I’ve been looking recently at the number of people who were hanged in Gloucestershire during the eighteenth century, and have been playing with statistics to see if any conclusions could be drawn from the bare figures.

Using Richard Clark’s fantastic Capital Punishment UK web resource, I input all the Gloucestershire executions between 1740 and 1800 and then split the hanged people up by gender.

This is the result:

It can be seen, looking at the executions of males, that there was a peak in cases in 1742. Whether this is due to a localised or more general moral panic around this time, resulting in a greater willingness to execute, or a regional crime spree (unlikely), I have not had a chance to research.

However, this year was of course part of the period known subsequently as the Bloody Code; between the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and around 1815, the number of crimes that were punished by the death penalty increased at a great rate – from around 50 at the start of the period, to around 200 by the mid 1770s.

There was also a peak in male executions in 1785, two years before transportation to Australia was introduced, and a corresponding fall in cases when that transportation began, and there was accordingly an alternative to hanging as a punishment.

Fewer women were hanged than men, but women were less likely to commit a capital crime than men; and those women accused were more likely to be acquitted, be convicted of reduced charges, and sentenced to a lesser punishment.

Women were also less likely to be transported, as they were seen as not being able to contribute as much as men to the economy of America or, later, Australia. Burning at the stake – the punishment for women convicted of petty treason, such as the murdering of their husband – was carried out in Gloucestershire, but was stopped in 1790.

Taking the period as a whole, more men were executed in Gloucestershire for highway robbery than for murder (40 of the former, compared to 30 of the latter). Housebreaking was the crime that 29 people were hanged for. Other types of theft followed – often the theft of animals, including cattle, horses and sheep – but also thefts from dwelling houses and other acts of stealing where the location was not specified.

Less common crimes that resulted in hangings in Gloucestershire included being an accessory to burglaries or murders; arson; rape; uttering; and sacrilege.

Juries became less keen to convict women of infanticide during the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, often preferring to believe that the woman involved had simply been guilty of the lesser crime of concealing a birth. Throughout the period studied here, infanticide is a rare occurrence in terms of a crime resulting in hanging – there are only four cases recorded, the last being in 1794.

I hope to look further at the executions that took place in Gloucestershire in further posts, and also at the non-capital punishments issued to men and women, to look for evidence of how gender influenced the punishment given out. Watch this space…

I’m sure a lot of people – even if they deny it to their friends – have watched the odd snippet, at least, of one of his programmes.

It often seems to follow the same format and subject matter. A man and woman, from the poorer end of society, come on and are interviewed about their relationship. They disagree on certain points, they argue, they dispute the facts as set out by their current or former partner.

One accuses the other of being unfaithful. The man says he is not the father of the woman’s child, or suspects he may not be.

The woman says the man will not pay maintenance towards the child; her family members are brought on to back up her claim, to say that he doesn’t pay a penny and that the woman has to rely on welfare to maintain her and her child.

Then Kyle, the voice of reason, decides that what needs to be done is a DNA test. Scientists will look at samples from father, mother and child – and possibly another man whom the first thinks is REALLY the child’s parent – and determine who is telling the truth.

Thinking about Kyle, and similar confessional TV programmes, the other day, I realised that there was a correlation between these 21st century programmes, and my research.

For the Jeremy Kyle show is like an eighteenth century bastardy examination.

Only in the Georgian period, there were no DNA tests to determine who was telling the truth – Jeremy Kyle would have had more authority back then.

But maintenance orders were the Georgians’ equivalent of the Child Support Agency, and the latter’s staff the equivalent of the parish officers, seeking to get the father to face up to his financial obligations and responsibilities.

Some things never change.

Stow-on-the-Wold is today best known as a rather genteel Cotswold town, full of antique shops, weekending Londoners and Japanese tourists. Twice a year, the Stow horse fair sees an influx of Traveller families from across the country come to camp out in fields on the outskirts of town and socialise – something that has seen tensions and suspicions about unfamiliar faces rise.

This is not a new phenomenon; such suspicions over strangers has long been a part of Stow’s make-up. On 26 July 1834, the day of the Stow Wool Fair, the town was thronged with visitors.

It was also the day appointed for the local magistrates to meet in Stow. Francis Edward Witts, the Rector of nearby Upper Slaughter, rode over for the justices’ meeting, where cases were brought and considered.

One of the cases involve some strangers, foreigners, who were regarded to have conducted themselves ‘outrageously’ in the Cotswolds.

They were American sailors, reduced to vagrancy far away from home. They were reported to have been travelling round the villages near Stow, including Condicote, and also more isolated farmhouses, demanding goods and money with menaces. They were said to be willing to use force.

These men, numbering only three, were brought before the magistrates. Witts described them as ruffians – “fellows half naked, ferocious, exquisitely blackguard and insolent”.

But they were also exotic – men from a far-off country, traversing the local lanes and putting the fear of God into local people, who had never seen anything quite like them before.

One case – involving a farmer’s wife in Condicote – was dropped, after the victim refused to testify that she had been intimidated by the men. This might imply that there was some hyperbole about the crimes, created by their ‘foreignness’ and the locals’ fear of strangers.

But despite this, the magistrates decided that the men should go to trial, and duly committed them until they could appear at the next Quarter Sessions, due at Michaelmas.

It may well be that there was more hyperbole in this case that it first appears. A glance at Gloucestershire Archives’ gaol registers for 1834 doesn’t show three American sailors.

There is one sailor whose origin is simply “unknown” and another who is from Castletownshend, in Ireland. Another is from Bennington – which could be the place in Vermont, but could also be a misspelling of Benington, in Hertfordshire.

It could be that anyone from outside of the immediate area was regarded as a “foreigner” and that Chinese whispers led to three men from different places being seen as “American” by suspicious locals.

But the existence of three half-naked foreigners threatening the tranquillity of the Cotswolds and its residents certainly attracted the locals’ interest, as well as the magistrates’; and roused the town from its slumber for a while.

Account of the justice meeting taken from The Diary of a Cotswold Parson, edited by David Verey (Sutton Publishing, 1978)

The Old Bailey Online website, which details nearly 200,000 criminal trials held at the Old Bailey in London, marks its tenth anniversary this weekend. Yesterday, I published a case study taken from it – the tale of the Winchcombe highwayman.

This case shows how the site can be useful not just for people researching London crimes and criminals, but for those looking at those in other geographical areas. The site has so much scope for looking at patterns of migration – how many defendants were servants who had travelled to London from more rural areas in search of work, for example? How many criminals went to London to commit crime, hoping that they could be anonymous in the metropolis when they couldn’t in their own small communities?

I hope to be able to look in more depth at Cotswold connections in the Old Bailey Online records at some point in the future (the database klaxon is blaring as I write), but that will take a bit of time. So in the meantime, I had a quick look at how Gloucestershire is represented in trials between 1750 and 1800.

The county is mentioned in nine separate cases – one of infanticide, six of grand larceny, one of theft under the value of a shilling, and one of bigamy. Two of the cases (both grand larceny) each involves two defendants.

In the infanticide case, from 1755, the defendant is a servant, Frances Palser, who was born at Wotton-under-Edge. She is stated to have moved to London from Gloucestershire 18 months prior to her trial. Witnesses who knew her as a child in Gloucestershire testify to her good character, and she is found not guilty.

The other female defendant who was born in Gloucestershire is Elizabeth Aspinal, charged with grand larceny in 1758 after being accused of trying to sell a silver tankard. Elizabeth, it appears, still lives in Gloucestershire, but after the death of her father, had travelled to London to try and sell some of his possessions – including the tankard, which she says friends told her to break into pieces in order to make it harder to steal en route. Elizabeth’s story shows a suspicion and fear of highwaymen and thieves outside of the county, and particularly on the journey to the capital. Elizabeth was believed, and found not guilty of theft.

In a further case, from 1759, Sarah Pittfield, a widow, is charged with stealing clothes belonging to a soldier – an opportunistic crime. We are told that she “came from Gloucestershire”, but it is unclear whether she lives there, and is just visiting London, or whether she has moved permanently. She is found guilty of grand larceny and transported.

The case of Martha Tame and Ann Kendall, from 1759, shows how women could meet in Gloucestershire and then maintain that relationship later, in London. Ann Kendall was a butcher’s wife living in Cheltenham. She also had her own job running a puppet-show. Martha Tame had travelled down to Cheltenham from an unknown destination, presumably in search of work in service, and met Ann. The two women became friends, and later both worked as servants for the same master in London. When they were caught, they were sleeping in the same bed in lodgings. When both were accused of stealing from him, friends spoke of Martha’s good reputation and Ann’s poor one – Martha was found not guilty, whereas Ann was transported.

In one case of theft, Thomas Fryer claims that all his friends live in Gloucestershire, and that he has no friends in London, implying that he is a recent migrant to the city (unless he is, of course, attempting to protect friends locally by denying all knowledge of them!). In another, the trial is told that a witness “is gone down to Gloucestershire” and can’t be contacted.

One grand larceny case sheds light on the working lives of Gloucestershire men. A predominantly rural county, in the eighteenth century, the majority of men outside of the main towns of Cheltenham and Gloucester would have been involved in agricultural work. This had peaks and troughs, and travelling round in search of work was sometimes necessary. In tis case from 1786, two Gloucestershire men, John Langford and James Ireland, had travelled to London in July in search of harvest work – haymaking. They had gone drinking in a pub, the Red Lion at Stanmore, Ireland, an agricultural labourer from Whittendon, admitting he had “come up to make the best of my time to work”.

Something happened between the two countrymen, and Langford was accused of stealing clothes from Ireland. He was found guilty and sentenced to be publicly whipped at Stanmore.

The last case, of bigamy, went to trial at the Old Bailey in May 1800, but involved events over the previous 35 years. William Beard had married his wife at Hanover Square, London, in 1791. At his trial, however, a native of Badgworth in Gloucestershire came forward with the information that Beard had married another woman back in 1765, in the Gloucestershire village. Witnesses spoke of having seen this first wife as recently as 1798. Beard admitted the facts, but stated that as he and his first wife had decided to part, the second woman was legally his wife.

This shows the beliefs of some members of society that if they had equably decided to part with their spouse, that this was pretty much the same as a legal separation – the marriage was at an end – and was therefore no obstacle to a remarriage. Beard may also have felt, however, that nobody in London could possibly come to hear about his earlier marriage, which had taken place miles away. But witnesses could be found who would travel to the Old Bailey and give evidence against him. William Beard was found guilty of bigamy and transported for seven years.

These cases show that a variety of Gloucestershire folk were involved in Old Bailey trials, as prosecutors, defendants, and witnesses. Gloucestershire origins could be an excuse for naive behaviour, for honesty and good character, or simply for innocence. But taken on its own, this argument would not necessarily be believed; witness statements were important, and the type of crime involved might have an impact on how a person was perceived. A widow stealing from a soldier in a pub was seen as beyond the pale; a young servant from the country, with a good reputation, would escape a conviction for infanticide (a crime that some were unwilling to convict girls for, in any case).

But the cases also show that there were strong communication links between Gloucestershire and London even in the eighteenth century. Witnesses could be called from the country to give evidence or character statements at the Old Bailey – and even to remember events from nearly half a century earlier.

In the first week of December 1704, ten men and women found themselves on trial in the Justice Hall of the Old Bailey. Only three were subsequently executed – one of them a Cotswold native.

John Smith was, in some ways, unlucky to be condemned at those Sessions. Of the seven women and three men who appeared as defendants in various crimes, two women pleaded their bellies and were duly found to be pregnant. Three other women were reprieved, as were two men.

But 48 year old starch seller Sarah Smith was condemned for stealing miscellaneous goods from a shop; and Mary White, 32, originally from Rochester in Kent, but who had migrated to London aged 18, was found guilty of stealing calico from a shop in Cornhill.

John was also a thief – but his crime was one that was viewed with terror by ordinary people. He was a highwayman.

Convicted of three counts of highway robbery, John’s modus operandi was to hold up anyone travelling by horse, or in a coach, in north and west London. He held up one man, William Birch, near Paddington, on 29 October 1704, forcibly taking from him his horse, a gray mare, along with its saddle and bridle. Then, on Bonfire Night a week later, he held up a Thomas Woodcock and his wife as they travelled over Finchley Common in their coach. He took from them any goods of value they had on them.

This derring-do was a far cry from his upbringing. John had been born and bred in Winchcombe, where he became a periwig maker. His parents had tried to bring him up respectably – as he later confessed, he “was well brought up by his parents, who gave him civil and Christian education”.

He was not a good child, though, and admitted, “he did not answer their Expectation and Desire; and was disobedient and undutiful to them, and fell into many extravagances and debaucheries”.

Given his extravagant tastes and rebellion, Winchcombe must have seemed like a very small, tame, place to be living. John did not, unlike the thief Mary White, state when he moved to London; perhaps he did not, simply travelling down to the outskirts of the metropolis to commit crime and then returning to Gloucestershire. In this way, he may have thought that he would not be recognised or identified by anyone.

Whether he committed the crimes on his doorstep or a long ride away, though, he was still caught and condemned. He freely admitted his guilt, although he was apparently put out that the robbery committed on the Woodcocks was counted as two different offences – one on Mr Woodcock and one on his wife.

Whilst awaiting execution, he appeared to be genuinely contrite about his offences – although anybody would be, given what the punishment was. He said that he was “very much contented to be thought the worst of men by men, provided he might obtain the favour of God by Christ.”

On Wednesday, 20 December 1704, John Smith was taken across London, from the Old Bailey to Tyburn, where he was duly hanged. He was just 23 years old.

John Smith’s confession taken from Old Bailey Proceedings Online, Ordinary of Newgate’s Account, December 1704 (OA17041220). This post has been published to mark the tenth anniversary of the Old Bailey Online website, which is a fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing almost 200,000 criminal trials held at the Old Bailey.

This short obituary marks a merging between my work and my personal interests. I am currently in the final year of a PhD in criminal history, looking at the work of a group of provincial eighteenth-century magistrates in order to study the involvement of women in the summary process – the initial stage of the criminal justice system, where people went to their local magistrate with complaints or allegations of crime.

One of the magistrates I am looking at is Edmund Waller, a magistrate in Buckinghamshire. He was this Cotswold rector’s ancestor and his family owned Farmington Lodge – a fact I was unfamiliar with when I started researching Farmington for this blog. Sometimes the world seems very small!

But this post relates specifically to Harry Waller. He was the son of Edmund Waller of Fetcham in Surrey, was born in 1760. He was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, graduating from there with BCL in 1787. He became rector of Farmington and of Hasleton-with-Emsworth in 1786, and then also vicar of Winslow the following year. He inherited the Hall Barn property when his brother Edmund died in 1810.

Several children were born at Farmington, including Harry’s successor, his son Harry Edmund, in 1805. In March 1809, Jackson’s Oxford Journal reported that “the lady of Rev Harry Waller” had been delivered of a daughter at their home at Farmington Lodge. This “lady” was Harry’s wife Maria, who died at Farmington Lodge on 4 February 1838, aged 70, 14 years after her husband’s death.

Eldest son Harry Edmund was educated outside of Gloucestershire – initially at Eton and then at Brasenose College, Oxford. He married Caroline-Elizabeth Larking, the daughter of John Larking Esquire, at the Consular Chapel in Boulogne-sur-Mer in 1826. However, six years later, he sold the ancestral home in Beaconsfield. He was a magistrate, like his ancestor, and in 1834, became High Sheriff of Gloucestershire. He was listed as a member of the gentry of Northleach in the national trade directories, his address given as Farmington Lodge.

In the early 1870s, a British gazette described Farmington as a village based entirely around the estate of Farmington Lodge, which was still the property of Harry Edmund Waller. There were only 59 houses in the village, and 284 residents.

This was the area that Harry Edmund’s eldest son, again called Harry, stayed in, having inherited Farmington Lodge after his father’s death. In 1891, he was still living there, with his wife Emily and their daughter Rachel – and still with 12 live-in servants to look after them. Like his father and grandfather – and his illustrious Buckinghamshire ancestor too – he continued to serve as a local magistrate.

Some of the family moved away – Georgiana Mary married magistrate Edward Marriott and settled in Burford, Oxfordshire; in 1871, her sisters Emily Maria – who nearly ten years earlier had married an army colonel, Edward Bondier – and Adela Dorothea were both visiting her there. Adela died in Upton on Severn in Worcestershire in 1890, aged 60 followed by Georgiana there in 1894; their sister Caroline Matilda had died two decades years earlier, aged only 35, in Bristol.

However, the links between the Waller family and Farmington continued well into the 20th century, with Harry Edmund’s son William dying there in 1909, aged 77.

This is very much an abridged version of the Waller family history. Apologies for not being able to include more material, but I was concerned this was becoming more of a book than a blog post!

At the moment, it’s early days. BBC Gloucestershire has interviewed Andy, who says, “I would like to get my hands on it and tell the story of what life was like in a Victorian prison, when prisons were prisons.”

The former Oxford Prison was turned into a highly successful hotel, using the prison cell rooms as a marketing hook, but whether Gloucester has the level of tourism to make this plan work is debatable (Shrewsbury residents have already expressed their doubt that their prison, the Dana – also closing – could become a successful hotel for this reason, and also given its slightly out of town location). So why not make it a tourist site, such as Nottingham has done with its fantastic Galleries of Justice, and use its grim history as a selling point?

I’ll be following this story with interest.

This resident was the rector of Bourton-on-the-Hill, the Reverend Dr Samuel Wilson Warneford, who was an alumnus of University College, Oxford.

Even though he was originally from Highworth, near Swindon, and had been in Bourton-on-the-Hill since 1810, Dr Warneford’s munificence spread far further. In 1838, he set out a proposal to the council of King’s College, suggesting that he could donate a sum of £1000 (£44,000 in today’s money) to the college, on condition that it be used to establish two prizes. The council meeting, chaired by the Archbishop of Canterbury, discussed the proposal on 28 April.

The prizes would be awarded annually for the two best essays by King’s College medical students, on the rather unwieldy subject of “On the evidences of natural religion from the facts and laws of the physical universe, especially those parts of it which are connected with medical or anatomical studies; and on the connection and harmony of natural and revealed religion”.

The top essay writer would receive a medal and books to the value of £25 (around £1,500 today); the second placed writer would also receive a medal but only £15 (£660 today) in books.

The competition would be announced by the Principal of the college in September each year, with the prizewinners being announced in October. Needless to say, the college eagerly accepted Dr Warneford’s suggestion to encourage students to try and find evidence for religion from the natural world; and the prize was duly established.

Remembered today for his involvement in the Warneford Hospital in Oxford, by his death, tales of his charitable works had reached as far as Australia; the Sydney Morning Herald, publishing his obituary, calculated his donations (with perhaps a bit of hyperbole) as totaling some £200,000 – around £11 million today.

The centre, in the village of Churchill’s old church (not the “new” one at the top of the hill!), contains innovative displays, touchscreens and digitised records – but this Easter, it reopens with a new exhibition on the history of farming in the area. This is quite a significant subject, as this locale – as with the Cotswolds as a whole – is a rural one that has relied on sheep and farming for centuries.

Churchill and Sarsden Heritage Centre will be open on Saturdays and Sundays between 2pm and 4.30pm; for sat nav reference, the postcode is OX& 6NA. For more information, see its website.

Captain Crawfurd (1859-1948) had been visiting the Cotswold town when his wife became ill; she was looked after so well by locals that the captain decided he would give his collection to the town. Another factor in his decision was the significance of Stow in Civil War history – it was the site of the last open battle on 21 March 1646. The paintings will be housed in St Edward’s Hall; it was at St Edward’s Church in the town that Sir Jacob Astley, Commander of the Royalist forces, was imprisoned.

The paintings includes one of Charles I and his family, together with others of Oliver Cromwell. Captain Crawfurd also collected armaments from the same period, which are also held at Stow.

The collection has been catalogued by the Public Catalogue Foundation – and the paintings it contains can be looked at here. It has also been put on a database, and a booklet produced with the help of a student researcher, which will be available to purchase. A steward will now be on hand at the exhibition to talk to visitors about the pictures within the collection.

The collection will be on view at St Edward’s Hall in Stow-on-the-Wold from April to October, on the first Thursday of the month, between 10am and 2.30pm.