Poem written by Fed rep honours murdered schoolboy

11 October 2022

The poem.

A West Midlands Police Federation representative whose heartfelt poem honouring murdered six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes says she is ‘truly humbled’ that his family chose to use her words on the schoolboy’s memorial plaque.

Jess Davies, a mother-of-one response officer, wrote a poem about Arthur, a young boy from Solihull whose death shocked the nation after he was tragically killed by his stepmother and father.

Jess, who lives in Solihull and whose son is just five months older than Arthur, says the incident had a real impact on her and, after following the trial closely, felt like she ‘got to know’ the young boy through the stories written in the media.

“I just want to do something in his memory. I suppose in situations like these you feel so helpless,” said Jess.

Jess admits she does not know why this particular case hit her, perhaps it is the fact that her own son is so close in age to Arthur, or that she works on the frontline in the area, and so felt close to the incident in some way.

She added: “I think that in many cases involving the murder of someone, the victim can lose their identity in some way, they become a person who was murdered. I suppose I wanted to help give Arthur his identity back; I wanted to put into words who he was.

“While I never actually worked on the case myself, I felt like I got to know him through the stories I read. I started to learn all these little things about him. So I used snippets of those stories to create the poem.”

Jess’s poem goes as follows:

Arthur

Close your eyes and you’ll feel him near

The most magical story you’ll ever hear

A superhero with the biggest smile

He came into this world for a little while

How he loved his Squashies and football too

Singing keep right on to his boys in blue

The happiest soul with eyes so bright

The cheekiest smile, a sunny delight

Superheroes are real you see

They are here to look after you and me

They touch our hearts and light up the sky

But then we must all say goodbye

This superhero could only stay a while

Heaven needed his superhero smile

We mustn’t be sad for he has work to do

Little Arthur’s shining love on all of you

Jess wrote the poem after Arthur’s stepmother Emma Tustin and father Thomas Hughes were sentenced to a total of 50 years in jail between them.

“I made a donation to the charity set up in Arthur’s memory and sent the poem to the charity too. I said that I’d written it for his family and they could do what they wanted with it,” explained Jess.

“When I saw that they had placed my poem on his memorial plaque, I was touched and truly humbled that they had actually put it to use.”

The memorial plaque has been placed in Cranmore Green, in Shirley, Solihull - near to the now-shuttered house in which Arthur was murdered.

With a clear passion for preventing such incidents from taking place again, Jess was also put forward to help with Government research, which should support the future of policing.

“It’s cases like this that remind us that we’re human too. As officers, we might put on a uniform but behind our uniforms we’re human, we have feelings,” Jess said.

“Following Arthur’s case has certainly made me change how I deal with jobs involving children, going forward. I’ll do all I can to prevent cases like these from happening again.”

Jess is also hoping to run a marathon in memory of Arthur by fundraising for the charity set up in his name Arthur's Angels.