Coroner’s Inquests 1861 cases
There were 89 cases reported in 1861, presented in six sub-pages, including the usual array of men falling off horse-drawn vehicles and being crushed under the wheel-rims, the awful cases of children left for a minute or five alone in the house and straying too close to the open hearth – one senses the poverty inherent in the situations of many of these cases, both parents required to labour in the fields for the bare subsistence diet.
The Road Hill House Murder of 1860 having whetted an appetite for sniffing out poor policing, I read with some incredulity another shocking case of murder, Ann Hill, wife of a gamekeeper at Everleigh Manor, being garotted in the boiling house where the dog and pheasant food was prepared. The fact of this being three-quarters of a mile away from the House in lonely woods, and the only other person about being the other gamekeeper, Storer, quickly fastened suspicion on that poor man. The deceased’s husband was apparently away, only his well-prepared trip was stalled so that he was actually in the village on the night in question. Am I the only one to think that even more suspect?
Charles Seymour might have trusted his female rescuer Eliza Rose, when they were both trapped on the fourth floor of Mr Henly’s flax mill at Calne and fire was raging below them. She broke open a window and pulled him by his smockfrock, saying, “Follow me,” jumping to safety into a deep pool of water, but unfortunately he didn’t follow her, and he died a terrible death.
There seemed to be a back-story to Harriett Lunn, a supposedly poor servant to a family then in London, who died ignoring a suggestion that she seek medical aid, and, on her boxes being opened in the presence of the Coroner and local vicar, she was found to own nineteen pounds in gold and a large sum of money invested in Government securities.
Was the child Jane Barnes, 10 years of age, aided to her death by the beating her father supposedly gave her a few weeks before? The fact of their being motherless, and the elder sister Sarah working from 7am to 7pm at hay-making tells a story of seasonal agricultural labour, and the concomitant poverty if they do not all bring in the required pennies.
In a similar vein, the husband of Elizabeth Saunders had to leave home at Broad Blunsden at 4am to reach his work at Swindon, staying there overnight, and returning at the end of the week at 8pm – leaving his daughter to seek medical aid for her ill mother, which involved obtaining a ticket from the relieving officer at Highworth, who proved unwilling to listen as she called down the street to him.
Another hay-maker was Peter Tucker, whose case is similar to that recorded famously on a grave-stone by Winchester Cathedral – that of drinking cold water on a very hot day after hot exertion.
Hixley, Eleanor – Stratton St Margaret
Millard, Elizabeth – Kington Langley
White, Isaac – Somerford Keynes
Karran, Ann – Stratton St Margaret
Loveday, Noah – Liddiard Millicent
Tugwell, Maria – Sherston Magna
Chinnock, Elizabeth – Warminster
Barter, Charles – Donhead St Andrew
Awdry, West & Lowder, Alicia – Chippenham
England, Elizabeth – Salisbury
Franklin, Nehemiah – Cliffe Pypard
Aldridge, James – Great Bedwin
Peddington, Georgina – Shrewton
Chilton, William – Marlborough
Pearse, Frances – Langley Burrell
Saunders, Elizabeth – Broad Blunsden
Golding, Martha – Sevenhampton
Unknown female – Donhead St Andrew
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Wiltshire Coroner's Inquests 1801-1920 