Suddenly they were free. After more than two months in gaol, constantly supervised and directed, the sisters were quite at a loss as to what to do.
The clerk of the court, sensing their bewilderment, reassured them that they were free to go. Mrs. Gardner offered to go and collect their meagre belongings from the prison, and John took Grace and Isabella over to lodgings where they could have a cup of tea, some fish and chips, and a bed for the night. A subdued Maggie followed quietly along.
Now they were no longer prisoners, getting back to Meanley Farm was no longer H.M.Q.’s responsibility but their own task to negotiate. Immediately after eating, the relieved John hurried off to buy tickets for their return on Wednesday’s train to Clitheroe. He also sent a telegraph to his brother-in-law, Tom Rushton, asking him to meet them at the station.
Sadly, the news that the former prisoners were due home on the train from Leeds spread quickly and the general sentiment locally was that by their action the sisters had given the area a bad name.
As the train neared Clitheroe, both Grace and Isabella became almost feverishly excited. They were approaching their homecoming with relief and a fervent wish to disappear back into anonymous everyday life.
THE ALLEGED MURDER AT SLAIDBURN Grace Isherwood and Isabella Gardiner, the two sisters who were charged at the Leeds Assizes, last Monday and Tuesday, with the murder of a child at Slaidburn, and acquitted, arrived at Clitheroe on Wednesday night. As the women left the station they were hooted by the crowd.
— Preston Guardian, Saturday, August 8, 1885
(As posted on the Slaidburn website by D. Higham)
After the warm applause for the verdict in the courtroom, the hoots and jeers from the crowd at the station in Clitheroe came as a horrible shock to John and his companions. It was their first painful exposure to the fact that while a jury in Leeds may have found the two women not guilty, a local “jury” of their peers nearer to home remained unconvinced.
Both Grace and Isabella hid their faces, doing their best not to weep. Isabella started to cough and Grace distracted herself by making efforts to comfort her.
John looked about at the angry faces and felt a dreadful surge of hopelessness; he had lost his savings, and now his standing in the community too. What was going to happen to his wife and children?
It was such a great relief to see Rushton emerge from the crowd with the trap that the irony of their return to Slaidburn in the same conveyance that had carried little Thomas Gardner on his last journey was entirely lost on all present.
Not Guilty in the Eyes of the Law
Having read those shocking midnight revelations from the Slaidburn website and the note from David and Cathryn explaining exactly how they had found the trial report, I felt a little stunned.
As I wrote to the Highams after reading the report of the trial and its aftermath:
Subject: An Unexpected Outcome
Dear David
What a surprising outcome. I thought the two women were for the gallows for sure. I guess that is what the jury feared and that they felt that death was too extreme a punishment for young women who did not know where to turn….
I wonder if the fact that Grace was pregnant played a role.
So the story is the indictment of the Poor Laws that you thought it was, but in a different way. And the vague story of suffocation was not so far from the alibi after all.
Thank you so much for the pictures. I imagined something much less picturesque.
Thank you for your part in this amazing story.
David’s thoughtful response was a clear reflection that the story was not yet satisfactorily “finished” for any of us twenty-first-century sleuths.
Subject: Re: An Unexpected Outcome
Dear Sheelagh
Thanks for your email.
… Today we put a copy of the story with the original cuttings in Clitheroe Library. Sue Holden the librarian who drew our attention to the story in the first place was also surprised at the outcome….
Our thoughts on the case — we too thought they were “bang to rights.” What struck us was the initial “vehemence” of the Coroner’s summing up, perhaps with benefit of local knowledge. What seems bizarre is that the Easington Beck flows 300 yards from Meanley Farm at the bottom of the meadow in front of the house. There is a stream flowing into the Easington Beck in a ravine no more than 100 yards to the left of Meanley Farm and one wonders why they took the body of the child the best part of two miles up to Langcliffe Cross to dispose of it. They could have said that the child had wandered off and fallen into the Beck near the house — what a tragic accident — no questions asked.
It seems such convenient timing that the child suffocated on the way back from being rejected at the Workhouse.
Still people do very odd things when they panic. (Around 5 years ago an Asian man in Clitheroe murdered his wife, dismembered her body and drove round to several local beauty spots, including the roadside of the main Clitheroe to Slaidburn road, set fire to the body parts in the midst of a summer drought, and thought that they would not be noticed !!! The grass fires were seen for miles around.)
At the Assizes trial there would not be the local knowledge element and I totally agree with your comments. The position where the child was found seems to vary with each trial report and if the policeman’s statement is that the body was 28 yards down stream of the bridge the body would not have been seen from the road and it is only the fact that the farmer John Bargh was walking up the stream that he would have noticed it. To say that she said that she had put it there to be found quickly seems unlikely.????
We think that if they had been tried in Slaidburn that they would have both hanged.
However, on a lighter note — do you know if they moved away from Slaidburn or stayed at Meanley? We will have a look at the Slaidburn Church tombstone transcription record and the census if you don’t have the details already and you are interested.
… Look forward to hearing from you.
David and Cathryn
Penny and I continued to marvel over the outcome of the trial. From her own experience as a trial lawyer, Penny informed me that what we had here was described in legal circles as a “perverse verdict.” In situations of a perverse verdict, the judge or the jury or both make a finding that is inconsistent with what one would expect to be the most likely legal interpretation of the facts.
One of the most famous cases of perverse verdict in Canada was the Montreal trial of Dr. Henry Morgentaler, an alleged abortionist. While it seemed clear on the facts of the case that he was providing safe but illegal medical abortions to women in that city, the jury found him “not guilty.” If, in the Morgentaler case, the jury was indirectly reflecting social change, what mood was the jury reflecting in the case of the murder of Thomas Gardner? Was it sympathy for the defendants, or a tacit recognition of the injustice of women and children “alone” having to pay the price, either in disgrace or in hardship, for the burden of illegitimacy?
Another Time, Another Place
We took some time to digest what we had learned from the press clippings and the Higham research about the suspected child murder.
Christmas came and went, with visits from what the Australians call “rellies” and a wonderful trip to the seaside. On Christmas Eve, I was disconcerted to learn that the strong smell of smoke I thought was from neighbouring barbeques was actually wafting down from a bush fire on Red Hill at the top of our street, but I was beginning to learn that Australians generally take extremes of fire and drought in their stride.
Meanwhile, the new year brought with it a new angle on the story from David:
Subject: A recent article in the Times
Dear Penny, Sheelagh and Elaine
I was reading an article in the Times newspaper the other day. The headline “Victorian values let murderers go unpunished” caught my eye and reading it set me thinking….
Whilst of limited relevance to our researches, it does suggest to
me that what might have been a “big deal” of a crime in a rural area would seem very much less important in a Victorian city such as Leeds where, if like Liverpool and Manchester, infanticide was a common and ignored occurrence. Perhaps this is part of the reason for what Penny described as a “perverse verdict.”
One other passage in Dr. Archer’s article also struck me as interesting: “Of all the Lancastrian murderers during the period, Fish was the only one who failed to generate any support for a petition of reprieve.” Young women would have been viewed far more sympathetically by a jury as we have discussed in previous emails, even if they had been convicted it seems unlikely that they would have been hanged.
Hope this is of interest, all the best for the New Year….
David and Cathryn
The Times article made compelling reading. Of particular interest were the comments:
In Manchester only one person was arrested for infanticide between 1847 and 1859, and in Liverpool a very high number of “accidental suffocations” were recorded….
Dr Archer said that his work uncovered a world where guns were rife, wife-beating was unremarkable, the murder of infants regarded as a form of family planning and beat constables were routinely violent.
— Times, Dec 29, 2001
My own thoughts about the case had been put temporarily aside. Penny was moving back to Canada, to the immense joy of her extended family, who both love her dearly and rely heavily on her goodness of heart, and I was caught up in a very demanding business negotiation.
The outcome of the murder trial, while raising more questions than it answered, was known, and I had no spare brain-time to muse about the impact of those long-ago events on my great-grandfather, or even on his daughter, Maggie, my grandmother.
And I had not yet even begun to think about how those events had reached down the years to shape my own circumstance.
Isabella’s Dilemma
Descending from the train in Clitheroe to a noisy, angry chorus of disapproval, Isabella, thin and blanched from incarceration and illness, realized that she was an outcast.
When the verdict of “Not guilty” was cheered in the court in Leeds, it had felt as if she and Grace would be free to resume their lives just where they had left off. But since that time, Isabella had slowly come to realize that there were still plenty of people who thought of her and Grace as murderers.
Much of the jubilation in court had, of course, come from family members and, she now realized sadly, from the sympathetic response generated by Grace’s beauty and ill health. Outside of the family, even amongst their close acquaintances, none had come forward since to welcome them home or to wish them well.
During the trial, she had seen the judge looking at her carefully. She guessed he was wondering if she had it in her to do such an evil deed. He knew for sure that she was a liar, but were those serious eyes able to look into her soul and see if she was a murderer as well?
From the judge’s thorough summation, it became clear that he had decided there was more than enough reason to doubt. Still, that didn’t make her and Grace “innocent,” just “not guilty.”
John had been very kind to her through those endless days in gaol, probably because of her sister, but he was beggared now, and he had to worry first and last about Grace and the children and how they would all survive.
Waiting for the trial, Isabella had tried to keep Grace’s spirits up — telling her that she’d soon be mistress at Meanley again. But that had been just to keep Grace from thinking about the gallows.
Left to herself at that terrible time, Grace would just stare into space, tears streaming down her cheeks, whispering, “We’re done for.” All her charm and winsome ways were wasting away in the lock-up.
There were moments when Isabella had even thought that if Grace didn’t stop weeping she’d smother her … but that was just her nerves talking.
The damp in the prison had begun to weaken Isabella’s resistance. She felt chill all the time these days, even though it was still summer, and her cough had grown even worse.
She was free, but not needed here and with no prospects. Mum had said she could come home for a bit to Dalton-in-Furness, but she knew that she would have to find a job. The Ulverston workhouse, especially with all its tragic connections, would be no place for her.
So what would befall her now? An eighteen-year-old who’d been on trial for murder! Certainly a man like that young lawyer who worked for Mr. Atkinson wouldn’t even have her as a servant, much less a lover. Working with the young barrister on her statement had given Isabella a chance to spend a considerable time with a different, more honourable, kind of man than those she’d known in Dalton-in-Furness — the men who’d got both of her sisters with child and then left them to fend for themselves. Those men were working men, miners mostly, who didn’t have much to say to a woman and didn’t have any use for her if she got pregnant.
Even when she was in service, Isabella had had no real contact with any men except for her cousin George and the field labourers. George had tried to get her to give him a tumble, but she was smarter than that, and the hired men thinking that she had “airs,” with her independent ways, had not bothered her.
What man would want to marry her now and see her be the mother of his child?
Choking back her sobs, she began to cough so hard that it felt as if it would never stop.
The Comparative Comfort of Home
Alone at last in the privacy of what had once been Jane’s marriage bed, John and Grace lay exhausted and silent, both lost in thoughts of how many months it had been since they had been able just to lie quietly together.
Grace had long been too overwhelmed by her fearful circumstance to think about how John might feel when she was back at home with him and the children. Now, as she started cautiously to think about their life going forward, she realized that she was afraid that the bond between them had been deformed by lies and confusion and that she was destined for a marriage that was no longer a joyous choice, but a different kind of life sentence.
John, secure in his own affection for Grace, was worrying about problems that were more practical and material. He was beginning to realize that the “not guilty” verdict was unacceptable to the morals of their community, and that many of his lifelong friends would no longer be comfortable sharing a pint with him at Hark to Bounty. His sister had tried to warn him that the women of the town had turned against Grace — an outsider who proved herself to be a liar and who had never been any better than she had to be, and attractive to boot. They feared her example and her possible influence on their men.
Some of his sister’s warnings made him smile slightly. Grace is an attractive woman, for all that, he thought ruefully.
The sheer weight of the debts he had incurred made him frightened. While the case was proceeding, he had cared only about securing a positive outcome. Now he had to pay for all the legal work that had been done. Mr. Atkinson had been sympathetic, but it was going to take a long time to pay off all the legal bills, especially since local demand for his skills as a stonemason had dropped off since the trial. Matt and Maggie were going to have to earn their keep, and the others too, as soon as they were able.
John didn’t like to bother the squire again, but it looked like he must. He needed some advice about how to repay his debt, and with the squire being of a legal family, he might have some insight into the feelings that flowed from a case like this, and how long it took to forgive and forget.
Although she had suffered a stillbirth and had scarcely eaten for months, John was convinced that Grace was made of sterner stuff than one would think at present, and he believed that she would be willing to have a go at rebuilding their life together. Despite all, he knew that he was. He also knew that he would have to make the first move.
“Good to have you home, Grace,” he said as he blew out the candle.
“Good to be here,” she said very quietly.
There’s a Story Here
Books have been my life. Work was just something I did to fill the spaces between pages. I feel anxious if I am away from home without a book at hand. I confess to retreating once in a while to read a few pages in the sanctity of the women’s room during the most tedious of business meetings.
I have been an author in search of a story, and here at last I thought I might have found one. I really wanted to write about that long-ago child death in Slaidburn.
Having confided my goal both to my husband, William, and to Penny, they of course ganged up to make me get started. Like the lawyer she is, Penny recommended that I get a three-ring binder for my research findings, which I did. William just used his tried and true technique of implacable expectation and perpetual willingness to help until I broke under the pressure.
In addition to the binder, I needed to be back in touch with the Highams. The exciting possibility of a visit to Slaidburn to get the “feel” of the locality also began to emerge.
So, almost nine months after David’s note about Victorian murderers, I wrote again from Australia.
Subject: At Work on the Slaidburn Murder Novel
Dear David and Cathryn
Inspired by the investigation done by the two of you, I am trying to make progress on a story about the murder and our communication about it….
I am hoping to go to Slaidburn in November to do some more research and I would be delighted to meet you both.
I don’t know how busy you are pursuing other interests, but if you are interested there are pieces of research that would help me greatly. What I am trying to do right now is to imagine what would lead a woman like Grace Isherwood to do such a thing, how it was that she returned to my great grandfather and lived a life with him and raised his kids, and possibly theirs, how my great grandfather lost his farm and became a stone mason, and how my grandmother felt being raised by a woman who had “accidentally” smothered one of her children.
The Slaidburn Angel Page 14