Part 1 of “Uncle Len, Wife-Killer”
Uncle Len lived in a lot of places, but three of them stand out: Berkshire, Basingstoke and Burnley.
Samuel Leonard Thomas Ashworth, or Len, probably died in a small place near Burnley, Lancashire, called Worsthorne – though till now I don’t know exactly when, as I haven’t found his death record. He lived his last years1 with my Aunt Dinah there; by the looks of it they were happy years.
He was born on 8 Nov 1922 in Royton, near Oldham, about an hour from Burnley, and worked as a young man in the mills, as a card tenter, operating the carding machine that disentangled and aligned the strands for spinning.
Fir Mill, High Barn St, Royton, one of the cotton mills in the area. Image: Kayla Chadwick
Perhaps the best part of his life began in 1981 in Basingstoke where he married Dinah for the second time. They had maybe laid their ghosts to rest and were able to at last settle down to a normal married life. By this time he was nearly 60.
Berkshire was, in contrast, the worst place he could have imagined. That is where everything went wrong. Specifically, in 1960 in the house near Punt Hill, at 4 Fairacre, Maidenhead, a new three-bedroomed terraced house6 with a small square lawn at the back. There was an upstairs bathroom, a kitchen with an archway through into the dining room and the sitting room. The nightmare sitting room with the settee where the police found his wife, dead.
The house in Fairacre belonged to Lisbeth, his third wife. She had bought it with the money she inherited from her deceased first husband, Major Stilwell, and moved in with her two children a year before she married Len. Nowadays a house like that in Maidenhead, the silicon commuter town, would fetch £400,000 or more. She probably paid a fraction of that, still a lot of money in those days for an industrial nurse. In her will, that she with remarkable prescience had written only two weeks previously, she left the house to her children, not to her new husband.
Lisbeth had given instructions on September 7th, 1960, to an estate agent to let the house, furnished. She planned to go and live with Len in Germany in family barracks on a British Army base. They wanted to take all of the eight children with them, her two and his six, from their previous marriages. But it never came to that.
The second most awful place in the world for Len was a toss-up between Maidenhead Magistrates Court and Berkshire Assizes in Reading. Possibly on his blacklist of Berkshire places was HM Prison Reading. But where he ended up after the verdict is a well-kept secret. Usually court records are opened 30 years after the event. But in 1997 the record on “Murder: Ashworth, Samuel Leonard Thomas (ASSI 6/202) has been closed shut. You can view it on January 1st, 2060, 99.5 years after Lisbeth was killed. I probably won’t be around that long and I can’t imagine that an application to open it under the Freedom of Information Act would be successful, just so I can get the facts of this story straight. So a degree of fantasy is needed here.
Berkshire Assizes, Crown Court, Reading
There are plenty of newspaper articles quoting Len in his defence. But no-one knows what actually happened on October 15th, 1960 in the sitting room of 4 Fairacre. All we know is what injuries were sustained, which were fatal, and what Len said happened. If Lisbeth was still here, she could tell us her side of the story. But then, if she was here, there would be no story or at least a very different one.
The inquest took place on October 19th, four days after Lisbeth’s death. She had a heavy bruise on her head above her left ear where she had been hit with a blunt object, but this was not the cause of death. She had died by asphyxiation due to “manual strangulation” reported Dr. Pallot to the court in Maidenhead.
On November 16th, a month after Lisbeth was killed, Len’s murder charge was reduced to manslaughter. It was decided that neither express malice nor intent to kill existed. The trial was set for January at the Berkshire Assizes.
The trial did not last very long. By January 20th, the Maidenhead Advertiser reported the verdict: Judge Mr. Justice Finnemore gave Len four years inside, saying that the case was “more than usually distressing”. Len’s character and reputation spoke in his favour, and yet “you brought about by your act the very thing you didn’t wish – the separation of your children,” the Judge said. He went on to say that a “wholly inoffensive woman had been done to death” and in a civilised country the law seeks to protect the sanctity of life.
These are the facts of the case. But as with all stories, there is more to this than meets the eye. Why did Len kill Lisbeth? Was he just the devoted father, obsessed with keeping his family together after his second wife died, as her father told the court? Or was he a veteran soldier who had been traumatised by a World War, now based in the country of the enemy, and married to a Austrian-German. What made Lisbeth marry him in the first place, only months before he killed her?
The plot thickens…
Next: C is for Care of the Children
Maidenhead Advertiser, 21 Oct 1960
Next: C is for Care of the Children
Sources:
1 Residence, 2009: UK, Electoral Registers, 2003-2010, Name: Mr Samuel L Ashworth; Birth Date: 1921-1923; Residence Date: 2003-2009; Address: 6, Gorple Green, Worsthorne, BB10 3PT; Residence Place: Burnley, Lancashire, England.
2 Birth of Samuel L T Ashworth, 1922: England & Wales, Civil Registration Birth Index, 1916-2007, General Register Office; United Kingdom; Reference: Volume 8d, Page 1026; Volume Number: 8d; Page number: 1026, Samuel Lt Ashworth birth registered Oct-Nov-Dec 1922 in Oldham, mother’s maiden name Mitchell.
3 1939 Register, Reference: RG101/4876J/013/17; Piece number: 4876J; Schedule: 169, Samuel Ashworth (born 8 Nov 1922), single, Cards Lenter Cotton Spinning, at 190 Heyside, Royton, Royton U.D., Lancashire, England.
4 Marriage (2) to Dinah Julia Hall, 1981: General Register Office, entry of marriage solemnized the Register Office in the district of Basingstoke in the County of Hampshire on the 23rd December 1981, between Samuel Leonard Thomas ASHWORTH (aged 59) and Dinah Julia ASHWORTH (aged 49), previously married at the Parish Church of St. Stephen with St. John in the City of Westminster on the 23 July 1966. Marriage dissolved on the 2 May 1978.
5 Maidenhead Advertiser, 21 Oct 1960: “Woman found dead was strangled, inquest told”. A year later she paid a deposit on her home at Fairacre, the large new block of houses and maisonettes near the top of Punt Hill, and moved in with her children.
6 Liverpool Echo: 13 Jan 1961: “Father of Six Accused of Murder Dispute Over Children DEVOTED”. She had a house of her own where all the children were accepted. All seemed as if things would go well. But the house had only three bedrooms and it was very crowded.
7 Evening News, 16 Nov 1960: “Wife Said: Your Children or Me”. Early on October 15 police found the wife dead on a settee.
8 Maidenhead Advertiser, 6 Jan 1961: “Mrs Ashworth’s Will”. By her will dated 29.9.60 she left her property to her children.
9 Maidenhead Advertiser, 21 Oct 1960: “Woman found dead was strangled, inquest told”. On September 7 Mrs Ashworth gave instructions to an estate agent to let the house, furnished, as she intended to return to Germany with her husband at the beginning of November.
10 National Archives: ASHWORTH, Samuel Leonard Thomas: murder of Lisbeth ASHWORTH. DPP 2/3189, 1960-1961, closed for 98 years, FOI decision date 2022, exemption: Personal information where the applicant is a 3rd party. Record opening date: 01 January 2060, https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C10878670 (accessed 6 Dec 2025)
11 Maidenhead Advertiser, 18 Nov 1960. “Murder Charge Reduced to Manslaughter, from Page 1, Husband killed wife allegation”. Dr. Cedric Keith Simpson, pathologist, said Mrs Ashworth had a heavy bruise on the left side of the head above the ear, but there was no fracture of the skull.
12 Maidenhead Advertiser, 18 Nov 1960. “Murder charge reduced to manslaughter”. Maidenhead magistrates were told by Mr. John Wood, defending, that there was no evidence of expressed malice or intent to kill. (…) Ashworth was committed for trial to Berks Assizes in January.
13 Maidenhead Advertiser, 20 Jan 1961. “Four years prison for killing wife”. Mr Justice Finnemore said: “This is a more than usually distressing case. You are a man of good character and fine reputation. You brought about by your act the very thing you didn’t wish – the separation of your children. I have taken into account everything that has been said in your favour but I cannot ignore the fact that a wholly unoffensive woman was done to death, and the law of this country, seeks to preserve the sanctity of human life.”
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