On this day in Oxfordshire...

On this day in 1931, Mabel Matthews, 56, had cycled to Burford to do a spot of Christmas shopping and now she set off in the early evening gloom for her home at Windrush Mill.

On the same day, a young soldier on leave reached Burford on a cycling tour. Having stayed with relatives in London, George Pople, a twenty-two-year-old soldier in the South Wales Borderers’ Regiment was on the return journey to Brecon armed with sausage sandwiches in his pocket, supplied by a family member.

Pople claimed that his cycle lamp gave out, so he got off and started pushing the bike when along came Mrs Matthews with a working light. Pople pushed her off her bike, grabbed the lamp and escaped. Two men came along at around half-past eight and flagged down a car. The driver fetched a doctor, but Mrs Matthews died soon after he arrived.

Mrs Matthews had been brutally beaten with twenty-three blows to her body, two to the back of the head, eleven broken ribs, and a fractured jaw. A man’s mackintosh with sausage sandwiches in a pocket was found at the scene. It was noted that the lamp was missing from Mrs Matthews’ bike.

The police caught up with Pople in Abergavenny the following day. He admitted taking the lamp, but he claimed: “My trouser leg caught in the pedal of my cycle, I stumbled and fell over towards the other cycle and knocked it over. The woman fell against a post and rolled down the bank.”

This is an extract from “On this Day in Oxfordshire: volume 2” by Julie Ann Godson, available at Amazon.