Harry’s bargain

On the evening of 29^th July 1932, Harry Hard went to an auction at the Lion Hotel, Cambridge, and picked up a bargain. He paid £1,550 for a four-bedroomed house with grounds of 1½ acres in the leafy southern suburbs of the town. (The selling price was about five times a teacher’s salary in those days).

According to the sale particulars, Meads End in Hills Avenue boasted two reception rooms and four bedrooms. Outside there was a laundry and garage and charming gardens, including a flower garden, a tennis lawn (“full size, the whole surrounded by ornamental trees and shrubs and Nut Walk, affording ample shade”), and a kitchen and fruit garden (“well stocked with fruit trees and extremely productive”), as well as “ample room for the erection of Two more Houses”. The property was to be sold “absolutely without reserve” and with vacant possession.

Just two months earlier, five people had met a violent death in the property. Herbert Tebbutt had shot his partner Helen Williams, their two small sons (Anthony, 2, and one-year-old Michael), and Helen’s daughter Elizabeth, 13, before turning the gun on himself.

Herbert Tebbutt came from the brewing family that owned Bailey and Tebbutt’s brewery. He had grown up in Cambridge, attending the Leys School, and playing cricket for the county. In 1913 he married a widow, Alice Spottiswood, who was originally from Scotland and with her late husband had kept the Plough Inn in Fen Ditton. In 1925 the brewery was sold and Herbert, who had been managing the business, became a man of leisure living off the proceeds of the sale. The couple moved into Meads End in 1927 and two years later Alice petitioned for divorce on the grounds of her husband’s adultery with Helen Williams. The divorce was not contested, and Helen replaced Alice at Mead’s End.

Helen Jenks had been born in California but had married in Wales in 1913. Helen and her husband, Walter Williams, had two children, Elizabeth and Bryan, and later separated. Helen then went to Cambridge to work in a hotel, taking her daughter with her and leaving her son with family in Liverpool. It was in Cambridgeshire that she began a relationship with Herbert Tebbutt.

No-one was able to offer an explanation for the crime, which took place on the morning of Saturday 28 May 1932. The family had been about to embark on a holiday to the coast and the maid and nursemaid were waiting in the car outside the house when they heard shots. Herbert was said to have been upset about the death of his dog, and angry about the amount of alimony he had to pay his ex-wife Alice. He had also practised a little deceit on his wife when he cancelled an arrangement to employ another nursemaid, and his wife was perhaps about to discover his subterfuge. An inquest was held three days later. According to a report in The Times the coroner had said that he had “no doubt the divorce proceedings had preyed upon Mr Tebbutt’s mind”. The report concluded: “The jury returned a verdict that after murdering Mrs. Williams and the three children, Tebbutt committed suicide while temporarily insane”.