On Monday, 11th March 1907, Thomas Dennison was brought before the magistrates at Haslingden after having been charged on suspicion of murdering his wife, Margaret Dennison at some point during the evening of Saturday, 9th March.

Standing before the bench and facing Alderman Hamilton (Chairman) as  well as Messrs. Holt, Law and O.W. Porritt, Thomas showed little  agitation and when asked if he had anything to say, he simply replied,  “She did it herself.  I never touched woman.”

Thomas, aged 49 and Margaret Dennison, aged 56 had only recently  moved into the third floor of 10 Cob Castle, Hutch Bank the month before  on the 2nd February having previously spent time at Hoyle’s lodging  house in Haslingden.   Both had travelled over from the suburban area of  Idle in Bradford, Yorkshire during August of 1906.

On the afternoon of Saturday, 9th March, Thomas, whom had been  employed as a stonemason by the Bury and District Joint Water Board to  work on one of the reservoirs over Haslingden, Grane –  after having arrived back home he gave his wife Margaret, 8 shillings to  help buy groceries.   He then went off to help some other men remove a  hen-coop from an area known as Underbank and relocate it at Hutch Bank, both areas of which were close to where Thomas and Margaret lived.

By 5pm that afternoon, and having done his chores for the day, Thomas  made his way to his local pub which was situated at the end of Cob Castle Road.

The Dyer’s Arms (also known as “the Flip”) was a  small pub that saw plenty of trade by the way of local workers as it was  nicely situated within the middle of what was a heavily saturated area  of textile and cotton mills.  The landlord was also the ninth Mayor of  Haslingden, Robert Taylor.

Thomas spent the next three or so hours drinking and singing, with  one of his favourite songs being, “In days of old, when Knights were  bold” and it wasn’t until just after 7.30pm that Margaret would come  looking for him.

“Is Thomas ‘ere?”  she asked Taylor, landlord, to which he replied, “Yes.”

Noticing how wet she was, as rain had been falling for pretty much  the entirety of the day but had gotten much worse as the evening had  worn on, he asked her if should would like to go into a room, presumably  where there may have been a fire burning and she would have been able  to keep warm.

“Aye, I will stay a minute.” she told Taylor.

Whilst the landlord went to fetch her husband, Margaret sat herself  down and enjoyed a glass of stout which he had already poured for her.

Entering the taproom, Taylor informed Thomas that his wife was  waiting for him in the next room and Thomas replied, saying he would  first drink up his beer and then go.

Shortly after eight o’clock, Thomas and Margaret both left the Dyer’s  Arms and began to make their way up the relatively steep incline that  led to their home on Cob Castle Road.