Warwick Read online

  The house on the corner of Brook Street and High Street, formerly the Bear and Bacchus Inn.

  Budbrooke parish church.

  Joseph and Sarah Dormer were wealthy and respectable farmers who lived at Dial House in the village of Ashow, a few miles from Warwick, with their six children. In 1819, the family employed a handful of servants, and among them was twenty-one-year-old Ann Heytrey from Charlecote. Her father had been a labourer but had died, and her widowed mother, Mary, was no doubt relieved when Ann obtained a position with a wealthy family, as she had had more than her fair share of trouble with Ann’s brother, Thomas.

  Ann was described as an attractive young girl, although reserved and sullen. Mrs Dormer thought her an excellent servant, which showed in her attitude to an incident earlier in the year, when Ann had stolen some banknotes from her employers. Thomas Heytrey had persuaded his sister to take the notes and he was going to pass them on for her. Joseph Dormer had wanted Ann arrested, but Mrs Dormer had spoken up for the young woman and Ann had remained in the Dormer’s employ. It was not until later that year that Ann’s behaviour took a strange turn.

  The peaceful village of Ashow.

  On Sunday 29 August most of the family went out to a parish wake while Mrs Dormer stayed at the house to arrange supper. The other servants also went to the wake, leaving Ann alone in the kitchen. At some time during the early evening Elizabeth Jaggard, who was passing on her way to the wake with her husband, said she saw, ‘A servant girl, with a coarse apron and a reddish coloured gown on at the gate leading into the fold or rick yard, looking towards Ashow, who returned in great haste to the house again.’ She also saw Mrs Dormer sitting by a window with a book in her hands.

  Three of the Dormer children, Mary, Elizabeth and Joseph, arrived home at about seven in the evening and found Ann standing by the kitchen door in an agitated state. Elizabeth, the eldest, saw some blood on the floor in the passage and asked, ‘Ann, what is this?’

  ‘Oh nothing,’ was the answer, so Elizabeth said, ‘Do bring a mop and clean it up.’ Mary, the younger daughter, then asked, ‘Ann, where is my mother?’

  ‘She is just gone a walk towards Ashow,’ Ann answered. Upon hearing this, Joseph went back outside to look for their mother. A few minutes later Harriet Dormer came in and also asked where her mother was. The answer this time was, ‘She went about ten minutes ago into the garden to get cucumbers.’

  Thinking nothing of it, the three sisters went upstairs. Moments later a dreadful scream was heard and Mary ran out of their mother’s room, shouting that she lay drenched in blood with her throat cut. Elizabeth rushed downstairs and asked Ann if anyone else had been in the house, but Ann said there hadn’t. When she heard what had happened to Mrs Dormer, she exclaimed, ‘Gracious God, surely your mother has not done violence to herself?’

  By this point, Joseph had returned to the house. He had heard his sister’s scream and his first thought was that one of his sisters had discovered an intruder and was being attacked, so he rushed to the barn to fetch a pitchfork. But on returning to the house he was told what had happened and went up to his mother’s room. He found her lying flat on her back surrounded by blood; a knife at her right side.

  Ann had followed him up to the room and he accused her of murdering his mother. All Ann said in reply was, ‘You may take me wherever you have in mind.’ Joseph then dragged her downstairs and out to the front of the house, where neighbours were already gathering. There he hit Ann so hard across the face that she fell to the ground.

  William Boddington, a surgeon from Kenilworth, had just passed by Dial House when he too heard the scream. The Dormer girls rushed to him to tell him that they thought their mother had been murdered and would he go and see if ‘any life was remaining’. But as soon as he saw Sarah Dormer he knew she was dead.

  Later, Boddington and Warwick surgeon Thomas Hiron examined the body. The surgeon’s report tells that:

  [We] found the throat cut violently so as to divide all parts to the spine, which was cut more than once, two deep cuts on the left jaw, one of which extends into the mouth, several small scratches on the left side of the face, a violent bruise on the nose, one front tooth knocked out from the upper jaw, and one opposite to it on the lower jaw, several bruises on various parts of the body, the middle finger of the right hand cut deeply across in two or three parts, with other cuts on the fingers of both hands.

  It was also noticed that one of Sarah’s shoes was marked with a white substance, as if she had been kicking or struggling against the wall, and that numerous spots of blood led through the passageway up to the bedroom. When the constable searched the house he found a bloodstained cloth and apron soaking in a tub of soapsuds standing in the yard.

  * * *

  ‘the throat cut violently’

  * * *

  As Ann seemed to be the only other person who had been in the house at the time, she was taken into custody, where she denied everything. When asked if she had murdered her mistress she said, ‘They say so but I have not,’ claiming that she was as innocent of the murder as a child that was yet to be born. At first, it was thought that Ann may have been covering up for her brother, Thomas, and that she had let him into the house in order to steal from the Dormers but had been rumbled by Mrs Dormer. Ann insisted that ‘neither her brother, nor no other man had anything to do with it,’ and it was suggested that she must have known who did it. After a short silence she admitted to killing Mrs Dormer, and that no one had helped her.

  Ann said she was in the pantry cutting the cucumbers which she and Mrs Dormer had just fetched from the garden, when a thought struck her that she would murder her mistress. She admitted that she had gone out into the lane first, which is where Elizabeth Jaggard had seen her. Perhaps it was to clear her head or perhaps it was to make sure she was seen by a witness, in the hope they would mention her leaving the house. Whatever the reason, she then went back into the house and into the ‘best’ kitchen, where her mistress was sitting reading. Ann then knocked Mrs Dormer out of the chair with her fist and while she was on the floor, Ann stood over her, looking at her. Mrs Dormer then got up and ran out of the kitchen, along the passage and up the stairs. Ann had followed her mistress out of the kitchen but veered into the pantry instead, where she picked up the knife she had been cutting the cucumbers with. She then made her way up the stairs, to find Mrs Dormer lying down on the floor. When asked if she had knocked her mistress down, Ann said she thought she had either tripped or fainted. She then went on to describe how she had ‘stooped down and cut her mistress a time or two’. Asked why she had put the knife down at the side of Mrs Dormer she said it was to make people think Sarah had committed suicide.

  Ann was found guilty at the Warwick Assizes on Monday, 10 April 1820 and sentenced to death, the judge declaring ‘that on Wednesday next, she be drawn upon a hurdle to the place of execution, and there be hung until she was dead, and that her body be given to the surgeons for dissection’. Some reports say that throughout the trial she remained quite calm, but others stated that while being examined her expression showed one of anguish.

  Ann had repeatedly been asked why she had murdered her mistress but every time she replied that it had just come into her head. When asked if she had ever had such thoughts before, she said, ‘No, never.’ ‘Did Mrs Dormer make any resistance,’ she was asked; ‘Very little,’ was the reply. When asked what she did when she had committed the crime, she just said, ‘I went back to the kitchen.’

  ‘Why did you not run away?’

  ‘I was so confused I did not know what to do,’ then, bursting into tears, she added, ‘I liked my mistress so much I would have got up at any hour of the night to serve her.’

  On the Wednesday morning she was taken out to the front of the gaol: ‘The firmness bordering upon hardihood, though strictly decorous, which distinguished her during the trial, remained to the last moment. She died perfectly resigned to her fate and with every mark of repentance for her horrid crime.�
� As the cap was being placed over her head she was again asked why she had committed such an awful crime, and she replied that ‘she could not tell – she had none, but she thought she must murder her mistress.’ After the execution her body was taken to a house in Kenilworth, where surgeons Mr Boddington and Mr Welchman dissected it.

  Prior to being hanged, Ann wrote two letters. The first, written on 10 April 1820, was to Elizabeth Dormer:

  I take the liberty of addressing you this Epistle for the last time and I am heartily sorry for the sorrowful misfortune as has happened which I hope the Lord in his mercies will forgive me and I am very sorry to see you look so bad; I did not know you when you was called up I hope you will forgive me for what I have done as my life will pay for the unfortunate Deed. Oh may the Almighty be your comfort and may he pardon me my sins. Miss Dormer I ask your forgiveness and the family’s at large for I forgive all the world and I hope I shall die in charity with all men. May the Almighty be merciful at me. Dear Miss Dormer it is not the distress as I have brought on myself but what I have brought on your family and my own and I hope I shall be a warning to everyone to avoid the temptation of the infernal spirit. I hope the Lord will be your comfort such a good creature as I acknowledge you to be. Farewell may the Lord power down his blessings on you and yours. I must conclude with my prayers as it all I can give at this time. I am your unfortunate servant. Ann Heytrey

  The second letter, to her mother, Mary, was written a couple of days later on 12 April 1820:

  My dearest mother, I take this opportunity of writing to you. I hope, my dear Mother, you will resign your troubles to the Lord, may he be your comforter, and I hope we will meet in heaven; my heart is resigned to the Lord, may he have mercy on me. My dear Mother, this is the last morning of my being in this world, but I hope in God by this time tomorrow I shall be in a glorious world, where there is no fear of death or trouble. My dear and tender Mother, I once more and forever bid you farewell: my last wish is for you not to grieve for me, an unfortunate sinner, but offer your trouble up to the Almighty, as he will be your comforter and protector. I hope I shall be a warning to everyone, never to deviate from the laws of God, but to walk in his ways. Farewell, my dear Mother: May the Lord bless you is the prayer of your unfortunate daughter. I most heartily repent and I forgive all the world and I hope the world will forgive me. Ann Heytrey

  Exactly one year later, Ann’s brother, Thomas, was hanged on the same spot with three other men for the murder of a man in Wellesbourne. Two months before, while he lay in prison awaiting trial, his mother, Mary Heytrey, died (it was said of a broken heart).

  Ashow parish church.

  The Dormer family grave in Ashow churchyard (first right).

  The Dormer grave still stands in the churchyard at Ashow today. The wording on the stone simply reads: ‘Sacred to the memory of Joseph Dormer who died May 12, 1830 aged 69 years. Also of Sarah, his wife who died 29 August 1819, aged 47 years’.

  These days, we often hear of crimes in which cars are regularly being stolen, broken into or vandalised, but this is by no means a new crime. Even before motor cars were invented other modes of transport were not safe to be left unattended, as the following extract from the Leamington Spa Courier of Saturday, 8 November 1828 shows:

  The alarming extent to which horse-stealing is carried [out] in this neighbourhood calls loudly for some extraordinary means of prevention; either by the extreme punishment of the law being inflicted in cases of conviction, in order to deter others, or by some more active and efficient means being adopted for the apprehension of offenders, and for decreasing the facility with which this rapidly increasing crime has hitherto been successfully committed. In Lincolnshire, and some other counties, we believe, Associations have been formed for the express purpose of protection from horse stealers, whose systematic and daring perpetration defied all ordinary means of detection; and when a horse belonging to a member of the Association has been stolen, other members either personally join in pursuit, or provide the necessary substitution; so that an immediate and simultaneous pursuit, in different directions, is commenced, and in several instances it has been attended with complete success. Some such measure, we would suggest, might be advantageously adopted in this district, where not less than six or seven horses have been stolen within a very few weeks; and on Friday se’nnight Mr Swadkins of Solihull lost two valuable ones, which though every enquiry has been made respecting them, have not since been heard of and it is presumed that they have been stolen.

  Throughout the following year horse stealing continued at an alarming rate and exactly one year later the same newspaper wrote:

  By an official French table of the importation of horses into that country, it appears that our neighbours are in the habit of borrowing at the rate of from fifteen to twenty-five thousand annually from us. It is said that the supply is almost entirely of stolen horses, accounting for the alarming prevalence of horse-stealing in this country.

  John Williams and William Roberts arrived in Warwick on the Godfrey’s Birmingham coach on Saturday 25 October. As the coach pulled up outside the George Inn in Market Square, one of Warwick’s constables, Thomas Bellerby, happened to be standing nearby. He noticed that Williams was seated at the front of the coach and Roberts, who Bellerby described as ‘a man having the appearance of a servant’, was riding behind the coach.

  Market Square in Warwick, where Williams and Roberts arrived.

  The site of the former George Inn in Market Square.

  Roberts took two saddles from the roof of the coach and Williams asked him, ‘Have you taken care of the saddles and my whip?’ Bellerby then engaged them in conversation and asked Williams if they were going on with the coach. He was told no, they were going to the fair the next day and wanted to deposit their saddles at the coach office, so Constable Bellerby directed Williams to where it was. Later that evening, the two young men were seen at the Flying Horse public house and at St Nicholas’ churchyard the following morning. The churchyard was close to the Banbury and Tachbrook toll gates, next to a piece of land occupied by a John Benbow. On the Sunday, Benbow had secured his horse, a black gelding, in this field but by the next morning it was gone. Two days later a grey horse was stolen from Thomas Bishop of Burton Dassett, some fifteen miles from Warwick on the Banbury road. When Constable Bellerby heard that the horses had been stolen he became suspicious of the two strangers he had seen on the Saturday and sent descriptions of the men to the Hue and Cry (a national newspaper which was the forerunner to the Police Gazette).

  Later that week, Williams and Roberts arrived in Chippenham. Witnesses said that Williams was riding a black horse and Roberts a grey one. The morning after they arrived in Chippenham, Williams took the grey horse to the local fair, where a horse dealer named Banks arranged to buy it. Williams asked him if he wanted to see a black gelding as well, to which Banks agreed but said that he would need to see proof that Williams owned the horses. Williams said that he had bought them from someone near Gloucester, but Banks thought this wasn’t proof enough and he insisted that he wanted ‘someone to vouch for his having honestly obtained them’. He maintained that he would not hand over any money until he had been given this evidence. By now, Banks had started to become suspicious, as it seemed to him that Williams was unable to produce proof of purchase or ownership, and so he decided to inform the local constable. Later that day, Williams and Roberts were taken into custody, and Bellerby was notified of their arrest.

  St Nicholas’ churchyard, where Williams and Roberts were seen prior to the horse theft.

  The fields along the Banbury road, now parkland.

  While waiting for the arrival of Constable Bellerby, Williams was placed for the night in a bedroom on the second floor of the gaol house and had been fastened to the head post of the bed with a handcuff. His clothes were taken away and the door was locked, but within moments of being left alone he ‘took off the tester of the bed, and of course easily slipped the chain from the post, being
thus far free he next proceeded to untie the sacking cord by means of which he let himself down from the window. His clothes being gone, he wrapped himself up in a blanket, and with the addition only of a night cap, actually walked several miles from the place’.

  At three o’clock in the morning Williams arrived at a row of cottages and knocked on one of the doors, which was opened by a woman who he offered his watch to in exchange for some old clothes. She was certainly shocked to see a man standing there in only a blanket and when she heard the rattle of his handcuff she ran for help and John Williams was soon in custody again; ‘the only benefit he derived from his nocturnal expedition was a cold skin and blistered feet’.

  On 2 November, the Saturday following their arrest, Constable Bellerby went to Chippenham to identify the men and to inspect the horses. On seeing Bellerby, Williams said, ‘It was the d****dest foolish thing that ever a man did, to think of stealing horses from a close adjoining a toll-bar.’