Mr Uff took up the story: “I was in my shop that evening when she presented herself to me at the counter with outstretched arms and her throat cut most dreadfully. She did not say anything ... Her throat had hardly begun bleeding ... I ran round the counter, caught her, and took her into the back room, and held her there until she expired.”

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Cross-examined, James Uff added, “I know the prisoner. I had heard that he was very fond of the deceased … I have never seen him with her further than their being at the door together.”

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Elizabeth, Annie’s sister, was next on the stand. “Three or four minutes after she [her sister] had left, I heard a noise in the passage, as if someone had fallen down. I thought the prisoner had got hold of my sister, and I immediately went out and found William John Stevens lying on the stones …

 

He was bleeding very much and appeared nearly dead.

 

My sister and the prisoner kept company together. He said he as very fond of her, and I believe from his manner in saying so that such was the case.”

 

PC Humphrey Ray of Buckingham Borough Police produced a razor in Court that had been  given to him by “the prisoner’s mother on the 27th February 1864. The razor was covered in blood, and  was snatched by Mrs Stevens as the prisoner was lying in the  [Norton] passage with his throat cut ... I was employed to watch him. I have heard him say many times over ‘My dear Annie, how could I do it; how could I do it?’”

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Witness Finch said to Stevens, in front of PC Ray, “Bill, where did you do it?” Stevens had replied, “Against Mrs Spicer’s. [Mrs Spicer lived in the corner house, then a shop, between Nelson Street and Tingewick Rd]. I spoke as civil to her as a man could speak, and she wouldn’t speak to me, but swung about, and then I done it.” 

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Mr. Robert Death [later De’Ath!] surgeon, said, “I am practising at Buckingham. [His practice was in West Street where his son Dr. George De’Ath was to build Hamilton House] On the evening of the 27th Feb. I saw the body of Ann Leeson, and also the prisoner at the bar. I first saw the prisoner. He was lying in a pool of blood… he had a long wound in his throat. (The prisoner was nearly at death’s door.) I attended him and he recovered under my direction … I saw the body of the deceased, Ann Leeson, at Mr Uff’s house. I found a cut in her throat … it extended from one ear to the other and severed all the muscles and major vessels. I consider that was the cause of death.”

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The Judge, in refusing a plea of manslaughter, counselled, “… the evidence would not justify the jury in reducing the crime to one of manslaughter. It would be dreadful if it did so – that because a woman refused a man who was not acceptable to her she should be punished by death.”

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After an absence of only 15 minutes, the Grand Jury containing many local gentry returned with a verdict: “Guilty.”

 

The Judge assumed his black cap and passed sentence of death for wilful murder ‘in an impressive manner”. We are told that the prisoner was removed to the cells ‘apparently less affected than many who were present in Court’.

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Stevens was initially too weak to be moved from his father’s house. Throughout his incarceration, Stevens was reluctant to eat or to drink Later, he became a prisoner in Buckingham’s [Old] Gaol for several months and was attended in his cell night and day by two nurses and two police officers, lest he be tempted, again, to resort to suicide.

 

Apparently, Stevens showed little or no remorse and he refused to see his mother whom he blamed for all that had happened to him. During his family’s farewell visit, Stevens physically attacked his mother and the warders had to separate them and escort her from the Old Gaol.

 

The wretched Stevens was the last person to be hanged outside Aylesbury Gaol. The scaffold was built high above the main entrance, and on Friday, August 5th 1864 a crowd of some three thousand people, mainly women and young girls, gathered on a bright, sunlit morning. Stevens, who had earlier joined in loudly in his own funeral service, averted his gaze from the onlookers and muttered “God Help Me,” and went quietly to his fate supervised by the expert hangman, Calcraft. 

 

The behaviour of the crowd differed greatly from the ribaldry and jesting that accompanied most city executions. 

 

The people of Aylesbury Vale were quiet and reverent; one eye witness said that “the scene was of a very solemn character”. Later, Stevens’ body was cut down and buried within the grounds of the Gaol.  

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Stevens’ appalling crime of passion happened nearly 150 years ago but the affair rumbles on in that part of Prebend End that is the University of Buckingham. Stevens, we are told, discussed his fate whilst in Buckingham Gaol and said that he greatly feared being hanged and buried in lime in Aylesbury Gaol. He cursed his slow recovery under the great Dr De’Ath; he’d have preferred to die a suicide in Norton Place and thence to live with his Annie in heaven. Poor dreamer. 

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Some University dons believe that Annie, or the spirit of Annie, remains imprisoned in her mother’s house. 

 

Buckingham University uses the house (28 Nelson Street) as temporary lodgings for visiting lecturers. Visitors report hearing footsteps, sensing movement, feeling a female presence, and an unsettled feeling that they are never alone in the house. The house, especially the ground floor, is so oppressive that many people cannot remain in it for long.

 

Whether one believes in ghosts, there’s no doubt that the ghastly crime of the wretched Stevens continues to haunt this old part of Buckingham.