RUSHING into the street, a hysterical woman shrieked: "My little boy has been murdered by some strange man." Hearing her screams, a neighbour rushed down a passageway bisecting their homes in a fruitless search of the villain.

And so began an extraordinary Edwardian investigation that gripped newspaper headlines for weeks. - who killed Teddy Haskell? 

The 12-year-old had been the victim of a crime so hideous it shocked the entire community. 

Though handicapped by the loss of an amputated right leg, he still relished playing games with friends, so nimble on his crutches he kept goal in school football matches. He had also lost his father, a soldier who became an attendant at a local asylum, at an early age, and despite those adversities, they never reduced him to despair. 

Teddy was an immensely popular and engaging youngster. Yet someone bore him ill-will.

On the evening of October 31, 1908, asleep in his bed in the tiny house he shared with his widowed mother, Flora, in Meadow Road, Salisbury, he was gruesomely slaughtered, his throat slashed with a carving knife.

It appeared his mother had left him asleep as she nipped out early the following morning to buy groceries but Percy Noble heard a commotion in his neighbour's house and tried to force his way in but found the front and back doors in the two-storey house locked. Then suddenly, the front door opened and Teddy's mother, a washerman, ran into the street.

So dark was Teddy's bedroom that another neighbour needed to borrow a lamp and shining the light around, was met with a hideous sight. His neck had been sliced open. The room was not in disorder but his bed was saturated with blood.

Sgt Golding was soon at the scene. Though she claimed she could only give him a brief description of an intruder who had rushed past her down the stairs clutching a bloodstained knife, she described him as being 30-40 years old, about 5ft 6in tall, clean shaven and dressed in dark clothing but without a collar or tie.

The officer then went down the passageway where he found the knife.

Such was the furore the chief constable of Wiltshire personally took charge of the investigation. A botched robbery was suspected as the motive and a local breeder brought his bloodhounds to Salisbury police station but his services were politely declined as detectives thought his dogs could not follow an old scent.

Officers carried out traditional house to house inquiries and spoke to neighbours and shoppers but no one had seen a man running away. The killer, they deduced, had to live locally.

Then came an astonishing development.

With other senior officers, the chief constable quietly visited Haskell with a warrant four days later and told her she was being arrested over her son's murder. Crying out "No, no," she was taken to the police station for further questioning. Word of her detention quickly spread and the streets around the council chamber were thronged with spectators when she made her first court appearance. 

Solicitor W J Trethowan made no application for bail. She was remanded to Devizes Prison and banned from attending her son's funeral whose cortege - bearing white chrysanthemums - was followed by school pals, friends, neighbours, and representatives of Salisbury football club to which he was devoted.

Haskell underwent two trials at Wiltshire Assizes - jurors were discharged after failing to agree at the first - where she was defended on both occasions by the then unknown Rayner Goddard who was to become Lord Chief Justice of England.

At his insistence, she did not give evidence. The prosecution's case was strong and he feared her credibility would be shredded on cross-examination. Instead, jurors and spectators were won over by his closing speech which reduced them to tears, exhorting: "Are you content to condemn a fellow creature on the evidence of theories of doctors?" as he scorned the probability that blood on her blouse could have come from her son's corpse.

It was enough to acquit her of murder but she could not shake off the suspicion local people harboured and two years later, she moved from Salisbury, her whereabouts unknown.

The most intriguing aspect of the case was the presence of a shadowy figure who temporarily lived adjacent to the Haskell household. He was seen the day before the killing and left the day after. It appears he knew Teddy by name, yet throughout the remands and trials his identity was never canvassed.

Police however were dismissive of his involvement. They never re-opened their investigation, convinced they had arrested the killer who had cheated justice.