by James Moore
On Sunday 3 November 1805, Otter was taken in a cart, accompanied by two parish constables, for his impromptu wedding at the church at South Hykeham. Otter said his vows while the constables watched to make sure he didn’t abscond. When the nuptials were over, the couple made their way to Saxilby near Lincoln where they called at the Sun Inn in the early evening for refreshments. After they left, Otter took Mary about a mile further and into a field near a spot called Drinsey Nook where he told his new spouse, by now about eight months pregnant, to sit down and rest. Otter immediately went to a nearby hedge and pulled a large stake from the ground. Then, advancing on Mary, he violently struck her over the head with it. She was killed instantly. John Dunkerley, a man who had been drinking earlier at the Sun Inn, had actually seen the murder according to an account he gave later, on his deathbed. On his way home to the village of Doddington he had fallen asleep near Drinsey Nook and woken to see Otter and Mary approach the spot. According to Dunkerley’s story, he had lain unseen and heard Otter telling Mary to sit down and rest before he watched him come back and hit her with the stake. Dunkerley said the attack sounded like someone was hitting a turnip. Too scared to help and too embarrassed about not intervening, the man failed to come forward at the time.
Mary’s body was found in the field the following morning. Her head had been beaten to a pulp. The murder weapon was found discarded about 40yds from the body. Otter was quickly identified as the most likely culprit and was recognised in Lincoln just a few days after the killing. He was arrested by a constable at the city’s Packhorse Inn. An inquest, conducted at the Sun Inn on 5 November, found that Otter should answer for the murder and he was committed to Lincoln Castle jail, awaiting trial. Following the inquest, Mary was buried in St Botolph’s church in Saxilby.
At his five-hour trial, which took place on 12 March 1806 at the Lincoln Assizes, Otter offered no defence. The jury listened to the testimony of twenty witnesses and, despite the circumstantial nature of the evidence, took just a few minutes to find him guilty.
Tom Otter was executed in Lincoln on 14 March and the judge ordered his body to be gibbeted in an iron cage on Saxilby Moor as a warning. Few tears were shed for Otter, a brutal individual who was once said to have cut the eyes out of a living ass. Five years after his gibbet was first erected, the Stamford Mercury reported that Otter’s skeleton was still there, complete with a bird’s nest in the jaw of his skull. In fact the gibbet remained in situ until 1850 when it blew down in a storm. By then the story of the murder had achieved mythical status and the crime gave its name to several spots in the locality including Tom Otter Lane, Tom Otter Bridge and Gibbet Wood.
As well as the blood on the steps of The Sun there were plenty of other creepy legends that became attached to the murder, which mostly originated in a semi-fictional account written in the 1850s by Thomas Miller. Of these, the most chilling was the story that, after the murder, the hedge stake used to murder Mary was said to disappear from wherever it was being kept on every anniversary of her death. Each time it would be found lying back at the lonely spot of her demise. According to local tradition it was eventually taken to the Bishop of Lincoln who exorcised it.
LOCATIONS: The Sun Inn, Bridge Street, Saxilby, LN1 2PZ, 01522 702326
THE STRANGE CASE OF THE ODDINGLEY MURDERS, 1806
The Fir Tree Inn, Dunhampstead, Worcstershire; The Talbot, Worcester
Visitors to the Fir Tree Inn in the tranquil Worcestershire countryside may be surprised to find The Murderers Bar, commemorating a double killing from the early nineteenth century with a link to the pub. The confession of a farmer called Thomas Clewes, who would later become the landlord of the inn, was key to the cracking the case. Yet, thanks to a legal quirk, neither Clewes nor his co-conspirators would end up behind bars.
At 5 p.m. on 24 June 1806, a shot rang out in the village of Oddingley followed by a pitiful cry of ‘murder, murder!’ Two butchers, John Lench and Thomas Giles, who were passing, rushed to the spot where they found the Reverend George Parker, the village parson, lying in a meadow. He had been shot in the side and his clothes smouldered, set alight from some of the wadding from the shot that hit him. The right side of his head had also been smashed in. It was later described by Lench as ‘all of a mooze’.
The pair almost managed to grab the man who had fired the shot but he dropped the bag he was holding and fled. Giles gave pursuit, but backed off when the short individual, wearing a dark blue greatcoat, turned and threatened to shoot him too. His description of the culprit soon made an odd-jobbing labourer and carpenter called Richard Heming the chief suspect. He had been seen behaving strangely by villagers in the preceding months and had a reputation locally as something of a rogue.
In the absence of a formal police force, efforts to find Heming were led by a local justice of the peace, the Reverend Reginald Pyndar. Heming was seen in the hours after the murder at an inn called The Virgin Tavern near Worcester. However, despite a large reward of 50 guineas being offered for his capture, Heming seemed then to have vanished. Some said that he had fled to America. Yet there was other gossip too. Many believed that a group of farmers, led by a Captain Samuel Evans, who had sometimes employed Heming, had conspired to have George Parker killed. He and the likes of another local farmer, Thomas Clewes, could often be found in pubs like the Speed the Plough, damning Parker in drink. They hated the hefty tithes, taxes on their goods, that were due to Parker. Indeed Parker, knowing of their hatred, was so concerned for his safety that he never walked through Oddingley alone after dark.
Despite the rumours, there was nothing concrete to link the farmers to the murder and as the months and years went by, the grizzly episode faded from memory. For a full twenty-four years the crime remained unsolved. Then, on 21 January 1830, there was a surprising development. The new tenant at Netherwood Farm, formerly owned by Thomas Clewes, had ordered an old barn to be pulled down. Charles Burton was the man employed to do the work, and whilst digging a trench he hit something hard. He had uncovered a skeleton complete with leather shoes and a carpenter’s rule. Burton was in fact Heming’s brother-in-law. He quickly put two and two together and set off to find a local magistrate.
On 25 January an inquest was convened at The Talbot Inn, Worcester. Locals at Oddingley were banned from the jury in case they were implicated in the crime. The evidence presented suggested that the skeleton bore similarities to the description of Heming – and he was known to carry a carpenter’s rule. Burton said that he believed the shoes he had found were Heming’s. Another witness, Susan Surman, swore that back in 1806 on the morning of the murder she had heard Clewes saying to someone who was with him that he ‘should be glad to find a dead parson’ when he came home from Bromsgrove Fair.
Gradually more evidence emerged including the fact that Evans had once been overheard saying of Parker, ‘There is no more harm in shooting him than a mad dog.’ Thomas Clewes had also been seen drinking with Heming at a pub in Droitwich before the murder. Clewes, who had himself been attending the inquest, was arrested and thrown in prison.
Once behind bars, Clewes soon confessed to having witnessed the death of Heming, who had been paid £50 by the farmers to kill Parker. He said that on the day after Parker’s murder, Captain Evans had asked if Heming could hide in his barn at Netherwood Farm and he reluctantly consented. That night he, Evans, another farmer called George Banks and James Taylor, a farrier, went to the barn. Clewes claimed that Taylor then smashed in Heming’s skull with a blood stick – an instrument usually used to let blood from horses. Heming, it seems, had been killed in case he spilled the beans about who had ordered Parker’s murder, though Clewes claimed not to have known that Evans and Taylor were going to go as far as killing him.
In March 1830, Clewes, Banks and another farmer, John Barnett, who had helped bankroll the deed, appeared before the Worcester Assizes, Evans and Taylor now having passed away. They could not be tried for their part in the murder of Parker because as the law then stood, the �
��principal’ culprit, Heming, was now dead. Instead they were charged with the murder of Heming. Clewes’ legal team argued that as his confession was the basis for the charges, it should also be taken as fact that he had not taken part in Heming’s murder or known Taylor would kill him as he had stated. A confused jury at first found Clewes guilty ‘as accessory after the fact’, but the judge told them that this verdict could not be recorded as it was not the charge of aiding and abetting murder which Clewes faced. The jury returned to find Clewes not guilty and he was acquitted along with Banks and Barnett.
When the news got out, some villagers in Oddingley broke into the church and rang the bells to celebrate. But Oddingley’s reputation suffered. The case made the national press and the place became synonymous with evil, its ditches said to ‘run red with blood’ every time it rained. But at The Fir Tree, the landlord is more sanguine about the events which brought this rural backwater notoriety. A sign in the pub’s car park reads, ‘Every old inn has a story to tell but none as gruesome as the Oddingley murders.’
LOCATIONS: The Fir Tree Inn, Trench Lane, Dunhampstead, Droitwich, Worcestershire, WR9 7JX, 01905 774094, www.thefirtreeinn.co.uk; The Talbot, No. 8 Barbourne Road, Worcester, WR1 1HT, 01905 723 744, www.johnbarras.com
SHOT BY SMUGGLERS AND LEFT FOR DEAD, 1821
The Ship Inn, Herne Bay, Kent
Smuggling was still rife around the Kent coast in the early years of the nineteenth century and men in the so-called ‘preventive service’, charged with catching them, had their work cut out trying to stop the organised gangs that, more often than not, outwitted their pursuers. Around this time about a quarter of all the boats used for smuggling in Britain were based in Kent and Sussex. Hundreds of men were involved in smuggling and local communities tended to stay tight-lipped about their activities for fear of reprisal. It was hard but vital for the authorities to catch the smugglers in the actual act if successful convictions were going to be made.
One of the most successful groups in the region at this time was known as the North Kent Gang, operating between the River Medway and the town of Ramsgate. These were hardened criminals who were quite prepared to take on the officers of the law, often attacking customs officers who got in their way. On one occasion, when some of their number were captured and put in Faversham jail, the gang launched a bold raid on the building, successfully setting their comrades free.
On the night of Monday 23 April 1821, many members of the gang had been drinking heavily in Herne Bay, a town then notorious as a hub for their nefarious practices. They were awaiting the arrival of a boat carrying contraband. At around 3 a.m. on the morning of the 24th between forty and sixty smugglers could be found busily unloading tubs of spirits on the beach directly opposite the Ship Inn.
Sydenham Snow was an enthusiastic 24-year-old midshipman from a sloop called the Severn, part of a blockade that had recently been beefed up with the task of crushing the illicit trade. On the night in question he had been patrolling the beach along with a handful of other ‘blockade men’ when they stumbled upon the crime taking place. Hopelessly outnumbered, the brave, if headstrong, Snow is said to have rushed forward in an attempt to capture the smuggler’s boat itself. He let off his own gun, but it misfired. He then drew his cutlass but was swiftly gunned down by the smugglers. Unperturbed, they continued unloading their valuable cargo before making off inland with the hoard. Shortly afterwards, Snow was found by one of his men lying close to the water’s edge with blood coming from his mouth. He had been shot at such close range that there were burns marks on his jacket.
Snow was still alive but told his comrades, ‘I am a dead man.’
Thomas Norris, the landlord of the Ship, had woken with a start when he had heard the gunfire. He later recalled:
I got out of bed, looked out of the window, and saw a number of people on the beach, and a boat on the shore – there seemed to be 20 or 30 men; they appeared in motion from the boat up the road, and appeared to be carrying something. I saw no cart or horse – I could not tell what they were carrying – they passed on, and soon after I heard a person mourning on the beach, and heard him say, ‘Lord, have mercy on me!’ and in the course of a little time four of the men belonging to the preventive service came into the road; I called to them, and Mr Snow was brought to my house … He was first taken into my bar by four of his men, and then into the parlour; he requested a clergyman to pray with him, and I sent for Mr Dornford, who came; I also sent for a medical man …
A naval surgeon, Joseph Galloway, arrived to attend to Snow and found that he had been shot in his right thigh and his right shoulder. He removed the bullet, but there was apparently little Galloway could do to save Snow’s life. His was clearly a slow, painful death. He finally expired, still at the inn, at 8 a.m. on the Friday.
However, Snow had lived long enough to give a description of some of the men in the gang. On the basis of this and information from members of the gang who had turned king’s evidence, five of them, including the leader of the party, James West, and the aptly named William Beer, were subsequently brought in. Their trial was held at the Old Bailey that June, having been transferred to London to avoid the possibility of corruption locally. As it was, military assistance had been needed to make the arrests.
But the trial was a shambles, with some witnesses being found to be unreliable and others swearing to the good character of the accused men. The judge ended up acquitting all the defendants. However, the gang’s days were numbered: Snow’s murder spurred the blockade men to pursue them even harder. Four of its leaders were later executed on Penenden Heath near Maidstone and fifteen others were transported to Australia. Though one officer in the blockade was later to claim that Snow’s actual killer was ‘still living in 1839, boasting of his exploit, in a parish near Herne Bay’. Snow was buried with full military honours and his own grave can still be seen in Herne churchyard. The headstone reads simply, ‘In memory of Sydney Sydenham Snow, who died 21 April 1821, in the 24th year of his age.’
LOCATIONS: The Ship Inn, No. 17 Central Parade, Herne Bay, Kent, CT6 5HT, www.theshiphernebay.com
THE RED BARN MURDER, 1827
The George Inn, Colchester; The Cock Inn, Polstead, Suffolk
In the spring of 1828, a hurriedly convened inquest into the death of a young woman opened at the Cock Inn, a low beamed, cosy hostelry in the sleepy rural village of Polstead in Suffolk. The badly decomposed body of Maria Marten had been found by her own father, a mole-catcher, buried in a lonely barn nearby. Maria, it seemed, had been shot; she had possibly been stabbed and strangled too. The corpse, inspected by a doctor at the Cock, was formally identified by her sister, Ann, from the colour of her hair and a gap in her teeth. Crucially there was a green handkerchief tied around the victim’s neck.
The handkerchief pointed towards the likely culprit: William Corder, her former lover who had moved out of the area the year before. Two years earlier, William Corder, the 24-year-old son of a farmer, had started courting Maria, 26, who had already conducted several affairs and given birth to more than one illegitimate child. They would meet on Corder’s land in a barn roofed with red tiles. In 1827, Maria gave birth to his child, but the child appears to have died in mysterious circumstances.
Nicknamed Foxey at school, Corder already had form. He’d once fraudulently sold his father’s pigs and was known to have forged cheques too. Maria was impatient that Corder should marry her and in May 1827 Corder seems to have agreed. Convincing Maria that the parish constables were aiming to prosecute her for bearing bastard children, Corder told her to meet him at the Red Barn one night wearing men’s clothing. The plan was that they would then elope to Ipswich. There the couple argued and Corder shot Maria dead. After hurriedly burying Maria’s body, he returned to run his farm. When asked where Maria was he said that she had had move to Great Yarmouth out of shame. Then, in the September of 1827, Corder suddenly left the village. Later he wrote to Maria’s family, telling them that all was well and that he
and Maria were now living happily together on the Isle of Wight.
Then in April 1828, back in Polstead, Maria’s stepmother, Anne, started having some strange dreams. Three nights in a row she dreamt that Maria was dead and had been buried beneath the Red Barn. Eventually she dispatched her husband to start digging there, where he made the gruesome discovery of Maria’s body in its shallow grave, inside a sack.
The Cock, Polstead, Suffolk where the inquest into Maria Marten’s death was held. (Courtesy of The Cock)
After the inquest at The Cock the local constable, a Mr Ayres, and a detective from London, James Lea, teamed up to find Corder. They eventually discovered him living, not on the Isle of Wight but in Ealing, West London. In the meantime he’d married another woman, Mary Moore, having brazenly advertised for a wife in the pages of The Times. And when, on 22 April, Ayres and Lea tracked Corder to the boarding house he was now running, Corder was in the middle of happily boiling some eggs, seemingly without a care in the world. However, during a search of the property the constables found a pair of pistols, one of which was assumed to be the murder weapon. There was also a passport from the French ambassador, seemingly evidence that he was planning to quit the country.
By the time Corder was being taken back to Suffolk to be tried at the Shire Hall in Bury St Edmunds, the case had already become a national sensation. Corder was returned to Bury via Colchester. Here Ayres tried to have Corder shut up in the local prison for the night, but the governor demanded to see a warrant specifying his commitment to a particular gaol. When Ayres couldn’t produce it he refused and so Corder spent the night in the George Inn with one arm tied to a bedpost and the other tied to the constable.