There weren’t many people to watch John Walthew (Waltho) on his wedding day as he limped, (courtesy of a broken left thigh some years earlier), down the aisle at St. John the Baptist church, Armitage on 26th September 1789. John was just short of 31 years old and his bride was 17-year-old Sarah Lamsdale and they were marrying in private. The marriage was made with a licence, rather than with banns – the church allowed them to avoid delay and the publicity of calling banns on three successive Sundays by providing, for a fee of course, a marriage licence. Couples in a hurry or requiring privacy did so for a number of reasons. It may have been the disparity of age that prompted the private wedding or perhaps Sarah was pregnant or maybe some other reason. Whatever the reasons, if Sarah was indeed under 21, she would have needed a formal written approval for the marriage. Neither could write so they made their mark on the register and one of the witnesses was Thomas Henney who was John’s employer.
John was a live in servant at Henney’s farm in Handsacre, employed, as was often the case for agricultural workers in the 1700s, on a yearly hiring – from October to October – and largely paid with board and lodging. Life did not take a turn for the better for John though because, within a month, his repeated negligence had caused the death of a prize foal and Henney decided that he would not renew John’s hiring when it expired and, even worse, he stopped £5 out of his wages which at the time would have been a significant sum.
John was often heard making threats of retribution in the days that followed and on Friday night, 30th October 1789, he took his revenge. It was a clear moonlit night and, with the aid of a lantern, he set fire to Henney’s barn, full of barley and a quantity of threshed and unthreshed wheat, three ricks of oats and a rick of barley in a nearby field. He immediately fled and the following week he was seen in Lichfield.
18th-century law enforcement was very different from modern-day policing. The prosecution of criminals remained largely in the hands of victims themselves, who were left to organise their own criminal investigations as there were no police forces. In 1771 the Birmingham Aris Gazette had announced that the ‘principal inhabitants of the townships of Rudgley, Hamstall Ridware, King’s-Bromley, Armitage and Bruerton have entered into an Association and Subscription, to pursue and apprehend, with all possible diligence, and expedition, and to prosecute to conviction, at a joint expence, all persons guilty of any burglary or Capital Offence, felony or petty theft, which may be committed against any of the subscribers; and that handsome rewards will be given by the Society to all persons, gate-keepers and others, by whose assistance or information these ends may be most speedily and effectually answered; as well as to all other persons within the above-mentioned townships, who shall at their own expence, prosecute and convict any offenders in form aforesaid.’ All the local landholders and others joined the Association e.g. Nathaniel Lister Esq., John Sneyd Esq., Andrew Birch.
Thomas Henney was a paid-up member and the Association placed notices in the newspapers, like the Birmingham Aris Gazette, offering a reward of 20 guineas for information that lead to Waltho’s arrest and conviction. The description given was that Waltho was about 5 feet 6 inches tall, of a pale complexion, light coloured straight hair, walks lame, and was seen at Lichfield on 6th November when he was wearing a Velveret coat, waistcoat and breeches.
The notice wasn’t only put in local papers – over the next few weeks the London Sun, York Herald, Ipswich Journal, Dublin Chronicle of Liberty and Belfast Commercial Chronicle all carried the information. On 12th November the Bath Chronicle stated that he had recently been seen in the Devizes area and that the reward could be claimed from the local Association i.e. the Associations nationwide were helping the Brereton one.
The reward notice had no effect though and John Waltho was able to carry on with his life although whether that was with his wife Sarah or a family is not known.
Almost sixteen years later John Waltho returned to the district, apparently on his own, and one of the first thing that he did was to go and see Thomas Henney and demand the £5 that had been kept from him. In those days you couldn’t simply knock on the door of a substantial property and expect it to be opened by the owner – you would have first faced a servant od some kind who would then find out from their master or mistress whether they were willing to see the visitor. Thomas Henney definitely wanted to see John Waltho but before he did that he despatched another servant to fetch the Parish Constable. Every parish was obliged to have one or two constables, who were selected every year from local communities, and were unpaid volunteers. These constables were required to perform policing duties only in their spare time but Henney was one of the few people in the village who was eligible to be an Overseer of the Poor and the Parish Constable would have reacted quickly. Henney did agree to see Waltho and invited him to sit down, kept him talking and before Waltho knew what was happening he had been arrested.
In April 1805 Waltho was successfully prosecuted for arson. The criminal justice system at that time was built on the principle of deterrence and it had plenty of punishments available to it such as transportation, hard labour etc. There was also a list of well over 200 offences that could carry the death penalty and one of those offences was arson.
From 1755 to 1914 (the date of the last execution in Staffordshire), well over a hundred people in Staffordshire were executed for seemingly minor crimes including horse theft, highway robbery, burglary, housebreaking and forgery and John Waltho was one of them.
Executions at the time took place in public. The gate-house to Stafford gaol stood on Gaol Road and contained the reception ward and a room for warders. A temporary scaffold was erected on the roof of the gate-house for the hanging – the authorities wanted everyone to get a good view. Executions were elaborate and shocking affairs and were advertised widely – the authorities wanted people to realise that death could be the result of a wide variety of offences. Hundreds and sometimes thousands attended each execution – the audience was often noisy and riotous and Waltho’s case would have caught the public attention because of the 16 years between the offence and the penalty.
The hanging was supposed to be a sombre, solemn legal ceremony. And instead it ended up being more like a fair.