Hanged at Lincoln E-Book

Stephen Wade

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 238

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2009

Beschreibung

This intriguing book gathers together the stories of 120 criminals hanged at both Lincoln Castle Prison and HMP Lincoln on Greetwell Road between 1203 and 1961. The condemned featured here range from coiners and forgers, to thieves, highwamen and poisoners. Among those executed at Lincoln were Richard Insole, hanged in 1887 for murdering his wife; child killer Frederick Nodder, hanged in 1937; and Herbert Leonard Mills, who failed to commit the perfect murder and was hanged in 1951 by Albert Pierrepoint. Fully illustrated with photographs, drawings, news cuttings and documents, Hanged at Lincoln will appeal to everyone interested in the shadier side of Lincoln's history.

Leseprobe

HANGEDAT

LINCOLN

STEPHEN WADE

Map of Lincolnshire, from Arthur Young’s Travels 1801.

First published 2009

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

Reprinted 2011, 2012

This ebook edition first published in 2013

All rights reserved

© Stephen Wade, 2009, 2013

The right of Stephen Wade to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUBISBN 978 0 7509 5242 2

Original typesetting by The History Press

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. William Kills Walter

William Malbis, 1203

2. A Regular Villain

Walter Wright, April 1353

3. Four Sentenced to Hang

Margaret de Staindrop, Alan Taylor, & others, April 1353

4. A Murderous Pair

John Elmsall & Diota Baker, March 1396

5. Punished after the Revolt

John Hussey & Richard Harrison, March 1536–7

6. Two Traitors

Thomas Sprott & Thomas Hunt, 11 July 1600

7. The Belvoir Witch Case

Margaret & Phillipa Flower, 11 March 1619

8. Burned at the Stake

Eleanor Elsom, 20 July 1722

9. Robber Brothers

Isaac & Thomas Hallam, March 1733

10. A Burglar and a Robber

Thomas Dixon & William Marshall, 17 March 1738

11. Dick Turpin’s Trade

William Lomax, Thomas Sharp & Joseph Binge, 23 March 1739

12. A Lancashire Man Murdered

Philip Hooton, March 1769

13. A Killing in Gaol

William Matthews, March 1770

14. Bayoneted to Death

James Kearney, August 1770

15. Caught at The Swan

John Lyon, 24 March 1775

16. A Case of Matricide

William Farmery, 4 August 1775

17. A Crime Spree

James Lee, 21 March 1777

18. Family Murdered

Henry Atkinson, 18 July 1777

19. Footpad Hanged

Thomas Hamm, 25 July 1777

20. Highwaymen at Grantham

Edward Dodson & Robert Blades, 20 March 1778

21. Forger and Thief Die Together

Edward Johnson & Jonathan Barnet, 13 March 1782

22. A Case of Arson

John Storey, 2 August 1783

23. Coiners Hanged

Edward Perplar & William Dale, 22 August 1783

24. Four Die on the Scaffold

Thomas Wood, Richard Dowind, William Davison & Richard Bull, 15 March 1784

25. A Vicious Attack

Richard Dennis & William Wright, 7 August 1784

26. A Hanging and an Acquittal Mystery

Patience Elsom, November 1784

27. Nine Die after Spring Assize

John Huson & others, 18 March 1785

28. An Identity Problem

John Smith & Thomas Golling, 29 July 1785

29. Murder of a Baby Son

Joseph Wilkinson, 16 March 1786

30. Sheep-Stealers Die

Henry Knowles & Stephen Tarr, 24 March 1786

31. One Dies, One Hangs

John Curtis, 12 May 1786

32. Wool in the Pie

George Roberts, 11 August 1786

33. An Apprentice Killed

William Rawby, 16 March 1787

34. In Tears in the Cell

Thomas Dickensen, 23 March 1787

35. Murder at the Turnpike

John Wilson, 14 March 1788

36. Quadruple Neck-Stretching

George Bennett, William Hardy, John Smith & Frances Acred, 20 March 1788

37. Offence Uncertain

George Kilpike, William Nettleship & William Ward, 27 March 1789

38. A Hardened Villain

John George, 7 August 1789

39. A Louth Robbery

John Ward, 19 March 1790

40. Stealing on Wildmore Fen

Thomas Rowell, 30 July 1790

41. A Murder in the Stables

William Burder, 11 March 1791

42. The Deadly Horse Trade

John Robson, 18 March 1791

43. A Sad Case

John Betts & William Campwell, 19 August 1791

44. Death Blow with a Hammer

Ralph Smith, 16 March 1791

45. Perjury was his Downfall

John Cocklin, 23 March 1792

46. A Spalding Burglary

John Dinney, 29 August 1794

47. Deserter Dies

Edward Coxon, 22 July 1796

48. A Claxby Poisoning

Elizabeth Brocklesby, 17 March 1797

49. Confession at the Gallows

Thomas Newman, 6 April 1798

50. The ‘White Lion’ Robbery

William Jewitt, 21 March 1800

51. A Rape Case

William Chapman, 8 August 1800

52. Undone by his Breeches

John Green, 13 March 1801

53. Two Women Tried for an Epworth Murder

Susannah Mottershall, 23 July 1801

54. Robbers and Forger Die Together

Matthew Stubley, Edward Taylor & John Whitaker, 31 July 1801

55. Turned off at Noon

Robert Wells & George Mitchell, 13 August 1802

56. A Blyborough Murder

Thomas Wilson, 14 March 1803

57. Tom Otter Gibbeted

Thomas Temporel, 14 March 1806

58. Three Burglars Die

John Freeman, Charles Metcalfe & Henry Coates, 20 March 1807

59. Silk-Eyed Jack Hangs

Charles Wilcock & ‘Silk-Eyed Jack’, 24 July 1807

60. A Motley Crew Hang

Charles Wakelin, Henry Sawer, William Marshall & John Atkinson, 18 August 1810

61. Fatal Threesome

George Rowell & Azubah Fountain, 6 August 1813

62. No Defence

David Spreadbury, 13 August 1813

63. Last Hanging on Burton Road

William Ward, 1 April 1814

64. Two Bankers Hang

Thomas Clarke & Henry Coster, 28 July 1815

65. Antimony Kills a Child

Elizabeth Whiting, 15 March 1817

66. A Surfleet Murder

Elizabeth Warriner, 26 July 1817

67. Bad Character Meets his End

William Longland, 15 August 1817

68. A Multiple Hanging

Richard Randall, John Tubbs, Thomas Evison & Thomas Norris, 27 March 1818

69. A Violent Burglary

John Louth, 19 March 1819

70. Hanged for Horse-Stealing

Richard Johnson, 6 August 1819

71. A Merciless Rape

William Fox, 17 March 1820

72. A Robbery Planned in Manchester

David Booth & John Parrish, 23 March 1821

73. Wife Murder at Whaplode

James Cawthorne, 9 August 1821

74. Highway Robbery on Market Day

John Rogers, 22 March 1822

75. Robbery and Assault at Caistor

Joseph Burkitt, 2 August 1822

76. ‘The commission of unnatural crimes’

William Arden, Benjamin Chandler & John Doughty, 21 March 1823

77. Arsenic in Alford

John Smith, 15 March 1824

78. Throat Cut to Escape the Noose

James Wetherill, 20 August 1824

79. ‘What’s hanging? I care nothing for it!’

William Udale, 23 March 1827

80. Robbery at Cross O’Cliff Hill

George Wingfield, 27 March 1829

81. Rough Tom Dies

Timothy Brammer, Thomas Strong & John Clarke, 19 March 1830

82. Killer in the Barn

Michael Lundy, 12 March 1831

83. Burglary of a Father-in-Law

John Greenwood, 18 March 1831

84. A Fatal Fight in Grimsby

William Hall, 22 July 1831

85. Arson at Lusby

Richard Cooling & Thomas Motley, 29 July 1831

86. Murder at Heckington

William Taylor, 18 March 1833

87. Hanged for Two Shillings

William Stephenson, 22 March 1833

88. Rapist Found with a Bloody Face

Thomas Knapton, 26 July 1833

89. Robbery with Violence

Thomas Johnson, 17 March 1843

90. A Boston Poisoning

Eliza Joyce, 2 August 1844

91. A Wainfleet Murder

John Ward, 27 July 1849

92. The Old Man put up a Fight

Henry Carey & William Picket, 5 August 1859

93. A Controversial Hanging

Priscilla Biggadike, 28 December 1868

94. The Murderous Brewer

William Horry, 1 April 1872

95. He Killed his Sweetheart

Peter Blanchard, 9 August 1875

96. Caught in Lowestoft

William Clarke, 26 March 1877

97. First Hanging in the New Prison

James Anderson, 19 February 1883

98. Irish Joe Hangs

Thomas Garry, 7 May 1883

99. Major Stress for the Hangman

Mary Lefley, 26 May 1884

100. Fisherman with a Gun

Richard Insole, 21 February 1887

101. A Shooting at Waterside

Arthur Spencer, 28 July 1891

102. Cigars in the Death Cell

Henry Rumbold, 19 December 1893

103. ‘She won’t aggravate me any more!’

Joseph Bowser, 27 July 1897

104. Murder by Rat Poison

Edward Bell, 25 July 1899

105. Grimsby Knife Murder

Samuel Smith, 10 March 1903

106. Boultham Murder

Leonard Patchett, 28 July 1903

107. Battered by a Coal Hammer

William Duddles, 20 November 1907

108. Calm with the Hangman

William Wright, 10 March 1920

109. Insanity Pleas Fail

Frank Fowler & George Robinson, 13 December 1922

110. Killed for a Bungalow

Bertram Kirby, 4 January 1928

111. The Murder of Mona Tinsley

Frederick Nodder, 30 December 1937

112. Murder at Walesby

Leonard Holmes, 28 May 1946

113. Murder in a Borstal

Kenneth Strickson, 22 March 1949

114. The Perfect Murder Goes Wrong

Herbert Leonard Mills, 11 December 1951

115. Stabbed to Death

Eric Norcliffe, 12 December 1952

116. No Case of Self-Defence

Harold Fowler, 12 August 1954

117. A Brutal Killing in Skegby

James Robinson, 24 May 1955

118. Murder in the Woodyard

Kenneth Roberts, 12 July 1955

119. Murder of a Widow

John Constantine, 1 September 1960

120. Last man on the Lincoln Gallows

Wasyl Gnypiuk, 27 January 1961

Appendix: Hangings with little or no information

Bibliography & Sources

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Crime history interests all kinds of writers and scholars, and sometimes enthusiasts whose names are little known provide the base for future writing. This certainly applies in the case of N.V. Gagen’s self-published Hanged at Lincoln 1716–1961, which I have found invaluable. In addition, books by Adrian Gray and B.J. Davey (fully referenced in the bibliography) have been very useful.

Staff at Lincolnshire Archives, at the prison and castle sites, and at the Illustrations Index have been helpful. I have to thank Paul Kemp for his help with some Gainsborough references. Retired police officer Harry Johnson sent me helpful letters too.

Sources outside the normal archival records are notoriously difficult to assess, but crime historians rely on these ephemera for extra snippets of information and to complement known sources. In this respect, a chronicle written by a certain H. Capland in 1835 provided details of names and crimes, as did a list of executions at Lincoln published in Ward’s Historical Guide to Lincoln (1880).

Thanks are due to the library staff in Lincoln public libraries who compiled cuttings books some years ago: these provided some aspects of social history that have helped enhance the narrative. The same applies to a number of pamphlets and journal articles, all listed in the bibliography. This was built on to some extent with scraps of oral history from staff at HMP Lincoln, where the last hanging (in 1961) has entered into history. The power of this for historians may be seen in Robert Douglas’s book At Her Majesty’s Pleasure (2007), in which he recalls sitting in the death cell with a condemned man in Bristol. I have been fortunate in that I have visited what was once the death cell in the Greetwell Road prison (before the refurbishment of A Wing) so I have my own small piece of historical testimony to add.

For details of the Belvoir witch case, I am indebted to the exemplary research carried out by Michael Honeybone. For permission to use the first page of the chapbook on that case, I must thank Magdalene College library, University of Cambridge.

For permission to reproduce the illustrations of the White Hart at Sibsey, and the White Horse at Market Deeping, thanks to the Local Studies Collection, Lincolnshire Archives, courtesy of Lincolnshire County Council.

Cassini Publishing Ltd kindly allowed reproduction of the map regarding Tom Otter.

Finally, thanks to the Lincoln Record Society for permission to use the illustration of the jurors’ seals.

As to the nature of the tales told here: I have dealt with some of the more celebrated Lincolnshire hangings in more depth in my book Lincolnshire Murders (2006). In the present work, the aim is to provide a reference but also to produce more than a mere checklist of known facts. I have therefore omitted the cases of which we know very little from the main entries and listed them in the appendices.

INTRODUCTION

In 1843 the press reported a dreadful murder in Quadring, near Spalding; a schoolmistress named Mary Spencer was found in her cottage with her head almost severed from her body. Pupils arriving at the school had the horrendous sight of their teacher lying in a pool of blood. There was blood on the walls, and there had clearly been a struggle. As word spread, a labourer queried, ‘I wonder what Bill’s been up to? He was out all night and came in all over blood.’

The constable was called and William Howett was arrested. He was twenty-two and had been deaf and dumb since birth. An inquest was held at the Brown Cow Inn, where Howett’s mother claimed she and the constable had gone to her son’s room and found his shirt covered in blood. A committal warrant from the coroner directed Howett to be taken to Lincoln Prison. He was charged with wilful murder, but spared the hangman: instead he was committed to an asylum for the usual length of time in such cases – to be detained ‘at her Majesty’s pleasure’.

This case is not unusual. In spite of the popular narratives of murder in nineteenth-century England, and writings about children and young women being hanged, along with all kinds of petty offenders (by today’s standards), the fact is that it would be easy to compile a book listing and describing those who killed other people in Lincolnshire in days gone by and yet did not hang. Even in the decades ruled by the Bloody Code of the eighteenth century, when there were 220 capital offences, the professionals in the law machine often did all they could to avoid giving the accused a date with the hangman. There were far fewer children hanged in the years before 1830, when capital offences began to reduce in number. Of course, in addition to the commutation of sentence to transportation or a prison term in England, there was the issue of the defence in court: potentially, that could reduce the number of hangings. But defences of insanity were difficult to apply successfully. Howett was fortunate in that respect, but his fate in the asylum was probably far from pleasant.

One of the most dramatic cases of reprieve was that of Priscilla Woodford, a farm servant who, in 1831, set fire to a haystack at Haconby where she worked, after a row with her employers. In the March 1832 Lincoln Assize she was sentenced to hang, at just sixteen years of age. In the early 1830s there was widespread rural crime, in the wake of what is now called the ‘Swing Riots’, and it must have looked as if Priscilla would hang. But a petition saw her sentence commuted to one of transportation to New South Wales, where she married a man who had also escaped the noose, Thomas Winstanley.

Lincoln has been a fortress and a place of prisons and scaffolds for many centuries. From Tudor times, there had been a courthouse and a county gaol within the castle walls; in the debtors’ prison the chronicle shows that John Wesley’s father was a debtor who spent time there. In contrast to the courthouse, which handled cases from Lincolnshire generally, Lincoln people were tried at the Guildhall in the Stonebow. The prison reformer, John Howard, saw the old prison when he prepared his great work of 1776, The State of the Prisons. The new prison within the castle was completed in 1787.

The prison as seen by the visitor today is primarily Victorian; William Lumley designed the interior and John Carr’s famous design is evident in the exterior. Between 1846 and 1848 the prison was enlarged, and in 1872 the new prison at Greetwell Road was built. From the death cells in the various gaols came the felons who were destined for the scaffold. The first gallows was close to what is now the small roundabout by the Burton road, close to the walls and the Struggler public house. The condemned felon would be taken there in a cart, and then the hangman would fit the noose over a crossbeam and let the horse go. In 1817 the Cobb Hall tower was used. The crowds who came to watch the criminals die could book a place in one of the taverns opposite and see the ‘turning off’ at the tower. Now that the trees have been cleared from the walls by Cobb Hall (in 2008) there is more of a sense of what the dramatic ‘theatre of the scaffold’ would have been like in terms of space and the vista of the death.

The prison in the castle. (Author’s collection)

There were occasional escapes, such as by a man named Ralph. He escaped just before he was due to be transferred to Armley gaol in Leeds. He had a replica key and a way of escape through a coal cellar. Not long after this, in January 1855, there was an advertisement for a turnkey in the Lincolnshire Times. The salary was £40 a year and applications had to be in writing; part of the duties was to instruct the male prisoners in reading, writing and arithmetic.

Public hanging was abolished in 1868, and Priscilla Biggadike was the first victim at Lincoln to be privately hanged, out of view of the crowd, though reporters were present. By 1861, the number of capital sentences had been reduced to four: murder, attempted murder, treason and piracy in the dockyards. But the criminal law still had no appeal system for the poorer people: the courts of criminal appeal were not created until 1907. There was also a problem with the nature of manslaughter, notably in cases of infanticide and hiding a child – these were not included within manslaughter until 1922, and so some of the murder cases which were related to the killing of children through a number of economic reasons persisted as a problem throughout the century. In many cases, such affairs would mean that the women in question would be committed to an asylum.

The Victorian prison, showing the view towards the execution route. (Author’s collection)

The graves of executed killers. (Author’s collection)

The prison, showing the wings. (Author’s collection)

The Strugglers Inn, close to the Burton junction where the first gallows stood. (Author’s collection)

In the twentieth century the steady move towards the abolition of the death penalty was marked by a series of committees and reports on all matters relating to hanging. In April 1948, hangings ceased for an experimental period of five years. From the 1870s, the Greetwell Road prison had been the place with the death cell, and now it was unused, until the last Lincoln hangings in the 1950s through to 1961. In March 1957 the Homicide Act was passed: murder was no longer automatically a capital offence once a new offence, ‘capital murder’, was created. There were six grades of capital murder and these are reflected in the last Lincoln hangings: murder in the furtherance of theft; murder by shooting or causing an explosion; murder in the course of escaping custody; the murder of police officers; the murder of prison officers, and a second killing tried at court. Despite this, Lincoln still had its reprieve dramas, as in the case of John Docherty in 1954. Docherty was legless, and had tried to take his own life – after murdering his fiancée – by hurling himself across the railway lines at Grantham. The Home Secretary exercised mercy; Docherty did not hang because of the clemency applied in relation to a physical deformity clause in the Homicide Act.

Mrs Van der Elst campaigning against hanging. (Author’s collection)

This book covers the period between 1200 and 1961, but for reasons of space I have selected only a representative group of pre-1700 hangings. The fact is that there is little known about the earlier hangings. The period I have covered comprises four phases in the history of capital punishment in Britain. First, the Medieval to Stuart years were dominated by the ‘Frank Pledge’ and then the Curia Regis and the King’s Bench courts; as the assizes developed, from the years of Henry I, execution gradually became more systematised in the new criminal justice procedure, rather than a matter of quick hangings carried out from a number of different courts (hence the number of ‘gallows’ references on early maps). Then, during the second phase, between the early Georgian period and around 1830, the Bloody Code dominated the scene. This is the term used to describe that period when there were so many capital crimes on the statute books. Up until 1800, about a third of condemned prisoners were actually hanged; one reason for this was the 1723 Black Act, mainly used to try to suppress poaching. The third phase was the period before the late 1860s, by which time public execution had ended and the number of capital crimes was reduced to four. Finally, the last century of hangings included a large number of issues, such as the training of hangmen (following a report of 1888) and the topics of diminished responsibility, hanging of children and the manslaughter/murder debate resolved.

Of hangings in the city before about 1700, there is little in the records, with a few exceptions, and I have listed these in the appendix. Some of those executions took place during times of great national furore, as was the case after the 1536 Pilgrimage of Grace, which had a prominent Lincolnshire following. In 1537 twelve men were tried at the Guildhall, including the Abbot of Barlings; all were hanged.

I have added an appendix in order to explain the Medieval and Early Modern legal system and the processes that led to hangings or otherwise, with a commentary on the lack of substantial detail of the material involved.

Reminder of the hangman’s presence: Marwood’s attic room was in this building. (Author’s collection)

In earlier centuries, it is not possible to identify the hangmen at work in Lincoln. But from the early nineteenth century onwards we have some fairly substantial records. However, it is not until the famous and well-documented executioners; William Calcraft, James Berry, William Marwood, the Billingtons, Albert Pierrepoint, Steve Wade and Harry Allen, that we can add to the narratives of hanging at Lincoln with some biography of these men. Readers are referred to the books by Steve Fielding for this information.

Lincolnshire boasts the most innovative and humane of the famous hangmen; William Marwood was born in Horncastle and learned his trade, along with his advance in the use of the long drop, by hanging animals and bags of flour. James Berry, the Bradford hangman, carried out some work at Lincoln, including the hanging of Mary Lefley, of which he left a detailed account in his memoirs. In 1684, the notorious Judge Jeffreys came to the city, but as far as we know he did not hang anyone; at that time he was Lord Chief Justice.

Finally, it must be said that the legal and criminal history of the city is a factor in the tourist and heritage identity of Lincoln. It is a provoking experience to visit the castle, walk up the sharp slope to the Lucy Tower and see the sombre circle of gravestones belonging to executed felons beneath the trees, or to stand at the door of what was once the death cell and imagine the cries and despair of those about to die. What makes this experience yet more melancholy is the certainty that some of these unfortunates have since been proved innocent. The most prominent of these is Priscilla Biggadike. In the Lucy Tower we can still make out the initials ‘P.B.’ and the date, 1868. We know that she was innocent: Thomas Proctor confessed to the crime on his deathbed in 1882.

Not all murders ended in convictions of course, and the county is full of obscure and dramatic references to killings for which the perpetrator either did not hang or for which there was never an arrest. An example of this is a tombstone in the Sanctuary at St Mary’s Church, Long Sutton, which bears the inscription ‘Alas poor Bailey.’ This refers to Dr John Bailey, a surgeon killed on the Tydd road on 21 April 1795, and whose murderer, Thomas Newman, was never caugh but confessed on the gallows (seechapter 49).

The Wig and Mitre, showing the connection with castle and assizes. (Author’s collection)

Steps leading to the burial ground for felons. (Author’s collection)

The entrance to the Lucy tower, burial place of the executed killers. (Author’s collection)

1

WILLIAM KILLS WALTER

William Malbis, 1203

This case is included to give one example from very early criminal history, and a perusal of the assize rolls for Lincolnshire up to the end of the fifteenth century show just how rare it was for a hanging to be the sentence, given that there were so many acquittals. A potential felon was tried at the assize, usually in Lincoln if it was the Easter term, but for the other terms of the legal year, the accused were tried in London. Many ran out into outlawry, many paid fines and some were imprisoned.

Not all trials were held in criminal courts in the Middle Ages; many offences were tried in Church courts, but in Lincoln, unlike York for instance, there were very few hangings actually in the city – though it was different across the county, where there were plenty of gallows available.

But in the centuries before the justices of the peace and the system of gaol delivery, Lincolnshire hangings did take place. One early example was William Malbis of Gainsborough, whose story is brief. He killed one Walter Fulingaud, for which he was put into gaol at Lincoln, and then hanged. He was not tried at a higher court, and the punishment was done in the frankpledge system – the earliest organised local justice system in England, whereby a community was responsible for an individual transgression, and in each tithing, when this was instituted in Anglo-Saxon times, the tithingman would ensure that a culprit was brought before a court leet to be tried. Walter was not: he was delivered for trial in Lincoln.

This first case illustrates how sketchy the details are of these early hangings. But the ominous words in Latin appear in the texts of the records: suspensus fuit – he was hanged.

2

A REGULAR VILLAIN

Walter Wright, April 1353

Fourteenth-century England suffered a widespread famine between around 1314 and 1319, and in addition to the foreign wars, there was the Black Death of 1348–9, when almost a third of the population died. There were gangs of desperate people and robberies were common. The Lincolnshire Peace Rolls for the years around the middle of the century show the most terrible crimes being committed in the county: in one example, four men broke into the house of a Thornton man, and raped and abducted his daughter. Their punishment? They were tried by the King’s Bench in Lincoln and acquitted. So many crimes at the time were similarly atrocious, but hangings were few and far between. There were either no witnesses to the crime, or men who would speak for the accused in court, and it was a simple matter to walk free if the accused had any kind of social standing at all, though outlawry was common. Outlawry meant that the person was a felon and so would lose their land and chattels, as would their heirs. It was a huge punishment, but at least the criminal lived to fight another day.

However, Walter Wright, a servant working for William Carter in the parish of St Augustine, broke into the home of John Shipman and stole a chest belonging to a Boston man. He was tried before the very busy justice, William de Skipwith, and was sentenced to hang.

3

FOUR SENTENCED TO HANG

Margaret de Staindrop, Alan Taylor & others, April 1353

Along with Walter Wright (see