The first hint of a scandal came at the Citadel, Carlisle’s great sandstone castle, during a meeting of the old Cumberland County Council. On a Wednesday afternoon in March 1936, William Trimble, an elected member, announced that he had recently begun receiving poisoned pen letters.
And then attention turned to the chairman of the council, Canon Alfred Sutton, who said he had received the letters, too. They were all unsigned, he added, and the latest one of them had arrived only that morning. Canon Sutton had spent much of his long life sitting on committees and he wasn’t a man to be trifled with. As well as being high up in the Church he also enjoyed fox-hunting and had once served with General Gordon in the Sudan.
It turned out that the letters were all about one thing – Englethwaite Hall, an impressive Victorian house a few miles south of the city. Built by a businessman who had made his fortune mining gypsum, it was now being used by the council as a home for boys.
The hall stood in its own grounds and had a large market garden. But rumours were rife that fruit and vegetables grown there had been given as gifts to prominent people connected with the home. A deputation of local residents had attempted to see the council about that, but their request for a formal inquiry was unceremoniously turned down. That was when the letters started to arrive.
Harbouring a thief
They weren’t, however, confined to Alderman Trimble and Canon Sutton. Several of them went to Charles Roberts, the vice-chairman of the county council. He had been a government minister during the Great War and was married to a daughter of the Earl of Carlisle. And he had spent the last two decades dividing his time between farming and public service. He was accused of knowingly harbouring a thief.
This same accusation was made in letters received at Netherby Hall, the family seat of Sir Fergus Graham. He too was a member of the council and he had, until recently, also been MP for North Cumberland. (He had in fact lost the seat to Charles Roberts’s son, although he would eventually return to Westminster as the member for Darlington.)
But it wasn’t only elected members who were targeted. The clerk to the council, Allan Hodgson, was accused not merely of harbouring a thief, but of being one himself. And other letters were sent to Mr Hodgson’s deputy, to the county’s Director of Education, to the Public Assistance Officer – who was dubbed “a rogue” – and even to a man named Bill Simmonds, whose only crime was to have been a caretaker at the council offices.
A borrowed bicycle
Canon Sutton acted as decisively as might be expected. The police were called in and quickly discovered that most of the offending letters had been posted in Carlisle at the same time of day. A watch was kept on the local post office and a man seen making repeated visits was identified as George Albert Studholme. He was a 34-year-old commercial traveller who lived just outside the gates of Englethwaite Hall, and his father had been part of the delegation that lobbied councillors about produce from the market garden.
Matters then took a curious turn. George’s bicycle disappeared from outside his house. He went to a local police station, to report what he believed to be a case of theft, was asked to provide a written description of the bike, and duly obliged. An expert was able to confirm that it was his handwriting on the anonymous letters.
One evening, a few weeks later, George arrived in Carlisle once more. But as he made his way towards the post office, he was confronted by Sergeant Robson. “You are Studholme” the policeman said. “Yes,” George replied, but then attempted to run away. He was seized by a second constable. A fierce struggle followed. And he dropped some letters he had been carrying, one of which was again addressed to Mr Hodgson, describing him now as a “noted public rogue”.
Dreadful annoyance
George Studholme was charged with ten offences of criminal libel, each of which would be punishable with up to a year in prison. His case was heard at the Carlisle Assizes of May 1937, in the great red Citadel. And it soon became clear that he was very angry at the rebuff his father had received. So angry had George been, in fact, that he had made a note of every vehicle either entering or leaving Englethwaite Hall. And he had sent several hundred of his poison pen letters – and also poison postcards – over a period of almost three years.
Sergeant Robson was revealed to have been behind the disappearance of the bicycle. He had merely “borrowed” it, he told the court. George’s barrister responded that his client had been “lured” into a police trap. But a superintendent summoned from police headquarters said he could see nothing wrong with the tactic.
Seeing the letters lying on a table in front of him now, George was overcome. “Guilty as charged” he said, when asked to enter a plea, and he apologised profusely for what he had done. It was an extremely stupid thing, his barrister said, and had caused dreadful annoyance to a number of people. And there hadn’t been a single word of truth in any of his allegations.
The Judge was every bit as lenient as the defendant could have hoped. Canon Sutton, Alderman Trimble and all the other people he had libelled were so well respected that his words could never have harmed them, he said. George Studholme was bound over to be of good behaviour for two years. And the judge said he hoped this hearing would finally put an end to idle gossip about the management of the market garden. Whether it did, of course, is anyone’s guess.
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