Police Constable Herbert Burrows and the Murder of the Laight Family

In November 1925, police constable Herbert Burrows was found guilty of murdering publican Ernest Laight, his wife Doris, and their young son Robert at the Garibaldi Inn in Worcester. The discovery was made by the family’s charwoman, who raised the alarm after finding the doors unlocked and the till emptied. The case exposed the calculated betrayal of trust within a small community and led to Burrows becoming the last person from Worcester to be executed by hanging. If you’d like to watch my documentary on the Prash’s Murder Map YouTube channel about the case of Police Constable Herbert Burrows, please visit https://youtu.be/BI6HIPx0Jkk

The Shocking Discovery at the Garibaldi Inn

It was a cold, dark, winter morning when 43-year-old Florence Hardwick arrived at work at 7 a.m. on Friday 27 November 1925. She was a charwoman employed by Ernest and Doris Laight, both aged 32, who ran the Garibaldi Inn on Wyld’s Lane in Worcester. The sun had not yet risen, so Florence would have barely been able to make out the silhouettes of the Victorian houses lining the street, or the steeple of Worcester Cathedral rising in the distance, its spire overlooking the River Severn, southwest of Birmingham.

Stepping inside the pub, ready to begin her morning cleaning routine, Florence was surprised to find the inner door already unlocked. The bar door and windows were unfastened, and both the kitchen and back doors were wide open. Were the Laights already up and about, or had they forgotten to lock up last night? She called out to Ernest and Doris but received no reply. When she spotted the till on the floor, surrounded by scattered coins and slot machine tokens, she realised something was seriously wrong.

Florence ran into the street and stopped the first person she saw; a local insurance agent named Danny Oram. Hopeful that there would be a logical explanation, Oram accompanied Florence back inside to help search the premises. Lifting the trapdoor to the cellar, he noticed a pair of rubber gloves lying on the top step. As he descended, the smell of burning caught his attention. At the foot of the cellar stairs, in the dim light, lay the bodies of Doris and Ernest Laight, flames flickering around them. Someone had piled paper around Doris’s skirt and set it alight, presumably in an attempt to destroy the bodies. Had Florence not arrived when she did, the fire might have engulfed the entire pub

Danny Oram managed to stifle the flames while Florence ran to fetch the police. Afterwards, Oram went upstairs to try and locate the children. 6-year-old Joan was fast asleep but alive, though the tragedy deepened when in the parents’ room, Oram discovered the body of 2-year-old Robert Laight, dead in his cot.

When police officers arrived, they found that money had been stolen not only from the bar till but also from two cash boxes, emptied of all but 7 shillings and sixpence. Dr Walpole Simmons conducted an initial examination of the bodies and found that Mr and Mrs Laight had been shot, and their 2-year-old son had been struck with a blunt instrument, fracturing his skull. The doctor surmised that Mrs Laight’s body had likely been dragged down the steps into the cellar.

A Policeman’s Strange Behaviour

Less than an hour after the gruesome discovery, Police Constable William Devey was on duty about a mile away, near a historic building known as the Cross, when he bumped into Probationary Constable Herbert Burrows, who was visibly agitated. 22-year-old Herbert, sometimes known as Bobby, was originally from Barnet, North London, and had joined the Worcester police force about 9 months earlier after a stint in the Navy. Looking uneasy, Burrows approached PC Devey and said,

‘Have you heard of the affair at the Garibaldi Inn? Ernest Laight and his wife have been shot, with their son dead in bed. The place has been ransacked. Funny thing was, I was the last one with them until midnight. I’m supposed to be going on leave today. Do you think this will prevent me going?’

When PC Devey asked how he knew about the murders, Burrows claimed to have heard it from a member of the public. The two officers parted ways, but later that morning, PC Devey met Detective Sergeant Fisher, who had just come from the scene at the Garibaldi Inn, and decided to recount the strange conversation he’d had with Herbert Burrows. The most troubling point was that the Laights’ cause of death had only been confirmed by the doctor after 9 a.m., yet PC Burrows had been aware of the details more than an hour earlier. How could he have known so much? Detective Sergeant Fisher decided to bring the young constable in for questioning.

 

That afternoon, Burrows was walking his beat when he received a message ordering him to report to headquarters immediately. During questioning, he maintained that it was about 8 a.m. when he had heard the news that the Laights had been shot. He was told to remain at the station while senior officers searched his lodgings, which were located at 92 Wyld’s Lane, directly opposite the Garibaldi Inn.

Inside his room, investigators found a photo of Burrows and his fiancée, Mabel Cracknell, along with a revolver, 36 live rounds, and three spent cartridges. Burrows had packed a suitcase full of clothes, as he planned to catch the 6pm train to Paddington that evening to visit his mother and stepfather in Barnet, as well as Mabel, who worked for a drapery firm in London. Tucked neatly beneath his socks and shirts were 34 £1 banknotes, 26 ten-shilling notes, £22 and 8 shillings in silver, and a mounted gold sovereign – equivalent to roughly £5000 today. When police showed Burrows’ landlord the rubber gloves discarded on the cellar steps at the Garibaldi Inn, he confirmed that he had seen Burrows wearing an identical pair.

The Arrest of PC Herbert Burrows

By 4:15 p.m., detectives had returned to the police station and formally charged PC Herbert Burrows with all three murders. His statement was chillingly brief and matter of fact. He said,

‘I voluntarily and freely admit that I killed at 12:15am on November 27^th 1925, Mr Laight, Mrs Laight and Robert Laight. The cause will remain unknown. I apologise to the officers and men of the Worcester City Police for the disgrace incurred.’ He then sent a telegram to his parents and his fiancée, which ran, ‘Cannot come tonight. Letter following, explaining. Love, Bobby.’

The evidence was presented at Worcester Police Court that weekend. Bullets recovered from the victims’ bodies were matched to Burrows’ pistol, and an accountant confirmed that the money found in his room amounted to the sum missing from the pub, based on the Garibaldi Inn’s average weekly takings and latest account book. Mrs Eliza Gertrude Griffiths wept as she identified the mounted gold sovereign found in Burrows’ room as one of two given to her and her sister Doris by their late father. There was more than enough evidence to commit Herbert Burrows to trial.

Hundreds of mourners attended the funeral of the victims, with people across Worcester and the surrounding towns and villages left reeling by the brutality of the crime and the killing of a two-year-old child. What made it even more horrifying was that the killer was a man who had sworn to uphold the law when he took up his role as a police constable.

The Trial and Execution of Herbert Burrows

The trial of PC Herbert Burrows opened at Worcester Assizes on Wednesday 27 January 1926. Despite having previously confessed to his mother and stepfather that his motive was robbery, he pleaded not guilty to all three charges of murder. The court heard how Burrows’ troubled path had begun early. At the age of 14, he started working as a clerk in East Finchley but was soon convicted of robbing a passenger on a train and sent to an industrial school in Wales. These institutions were designed to reform young boys, often destitute or delinquent, through strict discipline and vocational training, equipping them with the skills needed to take up a trade and avoid a life of crime. But for Burrows, it didn’t work. On his release, he was arrested again for stealing money from a shop, and was sent back to the school. Later, he enlisted in the Navy as a Stores Clerk. Around this time, he met his fiancée Mabel Cracknell, who was then working for a London confectioner. Burrows was invalided out of the Navy in 1921 and worked as a clerk in the city for a time, then as a chauffeur in Barnet. His stepfather, a recently retired sergeant of the Metropolitan Police, encouraged Herbert to apply to the police force, in the hope that the responsibility would keep him on the straight and narrow. Despite his record of petty crime, Burrows had glowing references from his naval service and was accepted into the Birmingham Probationary Police School. In February 1925, he secured a position with the Worcester City Police Force, just nine months before the murders.

Burrows’ defence barrister tried to prove that he was insane, citing hereditary syphilis noted in his Navy record, but multiple medical witnesses testified that although the condition can sometimes lead to insanity, there was no evidence that this was the case for Burrows. How he had managed to join the police force with this diagnosis, or his previous criminal record, remains unclear, and it may be that his stepfather’s connections enabled him to be accepted.

When Dr Bell of Gloucester Prison took the stand, his words left no doubt in the courtroom about the defendant’s guilt, nor about the cold-blooded nature of his actions. Dr Bell revealed that while awaiting trial, Burrows had confided in him that he had killed Ernest Laight first, in the cellar. Doris had heard the shot and came downstairs to investigate, so he shot her too. Their two-year-old son had started crying, so he killed him next to prevent him alerting any passersby to his presence. The night before, several witnesses had seen Burrows drinking in the Garibaldi Inn with the Laights up until closing time, making him the last person to see them alive. The prosecutor emphasised how Burrows had arrived that night armed with a pistol and rubber gloves, waiting until the other patrons had left, so he could take his chance to rob the landlords. This, the prosecutor argued, was not the conduct of a lunatic, but of a cold and calculating killer. It took the jury just 37 minutes to convict him on all three counts.

Burrows chose not to appeal and refused all visitors during his final days. He did, however, write a letter to Mrs Kate Harrison, the mother of victim Doris Laight, which read:

‘Dear Mrs Harrison,

For yours and Joan’s sake, I wish to deny the rumour that has been circulating through Worcester and elsewhere, to the effect that there was any intimacy between Mrs Laight and I. She was a good and respectable woman, and was respected by myself, as well as others who knew her. There was absolutely no truth whatever in the rumour, and in my opinion, it was circulated by people who had nothing better to do. If you wish to publish this denial, please do so. If you can forgive me, for I am sorry. Yours faithfully

Herbert Burrows’

Burrows spent his last hours playing cards and singing, seemingly untroubled by the fate which awaited him. At 8 a.m. on Wednesday 17 February 1926, Burrows, now aged 23, was hanged at Gloucester Prison by executioner Thomas Pierrepoint, assisted by Robert Baxter. He was the last murderer in Worcester to go to the gallows before the abolition of the death penalty.

Joan Laight’s Life After the Tragedy

6-year-old Joan Laight, the sole survivor of the tragedy, was presented with a cheque for £1,000 by the mayor of Worcester and was cared for by her grandmother Kate and aunt Eliza. As a young woman, Joan worked as a clerk for Worcester Council, before joining the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force during the Second World War. In 1945, she married War Reserve Constable Philip Richards and lived until 1999, dying at the age of 79.

Herbert Burrows’ true motive was never fully understood. He was soon to marry Mabel Cracknell and had no serious debts. What, then, could have driven him to commit such a terrible act — to murder three members of the Laight family for a sum of money so small compared with the value of their lives? Some have wondered whether his behaviour was influenced by congenital syphilis, a condition whose later effects can include poor impulse control and personality changes. While such symptoms might contribute to mental instability, they do not, in themselves, make a person criminal.
Though the deaths of Ernest, Doris, and little Robert Laight remain incomprehensible, there is a measure of comfort in knowing that Joan survived the ordeal and went on to live a long and full life.

Researched and written by Prash Ganendran, 24/10/25

© 2025 Prash Ganendran. All rights reserved. This article may not be reproduced, distributed, or republished without permission.

Sources

• Evening News (London), Tuesday 26 June 1917

• Hendon & Finchley Times, Friday 29 June 1917

• Sunday Express, Sunday 29 November 1925

• Daily News (London), Monday 30 November 1925

• Evesham Standard & West Midland Observer, Saturday 5 December 1925

• Thomson’s Weekly News, Saturday 5 December 1925

• Reynolds’s Newspaper, Sunday 6 December 1925

• Dundee Courier, Friday 18 December 1925

• Kingston Times, Saturday 30 January 1926

• Birmingham Daily Gazette, Wednesday 3 February 1926

• Westminster Gazette, Thursday 18 February 1926

• Cheltenham Chronicle, Saturday 20 February 1926

• Illustrated Police News, Thursday 25 February 1926

• Reynolds’s Newspaper, Sunday 21 February 1926

• Evening News, Wednesday 21 January 1987

• Ancestry.co.uk