It’s true to say that the North West of England and Lancashire in  particular has had its fair share when it comes to days of horror. From  murderous wives to the slaughtering of innocent children – Lancashire  has definitely seen some of the worst atrocities inflicted upon men,  women and children during the 19th Century.

Today’s story is no different, and for this we will be travelling  back to 1893 and into the cotton weaving capital of the world – Burnley.

On Thursday, 23rd March – 50 year old Eli Eastwood spent the day  trying to find new lodgings for himself and his paramour, Elizabeth  Longstaffe; and after speaking to a few people, he finally managed to  convince Joseph Clegg, owner of a number of dwellings in the Burnley  area, to let out number 70 Cog Lane.  This house was situated within a  heavily populated part of town, known as Gannow.

Eli Eastwood was not an easy man to get along with. As an habitual  drinker, he would often find himself worse for wear and during the early  years of their marriage, Eastwood and his wife, Elizabeth, would find  themselves moving up and down the country before finally settling down  in Wood Top, Burnley, sometime in the early part of the 1880s along with  their five children. Together, they had eight children but three had  already married and moved away.

Looking into Eastwood’s past, it seems he was always a man whose rage  would often get the better of him.  During the first week of April 1868  he was summoned into court after assaulting a lady by the name of Nancy  Catlow, with whom he had been living with on and off for 5 months in  Preston.  On the 1st April that year, he barged into her home at Archer  Clough, demanding that she “go with him!” Nancy told him he would be  better off with his wife, which seemed to agitate him to the point he  threw her down onto the floor before throttling her. Standing back up he  kicked her several times in the abdomen making her bleed from the  mouth. In court, he would say he was provoked into doing what he did  because Nancy refused to give him back his clothes.  However, the bench  didn’t see it this way, fining him 10 shillings in costs which had to be  paid in full within 14 days.

But it wasn’t always bad for Eastwood, as he had at some point in his  life managed to start his own profitable business as a hawker, selling  fried fish on the streets around Burnley and from all accounts he was a  savvy business man.

Despite his business doing well, things at home where never right.   His drinking and abusive ways would eventually become too much and when  his wife finally left him, it is thought that he had several hundred  pounds which he would waste by spending the majority of it on drinking.

And as for the separation from his wife, twelve months prior to the  events that would take place in 1893, a massive row between the pair led  to her leaving him, after having been threatened by the use of a  carving knife he picked up during another violent outburst.  Afraid of  what he would do to her, she fled Albany Terrace, where they then lived,  and took her children with her.