The Queen’s Arms stood on the corner of Elswick Row and Westgate Road. In the nineteenth century anyone could pay a couple of guineas a year to the government and open their home to the public as a ‘beer house’, the official reasoning being that this would encourage people to drink less gin. A pitman called Thomas Ramsay was one of several hundred people in Newcastle who sold homebrewed ale to friends and neighbours in their living room.
John Hart came into town from the nearby village of Callerton one Saturday in November 1878 to visit some friends and relatives in the neighbourhood, and they headed up the street to Ramsay’s house for a drink at around eight in the evening. Ramsey produced a fiddle and struck up a tune, and John Hart began to dance a quadrille. Thomas Richardson walked into the house and told Hart he was rubbish and that he was a far better dancer himself. An argument erupted between the two about their respective ability and technique, which became so heated that Ramsay threw Richardson out. He returned a few minutes later and resumed the argument, and was put out onto the street again by Ramsay.
This time Hart and two companions followed him outside where he was standing across the road, shouting that he’d “fettle him” if Hart came any closer. Hart approached him and offered to buy him a pint at the Goat Inn a few yards away, and in front of several witnesses he extended his hand for Richardson to shake. Richardson responded by thrusting a knife into Hart’s chest up to the hilt, and then stabbed him twice more before fleeing down Westgate Road.
Hart was taken to his uncle’s house in Elswick Street, where he bled to death a few hours later. Richardson was arrested across the river in Wardley the following day, and the bloodied knife was in his pocket. He denied any knowledge of the killing, but the following January a jury at the Assizes found him guilty of wilful muder, whereupon Mr Justice Lopes donned the black cap and sentenced Richardson to death. The prisoner raised his hands towards the gallery, and said “Goodbye all”.
Richardson was sitting in the condemned cell at Newcastle Gaol contemplating his last dance on the gallows, when the Governor received a message from the Home Secretary ordering the cancellation of the execution. It was a response to a petition signed by the Mayor of Newcastle, the ex-Mayor, seven Aldermen and sixty members of the legal profession, alleging that there wasn’t sufficient evidence to convict him of wilful murder, and demanding that justice be better served with a prison sentence instead. The condemned man was said to have received the news “with evident gladness”.