Last updated at 12:07, Thursday, 10 January 2013

St Johns church at Waberthwaite: Where the murder victim Philip Troughton was buried

DRY and dusty old documents can be just that, uninteresting and rather boring, written in ancient flowery language with too many effs where there should be esses! Some, however, can hold fascinating treasure and hints to exciting tales of murder and mayhem. So it’s always worth a bit of a dig about.

And so it was with one local researcher who, while wading through a pile of old legal documents at Whitehaven Record Office was intrigued to catch sight of two eye-popping words – “barbarous murder”.

The documents belonged to the Muncaster Estate and initial inquiries showed that here was an interesting story, long forgotten.

More details were found from the pages of the Cumberland Pacquet and other sources, including the National and Australian archives, and separate anonymous account of events, now, for whatever reason, held at Glasgow University.

It seems the victim of this dire deed at Waberthwaite was one Philip Troughton, a bachelor, aged 60 of Woodyeat Estate. The perpetrator was a visiting relative, Joshua Wilson.

Mr Troughton (who, it was said, “had money”) was often visited by Wilson, a near relation “who gave himself out to be a smuggler, but was only a private soldier in the Westmorland militia.’’

On January 7, 1784, he had been at Troughton’s house where he lodged all night and lay in bed till very late the next day. He learned that Mr Troughton’s servants were to attend a dance that night and he left to return later only to find that just the one servant had gone to the dance.

But it seems all the servants, two women living in and one man, were set to go out on the following Friday night, so Wilson left Troughton’s home again on the Friday morning but returned in the evening while the servants were out at their entertainment.

It must have been a good do for they did not return until between five and six o’clock in the morning – finding their master lying in his own blood, “having received two dreadful wounds, one on the back side of the head and one to the front.’’

An axe, which it was assumed had been used in the dreadful deed, was found lying near him, smeared with blood. The front door was secured with a hoe from the stable and it too was covered in blood. Mr Troughton being unable to speak, languished till about nine o’clock on Sunday morning (January 11) when he died.

The deceased was buried at Waberthwaite three days later, though the parish register gives no hint of the terrible circumstances of his death.

Wilson was immediately suspected as being guilty of the murder, and of robbery. The subsequent coroner’s inquest brought in a verdict of “wilful murder’’ against Wilson and a warrant was issued for his arrest. A search was made with the prospect of a £20 reward, a substantial amount for that time, funded jointly by the coroner of Allerdale Ward (John Skelton of Rowrah) and Muncaster Castle’s Lord of the Manor.

Wilson was finally tracked down on January 29 to Staveley, near Kendal and brought before two JPs, Messrs Grisdale and Wilson, “to whom he confessed the whole of the diabolical transaction”.

He implicated a second man, one John Young from the same regiment, saying he had carried out the robbery while he, Wilson, kept watch. According to Wilson Mr Troughton fought back giving Young a severe blow on the head, to which Young responded with the axe blows and then took 30 guineas. Young was rapidly cleared of direct involvement, however, and appears to have never been apprehended.

“Blood was traced on the snow from Troughton’s home to a place called Egremont Park Head, near 12 miles.”

However it was also said that a man named Wilson called at an ale house in Eskdale about 11 o’clock on Friday night and asked for lodgings. Being told he could not be accommodated he drank two pints of ale, paid and left. Both accounts cannot be true if there was only one man involved, especially as another tale has a trail of blood leading two miles to the shoreline, which is in a third direction!

After his hearing before the bench, Joshua Wilson was committed to Carlisle jail to be tried at the next Assizes. These should have been in March 1784 but did not occur and the trial was delayed until the second and major Carlisle Assizes of that year, held in August. The report in the Cumberland Pacquet of August 24 is interesting particularly for the detail of how the jury were treated.

The trial came on at nine o’clock on Monday morning (August 16), and continued till near four in the afternoon; but the jury, not being able to agree on a verdict, withdrew from court, and were enclosed from that time till eleven o’clock on Tuesday forenoon, when they brought in a verdict finding the prisoner guilty of the murder and robbery.

Several witnesses were examined on the part of the prosecution, and a ring, two crown pieces, a piece of Portugal gold, and a pair of sleeve buttons, which had been found on the prisoner, were produced as belonging to the deceased. One witness, a young woman, was called in support of Wilson saying the defendant was with her at the time of the murder and that she had before frequently seen the two crown pieces, and the other articles in Wilson’s possession. Part of her evidence was however invalidated by the prisoner’s own examination before the coroner.

The trial took 27 hours all together, during which time the jury (as the law was in such cases) received no refreshment, and, during the night, were given no heat nor light.

Then Wilson got lucky. He had been found guilty and the sentence should have been death. However the judge showed clemency and he was “commended to His Majesty’s mercy”. From a document at The National Archives we learn that sentence was commuted on August 24 to ‘transportation for life.’ Until 1776 transportation was usually to America, however this stopped with the outbreak of the American War of Independence and, for a time, no alternative destination was in use. Thus, in 1784, the sentence of the court simply could not be carried out.

In other parts of the country prisoners due for transportation had to be accommodated pro tem on the infamous prison hulks, but Carlisle seems to have had room to keep them within its city jail. By 1787 transportation had started up again, this time to Australia and Tasmania, but there was a substantial backlog of prisoners to deal with.

Wilson’s eventual transportation cannot be traced in existing records, which are known to be only around 80% complete. However other records in the archive do trace other Carlisle prisoners eventually being transported to Australia after delays of seven years or more .

Strong circumstantial evidence suggests Wilson may never have been transported. Whether this was because he had died in jail or whether he was simply forgotten about and served out a life sentence at Carlisle prison is not known.

We do however know what happened to two others who were up before the same court as Wilson.

One, Elizabeth Stewart, was tried for theft of a box containing 18 guineas, and John Sumpton for stealing eight sheep. Both were sentenced to death - Stewart commuted to six months hard labour and Sumpton to life transportation. His journey to Australia occurred in December 1789.

Thanks go to historian Stuart Nicholson for his major contribution to this article.

First published at 12:06, Thursday, 10 January 2013
Published by http://www.whitehavennews.co.uk