Cambridgeshire Murders (2 page)

After about half an hour the thatched roof collapsed and the last hope of rescuing anyone else vanished. Although Thomas Howe and his brother had survived, their sister had died, as had John and Ann Palmer. In total there were about eighty deaths, the bodies transported by cart and buried in two large pits in the graveyard. A gravestone known as ‘The Flaming Heart' was erected in Burwell cemetery commemorating seventy-eight deaths, although a 1769 account lists seventy-nine with a possibility of two more unnamed victims. The bodies of John and Ann Palmer were buried separately since the Palmer family had its own dedicated area in the churchyard. A number of the casualties were children who had climbed from their bedroom windows to see the show. Also among the dead were the puppeteer and his family.

The sermon later preached by Alexander Edmondson, vicar of the parish, came from Lamentations 4: 8: ‘Their visage is blacker than coal; they are not known in the streets; their skin cleaveth to their bones: it is withered, it is become like a stick.'

Richard Whitaker was arrested and charged with arson. He was about 25 years old and came from Hadstock in Essex. Some reports suggest that he was tried at the Essex Assizes, others that he was tried at the Cambridge Assizes. The original assize records for these hearings no longer exist but it seems most likely that he was tried in March 1728 in Cambridge.

Whitaker was found to have been the cause of the fire, but only through negligence, and so he was acquitted of the charge of arson. Parish records say ‘that the fire was occasioned by the negligence of a servant who set a candle and lantern near the heap of straw which was in or near the barn'.

Apart from references to the fire in parish records the only other account of the day was a half-sheet produced by a Northampton printer very shortly afterwards. It contained several major inaccuracies including the date being wrong by a day and the listing of an incorrect number of casualties. However, it is still an interesting, if graphic, account:

September 9th, 1727. At Burwell in Cambridgeshire a Puppet Show was exhibited in a barn, ye doors were locked, and there was a stable adjoining to it where a boy was got with design to see it, for which purpose he climbed up upon some beams and took his candle with him, while he was viewing ye show fell down among a heap of straw and find it alight which ye boy perceiving he sprung out and narrowly escaped. The fire burning very fierce had catcht ye roof of this barn before ye people perceived it, ye doors were lockt to keep people out, and with some difficulty ye doors were broke and some escaped – but the rest pushing to get out wedged one another in yet none could stir till the roof fell in and 105 persons perished in ye flames. Some few were escapd into an adjoining yard which was built round with thatcht houses and on fire, but were forced to lie down and perish in it. An excise man and his child perished there and his wife is since quite distracted. After the fire was abated they found here an arm and there a leg, here a head there a body, some burnt with their bowels hanging out, most deplorable sight. There were abundance of people from the adjacent towns in ye number all most young persons.

The Revd Thomas Gibbons wrote
An Account of a Most Terrible Fire
, a more comprehensive account of the incident, published by J. Buckland in London in 1769. Gibbons had spent some of his childhood in Reach and in 1728 attended a school in Little Swaffham, just outside Burwell. He saw the site of the fire and many years later revisited Burwell and drew his account from village records and the memories of survivors, primarily Thomas Howe, who were keen to have the fire recorded more accurately than the account produced at the time.

The fire had a huge impact on the small rural village of Burwell and its surrounding hamlets. Of Burwell's 800 inhabitants at the time, it is said that barely a family escaped without loss.

The barn was located in Cuckolds Row, near the footpath which now runs between the pharmacy and the bank. Since the fire some villagers have claimed to have heard the ghostly clanking of water pails.

In February 1774 the following report appeared in the
Cambridge Chronicle
:

A report prevails that an old man died a few days ago at a village near Newmarket (Fordham), who just before his death seemed very unhappy; said he had a Burthen on his Mind, which he must disclose. He then confessed that he set Fire to the Barn at Burwell on ye 8th. of September 1727, when no less than 80 persons unhappily lost their lives; that he was an Ostler at that Time, at or near Cambridge, and having an Antipathy to the Puppet Show Man was the cause of his committing that diabolical Action, which was attended with such dreadful consequences.

Frustratingly, the man is not named, therefore making it impossible to check the likelihood of this claim, but according to parish records the old man in question was not Richard Whitaker.

Notes

1 Clunch is a traditional building material, usually a soft limestone, often used in the east of England, where more durable stone is uncommon. It can be rich in iron-bearing clays or be very fine and white – in effect just chalk. As it is not a long-lasting material, it is now used mostly for boundary walls, and occasionally for traditional agricultural buildings. Clunch was quarried in Burwell.

2 Reach (sometimes spelt Reche) is the location of the Reach Fair, whose charter dates from 1201. The fair is still held in May each year, making it England's longest surviving fair.

A
my Conquest
¹
was born to Thomas and Mary Conquest in Whittlesey and baptised on 19 October 1729. The family were not well off but nevertheless Amy's parents ensured that she received an education until she reached the age of 12. By the age of 16 she had grown into a tall, fine girl and began to receive attention from Thomas Reed
²
of Whittlesey.
³
Her father did not approve of the liaison and wanted his daughter to stop seeing the young man, but the two had fallen in love and soon consummated their relationship, which, according to a later description in the
Newgate Calendar
, ‘continued till it became criminal' .

Amy fully expected that she would marry and so was shocked when, in the summer of 1748, Thomas told her that he was planning to travel to London and did not know when he would come back to Whittlesey. Despite assuring her that they would marry upon his return, Amy still felt betrayed and began to spend time with another local man, John Hutchinson, who had also been a suitor but one she had not encouraged. Despite the fact that Amy had never particularly liked John, her family, and her father in particular, felt that he was a better choice than Thomas Reed. Consequently, when John formally asked for Amy's hand in marriage on 24 August 1748, her father was quick to consent. As the wedding was arranged for the very next day, Amy's father may have thought that a quick wedding would avoid any possibility of the union being spoilt by Thomas Reed's return.

However, Thomas got word that Amy and John Hutchinson were about to marry and rushed back to Whittlesey only to see the two leaving the church as man and wife. Amy was distraught when she saw him and instantly realised what a terrible mistake she had made by marrying a man she did not love.

Within days Thomas and Amy were seeing one another again but were not as discreet as they should have been. Very soon neighbours were gossiping and John Hutchinson became jealous. Amy's arguments with her husband culminated with him beating her with a belt or stick on several occasions, but also with a realisation that his wife would not change her ways. He began to drink heavily and to stay away from home.

At about 5 a.m. on 14 October, just seven weeks and one day after their wedding, John Hutchinson became ill, complaining of the ‘ague'. Amy brewed him some warm ale but on seeing no improvement she sent for Mary Watson. Mary stated that she found John very ill and that the boiled beer given to him by Amy had made him feel worse. According to some accounts John was still alive at 9 a.m., but died soon afterwards. Mary Watson claimed that:

Ann Conquest, the sister of the said Amey [sister-in-law] went for this deponent in the afternoon following to desire after to come and see the said John and upon going he apprehended to this deponent to be dying and dyed within about three-quarters of an hour after. That he did not complain that any means had been used to shorted his life. That this deponent was at the laying out of the said John after death and that nothing appeared to her this deponent but that he dyed of his natural death.

Initially John's death was not considered suspicious, and the burial took place in Whittlesey on 16 October 1748. However, when Amy's lover moved in only a few days later in what seemed to be a blatant act of disrespect, the people of Whittlesey grew uneasy. On 19 October John's body was exhumed and three surgeons, John Clarke, William Benning and John Stona, carried out an autopsy. In the mid-eighteenth century methods of detecting and identifying poisons were primitive, so their account of their findings is both graphic and fascinating:

We whose names are here unto subscribed being called upon the day and date above to open the body of John Hutchinson deceased found his stomach had been much inflamed and in it a bloody liquor with a mucus matter of the same colour which we imagine to be caused by some corrosive medicine taken inwardly.

The said liquor and mucus we immediately gave to a dog kept him confined and he expired about seven hours after.

The next day upon opening the dog found his stomach much in the same manner as the deceased John Hutchinson's and caused as we believe by the liquor out of his stomach.

The ensuing inquest heard statements from a variety of Whittlesey residents. One of the statements, which was to lead to Amy's arrest, came from shopkeeper William Hawkins, who testified that he had sold Amy Hutchinson an ounce of white arsenick
⁴
(
sic
) on Thursday 13 October. He said that she had wanted it to poison rats but could not say what use she had actually put it to.

By Tuesday 18 October Amy was under arrest and being held at the house of John Stona. A villager named Mary Addison, who asked her whether she had any poison in her house, visited her. Amy told her about the rat poison, saying that she had mixed it up with oatmeal and placed it under the floorboards. Mary went to the Hutchinson house the following morning where she found a broken pot containing the mixture Amy had described. Unfortunately for Amy, instead of retrieving it so that an attempt could be made to gauge the amount of arsenic it contained, Mary covered it with hay and left it there.

Most of the witness statements did not help Amy's situation. Even though Mary Watson said that John Hutchinson did not think he had been poisoned, telling the jury it was the beer that had made him worse would have weighed heav-ily against Amy. Even when John Hutchinson was portrayed at the inquest as a brutal man, the evidence did not lean in Amy's favour.

An example of John Hutchinson's violence was relayed to the inquest jury by Prudence Watson of Whittlesey, who testified on 20 October. About three weeks earlier she had been at John and Amy's house. She and Amy had been drinking tea and decided to try reading their tea leaves when John returned home. After an angry exchange with his wife, John turned on Prudence and kicked her down the stairs. Prudence explained to the inquest that soon after this assault she had received a visit from Amy, who suggested that, as she was pregnant, she should press charges. Amy also stated that she feared that her husband ‘would knock her on the head'. However, instead of winning any sympathy for Amy, Prudence's disclosure was seen as a sign of Amy's faithlessness and willingness to betray her husband.

Prudence Watson's statement

Many of the statements were little more than hearsay and gossip, including accounts of tea-leaf reading from Alice Hardley (the mother of Amy's sister-in-law Ann) who said that Amy had seen a man's coffin and a child's coffin in her cup. There was a questionable statement from Alice Oldfield, who claimed that Prudence Watson had talked about an unnamed man who had died and whose wife was under suspicion; Alice suspected this to be Amy.

Statements such as this offered little in the way of evidence but they do show the weight given to rumour. It is possible that many of the friends, neighbours and even relatives who gave evidence against Amy at the inquest and the trial did not distinguish between scandal-mongering among themselves and testifying under oath. Unfortunately for Amy, when the inquest jury returned its verdict on Monday 7 November, the opening words demonstrated the damage that had been done: the said John Hutchinson was wilfully and maliciously murdered by poison of which the said John on Fryday the fourteenth day of October last languished and dyed that it does not appear to them who were the person or persons that committed the said murder but that they have just reason to suspect that the same was committed and done by Amey the wife of the said John.