Murders in Guernsey

Violent crime is relatively rare in Guernsey and the Channel Islands in general – particularly when compared to the mainland. Murder, in particular, is almost unheard of, although there have been some cases over the years. Perhaps the most notable of these, John Tapner’s murder of Elizabeth Saujon, led to the last ever hanging for murder on the island.

Guernsey murders and murderers

The following murder cases with a link to Guernsey were notable. Click the headers to read the fuller story of each incident.

1304: Thomas le Rouvet

Thomas le Rouvet killed a monk on Lihou and was stabbed in a fight with the Bailiff’s men who had come to arrest him. Years later, this led to the execution of a bailiff, who is said to have confessed at the place now known as Bailiff’s Cross.

1830: Marie Joseph Francois Beasse

Beasse was hanged after murdering the five month old baby he’d had with his servant.

1854: John Tapner

John Tapner’s public execution went badly wrong after he was sentenced to death for killing Elizabeth Saujon. He became the last man hanged on for murder on Guernsey.

1894: Charles Greaves

Greaves tried – and failed – to kill his wife but was accidentally killed by David Kail, who had tried to stop him. Kail stood trial for Greaves’ murder.

1911: John Hutchinson

Hutchinson poisoned the coffee at his parents’ dinner party, killing 14, and fled to Guernsey where he committed suicide when apprehended by the police.

1935: Gertrude de la Mere

Gertrude Elizabeth de la Mere murdered her employer and wrote a note, apparently from her victim, saying she was not to blame. Gertrude became the first woman to stand trial for murder on Guernsey.

1937: Peter Robin

Peter Robin killed his 12-year-old daughter, Edith, in their back garden. He claimed that he believed he was chopping wood at the time.

1947: James Ozanne

Ozanne was sentenced to death in a trial lasting just three hours for shooring his housekeeper in the head. His sentence was commuted to a life sentence on appeal.

1949: George Jackson

George William Jackson killed his lover in an apparent suicide pact but was unable to kill himself because he couldn’t reach his rifle’s trigger. He didn’t deny killing his lover, Maglona.

1973: John Tilley

Tilley was convicted of murdering chambermaid Margaret Weaver, but his conviction was later reduced to one for manslaughter, and his life sentence reduced to 12 years.

1979: the Richards brothers

The brothers pleaded not guilty but were convicted of murdering Thames Water engineer John George in woodland near Dunsfold. They fled to Guernsey and were later arrested on a boat off France.

Death penalty for murder on Guernsey

Although Guernsey didn’t hang anyone after John Tapner in 1854, it retained the death penalty as the standard punishment for murder until 29 April 1964. In practice, however, all sentences were routinely commuted to imprisonment.

In April 1964, the States of Guernsey abolished the death penalty for murder as part of The Homicide (Guernsey) Law, which came into force in 1965.

A Wrinkle in the Skin by John Christopher

I’ve just finished reading A Wrinkle in the Skin by John Christopher. It’s a curious book about a series of earthquakes that fundamentally change the world and wipe out most of humankind. It doesn’t sound particularly cheerful, does it, but what drew me to it was that much of the story is set on Guernsey.

Here’s an excerpt:

So they came up the hill to the jumble of bricks that, like a high water mark, outlined the Fort Road. This was the point which offered one of the finest views in the island – the Fort George headland, green and wooded, on one’s right, ahead the expanse of sea, broken by the other islands, Herm and Jethou and the more distant Sark and, on good days, Alderney, its cliffs bright in the sunshine. And the town below, the huddled terraces dropping, layer on layer, towards the waterfront and the harbour.

He saw the islands first. They stood where they had always stood, but islands no longer; between and round them lay the rock and sand and banks of weed of the sea bed. In the middle of the Russell a cargo boat sat, broken-backed, on an upthrust shoal. Nearer, Castle Cornet was broken, leaving a few bits of wall. It looked, on its rocky eminence, like a shattered tooth. Nearer still…

He had expected total ruin, even a desert of smashed brick and stone, all salient features destroyed. But the reality had power to amaze and shock him. The town has gone completely. Where there had been houses and shops one saw raw earth and rock, the contours, exposed again, of the time before history. All that remained was a vague outline of front and harbour; at one point the twisted stub of one of the big cranes stood out. As he looked more closely, he saw that the bed of the Russell, as far as the eye could see, was speckled with debris. What he had seen before on the island had been ruin: this was obliteration.

Billy stood beside him. He said, in a quiet voice: ‘What did it?’

‘The sea.’

‘All that?’

‘Like a wall,’ Matthew said, almost to himself. ‘A wall of hammers, battering rams, bulldozers, beating and scouring. My God! And to think I thought there might have been a fire there.’

They were silent, looking down. It was possible to trace the course of the tidal wave by the great smear of erasure, running along the sides of the hills on which the town had been built, to the north spilling inland. There would be nothing left of St Sampson, either, and very little of anything on the far north of the island.

The sea’s disappearance is key to the plot, as it allows Matthew and Billy – a child who tags along – to walk first to Alderney and then right across to the mainland, where Matthew is determined to search for his daughter. Along the way, they encounter a stranded tanker, and when they reach the mainland they find equal devastation. Worse, mob mentality has set in. The few civilised civilians who have survived the disaster are being terrorised by marauding gangs, intent on stealing food and supplies.

It was first published in 1965, and my edition is a second-hand copy from the late 1970s, and although the story holds up well, some of the characters’ attitudes may leave you feeling somewhat uncomfortable when you’re used to reading more modern fiction. The remaining women on Guernsey are ‘owned’ by the self-appointed leader, Miller, who beats them and discards them when something better comes along. It takes a long time for us to encounter a truly strong female character. Up until that point, the only female that showed any potential quickly succumbed to Miller’s dubious charms and, despite knowing how he treated the woman he was with when they first met, still moves into his tent on very little pretext after just a few pages.

Elsewhere, the gender roles are reinforced.

[Matthew] tried to keep the children cheerful by talking to them and getting them to play games like ‘I Spy’, but, Jane apart, he had never been particularly good with the young. It was a woman’s job, really, but three of them were plainly worse than the children…

…and…

…The tent poles went askew and one of them broke but it happened during the day and the men were able to put things right without much difficulty…

Many of the more mundane hardships of post-apocalyptic life are absent. How do the characters shave, what’s it like not being able to clean your teeth for months on end, why aren’t they more traumatised by the death of almost everyone they love?

Fortunately, the premise underpinning the story is strong enough to overlook such omissions. The idea of walking from the Channel Islands to the mainland is far from appealing, but John Christopher’s description of the secret landscape that a disaster on this scale would reveal at least makes it intriguing.

The mist did clear, but not until the middle of the day. Before that they walked between peaks of pink granite which might, for all one could see of the upper reaches, have been Himalayan foothills. The sea had cut the rock into strange shapes; at one time they traversed a twisting gorge, floored with bright sand, where their voices echoed back on them…

That gorge, it turned out, was the Casquettes.