East & South Devon Advertiser. – Saturday 01 October 1904 “No One Calls Upon Him in Vain” The Rumour of John Lee’s Imminent Release – and the Faith That Sustained Him In the early 1900s, long before John Henry George Lee would finally walk free from prison in 1907, whispers of his release began to stir public hope. One such […]
The Man They Could Not Hang
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Isidore James Carter, Life and the Babbacombe Murder Isidore James Carter played a shadowy but significant role in the Babbacombe Murder case of 1884 The name Isidore James Carter does not appear in bold headlines when discussing the Babbacombe Murder case — the sensational 1884 trial that saw John ‘Babbacombe’ Lee sentenced to death for the murder of Emma Keyse. […]
Gloucester Citizen – Saturday 22 November 1884 THE BABBICOMBE MURDER. The adjourned inquest on the body of Miss Keyse was resumed in St. Mary Church Town Hall, Torquay, on Friday. The prisoner, John Lee, was brought up in a cab by two police-officers. He was pale, but jumped nimbly out and ran lightly up the steps. It will be remembered […]
THE MURDER AT BABBACOMBE. Public excitement in reference to the murder of Miss Keyse, an elderly lady, residing at the Glen, Babbacombe, early on Saturday morning, under circumstances already reported, continues unabated in the district. The inquest was opened in the music room at Babbacombe Glen, the residence of the deceased lady, at eleven o’clock on Monday, before Mr. S. […]
By the time John Lee was finally released from prison, he had become something of an Edwardian folk hero. Once the subject of morbid fascination, he now enjoyed a remarkable public rehabilitation—viewed by many as a wronged man, even a symbol of divine intervention. Clean-shaven, suited, and publicly repentant, Lee moved in circles where his infamy brought admiration rather than […]