Queen Victoria has her back to Dr. Ruxton's house in Dalton Square. The following story is a bit of oral history (or gossip as it's known locally) that I was told back in the mid-70s by an elderly lady who, like a lot of local people, knew the doctor and his common-law wife, Isabella Kerr.

In the days before the National Health Service, Dr Ruxton was considered a kindly man, and he was universally popular in the town. Unfortunately, he was also a very jealous husband.

My source told me that Isabella was attractive, and liked to socialise. At the mayor's ball, in the Town Hall, she danced all night, and was much in demand, her husband apparently preferring to sit things out and sulk.

The marriage deteriorated, with Dr Ruxton becoming ever-more jealous and controlling until the 15th September, 1935, when he strangled Isabella with his bare hands and killed her. To prevent their maid, May Jane Rogerson, from discovering his crime before he had time to conceal it, he suffocated her.

To dispose of the bodies, he first dismembered them, and, being a surgeon, made a professional job of it. However, he also tried to give one of his female patients a suit with blood on it, in an effort to persuade her to help him clean up the mess it made! Duh.

My source recalls being in the hairdressers then on the west side of Dalton Square, and the ladies present remarking that Dr Ruxton had been burning 'ever such a lot of rubbish', the smoke from his back garden had been drifting across the square for two days. He said that his wife had gone away with the maid. He burned their clothes, to make it look as though she had taken them.

The murders are famous because of the application of then new methods of forensic science to their solution. A man of science himself, Dr Ruxton would at the time have been one of the few to understand the means by which he was convicted.

A man out walking his dog across a bridge at 'The Devil's Beeftub' near the town of Moffat, in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, saw something white flapping down the steep gully below. Investigating, he found parts of two dismembered bodies, mutilated beyond any recognition, wrapped in newspaper. The paper was identified as being a special edition of the 'Sunday Graphic' sold only in Lancaster.

Not all the body parts were found. A search of the area was carried out and the local boy scouts were drafted in to assist. We don't know if they got a special badge for it.

The Glasgow Police Identification Bureau used new fingerprint techniques to help identify the bodies. As the fingers had been mutilated, they also used the new science of photographic superimposure, matching a photo of Isabella to the shape of one of the skulls found. The match was perfect.

Dr Ruxton was hanged at Manchester on 12th May 1936. A petition asking for clemency for him was signed by 10,000 people.

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