FORGOTTEN MANCHESTER: The grisly story of the Taylor murders on King Street

While King Street in Manchester’s City Centre has become known for its abundance of designer shops and high-end restaurants, many are unaware of its somewhat sinister past.

Yep, a couple of hundred years before Pep Guardiola moved in his luxury Portuguese eatery and before The White Company began flogging £40 candles, a man was brutally murdered in his King Street office.

It happened in May 1862; Evan Mellor was working as an estate agent and had been renting out a shop down Bury New Road to William Robert Taylor and his wife Martha Ann Taylor.

But just one month into the tenancy, Taylor had been complaining to Mellor about the boiler, claiming it was broken and saying the pipes were leaking.

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It isn’t clear whether Mellor had attempted to repair the leaky boiler; but what is known is that a couple of months later in the midst of a January freeze, the pipes froze and burst, killing one of Taylor’s four children, Hannah Maria Taylor, at the age of just six-years-old.

The little girl was allegedly scalded in the accident, and suffered horribly before her death. At the inquest, a verdict of ‘accidental death’ was recorded and, while the jury severely censured Mellor for not taking action regarding the boiler, Mellor was not sent to prison for his role in her death.

Read More: FORGOTTEN MANCHESTER: The gruesome history of Manchester’s body snatchers

A grief-stricken William Taylor demanded Mellor pay him £50 in compensation – the equivalent to thousands of pounds today – but Mellor refused, something that is believed to be a result of Taylor’s missing rent payments.

From this, the Taylor family found themselves in growing financial difficulties, with them being forced to bury their daughter in an unmarked pauper’s grave after being unable to pay for a funeral.

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And within weeks of Hannah’s tragic death, creditors began showing up to repossess their belongings, allegedly taking even the family’s laundry and taking a comb right out of the oldest child’s hand.

With tensions building, Taylor and his wife paid Mellor a visit at his King Street office on the morning of May 16th 1862, both armed with a gun and a carving knife. There, Taylor stabbed Mellor eleven times before shooting a passing porter who happened to witness Mellor falling down the stairs during the attack.

The couple fled from the scene.

However, the tragedy didn’t end there; when police officers arrived at the Taylor residence they discovered the bodies of the Taylors’ three children.

They had each been washed and were each dressed in long, clean white nightgowns with black sashes, with black ribbons tied around their wrists and necks.

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The Taylors kept their silence on the children’s deaths, and autopsies never determined an exact cause of deaths, with their organs being healthy and their bodies unbruised with no evident indications of poisoning or suffocation.

However, multiple witnesses had seen William Taylor kill Mellor, with him been arrested with the bloody knife still in his possession. His lawyer had no alternative but to plead insanity, saying William’s mind had snapped under the weight of his grief and financial ruin.

Mr. Taylor was later charged with the murder of Evan Mellor, and Mrs. Taylor with being an accessory to murder. While Mrs. Taylor was later acquitted, however, Mr. Taylor was hanged on September 13th 1862.

The children were later buried at the Manchester General Cemetery, with over 300 residents contributing to a fund to pay for a family grave and headstone so they could avoid a pauper burial.