Reward adverised in the Leamington Spa Courier of Saturday, 21 February 1846.
At the Warwick Assizes on 28 March, Landor gave explicit details of the events of that night. He said that although the men were wearing masks, he was sure that the four who stood before the Bench were the men. Three of them, he said, he recognised by their build and voices, in particular Overton, who had been the one to say he would take the watch. Cairn he recognised as his mask had slipped once, and in that brief moment Landor caught a glimpse of his chin and the side of his face; for a few seconds their eyes had met and Landor said he had been able to examine him quite closely. He then stated that he thought Overton and the other man had seemed ‘excited by liquor from the violent shouting they made’ but that Cairn remained calm the whole time.
George Ward of Leamington said he had seen the four men together that night at around midnight. They had asked if he wanted to go with them and he had assumed they meant poaching. He said, ‘If you have got them [referring to nets and wires] they are no use on such a night as this – I can’t see my fingers before me,’ but as he was leaving they called back, saying, ‘It is as right as a trivet and there is plenty of money on the job.’ But Ward ignored them and the group walked on towards Clemens Street, which would then take them onto the road leading to Bishop’s Tachbrook.
When the police searched the garden of Landor House they found footprints leading out to Oakley Wood, which they compared with the boots belonging to the men. John Doughty was called forward as an expert witness, after he had assisted with these comparisons on the morning of the arrest, and he suggested that the treads were a perfect match, but other witnesses insisted that the four men were at their homes that night, albeit drunk. The defence lawyers for the four men each played heavily on the boots being of common types and that the men were of average builds and appearances. They also pointed out that Doughty was no longer a shoemaker but a baker, so could hardly be called as an expert witness, and that, more importantly, none of the stolen property had been found when the men and their houses had been searched. The court was also reminded that the prisoners had been arrested after the reward had been offered, and suggested a case of ‘any port in any storm’.
Tachbrook parish church. The graves on the left date back to the time of Landor’s death.
However, despite a strong case for the defence, the jury still found the men guilty. When sentencing them, the judge said that due to the enormity of their offence and the serious injury to Morley that might have caused his death, they were to be transported for fifteen years.
Edward Wallsgrove, aged twenty-five, James Cairn, aged nineteen, and William Overton, also aged twenty-five, were all transported onboard the John Calvin on 9 May 1846, arriving in Tasmania on 21 August. George Hart, who was twenty-six, remained in his home country a little longer and was transported aboard the Anna Maria on 6 March 1848.
Henry Landor recovered from his ordeal and lived to the ripe old age of eighty-six. He died on 29 November 1866 and was buried at Tachbrook parish church on 6 December. A short notice in the Birmingham Journal read: ‘One of the two surviving brothers of the late William Savage Landor has just died. Henry Eyres Landor, the third of four brothers and for some years past had been blind was nearly 87 at his death, his more famous brother had lived to the age of 90’.
In some instances a case does not make it to the assizes; sometimes the jury at the Coroner’s Inquest makes the decision that the evidence just isn’t enough to convict.
On Thursday, 20 May 1852, Esther Matthews left her home at Saltisford and went off to meet her friend Emma Kibler outside the Warwick Arms hotel, but by two in the morning she hadn’t returned.
Esther’s brother, George, was a gas-lamp lighter and on that morning was going around the streets turning the lights off. He met his mother who told him that Esther wasn’t home and that she had been seen out with Reuben Ward and John Boneham. Both men lodged with Ward’s brother, and while on his rounds George called at Ward’s house but neither Reuben nor John were there.
By the weekend, Esther’s family were getting worried. On the Saturday, her father, Joseph, met Thomas Franks who asked if it was true they had lost Esther. Joseph confirmed that they had, and that they were also afraid she had drowned herself. Thomas, however, said that he and his wife had seen Esther in Leamington the previous afternoon and that she had been near the Star and Garter Inn with another woman. They had said hello to her but he could not remember if she had acknowledged them or not. On hearing this news Joseph went straight to Leamington in search of her.
That same morning, Esther’s sister-in-law, Martha Masters, saw Thomas’ wife Emma in the Black Horse yard. Emma also told her that she and her husband had seen Esther. A little while later Thomas and Emma Franks met Esther’s brothers, George and Joseph, and again the Franks were adamant they had seen Esther, but this time they said they had seen her on the Wednesday afternoon. When they were told she hadn’t gone missing until the Thursday night, they thought about it for a moment then decided that they were wrong, it was in fact on the Friday afternoon that they had seen her and she had been alone. They had both known Esther for a number of years and were sure it was her and that when they saw her she had been wearing a lilac dress.
The Warwick Arms Hotel in the early 1900s.
A week after she had gone missing, Esther’s family’s worst fears were realised. A body dressed in a light-coloured lilac dress was found in the River Avon near to Castle Bridge.
Joseph Bonehill of Bridge End had been going over the bridge at a quarter to nine in the morning when he had seen something in the river. At first he thought it was just a bundle, but on looking more closely he realised it was a body. Together with some other men they got the dragnets and pulled the body out of the water. The face was so unrecognisable that Joseph Matthews could only identify his daughter by the clothes she was wearing.
Warwick Police Superintendent, William Charles Hickling, saw the body after it had been hauled out of the water and told the inquest:
She had a straw bonnet on trimmed with dark blue. It was tied on quite tight, but the head was very much swollen, and the bonnet was broken in two places. From the appearance of her face my impression when I first saw her was that she had been knocked about. Her head and left eye was very much swollen.
Castle Bridge across the River Avon.
* * *
‘Her head and left eye
was very much swollen’
* * *
However, the surgeon who examined her said that there were no marks of violence on her body and that death appeared to be from drowning. Upon further examination he discovered that:
Shortly before death, the deceased had been guilty of some impropriety. That she had had sexual connexion a few hours before her death. The hymen had been quite recently ruptured and there were other appearances indicating the same; but there was nothing to induce me to suppose that any violence had been used towards her.
Sarah Somers had seen Esther at the bottom of Jury Street on the night she went missing, and said that Esther looked ‘rather red in the face and was laughing and was hanging on the arm of a young man’, and that the young man had been Reuben Ward of Emscote.
Ward and his friend, John Boneham, admitted to being with Esther until three in the morning on the day of her disappearance and were immediately taken into custody on suspicion of being involved with her death. When questioned, they said that they had met with Esther outside the Warwick Arms Hotel, where they had gone to listen to the Yeomanry Band. Shortly afterwards they had been joined by Emma Kibler and a man named Wallen. The group then went to William Payton’s liquor shop and drank two and a half pints of gin before walking around for a while. Esther and Ward then went to Emma’s house in Woodhouse Street, but Boneham said he was so drunk he couldn’t remember where he was from that time until about eleven o’clock in the evening.
The Warwick Arms Hotel today.
Esther and Ward left Emma
’s house at ten thirty but Esther was quite tipsy and was afraid to go home, and it was at this time that Sarah Somers saw Esther. Reuben said he had been taking her to her brother’s house in Avon Street, Emscote, but on the way Esther had fallen and wanted to sit down for a while. So he had taken her to the lane below the railway bridge, where they lay down for about half an hour. Afterwards, they met up with Boneham on his way home and both men took Esther to a cart on the lane leading up to the Nelson estate, where the three of them had lain down underneath the cart, with Esther in the middle, and had gone to sleep.
When they awoke they saw Esther’s brother putting out the lamps. Esther wanted to avoid him and so they waited until he had finished. When she left, Ward said he watched her as she walked the 200 yards down the lane to the main road before going home himself. He said he did not have any sexual connexions with her, but that Boneham could have done whilst he had been asleep.
The inquest into Esther’s death took place at the Mattock and Spade Inn on Monday 31 May, but was adjourned while further investigations were made. The second inquest continued on Monday 14 June but after six hours the jury asked for another adjournment, to which the judge agreed and they reconvened the next day.
There was a certain amount of controversy regarding some of the witnesses’ statements. Was it the Wednesday when Thomas and Emma Franks had seen Esther, or the Friday? And if so was she alone or was she with someone? Or had it been her sister they had seen on the Friday? Esther and her sister, Rebecca Shellard, looked very much alike and Rebecca said she had been in Leamington on the Friday afternoon with her mother-in-law. Although she didn’t remember seeing Mr and Mrs Franks, it may be that, because of her concern for her sister, she just hadn’t noticed them. Or had they, for some reason, concocted the story between them? Esther’s family said that although the Franks’ had known Esther for some years, she never spoke to them.
The coroner, Mr W. Haynes, wanted to get the facts right. If Esther was still alive on the Friday afternoon it meant that Ward and Boneham hadn’t been the last people to see her alive and so, therefore, may not be connected with her death. In the end, Haynes decided that it had been Rebecca Shellard who Thomas and Emma Franks had seen.
Sarah Somers said she was sure she had seen Ward and Esther go over the Black Hills from Jury Street and cross over in the direction of Mr Glover’s factory. The coroner pointed out the importance of this, as Esther had been found at Castle Bridge, ‘to which the road pointed out by the witness would have taken them,’ but Reuben insisted they had kept to the left-hand side of the road all the way, going under the arch into Smith Street, and that they were never on the right side of Jury Street or the Black Hills. He said they went on into Coten End where Esther had fallen and it was here she had wanted to sit down. After this he had taken her up to the nearby lane, where Boneham met up with them.
Haynes was also suspicious as to why they had not called to Esther’s brother when they saw him: ‘It was extraordinary that, as Ward had previously been so anxious that the girl should go home, he did not then place her under the care of her brother; but he did not take any steps to do so.’ Haynes also questioned why, after Esther had disappeared from sight and Ward had made his own way home, he didn’t go to bed but lit a fire and lay down in front of it instead – maybe he was drying himself off?
Superintendent William Hickling said that when he had asked Ward to sign his statement, Ward claimed that he could not write, yet on the day before the second inquest, Hickling had gone into Ward’s cell and spotted some writing on the wall that had not been there before, it read, ‘… has brought me here, o cursed woman’. He asked Ward if he had written it but Ward again said he couldn’t write. Hickling then sent for a pencil and paper and made an unwilling Ward write the words down, proving that he could write and also showing that certain letters were very much the same on both the cell wall and the paper.
In light of this evidence, Haynes noted that, ‘The man who was in that cell by himself for hours and days, meditating upon what he had done, and who was extremely depressed in his mind and body, it was very likely would write that; it was the effect of his conscience acting upon his mind.’
Haynes also commented on the fact that there were no signs of a struggle and no bruising on the body. And so he asked the question – did Esther drown herself because of what had taken place between her and the men she had been with, even though they themselves denied any such contact with her? He said that, ‘Unfortunately they had very little evidence, but that of Ward and his associate as to the circumstances attending the death; and it was possible they had concocted their story.’
He also made the suggestion that opium may have been administered to the gin earlier in the evening, as he didn’t feel that two glasses would have got Esther and Emma so drunk. It appeared, though, that the boys had met the girls by accident, not as a pre-arranged meeting, and he wondered whether they would have been carrying such a substance with them just on the off chance.
Haynes’ summing up pointedly indicated that he believed Ward had been instrumental in the death of Esther Matthews. He referred to the lies he believed Ward had told. For instance, the surgeon stated that Esther had recently been intimate and how could anyone believe the three had lain under the cart all night and nothing had happened? When questioned together, following Esther’s disappearance, the two men’s stories had been the same, but when questioned separately, after her body had been found, there were many discrepancies in the stories – the way she had been carried to the cart, for instance; one said they had opened the gate, the other said they had climbed over it.
In conclusion, Haynes said that ‘it was a case left very much in doubt, and was a very melancholy and unfortunate one.’ The jury, having very little evidence before them, returned a verdict of ‘found drowned’. They expressed ‘their regret that, with such a conflicting mass of evidence, they could come to no other conclusion’. Haynes agreed that it was ‘very distressing that the case should be left so much in doubt. Ward and Boneham had been most discreditable and they should always have a feeling in their minds that they were the persons who materially contributed to the death of the deceased.’
Throughout the nineteenth century, many women were tried for concealment of birth. This next case shows just how desperate new mothers could be when faced with another mouth to feed, or the shame of an illegitimate child.
In his opening statement at the Warwick Assizes on 9 August 1862, the judge, Lord Chief Baron Pollock, addressed the jury regarding one such case, saying, ‘You will have to say whether it is merely a case of concealment of birth or if it is murder.’
Six weeks earlier the Leamington Spa Courier reported on an inquest that was held on Monday 23 June and Wednesday 25 June:
So far back as the 8 of May last the body of a finely-grown female child was discovered in the brook of the tan-yard in West Street, Warwick. The body was at once handed over to the police, and a Coroner’s Inquest at Mr Butler’s, the Wheat Sheaf Inn, West Street, assembled on the 9 of May. Evidence was taken from the person who found the body, and also from Mr Nunn, surgeon of Warwick. Mr Nunn was of the opinion, from a post-mortem examination which he made, that the child had lived ten days after birth, but from the advanced state of decomposition in which the body was when submitted to him he said it was extremely difficult to determine the child’s age, or the manner of its death.
The old tan yard in West Street today.
No one reported a child missing and Mr Nunn had not been able to determine whether the baby was already dead when it had been put in the water. He did state, though, that there were no marks of violence and it appeared to have been delivered by someone who was perfectly capable in attending a birth. As no one had any idea who the child belonged to, the inquest was adjourned while Superintendent Hickling made all the necessary enquiries.
At first he was unable to gather any information but remained diligent and eventually heard some gossip, which led him to inter
view some women from Pepper Alley in Saltisford, and the sad story began to unfold.
Widow Ann Osborne lived in Pepper Alley, Saltisford, where a water closet at the bottom of her garden overlooked the brook which ran down to West Street – anything dropped into the closet went straight to the brook.
Ann’s husband had died three years previously, leaving her alone to bring up their young family. She had given birth to a child three months after her husband died, but it died soon after it was born. Ann had been receiving a regular visitor, Charles Chambers, for a few months, who said he would like to marry her but was out of work at the time.
In February 1862, Ann appeared to have gained weight and her neighbours suspected that she was having another baby. When asked, however, she would just laugh it off; not confirming whether she was or wasn’t. But Martha and her family were convinced she was pregnant and that the baby had been fathered by Charles.
In March, Ann seemed to be in bad health before suddenly becoming much thinner. When neighbours questioned her about it she would simply shrug and say that ‘she had been relieved of a large quantity of water which had collected in her system’.
Martha Masters said her brother had come home on 1 March and asked her to go and see Ann, whose eleven-year-old daughter had informed him that her mother was ill. When Martha went to see Ann she was in bed and when asked what was the matter, Ann said she had been bad all night with dreadful pains but would soon be better. Martha then said, ‘You will be better when that lump comes from you,’ but once again Ann had said it was just water and Martha left.
Warwick Page 4
