York

by Summer Strevens

  A fire set with deliberate intent starts with the first malicious ignition – no matter how small.

  ‘A very large concourse of people’ were also assembled to see twenty-four-year-old Robert Driffield and twenty-two-year-old Mark Edmund hanged at the Tyburn on Wednesday, 2 August 1672. Both men were found guilty of setting fire to six corn stacks, the property of Mr George Robinson at Skelton, just on the outskirts of York. This arson had been committed on the Mayday of that year, one of the few public holidays enjoyed by the working classes in the seventeenth century. Both bodies were buried in the churchyard of St Mary’s, Bishophill Senior, which, though sadly demolished in 1963, was itself one of the oldest churches in York and retaining the only church tower in the city not to have been consumed by the conflagration of the Conqueror’s repression of 1068 mentioned earlier.

  However, probably the biggest draw for the execution of a convicted arsonist was on Tuesday, 2 April 1628, when an estimated 8,000 to 9,000 strong crowd turned out to see Robert Storie hanged at the Knavesmire. A native of Clifton, Stone had been found guilty of burning down the dwelling house and out buildings of a Mr R. Wilson in the January of that year. We know nothing of Storie’s motives, just that ‘the culprit died very hardly’ and in this instance escaped the anatomists’ clutches, as his body was buried in the churchyard of St Mary’s Abbey.

  Although her hand was not the one that lit the flame, mother of nine Mary Hunter professed her innocence of indirect arson, right up to the very point that the drop fell on Saturday, 30 March 1833. She was insistent to the last that she was not guilty of bribery and threats against her serving maid Hannah Gray. Described as a ‘simple country girl’, Hannah had set fire to three stacks of wheat at the coercion of her mistress. Clearly manipulating Hannah, who was born with developmental disabilities, Mary Hunter had promised the girl, ‘A new frock if she did it, and that if she did not she would tear her liver out, and that if she told anybody she would tear her to pieces.’ And so ended the life of Mary Hunter at age forty-seven, before an estimated crowd of 4,000 to 5,000 people – all for the sake of avenging a grudge against a neighbour, who refused to pay 4d for the use of the Hunter’s pinfold to hold his foals.

  Never a ‘dying’ trade – the temporary occupiers of the condemned cell kept York’s coffin makers busy.

  Though never carried out, an ultimatum was issued and a serious threat of arson made against the Lord Mayor of York in 1777, which was provoked by the fear of the imminent arrival of the press gangs coming to force the men of York to join the military. Anyone between the ages of eighteen and fifty-five were viable ‘volunteers’ and were signed up for years at a time against their will, with men outside of the specified age range often taken as well. The citizens of York were so incensed that the Lord Mayor had sanctioned their coming to the city that there was a minor uprising on 26 January 1777. The mayor was sent an anonymous letter threatening to burn down both his house and the Mansion House if any man were taken from York by the press gangs. Although the City Corporation offered 100 guineas reward for the identity of the sender, no information was ever forthcoming.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  COUNTERFEITERS & COINERS

  * * *

  Ever since the advent of the circulation of coins as currency people have been tempted to ‘adjust’ their value in their pecuniary favour. The milled edge of a modern English pound coin is engraved with the words decus et tutamen, the term meaning ‘an ornament and safeguard’. Originally, these words were stamped around the edge of coins to indicate whether it had been tampered with in an offence known as ‘clipping’. The shavings of the precious metal were harvested, along with the metallic dust collected in another method of debasing coinage called ‘sweating’, where coins would be placed in a bag and vigorously shaken, producing precious dust that could then be collected.

  A King Charles II sovereign.

  All sorts of people were involved with coining, from children who might be used to deliver bags of clippings, to innkeepers who would rent out rooms for people to clip coins in. Some shopkeepers would even lend out their takings for a small fee to coiners who would clip them and then return them back to the shopkeeper for re-circulation. Of course counterfeit coins were far more difficult to spot then than in today’s currency, as the lightweight, thin and poor quality coins made it difficult to tell if they had been falsified or tampered with.

  The constant shortage of currency also helped create a steady market for counterfeit coins, a circumstance which was viewed very seriously by the authorities as an excessive injection of false money into the economy would compete with the legitimate government input of coinage, essentially jeopardising the state of trade or even bringing it to a standstill. As a result, ‘coining’ was classed as treason and merited punishment by death.

  Of course the introduction of paper money presented forgers with a further opportunity to counterfeit currency. Before the Bank Charter Act of 1844 tying the sole issue of bank notes to the Bank of England, private banks had the right to issue their own notes, thus broadening the scope for forgery and fraud.

  In legal terms ‘uttering’ a false or bad note was the act of passing such and also applied to counterfeit coinage. All transgressions fell under the Forgery Act and were punishable by death, until two years after the consolidation of the Act in 1830 when the death penalty was abolished for most of the offences, and for all remaining offences in 1837.

  Fiscal Felons

  * * *

  Before this time, however, those convicted of forgery, uttering, counterfeiting or coining were all liable to be hanged for their crimes, and this was the fate that befell Frederick Gottfried and Thomas Conrat on Friday, 27 March 1575, for ‘coining guineas in the Thursday Market, in the city of York.’

  The street running to the south east of what was the Thursday Market is Jubbergate. It was here that in 1585 another pair of coiners, George de Kirwan, aged thirty-four, and Thomas de Alasco, aged thirty-nine, were arrested for coining guineas at the house of Simon Pontius, a silversmith of York who was presumably in possession of some useful metallurgical working equipment. As was custom, they were drawn to their execution at the Tyburn on sledges and were apparently resigned to their fate and died penitent. They were both were buried at St Helen’s, Fishergate, located in what is now Winterscale Street, and possibly amongst the last burials to take place there as it had fallen into disuse by the late fifteenth century, the parish being amalgamated with that of St Lawrence in 1586.

  * * *

  ‘liable to be hanged for their crimes’

  * * *

  The Thursday Market – the site is now occupied by St Sampson’s Square.

  Multiple coiners were executed on Tuesday, 6 April 1604, at the Tyburn, for, ‘coining and paying money, well knowing it to be counterfeit and bad.’ The hanging of Richard Cullingworth aged forty-three, Elizabeth Bradwith aged thirty, Hannah Bulmer aged twenty-eight and Jane Buckel aged thirty-four, all of whom were from Walmgate in the city, was apparently witnessed by a ‘large concourse of spectators.’

  The neighbourhood of Walmgate was home to the bulk of the poorer classes of York, a district where those at the bottom of the social scale were tightly packed in filthy, diseased conditions, and human waste was left to accumulate in the alleys until there was enough to be collected and added to huge dung hills like the one behind St Margaret’s Church in Walmgate. Small wonder then that they, and many others like them, felt forced by circumstance to succumb to the temptation that counterfeit coinage might afford them.

  Edward Wells, a forty-year-old bricklayer from Northallerton, was found guilty of forging and publishing a counterfeit promissory note (a written promise to repay a loan or debt under specific terms) in 1753, with the intent of defrauding one William Horseman. He put on quite a show of bravado on the day of his execution, on Monday 28 April. Standing on the gallows he removed his hat, wig and handkerchief, unbuttoned his shirt and then, opening the noose, he kissed the rope before p
utting it under his chin. When the time came and the cart was drawn away, Wells threw himself off ‘with the greatest resolution’. Executed along with Wells on that day was seventeen-year-old convicted murderer Bezaliel Knowles, who didn’t make such a flamboyant end as Wells, though equally memorable in his falling over backwards into the cart before the executioner could fix the halter around his neck. He did, however, behave with much ‘decency and contrition’, and after ample confession he died penitent.

  Various tools were employed in the business of ‘coining’ and none more so that a trusty pair of tin-snips.

  In 1773, the Government’s determination to stamp out coining led to the passing of The Coin Act, which rendered anyone in mere possession of a ‘light guinea’ guilty of the crime of coining. They were expected to give the counterfeit money up, in spite of the fact that they would receive no reimbursement and be left out of pocket. While organised coining groups did exist and operated on a productive scale, it was often the working classes and the poor who turned to coining to make a profit, with the meagre manufacture of just a single coin. However, the harsh reality of the Government’s measures left many such needy individuals with worthless currency in their pockets.

  Presumably, amongst the crowd who turned out to see William Waddington hang on the morning of Saturday, 12 April 1794 were some of those working and poor townsfolk whom he had previously swindled. A native of York, the apparently hitherto ‘respectable’ Waddington had been found guilty of counterfeiting coins of the realm ‘… and paying the same to diverse people in York.’ In this instance, Waddington had forged coins by ‘colouring’, which is disguising a base metal with a gilded veneer to give the appearance of the real thing. Two methods of colouring were typically employed, either by ‘fire gilding’, where the base core coin was coated with a liquid gold/mercury amalgam and then heated to drive off the majority of the mercury, or by building up repeated layers of gold leaf. At forty-two years of age, Waddington left a wife and seven children who all visited him on the morning of his execution. After their parting, Waddington was said to have stated that the terrors of death were now over.

  Bad Notes

  * * *

  One of the many private banks in existence in eighteenth-century York was Raper, Clough & Swann, which was ultimately absorbed by the Royal Bank of Scotland after several incarnations, but in 1806 the bank occupied 45 Coney Street. On Saturday, 5 April of that year George Ormond, a thirty-year-old butler, was hanged after being found guilty of forging one of Raper, Clough & Swann’s bank notes. Executed at the New Drop, Ormond declared that the forgery was the only crime that he had ever perpetrated. This had no bearing on his ultimate fate however.

  A hefty bolt held the door of the condemned cell closed.

  The first of only two executions that were ever to take place at the under-utilised gallows of the city gaol at Bishophill was that of forger David Anderson, who on Saturday, 20 August 1809 was hanged for ‘uttering bad notes’. Arrested at the house of Robert Dentis, a flour-dealer who operated out of Low Ousegate in the city, Anderson was betrayed by Dentis, who gave the principal evidence against him when he was found guilty at the Summer Assizes for distributing and uttering Bank of England notes. Kneeling down, Anderson made a fervent prayer on the gallows, meeting his fate with ‘fortitude and resignation’ before the executioner, who had come especially from the castle to carry out his job. That executioner was William Curry, himself a convicted felon who had twice escaped sentence of death.

  CHAPTER SIX

  IT’S ALL RELATIVE: KEEPING IT IN THE FAMILY

  * * *

  ‘God gave us our relatives; thank God we can choose our friends.’

  – Ethel Watts Mumford

  Since the dawn of civilisation and the advent of co-habiting familial groups, the domestic stresses of near relations and family life has always existed. One family member committing a crime against another is not a new notion, and violence and murder committed within the family circle carried the same serious social taboo in the past as it does to the present day.

  Victorian family in a slum area of York. (Courtesy of York Museums Trust, York Art Gallery)

  While the instances of familial murder may have fluctuated, subject to the varying social and economic pressures governing the size and circumstance of households past, the following cases amply attest to the fact that the good folk of York were in no way immune to the murderous inclinations engendered by the sentiment expressed in the old adage, ‘You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family.’

  Life Partners

  * * *

  Intimate associations dictate that husbands and wives, lovers and sweethearts always have been and always will be prone to the odd spot of discord, it’s only human. Unfortunately, in some instances these moments of conflict become escalated and can end in tears – maybe even blood.

  We start with an ending so to speak, as the boyfriend and murderer of Juliet Wood was in fact the last person to be executed at York Prison in 1896 – a dubious claim to fame if ever there was one. August Carlsen, a forty-three-year-old Swedish seaman, was justly found guilty of Juliet’s murder committed in the summer of that year. Though natives of Hull and living in Myton Street near the docks, at that time Hull fell within the East Riding of Yorkshire and therefore Carlsen was tried at York. Juliet worked as a part-time prostitute, which inflamed Carlsen’s jealousy whenever he was ashore, and he was known to be repeatedly violent towards her. Incredibly, the sympathies of the judge and jury sitting on the case were swayed by the fact that Carlsen had been intoxicated at the time of the killing, although it was noted that the couple were said to be in an almost permanent state of inebriation. However, on the evening of 23 July matters clearly got out of control when Carlsen, presumably more intoxicated than usual, knocked on his landlord’s door to tell him, ‘I’ve just killed Juliet.’ The unfortunate Juliet, aged thirty-eight, was found on the bed with her throat cut and indeed very much dead.

  Recommendations for mercy were ultimately rejected by the Home Office, and no reprieve on extenuating circumstances was forthcoming, despite the request of the presiding judge and jury. Consequently, August Carlsen spent his last days in the condemned cell at York Prison on an iron bed with only the comfort of a thin straw mattress (the fireplace and rudimentary toilet were later additions to the Victorian cell). Carlsen was hanged on Tuesday, 22 December 1896.

  Interior of the condemned cell at York Gaol.

  Nearly forty years previous to Carlsen’s untimely end, another throat-cutting boyfriend to grace the scaffold outside York Prison was one John Taylor Whitworth. His demise proved a big draw in terms of audience numbers, with an estimated 5,000 spectators turning out to watch him hang on the afternoon of 8 January 1859.

  Whitworth was convicted of murdering his sweetheart Sally Hare, a servant girl whose throat he had cut on 1 October 1858, after an altercation arising from his suspicions that Sally was paying marked attentions to another man, and exacerbated by her refusal of Whitworth’s sexual demands.

  The verdict of ‘wilful murder’ returned against Whitworth, a twenty-two-year-old assistant shepherd and farm servant, must have rested primarily on the evidence Sally gave in the statement she made shortly before dying of the wounds inflicted on her by her controlling and possessive partner:

  The prisoner and I have kept company for about three years. Last night, the 30th of September, he came to see me. My mistress went to bed and left us up together in the kitchen. My master went to bed about eight o’clock. The prisoner and I sat quietly together till about one o’clock, and no angry words passed between us. About one o’clock he left the house to start for home, and asked me to accompany him a short distance. It was a beautiful starlit night, and I consented. We left the house together and got as far as the little common. He then accused me of going with another young man, whose name he did not mention. We had some words about it, and he asked me to take poison. He said, ‘If you will take some, I wil
l take some too, and we can die together’. I said I would not. He said, ‘If you don’t, I will kill you’. I said, ‘Though you do kill me, I won’t take any’. Immediately on leaving the house, and before he accused me of infidelity, he had attempted to take improper liberties with me, and had made indecent proposals to me. I would not accede to his proposals, and he then accused me of going with another man. After I refused to take the poison he got hold of me, threw me on the ground, put his knee upon me, pulled out a knife, opened it, and cut my throat. Before he cut me I implored him not to kill me, but he put one hand on my mouth, and with the other cut my throat. I got the knife out of his hand and managed to get up, but in the struggle I cut my hands and fingers very much. When I had got up he stabbed me in the throat with the knife, and I got hold of his hair, threw him backwards, and so managed to escape. When I was on the ground, and endeavouring to rise, he stamped upon my head with his foot two or three times. I ran home, bleeding all the way, and went straight to my mistress’s bedroom. I said that Whitworth had tried to murder me. My mistress got up and endeavoured to stop the bleeding with some clothes, and I was put to bed, where I have been ever since.