SOLDIER George Pople was a second man to hang in Oxford Prison in three months.

We told (Memory Lane, April 28, 2013) how Henry Seymour was executed for the gruesome murder of widow Annie Kempson at her home in St Clement’s, Oxford, in December 10, 1931.

The hangman was in action again on March 9, 1932, when Pople went to the gallows for murdering Mabel Elizabeth Matthews near Burford.

Pople, a 22-year-old soldier in the South Wales Borderers, had been convicted of the crime after a trial at Gloucester Assizes a month earlier.

Sir Reginald Coventry QC, prosecuting, told the court that Mrs Matthews was cycling home along the Oxford-Cheltenham road after Christmas shopping in Burford when she was attacked by Pople.

She was found at 8.30pm on December 19, 1931, in a distressed state and her face covered in blood, by two young men, who flagged down a passing car.

They put her in the car, but her position made it difficult for the driver to steer, so he stopped, got her out of the car and went for assistance.

Oxford Mail:

Mabel Matthews

A doctor quickly arrived on the scene, but Mrs Matthews died soon afterwards.

Sir Reginald told the court that Mrs Matthews had been “brutally maltreated” with 23 blows to her body and there was no doubt she had been murdered.

He said Pople’s mackintosh with blood on it was found at the scene and in the coat pockets were a watch belonging to Mrs Matthews and a cigarette case belonging to him.

Pople claimed in court that Mrs Matthews, of Windrush Mill, near Burford, had sustained the injuries in a fall.

He said he was cycling to Brecon and because it was dark, he tried to grab Mrs Matthews’s cycle lamp.

“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.”

The jury found him guilty of murder and Mr Justice Roche sentenced him to death.

In the month between sentence and execution, Pople was visited regularly by a priest, but his wife saw him only once. Their young son did not visit him at all.

Unlike the Seymour case, when large crowds gathered outside County Hall and the prison in New Road, the Pople case did not capture the public mood.

The Oxford Mail reported: “For the second time in three months, Oxford Prison has been the scene for the grimmest procedure in British law.

“In marked contrast to Seymour’s execution in December, very little public interest was manifest.

“Just before the hour struck at 8 o’clock, there were about a dozen waiting.

“As the hour struck, no-one moved and not a hat was lifted. At 8.10, the official notice of death was posted and the crowd melted away.”

In the earlier case, Mrs Kempson, a 54-year-old widow, was battered with a hammer and a chisel was pushed through her throat.

Seymour, a vacuum cleaner salesman, had called on her the day before the murder and a card with his name was found on her mantelpiece.