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 The Lantern Pike at Little Hayfield is an attractive roadside pub where you can usually, these days, see a line of parked cars outside. It is a popular spot for good food and beer.
On 16 November 1927 the line of parked cars was a hearse and funeral cortege. An angry, grieving crowd stood watching in the rain as 36-year-old Amy Collinson, the landlady of the New Inn (as it was then called) was carried out in her coffin. She had been the victim of a brutal murder for the small amount of cash that she and her husband, Arthur, kept on the premises to provide change for the till. Her murderer had profited by less than £40.
It was a quiet pub in those days and Arthur went out to work, leaving Amy to mind the pub alone in the daytime. When he returned from work at 6pm on 11 November he found one of the pub regulars, Amos Dawson, waiting on the doorstep, puzzled that the pub was still closed. They went in and found Amy lying in a pool of blood. On the face of it, it looked as if she had cut her own throat, the knife she held was still in the wound. She had apparently hit her head hard as she fell.
The police were called and, as soon as Derbyshire’s Assistant Chief Constable, James Garrow and his Head of CID, Walter Else, took a look at the scene, they realised that they were dealing with murder, very clumsily disguised as suicide. The hunt for the motive, the weapon and the murderer began.
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Crime & Punishment
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