Damn His Blood (43 page)

Clewes was returning to a community which remained divided on the outcome of the case. This split was epitomised by the celebrations at Oddingley church the previous night, where initial joy at the verdict had soon descended into a violent quarrel. The confrontation was only broken up when Reverend Charles Tookey, Oddingley’s current clergyman, arrived back in the parish to find the church’s bells still clanging. Tookey had acted swiftly – suspending the clerk on the spot and threatening others with prosecution in the ecclesiastical court – but he could not prevent the incident being picked up by the press. Over the following days the newspapers concluded their reports of the trial with breezy anecdotes of the disorderly scenes at the church. Most adopted a lofty moral standpoint, declaring ‘feelings of remorse and shame’ at the behaviour of the parishioners. The scene was considered an undignified end to a shameful case, but if nothing else it did lend a degree of symmetry to the story, which had begun and ended with a quarrel under the church roof: the first at the vestry meeting in 1806, the second almost exactly 24 years later. The incident also stood in noisy testimony to the depth of feeling which still festered in Oddingley.

The parochial split over the outcome of the trial was replicated in wider society. Surprisingly, in some quarters the farmers had gained support during the past few weeks. One journalist who had been at the Guildhall estimated, ‘Every second man in the court seemed to be a friend of the accused,’ something explained, perhaps, by the fact that a tithe dispute had prompted the first murder. By 1830 the issue, so long unaddressed, was coming to a head but the problem would not be entirely resolved until 1836, and the abolition of the tax by the Tithe Commutation Act.

Others who agreed with the verdict had a more rational take. They believed the sheer number of years that had elapsed since the murders meant there was no real chance of exposing the truth. The very worst of the villains, Captain Evans, James Taylor and Richard Heming, were already dead or had met with arbitrary punishment for their roles in the crime. What sense did it make now to single out a handful of members of a community when so many could be accused of having had some involvement in the crime? Why should Clewes, Barnett and Banks stand trial at the assize when others like James Tustin and William Barnett did not?

This view, however logical, was not widely held. The
Observer
¹
was more reflective of popular opinion, openly regretting the verdict, which it branded a terrible aberration ‘wrung from an unwilling jury’ which left potentially dangerous felons loose in society. This opinion was echoed by the editors of several other publications including the
Carlisle Patriot
, which displayed the shortest temper in its response to the judgement. The paper complained that the laws of England had been shown to be deficient before a wide audience. ‘That a man who confessed to have been present at the perpetration of a crime should escape punishment is another instance of the wretched state of our law,’ it lamented.

In
Sequel to the Oddingley Murders
, the second of her pamphlets on the subject, Mary Sherwood also expressed indignation that the farmers had been released. ‘I should not hesitate to say that the result of this trial has been by no means acceptable in my immediate neighbourhood,’ she declared, adding that her friends were ‘alarmed rather than gratified at the idea that such villainy could escape its due and proper punishment’. She did concede, however, that English law ‘could not be framed as to suit every case and to meet every form and variety of crime’. Sherwood rounded off her highly individualistic coverage of the case with a series of biblical quotes addressed directly to Clewes, Banks and Barnett, encouraging them to repent and atone: ‘Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.’

It seemed Littledale’s warning to the grand jury at the beginning of the assize – ‘at this distance of time it might be very difficult to get at the truth of the case’ – had been proved accurate. And, reasoned many of the newspapers, there was a distinct difference between a legal and a moral acquittal. In a long meditation
Berrow’s Worcester Journal
pondered:

The acquittal of Clewes,
²
after he had confessed he was present at the murder and that he received money to conceal the murder, has occasioned much remark, and those who are least capable of forming an opinion on the subject refer his acquittal to causes which had no influence whatever on the decision. He was acquitted in strict accordance with a known rule of law, and though the application of a general principle may, in some peculiar instances, enable a great criminal to escape, it is far more consistent with the due application of justice that general and known rules exist. Were it otherwise the criminal code would be a code of uncertainties. Such then has been the issue of a trial which was expected to produce a very different result.

It is now highly probable that none of those who were engaged in the bloody conspiracy will ever be reached by the arm of human justice, but

THE WAYS OF HEAVEN, THOUGH DARK ARE JUST.

In this dispensation of Providence, there is much that our finite minds cannot comprehend, but the day of Retribution will ‘vindicate the ways of God to man’ – will bring to light ‘the hidden things of darkness’ and make manifest the justice of HIM who has said ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay.’

As these sentiments poured from the presses, Judge Joseph Littledale and his sergeants, barristers and sheriffs were far from Worcester, already distracted by details of a new slew of cases.
^fn1
But the precedents
³
established at the Guildhall in the case of Rex vs Clewes would endure for many decades. These reflected the uniqueness of the case but also stood as testimony to the skill, eloquence and persistence of the defence barrister Ebenezer Ludlow who had helped establish them. Many of England’s finest legal minds had gathered at the Guildhall that day – Curwood, Taunton, Littledale and Campbell – but Ludlow had managed to eclipse them all. It had required a nimble, shrewd performance from the sergeant, who had used all his mental resources to outfox the masses of prosecution testimony, but he had succeeded. Had the prosecution not been so bold as to press for an outright conviction of Clewes as principal and instead charged him as an accessory after the fact – something he had admitted in his confession – then the outcome might have been different. As it was, a cocktail of Ludlow’s clever counsel and an overly aggressive prosecution had set the men free.

For some weeks articles continued to appear in the newspapers, and George Banks for one was not ready to let matters rest. He had not had the chance to counter Clewes’ claims publicly and, fearing that his character had been unjustly tarnished, he opted to use the
Worcester Herald
as a mouthpiece. On 20 March the paper published a full account of the defence he had intended to present at the assize. It was a fiercely worded and powerful document which branded Clewes a ‘wicked and wretched man’ and bemoaned the fact that Banks had not had the opportunity to defend himself against the slanderous ‘idle rumours or fallacious reports’ that had circled freely in the marketplaces and squares of English cities. If he were guilty, Banks contended, how was it that the coroner had sat for five days, interviewed 50 witnesses and still not found any significant evidence against him apart from that given by Clewes? And how could they believe what Clewes said? If he was ‘wicked enough to participate,
as he admits he did
, in this foul and cold-blooded deed, and afterwards conceal it, and bear the burden of it on his conscience without remorse for more than 20 years, [he] would not hesitate to sacrifice 100 lives to save his own’. Banks continued,

Who, Gentlemen, has heard of four men meeting to rob a hen roost, to steal a horse or a sheep, to rob upon the highway, to break open a house or commit any other crime without previous consent? Would they not, I ask you, in all probability, have had frequent meetings beforehand to discuss and arrange their plan, the time of executing it, the part that each was to take in it and how they should afterwards repel and escape suspicion?

And yet, Gentlemen, if the story of this wretched man Clewes were true, four men met, as it were by accident, and that Taylor, instantly and without ascertaining who his associates were, and without one word being said, proceeded to murder Heming.

According to Banks, Clewes’ confession was all a ludicrous story riddled with unsubstantiated and erroneous claims. ‘Is it within the scope of possibility,’ Banks asked, ‘that a grave of five feet six inches deep and fourteen inches in width could have been dug by the throwing out of two or three spadesful of earth?’ Could Taylor have completed the job, without any assistance, in as little as half an hour? Why had nobody else helped? How could Taylor have even dug the grave with a spade, the ground in Oddingley being so hard? At the very least, Taylor would have needed to use a mattock, about the only implement fit for the task. And Banks had more to say about the spade.

Gentlemen, observe the artful but futile attempt and caution which Clewes uses to make it to be supposed that not even the spade was his, ‘the spade’ he says, ‘was none of mine’. Then whose was it? He has not said that Taylor or any of the others had a spade with them when he met them at the barn; neither has he said that they took it away with them. Whence, then, did the spade come? Whither did it go?

There were more anomalies. Banks claimed that the Captain had never owned the type of lantern he was supposed to have been carrying. And who held this lantern, lighting the path, as the Captain and Taylor dragged Heming’s corpse to the grave? Banks then cast doubt on Taylor being involved at all, reiterating that the farrier had no motive for murdering Heming and reminding readers that he had an alibi. Even more absurd, Banks pointed out, was the suggestion that Taylor had committed the murder. Banks had located witnesses to prove that by 1806 Taylor was ‘an emaciated, drunken, feeble old man, between 70 and 80 years of age, utterly incapable of fracturing Heming’s skull with a blood stick, or to have dug Heming’s grave in half an hour – or half a day’.

Most dubious of all was Clewes’ allusion to a mysterious fourth man in the barn. If he was to be believed, then this fourth man had remained impassive throughout – just like Clewes himself. Clewes had supposed this fourth man to be Banks, though he had not stated so explicitly. It was a glaring weakness, and Banks seized upon it, deriding it as the one artful lie that exposed Clewes’ words for what they were. His whole statement, Banks countered, was a long string of lies, cobbled together by a desperate amoral man in a frantic bid to claw himself out of a perilous situation. The only sliver of truth in the whole sulphurous invention, Banks asserted, related to the moment that he had given Clewes some money at Pershore Fair. But he knew nothing about what this money was for.

It certainly seemed bizarre that Clewes had remained meek and impassive for half an hour while Heming, a man he knew well, was beaten to death and buried in his barn. And the accuracy of his confession was called into further question with the revelation that Clewes himself had admitted it contained a flaw. According to the
Worcester Herald
, just before he was released from gaol Clewes had declared his evidence to be true ‘except in one point’. The
Herald
, exhibiting a talent for melodrama, did not enlarge on this statement, which served only to strengthen the long-held suspicion that Clewes was untrustworthy. And several days later Clewes was to suffer another stinging attack. John Barnett, breaking his silence at long last, joined Banks in ridiculing the entire confession as a ‘false and wicked invention’. He stated that he had never met Clewes at Pershore Fair or given him any money. Ever since their arrests in February, Banks and Barnett
⁴
had maintained a united front, and now they were closing ranks.

This was how matters came to rest in the spring of 1830, as life in Worcester and Oddingley reverted to its normal rhythms and the public’s attention settled elsewhere. And while the trial had not resulted in convictions, it had at least exposed enough to leave people with an almost complete picture of what had happened during those two days in June 1806. Nobody seriously doubted the main facts of the case: that the farmers had conspired to have Parker murdered, had hired Heming to complete the task and then killed him to keep him quiet. But there were still unanswered questions relating to the accuracy of Clewes’ confession, and 200 years later these puzzles still linger, as perplexing now as they were in the spring of 1830.

Clewes’ confession is a fascinating document. The eerie, panicked tone is evocative of both the long June day in Oddingley which it described and the chilly magistrates’ office at Worcester County Gaol where it was taken down years later. Today when scouring the document for the truth we have some advantages over the trial jury at Worcester in 1830. Unlike them we are not compelled to see the confession in absolute terms – as a true account or a complete fabrication. Instead we are free to navigate a middle course, accepting some of Clewes’ claims and rejecting others. Banks had planned to appeal to the assize jury: ‘You cannot, I am persuaded, place any confidence in the contradictory and improbable statements which have been made, especially by Clewes.’ But this was going too far, because, for all the logic, power and venom of both Banks’ and Barnett’s attacks in the press, there is good reason to believe that the bulk of what Clewes said was true. Above all, the confession has two driving qualities: it is cogent and comprehensive. Each assertion Clewes makes, however much disputed, does at least fit the known circumstances, and the sheer length of his statement (nearing 1,500 words) means he gives answers to almost all the hanging questions. He tells us how Richard Heming died, when he died, how his body ended up in the grave, who was in the barn, how the money was distributed afterwards and why he kept quiet. Also implicit is information about Parker’s murder. The description of the Captain and Banks at the beginning of his statement is revealing. They are frantic, pestering, distracted and improvising. Why should this be so if they had not conspired to have Parker killed and hired Heming for the task? Why had Captain Evans been so eager to give Heming money to get rid of him? Why had Clewes been desperate to wash his hands of everything (‘I won’t have him here, nor have anything to do with him’)? And why did they not alert Reverend Pyndar? The whole confession is a tacit acknowledgement that the farmers were implicated in Parker’s murder. This is the engine that propels the action that follows, and therefore Clewes does not just explain the circumstances of one murder but two. And to think a depressed isolated man with no legal knowledge had invented such a piece of fiction to explain all the facts yet still allow himself to escape goes beyond credibility.