75 | Murder in Sovell Woods

In 1913, the little known hamlet of Gussage St. Michael in Dorset, southwest England, became the scene of a shocking discovery when a young woman’s body was found buried in woodland. This obscure true crime case explores the lives of killer William Burton and his victim, Winifred Mitchell, and how she came to be buried in a shallow grave in one of England’s most rural counties. 

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Sources:
Ancestry
National Archives HO 144/1272/23900
Daily Mirror - Monday 05 May 1913
Daily News (London) - Wednesday 07 May 1913
London Evening Standard - Thursday 08 May 1913
Illustrated Police News - Thursday 15 May 1913
Daily Mirror - Friday 16 May 1913
Southern Times and Dorset County Herald - Saturday 21 June 1913
Daily Mirror - Tuesday 27 May 1913
Larne Times - Saturday 31 May 1913
Exeter and Plymouth Gazette - Wednesday 04 June 1913
Taunton Courier and Western Advertiser - Wednesday 11 June 1913
Reynolds's Newspaper - Sunday 22 June 1913
Shields Daily News - Wednesday 25 June 1913
Grantham Journal - Saturday 28 June 1913

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Nothing much ever, happened in the tiny hamlet of Gussage
Saint Michael, near Wimborne in Dorset, southwest England. There was
little more than a school, a church, a rectory, a
blacksmith and a few farms, and just before the start
of World War One the population stood at around two

(00:22):
hundred people. The nearest railway station was ten miles away,
which meant few visitors and even fewer surprises. But in
nineteen thirteen, the villagers would learn that Gussage Saint Michael
was not immune to scandal or to murder. In this

(00:43):
obscure true crime case played out in a little known
hamlet in one of England's most rural counties. William Water Burton,
known to most as Bill, was born in July eighteen
eighty three at twenty nine years old. He was seen

(01:05):
as a respectable member of the community, a hard working
family man and a regular churchgoer who was even a
member of the choir. He had been married for six
years to Lillian Dover, the daughter of a tailor who
was twelve years his senior. In nineteen ten, the couple

(01:26):
had a son, whom they named Cyril Harry Burton. Bill
was the village postmaster, running the post office with his wife,
but in a place that small, it was common for
people to have more than one job. Alongside his postal duties,
Bill worked as a gamekeeper and rabbit catcher at the

(01:50):
nearby Manor Farm, and also unofficially looked after an area
of woodland known as Souvil Plantation. In his spare time,
Bill enjoyed playing the melodeon, a type of accordion, and
having affairs with local women. He usually managed to keep

(02:12):
these liaisons hidden behind his carefully maintained image, and for
the most part, the young ladies in question were unlikely
to speak up because in those days, being known to
have had a lover could ruin a woman's marriage prospects.

(02:33):
While carrying out his rabbit catching duties at Manor Farm,
Bill Burton's eye was caught by the new cook, twenty
three year old Winifred Mary Mitchell, known to friends as Winnie.
She lived at the farm and shared a room with
domestic servant May Bailey. When he was five foot five

(02:54):
with dark hair, striking eyes and a broad smile, and
before long she and Bill were exchanging love letters. Soon after,
he gave her a gold bracelet In March nineteen thirteen,
Winnie announced to Bill that she was pregnant. She had

(03:17):
a brother in Canada and had heard it was a
bright new land of opportunity, so she tried to convince
Bill to elope there with her and start a new
life together. Bill felt like a rabbit caught in one
of his own traps. For one thing, he couldn't afford
to buy tickets to sail to the New World, and

(03:40):
for another, he had seen Winnie as nothing more than
a dalliance, a distraction from the boredom of his married life.
But he had no desire to leave behind his wife
and son and say goodbye to Gussie Saint Michael forever.
When he told Winnie he wasn't prepared to make such

(04:00):
a commitment, she threatened to tell his wife about the affair.
She was so sure he would change his mind that
she confided in her friend May that she planned to
go to Canada with Bill, but begged her not to
tell anyone about it. She didn't even reveal the truth
to her own mother, telling her instead that she intended

(04:22):
to go to London to find work as a servant.
At three pm on Monday, thirty, first of March nineteen thirteen,
Winifred Mitchell dressed carefully in her best clothes. She wore
a black straw hat adorned with ostrich feathers, and she

(04:43):
put in her false teeth, which were not uncommon at
the time, even for someone as young as twenty four.
Due to limited access to dental care, it was often
considered more practical and economical to have all one's teeth
removed early on and replace with dentures to avoid ongoing
costs in the future as the teeth inevitably started to

(05:06):
decay one by one. When May saw Winnie, she inquired
why she was dressed up so smartly, and Winnie replied
because Bill asked me to do so. She told me
she was going to cycle to the top of the
hill to meet him, and urged her not to mention

(05:27):
it to anyone, and she left carrying a small case
containing some items of clothing. It was the last time
Winnie was ever seen alive. That evening, Bill Burton appeared
to be in good spirits as he dined with his wife,
later playing some tunes on his melodeon. Sometime later, Winnie's

(05:56):
two younger sisters came across her bicycle propped neatly again
an apple tree in sovel plantation. They told their mother Rose,
who went to collect it. She noticed a man shoeprint
in the soil nearby, but thought little of it. She
then received a note from Manor Farm saying that Winnie

(06:18):
hadn't arrived for work that day, and she replied to
explain that her daughter had gone to London in search
of a new position. Rose Mitchell expected to receive a
letter from her daughter confirming her safe arrival in London,
but none came. Unexpectedly, Bill called at the house and

(06:42):
asked if she had seen Winnie. Rose admitted she was
growing concerned and mentioned she was thinking of going to
the police. At this point, she had no idea that
her daughter had been involved in an affair with the
village postmaster and rabbit catcher. Bill replied calmly, that is

(07:05):
the best thing you can do. A few days later,
Rose did report the matter to the police, though she
still hoped she would hear from Winnie soon. After all,
the journey to London from Rual, Dorset was nearly one
hundred miles and she may have taken a while to
find work in lodgings. Nonetheless, The police began making inquiries,

(07:31):
but turned up no trace of the missing twenty four
year old. When Bill Burton learned that the authorities were
now involved, he went to see May Bailliot Manor Farm.
Suspecting that Winnie had confided in her, He urged May
not to mention his name, acting as though his only
concern was that his wife might discover the affair. One

(07:56):
of Burton's acquaintances, who was well aware of his reputation
with women, asked if he had any idea where Winnie
might be. Bill replied, she may be up in London
with somebody with more money than thou and I have.
I shouldn't be surprised to see her back here before long.

(08:18):
It was not until a full month after Winnie's disappearance
that local clergyman Reverend Wright was told an interesting story
by dairyman named George Dillingham. George told him that he
and his wife had been walking through Souvel Plantation when
a sudden rain shower forced him to seek shelter beneath

(08:39):
a tree. There, just off the footpath, they noticed something unusual,
a set of false teeth lying on the ground. Troubled
by the discovery, Reverend Wright reported it to the police.
Soon after, Dorset Constabulary received another piece of information. A

(09:04):
local boy named Edward Bridge, aged thirteen, and his friend
Henry Palmer had been exploring subtle plantations thick hedgerows in
search of birds nests. The boys said they had been
there a week earlier, on Sunday, thirtieth of March, just
a day before Winnie vanished, and they had seen a

(09:24):
large trench dug into the earth with a heap of
chalk piled beside it. Yet this time they noticed the
trench had been filled in. On Friday, second of May,
the boys led police Constable Alfred Light and Sergeant Stockley
to the site, and the officers began to dig. What

(09:50):
they uncovered was the body of a woman buried in
a shallow grave just a foot and a half deep,
wearing a black straw hat trimmed with ostrich feathers. She
was quickly identified as the missing Winifred Mary Mitchell and
fellow servant May Bailey recognized a jewelry found on the body,

(10:12):
including the gold bracelet Bill Burton had given her. The
post mortem examination revealed that Winnie had died from two
gunshot wounds, one to the head and another to the neck.
Her face had been partially destroyed, and it was determined

(10:33):
that she had likely been shot from a distance of
about four feet. Leonard Mitcham, the son of the village undertaker,
came forward with a shocking revelation. He told police that
on the afternoon of Monday, thirty first of March, he
had lent his father's shotgun to Bill Burton, who claimed

(10:54):
he needed it to shoot a cat belonging to a
local farm worker, saying he hated it the animal and
wanted to be rid of it. He returned the gun
at around five o'clock the same day and asked Lena
not to tell anyone what he had done. Another witness
reported seeing Bill Burton with the deceased that afternoon, and

(11:18):
that Winifred had been pushing her bicycle as she walked
beside Bill. The witness had noticed them talking, but hadn't
been close enough to hear their conversation. Yet another villager
said that he had seen Burton smoking his pipe near
the gravesite on more than one occasion after thirty first

(11:38):
of March. Could he have been checking whether it had
been disturbed to make sure his terrible secret would remain hidden.
William Burton was arrested on Wednesday, seventh of May nineteen thirteen.
When questioned by police, he insisted I've done nothing to her.

(12:04):
If you found her in the plantation, she's been killed
and dragged there, so that someone else should have the blame.
As he was presented with a growing body of evidence,
his tone shifted. This is a bad job, he said.
The only one I worry about is my wife, who's

(12:24):
as good a woman as any man can have. It's
a pity I ever saw the girl. I know I've
been a fool to write letters to her. Burton was
remanded to Dorchester Jail and later stood trial at Dorset
a Sizars. Dressed in his worn country tweeds and a
pair of muddy hobnail boots, he continued to protest his innocence,

(12:51):
now claiming that Winnie had been involved with another man
and it was this mysterious figure who had taken her life.
The first time Burton had made such an unconvincing claim
was the very moment he stood in the dock, and
his defense team was left with little room to maneuver.

(13:12):
The jury returned a guilty verdict after just nineteen minutes
of deliberation, and Burton chose not to lodge an appeal.
While awaiting his execution, Burton made a full confession to
the Reverend of Gussig, Saint Michael, and the prison chaplain.
He admitted that Winnie had threatened to tell his wife

(13:34):
that he was the father of her unborn child unless
he took her to Canada. After trying and failing to
borrow money for the trip, he had felt he had
no other way out. He said, she made me believe
all sorts and begged me to go away with her
to London and then to Canada so soon as we could.

(13:57):
She said if I didn't, she would write a letter
to Lily and tell her everything about me. I knew
what that would mean if she did, and I hadn't
any money to go away with her. I didn't want to,
so she nearly drove me wild. This is why I'd
done it. I dug the hole on Sunday morning. It

(14:18):
was all done between three and four, killed and buried
in that time. I got home just about five o'clock.
The poor girl didn't suffer. She fell dead in an
instant and did not speak. He then added that he'd
burned the case full of clothing that Winnie had been carrying.

(14:41):
On Tuesday, twenty fourth of June nineteen thirteen, William Burton
walked to the scaffold with a demeanor of calmness and
apparent indifference. After his execution, he was buried in an
unmarked grave on the prison and grounds, becoming the first
convict to be executed at Dorchester Prison in twenty six years.

(15:06):
His widow, Lillian Burton, reverted to her maiden name Dover,
and moved with her young son, Cyril, to live with
her mother in Somerset. There, Cyril grew up alongside his
orphant cousin, Roy, who was the same age. Lillian found
work at a leather glove manufacturer, and in time Cyril

(15:27):
would follow in her footsteps and enter the same trade.
Lillian died in nineteen thirty at the age of fifty eight,
not living to see a son get married in nineteen
thirty seven to a nurse named Thursa Lamb. Roy, his
cousin and childhood companion, was his best man. Decades later,

(15:52):
in nineteen eighty six, eighty two year old Gladys Isgar,
who had been a nine year old girl in Gussyge.
Saint Michael, at the time of the murder, shared her
memories of the crime with author Roger Gutridge. She recalled,
it really was a dreadful thing and came as a
great shock to the village. I remember we were frightened

(16:14):
every time we walked up to the chapel. It was
dark when we came back, and we couldn't bear to
look up across the field at the plantation where this
murder happened. Today, Souvil Plantation forms part of the Sovil
Down Nature Reserve, protected by the Dorset Wildlife Trust. In

(16:36):
a final tragic irony, the post mortem examination of Winnie
Mitchell found that she was not pregnant after all. Whether
she had truly believed she was, or whether she had
said it in desperation to persuade Bill to begin a
new life with her, we will never know. In the end,

(16:58):
it was this mistake which may have inadvertently sealed her
fate and pushed Burton into an action that revealed his
true character and a lack of concern not only for
his lover's life, but that of the child he believes
she carried. You've been listening to Precious murder Map. If

(17:23):
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