On Christmas Eve 1919, 100 years ago, the body of a young woman was found amongst the sand dunes in Lytham.

The victim was 26-year-old Kathleen Breaks who had been shot and suffered numerous other wounds to her face and leg.

Beside her corpse were a set of footprints, a pair of bloodied gloves and a Webley service revolver, a standard issue pistol for the British army since 1887.

The killer, and his motive, turned out to be more mysterious than people could have imagined.

The young lieutenant

Frederick Rothwell Holt was born in 1887, in the Fairhaven area of Blackpool.

The world was a very different place when Fred entered it and he would have lived in a very imperial Britain compared to the one we know today.

In 1887 the British colonies stretched from South Africa to India, to Australia, Canada and the West Indies. Young, educated men could easily take up positions as civil servants, ambassadors, clerks or British representatives across the Empire and see the world.

It was a strange and exciting time.

It was also in this period that the forces of Europe were carving out the map of Africa, turning the empty continent into a patchwork of carefully drawn territories, split between foreign empires, native tribes, ethnic groups and companies. The modern world was very literally, and very rapidly, being built before Frederick's eyes and he would later become a big part of it.

Not much is known about Fred's life before 1914, when the First World War broke out, but we can surmise quite a few things about his life.

British soldiers crossing the boggy terrain of the trenches.

Frederick was a lieutenant in the British Expeditionary Force that went to France and Belgium, fighting the German forces on the western front.

This brings us two possible conclusions: either Fred had signed up to the army at 16, back in 1903 when the Mapondera Rebellion had drawn to a close in South Africa and the British were no longer in need of troops. To reach the rank of Lieutenant after 11 years he would have had to have an extraordinary military career.

It is much more likely that he entered the army in 1914, aged 27, as a lieutenant which tells us that Fred was rich, upper class and private school educated.

Any man aged 18 or over with a private school education was deemed officer material and, given minimum training, competent to lead his men into battle. Thus we know at least one major thing about Fred's background.

He was likely to be educated at Rossall School, the only major private school near Blackpool. It was a major centre for education before the war and considered to be one of the best in the UK during the reign of Queen Victoria.

The school now commands fees of up to £12,000 per year for full boarders so it is right to conclude that Fred was also upper class and from a rich family.

Aged 27, Fred went off to war, with a Lieutenants' badge on his sleeve and serving with the 4th Loyal North Lancashire Regiment. But his life was soon to drastically change.

The horrors of the First World War

The horrors of the First World War could never be properly understood in a modern setting.

The men who went off to fight on the western front in 1914 did not just experience the usual death and destruction of conflict, they also found themselves at the centre of an ever evolving war machine that continued to find new and cruel ways to kill on a mass scale.

At the start of the war the British army still used cavalary. The only major artillery they had were shells and transport was not mechanised.

Four years later and the British Tommies were fighting across barren landscapes avoiding machine gun fire, shells, mustard gas, tanks, aircraft and more; weapons and technology they could have only imagined just four years ago.

There was also the psychological impact of the war. Never before had armies of this number, magnitude or scale clashed on the battlefield and the death toll was so great its like had never been seen before then. Between 15m and 19m people died on in just four years, just 100 years before Europe lost 10m people to the French Revolution, subsequent revolutionary wars and the Napoleonic conquests. Mass multiple conflicts across 25 years.

War had changed significantly. It had moved to a constant, shifting melee of death and at the middle of it were young men, totally unprepared for a war on that scale.

An artillery gun firing shells during the battle of the Somme.

One of the biggest psychological horrors faced by the men in the trenches were shell attacks.

Shells were the modern cannonball between 1914 and 1918, a large, pointed bullet, a foot in length, and fired from dozens of miles away. The shells were stuffed with explosives that went off on impact. Not only would these shells cause damage through the explosions and instant impact but the blast would rip the shell case into shreds of shrapnel, causing catastrophic injuries to those in the vicinity.

Shells became a huge part of the war, billions were fired in during the four years of conflict, perhaps trillions. The large explosive devices were used to punch holes in the vast walls of barbed wire used to protect enemy trenches and served as a breaching device, giving soldiers on the ground a gap in the line which to attack.

One of the most intense artillery bombardments of the conflict began on July 18 1917 as a prelude to the battle of Passchendaele. The bombardment of German positions by the British lasted for about two weeks. Some 4.5 million shells were launched from around 3,000 cannons prior to, and along with, the infantry attack which began on July 31.

Sitting in a cold, muddy hole, a large, explosive device hurtling towards you, knowing that at any moment an explosion or a shred of shrapnel could end your life, was bound to impact the soldiers negatively.

Today we would called it Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (or PTSD) then, they called it shell shock.

The fear of imminent death, the helplessness, the constant association and relationship with death and injury, drove men into a state of stress.

Nurses at the Sir William Hospital using experimental medical equipment on soldiers suffering from shell shock.

By December 1914, just five months into the conflict, 10% of British officers and 4% of enlisted men were exhibiting signs of nervous and mental shock. Victims suffered from weakness in their nervous system, an inability to speak, an inability to move, amnesia and at times impaired vision and a strange catatonic state brought on by their experiences.

The number of shell shock victims rapidly increased as the conflict dragged on. Almost half of the British soldiers who fought at the Somme in 1916 were shell shocked and by the end of the war 19 British hospitals were devoted to shell shock care and some 65,000 British soldiers received treatment for the condition when the war ended.

According to an article in the Lancashire Evening Post, Fred was involved in the 'early stages of the war' before he was invalided from the army due shell shock. Certainly shell shock in the early stages was treated with a swift dismissal, with generals fearing that these soldiers could be erratic and unpredictable.

Either way, Fred showed clear signs of the condition, exhibiting bouts of amnesia and later depression causing him to be taken ill in 1915 and to be discharged soon after.

Most likely Fred would have felt some shame, leaving the army barely a year after the war began whilst his old school mates, friends, colleagues, soldiers and more all died fighting for freedom whilst he remained in Britain following a discharge.

Following a speedy recovery, Fred returned to his native Lancashire, possibly in 1917.

The lovers insurance and the body on the dunes

Despite his condition, Fred seemed to have quite a comfortable life. As we said before he was likely to be wealthy and when he returned home he was living off an inheritance of £500 per year, almost £30,000 in todays money.

He had also found love, in the form of 24-year-old Kathleen Breaks (more commonly known as Kitty), originally from Bradford, Yorkshire. 

He had met Kathleen as a member of a party visiting a Blackpool hydro where he was was being treated for his injuries.

Kathleen married James Studdard Breaks at the age of 18, according to the Yorkshire Post writing in 1919, but had separated from her husband and returned to her family home at Ryecroft Farm in Sheffield where her six sisters and brother lived.

She then went on to work at a music shop in Bradford but at some point she began an affair with Fred.

The two must have been in some relationship whereby Kitty traveled to Blackpool to see Fred as she continued to work in Bradford and their affair was probably secret but, by all accounts, they were happy together.

In November 1919, Kathleen  took out a life insurance policy on herself worth £5,000, some £280,000 in today's money.

Frederick Rothwell Holt in uniform.

The beneficiary to the insurance? The now 32-year-old Frederick Rothwell Holt. She also changed her will, leaving her precious wedding ring to Fred.

On Tuesday, December 23, Kitty was seen leaving the music shop where she worked in Bradford. It was the last time she was seen alive.

On Wednesday, December 24, 1919, farmer Edward Gillet was walking along the shore when he discovered the body of a woman lying amongst the sand dunes on St Annes beach, Lytham.

At around 9am, he told Lancashire Police and two officers were dispatched to the scene, just off Clifton Drive.

According to the Lancashire Evening Post, the body of a "well-dressed lady, with a wound in the forehead" was found on the beach. She had a large amount of cash on her as well as a black bank book.

Her face and head, which had suffered three wounds, was covered in blood and her body and leg were similarly covered in cuts caused by, as the police put it, a "sharp instrument." She had obviously struggled against her assailant.

Two children walking amongst the dunes also came across a Webley service revolver, alongside a pair of bloodied gloves.

A surgeon was called to examine the body and he confirmed that the wounds were not self inflicted. A receipt for dinner at the nearby Palantine Hotel was  also found on the body, plus a letter.

Fred's lover, Kathleen Breaks.

At the time the newspaper said only that the letter was £signed by a Lytham resident" but it would later become a valuable piece of evidence.

By the next day the body had been identified as 26-year-old Kathleen E. Breaks and her lover Frederick Rothwell had been charged with her murder.

In response to the charge he told Detective Inspector John Sherlock (real name): "What am I to say? I have already given a statement, how long will the job be on?"

Fred had become a suspect after it transpired that he had signed the letter found on Kathleen's person and had been arrested at 10.30pm on Christmas Eve, 13 hours after Kitty's body had been discovered.

He was described as a "young, single man" from Lake Road, Fairhaven, and was taken to Lytham Police Court and charged at 7.30am. The newspapers said that the 32-year-old "did not appear to treat his position at all seriously."

Trial and execution

The Lancashire Evening Post repeatedly made reference to Fred's calm demeanour during the trial, his joke to a constable after he missed a step on the way to the dock, the crowds of women who were interested in the trial.

He was handsome, dark and decidedly unmoved throughout the proceedings and turned up to court each time in a smart suit.

During the trial, he seemed to not be aware of what was happening in the court and perhaps his detached demeanour was a symptom of his shell shock.

But the evidence was against Fred. The revolver found, which had been used to shoot Kitty, was one commonly used as a service weapon in the British army.

Richard A. Dagger of Lawrence Street, Lytham, served under Fred and gave evidence to the court in January.

He told the court that Holt owned two revolvers and that when he was taken ill in 1915 the revolvers were not seen again. The boot impressions found on the beach matched the resoled boots owned by Fred a bloodied glove found at the scene also matched a pair once owned by Fred.

But it was the discovery of the will and life insurance policies that pointed to unequivocally to the former soldier  and the later discovery that he had taken Kitty to dinner at the Palantine Hotel the day before he body was found, the receipt of which was found on her corpse.

Holt was defended by the Sir Edward Marshall Hall who had made a career out of cases such as this but he couldn't save Fred.

The Lancashire Daily Post: Holt Executed.

Edward Marshall plead insanity on Fred's behalf, using the excuse that his shell shock had caused him to go insane. Fred seemed to justify these claims when he said that the police had tried to kill him using mad dogs, germ-carrying flies and gas. The gas matched part of the fever of shell shock as Mustard Gas was fired in shells during the war.

He was examined by Home Office psychiatrists who rejected the insanity appeal.

On February 28, 1920, a huge crowd assembled outside the Manchester Assize Court to hear the final verdict.

With the insanity plea rejected and the jury accepting the theory that Fred had killed to gain Kitty's sizeable life insurance, Fred was found guilty and sentenced to death.

He was hanged at Strangeways Prison in Manchester on April 13, 1920.

The Lancashire Daily Post reported that Fred made no confession before his execution and was "stoical until the end" before walking "firmly to the scaffold."

Whether he was insane or not, Fred had killed his lover and he didn't away with it. Possibly suffering from war riddled trauma, or possibly full of greed, he had shot and then stabbed his lover and left her body tangled on Lytham beach.