This grave has not yet been found, and is now thought not to be possible to be located.
Parish: St Andrew the Less
Relationship: Mother, three children
All four members of the family died on the same day – the three children were killed by their mother, who then committed suicide.
Emma Julia Rayner (née Sowter) (8 November 1869 – 21 November 1900)
Elsie Marguarite Rayner (1891 – 21 November 1900)
Gilbert Leslie Rayner (1893 – 21 November 1900)
Sybil Marion Rayner (1895 – 21 November 1900)
Emma was born in Reddenhall, Harleston in South Norfolk and was baptised in Bury St Edmunds on 12 March 1870. She was the fourth daughter of Robert (1836-1914) and Henrietta Phobe (née Ford) (1841-1892). Robert was a railway porter when she was born, but by 1881 was Station Master of Lakenheath Station. Emma married baker Albert Rayner (1862-) on 31 August 1890 at Wilton Parish Church, Norfolk. Albert came from Trumpington and was the only son of Ebenezer Rayner.
The couple started married life living on London Road (now Trumpington Street), next door to the Green Man pub. The couple had three children – Elsie, Gilbert and Sybil. Albert and Emma separated c.1897, and it was speculated that he had moved in with another woman. Emma was left to care for their three children and was reportedly ‘very much troubled about the husband leaving her’. Although he contributed financially initially, later the money stopped, and this caused Emma some financial hardship. It was later reported that her parents ‘were very good to her’ and that she thought that she had enough money to last two years. She was said to be particularly upset that ‘her little girl had never known her dada and never would’.
Emma lived at 58 Catherine Street from c.1897 and took in lodger William Henry Claxton to help pay the bills. In late October 1900 she moved to live and run a store at 179 East Road – and William Claxton went with the family. However when she told him that she was taking in a second lodger who would be sharing the same bedroom [and indeed bed!], he gave notice. He described her as being a good mother and ‘affectionate to her children’, but that her ‘husband was the principal cause of her trouble’. Emma complained of a headache on the day the family died, but her new neighbours at East Road did not know her very well. One described her as being ‘very fond indeed of her children and she was a good mother’. Due to the headache she had gone to the local chemist to buy a common pain relief, which was also a poison. She had presented as being very composed and she had been sold the poison. It is thought that Emma used the poison to help kill her children.
William Claxton found the bodies of Emma and her three children in her bedroom early one morning. He had gone to look for her because his breakfast was not ready when he expected it to be. He called both a doctor and a policeman, but there was nothing that could be done.
Before she died Emma wrote to her sister Florrie – writing ‘My dear Florrie – I hope by the time you get this letter I shall be out of the misery of this world and take the children with me. O Florrie! I have been felling so ill this last week; I think it has been influenza; and what with sleeplessness and feeling so bad – I have felt so depressed – in fact my mind is going.
I know it is an awful thing to do, but where has there been any women living as I have been and tried more to succeed that I have, and yet I have had no success. Dear Florrie, I cannot leave my dear children behind….If one of my children should live dear Florrie, I leave it up to you. Take all there is and have it sold and keep my children, if any should live. I wish the things divided or sold as you may wish and the money divided’.
The inquest into the deaths considered that Emma had total funds of £26 and ‘no motive for her to commit the act except that she had had domestic trouble. She was fond of her children and everything pointed to the fact that if she had been in her right mind she would have lived for her children alone’. A verdict of ‘killed her three children and then killed herself in a state of temporary insanity’ was returned.
The family were buried at Mill Road Cemetery on Saturday 24 November. Newspapers reported that in the intervening days ‘Cambridge has talked of little else. It was then that the curtain was lifted upon a drama which, if presented upon the stage would have been said to be overdrawn, and if written in a book of fiction would have been condemned as the product of a morbid mind’. The Cambridge Daily News wrote an extensive piece, calling Emma’s life one of ‘dreary struggle’ and praising her for wanting to spare her children ‘the possibility of similar bitter experience…she would not leave them to a pitiless world – even in death they would not be separated’.
The funeral drew ‘a large crowd’, with newspapers noting that some mourners came from sympathy whilst others came out of curiosity. The ‘hundreds of mothers’ in the funeral crowd were said to have repeated to each other ‘poor dears, oh the poor darlings – over and over again, never finding in their limited vocabulary anything monotonous’. The coffins left 179 East Road at noon, and police struggled to control the crowds, with people packed 10-12 deep along the East Road and ‘fresh arrivals each minute’. The Avenue of Limes at the Cemetery was lined on both sides and ‘the most advantageous positions around the graveside had been occupied sometime prior to the arrival of the funeral procession’. Iron railings were erected around one side of the grave to ‘keep the crowd in check’ and police lined the other side. When the funeral procession arrived ‘tears of the more tender hearted of the women began to fall’.
There were no wreaths left at the graveside, but the Cambridge Daily News described the funeral was ‘one of the most impressive funeral services seen in Cambridge’.
The deaths were reported on extensively – with many regional newspapers carrying headlines such as: ‘Triple Murder – Cambridge Mother’s Terrible Deed’, ‘Terrible affair in Cambridge – Mother kills her three children – suicide of the murderer’ or ‘Three children murdered by their mother’.
Albert Rayner did not attend the funeral and his whereabouts have not been traced.
Sources:
Ancestry
Newspaper archives
Parish burial records
by Claire Martinsen
[If you have any further information about this family, please contact us at Friendsofmillroadcemetery@gmail.com]