A 12-year-old Salisbury boy who was discovered cruelly murdered in his bed in 1908 has led a local author and historian to try and solve the mystrey more than 100 years later.

Frogg Moody who writes the bygone column for the Journal was a guest on the ‘On Point’ podcast last week and shared his passion and drive to uncover more about the murder.  

The murder was a vicious one. Teddy had his throat cut.

Frogg said: “The Salisbury Police made a mess of it, and washed the floor, the door and all the blood away."

The murder took place on Meadow Road in Salisbury.

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Teddy only had one leg. The other had been amputated to the hip.

It was said that he was saving up for an artificial leg and kept the money in his room so it could have been a theft gone wrong. 

Teddy had been out shopping with his mother and the thief may have been trapped in his room when they returned. The mother stated that a man ran down the stairs and threw the knife at her.

She was arrested for the murder.

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Frogg said: “It went to court and ended up as a retrial, but she was found not guilty through a lack of evidence.”

After the trial, she moved from Salisbury to go and live with her brother in London but did not live for long.  

Frogg said: “She died of TB like her husband, her father and her son had TB in his leg, hence the amputation. The leg was amputated at the hip in Salisbury Infirmary.

“I went to New Hall hospital, it gets a bit unsavoury, the stump that was left still used to secret blood and pus through a small gap and the consultant said it was probably excruciating. It hadn’t completely healed up. Some people believe that may have been why the mother killed her son as she couldn’t see a future for him or that he was in pain.”

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Frogg has said that he will never write the investigation off. 

"We are always looking for other stuff. The mother was found not guilty in 1909 and yet, on the boy’s death certificate, it said murdered by the mother, and technically that’s not right. We have been looking at ways to get that changed.

The grave of Teddy Haskell is located at the Devizes Road cemetery.

Listen to the full interview on the Salisbury Journal podcast.