Damn His Blood (38 page)

Ballads and woodcuts combined in
The Worcestershire Murders
, a broadsheet printed by W. Wright in February 1830 and sold in Birmingham

Meanwhile relatively little attention was given to James Taylor, who according to Clewes had dealt Heming the fatal blows. The
Morning Chronicle
published the story about the communion plate at Hampton Lovett and how Taylor had escaped due to a ‘legal quibble’, but the
Liverpool Mercury
was typical of many regional newspapers, doing little more than observing, ‘James Taylor was a farrier at Droitwich,
¹⁴
he is dead.’

The newspapers were not the only medium to spread the story. By mid-February three woodcuts published by a W. Wright of Birmingham charting the Oddingley case were circulating. The first shows Heming’s head peeping malevolently out from a hedgerow as he levels his gun at Parker. The second depicts Heming’s murder the following day: Taylor with his blood stick held high in the midnight gloom, the scene lit only by the lazy light of the Captain’s lantern. The third of the set shows two men (presumably Pierpoint and Smith) wearing tall hats and greatcoats pointing in astonishment at the exposed bones. Four other figures are shown: one must be Charles Burton, who is leaning on his shovel with a satisfied expression on his face, while the others (perhaps members of the Waterson family) look on, aghast.

These woodcuts were published on a single broadsheet which also featured the transcript of a street ballad inspired by Burton’s discovery. With access to newspapers still limited and literacy largely confined to small areas, the street ballad was an essential link in the dissemination of any sensational story – murder, divorce, affair or fraud. They were sung to a familiar rhythm by balladeers outside shops, public houses or markets. Many ballads have been lost, but this one survives. It begins:

The greatest of all miracles
¹³

Is going to unfold

Of two atrocious murders

As true as ever told

A horrid band of miscreants

A cruel plot did lay

Against Parker their Church Minister

To take his life away

One Heming there a carpenter

They did send for with speed

And promise to him fifty pounds

If he would do the deed

And for the sake of cursed games

Until their voice did yield

And Mr Parker soon he shot

Within a lonesome field

This ballad is likely to have appeared very early in February, shortly after Clewes’ confession, as it includes information that could only have been drawn from that document. It pins the blame squarely on Clewes: ‘A strong suspicion fell on Clewes / being one of the crew/ connected in both murders / of Heming and Parker too’. No other farmers are mentioned at all – not Captain Evans, John Barnett or George Banks. It is an example of how street ballads could distil a story in a simple linear narrative to render it comprehensible, but it demonstrates how Clewes was continuing to receive little sympathy from the general public.

A second ballad survives. It is different in tone, more didactic and literary, and it sees the Oddingley murders through a disapproving Christian eye, as evil drifts imperceptibly into the parish, subverting its inhabitants and poisoning the air. Instead of explaining Heming’s disappearance, it dwells on the farmers’ fate, particularly that of the Captain (‘Ill thoughts to drown, he deeply quaff’d / Th’ intoxicating bowl; / But madness curs’d the frequent draught, / And horror fill’d his soul’) and Clewes (‘He droop’d, an alter’d, broken, man, / Cowering ‘neath human eyes. / Like one guilt-stain’d – so gossip ran – / But who on such relies?’).

Whereas the first ballad is populist, the second is a morality tale, its imagery and frequent references to the scriptures designed to shock and provoke. Oddingley’s sunny lanes and fertile fields form a blithe and bucolic scene, but even here there is evil. Heming is depicted as a personification of sin, creeping invisibly through the parish with terrible intent. The Captain and Thomas Clewes, who are responsible for Heming’s appearance, will suffer divine vengeance. All of them are damned.

As the ballads and engravings circulated, other publications continued to emerge. Three chapbooks were printed and distributed in both Worcester and London, where the
Morning Chronicle
continued its steady coverage of the case: ‘Publications, taking all shapes
¹⁵
and bearing many names are daily issuing from the Press upon the above theme [the Oddingley Murders]. A Mrs Sherwood, the authoress of
Stories for Infant Minds
, has unfolded a tale, and a Rev. Gentleman, in a pamphlet replete with quotations from
Macbeth
& the Scriptures, has, in the sublimest language, enlarged upon the Providence that never fails to discover the murderer,’ one report concluded.

As news of the crimes continued to swirl across the country, Clewes, Banks and Barnett remained in gaol. Of the three, Banks took his confinement most harshly, the
Worcester Herald
noticing ‘the alteration which had taken place
¹⁶
in his person since his apprehension’. Initially Banks refused to see anyone, and only at the end of February did he talk to Mrs Parks, his landlady. Others were refused altogether. ‘It pains me to see them,’ Banks told one of the turnkeys.

Clewes seemed in brighter spirits. For most of February he remained ‘cheerful and composed’ and was visited by his wife and children. Only at the end of the month, as the trial drew near, did he succumb to a bout of depression. In another ward John Barnett remained stoical, stoutly protesting his innocence and his confidence that he would soon be acquitted. His chief concern, it was said by his visiting family, was the danger the gaol posed to his delicate health.

The incarcerated farmers had been far from idle. Despite Banks’ protestations in the Talbot Inn that he wanted no legal adviser, he had quickly changed his mind once the gravity of his situation had become apparent. In early February he engaged Spurrier and Ingleby of Birmingham to conduct his defence. Shortly after, perhaps in an attempt to present a united front against Clewes, Barnett had also signed with the firm.

Clewes did not have the resources of the other men. His years as an aspiring young farmer at Netherwood were well behind him, and at 59 years old his finances were as worn as his body. He judged himself too poor to afford the counsel of attorneys or solicitors and stated that he would have to rely on the presiding judge to ask questions on his behalf. However, in early March Clewes’ relatives hired Stephen Godson, a local attorney. Godson was not of the rank or education of Banks’ or Barnett’s representatives, but he did give Clewes access to a degree of legal expertise.

The brief for the prosecution was passed to William Smith, the coroner, and his firm, Smith and Parker. Smith was at the height of his reputation following his successful inquest, and knowing the facts of the case far better than any other lawyer, it made perfect sense for him to take the role of state prosecutor. Over the next few weeks, sergeants, King’s councils and barristers were added to the growing number of legal representatives. They would each play a role when the assize judges had concluded their business in Oxfordshire and completed the 50-mile journey to Worcester.

The legal tussle ahead would be decided by the finest of subtleties. While English law remained highly technical and afforded prisoners various routes of escape, the system favoured the prosecution. None of the defendants would be given notice of the specific case to be answered until the day of their trial, and the prosecution was not compelled to disclose the material it was planning to use, raising the unnerving possibility of surprise witnesses. Furthermore, there was no court of appeal, meaning that judgements were usually final.

William Smith spent much of February preparing his case, faced with the troubling question of whether to bring additional charges against the men. The 1826 statute repealing the need for the principal perpetrator to be first convicted raised the possibility of a prosecution for Parker’s murder, but this, as Smith conceded in his notes, was unlikely to succeed. There was a much stronger chance of convicting the men for Heming’s killing. But should additional charges be laid in addition to those brought by the inquest? Was Clewes merely an accessory to the murder or was it possible that he had landed the fatal blow himself?

In his city office William Smith had his clerks draw up a detailed document entitled
The Case for the Prosecution
. This survives today and much of what is known about the Oddingley case comes from it. On the first page Smith outlined his intention to prosecute all three of the prisoners as accessories before the fact in Parker’s murder as well as for their involvement in Heming’s. He collected together proofs of the coroner’s inquest in 1806, minutes from Captain Evans’ and John Barnett’s interrogations at the Crown Inn in 1806, all the depositions taken informally by Reverend Pyndar and copies of the voluminous evidence given at the coroner’s inquest over the past few weeks.

On 7 March, little more than a month after the inquest had concluded, the assizes arrived for the Lent session in Worcester. At least ten different journalists from newspapers across the country were waiting in the city, where for weeks the
Worcester Herald
had been promising readers a special edition containing ‘a full and accurate Report of the Trials of the above Assizes and more particularly of that of Thomas Clews and Others for the murder of Heming’. Its rival,
Berrow’s Worcester Journal
, reassured its readers, ‘we shall use every exertions to furnish a full report in our journal published that evening [11 March]. If the trial is not concluded when we go to press, we shall on the following day continue the report in A Second Edition.’

The entry of an assize judge into a town was intended to be an impressive affair, a vivid and lasting symbol of the Crown’s power before its subjects in the provinces. Late on Sunday 7 March Justice Joseph Littledale was met at the county boundary and escorted into the city by the high sheriff to the ringing of the cathedral bells. Spring was advancing and only the cold breeze lingered as a reminder of the frosty winter weather. The Star and Garter, Unicorn and Rein Deer hostelries were already busier than usual, the
Morning Chronicle
¹⁷
noting that the ‘innkeepers are in eager expectation of a plentiful result, and look proportionally smiling and jolly’.

The article continued,

With respect to Oddingley itself, the excitement to visit it is in a great measure passed away, for the barn where the body of Heming for so long lay undiscovered is razed to the ground – the hole that served for his grave is filled up, and the bones of the murderer are long since removed. With all of these drawbacks to the scene of action, the curiosity of the public mind naturally turns to those it presumes to be the living monuments of the transaction; and, therefore, instead of Oddingley being the great attraction for the marvel-hunters and wonder-lovers, the run is all in favour of Worcester, with an anxious expectation for the result of the trial.

CHAPTER 17

The Assize

The Guildhall, Worcester,
¹
8–11 March 1830

EARLY ON THE morning of Monday 8 March the Lent assize opened at the Guildhall on Worcester’s High Street. The Guildhall was the most elegant building in the city and one of the finest examples of early Georgian architecture in England. Built of red brick and dressed with stone, it had been designed by Thomas White, one of Sir Christopher Wren’s pupils, and it was believed that the architect had personally carved the bust of Queen Anne which loomed over its arched doorway. The Guildhall was a permanent symbolic and administrative hub in the heart of the city. It had hosted assize sessions since its opening in 1723, and it was a suitably imposing and solemn setting for an orderly dispersal of the King’s law.

An ornate symbol of power: Worcester Guildhall in the early nineteenth century

As part of the preliminary steps, Judge Joseph Littledale convened with members of the grand jury to introduce himself and to offer guidance on the more complicated of the cases that awaited them. A grand jury was a body of between 12 and 23 important local men, whose role was to filter out cases unworthy of Littledale’s court. They met in private, interviewing witnesses and analysing indictments – formal written statements detailing the charges against a defendant. Once a majority was persuaded that a suspect
probably
²
had committed a crime, the grand jury endorsed the bill of indictment – proclaiming it a true bill – and the case was forwarded to the courtroom for trial.