Rose Harsent

Mr and Mrs Crisp headed upstairs to bed at around 10.15pm. It was a Saturday evening on the last day of May 1902 and Sundays were busy for the baptist elder and his wife, so they wanted to get a good night's sleep. It looked as though this might prove difficult due to the storm that continued to batter the small village of Peasenhall in East Suffolk. Their large home, Providence House, felt particularly exposed to the strong winds and rain. The couple managed to drift off reasonably quickly but hadn’t been asleep long when they thought they heard a noise coming from downstairs. Mrs Crisp got out of bed and went down the main flight of stairs into the kitchen to check on the disturbance. She peered into the kitchen from the hall and noticed it was unusually dark but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Perhaps she’d been mistaken and had instead heard her domestic servant, Rose Harsent, pottering about in her attic bedroom. Rose was in her early twenties and often went to bed later than her employers. The wind was still howling outside so she swiftly returned to her cosy warm bed. 

A little later the couple were awoken again by another noise. Mr Crisp was hard of hearing but both he and his wife could have sworn they heard a scream, followed by a muffled thud. It was not a piercing scream, it was softer and less harsh. Mrs Crisp was tempted to get back up and check on Rose, but the storm was still raging outside and everything in the house seemed quiet now, so she turned over and went back to sleep. We can only wonder how things would have been different, and indeed if I would be telling this story at all, if Mrs Crisp had ventured out of her bed for a second time. 

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Rose Anne Harsent was born and raised in Peasenhall, which lies in the county of Suffolk on the eastern coast of England. The villages of Sibton and Badingham are nearby and the nearest town, Saxmundham, is 6.5 km away, with the largest town in the region, Ipswich, a distance of 30km. Rose’s date of birth is unknown but it is believed to be in 1879. She is referred to as being 22, 23 or in her 23rd year in May 1902. She was known locally as a colourful character. In a time when women were supposed to be seen and not heard, Rose was anything but demure and passive. She seems to be someone who spoke her mind and didn’t mind breaking social conventions. When Rose was around 19 she started to court a young man named Bob Kerridge. He was an avid chapel goer and so Rose also started to attend Sunday services and other social events put on by the Methodist church in nearby Sibton.  Rose had a love for music and longed to learn to play the reed organ. The church gave her opportunities to exercise her musical gifting and it wasn’t long before she joined the choir.

Bob and Rose’s relationship never blossomed into marriage, the pair drifted apart and in 1900 Rose obtained a job with Mr and Mrs Crisp. Her new role as a domestic servant meant she left her family home and moved into Providence House. Not long after starting there she met another young man, a few years her junior, Frederick  Davies. Frederick worked at the local grocery store. It is not clear how serious this relationship was but Frederick would send Rose racey letters which he later claimed she had asked him to write to her. 

In the summer of 1901, Rose’s name was whispered throughout the village, as she was caught up in some juicy local gossip. In May that year Rose and the choirmaster, William Gardiner,  were supposedly seen sneaking into a little-used room at the Methodist church building known as the Doctor’s chapel. Rose cleaned the chapel once a week and was said to have been seen going inside on the 1 May, with William following shortly after. The witnesses to this event were two young men, George Wright and Alphonso Skinner, who wasted no time in putting their ears to the wall to  hear what was going on. What exactly they said they heard is not clear. One source says Rose referred to the Bible story about Onan and Tamar, found in Genesis chapter 38, and they heard her joking that they had just done the same thing. You can look that up in your own time but suffice to say the passage involves a sexual act. Thanks to George and Alphonso, whatever the details were, this salacious piece of gossip went through the village and the surrounding areas like wildfire. 

William Gardiner was a respected older man of 35 years. He married his wife Georgianna in 1888 and they had six children. The Gardiner family lived in Alma House, a cottage that lay 180m away from the much grander Crisp property. He had worked himself up from very impoverished beginnings to be a skilled carpenter and wheelwright. William, together with Georgianna and their  family, moved to Peasenhall in the mid 1890’s and it wasn’t long before he had become a foreman in James Smyth and Sons drills and sowers, which made agricultural machinery. He was very active in the Methodist church, becoming an elder, teaching in the Sunday school, leading the choir and playing the pedal pumped reed organ for congregational worship. William struck an imposing  figure. He wasn't tall but stout with a stocky build and jet black full beard and hair. Displaying much of the prejudice of the time, one newspaper described him as quote “a good specimen of his class”.

The rumors flying around the village about William and Rose caused his superiors in the local methodist circuit to hold an investigation into the accusations. William denied them and told the two alleged witnesses, George Wright and Alphono Skinner, to their faces that they were outright lying. He also threatened them with legal action for defamation of character. Reverend John Guy, Superintendent minister of the local methodist circuit, oversaw proceedings. Interestingly the two witnesses were in attendance, as well as William, but Rose was not present. Apparently she was spoken to at a later date. William claimed he had only gone into the chapel as Rose had called to him for help to lock a door. Ultimately Reverend Guy couldn't find enough evidence to back up the witness's claims and William was declared innocent of the accusations, though they did warn him to be more circumspect in his behaviour and friendship with Rose in the future. William was allowed to continue with his normal responsibilities within the church. 

It seems that most in the church believed him to be innocent but in the wider community there was the belief amongst some that there was no smoke without fire.  It's important to say that Georgianna Gardiner, William's wife, thought the rumours were false and Rose, who often visited the Gardiner’s house, continued to do so in the wake of the scandal. In the aftermath, William wrote at least two letters to Rose about the scandal, which talked about his horror and embarrassment at having their reputations dragged through the mud in public. Georgianna was heavily pregnant and in poor health at the time of the allegations and the child died shortly after birth. One consequence of the scandal was that Bob Kerridge, the man that Rose had started seeing as a teenager and who still held a torch for her, completely gave up trying to rekindle their relationship. Linda Stratmann, in her chapter on the Peasenhall Murder in  “Casebook Classic Crime”, says Rose was not bothered by this at all. She apparently found him too quiet and boring!

Rumours persisted over the next 6 to 8 months about the pair. Henry Rouse, another Methodist minister, allegedly saw William and Rose walking together in a quiet part of the village. This led William to receive another scolding from the church officials and again he promised to be more judicious in the future. Although not long after Henry Rouse saw the couple engaging in what he deemed was flirtatious behaviour on the pews of the church. One Sunday morning during a sermon he was giving he witnessed William sitting with his legs across Rose’s lap.

The evening of the 31st May 1902 saw the inhabitants of Peasenhall witness the second storm in consecutive days. The first rumbles of thunder were heard at around 10pm but the storm didn't get going until around 11.30pm. and the wind and rain did not abate until 1.30am. Most of the residents were tucked up in bed and woke up on the first day of June hopeful of a pleasant Sunday now the storm had blown over. They were completely oblivious to the heinous events that had occurred at Providence House in the dark of the night. 

At 8.00am that morning William Harsent, Rose’s father, came over to Providence House to bring some fresh bed linen for his daughter. When he got to the house he found the door to the conservatory leading to the kitchen unlocked. This was unusual, so he pushed the door and made his way through to the kitchen. Inside it was quiet and dark, as a sheet had been hung across the main window, blocking the sunlight. He continued forward until he came to a staircase that was only used by the servants of the house and led up to Rose’s attic bedroom. There, wearing only a nightgown and pair of socks was Rose, lying face up at the bottom of the stairs in a pool of blood. She was quite obviously dead. William Harsent went to raise the alarm but not before he placed a rug over her body. A fathers last act of tenderness towards the daughter he loved. 

First on the scene was Dr Lay, who was a neighbour of the Crisps, and the local village police officer, Ely Nunn. I think it’s fair to say that neither man had dealt with a scenario like this before, but both got to work trying to make sense of the scene before them. Rose had numerous slash wounds on her throat and chest. She also had some minor burns to her hands and arms and it looked like someone had attempted to set her nightdress alight. Under her body lay a copy of the East Anglian Daily Times from Friday 30th May. Near the body was a candlestick which she had been using to find her way in the dark. There was also a dismantled oil lamp with the glass encasing still intact. Blood was only found on the left side of the body and no footprints were visible at the scene. Near her head was a shattered 170 ml medicine bottle which reeked of paraffin. The cork was still jammed so tightly into the neck of the bottle that it could not be removed. The writing on the bottle had faded and it could not be made out but Dr Lay thought it was a bottle that he had prescribed to the sister of Georgianna Gardiner. It didn't look like anything had been taken from the house but the back door was found to be damaged with a broken bracket. 

Both P.C Nunn and Dr Lay went on to search Rose’s attic bedroom for anything that might shed light on this horrific incident. They found her bed had not been slept in but did contain a slight indentation indicating someone had been sitting on it. Near the bed they found a letter postmarked the previous day, the 31st May. It read:

D R (Which is believed to be short for Dear Rose)

I will try and see you tonight. At 12 oclock at your Place

If you Put a light in your window at 10 o'clock for about 10 minutes then you can take it out again. Don’t have a light in your Room at 12 as I will come round to the back

It sounded like Rose was expecting a visitor that night and they now understood why Rose had not been to sleep but had been sitting waiting on her bed and why the window in the kitchen had been covered up. To prevent prying eyes peering in at the clanestine meeting. 

Further letters were found in the bedroom in dresser drawers. Most were unsigned. Some were love letters and others of an even more explicit nature. The handwriting on these letters did not match the handwriting on the letter requesting the rendezvous. There were an additional two letters signed by William Gardiner discussing the scandal that occurred the previous autumn. The handwriting on these pieces of correspondence was similar to the rendezvous letter.  Bizarrely Dr Lay concluded within an hour or so that Rose had died as a result of suicide. I am not sure what exactly led him to reach this assumption; it was possibly the lack of bloody footprints in the kitchen. As we will see, the doctor did change his opinion a short time later.

The investigation was taken over by detectives from Suffolk police led by Superintendent Staunton.  They were not so sure that suicide was the correct call and on Tuesday 3rd June they arrested William Gardiner in connection with Rose’s death. When he was first told of her death on the Sunday morning he apparently was stoic but at the time of his arrest he fainted in shock along with his wife Georgianna. He had become a prime suspect when investigating detectives learnt of the rumours circulating about the affair and because his handwriting was eerily similar to that of the rendezvous letter. There were multiple pieces of circumstantial evidence pointing to William which we will cover shortly at the trial. 

The nail in the coffin for William came the day following his arrest  when the post-mortem was carried out on Rose’s body. The procedure was undertaken by Dr Lay and Dr Richardson from a neighbouring village. The men were unanimous in their belief that Rose’s wounds were not self-inflicted. An assailant had slashed the left side of her chest with an upward stab and as she turned away bleeding profusely they had stood behind her and cut her throat twice. Either injury to the neck would have been fatal. She also had a bruise on her face and what looked like defensive injuries on her  hands. Rose had desperately tried to fight back against her attacker. Her nightdress was doused in paraffin and an attempt had been made to set it alight, though this hadn’t worked very well and it was only partially burnt. The police made the assumption that the murderer took the paraffin to use as an accelerant but struggled to get the cork out of the bottle, so was forced to smash the bottle to release the liquid. Most of it spilled on the floor and then the newspaper was used as kindling but didn't catch properly.

They could not say exactly when the time of death occurred but gave the window of between 12.30am and 6.30am on the 1st June. Mrs Crisp wasn’t sure exactly when she  had awoken to the thud and scream but thought the storm was still raging when she did. It eventually subsided at  approximately 1.30am. Of course what Mrs Crisp heard may not have been the attack on Rose and she was also groggy from sleep. Later in court, the Doctors narrowed the time of death to between 2am and 4am but this was only an estimate. The prosecution pinpointed 12.40am to 1.40am as the likely time. The belief was that the murder had taken place under the cover of darkness and, being the 1st of June, it started to get light very early.

Unsurprisingly Dr Lay changed his opinion from suicide to murder. The biggest shock was that the doctors also discovered that Rose had been six months pregnant at the time of her death. Police now had motive for William to have committed the murder; the length of the pregnancy would very much fit in with the rumours that had been doing the rounds throughout the Autumn. Police worked on the assumption that Rose either told William for the first time that night that she was pregnant and he flipped and murdered her in an angry rage or that he had known about the pregnancy for a while but felt that he had to act soon, before people would be able to tell by the size of Rose’s bump and their secret would be revealed. I’ve read one report stating that the Doctors also thought she had sex shortly before her death. 

William, on his part denied, having anything to do with Rose’s murder and also was adament that he had not sent the rendezvous letter. Many of his friends, including his employers supported him in his defence. When he was formally charged with the murder on the 13 June he looked smartly dressed, calm and unworried which the newspapers eyed with suspicion.

By the time the trial came around at the beginning of November 1902, the murder of Rose Harsent was atrracting national attention. A man from Great Yarmoth who owned a wax work museum was charged with contempt of court because he was displaying a portrait of Willaim Gardiner as part of his exhibition. A scene was created depicting a kitchen with a model of a young girl representing Rose sitting at a table. Behind her loomed a large menacing portrait of William glaring down on his prospective victim. This story highlights the public attention the case was receiving and the intrigue and mystery that went along with it.

The trial commenced on November 7th in Ipswich, with Henry Dickens, the son of the famous Victorian novelist, Charles, prosecuting on behalf of  the crown. He focused heavily on motive, which he said was Rose’s secret pregnancy. The prosecution said William had sent the note to Rose and planned on meeting her at 12.00am but was delayed because of the storm. He sneaked out at some point and went to Providence house. When Rose told him about the pregnancy he flew into a rage killing her in cold blood. He attempted to burn the body to cover up the fact that she was pregnant as he knew full well that would make him the obvious suspect. The lack of footprints showed he then displayed a remarkable degree of composure to ensure he left the scene undetected. There was, however, a whole host of circumstantial evidence that pointed to the defendant. The medicine bottle label was able to be cleaned and the writing could now be read clearly. The prescription on it was made out to Mrs Georgianna Gardiner for use by her children. Other reports say it was for her sister-in-law, Mrs Cullum. Either way there was no denying that the bottle had been, at least originally, in the possession of the Gardiners. The East Anglian Daily Times found at the scene was not read by Mr and Mrs Crisp, but William Gardiner was known to be an avid reader of that newspaper. A neighbour, Herbert Stammers, witnessed smoke from the Gardiners chimney at around 7.00am on Sunday 1st June. This was highly unusual so early in the morning, and it was said this was the defendant burning his bloodied clothes. A knife was found in William's possession when he was arrested and experts believed it could have been used to make the cuts to Rose's neck and chest.  The knife looked like it had been recently sharpened and cleaned but specks of dry blood were found on the hinges. In 1902 it could not be determined if the blood came from a human or an animal. 

James Morris, a local gameskeeper, gave evidence. He had come forward a few days after the murder to say he had been out at 5.30am on the 1st of June and had noticed footprints in the fresh mud leading from the Gardiner’s cottage to Providence House. From memory he sketched the prints and they were said to match a pair of boots belonging to William. The prosecution also had a witness putting Gardiner at 10pm on the front steps of his cottage chatting to his neighbour Harry Burgess and  looking up upwards at Providence House. There a light was said to be dimly shining in the attic room, just like the note asked for. 

The prosecution's trump card was Mr Guerin, a renowned handwriting expert who said it was his opinion that the rendezvous letter was written by Gardiner. The local postal worker Henry Brewer confirmed that he had delivered the letter on the afternoon of Saturday 31st May and that the postmark was local. Brewer also said he had delivered other similar looking letters before. The envelopes themselves were said to be very distinctive and blue in colour. It just so happened that the Smyth and Sons Drill Works where William was employed had dozens of these envelopes in their stationary stock. 

Defending William Gardiner was a pugnacious lawyer named Earnest Wild. He said his client was not going to get a fair trial and pointed to what he called unfounded local rumours that prejudiced the case against William. Wild was very impassioned and bold in William’s defence but sometimes was not altogether clear and concise or believable in his delivery. He spent a good deal of time building up an alternative potential suspect for the jury. It was insinuated that Frederick Davies, the young man besotted with Rose, was the real killer. The defence pointed to the pornographic poems he had written to Rose as evidence of his sexual deviance. A medical book which detailed an abortion procedure found amongst Rose’s posessions was given to her by Davies. It was believed that Rose had tried to abort her pregnancy herself in November when she first found out she was pregnant but failed in her attempt. Davies freely admitted giving her the book and the poems which did raise some eyebrows and cause the judge to give him a lecture on morality. Ultimately, however the judge got fed up with this approach as Wild presented no evidence, and was evenatully forced to admit defeat, saying it was very unlikely Frederick Davies had anything to do with the murder.

The next tactic was to argue that it was imposible for William Gardiner to have committed the murder, as he could be accounted for thoughout the night. The Gardiner’s neighbour, Rose Dickinson, was nervous of the storm and so at around 11.30pm both William and his wife Georgianna went to the neighbours house to keep her company. She said Georgianna first arrived at her house and William came some time after, adding that he wore a pair of carpet slippers. The defence said this was a matter of minutes but the prosecution countered this with estimates that went from 30 minutes to an hour. The couple only left Mrs Dickinson’s house at 1.30am when the storm finished. 

When they returned William went to bed and his wife said she could vouch for this as she hadn’t slept because of a cold and didn’t retire to bed until around 4.00am. She said he was sleeping and that one of their daughters was cuddled up next to him, presumably having been scared by the storm. Another neighbour, Amelia Pepper, backed up the defence’s claim that William had not left his house, saying she didn't sleep at all  and would have heard if any of the Gardiners had left their cottage. She said the partition between her own bedroom and the Gardiner’s was thin, and she heard William go to bed at around 2.00am and Georgianna go downstairs shortly after. Amelia  Pepper also said she had heard Mrs Gardiner coughing at around 4.00am, after which Mrs Garidner retired to bed. 

The dried blood on the knife they attributed to a rabbit that had been skinned recently and the early morning fire was said by Georgianna Gardiner to have actually been a steaming kettle coming to the boil, giving  the appearance of smoke in the damp  mornting air. There was no proof, they said, that William had disposed of any clothes and in fact he was said to own only two shirts and four coats, none of which had even the slightest trace of blood or paraffin. The bottle of paraffin itself was admitted by Georgianna to have belonged to her but she said several  months ago she had given it to Rose as she was complaining of feeling unwell. Paraffin was primarily used as a laxative to help with constipation.

The defence had two of their own handwriting analysts who were bank clerks employed to detect forged signatures. It was their opinion that William’s handwriting, whilst being similar, did not match the rendezvous letter.

A witness named James Hart, who was a fowl and egg dealer  on his way to work at 4.00am on the  1st June, was called to give evidence. He had walked along the route the muddy footprints were said to have taken but he saw none. Doubt cast on the testimony of George Wright and Alphonso Skinner and what they heard outside the Doctors chapel, as they worked at the same factory as William. William was George’s foreman, and whilst not directly responsible for Alphonso, would give him orders from time to time. The defence suggested that William was not a popular person at the works because he was religious and teetotal. Recently he had reprimanded Geroge Wright for shoddy work. This was inferred to be a possible motive for the young men to lie. 

Henry Rouse, the methodist minister, also came in for criticism for his testimony about the flirtatious behavior between William and Rose. The defence said  Rouse was being driven by a jealous grudge as he was envious of William’s position and standing in the church.  

No stone was left unturned by Earnest Wild in his defence of William Gardiner. In his attempt to cover all bases he even argued that that there was doubt as to whether this was a murder at all.  This could well have been a tragic accident. Perhaps she slipped on the stairs and cut herself on the broken glass medicine bottle.  Most thought this was quite a stretch, even people who believed William to be innocent. 

The jury retired to make their verdict. They debated the issue for 4 ½ hours but came to an impasse. In 1902 juries still needed to return a majority verdict to pronounce a defendant guilty or not guilty. Eleven jurors were convinced that William Gardiner had murdered Rose Harsent but there was one, Evan Evans, who said he hadn't seen enough evidence to send a man to the gallows. Therefore a retrial was scheduled for January the following year. 

The retrial saw Earnest Wild focus the defence case on Georgianna Gardiner. She was portrayed as a hardworking, loyal  and  honest wife. If her husband was convicted the jury would be saying that she was a liar and in contempt of court. Why would she lie if her husband was a no-good philanderer? During proceedings she did not look well and at one point was taken from the court moaning and crying, and later collapsed.  This undoubtedly helped the case for the defence and the obvious stress on her brought much sympathy from the general public.

Henry Dickens mostly rehashed the evidence from the first trail. One difference was that in the original trial, Harry Harsent, the brother of Rose, had denied ever taking letters between his sister and William in the past. This time he admitted that he had done it on several occasions although not for many months. Dickens urged the jury not to get carried away with cynical appeals to their hearts but to put emotion aside. He said that George Wright, Alphonso Skinner, Henry Rouse and Herbert Stammers had had no reason to lie in their accusations over the affair, the inappropriate conduct and the early morning fire respectively. Likewise what did groundskeeper James Morris have to gain by investing a story about the footprints?

The murder was a lot more distant in people memories and the focus was more on William and Georgianna than Rose. Public shock and repulsion at the murder had dissipated  and other news stories were taking the headlines. The newspapers were increasingly casting aspersions on Rose’s character and the lifestyle that she led and engaging in what would now be called victim blaming. The tide of public opinion was shifting and the jury’s decision reflected this change in narrative. 

The jury result this time was exactly the reverse of the previous trail. 11 voted for acquittal and only one for guilty. The prosecution decided it was pointless to seek another trial. As a result William Gardiner was a free man and was released on the 29th January 1903. He is one of the few people in the UK to have faced a murder charge and not been found either gulty or not guilty. On his release he gave a newspaper interview to the Star, which in turn the St James Gazette abbreviated. In it he said firmly, with a clench fist striking the table at which he sat, that he had done nothing wrong. When the trial first began he said he had been nervous but found his resolve quickly as he knew he was going to be acquitted.

William and his family moved to London shortly afterwards and he continued his career as a carpenter.He died in 1941 with Georgianna passing 7 years later. 

So who killed Rose Harsent and her unborn baby? It’s not surprising that many modern crime historians think William Gardiner got away with murder. The handwritten rendezvous note is still floating around on the internet and some true crime experts are convinced the handwriting is that of William Gardiner. 

The common view from those who thought William guilty at the time was that the murder was an act of rage after Rose had requested his financial support for the baby. Perhaps she threatened to expose him if he did not acquiesce to this. The presence of the paraffin and the newspaper at the crime scene suggests a degree of premeditation and planning which seems to go against the idea of a spontaneous attack. Crime writer Stuart P. Evans has a theory to explain this. He thinks that Rose did confront William about the unborn child and he did indeed snap and kill her. He thinks he tried to set her body alight using the oil lamp.  If you remember the glass shield encasing the lamp was not broken but it looked like someone had tried to take the lamp apart. Evans believes this is because  William attempted to access the oil in the lamp in order to set the fire but couldn't do it.  He then returned to his house and cleaned up and returned later in the night with the newspaper and paraffin to burn her body and cover up the evidence.  Perhaps he murdered Rose earlier in the night when Georgianna went over to Rose Dickinson's house. William arrived an unknown time later. Is this when he murdered Rose? Returning later in an attempt to burn the body.

But what happens if we believe William was telling the truth? Well, there are some other suspects. True crime author Kevin Turton believes that Rose's lover and the father of her child was somebody other than William Gardiner. He says it was well known that Rose had several men interested in her and so it is not unreasonable to think that William Gardiner was just the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. He doesn't think that William sent the rendezvous letter and says that the view from the Gardiner's cottage  to Providence House was restricted and he didn't think the candle light in the window was visible from there.. 

At the time of the trial police received at least three confession letters. All three said that William Garidner was innocent. One in particular stirred up quite a bit of attention. The letter was postmarked Burton on Trent, in the midlands of England and sent to the East Anglian Daily news. It was littered with grammatical and spelling errors which experts said were not feigned. The author said they were the killer of Rose but added they were not the father of her child. The writer of the letter claimed to have had a romantic relationship with Rose but murdered her when they found out that she was having an affair with Frederick Davies, whom she had fallen pregnant with. 

Following some clues left in the letter the police believed they had found the author. He was a maltster from Badingham, east Suffolk, by the name of Albert Goodchild. It seems this was a red herring.  Albert had nothing to do with the letter or the murder. His movements on the night of the 31st May into 1st of June could be accounted for. For a time he was in the company of Rose Harsent’s brother.  It seems whoever wrote the letter wanted to set Albert up. Most believed this confession to be a cruel joke. Why would the killer attempt to write it if someone else, i.e William Gardiner, was already taking the fall for the murder? At trial the defence tried to suggest that it could have been written by the actual killer, although they did admit Albert had no part in it. Handwriting experts said the writing of this confession letter did not match the rendezvous note. The true author of the letter has remained unidentified. 

In 1904 a soldier by the name of William Taylor confessed to the murder of Rose Harsent. Taylor who was aged around 30 was serving time in a military prison in Dover, Kent, though he was orinaglly from Suffolk and said to have been in the Peasenhall area at the time of the murder. Taylor was said to have a character that made police doubt his truthfulness but there were elements of his signed confession that had a ring of truth. On closer investigation the confession was dismissed as bogus. Whilst being interviewed Taylor was deemed to be wholly inaccurate in his details of the crime. It wasn't uncommon at the time for military prisoners to bring false confessions so they could be moved to civilian prisons. 

In 2005 the actor, director and author Julian Fellowes, most famous for the Oscar winning film “Gosford Park”, produced a television series in which he investigated historical cold cases. The five part series used a mix of documentary and dramatised reenactments to delve into the crimes and come up with possible theories. The program argued that William could well have been innocent of the murder but attempted to cover up for the real culprit, his wife, Georgianna. She killed Rose out of jealousy and anger when she discovered the rumours about Rose and her husband were true. Worse still Rose was pregnant with William’s child, who would be a lifelong reminder of her husband's infidelity. William attempted to help his wife to clear up evidence of the crime and he was willing to take the fall for her. Julian Fellowes says he thinks Georgianna would have confessed if her husband had been found guilty. There is really no evidence for the idea that Georgianna was the murderer. Though this theory would explain why Georgianna was up most of the night and why she was so keen to back up everything her husband said. 

There is the possibility that even if Gerogianna didn't commit the act, she was an accomplice after the fact. Again there is very little evidence to back this up.

Life went on in Peasenhall but the murder of Rose was not forgotten. A few local stories began to circulate about the identity of the murderer. One of the most odd came from a person known as “the wise woman” who was reputed to be a witch living in nearby Kelsale. She was said to tell fortunes and be able to predict the future. She said she had seen the murder happen and that it had been committed by a man dressed as a woman. One strange coincidence was that the man who moved into Alma cottage, the Gardiner’s former home, was another man named William Gardiner. He too was a carpenter and went on to do the very job that William had done previously at Smyth and Sons. 

The people of Peasenhall raised money for a marble cross to be placed on the grave of Rose Harsent. It is inscribed with these words: In affectionate Remembrance of Rose Anne Harsent whose life was cruelly taken on 1st June 1902 in her 23rd year. A light from our household gone. A voice we loved is stilled. A place is vacant in our home. That never can be filled.