The Murderer Writes Back
- Mark Anthony
- Sep 22
- 3 min read
Updated: Oct 11
James Atkinson’s Prison Letters, 1858
In April 1859, the Journal of Mental Science published the prison letters of James Atkinson — the man acquitted of Mary-Jane Skaife’s murder on grounds of insanity and sent to Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum.
These letters, written while he awaited trial in York, have rarely been seen since. They promise a raw and unsettling glimpse into his mind — part of a case that shocked Victorian Yorkshire and still raises questions about justice, truth, and mental health in the 19th century.
On the cold stone floors of York Castle, a man dipped his pen into ink. His words are clumsy, his grammar fractured, but his purpose is clear: to explain, to justify, and — most chillingly — to be heard.
James Atkinson, who brutally murdered twenty-one-year-old Mary-Jane Skaife on the night of August 1st, 1858, did not vanish into silence after his arrest. While awaiting trial, he poured his thoughts into letters to Mary-Jane’s family, letters that had rarely been widely read until now.
The official story told at York’s Winter Assizes was one of “imbecility.” His defence painted him as simple-minded, incapable of forming intent. The jury agreed, acquitting him on the grounds of insanity. But these letters tell another tale — one of jealousy, wounded pride, and a twisted sense of divine destiny.
“I thought she wanted some one else… I should not think of her having any one else, we had been so much connected together…”
From the opening lines, suspicion and bitterness spill from his words. He returns, again and again, to perceived slights: how Mary-Jane behaved “quear” after a harmless exchange with another man, how her mother had turned against him. In his mind, these moments stacked like tinder until the spark came.
Yet between the recriminations are flourishes of religious fervour. He quotes scripture. He writes of forgiveness. He imagines Mary-Jane “fallen asleep in Jesus,” even as he admits, without apology, to the act that ended her life.
“The Lord says he can forgive the vilest of the vile… I hope you will all turn to him and repent of your sins…”
There is no confession in the modern sense — no simple “I did it because.” Instead, there is an uncomfortable mingling of self-pity and sermonising, as if he were both sinner and preacher, addressing a congregation who had wronged him.
The letters also reveal the intimate tragedy at the heart of the crime: a relationship that, in Atkinson’s mind, was destined for marriage. He writes wistfully, almost tenderly, of how they “always was before” her family intervened. But his tenderness is curdled by a possessive certainty — if he could not have her, no one else would.
In the end, it is the banality of the details that chills: his mention of tea-time before the murder, of family quarrels, of fleeting thoughts to take his own life afterward — quickly abandoned.
James Atkinson walked free from the court that December, not to liberty, but to Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, where he would spend decades replaying the summer evening when his life and Mary-Jane’s became bound forever.
These prison letters are more than relics; they are windows into the mind of a man who could quote Isaiah one moment and kill the next. They do not resolve the question of his sanity — if anything, they deepen it. And in their uneven scrawl lies the echo of a voice that still haunts Nidderdale’s valley.
📜 Read the full letters here: The Murderer Writes Back
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