1st April 2013
Born 1869 and 1879 (respectively) Died 20th October 1930
Aged 61 and 51 Years
Section 4 consecrated
On the morning of Monday the 20th October 1930, Thomas Edwin and Louisa ‘Barbara’ Holloway were shot dead in their bedroom at Watsford Farm House near Wimborne.
Earlier that year the marriage of the Holloway’s 19-year-old daughter, Trixie to a 55-year-old Capt. Frank Burdett took place causing upset because of the huge age difference and a summons for abduction was taken out against him, but later withdrawn. Thomas Holloway and Capt. Burdett had not spoken to each other since the marriage, but Barbara Holloway helped him several times for Trixie’s sake, giving him £18 on one occasion, no small amount in those days.
The exact reason behind the murders is unknown as Capt. Burdett proceeded to take his own life, leaving a note to Trixie, saying “The time has come to end everything. I am going to do away with myself. I leave everything to my wife.” He was found in a hedge about 100 yards away with terrible wounds to his face and a gun by his side – he later died. He was also buried in Wimborne Cemetery but not before a dramatic interception by the Clerk to the Burial Board A. G Taylor, who ran towards the vicar and funeral director shouting ‘You are aware of the verdict at the inquest. This man was a suicide and can’t be buried in Consecrated Ground’. After digging a new grave in a neglected corner of the Cemetery, Capt. Burdett was interred into an unmarked grave.
The inquest on all three deaths concluded that Capt. Frank Burdett had ‘wilfully murdered’ the Holloway’s and that his death was recorded as ‘suicide’.
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