Foul Deeds & Suspicious Deaths in Shrewsbury and Around Shropshire

By David J. Cox

Sixteen true crime cases with a connection to two West Midlands English towns from the Middle Ages to the early decades of the twentieth century.
 
Criminal cases give us a fascinating, often harrowing insight into crime and the criminal mind, into policing methods and the justice system. They also tell us much about social conditions and attitudes in the past. And such cases make absorbing reading. David Cox’s graphic account of 16 notorious cases in Shrewsbury and around Shropshire is a particularly strong and revealing study of this kind.
 
Using newspaper reports, census returns, and court records, he reconstructs each case in vivid detail. At the same time, he looks into the background of the crimes and into the lives of the criminals, and he describes the methods of detection and the punishments that were imposed. The cases he’s chosen range in date from the medieval period to the twentieth century. Included are the case of the forger who had his ear nailed to a post, the father who killed his infant son with vitriol, the transportation of a seventy-year-old woman, the murder of an inmate in a lunatic asylum, a twentieth-century highway robber and a VC winner involved in bigamy.
 
The personal dramas David Cox explores in this book will be compelling reading for anyone who is interested in the sinister side of human nature and human weakness.Criminal cases give us a fascinating, often harrowing insight into crime and the criminal mind, into policing methods and the justice system. They also tell us much about social conditions and attitudes in the past. And such cases make absorbing reading. David Cox's graphic account of 16 notorious cases in Shrewsbury and around Shropshire is a particularly strong and revealing study of this kind. Using newspaper reports, census returns and court records, he reconstructs each case in vivid detail. At the same time he looks into the background of the crimes and into the lives of the criminals, and he describes the methods of detection and the punishments that were imposed. The cases he's chosen range in date from the medieval period to the twentieth century. Included are the case of the forger who had his ear nailed to a post, the father who killed his infant son with vitriol, the transportation of a 70-year-old woman, the murder of an inmate in a lunatic asylum, a twentieth-century highway robber and a VC winner involved in bigamy. The personal dramas David Cox explores in this book will be compelling reading for anyone who is interested in the sinister side of human nature and human weakness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 16, 2008
• ISBN: 9781783408481

David J. Cox

David J. Cox, Ph.D., M.S.B., BCBA-D currently works as the VP of Data Science at RethinkFirst and is faculty at the Institute for Applied Behavioral Science at Endicott College. Dr. Cox has earned a M.S. in Bioethics from Union Graduate College; a PhD in behavior analysis from the University of Florida; a post-doctoral fellowship at the Behavioral Pharmacology Research Unit of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; and a post-doctoral fellowship at Insight! Data Science. Since 2014, Dr. Cox’s research and applied work has focused on how to effectively leverage technology, quantitative modeling, and artificial intelligence to ethically optimize behavioral health outcomes and clinical decision-making. Based on his individual and collaborative work, he has published 50+ peer-reviewed articles, three books, and 150+ presentations at scientific conferences.

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Introduction

Crime has always exerted a fascination over us and it continues so to do: witness the often lurid headlines to be found in almost every daily newspaper or the plethora of detective stories featured in radio or television programmes, both factual and fictional – Poirot, CSI, Crimewatch, Inspector Morse etc – all of which we avidly devour.

This book contains a wide variety of suspicious deaths and foul deeds that have a Shrewsbury or Shropshire connection over an 800-year period from the early Middle Ages through to the early decades of the twentieth century. The object of this publication is not merely to recite dramatic cases of murder – to do so would involve little more than a simple narrative regurgitation of contemporary newspaper reports of trials and would rapidly become repetitive. Instead, whilst hopefully engaging readers’ attention with sixteen cases that cover many types of crime over an extensive chronological period, I have sought to relate each of the cases to wider developments in the history of criminal detection, justice and punishment in England.

The background and known facts of each case have therefore been conscientiously and meticulously researched using a wide variety of both primary and secondary sources including assize records, calendars of prisoners, court records, census returns, newspaper reports etc., in order to provide a wide cross-section of foul deeds and suspicious deaths from around Shrewsbury and Shropshire. Cases detailed in the book include arson, bigamy, fraud, imposture, infanticide, and several murders, together with often reprehensible and occasionally atrocious behaviour by the forces of justice and law and order.

Several of the cases illustrate a particular aspect of crime, detection or punishment, such as the absence of what we would now recognize as a police force; the difficulty of proving the identity of a murderer due to the limitations of forensic science; the different ways in which men and women were treated before the law; and the often brutal forms of punishment that were meted out to convicted offenders, especially in the Middle Ages and the early-modern period of English history.

Within its pages can be found all the elements of criminality that so intrigue us: murder, violence, bad behaviour, detection, punishment, sometimes unintentional humour, and perhaps even occasional sneaking admiration for an audacious rogue.

Unfortunately no national crime statistics were kept before 1805, so it is impossible to accurately compare crime figures from the past with those that are reported today. However, human nature has changed little over time, and, as the following pages will show, crime of all kinds was far from absent in Shrewsbury and around Shropshire in the preceding centuries. Each generation seems inclined to hark back to a mythical ‘golden age’, and this is certainly the case when discussing crime. Consider the following two statements:

Highway robbery and burglary were common. It was not safe to go out after dark.

It was not safe to go out at night owing to the profusion of housebreakers, highwaymen, and footpads – and especially because of the savage barbarity of the two latter, who commit the most wanton cruelties.

Either of these statements could have appeared in newspaper columns within the past few weeks (with just a few minor idiomatic alterations), illustrating a perceived breakdown of law and order in contemporary society. In fact, the first was written in the 1880s about the 1840s by a Victorian diarist and poacher, James Hawker, whilst the second was penned in October 1751 by Westminster magistrate and famous novelist Henry Fielding, indicating that there has always been a strong societal worry about the amount of crime present in each generation.

Whilst Britain has been fortunate in recent years in having developed a reasonably robust and fair legislature and judiciary, together with largely democratically accountable police forces (although the extent of this accountability has been recently increasingly questioned), this has not always been the case. This book illustrates that many of the constituents forming the bedrock of our present criminal justice system, including the right to defend oneself before a jury; the right to a fair trial; the right to appeal after judgement; the existence of an efficient and unbiased police force; the need for prosecutors to prove a defendant’s guilt rather than a defendant prove his/her innocence; and the reliance on judges and juries to be apolitical and impartial, are in fact all relatively modern constructs. Many of our predecessors (especially if poor) could not depend on most of these rights. In certain ways the criminal justice system has changed almost beyond recognition in the past 800 years, and this is primarily reflected in the methods of punishment to which an offender was sentenced – those detailed in this book include having one’s eyes gouged out, one’s ear nailed to a board, death (often slow and painful) by hanging, or being forcibly transported to a new country, thousands of miles away from one’s home, family and friends.

I have endeavoured to give readers a flavour of some of the foul deeds and suspicious deaths that have occurred in Shrewsbury and throughout Shropshire during the past eight centuries, and have chosen a wide cross-section of cases that hopefully will engage people’s interest. I have also tried to show the human aspect of all the cases; the people detailed within the book all existed and either suffered their occasionally awful fate or carried out foul deeds in reality; these events actually happened and therefore should not be seen merely as stories by which to frighten or entertain ourselves. Some of the offences and their aftermath, as illustrated in the book, could be extremely brutal and inhumane, both in terms of offence and punishment. Although many of the cases do possess sensational aspects (and were reported in such a manner), I have tried to ensure that they are not related in an unduly voyeuristic or salacious manner. Similarly, in order to avoid distress, discomfort or offence to any living relatives or friends of those involved as either victims or perpetrators, no case featured is more recent than the early twentieth century.

It is to be hoped that readers enjoy learning about the cases detailed in the following pages and that they are also stimulated to find out more about England’s fascinating criminal justice history. A brief Further Reading section is therefore provided at the end of the book in order to point any readers that may be thus inspired in the necessary direction.

Finally, although the most meticulous care has been taken to ensure the accuracy of facts and events of each case detailed within the following pages, it must be appreciated that the book deals with records of cases that occurred a considerable time ago, with several of the primary documentary sources surviving somewhat patchily over a period of many centuries. As a consequence, there are occasions in which different sources give different versions of events, with often conflicting details or outcomes; indeed in one or two of the cases the outcome remains unknown. Any such errors or omissions that may have arisen as a result are therefore apologized for in advance.

A brief note on the English legal system

Several aspects of the English trial-based legal system, although being subject to several important changes throughout the centuries (as will become apparent through reading this book), have in essence remained remarkably similar in their constitution from at least the thirteenth century. During the majority of the period covered by this book, criminal cases were first brought before a justice of the peace or magistrate (the terms are interchangeable, although current court usage favours the term magistrate) at either Petty Sessions (which could occur as and when the need arose and were usually held at a local community venue such as a public house or, from the latter half of the nineteenth century, in a purpose-built magistrates’ court) or, for more serious cases, Quarter Sessions, which, as their name implies, were held every quarter (March, June, September and December), usually in the larger towns of a county.

These were presided over by county magistrates and were heard before a jury. In cases where the magistrates felt that they were unqualified to deal with the complicated or extremely serious nature of the crime, defendants could be held in gaol for a considerable period to await trial at the Assizes, which were presided over by royally or (more latterly) state-appointed judges, and which normally took place twice a year, usually in the county town – in this case, Shrewsbury – at Lent (March/April) and Trinity or Summer (July/August). A third Assize court, known as the Winter Assizes could also be held (usually sometime between October and December) if warranted by the number of cases waiting to be tried in any particular year. The system of Petty Sessions, Quarter Sessions and Assizes was completely swept away by the passing of the Courts Act of 1971, which replaced the old system with Magistrates’ Courts (which deal with petty offences) and the Crown Court (which hears more serious criminal cases).

Pre-decimal currency system

Throughout this book the pre-decimal system of currency is used. Prior to decimalization in 1971, the British currency system was based on the ancient system of LSD or £ (pound) s. (shillings) and d. (pence). £1 was made up of 240 pennies (because a pound of silver was used in Anglo-Saxon times to make that number of silver pennies), twelve of which made a shilling. The penny itself was subdivided into farthings (four of which made a penny) or halfpennies (two of which made a penny). A guinea was worth £1 and one shilling (i.e. twenty-one shillings). It is extremely difficult to accurately equate monetary values from historical periods to those of the present-day, due to the fluctuating costs of basic goods and foods, but a rough multiplication of between 100 and 125 should be made to late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century figures in order to compare them with present-day values, whilst late-nineteenth-century figures should be multiplied by around 50 to arrive at a general modern-day comparison.

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Stocks and whipping post, Norton, Shropshire. The Author

Chapter 1

‘Almost to the extreme limit of legal memory’ Murder in Lilleshall 1203

This chapter illustrates how the early medieval justice system functioned, and how the justice meted out could be swift and horrifically brutal. The case is also interesting in that it serves to show how medieval monarchs (in this instance King John), although in many ways extremely powerful, could also remain subservient to the laws of the Church.

The English legal system has its origins in the system of criminal justice created by Anglo-Saxon kings such as Ethelbert (c.552-616) and Alfred the Great (849-99), who both developed and issued a system of law-codes which remained in use throughout the Anglo-Saxon period. Following the Norman Conquest much of this systematic law-code remained in use, including the use of ‘hue and cry’, whereby every member of a parish was legally required to pursue and capture suspected criminals. Failure to do so could involve legal action in the form of levying fines.

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King Henry II – creator of the Royal Justices in 1166. Author’s collection

However, the Norman kings also introduced several new ideas in the field of criminal justice. One of the most notable of these was the decision in 1166 of King Henry II (1133-89) to instigate a system by which royally appointed Justices would visit each of the shires or counties hearing ‘pleas of the Crown’ (cases between the king’s subjects) on a regular basis on behalf of the king. The king had previously dispensed justice throughout the country personally, but this was problematic as many of the Norman kings were peripatetic, spending large amounts of their time in their French dominions, and therefore there was no guarantee when cases would be heard. For example King John was in France (where he also held land) from May 1201 until December 1203, and would have been unable to hear any cases in person. Therefore it was decreed that twelve free men from each hundred (a division of a county) would present cases that had occurred in each county to these visiting Royal Justices who would hear the evidence in a court, deliberate and then pass sentence on the suspects.

These perambulations of the Royal Justices became known as Eyres (from the Latin errãre – to wander) and the Justices in Eyre quickly became the most visible indication of the king’s power and presence with regard to the legal and judicial affairs of the shires. The courts could sit for a considerable time and hear a great many cases – for example, the Shropshire Eyre of 1256 sat at Shrewsbury from Friday, 14 January to Wednesday, 16 February, hearing almost 500 civil cases and over 400 criminal cases. This system gradually evolved until by the middle of the thirteenth century it became the more recognizable system of Assizes (which lasted until the twentieth century), in which senior royally appointed judges would ride out into the counties at least twice a year in order to hear serious criminal cases.

A record of these Eyres (known as Eyre Rolls as they were originally written down on