The murder
I have always been fascinated by killers, but not because I get a kick out of reading what they do, whilst I am not bothered by blood and gore, I am not interested in their methods of murder. What I truly find absolutely intriguing is the “why”, not just that, it is the lack of accountability in so many killers minds, the amount that blame either society or their victim for their crime.
This case dates back to 1885, and it is not one that is well documented online, it is just a sad case of domestic violence with a fatal ending, but it is the lack of any kind of empathy for the woman he took the life of that has surprised me.
There was something else that really bothered me about this whole case, none of the newspaper articles mentioned the name of the deceased, just called her “the wife”.
39 year old Owen McGill was living in a small tied cottage in Landican near Woodchurch (Cheshire) whilst he worked on a farm owned by Mr Ziegler, and carried out his tasks as both a waggoner and a farm labourer. On the 31st October 1885, he had been on a trip to nearby Birkenhead and for some reason when he returned he got into an argument with some of the other labourers. His wife Mary came out to try and defuse the row and berated him in front of the others for starting such a pointless disagreement – or at least this is what witnesses reported to the police subsequently. That night his neighbours said they heard sounds of a woman shrieking and groaning in what they thought might be pain but they were too scared to get involved.
What they had been privy to was Owen punching and kicking his wife Mary to death, in fact in the morning he cleaned up her body, and dressed her in clean white clothes. He then travelled into Birkenhead and called on a female married cousin of his, and asked her to return to Landican with him as he was concerned that his wife was unwell. One can but imagine what his relative thought they were going to encounter but the beaten corpse of his late wife was not one of them and his then employer was called who promptly arrested McGill for murder.
Even at this point he had excuses, she had fallen out of his cart when she was inebriated so nothing to do with him, it had not been his fault as he was drunk and she knew he had a temper when alcohol was involved and that he had only struck her “once”, he finally admitted that it had rankled him that she thought her place was to tell him how to behave and found himself unable to stop the barrage of blows. Interestingly he had no family in England, but his parents and brother in county Louth Ireland refused to show him sympathy and alluded to the fact he had always used his fists with his wife and that he had treated her incredibly poorly.
He spent the time from the murder until his execution on 22nd February 1886 in Knutsford Gaol, and even there had not seemed to learned any lessons in humility and control being described as “low animal type and of ungovernable temper” having complained about the quality of the food in prison, demanding tobacco and finding his sentence amusing.
Shortly before he was hanged, he did seem to suddenly realise that it was not one big joke and started to show that he accepted the penalty he had brought upon himself, but no, he still didn’t show any remorse or self-awareness and started to blame the neighbours for not intervening when he was beating his wife Mary to death.
So, was there a “why” here? Probably not a logical one other than McGill had a problem with his temper and drink, and the combination of the two proved to be lethal for his wife Mary. Did he ever take true accountability for his crime? Reading his comments I genuinely do not think he ever did, he may have accepted what was going to happen shortly before he fell those five feet but he still blamed others for not having stopped him committing his crime in the mere moments before the handle was pulled.








