at all. I hunted through the probates for the 1960s, the decade in which we have always presumed he probably died, as Theresa passed in 1966. No luck. I went through the entirely of the 1950s. Nothing.
Becoming hopeless, and not believing I’d find it, I delved all the way back to the 1940s. Nothing in 1949, 48, 47, 46, 45, 44, 43, 42…
Then, my heart skipped a beat to find a John Walker who died in 1941 and left his estate to his widow, Theresa Agnes Walker. Let me note that few John Walkers married a Theresa, let alone a Theresa Agnes Bull.
And no, much to my wild imagination’s previous ramblings, he was not, in fact, Jack the Ripper.
But there it was, on this probate, a John Walker who had lived at the ironically-named Forget-Me-Not Villa (the address where he and Theresa wound up after Frederick’s death, listed on the 1939 registry as their residence) in Essex, who died on March 22, 1941 in the Warrington General Hospital, leaving an estate of £755. That would be roughly £47,001 in 2023, or about $80,634 in Canada. A sizeable inheritance for a widow who cleaned houses for a living.
(John Walker's probate after death (Ancestry.com))
So was this the one? I continued searching. Why had he died in Warrington, of all places? Were he and Theresa separated at the time of his death? Had he been visiting?
I started a hunt for a John Walker who was maybe born in Warrington. Behold, again emerged that baptism record from Sept. 18, 1887. The birth place being Warrington had thrown me off of accepting it to start. Not only did the birth date match up, but as I hunted further into other ancestry trees, I discovered something vital: His father, George Walker, had died in 1916. If we recall, John and Theresa’s marriage certificate stated that John’s father had died prior to the wedding.
Warrington is located in northern England between Liverpool and Manchester, all north of London and Essex. Today, it’s a small city with a population of about 200,000. In the early 1900s, it was a town which embraced the industrial revolution to become a center for producing metal and leather products, after initially being a place known as a medieval market with tools and textiles.
John would have grown up witnessing the industrial revolution transform markets to factories, and would have even seen the introduction of electricity to the town in 1900. The first buses ran there in 1913. Metalworking became the prime industry of the town. As of 1901, it also linked Manchester and Liverpool via railway.
George Walker, an Irish man by birth, died on May 2, 1916. Elizabeth Walker, John’s mother, died in 1920. He had ten siblings. George and Elizabeth’s first baby, born in 1884, also named John, died shortly after birth. I couldn’t find much for employment regarding George (the census records can be hard to read) but John listed him as a merchant seaman on his marriage certificate.
Elizabeth Hanson, as was her maiden name, was born in Scotland in 1864. It seems her parents probably moved her when she was young. By 1881, a census record places her living as her sister’s domestic servant in England at 18 years old. She and George married in 1884, with the first John born that same year, though he died in infancy, as so many babies did back then. A daughter, Lilian, would be born the year before the second John. Census records noted that she, like most wives of that time, was a stay-at-home mother.
In 1891, the family lived in Barrow in Furness, Lancashire, England. In 1901, they’re in the same area.
(1901 census, Ancestry.com)
John would have grown up watching his mother live that double life of a sailor’s wife. In charge when her husband was gone working, in control of the home and the kids, making the day-to-day decisions and disciplines. When he got home, she would hand that control over to George. How different the two were in parenting styles is unknown. In the 1901 census, neither employment nor school is listed for John’s occupation, but one can presume he likely went to school, since he was 14. It was law for parents to enroll kids into some form of education by this point. It’s possible that census takers assumed kids were in school so didn’t bother noting it.
By 1911, I can’t find much on him once more. It’s possible he had already become a sailor and was out of the country at the time of the census, or he perhaps joined the military, but I couldn’t find records to back that up either way. His life between 1901 and his 1924 marriage is vague. George died in 1916, and Elizabeth died in 1920.
By then, John likely felt he had little left in Warrington other than his siblings, and there’s no way to tell what his relationship with them was. (Though as I did with Frederick, I will try to find living relatives who may know something.) Between here and 1924, he left his place of birth to seek something else, and somehow wound up in West Ham, Essex, to cross paths with none other than Frederick and Theresa Bull.
If he left Warrington after his mother’s death in 1920, then he would have arrived in West Ham at a time when the Bull marriage was beginning to struggle. The Spanish Flu pandemic was a year in, and work would soon dry up for Frederick. We know that an arm injury he’d suffered in 1922 plagued him into 1923, when he found himself unemployed and in and out of the hospital for treatments.
On the afternoon of June 8, 1923, Frederick vanished without a trace until his body was pulled from the River Thames off King George V dock on June 19, 1923. His cause of death was drowning, but “no sufficient evidence” to show how body wound up in the water to begin with. The coroner ruled an “open verdict”, which indicates some criminal element to the death.
It appears Frederick was murdered. But what happened? We’ve discussed a lot that led us to this part - family histories and how he went missing. So many questions remain. I have a theory, but let’s go through all of the possibilities, just to give Theresa and John the potential that they might be innocent.
Did Frederick kill himself?
Theresa’s original story of suicide is a possibility. The Center for Suicide Prevention notes that men aged 40-60 are more likely to die by suicide than young people and women because they tend to mask emotions and hide when they hit rock bottom. Frederick was a 44-year-old man who was unemployed and deeply troubled by his lack of ability to provide for his family after years of being a strong-bodied sailor dedicated to life at sea.
Something at the hospital, or perhaps an argument with Theresa, could have sent him off the edge. After leaving the hospital, Frederick could have wandered off until the docks were more vacant, then jumped into the water with his injured arm, letting himself drown and unable to swim up to save himself.
But there was no gunshot, as Theresa had allegedly told her kids.
Suicide by drowning is possible. But is it likely?
Not according to family accounts. Despite his kids feuding as they became adults, they all agreed on one thing: their dad would not have abandoned them like that. He doted on them, loved them, and was there for them. His family was his life. And with the Stratford Express even commenting on his happy family life, and how fond he was of his wife and kids, it doesn’t sound like a man who was about to end his own life. He was troubled, yes, but still attending the hospital to treat his arm. He was still present for his kids.
The Coroner ruling his death an open verdict also doesn’t necessarily indicate suicide. While an open verdict can be ruled in a case where a suicide is possible, there are various rulings a Coroner can make. According to a 2001 article in the British Journal of Psychiatry, titled “Open verdict v. suicide – importance to research” (Linsley, K., Schapira, K., & Kelly, T.), these deaths are classified as “suicide impossible” or “suicide unlikely.”
A death deemed as “suicide impossible” would be applied to a baby found deceased or deaths immediately following surgery; the type of deaths with no evidence or possibility of suicide. Frederick’s death doesn’t fit this classification.
A “suicide unlikely” is more of a gray area, according to this article.
“The category of ‘suicide unlikely’ was allocated to cases such as that of a young man who in a state of solvent intoxication fell from a window and of an elderly lady with dementia and who was prone to wander, found drowned in a small stream,” the writers say.
Despite the questionable nature of these deaths, there was no evidence of suicidal ideation or thoughts beforehand.
The writers do note, however, that suicides via drowning are more likely to be ruled as an open verdict if there is no evidence to suggest the person had any intent to commit suicide.
And it’s such a difficult ruling to make, given the time period in which Frederick lived, and that men in general are less open to talk about their problems. So many times, someone will commit suicide and their families will remain in disbelief, saying there had been no signs. Frederick’s kids were so young, that all they could really go on was their love for him, and the knowledge that their father loved them so dearly. Anyone in their position would have believed he wouldn’t simply abandon them. No one wants to believe their parent would do it, especially in that way.
But, if he really had jumped off a dock or somewhere into the water, and if he died the same day he vanished, why was he missing for two more weeks before being found? It’s possible his body was simply swept away into the ocean if he did jump in willingly, only to turn up by the dock two weeks later, bloated and floating to the top of the waves.
Therefore, the open verdict ruling could leave the door open to the possibility of suicide.
Was it an accidental death?
In the same way that he may have killed himself, it’s also possible that Frederick met with a tragic accident at the docks. I feel like this one is less likely, though.
This was a man who spent his life at sea. He knew his way around docks. Had he merely wandered down to the docks in the middle of the day, even with an injured arm, he would have been around men who knew him. Colleagues and fellow sailors. He was respected there. Had he fallen off the dock into the water, even with an injured arm, there were plenty of able-bodied sailors who could swim to pull him out before he would have succumbed to the ocean.
An accident theory only seems plausible if Frederick had wandered off on his own, perhaps due to memory loss, or just wanting to be alone with his thoughts, troubles, and misery before returning home. Maybe, in his wanders, he slipped and fell, unable to pull himself from the waters with his injured arm. Maybe, in his final moments knowing he couldn’t reach the surface, he cursed the very waters he sailed for so many years, that they would finally take him when he was vulnerable and sought the comfort of the ocean, not the cruelty.
This would seem the most plausible and less sinister theory had Theresa not allegedly said what she did to her kids. Why would a mother tell her kids their dad shot himself when he simply met a tragic accident while injured? It seems like it would only add another level of trauma to tell the kids their father abandoned them like that when he didn’t. It seems exceedingly cruel. But then, so does the final theory.
….or was it murder?
Motive, means, and opportunity. The three ingredients to concoct a cocktail of murder. One of my favourite true crime figures, Lt. Joe Kenda of the show “Homicide Hunter” once said something that stuck with me as both a fictional mystery and true crime writer: If you can’t place someone in the room with the weapon with the victim, you can’t prove the crime. And it’s true.
Of course, I cannot leave out to potential for a robbery gone wrong, or someone Frederick didn’t know ambushing him for some reason or another. But, most murders are committed by someone the victim knows. Someone closer to home.
While I cannot place John nor Theresa in the same place as Frederick when he died, nor with any weapon to speak of, the circumstantial evidence stands fairly strong one hundred years later. And for a time when DNA or cameras couldn’t place anyone anywhere, circumstantial is all we really have to go on, as did the detectives of the time.
Frederick could no longer financially provide for his family. Theresa faced losing her freedom as a sailor’s wife she was so accustomed to with him gone so often, and the money that came with his career.
I believe that John Walker was a figure in the Bulls’ lives for sometime before Frederick’s death. The men possibly knew each other from working on ships or on the docks. They would have crossed paths somewhere, no doubt.
Frederick was unemployed at the time of his death. The Stratford Express reported that he was involved in an accident on July 20, 1918, which injured his arm and left him unable to work. Despite receiving compensation, Frederick was concerned when his job was filled. The man who had worked relentlessly for his entire life was suddenly left with no job and little money.
Perhaps John Walker, at the same age as Theresa, younger, more able to work, more useful to her, wandered into her life sometime in the early 1920s. Maybe John rented a room from the Bulls and was involved with the family, and perhaps Theresa, that way. Maybe this was when Theresa realized how bored she was of her marriage and her older man.
Maybe John had drifted that way from his time as a sailor. He and Frederick possibly crossed paths on the docks and maybe certain ships. Perhaps John and Theresa knew each other through Frederick and started an affair while he was gone. Theresa may have played the good wife when Frederick was home, but then opened the door to John once her husband was gone. She was still in her early thirties; by no means an old housewife yet. In fact, she was only 34 when Frederick died. She had an older husband and possibly a man her own age in her bed when Frederick was off working. Between the two sailors, she had a revolving door of male attention.
That is, until Frederick got injured and lost his job. That makes an affair a tad complicated to pull off when she is supposed to be a devoted housewife. Perhaps after four kids, years of the mundane routine of child rearing and running the house, and feeling like a single mother, Theresa wasn’t as in love with her handsome sailor as she used to be. Him losing his job could have been her final straw.
Maybe, Frederick became worth more to her dead. The National Probate reveals that Frederick had £100 to his estate at the time of his death. A quick Google search tells me £100 is worth about £7736.64 today. That translates to $12,955 in Canadian dollars.
It crossed my mind that John also could have possibly murdered Frederick and married Theresa for the money — except in 1923, from what I have read, he would not have any rights to the inheritance Theresa received from her late husband. That money was hers by legal right.
Still, that’s a lot of money for a woman desperate to keep a roof over her head, and to keep an affair hidden from an unemployed husband. And it all went to Theresa.
I don’t think noon at the hospital was the last time Frederick was seen. It is my belief that Theresa wasn’t truthful with the police and that she had some knowledge of what was to come. In telling her kids that Frederick shot himself, it indicates that she had some premonition that a gun was used in his death, though it wasn’t.
That premonition hints at collaboration. Premeditation. The Stratford Express wasn’t even reporting on Frederick’s disappearance until he was found. By then, he had long been dead. Theresa had to have been expecting him to come home that day. He certainly wasn’t going to work. And she should have been extra concerned if she knew he was suffering from memory loss. (Or was it possible he was merely suffering migraines from stress?) If he indeed suffered memory loss, and she still cared for him, would she not have reported him missing that day or the next?
Either that, or it was a convenient cover to explain why he had maybe wandered off. Still, it’s highly suspicious his disappearance went so long unreported. I don’t even know if it was Theresa who reported him missing, or someone in his family, or if one of the kids finally said something. But he left that hospital, vanished for two weeks, and turned up dead off the docks without so much as being reported.
The alternative here is that if John entered Theresa and Frederick’s lives — be it a boarder situation, or as a friend — it’s possible John made advances on Theresa which she rejected. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, I know as true crime enthusiast and as a woman who has been in the dating world over the years, some men simply cannot handle rejection and take it as a personal insult to their ego. Some resort to murder. Sometimes they kill the woman who rejected them, and sometimes they kill the man in the way.
Theresa had some premonition that a gun could have been used to kill Frederick. Did John plant that into her head? Did he threaten her or Frederick? Was he trying to force her into a relationship by killing her beloved and hard working husband? As a widow with no job and only the inheritance from her late husband to live on, which wouldn’t last forever, maybe marrying the man who killed him became her only option.
A tragic and heart-wrenching alternative, too. I don’t know which is worse: the possibility that she willingly had him killed, or stood by helplessly as a jealous man murdered him and forced her, essentially, into becoming his wife?
Did John threaten Theresa that he would shoot Frederick, only to shove him off the dock during some confrontation that day, letting him drown? Was it Frederick who confronted John about the potential affair with Theresa, perhaps? If John had put it into her head that he planned to shoot Frederick, then perhaps she told the kids that their father had killed himself to provide an explanation for the gunshot wound she assumed would be present for the autopsy.
But it wasn’t.
And then, Theresa allegedly told the kids he shot himself when he, in fact, drowned. She would have had his death certificate and the autopsy report. She would have known his death was ruled as a drowning. There was no reason to tell the kids such a gory, awful thing. It makes no sense.
It might have been the perfect murder no one suspected had she not done it. Because one daughter spoke of it years later, only to be brushed off and labelled as crazy.
But maybe she wasn’t.
Next time, I’ll delve into the aftermaths of how Frederick’s death tore his beloved family apart until the day Theresa died. Did she carry the secret to her grave leaving her kids to suffer the unexplained trauma?
Sources
Britannica
Ancestry
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