Samuel Dougal was devoid of morals, a psychopath with no conscience and a murderer none to careful about covering his tracks.
That he got away with murder for years was down to his unquenchable self-confidence and magnetic charm.
Dougal was born in Bow in 1846, finished school and secured a job as an apprentice in a civil engineer’s office.
But the young man was in search of fun, not regular employment. When his debts, his drinking, his womanising and his father started to catch up with him, he ran off to join the Army, enlisting at Chatham in 1866.
For 21 years he toured the world with the Royal Engineers, serving in Wales, Ireland, Nova Scotia, and finishing his service at Aldershot in 1887, where he was quartermaster-sergeant and chief clerk.
His military career was spotless but his home life was not so good. He had married one Miss Griffiths in 1869. The couple had four children, but she had to endure his drunkenness and violence for 16 years.
Then, in June 1885, she suddenly fell violently ill. 12 hours later she died in agony.
Violent death
Dougal returned to England on leave just two months later, with a new wife. In October she was dead too, after a bout of violent vomiting.
Both women were buried within 24 hours of death. And, as both occurred on military property, neither body was subject to post mortem.
In 1887, the regiment returned to England, Dougal with another woman, though this time they didn’t marry. She had a baby, but was so beaten by Dougal that she fled back to Halifax, posing as a widow.
The decommissioned soldier moved through a quick succession of Civvy Street jobs – publican, steward of a Conserva-tive club, surveyor, clerk, salesman and storekeeper.
There were even more women than jobs. He fathered two more children with a young widow, but again the violence was so much that she fled.
He ran a pub in Ware, Hertfordshire, supported by an elderly woman and her cash. When the house ‘accidentally’ burned down in 1889, Dougal anticipated an insurance payday but instead wound up in St Albans Crown Court, charged with arson.
The lucky Dougal escaped due to lack of evidence and skipped off back to Ireland, where he met and married Sarah White in 1892. The
third Mrs Dougal bore him two children.
By 1898, Dougal was without a wife again and his youngest child was dead after suffering convulsions.
Spinster’s fortune
Camille Holland was a spinster of 55 when she had the misfortune to bump into Dougal at the Earl’s Court Exhibition that year. She had recently come into an inheritance of £6,000 – an enormous amount for the time.
Dougal persuaded Miss Holland to invest in Moat House Farm, outside Saffron Walden, in January 1899.
There was a succession of servant girls, most driven out by his drunken sexual advances. The last, Florrie Havies, was also the last person to see Camille Holland alive.
On 19 May, Miss Holland said she was off to do some shopping – her whereabouts would remain a mystery for another four years.
Unexpected exit
Dougal told Florrie that her mistress had unexpectedly boarded a train to London and had written saying she would soon return.
Remarkably, though rumours flourished and Dougal’s behaviour got no better, nobody chose to dig any deeper until April 1903.
In the intervening years, Dougal had forged cheques to siphon money from Camille’s bank accounts, transferred the deeds of Moat House to himself, moved Sarah White in as his daughter, and impregnated another servant, Kate Cranwell.
But the police were finally closing in. On Friday 13 March, 1903, Dougal moved out of the farm with Kate Cranwell’s sister, Georgina, also pregnant. The pair took the train to Liverpool Street and then on for a weekend of pleasure in Bournemouth.
Dougal was eventually apprehended not by the police, but by a sharp-eyed bank clerk, who called officers when the killer tried to change some £10 notes at the Bank of England.
The police moved in to Moat House, digging up the farmyard and, on 27 April, Miss Holland’s corpse was found in a drainage ditch.
Dougal’s defence in court was typically confident if implausible. He claimed he had been unloading his gun, when it accidentally went off. Panicking, he had hidden her body in the ditch.
The father of 11, husband of three and lover of many more was hanged at Chelmsford Gaol on July 8, 1903.