ABSTRACT
Sentenced to three years’ penal servitude and six months’ hard labour in the spring of 1924, Jesse Varley disappears from view at the very moment one would think that his every movement would again be noted, recorded and preserved for posterity. According to Sir Harry Haward’s, 1932 autobiography, Jesse Varley had little, if anything, to show for his life of crime. The death certificate is revealing finally in showing that although Jesse Varley died at home, he did not die alone. For although pleurisy and pneumonia were common enough complaints, they were also ones that doctors might put on the certificate if they were not sure as to the cause of death – or if they suspected suicide and wished to spare the bereaved family the stress and shame of a post mortem. Shortly after Varley was brought to justice, the Sheffield Independent was decrying the ‘bogus share stunts and “booby traps” designed to snare unwary investors’.
