A young by who was murdered on a train and found stuffed under a seat of a third-class compartment is believed to have predicted his death.
It was around 2.15 pm on January 9, 1914, when a signalman at Camden Town recalled seeing a man hunched over a curly-haired child on a train. Two hours later, on that train, a young boy's body was discovered.
An errands boy, George Tillman, had noticed a hand as he leaned over to tie his bootlace on the North London Railway between Mildmay Park and Dalston Station at 4.30 pm. The boy was five-year-old Willie Starchfield and it was later discovered that he had been strangled with a piece of cord which was found by investigators on the railway lines.
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The youngest child of John and Ellen Starchfield, Willie's two siblings had died of natural causes. His parents separated and Willie lived with his mum on Hampstead Road.
John sold newspapers at the Oxford Street end of Tottenham Court Road. He had shot to fame in 1912 while trying to disarm an Armenian terrorist named Stephen Titus who went on a gun rampage in the bar of the Horseshoe Hotel.
John was shot in the stomach and seriously wounded during the altercation. He would go on to receive £1 a week from the Carnegie Hero Fund for his valiant efforts, but his return to the news two years later was for much sorrier reasons.
The inquest and trial
Articles in the British Newspaper Archive show the murder was reported widely up and down the country with headlines such as "A Lunatic's Crime" and "Tragedy of Young Willie". There was huge interest surrounding the inquest and subsequent trial.
The jury heard how Mrs Starchfield had went out looking for work and left her beloved boy in the charge of the landlady who sent him out on odd jobs. When he failed to return a search was launched.
At 9.30 pm that night, police arrived and took the landlady to Bethnal Green Mortuary. There she saw Willie's body, dressed exactly as he was when she sent him on the last errand. It was thought his body had remained under the seat over four and a half journeys between Chalk Farm and Broad Street before being discovered.
People at his father's lodging house in Hanover Court, Longacre, said John had been in bed that day and had not come downstairs until 3:00 pm. John told the inquest he had not seen his son in three weeks.
Perhaps the most important witness was a woman named Clara Wood who claimed to have seen a man leading a little boy by the hand on the afternoon of the murder. The boy was eating a piece of currant cake, she said.
A post-mortem showed one partially digested food in Willie's stomach containing currants. When she was asked if she could identify the man, Ms. Wood pointed at John Starchfield.
“Me?” said John. “Yes,” said Ms. Wood. “It's a lie,” John shouted.
But at trial, Ms. Wood failed to stand up to cross-examination. She had implied she had seen a photograph of Willie's dad in a newspaper before she had identified him.
A boy who lived near Willie's home said he saw the little lad going towards Camden Town with a boy taller and older than him. Willie had dropped some sticks from a bundle in his hands and the older boy reportedly shouted, "Come on!"
The inquest concluded the boy's father should be held accountable but the subsequent trial collapsed. The judge was critical of the coroner’s office and instructed the jury to return a formal verdict of not guilty.
Willie's dream about dying
When the Daily Mirror visited Mrs. Starchfield after the awful news of her son's death broke, she told the reporter of Willie's strange premonition. Willie had told her brother the night before he died that he was going to see his own late brother Jacky the following day.
"Naturally I thought the child meant my cousin Jack, for William has been to see him. I never dreamt it was his own brother," she said.
"The same night he said this - he had, strangely enough, a weird dream. He woke me up and said, 'Mammy, I've been dreaming I was dying and you were crying.'
"I was flabbergasted at such an utterance from a child." The devastated mum told the journalist Willie that was "all my life, my joy".
At her son's funeral, she collapsed at his graveside and cried, 'Tell me Willie dear, who was it before you go?' The following June, the grief-stricken woman was arrested near Regent's Park after telling a police constable she wanted to kill herself.
John Starchfield died from the effects of his gunshot wound in 1916, still claiming his innocence in his son’s death. He had suggested the murder was a revenge act by a friend of Stephen Titus.
Two years later a man named John Fitzpatrick from Liverpool professed to the murder of Willie. The story given by the 40-year-old, described in a report at the time by the Birmingham Post as "apparently of the tramp class", did not match the facts.
A doctor said the man was suffering from a form of insanity. He was discharged and sent to the workhouse, said the 1916 report.
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