Henry Pankhurst

Henry Pankhurst was an Englishman who killed 10 people and injured three others at his home in Manchester, United Kingdom, on July 10, 1904. The 19 year old was arrested 15 days later, sentenced to death, and executed.

Background
Henry was born into a rich family on February 22, 1885, as the last of three children. The family lived in a large mansion, which they shared with another family called Austin. Henry did poorly in school, and got into fights with other students. While at home, Henry would insult the Austin family and harass servants, and sometimes expressed a desire to kill himself. In 1903, Henry was married, due to the insistence of his parents, and had a child with his wife. However, he frequently got into fights with her because he suspected her of having affairs with his brother. He was also angry at the rest of his family for making him marry her. According to his testimony, he had been debating killing his family for several months before the murders, but he wanted to have somebody to frame if he murdered his family.

Murders
On July 2, 1904, a 50 year old eccentric Hungarian immigrant named János Zipernowsky moved in close to the family mansion, and on July 9, he was invited to a dinner party at the Pankhurst mansion. During the dinner, Zipernowsky expressed desire to marry Henry's 30 year old sister Margaret, but when the rest of the family refused, Zipernowsky became upset and left the building not long afterwards.

During the morning of July 10, Henry left his bedroom to go to the toilet, only to find his wife in the kitchen, eating a pie that was meant for Henry. He yelled at her to stop, and she grew angry and slapped him on the face. In a rage, Henry grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed his wife 55 times with it, before going to her room and decapitated their infant child. After the first to killings, Henry went to his parents room and told them that he was going to kill himself. When his father pleaded for him not to kill himself and attempted to take the knife away, Henry stabbed him to death. Next he chased his mother out of her room and into a hallway, where he fatally stabbed her 17 times. Next he killed his sister Margaret when she walked into the hallway, asking what was happening, before going back downstairs. Returning to the kitchen, he found his brother screaming in terror at the body of Henry's wife. Henry told his brother to calm down and that he would tell the police, only to take a wine bottle from the wall, knock his brother unconscious with it, and then cut his throat. Next he went to the room of his brother's wife, stabbed her eight times, and broke the bottle over her head. He then discarded the knife and took a musket from his fathers safe, and went to the part of the mansion belonging to the Austin family. First he called the father of the family, Harold Austin, to the library, where he attacked him from behind and shot him in the back. Harold survived by playing dead. Henry next went to the room where the rest of the Austin family was sleeping, and killed the wife and son by bludgeoning them with the musket. He afterwards left the room, only to return when he heard Austin's two year old daughter crying. He struck the girl on the head with such force that the gun was broken in half, killing her instantly. Afterwards he burned the bodies of his wife, child, parents, sister, brother, and sister in law. He then stayed in the house, laying in wait for the family servants, who had been staying out for the night. When the bookkeeper and maidservant arrived, he first attacked the bookkeeper, named Thomas Chambers, in the library, critically wounding him by shooting him in the back of the neck with a revolver. Then he pursued the maidservant, surnamed Glover, and struck her several times on the head with the revolver, knocking her unconscious. Henry then went to his room, where he attempted to commit suicide by shooting himself in the chest, but survived.



Aftermath
After Henry shot himself, Harold Austin crawled out of the house, yelling for help. When police arrived at the scene, they found 10 bodies and four injured people, including Henry. Henry told police that Zipernowsky had attacked the family because they had refused to let him marry Margaret. The two injured servants agreed with this story, because neither of them had seen their attacker, while Harold Austin said that he suspected that Henry committed the murders. Police believed Henry's story, because Zipernowsky was a strange man who lived alone in a disheveled house where he didn't allow visitors, was obsessed with the occult, and was probably mentally ill. After Zipernowsky's arrest, police began to suspect him even more, because he had no alibi and made poor defenses. However, on July 17, after being discharged from the hospital, Harold Austin went to the police and asked them to do a more thorough search of the murder house. The police obliged, and while searching the boxes of the storage room, they discovered a broken musket and a knife stained with dry blood. Afterwards when police tried to question Henry, he fled. A large manhunt was started to recover him, and he was found hiding in an abandoned house on July 25. After being arrested, he confessed to the murders. He was put on trial for 10 counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder, found guilty, and executed in November 1906.