Turton A Grim Almanac of Nottinghamshire

1. Auflage 2009
ISBN: 978-0-7509-5315-3
Verlag: The History Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 160 Seiten

In 1826 'resurrection men' stole thirty bodies from the graveyard of St Mary's Church in Nottingham to sell to unscrupulous medical establishments in London. It emerged they had been shipping their cargo to the capital in wicker baskets booked aboard stagecoaches, but they were never caught. In 1908 Mansfield tattooist Arthur Scott attacked a customer who refused to pay his bill. Scott tracked his quarry down after two days and attempted to shoot him. He failed, but it didn't take the police long to find Scott - the only tattooist in Mansfield. On 7 June 1865 Thomas Whittaker left the bar of a Newark pub to visit the toilet in the backyard. As he returned he slipped from the top of a flight of wooden stairs and fell head first into a water butt. He drowned. When Retford eccentric John Clifton died in 1816 he left a deadly legacy. He had a life-long fascination for fireworks and made them for his friends. While sorting through John's things his sister found a tin of black powder, which she thought was worthless, and threw it on the fire. The resulting explosion killed her and demolished the house. A Grim Almanac of Nottinghamshire is a collection of stories from the county's past, some bizarre, some fascinating, some macabre - all absorbing. Revealed here are the dark corners of Nottinghamshire, where witches, body snatchers, highwaymen and murderers have stalked. Within the Almanac's pages we plumb the depths of past despair and peer over the rim of that bottomless chasm where demons lurk. Author Kevin Turton has pored over the historic records of the county to bring together these extraordinary accounts of past events.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Turton, Kevin

Leseproben

FEBRUARY

A seventeenth-century woodcut of a public execution.

1 FEBRUARY1832 A triple drop at Nottingham Three men, George Beck (aged 20), George Hearson (22) and John Armstrong (26), were all executed together in front of Nottingham’s County Hall. On 4 January Armstrong had been found guilty of causing the Beeston riot and the destruction of Lowe’s silk mill. The other two had been arrested later the same month and charged with involvement in the same crime. Unfortunately for Beck and Hearson, though, their convictions had been made on spurious identification evidence. No one at their trial had given irrefutable evidence to establish guilt and by the time they climbed on to the scaffold to join Armstrong some 24,000 people had signed petitions for their release and well over that number swelled the crowds which gathered to watch the executions. So nervous were the Nottingham officials that they called out the 15th Hussars, The Queens Bays, the 18th Foot and a significant body of special constables to block off High Pavement and prevent any outbreak of unrest. A poem relating the injustice of the verdicts was widely circulated:

Hark! The Trumps are mournful sounding,

Wafting souls to realms above,

Where there’s naught but bliss abounding,

Glorying too for Jesu love.

The reckless fate of these poor creatures,

Fills the town with sad dismay,

For Nottingham, with its bright features,

Could not check that dreadful day.

To see the prime of youth now wither,

’Midst relations, friends so dear,

It makes one’s blood almost to shiver,

Who could stop the burning tear?

Hearson, Beck and Armstrong boldly,

Met their fates beneath the tree;

Villains swore against them coldly,

And their doom we all shall see.

2 FEBRUARY1772 On this day Nottingham’s local press reported details of a great snowstorm that had raged across the city throughout the night and into the early hours of the day. The severest storm in living memory, it claimed the lives of numerous people, including Mrs Ann Webster of Calverton, who had left Nottingham in the late afternoon just as the snow began to fall, intending to ride home. Caught in the teeth of the blizzard, her body was found shortly after dawn, still astride her horse and her frozen hands still clutching the reins. Both horse and rider were quite dead. A similar fate befell butler Thomas Rhodes and his good friend John Curtis. Attempting to drive their carriage into the city they were halted at Newstead by a soldier in great distress. Thomas, fearing the man would die without assistance, kindly unhitched one of his horses and sent the soldier off toward Mansfield. it saved his life, but it was the undoing of the two travelling companions. They were both found dead several hours later, along with their remaining horses which had refused to move as the weather worsened.

Gateway to Nottingham prison.

3 FEBRUARY1865 Charles Towle was hauled up before magistrates in Nottingham and charged with the offence of throwing snowballs. Hannah Dakin claimed he had made an unprovoked attack on her and thrown snowballs at her head in a street in Stapleford. The snowballs, she claimed, had hurt her when they struck and had knocked her to the floor. Magistrates took a sympathetic view and poor old Charles was fined 20s and told to refrain from such actions in the future.

4 FEBRUARY1775 Footpads attacked and robbed James Broome of 23s 9d at Basford, Nottingham, but Broome was a resourceful man and not easily separated from his wealth. Recognising one of his attackers as James Porter, a man he had been drinking beer with only hours earlier, he resolved to track him down. Believing Porter to be less than intelligent and probably in need of another drink, he felt it unlikely that he would have strayed far from the warmth of the pub’s fireside. Thus he retraced his steps. He found Porter, as he had expected, propping up the bar and merrily spending some of the silver shillings he had just stolen. in the fight that ensued Broome won the day and a badly beaten James Porter gave up what remained of his share of the robbery. The others involved unfortunately escaped.

5 FEBRUARY1885 It was reported in the Colonial Gazette that Nottingham woman Annie Pagel, shipwrecked off the coast of North New Guinea, had been captured by a warlike tribe of Hermit islanders and, along with other members of the ship’s crew, eaten at a cannibal banquet. A native of an adjoining island, who had also been captured but had escaped, is said to have confirmed the story. A search of the area by a German vessel apparently recovered a white chemise bearing the embroidered initials A.P.

6 FEBRUARY1909 The Nottingham Daily Express reported the mysterious death of 46-year-old Annie Tantum at Hyson Green, Nottingham. She had been found at the bottom of a flight of stairs alight from head to foot. Nothing else in the downstairs rooms showed any kind of fire damage. A police search of the upper rooms revealed that in Annie’s bedroom the dressing table had been knocked over, three beer bottles had been smashed and lay scattered across the floor, a lamp had been broken and a small patch of curtain showed some fire damage. However, there was nothing to indicate how or where the fire had started. According to Dr Alloway, the house surgeon at Nottingham General Hospital, she had suffered severe burns across every part of her body and died within six hours of being admitted. Coroner Mr Rothera, declared the case to be a complete mystery and the jury agreed in a verdict of ‘Died from burns, but there was no evidence to show how her clothing became ignited’.

7 FEBRUARY1773 The remains of William Rice, the ‘Nottingham giant’, were buried at St Anne’s Church, Sutton Bonnington, on this day. The coffin, made of strong oak, was 8ft 4in long, and the grave measured 9ft in length and 7ft deep. It took eight stout men to carry the coffin into the church, followed by eight maids who bore the pall. The church was packed with over 500 mourners.

8 FEBRUARY1801 Ralph Kinder (aged 44) was condemned to death after being found guilty of stealing and killing a wedder sheep (castrated male) from a field in Basford and then trying to sell the meat.

9 FEBRUARY1795 After forty-seven days of severe frost, during which the River Trent had frozen over as far as Gainsborough, a thaw began that caused the river to burst its banks. The fast-moving water swept away fence-posts, rails, trees, flocks of sheep and numerous cattle. Most of the people living in Narrow Marsh, Nottingham, were trapped in their homes by the floodwater. The canal system was destroyed and all the livestock housed at West Bridgford, Wilford and Lenton were completely wiped out.

10 FEBRUARY1823 The Nottingham Date Book (a history of Nottingham from AD 850 to 1884 by Mr J.F. Sutton) includes a report of a burglary. George Lackenby (aged 21) was arrested shortly after stealing three pairs of shoes and a boot from the Nottingham home of Charles Shaw. Just what he hoped to do with one boot was never made clear, but for Lackenby it was to be the last burglary he would ever commit. Found guilty at his trial, he was originally sentenced to death but this was later commuted to transportation for life.

11 FEBRUARY1902 A Strange Death at Bingham An inquest held at the Wheat Sheaf Inn, Bingham, heard how the body of gardener Edward Coy had been found lying in the middle of the Bingham to Langar road a few days earlier at a little after 10 a.m. He had sustained head injuries and his bicycle was parked by the roadside resting on the hedgerow. A number of witnesses told the court they had met him during the course of the morning, some having held brief conversations with him, and his body had been found within minutes of the last of these short meetings. No other person was seen either on the road or crossing the fields. Coroner Frederick Footitt decided that he had probably fallen from his bicycle and sustained the injuries that killed him, but of course there could be no certainty.

12 FEBRUARY1847 Death of Darker, the Recluse Known as Tommy to those that knew him, Darker lived a hermit-like existence in a house at Broadmarsh, Nottingham. Born to a wealthy family, he had remained a bachelor throughout his life and consistently shunned all modern amenities. So miserly had he become in old age that he only spent 2s a week on food, performed all his household duties between 11 p.m. and midnight, regarded fire as a luxury he rarely indulged in, preferring to stay in bed if it were cold, dressed like a beggar and refused to allow anyone into his house. Committed to an asylum a year earlier, he had died in a state of total madness after refusing to allow anyone to enter his property to cap a dangerous well. After the funeral it was discovered that considerable quantities of gold and valuable securities were stored in a back room in the house he had so fiercely guarded.

13 FEBRUARY1909 A case of Proverbs in Justice The Nottingham Daily Express reported the case of Mary Saunders of Platt Street, Nottingham, who appeared in court with a summons against her husband for desertion for a fourth time and was told by the judge ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof’. Turning to the representing solicitor he...