Continuing in senior appointments, he was AAG and QMG, North-Eastern District from 1 July 1889 – 21 September 1892, where he commanded the training camp at Strensall Camp, Yorkshire.
On 18 April 2005, at Leeds Crown Court, Hobson admitted both of the murders as well as those of James and Joan Britton, a couple in their eighties who were found beaten to death in the village of Strensall near York.
To the south is the garden village of New Earswick and the York Outer Ring Road (A1237) with the open farmland to the north as far as the villages of Sutton-on-the-Forest and Strensall.
The district lost about half its population in 1996, when an expanded City of York became a unitary authority, specifically the parishes of Clifton Without, Earswick, Haxby, Heworth Without, Holtby, Huntington, Murton, New Earswick, Osbaldwick, Rawcliffe, Skelton, Stockton-on-the-Forest, Strensall, Towthorpe, and Wigginton.