Murder most Foul
Imagine the foul smell as you walk toward a decomposing body, suspended high in the air, the body enclosed in a gibbet swinging in the warm summer breeze. Not the victim, but the smell of the rotten, maggot eaten flesh of the villain. Holding your breath as you get closer, and closer to the body that had been deliberately suspended above the style that you have no choice other than to climb over to get home.
You try not to look at the wretched remains as you get closer to the style, but cannot avoid seeing the swollen body bursting the seams of the remaining clothes, the skin pealed off the flesh, the eyes pecked by Ravens and hanging from their sockets, the torn clothes revealing a maggots feast wriggling in the exposed flesh. Wood lice, centipedes and other insects nesting in the hair. Body fluids dripping to the ground below, eagerly awaited by a swirling pile of worms and maggots. The undergrowth flattened by the rats and other animals attracted to the scene. You focus your sight on the handsome dog fox, hastily running from the scene, carrying a rat in his mouth.
You shut your eyes to avoid seeing the body above you as you climb over the style whilst holding your breath, but you cannot avoid the loud buzz of the blue bottles and other flies swarming around the gibbet, looking for a place to lay more eggs. The warning cries of crows and ravens circling overhead, waiting for you to pass. The magpies arguing about the shiny buttons torn from the pigskin waistcoat of the deceased.
You can taste the pungeant air around you. A fly pitches on your cheek, looking for a fresh meal. Your hair nervously tingles as you hastilly leave the foul scene.
Imagine walking home to Kinver 200 years ago when the body of William Howe, alias John Wood was left to rot in a gibbet at Dunsley. Dissected by nature, rather than by medical dissection normal for murderers at the time.
Click Here to Listen to the scene in 1813
Howe was tried and hanged at Stafford Lent assizes for the murder of Benjamin Robins of Dunsley Hall, his body brought to Dunsley to be gibbeted as a deterrent to others. He was the last person to be gibbeted in England, the sight having been deemed too disgusting to repeat, despite thousands of locals turning out in their Sunday best to witness the event, and to hear the weekly sermon by a preacher at the gibbet.
A sight most foul indeed, until the body was stolen. The empty gibbet left as a reminder. Does the ghost of William Howe haunt Gibbet Lane tonight?
Timeline
| 17/12/1812 | William Howe went missing from his work at Ombersley Court, the country house of Baroness Sandys (Marchioness of Downshire), on December 17th 1812, where he had been employed for about 14 months as a carpenter. It is possible Howe had been working on a house refurrbishment and landscaping by John Webb |
| 18/12/1812 1pm | Howe arrives at the Nag’s head, the first of many pubs in Stourbridge, where he drinks and eats a pork pie for lunch. |
| 18/12/1812 4pm | Mr Benjamin Robins, a respectable farmer and squire of Dunsley Hall, had been at Stourbridge market where he had been selling sheep. He left Market Street at around 4pm to walk home, a distance of between two and three miles. |
| 18/12/1812c 430pm | A witness saw a man fitting Howes description ramming something down as if charging a gun. Another other saw him get a thorn from the hedge, and it was also proved that he afterwards called at a house on the road and asked a woman for a pin, probably to prick the touch hole of a gun. He was afterwards seen to put something into his left hand great coat pocket |
| 18/12/1812 5pm | About half a mile from his own house, Mr Robins was approached by a stranger who inquired the directions to the turnpike road for Kidderminster. They walked together for two or three hundred yards when the stranger drew behind, shot Mr Robins in the back, and robbed him of £11* and his newly repaired silver watch. Mr Robins noticed that the pistol was long and very bright, and that the robber wore a dark coloured great coat which reached down to the calves of his legs (*£26 according to another source) |
| Mr Robins made it home, but the wound was found to be serious, so two surgeons were called to remove the bullet which was lodged in his spine. | |
| 18/12/1812 5.30pm | A man fitting the descripton of Howe was seen going in great haste towards Stourbridge from the spot where the Mr Robins had been shot |
| 18/12/1812 6pm | Howe called at The Angel, first of two public houses at Stourbridge, where he joined in the conversation about the shooting, deliberately suggesting the robber knew the victim. |
| 18/12/1812 9pm | Howe continued his pub crawl to The Duke of William” where again the robbery and attack had been the subject of conversation. Howe again joined the conversation, and witnesses described him wearing a fawn skin waistcoat. He stays the night |
| 19/12/1812 7am | How leaves the Duke of William, pays the bill and leaves Stourbridge. |
| 21/12/1812 | Howe sold Mr Robins watch to a pawn broker at Warwick, stating it to be a family watch |
| 23/12/1812 | Howe returned to Ombersley to collect his possessions which he took in two boxes to a carrier at Worcester. One box one contained his working tools and the other his clothes. The boxes were addressed to a John Wood at an inn in London, with instructions to be left until collected by a person answering to the name of William Howe |
| 25/12/1812 | Howe finally left Ombersley and went to London |
| 26/12/1812 | Mr Robins dies in agony. A murder investigation is started by the local constable of the parish. Bow Street runners were summoned from London to assist. |
| 5/1/1813 | A person answering the description of Howe removed the two boxes from the inn in a mealman’s cart and took to the Bull in Bishopgate Street, London, and from there removed in a cooper’s cart to another location. |
| 12/1/1813 | Bow Street runners succeeded in tracing the boxes to a widow’s house in a court in the same street. When they axamined the box which contained the prisoner’s clothes they found a screw barrel pistol, a pistol key, a bullet mould, a single bullet a small quantity of gunpowder in a cartridge, and a fawn skin waistcoat which proved the undoing of Howe. |
| 13/1/1813 | The Bow Street runners hid in the woman’s house the police and waited to apprehend Howe. Howe returned and was arrested. He denied that he had ever been at Stourbridge, or heard of the deceased being shot, and accounted for changing his name at Worcester by stating that he had had a difference with his fellow work people. Later, he claimed that he changed his name to prevent his wife, whom he had determined to leave, from being able to follow him.On being asked where he was on the 18th of December he said he believed at Kidderminster. Upon the prisoner’s subsequent examination before the magistrates he changed his story, stating that he was at Kidderminster on the 17th of December, and at Stourbridge on the day of the murder, but that he was not out of the latter town from the time of his arrival there at 1pm until 730am on the following morning. He claimed that in the afternoon, he went to look about the town for new lodgings, and ultimately went to his lodgings about six o clock in the evening. The account which the prisoner thus gave of himself was proved to be a tissue of falsehoods |
| Whilst in Stafford Gaol, Howe sent a letter to his wife, who was unable to read. She asked a person to read it to her, but it was found to contain a direction to remove some things concealed in a hayrick near Stourbridge. The letter was taken to William Robins, son of Joseph Robins who was Benjamin Robins attorney. A search was made by Vickers and Aston who found a glove containing three bullets , and a screw barrel pistol which was a matching pair to the pistol found in the prisoner’s box. A gun maker gave his opinion that the bullet extracted from the wound had been discharged from a screw barrel pistol, and the bullet and the bullet found in the prisoner’s box were both cast in the same mould. | |
| 17/3/1813 | William Howe was tried at Stafford Lent assizes in 1813 for murder. He did not call any defence witnesses, and appeared indifferent to the proceedings. The trial lasted just 7 hours as all the circumstances placed the guilt beyond any reasonable doubt. Mr. Justice Bayley declared “You will be taken to the place of execution and hanged by the neck until you are dead, and that after you are dead, you will be cut down and your body be dissected and afterwards anatomised.”The Murder Act of 1752 included the provision “for better preventing the horrid crime of murder”, “that some further terror and peculiar mark of infamy be added to the punishment”, and “in no case whatsoever shall the body of any murderer be suffered to be buried”.The Act required either public dissection or “hanging in chains” of the cadaver (body).The act also stipulated that a person found guilty of murder should be executed two days after being sentenced unless the third day was a Sunday, in which case the execution would take place on the following Monday |
| The Stourbridge Magistrates applied for the body to be taken to the site of ther murder and gibbetted. Perhaps the surgeons who had removed the bullet from Mr Robins spine, wished to observe the natural process of decay. | |
| 20/3/1813 | Howe was hanged at Stafford Gaol. Realising his imminent fete, he repented and confessed. His body was taken to Fir Tree Hill at Dunsley, with a large crowd following in procession, where it was suspended in the gibbet for moral benefit. |
| 9/9/1814 | The STOURBRIDGE & DUDLEY MESSENGER (Printed and published at the office of J. Hemming, High Street, Stourbridge,) reported that Howes remains had been stolen from the gibbet on Saturday 3rd September 1814. It is roumoured that two doctors stole the body and hid the remaining dried flesh in bushes nearby. |
| 1834 | Hanging in chains or gibbet irons after death was abolished in Law |
Source “An essay on the rationale of circumstantial evidence” Published by Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman, 1838
Site Visit
Is this the site of the gibbet at Gibbet Wood, where the path turns towards Dunsley? Or was it further along the line where the current footpath from Dunsley joins the Wood?
It is said the the Gibbet was visible from Mrs Robins window. The wood is probably visible from Dunsley Manor, Dunsley Hall and Dunsley House
View from Gibbet Wood to Dunsley House, Dunsley Manor Farm and Dunsley Hall.
Food for Thought and Further Research
Did Howe just wake up one morning and decide to chuck his job and head to Stourbridge for no apparent reason? Did he decide to rob and murder someone after he arrived, having overheard about a lot of money being carried from the local bank, and decided to steal it; or did he go to Stourbridge with the plan already made?
Why did he murder Mr Robins? Was it a case of mistaken identity? It has been said that it was a case of mistaken identity, as a local farmer, George Burgess of Checkhill , was reportedly carrying a lot of money from Messrs Hill and Co Stourbridge Old Bank to pay a half-year’s rent. Howe may have overheard the story when he was already in Stourbridge, but if it was a spur of the moment decision, why was he in Stourbridge in the first place?
Alternatively, maybe he knew about the transfer before he went to Stourbridge? He was working for Mary Hill, Marchioness of Downshire, wife of Arthur Hill, 2nd Marquess of Downshire, when he mysteriously vanished. The local bank at the time was Messrs Hill and Co Stourbridge Old Bank, an important bank in the Midlands which later merged with the Midland Bank. Was Hill & Co Bank owned by a Hill family related to the Hill family at Ombersley? Maybe Howe overheard something while working at Ombersley about an imminent large sum of money to be withdrawn, and then planned to go to Stourbridge to steal it? It was gossip in Stourbridge, so the news may have travelled.
In 1832, the bank was recorded as being owned by Thomas Hill, Thomas Bate and William Robins. Was William Robins the same person who received the letter from Howe’s wife?
How did he get to Stourbridge? If he walked, then he would have to have made the journey in one day. The pistol was found in a hay stack between Dunsley and Stourbridge. No reports indicated he was carrying a large shiney pistol in Stourbridge. Did he ride on a stage coach to Kinver, or hich a lift on a cart delivering materials to the iron works, then cross to Stourbridge on foot, hiding the pistol in a hackrick to return later? In which case, he already knew the route that George Burgess would be taking before he arrived at Stourbridge.
Why were the Bow Street Runners called in, and how did they trace him so quickly? Surely it was not normal for The Bow Street Runners to leave Bow Street? So why did they? A very determined effort was made to catch the villain. Benjamin Robins’ attorney was a member of his family, Joseph Robins. Thomas Hill, of Hills bank had been a High Sheriff of Worcester. Maybe they had contacts in London via the Old Bank or the legal system? An account of the case by the Bow Street Runners can be found here.
Where did Benjamin Robins, described as a farmer, live? Farmers usually live in farm houses! He was returning from the market where he had sold some animals. The owner of Dunsley Hall is listed as Philip Foley at the time of Benjamin Robins death. The Foley family were industrialists, and owned the iron works at the Hyde, but they lived in Prestwood House and Dunsley Hall was tenanted perhaps to Benjamin Robins? Perhaps Benjamin Robbins lived in Dunsley Manor Farm, a listed farm house which can also be seen from Gibbet Lane? Dunsley Manor is on the right hand side when leaving Kinver, just past the de-restriction sign, and close to the public footpath between Dunsley Drive and Gibbet Wood. Maybe he lived at Dunsley House? This listed property boasts a vineyard, and can also be seen from Gibbet Lane. Dunsley House is at the end of Dunsley Drive, also adjacent to the public footpath to Gibbet Wood. Who lived in these houses in 1812?
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