On May 30th 1914, the body of a well-liked greengrocer named David Ombler was discovered in the backroom of his shop on West Parade, off Spring Bank, in Hull, East Yorkshire. He had been brutally battered with a fire poker and tongs, and had bled out significantly.
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There’s a case to be made that this is actually Britain’s oldest unsolved murder. The official inquest gave a verdict of “wilful murder against some person unknown”, after a reward for £50 for any information regarding the crime came to nothing.
It was housekeeper Mrs Harrison who found the body upon her arrival at 8am, and the owner of a nearby off-license named Mrs Stephenson soon joined her and attempted in vain to get the half-dead Ombler to drink from a glass of water. He did, however, move his lips wordlessly when she asked him who had attacked him. He was pronounced dead once transferred to the infirmary.
72-year-old Ombler had been hit so hard with the poker that it had broken in two, and it was clear that there had been quite the struggle as a shattered dish was found on the floor as well as an upended stool. His breakfast lay uneaten on his table.
His cause of death was explained as blunt force trauma to the top of his head, which fractured his skull, and he had two other wounds on his head with all of them likely to have been caused by the poker.
No suspects were ever named in this vicious killing, though a number of eyewitnesses testified to a prowler hanging around the shop in the early hours before the attack. None of them were able to identify him, but a Mr Foster’s statement made reference to a 5ft 6in male with dark corduroy trousers and a tilted nose.
A local publican named Joseph Spokes also claimed that a man of the same description had been behaving strangely when he entered the Slater’s Arms between 7:30 and 7:45 in the evening, while a Mrs Feetham claimed she saw a strange man with a moustache running from the shop on the morning of the murder. Another spoke of a man wearing a “speckled muffler” prowling about, and somebody else described a “shabby” looking stranger.
Interestingly, there were reports of the suspect being seen wearing a dark grey overcoat that matched the description of one owned by Ombler. He’d also apparently taken a silver lever hunter watch, a silver-coloured dial watch with steel hands, a gold Albert chain and a purse - though none of these items turned up on the black market and there were no suspicious reports from pawn shops.
In terms of motive, the popular theory was robbery, given that Ombler had no known enemies. He was a widower with money in the bank, though nothing valuable was on the property at the time. Another suggestion was that it could’ve been a tramp who had been angered after being refused entry to the shop - it certainly fits with descriptions of a “shabby” looking man.
There was one rumour that Ombler was killed over a bag of gold that he kept with him; indeed, he was considered to be relatively wealthy at the time. The only thing we know for sure about the circumstances of Ombler’s death is that earlier that morning he had visited a wholesale market, so he must have been killed between returning from there and his housekeeper arriving at 8am. We also know that Ombler was described by most as a fit man, which means whoever attacked him must have been relatively strong to overpower him.
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Unfortunately, there’s little else to go on. Ombler lived alone so there was no-one else in the household to be implicated. He did have a brother who was a Hull councillor, but there’s nothing to suggest any kind of family feud there. Most likely this really was just an opportunist attack - and probably not a very well organised one given how very little was taken.
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