Josef Husnik had been a native of Prague before coming to Sheffield in 1877. Six years later he found himself living in lodgings in Sheffield. His landlord, Mr Oates thought a lot about his lodger, although he noted that the twenty seven year old lad could easily become very depressed on occasions. When in this mood, Josef tended to sit close to the fire smoking his pipe incessantly, sometimes quiet and other times talking quite wildly. More worryingly, he told Mr Oates that he got into the habit of carrying a gun, a practise his landlord was well aware of, as he would often practice shooting in the back yard of the lodging house.

Nevertheless Josef was very popular mainly due to his polite and nice manners and was ready to say ‘thank you’ to anyone he interacted with. However at some point he started to drink regularly at the Royal Hotel on West Street, which was described as being ‘a beerhouse of something more than average size.’ The landlord of the Hotel was a man called John Jubb and he lived there with his wife Margaret and their four children. Like most landlords in the town Jubb had two jobs. During the day he had been employed at Messrs Rogers Works as a table knife hafter and in the evening helped his thirty one year old wife to serve customers.

Around the beginning of June 1884, instead of just calling in at the Hotel for a drink, Josef moved in as a lodger. Apparently the young Austrian had formed a strong attachment to the landlady, which was quickly noticed by her husband. Consequently in July of 1886 Jubb gave him notice to leave and Josef was forced to find new lodgings in St Phillips Road, Sheffield. However he continued to visit the Royal Hotel a couple of times a week. On Wednesday 1 December 1886, Josef came down to breakfast where his landlady, Mrs Oates noticed that he seemed rather morose. Nevertheless he managed to eat a good breakfast of three eggs and a rasher of bacon,

However when he left the house he bid Mr and Mrs Oates ‘good morning’ in a cheery manner and raised his hat to them both. He then left around 9 am stating that he would be back at dinnertime. When Josef got to the Royal Hotel, he appeared to be very restless and paced around for a time as if he could not settle in one place. He went from the public bar into the dram shop, almost as if he had something heavy weighing on his mind. About noon, when the public house was almost empty of customers, he saw Margaret Jubb talking to a tailor, called Freeman who leased a workshop in the Hotel yard.

When the landlady returned back inside the hotel she joined her servant, fourteen year old Mary Ellen Whitaker in the kitchen with the couple’s four children. Suddenly there was a knocking on the dram shop window and Mary Ellen answered. She said to her mistress, that ‘someone wanted her’. A few moments later, completely out of the blue, five shots were heard. Mary Ellen ran into the passage which separated the kitchen from the hotel dram shop where she met Mrs Jubb clutching at her bleeding chest. She told the girl ‘Oh Ellen, I’ve been shot!’ The poor woman managed to stagger into the kitchen where she sank to the floor and immediately became unconscious.

Mary Ellen ran out into the yard to get help, but the shots had already attracted the attention of Mr Freeman and another worker called Marriott, who both ran into the house. They lifted the poor woman onto the settle and Freeman ran to call an ambulance, whilst Marriott attempted to staunch the woman’s bleeding. Husnik was seen at this point staggering into the dram shop. Later his dead body was found by the servant girl Mary Ellen lying behind the door which led out into West Street. Just at the same time, Police Constable Candlin arrived with several other officers. Husnik’s body was lying on the floor with the revolver still clutched in his hand.

It was quite clear that he had shot himself in the mouth. PC Candlin arranged for the body to be taken to the Dispensary in West Street along with the body of his victim, Margaret Jubb. That afternoon the house surgeon Mr Harry Lockwood, carried out post mortems on both bodies, the results of which were given at the inquest held the following day. The surgeon told the Coroner that the cause of death for Margaret Jubb was internal haemorrhage from the wound in her chest. In the case of Husnik, he gave the cause as two bullet wounds which had passed through his lungs and lodged in his spine.

Mrs Harriett Oates told the inquest that her lodger had been a ‘steady man’ up to three weeks ago. On the previous Sunday she had found him firing a gun at the wall in the back yard. When she asked him what he was doing, he told her that he was testing the revolver to see if it still worked alright. The next witness was the young servant, Mary Ellen Whitaker who told the inquest that Josef had been a frequently visitor to the Royal Hotel on West Street, She said that he was such a frequent visitor that he did not pay for his beer at the bar. Then the young girl described the night in question and finding her mistress shot.

At this point the coroner said that there was little doubt that Margaret Jubb died at the hands of Josef Husnik, even though there were no actual witnesses to the act. He told the jury that the first thing for them to decide was firstly had the deceased man shot Mrs Jubb and secondly what was his state of mind at the time. Police Constable John Candlin told the coroner that on the body he had found a letter and asked permission to read it out. The coroner acquiesced, and it seems that the letter was in the form of a confession which was dated November 29 1886. It stated that the writer, Husnik had been a lodger at the Royal Hotel for two years.

He said that during that time he had been very kind to Mrs Jubb and had often lent her money. The letter claimed that in return, she sent him love letters expressing her feelings for him. They had, at first been very passionate, however for the last five weeks they had quarrelled. Since 27 November she had told him that she only said she loved him for his money as ‘it was very useful to her.’ The letter stated that since that time Husnik had found out that she had done the same to three other men. In conclusion he had written that he had left the other letters from his former paramour at his lodgings to prove that what he had said was true.

The coroner then told the inquest that he had read the letters, and although they were clearly love letters, that Mr Jubb had claimed they were not in his wife’s handwriting. He told the jury that nevertheless it was their duty to decide how these two people came to their deaths. Accordingly the jury returned a verdict that:

‘The woman Margaret Jubb was wilfully murdered by Josef Husnik and that the said Josef Husnik committed suicide by shooting himself. But as to the state of his mind at the time, there is not sufficient evidence to show.’

In a final act to what was now being referred to as the West Street Tragedy, the body of the deceased Austrian was interred in the cemetery at Intake. As he had no relatives in this country it was reported that the burial had been paid for by the Sheffield workhouse authorities. But perhaps what is most poignant of all was that because the service had not been advertised, there were no spectators at the ceremony and no funeral service was read out either in the chapel or at the graveside itself.