by Graham Seal
The church also provided the charity and scraps of education that were the lot of the working classes for much of the nineteenth century. This source of knowledge was supplemented to some extent by the secular offerings of the Mechanics’ Institutes. Establishments selling the few necessities and the even-fewer indulgences available also sprang up. The matches, candles, needles, thread and other such articles that were often the treasured possessions of the urban working family were bought in dingy shops, cramped into the front room of a terrace house, or from a ramshackle lean-to built alongside.
At the opposite end of the scale from the houses of God were what the temperate and the excessively pious called ‘houses of sin’. The public house was at least as important an institution in the urban villages as the church. It provided alcohol, of course, but almost as necessarily, for men at least, a place to meet, smoke, gamble and discuss the events of the time and the trivia of everyday working life. Pubs were often noisy, always smoky places where men laughed, swore, cursed and sometimes made silly threats and hatched even sillier plots.
William Sykes and his friends often met at Masborough’s Black Bull Inn to drink, smoke and talk about the way things were and about how they might make some things at least a little better for themselves. The landlord, James Woolhouse, gave evidence that ‘they have all been in the habit of frequenting my house’.20 It was at the Black Bull where they had made the fateful decision to go poaching in Silver Wood. The events that followed from that simple discussion were to banish William Sykes to the other end of the Earth.
4 On Trial for Murder
He removed the muscles and exposed a comminuted fracture of the left side of the skull cap, eight or nine broken pieces being driven in upon the brain.
Mr Henry John Knight, surgeon, on the autopsy of Lilley
The poachers’ trial began in Leeds a few days before Christmas. By now local interest in the affair was profound. The proceedings were reported at length and in detail by the local press. Sykes, Teale, Savage, Bone, Bentcliffe and Booth stood in the dock, sombre and attentive. But their seventh companion, William’s mate Robert Woodhouse, was in the box as a witness for the prosecution.
Arrested in Sheffield at the same time as the others, Woodhouse had evidently decided the game was up and that he might as well have the large reward and save himself as well. He made a statement incriminating his companions, especially Bone, Bentcliffe, Teal and Sykes. There was a considerable amount of legal argumentation in which Woodhouse further incriminated the others, even though, as he admitted, he had been the last to leave the prostrate and dying Lilley and had struck him with his own stick, though only to see if he was still alive. Mr Campbell Foster for the accused sought to throw the guilt back onto Woodhouse, a tactic that scored as well with the jury as it did with the locals observing the trial. But it had no impact on the judge. Foster also revealed Woodhouse’s criminal past in connection with poaching and suggested that he was influenced in his decision to turn approver by the large rewards that had been posted after the death of Lilley.
Most of the witnesses from the committal hearing were recalled and re-examined. It was clear that there had been a good deal of animosity between the local keepers and the poachers and that the events of the fatal night were more than random. According to head keeper Hawkins, Silver Wood was a poor area for game. This begged the obvious question of why seven experienced poachers had travelled several hours to hunt there.1 It also raised the question of how Hawkins and the other heavily-armed keepers just happened to be in the same location that evening and had lain uncomfortably in wait there for some hours before the poachers arrived. The reluctance of Hawkins and the other keepers to identify the poachers again became an issue.
This time the judge, Justice Shee, took up the question with Hawkins directly, questioning him intensively about his relationship with Teale. The interrogation revealed that Hawkins had known Teale, boy and man, for nearly 20 years. ‘And,’ asked the judge incredulously, ‘do you mean to say that when you left the field you did not know it to be him?’ When Hawkins insisted he did not recognise Teale the judge pointed out that he had admitted meeting the accused man and having a conversation with him barely more than six months earlier. But Hawkins still insisted that he had not known it was Teale until he had seen him at Rotherham Court House.2
The trial progressed to the giving of medical evidence. Mr Henry John Knight, the surgeon, described in medical detail the state of Lilley after the savage attack upon him. At two in the morning of 11 October, Knight had attended Lilley. He was
lying on his back in bed perfectly insensible. His breathing was sterterous [sic]. He was bleeding from the head. The pupils of his eyes were fully dilated … There was a pulpy swelling over the left temple, a lacerated wound about half an inch in extent behind the left ear, higher than this on the same side a contused and lacerated wound, starred or cross-shaped, on the top of the head there were two lacerated wounds, each about two inches in length, and there were also two lacerated wounds at the back of the head, a lacerated angular wound above the right ear, and a contused and lacerated wound on the right ear, itself dividing the cartilage [sic] of the ear.
The doctor never saw Lilley alive again and on the following day conducted the post-mortem examination.
There was extravasation of blood in the left temporal muscle corresponding to the pulpy swelling, also extravasculation of blood in the whole of the muscles on the left side of the head. He removed the muscles and exposed a comminuted fracture of the left side of the skull cap, eight or nine broken pieces being driven in upon the brain. He then removed the skull cap, and in the outer membrane of the brain he found a rent about an inch in length, corresponding in position to the starred wound on the left side. Beneath this rent there was a layer of coagulated blood, on removing which he found the substance of the brain lacerated to about an inch in circumference. He then removed the brain and found a layer of coagulated blood at the base of the skull extended as far as the roof of the nose on the left aside and round the bones of the skull to the right side. Altogether there were eight wounds and a swelling. He attributed death to pressure upon the brain, caused by the fracture and extravasations of blood … There were wounds behind the right and left ear that appeared to have been produced by stones.
On being cross-examined by the defence, the doctor said he found no bruising elsewhere on the body, specifically stating that ‘a blow on the inside of the left leg of sufficient force to cause the deceased to roll over would leave a mark’, thus contradicting Woodhouse’s assertion that he had used his stick on Lilley in this way.3
There was further legal argument over the admissibility of Booth’s statement, which confirmed much of what Bentcliffe claimed and clearly incriminated Bone, Teale and Sykes. Booth did not expect to receive any reward for his statement, saying, ‘I expect to receive the benefit in another world.’ He said that Teale, Bone and Sykes threatened to swear that Booth killed Lilley if he informed. ‘Sykes has been very bitter about it, and said that if anyone told about it he would swear it on them.’ Booth also gave another insight into the clandestine underworld of the poachers and keepers, saying that ‘Teale said, I believe he swore, that if he had known it was Lilley he would not have left him so long as there had been a bit of breath in him.’
After two days of proceedings Mr Justice Shee spent nearly three hours summing up. The basic message of his summation was that the jury should find the defendants guilty of murder. When he had finished, one juror asked if there were not a verdict for them to consider against the informer. When the judge replied that Woodhouse was not in the dock, the juror was heard to mutter what most people in the court were thinking: ‘I wish he was.’ The jury foreman then had to explain to Justice Shee that the jury was very unhappy at not being able to render a verdict against Woodhouse. Exasperated by this display of local intransigence, the judge sent the sullen jury to consider their verdict against the accused.
It looked very ba
d for the poachers, especially for William Sykes. His friend Woodhouse had betrayed him and the others. Woodhouse’s evidence had been carefully crafted to slide culpability away from himself and onto the others. But it was William Sykes who Woodhouse singled out for most of the blame. According to his evidence Sykes had led the poachers, he had given the warning cry when the keepers came upon them and he was the one who had to be prevented from attacking Butler in the same way he had laid into Lilley. Worst of all though, Woodhouse claimed that when he remonstrated with Sykes about attacking a man so savagely, Sykes had replied that he ‘hoped the —— would die’.4
The poachers’ defence attempted to undermine this damning evidence. Campbell Foster had pointed out that it could just as easily have been Woodhouse who struck the fatal blow as he was the last to leave the shattered Lilley on that desperate night. Antagonistic towards the informer, the jury was clearly impressed by these arguments. But most of the other evidence, together with the determination of the judge to have a verdict of murder, painted a very grim picture for the defendants. They waited fearfully for the jury’s verdict.
Their trepidation was mercifully brief. The jury returned to the court in less than an hour. Either in fear or anticipation, all present expected to hear a verdict of guilty. William Sykes looked very anxious and Teale was ‘visibly agitated’.
The Clerk of Arraigns: gentleman of the jury, have you agreed upon your verdict?
One of the jurors replied ‘no’. But the foreman insisted ‘We have.’
The Clerk of Arraigns: Do you find John Teale guilty or not guilty?
At this point the foreman of the jury declared himself too disgusted with his fellow jurors to deliver the verdict. A juror, presumably the one who had just spoken, gave the verdict of ‘guilty’ – then, after a cruel few seconds pause – ‘of manslaughter’.
The reporter attending for the Independent wrote that ‘The last word took the whole Court by surprise. Everybody stared incredulously at the jury, the prisoner Teale being clearly unable to believe his ears.’
The same verdict was recorded for Bone and Sykes, with Bentcliffe being recommended to mercy. Booth and Savage were found not guilty and removed from the bar.
The four convicts showed themselves to be thoroughly conscious of the vast change that had taken place in their position and prospects. The shadow of the gallows, the ‘grim presence’… was removed and they seemed to be indifferent as to what fate may now be in store for them.
Clearly astonished, ‘Mr Justice Shee … did not disguise his dissatisfaction at the verdict of the jury for the minor offence’.5 He rebuked the jury for deciding against his summing-up, his annoyance stinging the foreman to turn and say to the juror who had delivered the verdict: ‘There! I told you how it would be.’
When these extraordinary exchanges between the representative of the rulers and those they ruled came to an end, the judge gave Bone and Bentcliffe 20 years penal servitude apiece and sentenced Sykes and Teale to life. There was a scream from among the spectators as Bentcliffe’s wife, either from relief or shock, fainted.
The toughened Independent reporter was also surprised: ‘The jury were obviously disconcerted by his Lordship’s observations, which were more pointed and severe than any we have previously heard a judge address to a jury, in the course of a pretty large experience.’ He subsequently interviewed a member of the jury who told him that ‘ten or eleven of them had made up their minds in the course of the previous night to a verdict of manslaughter. They refused to take the law from a judge, who told them in express terms that there was no element in the case that could reduce it to manslaughter.’6
Why had the majority of the jurors ‘refused to take the law from a judge’? Once again, the Independent’s journalist provides a perceptive interpretation.
In the first place we may take into account the almost universal prejudice against the game laws, which often induces juries to take a very lenient view of the consequences which result sometimes to the poachers or the gamekeepers through a fight over the body of a hare or a pheasant. The approver, Woodhouse, was hated by all. A universal shudder agitated the court when the wretch admitted that he used his bludgeon upon the prostrate body of Lilley, and the reason he gave for the act – that he ‘wanted to see if he was moveable’ – deepened the horror and aversion with which he inspired the court.
Woodhouse’s prominent part in the organisation and leadership of previous poaching sorties and his admission that he informed to save his own neck had not endeared him to the jury. Nor did the fact that he was prepared to see his companions hang and to walk away with the reward money. In addition, Woodhouse had been the last to leave Lilley’s body and the medical evidence showed that the blow he had given to it had not been to the leg as he claimed, but may well have been the coup de grâce. Added to this was the repulsion at the number, variety and unpleasantness of the weapons with which the keepers had armed themselves that night. The teaser was particularly loathsome and brutal. Even though the weapons had not been used, the intention of the keepers was clear to all.
Hovering between these lines from the newspaper accounts are the deep local tensions that lay beneath the fight at Silver Wood, tensions that can be glimpsed at certain moments during the committal and trial proceedings: the reluctance of the keepers to identify the poachers to the police, even to the judge at the committal, the fact that at least some of those involved had long associations of one kind or another and that there were considerable personal and other antagonisms between them. Hardly anyone in the community from which William Sykes and his companions came believed that there was anything wrong with poaching, apart from getting caught. And, of course, many people were of the opinion that Lilley got what he deserved.
But not everyone. On 11 November some verses were published by the Rotherham Advertiser that put the point of view of the gamekeepers and their supporters:
A FEW LINES ON THE MURDER OF WILLIAM LILLEY, GAMEKEEPER, OF WICKERSLEY
At Wickersely there lived a gamekeeper
Of honour and great fame
He took delight in the dead of night,
Preserving of his game.
On the tenth night of October he left his wife and children,
The weather was cold and chilly;
The poachers shed the blood near Silverwood
Of famous William Lilley.
It was Sykes, Teale, and Bone fought with hedgestakes, sticks and stones,
More like savages in a melee;
They shed the blood near Silverwood
Of famous William Lilley.
The murderers found no resting place,
Wherever they did scout;
And Hockaday from Wakefield came,
And searched the villains out.
The crime of murder will stick close to them,
Wherever they may be,
And stain the spot they finish at last –
On the gallows tree.
Though years and centuries may pass away,
Then human blood will chill
To hear the tale of wilful murder
Of poor Lilley of the hill.
Poor Lilley is gone, and we greet [mourn] him,
Though in these woods we will meet no more;
Still we hope some day to meet him
On some peaceful, happy shore.
Self-appointed judge, jury and executioner, the poet – identified only as ‘H.W.’ – was expressing the passions of the gamekeepers and their masters. Lilley was now a hero to that group and Sykes and his companions the bloody villains who must suffer appropriate punishment. But despite this deep enmity in one, obviously small, sector of the local community, William Sykes and his companions had beaten the very considerable odds against them. They would not hang, though perhaps their fates and those of their families would be, in some ways, worse.
Myra and William were allowed only a few brief minutes together. We can imagine what passed between them. In one of her later l
etters Myra would recollect how she felt at the time. William’s hands felt soft and he seemed very young-looking: ‘my hart Broke neley’ she wrote.
Then William was led away. Myra returned home to Masborough, the children and Christmas without a father or a husband.
Only a few weeks later, Myra was back in the Leeds assizes as a witness in the night poaching case. While the poachers had been found not guilty of murdering Lilley, Booth, Savage and William Sykes still had to face the potentially serious consequences that could arise from a charge of poaching at night. The three were at the bar again little more than a week after New Year, on 9 January 1866.
5 Another Trial
Speak the truth, Mrs Sykes.
Unidentified woman at the trial of Booth and Savage on charges of night poaching, 9 January 1866
The second trial began on a Tuesday, again before Mr Justice Shee, and with an ironic twist. William Sykes, now dressed in prison uniform, was acquitted before the proceedings began and admitted as an approver against Woodhouse who was also present as a spectator in the court. It seems that William was not required to give evidence in this trial, though Myra’s role was to be an important one.
In order to prove the guilt or otherwise of Booth and Savage it was necessary to establish who had been present at the Sykes house prior to the poaching expedition. Myra appeared for the prosecution to point the finger at Booth and Savage. But she also used the opportunity to cast further doubt – if any were needed – upon the motives of Woodhouse in approving against his former comrades.
