Landlord Arthur Bradbury slaughtered five people, including his wife and three children, before burning down his backstreet pub in one of Manchester’s most notorious crimes
It was chilling boast that foretold a mass murder.
As regulars in Manchester city centre pub Mother Mac’s discussed the gruesome story of a massacre in a village then destroyed by fire, the new landlord Arthur Bradbury joined in the conversation. The solider-turned publican claimed he’d been involved in a similar incident during his time in the Army.
In a unsettling outburst he said he could kill people and burn their bodies so no one would know the murders had taken place. Infamously the following year that’s exactly what he did as he committed one of Manchester’s most notorious crimes.
According to one acquaintance, Bradbury was a ‘sly and untrustworthy man’ who loved to crow about his military experience. He claimed to have been a commando and despite standing just 5ft 8ins and weighing around 10st, bragged he was skilled in unarmed combat.
That may or not have been true. What is clear though is that Bradbury was a bully and a wife-beater and possibly a thief.
The 30-year-old took over as publican at Mother Mac’s on Back Piccadilly in early 1975 having bought himself out of the Army. He moved in with his wife Maureen, 36, their six-year-old daughter Allison, and his two step-sons, Andrew McMurdo, 13, and James McMurdo, 11.
It was his first pub, but things didn’t go as well as he might have hoped. Within months takings at the backstreet boozer plummeted from around £800 to £500 a week, meaning some staff had to be let go.
Bradbury’s poor paperwork and stock-taking meant the brewery was constantly on his back, sending him at least one warning letter. When Mother Mac’s was robbed early in his tenure there were suspicions he’d had a hand in the raid.
And, it appears, he was also violent towards his wife. Friends told of Maureen turning up at the hairdressers with black eyes, marks on her face and bruises and cigarette burns on her body. On one occasion it was said Bradbury tried to strangle her with a telephone cord.
Meanwhile, concerns were also raised about Allison being neglected. Things came to a head in June 1976.
The brewery had had enough of his shoddy management and told Bradbury he was being sacked. Two days before he was due to leave he flew into a murderous rage.
Shortly after midnight on June 17, he suffocated Maureen after tying up her hands and feet. Then he murdered the children.
All three were either strangled or suffocated and all appeared to have had their hands tied. Later that morning part-time pub cleaner Ann Hennegan became Bradbury’s fifth victim.
After she arrived for work at around 8am it appears she stumbled across the horror. Like the other victims she was also bound, gagged then strangled.
Having dumped the bodies in an upstairs storeroom, in an eerie echo of the previous year’s conversation at the bar, Bradbury then set fire to the building. With the pub now a funeral pyre, Bradbury took his own life by throwing himself headfirst into the flames.
As smoke poured from the first floor windows, firefighters rushed to the scene and brought the blaze under control. But as they sifted through the charred wreckage, they made a horrifying discovery.
“As we lifted out a piece of rubble, we would find a body,” Det Chief Supt Charles Horan, head of Greater Manchester CID, told the press as he revealed the case was being treated as a multiple murder inquiry.
“At first we expected to find three. Then it became clear there might be five – finally there were six.”
The victims were so badly burnt they were unrecognisable. But detectives were able to identify them through dental records, clothing and jewellery. The Bradburys’ Alsatian Shandy was also found dead in the bathroom.
A lack of scratch marks on the door led police to believe the dog was killed before it was put there. A stock check conducted four days after the fire found Mother Mac’s had an £1,800 stock deficit.
Some 480 gallons of beer were missing. A large suitcase in the basement was found to contain bottles of whisky and cigarettes, perhaps indicating Bradbury had originally intended to flee the scene of his horrific crimes.
At an inquest held three months later, a jury ruled Bradbury had murdered his five victims before taking his own life. Senior Home Office pathologist Dr Geoffrey Garrett later wrote about the killings in his memoirs, Cause of Death, written with former M.E.N. crime journalist Andrew Nott in 2001.
Speaking of the horror, he wrote: “Killing one’s wife in blind anger is one thing, going from room to room intent on killing children is entirely another. Bradbury’s behaviour was almost unbelievably savage.”
Mother Mac’s was eventually rebuilt and reopened. In later years the massacre was remembered with newspaper clippings on the walls. A plaque outside the pub, now renamed the Rat & Pigeon, told of the terrible events of June 17, 1976.
It read: “In 1976 the pub manager Arthur Bradbury was given notice to quit, so he revenged himself the coward’s way by killing all around him. His wife Maureen, his six-year-old daughter Alison and his stepsons James and Andrew aged 11 and 13 respectively.
“The cleaner walked in on the carnage so he killed her too and then set the pub on fire to hide the evidence. But justice caught up with him and he ended up killing himself too.”
