April 4 to April 11, 2011 (From Worcester News)

April 4 to April 11, 2011

2:24pm Monday 4th April 2011 in Up to the 1900s By Michael Grundy

300 YEARS AGO:

OUR assizes at Worcester ended on Tuesday night when four persons received sentence of death. Roger Ackley and William Gatly for sacrilege and Thomas Webley and Richard Paine for horse-stealing. The two latter are reprieved. Nine criminals were burnt in the hand for several felonies, and two are to be whipped.

The 11 persons committed to our castle from Inkbarrow [sic] church are out on bail.

250 YEARS AGO:

ABOUT five o’clock last Sunday morning, one Pemberton, who used to keep a standing with meat near our Shambles at Worcester, was found dead, weltering in his blood, in a field near the city. As there was a deep wound in his side and a knife, unsheathed, found in his pocket, with the point bloody, it is imagined he had a fall and the knife ran into his body. He has left behind him four or five children and his wife big with child.

200 YEARS AGO:

COMMITTED to our house of correction in Worcester for 14 days, William Smith, hired servant to John Lane, for being disobedient, swearing at the horses and giving his master some impertinent answers 􀁥 British prisoners in France. We understand that £5 have been added to the collection at Worcester Cathedral by a person unknown. At Claines Church and St Oswald’s Hospital the collections amounted to £22.10s.4d. At Lady Huntingdon’s Chapel £8.3s.3d was collected and the Society of Friends (Quakers) in this city have subscribed £31.13s. At the church at Upton-upon- Severn, £21.5s.9½d was collected.

150 YEARS AGO:

A FATAL accident occurred at the Cross, Worcester, after eight o’clock on Monday morning. For some days past, workmen in the employ of Messrs Wood and Son, builders of this city, have been engaged in taking down the buildings between St Nicholas Church and the Avenue, preparatory to the erection of the new City and County Bank. Three of the men, named Stephen Chaplin, George Lea and William Nind, were engaged in pulling down an outer wall next to the Avenue when the bottom gave way and the mass of bricks, about 10 feet high, fell on the unfortunate Chaplin, who was knocked about seven feet and injured so severely as to cause his death, almost instantly. Lea was also knocked down and injured but not seriously.

Chaplin’s body, frightfully mutilated, was taken to the infirmary where a postmortem examination revealed several fractures of the skull which had driven bones completely into the brain. Chaplin was 43 years of age and has left a widow and four children. The jury at the inquest returned a verdict of accidental death.

Messrs Wood and Son have expressed their regret at the melancholy occurrence and state their intention to render every assistance they can to alleviate the plight of the poor widow and children.

100 YEARS AGO:

A COLOURED pugilist named Robert Johnson, aged 26, of Wilson’s Lodging House, Dolday, was charged at Worcester Police Court with stealing from Eliza Harvey, wife of a hawker, while in Dolday, a leather purse containing a sovereign and two halfcrown pieces. Mrs Harvey said she went to the Ten Bells Inn and paid for drinks for the prisoner but returned to her house the worse for drink and later noticed her purse was missing. PC Fisher traced the prisoner to Mealcheapen Street where he claimed he had obtained a sovereign from the landlord of the Nag’s Head, Malvern.

Johnson pleaded guilty and was sent to prison for one month with hard labour.