For a while I’ve been interested in the sad, dramatic life of Emma Humphreys, a woman who was convicted of killing her boyfriend/pimp Trevor Armitage in 1985 and was then released in 1995 after the feminist campaign group Justice for Women got her conviction changed from murder to manslaughter. Humphreys later died aged just 30 in 1998 from an overdose.

The Emma Humphreys Memorial Prize (EHMP) was established following Humphrey’s death, as described on the website emmahumphreys.org:

“Every year since her death in 1998, the Emma Humphreys Memorial Prize has given two awards to feminist campaigners in honour of Emma. The awards carry a prize of £1,000 and are given to women campaigners and to campaign groups who have, through writing or campaigning, raised awareness of violence against women and children.”

Only feminists could establish a prize for “recognising women who work against male violence” and dedicate it to a woman who murdered a man. Humphreys was able to get her conviction changed because it was argued that she had been physically and sexually abused by Trevor Armitage and so her murder of him was an act of self defence. February of this year (2024) marks the 25^th anniversary of the prize so this post was unintentionally well timed.

What makes this case interesting to me is the way it shows how narratives can diverge from the facts, or as close as we can get to the facts from the information at hand, as well as how ideologies can have a big impact on our perceptions. I’ll attempt to illustrate here in three parts why this case is a good example of the truth being distorted to fit a particular ideology, in this instance feminism.

The standard narrative presented about Emma Humphreys is that she grew up with a violent stepfather and was forced to run away from home and become a prostitute. She was later the victim of abuse by Trevor Armitage which led to her killing him. In response, the apparently brutal and patriarchal justice system condemned poor Emma Humphreys to life in prison until feminists came to her rescue in the 1990s. After being released from prison, the psychologically damaged Emma was left to fend for herself which led to her untimely death.

The basic, uncontroversial facts about Humphrey’s background prior to her crime are that she was born in the UK in 1967 and then went with her mother, stepfather and siblings to Canada after her parents’ marriage broke down. She later came back to England to live with her father, then her grandmother and, at some point, began living with her victim Trevor Armitage after she had turned to prostitution.

A more in-depth description of her background can be found in this post by ‘VennerRoad’ which also gives a detailed overview of her murder case.

Trevor Armitage is always referred to as being Emma Humphreys’ pimp but it is unclear how much he was involved in Humphreys’ sex work. Was he forcing her to prostitute herself or was he simply taking money she had earned from prostitution in exchange for letting her stay at his residence? My own thinking is that the latter was more likely. Perhaps it’s more accurate to call Armitage Emma Humphreys’ “pimp” in quotation marks since he may have been indirectly gaining money from her prostitution. What is clear is that Humphreys and Armitage had a very tumultuous relationship.

Trevor Armitage was certainly a deeply flawed man – he had previous violent convictions and was in a relationship with a much younger woman barely older than his son (Armitage was 33 and Humphreys was 17). He could have definitely been violent towards Humphreys but she had opportunities to leave him if the abuse was so bad. Some might argue that Emma may have been too afraid to leave but she was not exactly harmless herself.

However, you can believe that Trevor Armitage was a scumbag and at the same time think that Emma Humphreys should have remained in prison for killing him. Feminists like to say that there is ‘no such thing as a perfect victim’ but does this also apply to men? Feminists seem to think however that any blame placed on a woman is equivalent to saying all the blame is on women. In fact, assuming women have responsibility over how they behave is surely less patronising than presenting them as powerless victims?

As already noted, Trevor Armitage was not exactly a saint and his decision to have a relationship with Humphreys cost him his life. However, would it be politically incorrect to suggest that birds of a feather flock together? In other words, perhaps Emma Humphreys and Trevor Armitage’s volatile personalities drew them towards each other.

Since Trevor Armitage is not alive to put forward his own version of events, we are only left with the information presented about the case. The same cannot be said for Emma Humphreys, who later presented as a heroine fighting a sexist, patriarchal justice system.

Emma Humphreys killed Trevor Armitage with a knife to the chest while he was lying on his back at their residence sometime between 25^th-26^th February 1985. He was only wearing a shirt which Humphreys claimed was an indication that he wanted to have sex with her. The Court of Appeal judgement (which is linked on VennerRoad’s post) argued that a comment made by Armitage to Humphreys while they were in a pub with some friends earlier that night about them being “all right for a gang bang” was evidence of provocation.

Notice that these are assumptions rather than definitive evidence of threatening behaviour by Armitage that would justify Humphreys stabbing him. It is one thing to talk about a gang bang than to engage in one. Armitage’s “undressed state” as it was described in the Appeal may have indicated he wanted sex from Humphreys but he didn’t force himself on her before she stabbed him. Maybe he would have. Then again, maybe he would have spontaneously combusted had he not being stabbed. This is further complicated by the fact that we only have Emma Humphreys’ account of what happened. To say that she may have been an unreliable narrator might be an understatement.