This post is published on the 25^th Anniversary of the Emma Humphreys Memorial Prize (9^th February). What better way to celebrate this milestone than to read the final part of my exploration of Emma Humphreys’ life and legacy?

As she was only 18 at the time of the trial, Emma was sentenced “at Her Majesty’s pleasure” meaning that she was given an indefinite sentence. An appeal in 1986 proved unsuccessful. Later, according to VennerRoad, Humphreys wrote to Justice for Women after hearing about their campaigning for the release of Kiranjit Ahluwalia, a woman who had burned her husband alive in 1989 after apparently suffering years of abuse at his hands. Ahluwalia’s appeal to have her conviction changed from murder to manslaughter was successful and she was released in 1992. Justice for Women, founded by lesbian feminist couple Julie Bindel and Harriet Wistrich, have campaigned for the release of women like Kiranjit Ahluwalia and Emma Humphreys (VennerRoad acknowledges, nevertheless, that Humphreys and Ahluwalia’s cases were very different) since 1990 and succeeded in securing Emma’s release in 1995.

Humphreys’ instability and impulsivity, evident before her conviction, revealed itself again following her release from prison. According to Bindel’s and Wistrich’s recollection, Emma “ran wild” following her release – indulging in drugs and picking up men like she had done prior to her stabbing Trevor Armitage. VennerRoad provides a quote from Wistrich where she recalls an incident where herself and Bindel had to turn Humphreys away “from our house at 5am with nowhere to go” showing that even they couldn’t tolerate some of her behaviour. However, Julie Bindel and Harriet Wistrich perceive Emma Humphreys’ actions to be the result of trauma from her time in prison and everything that had happened to her before, effectively robbing Humphreys of any agency.

Just like before her imprisonment, Humphreys was in and out of several accommodations due to being disruptive and challenging. Imagine what she was like with Trevor Armitage! I have read some accounts about Humphreys which describe an appearance on a radio show (Woman’s Hour perhaps?) at some point after her release where she talks about being in another abusive relationship with a man and stating that “if he doesn’t hit you, he doesn’t love you” which resulted in the interview abruptly ending! However, I can’t confirm if this really happened because I haven’t found evidence showing if/when this interview took place.

Nevertheless, there is footage of Humphreys on the day she was released from prison in this video with the rather dubious title ‘Emma Humphreys – An Inspiring Legacy’. Humphreys can be seen being cheered by a crowd of women while balloons with the Suffragette colours of green and purple drift up in the air; I find this detail rather appropriate as, like Emma Humphreys, many of the Suffragettes engaged in acts of violence and so were not as heroic and ‘inspiring’ as feminists have presented them as been.

Judging from the video, Humphreys comes across as a little childlike and not particularly intelligent. However, this may have been the result of drug taking as VennerRoad notes she looks ‘spaced out’ during the interviews. This child-like and/or drug-addled feature of Emma Humphreys’ psychology makes interpreting her actions something of a Rorschach test; whoever observes her may draw their own unique interpretations about what she did and why she did it. Moreover, like many mentally unstable people, Humphreys would have likely being easily swayed by others. In truth, Emma may not have completely understood why she stabbed Trevor Armitage but feminists were available to interpret for her.

From the small amount of footage I’ve seen of her, I get the impression that, in spite of what she did, Emma Humphreys may not have been an entirely bad person but she was definitely a very troubled and dangerous individual. If she wasn’t going to be in prison, she should have certainly been in an institution, for her sake as much as anybody else’s.

The video also shows Emma Humphreys’ struggle with anorexia which likely contributed to her early demise. It’s shocking to see how Humphreys’ appearance changed from how she looked shortly after she left prison (see 1:19 on the above linked video) compared to how she looked a while later (see 8:33). She wasn’t a bad looking woman but towards her death she looked much older than her thirty years. Freedom, it seems, had aged her far more than 10 years in prison had.

Emma Humphreys died of a choral hydrate overdose on 11^th July 1998. Interestingly, the video gives her birth date as 1968 rather than 1967 possibly showing how little her feminist supporters actually researched her background – or maybe they just don’t understand how someone who was born in October 1967 could be 30 in July 1998.

Following Humphreys’ death, Julie Bindel apparently told the inquest that Emma was “thrown out of prison and left to her own devices” seemingly forgetting that Bindel had partly contributed to this cause of events by lobbying for her release. In this memorial to Humphreys, Harriet Wistrich writes that she “sometimes …wondered whether we were doing the best thing for Emma” during their campaign for her release and Bindel recalls here Wistrich noting that “cruelly, Emma had been safer in prison than on the outside.” – you think so, Harriet?

Although Bindel, Wistrich and others did attempt to look out for Humphreys following their successful campaigning – they frequently visited her and tried to give her food to gain weight – they seem have been, and likely still are, blinded by their own ideologies and have a very naive perception of Humphreys.  In their eyes, Emma Humphreys was merely a tragic victim of the Patriarchy and her own actions were simply a reflection of that. That Humphreys bore some responsibility for what happened to her has likely never occurred to them. After all, how would they then turn her into a martyr and create a prize dedicated to her?

I don’t doubt there was a lot of sympathy and empathy from the likes of Bindel and Wistrich towards Humphreys and they couldn’t have predicted that she would die so soon after her release, but their involvement in the last years of her life have enabled them to control her legacy and spin a very particular version of events. This account of Humphreys’ life by Harriet Wistrich from earlier last month shows how sentimentalised and distorted her story has become. It also appears neither Wistrich nor Bindel have reconsidered how their actions may have contributed to Emma Humphreys’ early death.

Dea Birkett, writing in The Times back in 2002, notes in this article several cases, including that of Emma Humphreys, of women convicted of killing their male partners being set free on the grounds of abuse.

Birkett notes:

“A gaggle of feminist and legal groups have welcomed these women walking free. The judiciary are finally accepting the argument that domestic violence and abuse are sufficient grounds for provocation, declares Justice for Women. Put in plain language, this statement is terrifying: if your boyfriend gives you bruises, it’s understandable if you knife him in the heart. Soon, women will be able to get away with murder. It cannot be right that our legal system is being used as a weapon in the war between the sexes.”

Dea Birkett – ‘Women should not get away with murder’

She also makes this compelling point:

“But the courts are not the place to redress centuries of women’s oppression. These murdered men, however unsavoury, should not be scapegoats for society’s inequalities. If this were the purpose of our legal system, any Muslim killing any Christian would be committing mere manslaughter because of the atrocities of the Crusades. A black burglar could be defended on the basis that he was redressing the sins of slavery. Such arguments would be, rightly, laughed out of court. Each of these individuals is committing a crime against a person.”

Dea Birkett

Although we could debate whether women have endured “centuries of oppression” – at least compared to any other group of human beings – her overall point was very well made.

Emma Humphreys’ life was in many ways tragic, but this doesn’t mean we can’t judge her actions or her as an individual. She was not some poor helpless soul who could be rescued by heroic feminists and go on to have a normal life following her release. What happened to Humphreys after she came out of prison indicates to me that Bindel, Wistrich and their fellow campaigners didn’t really know who or what they were dealing with. Emma Humphreys’ unfortunate fate should be seen as a warning to what can happen when the simplistic and black-and-white viewpoint that an ideology provides encounters the cold and complicated real world.

Often omitted from most presentations of this case is Emma Humphreys’ own incidents of violence and difficult behaviour, at least before her killing of Armitage and subsequent conviction.

The Guardian released some of Humphreys’ diary entries in this article and argued that, if they were published at the time of Humphreys’ initial conviction, they could have lessened her sentence. Ironically, in my opinion, the diaries could have equally SUPPORTED her conviction.

One entry comes from her time in Canada. Both Emma’s mother and stepfather seemed to have been heavy drinkers which clearly made her home life unstable. According to her own account, Emma had ran away from home on at least one occasion and ended up spending time in a children’s home called Westfield in Edmonton where she records that she cut herself and, in one incident, “went rank” (whatever that means) on her social worker which resulted in her being restrained by security guards.

She also describes her relationship with her mother. Humphreys records her mother “drinking 24 hours a day” and writes that “she upsets me” (this is admittedly open to interpretation: is Emma being sympathetic towards her mother or saying that her mother says/does things to her which she doesn’t like?) Later she writes that she “never had a mother-to-daughter relationship” with her mother.

When she was living with her ‘Nana’ (grandmother) back in the UK in Nottingham she writes that she and her Nana “aren’t talking again” because her Nana was “being so judgmental towards me”. This suggests that Humphreys’ behaviour was concerning enough to warrant criticism from her grandmother and probably the reason for Humphrey not staying with her.

Other entries after she moved in with Armitage describe him hitting Humphreys, her getting involved with another man called Anthony, and the two of them smashing up Armitage’s house which led to them ending up “at Radford Road cells.”

The (biased) Wikipedia article on Humphreys mentions that she had convictions before her murder case:

“In January 1985, Humphreys was arrested and kept on remand at HM Prison Risley for two incidents, one of which involved assaulting a hotel manager.”

In her diary, Emma writes that she had assaulted a police officer as well as the hotel manager! The Court of Appeal judgement simply refers to Emma appearing before the criminal court “as a result of two incidents” conveniently not mentioning any assault on her part. There is however an interesting detail here that Humphreys was conditionally discharged on 21^st February 1985 – only a few days before she killed Trevor Armitage – who had “took in another girl” while “she was away”.

Did Armitage taking in another woman while Humphreys was on remand contribute to Humphreys’ actions days later? It may have certainly infuriated her and made her jealous – although this is simply a conjecture on my part. Killing someone only days after being conditionally released isn’t exactly going to help you avoid going to prison though.

What is evident here is that, even before her association with Armitage, Emma Humphreys was capable of impulsive and destructive actions like the one that led to her imprisonment.

True, Emma Humphrey’s erratic behaviour would have likely made her vulnerable to dangerous and predatory men but she was obviously just as capable of being violent and unpredictable.

According to her Wikipedia article, a psychiatrist at the original 1985 trial described Humphreys as:

“of abnormal mentality, with immature, explosive and attention-seeking traits, the last trait referring to her tendency to slash her wrists”

A medical examination after her killing of Armitage also revealed cuts all over her arms including recent ones. According to Emma herself, Armitage had taunted her about her wrist-slashing which was what led to her stabbing him. Was this evidence of persistent mental abuse by Armitage towards Humphreys which caused her to finally snap and retaliate? Or evidence of the couple’s destructive characters and relationship? Feminists would have us believe that the former was the case. This interpretation of the events is a classic example of so-called ‘battered women’s syndrome’ which argues that pre-meditated or seemingly unprovoked acts of violence by women against their male partners is the result of the men’s previous abuse of the women. Obviously, acts of violence from one person to another will, in many cases, result with a response in kind but if that response leads to murder, then the murder victim is still a victim.

Had Trevor Armitage forced himself on Emma Humphreys and tried to rape, injure or murder her, then her stabbing of him could be justified as an act of manslaughter – which makes the idea of battered women syndrome futile.