by Alison Bruce
Six years before his execution Matcham had murdered a 15-year-old named Benjamin Jones at the same spot. His gibbet remained in place until well into the nineteenth century.
Matcham was born in Yorkshire around 1760 and ran away from home when he was 12 to fulfil his ambition of becoming a jockey. He had a talent for handling horses and he found work as a stable hand assisting the Duke of Northumberland’s stable manager in the transportation of horses abroad. He also worked as, among other things, a horse dealer. Eventually he enlisted in the infantry but did not take to his new role. By 1780 he had deserted and was again loitering around the world of horses, this time at Huntingdon races.
He was struggling to find adequate food or shelter and in the end decided that the best place to hide would be back in the army. He therefore re-enlisted, this time becoming a private in the 49th Huntingdonshire Foot Regiment.
Matcham got on well with people and was liked and trusted by both his comrades and superiors, including Quartermaster Sergeant Jones. On 18 August 1780 Matcham was ordered to be chaperone to the Quartermaster’s son, Benjamin, who was the regiment’s 15-year-old drummer boy. Benjamin was going to walk approximately five miles to Diddington Hall to collect seven pounds from Major Reynolds. The money, all in gold coins, was to be used to buy supplies.
The journey to Diddington Hall passed without incident, but as they walked back to their regiment Matcham decided that he was going to steal the money. They reached a fork in the road and Matcham convinced his companion that they should take a wrong turning, which led them past isolated woodland. It was then that Matcham attacked, pulling a knife from under his tunic and slitting young Jones’s throat.
Matcham dragged the dying drummer boy into undergrowth and covered the body with leaves and branches before fleeing the area with the money. It took some time for the body to be discovered, but by then Matcham was almost impossible to find as he had travelled north to York and been press-ganged into the Navy.
After several years Matcham was discharged from the service. One night shortly thereafter he was walking across Salisbury Plain with a comrade when a storm broke out. The story goes that they kept walking until they were suddenly confronted by the vision of an old woman. Both saw this and Matcham’s companion ran away. As Matcham walked on alone he saw other apparitions until eventually he was faced with the vision of Jesus on one side of the road and Benjamin Jones on the other.
Matcham’s visions were most likely to be the product of a disturbed mind, but undoubtedly he believed them to be genuine. The idea that they were real no doubt helped to make the story famous in its day. Matcham ran to the nearest town and confessed. He was transported to Huntingdon and convicted at the next assizes. As a deserter he stood trial in the uniform of the 49th Huntingdonshire Foot Regiment.
Because of his own confession he was found guilty and sentenced to death. The judge ordered that after his execution his body was to hang at the spot where he had killed his victim. Matcham’s body, still dressed in his red uniform, was left to rot on its gibbet, the bones and tattered cloth remaining long after his flesh had rotted.
The tale of Benjamin Jones and Gervais Matcham was told in an extremely long poem entitled The Dead Drummer: A Legend of Salisbury Plain. It is part of a collection of humorous and macabre stories published in the Ingoldsby Legends by Thomas Ingoldsby – the pen name of Revd Richard H. Barham. These were published in three series between 1840 and 1847 with illustrations from George Cruikshank.1
Lost in the Brooding Fen
The final of these short case histories is an example of one for which there has been plenty of rumour and speculation but, so far at least, no conclusive solution.
Richard Peak was from Caxton, where he lived with his widowed mother and his two younger siblings. Richard was christened in 1831 and was therefore about 20 when the Cambridgeshire police force was formed in 1851. In 1852 he joined up and became a constable in December of that year. He was stationed at Burwell and given the responsibility for the village of Wicken about two miles away.
In 1854 he married a Soham girl named Ann Dennis Cooper, the daughter of Joseph Wood Cooper. Before their marriage she had lived in the house where Soham vicarage now is. After their nuptials they were given permission to live together in the police house at Burwell.
Their first child was a son named Sidney and by August 1855 they were expecting their second child. On Friday 17 August of that year Peak was ordered to police a crop auction taking place at Wicken’s Lion public house. The auction was due to finish at 9 p.m. but Peak’s shift was to start at 5 a.m. He reported for duty and left Burwell for the walk to Wicken wearing his police constable’s uniform.
Later William Cranwell, the landlord, reported that Constable Peak had made several visits to the bar during the evening and was not wearing his uniform at the time. Drinking on duty was strictly against the rules and the landlord claimed that Peak had consumed ‘a pint of beer and a shilling’s worth of brandy’ which may have explained why he was dressed in civilian clothes. But another explanation was that constables were often allowed to change into private clothes at night for events such as this to save their day uniforms. Whatever the reason, Peak would have needed to be back in his uniform when he was next due to see his sergeant. This meeting was scheduled for 4 a.m. back at Burwell.
During the evening plenty of people witnessed Peak in the bar and in the garden, and also breaking up a minor disturbance in the pub. People began to disperse in the early hours and at 3.15 a.m. Cranwell saw the constable for the last time. Peak was leaving and said: ‘Good morning. I’ve got an hour and a half’s walk, and then I will go to bed.’
Constable Peak failed to report to his sergeant at 4 a.m. In the following days many people were interviewed and police were drafted in from elsewhere to search routes from Wicken to Burwell. Various stories emerged; three men had been seen fighting in Wicken; a brick kiln at Burwell Fen had been giving off ‘a very peculiar and disagreeable smell’; and rumours circulated about a local gang known as The Fen Tigers, but none led to Peak.
After his disappearance his wife gave birth to their second child, named Alfred. The following year a man on his deathbed stated that Peak had been murdered by a blow to the head. He claimed he had not com-mitted the crime himself, nor would he name the man who had, but said that the body had been disposed of in the kiln. But there was nothing to substantiate the story and eventually the story died down again.
In the 1880s a skeleton was pulled from a pond in Wicken. It was seen to have suffered severe damage to the skull. Strangely the remains were returned to the pond and lost. During renovation work at the Anchor pub in Burwell a skeleton was discovered. For years the skull was displayed over the bar and it was rumoured to be PC Peak’s. Eventually it was dropped and smashed and the whereabouts of the other bones are not known. Interestingly the Anchor is located on the Wicken side of Burwell, and seems to be the most probable of the three rumoured resting places of PC Peak.
The widow returned to live with her parents in Soham. She lived to the age of 80 and was buried in Soham’s Fordham Road cemetery near the grave of her eldest son, Sidney. Sidney’s descendants continued to live in Soham and in recent years donated the above photograph of Constable Peak to the police museum in Peterborough.
Notes
1 George Cruikshank (1792–1878) was a humorist of the Hogarth school. He produced more than 15,000 drawings in his lifetime and many consider him to be one of Britain’s finest book illustrators.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barham, Thomas, The Ingoldsby Legends, Ward Lock.
Bell, John, Cambridgeshire Crimes, Popular Publications, St Ives, 1994.
——, More Crimes of Cambridgeshire, Popular Publications, St Ives, 1995.
Blackstone, William, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1765–9.
Church, Robert, Murder in East Anglia, Hale, London, 1987.
The Complete Newgate Calendar, Navarre Soci
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Eddleston, John J., The Encyclopedia of Executions, John Blake, London, 2002.
Gibbons, Thomas, An Account of a Most Terrible Fire, James Buckland, London, 1769.
Gillen, Mollie, Assassination of the Prime Minister, Sidgwick and Jackson, London, 1972.
Hawkins, Sir Henry, The Reminiscences of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton), Thomas Nelson and Sons, London, 1909.
Narrative of the Murder of the late Rev. J. Waterhouse, T. Lovell, Huntingdon, 1827.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1982.
Richardson, Heather, Burwell, A Stroll Through History, H.M. Richardson Publishing, Cambridge, 1990.
Stevens, Serita with Anne Klarner, Deadly Doses, F. and W. Publications, Cincinnati, 1990.
Wright, W., A Sermon . . . occasioned by the barbarous murder of the Rev. J. Waterhouse, A.P. Wood, Huntingdon, 1827.
Newspapers and Journals
Cambridge Advertiser
Cambridge Chronicle
Cambridge Chronicle and University Journal
Cambridge Daily News
Cambridge Evening News
Cambridge Express: and Eastern Counties Weekly News
Cambridge Independent Press
Ely Standard
Evening Standard
Gentleman’s Magazine
Huntingdonshire Gazette
Hunts Post
Illustrated Police News
Isle of Ely Herald
The Leader
Norwich Mercury
Stamford Mercury
Sunday Telegraph magazine
The Times
ACKNOMLEDGEMENTS
Jacen, Natalie, Lana and Dean for making home a lovely place to work.
Bob Burn-Murdoch at the Norris Museum, St Ives, David Bushby, Stewart and Rosie Evans, Chris Jakes at the Cambridgeshire Collection, Laura Johnston at the Cambridge Evening News, Donal O’Danachair at www.exclassics.com, Mike Petty, David Rudd at the St Neots Museum and Jonathon Smith at Trinity College Library for their help with research and illustrations.
Maureen Algar, Christine Bartram, Mark Billingham, Sarah Bryce, Barry Crowther, Broo Doherty, Alison Hilborne, Kimberley Jackson-Liew, Sheila Malham, Jennifer Marrs, Richard Reynolds, Floramay Waterhouse and Kate Wyatt for their advice and encouragement.
