Butchering a Paramour (1893)

It’s true to say that the North West of England and Lancashire in particular has had its fair share when it comes to days of horror. From murderous wives to the slaughtering of innocent children – Lancashire has definitely seen some of the worst atrocities inflicted upon men, women and children during the 19th Century.

Today’s story is no different, and for this we will be travelling back to 1893 and into the cotton weaving capital of the world – Burnley.

On Thursday, 23rd March – 50 year old Eli Eastwood spent the day trying to find new lodgings for himself and his paramour, Elizabeth Longstaffe; and after speaking to a few people, he finally managed to convince Joseph Clegg, owner of a number of dwellings in the Burnley area, to let out number 70 Cog Lane. This house was situated within a heavily populated part of town, known as Gannow.

Eli Eastwood was not an easy man to get along with. As an habitual drinker, he would often find himself worse for wear and during the early years of their marriage, Eastwood and his wife, Elizabeth, would find themselves moving up and down the country before finally settling down in Wood Top, Burnley, sometime in the early part of the 1880s along with their five children. Together, they had eight children but three had already married and moved away.

Looking into Eastwood’s past, it seems he was always a man whose rage would often get the better of him. During the first week of April 1868 he was summoned into court after assaulting a lady by the name of Nancy Catlow, with whom he had been living with on and off for 5 months in Preston. On the 1st April that year, he barged into her home at Archer Clough, demanding that she “go with him!” Nancy told him he would be better off with his wife, which seemed to agitate him to the point he threw her down onto the floor before throttling her. Standing back up he kicked her several times in the abdomen making her bleed from the mouth. In court, he would say he was provoked into doing what he did because Nancy refused to give him back his clothes. However, the bench didn’t see it this way, fining him 10 shillings in costs which had to be paid in full within 14 days.

But it wasn’t always bad for Eastwood, as he had at some point in his life managed to start his own profitable business as a hawker, selling fried fish on the streets around Burnley and from all accounts he was a savvy business man.

Despite his business doing well, things at home where never right. His drinking and abusive ways would eventually become too much and when his wife finally left him, it is thought that he had several hundred pounds which he would waste by spending the majority of it on drinking.

And as for the separation from his wife, twelve months prior to the events that would take place in 1893, a massive row between the pair led to her leaving him, after having been threatened by the use of a carving knife he picked up during another violent outburst. Afraid of what he would do to her, she fled Albany Terrace, where they then lived, and took her children with her.