This is the last Friday Murder of 2023: there will be a roundup post next week, but I need a festive break! There’s only so much murder a girl can take. If you, however, have a great thirst for murder, may I recommend Nell Darby’s recent post.
But let’s begin with some delightful news: I have joined the committee of the Crime and Punishment Collections Network as their Family History Consultant. I will be creating some resources in the new year, covering the nineteenth-century justice system and how you can find out more about your ancestors, whether they were criminals or victims of crime. Other academics can be a bit sniffy about family history but it’s the starting point of all my work. Death is a family event, a seismic family event, and when it could be a murder, that is magnified.
This is a story firmly based within a family, inextricable from its family setting, and all the more shocking for it.
Welcome to Norfolk, 1867…
Barton Bendish is a tiny village between Downham Market and Swaffham, tiny but ancient. It’s odd, with its two churches opposite each other, serving a population of less than 300 souls. But villages round there are odd. Isolated. Built around estates that no longer exist, that haven’t existed for centuries, they were built to serve much larger, god-fearing populations. These populations died off in plagues, or moved away following enclosure. Barton Bendish was once home to a Roman camp, to nine manors, to a monastery, there was a third church. It is diminished.
Jacob Black was born in Didlington, nearly nine miles to the south of Barton. He married a woman named Elizabeth from Barton Bendish probably in 1811, and they settled in Barton. Jacob worked for Barton Hall, owned by the Berney family. He was a woodman on the estate. Over the next twenty-two years, they had nine children. Three died young, but the two that concern us were Benjamin, born in 1818, and Elizabeth, born in 1822.
Elizabeth married George Henry Lingley at Barton on 26th October 1841, when she was nineteen. George was a gamekeeper, a few years older than Elizabeth, and it’s likely they married because George was moving to a new job. They left Norfolk soon after their marriage to live at Kirkby-on-Bain, and had a son named Henry there in 1843. By 8th May 1845, they had moved to Hampshire. Their second son, Hubbard, was born in Abbotts Ann on that date.
Disaster struck in August 1847, when George suddenly died. He was only thirty, and Elizabeth was around twenty-five. She had two small sons and no settlement - no right to relief - in Hampshire. She returned to Barton Bendish and moved back in with her parents.
Her brother, Benjamin married Anna Fickling in 1848. They lived with her parents in a cottage on the edge of the woods in Barton Bendish, not far from the Blacks. They had seven children, although one died young. Benjamin also worked on the estate.
In 1851, a double tragedy struck the family. First, on 13th April, Elizabeth Black died. Less than three months later, on 3rd July, Elizabeth Lingley died, aged only thirty. Her cause of death was given as apoplexy, although there was no post-mortem.
Jacob Black remarried almost immediately, to Elizabeth Ward. She was about fifty-nine, born in Fincham, and had never previously married. She had a son named William (born in 1815), but had been living with her brother in Denver prior to marrying Jacob. Jacob and his second wife continued to support Henry and Hubbard Lingley. Jacob died in Barton on 10th April 1862. Henry moved to Mundford to live with his father’s sister. Benjamin succeeded his father as the head woodman on the estate.
In 1865, Hubbard married Mary Ann Ward, the granddaughter of his step-grandmother. Hubbard, Mary Ann and Elizabeth lived together in Barton, and Hubbard also worked on the Berney Estate. He was an under-woodman, and Benjamin was his direct boss.
However, Hubbard clearly saw himself as his grandfather’s natural successor to the head woodman role, and when this role was given to Benjamin - twenty-seven years his senior with far more experience - Hubbard was furious. He was even more enraged when it became clear that Benjamin was training his young son up to work in the same role. Hubbard picked fights with Benjamin often, although they never came to blows, and Hubbard often visited with his aunt and cousins. Mary Ann and Hubbard welcomed their second daughter in March or April 1867. Money was tight, as Hubbard was only paid twelve shillings a week. A friend of his mother’s, Maria Peeling, often gave him his dinner, and Hubbard told her about how much he hated Benjamin.
Early in the morning of Friday 17th May, Benjamin and Anna were in bed, when they heard a gunshot from the direction of The Leys wood, southwest of the Hall. Benjamin got up to investigate: someone had been swiping pheasant eggs from the woods, and he wanted to see he could catch the thief in the act. It was 4am, and probably not long before he’d have headed to work anyway. He met some neighbours who were also starting the day as he walked to the wood.
Half an hour later, Anna heard a second gunshot. She thought nothing of it until some men brought Benjamin’s dead body back to the house.
These men had found Benjamin’s body at the entrance to the Leys wood, and described the crime scene to the coroner at the inquest, held at the village pub the following day. There were two homemade explosives near the body; small, dense glass bottles with sugar-twists of gunpowder inside, both of which had detonated. There was some number two (large gauge) sized shot scattered about. There were footprints, footprints that the men followed up and away from the woods, almost to Fincham. Back at the death scene, they found some paper used as gun wadding. Someone had tried to take Benjamin’s watch but only managed to break the chain. Someone had, however, taken the money he was carrying to pay his poor rates that day.
Hubbard was working in a field nearby, and was fetched to the death scene. He wept, he checked the body for valuables, he wrung his hands together. He showed the police the interior of a barn, where there was evidence of a party having taken place there: signs of sleeping in hay, signs of drinking. He told the police of recent thefts of poultry, and that his uncle blamed a local man called Collins. He stayed with Anna on the first night after the murder, although he went to the pub and spent quite a sum of money on beer.
A doctor examined Benjamin, and found he had been shot at very close range in the head and upper chest, and died instantly. The inquest was adjourned for a full post-mortem, but in the meantime, Hubbard was arrested.
You see, the police had their own suspicions; they listened to gossip, but they also found a gun. They asked Hubbard to show them his gun. Hubbard claimed it was at his uncle Henry’s house, so off they went to find it. Hubbard then tried to say his cousin’s gun was hit own, but Uncle Henry Black told the police he was lying. After this, Hubbard confessed he’d been lying because he was afraid and took the police to his actual gun, hidden under leaves near the shooting site. He told the police he left home at 5:30am to go to work on the 17th. This was also a lie.
On Sunday 19th May, three hundred people searched the little wood, and found a powder flask hidden inside a tree trunk. The flask was Hubbard’s. In Hubbard’s house, they found several ounces of number two shot.
On Monday 20th May, Hubbard appeared in court at Downham Market. Three days prior to the shooting, he’d bought the equipment and some number two shot to make his own cartridges. The paper the shot was wrapped in was the same paper found at the crime scene, although the shot was also found still wrapped in that paper. Evidence was given about the runaround he’d given the police, and he was remanded for a week.
Court reconvened on Monday 27th May. Hundreds of people attended court, although few were admitted. I have not been able to find the close of the inquest proceedings, but the medical evidence was given to the magistrates: Benjamin died from catastrophic injuries to his lung and heart. A man named John Jude told the court that he had fired the shot that had got Benjamin out of bed: he was shooting rabbits. But he had gone straight home afterwards, and could not have then shot Benjamin. A neighbour gave evidence that someone had snuck out of Hubbard’s house early on the 17th, and he had not subsequently seen Hubbard go to work. Neighbours and co-workers, including Maria Peeling, gave evidence that Hubbard had loathed Benjamin, and wished him ill. At the close of the court, he was formally indicted for murder. Hubbard told the court that although he had hidden his gun and powder flask in a panic, he was innocent of murdering his uncle. He was removed to Norwich castle to wait for trial.
He waited for just over two months. On 8th August 1867, his trial commenced. His gun had been fired, the shot he’d bought and the paper it was wrapped in were at the scene, so was his powder flask. He had a grievance, a known grudge. The court adjourned overnight, and the defence summing-up was given the following morning. It was lengthy, impassioned and nuanced, picking numerous holes in the prosecution. Benjamin only earned two more shillings than Hubbard a week, was that worth killing a man over? Why would he openly purchase the shot he intended to kill his uncle with? Who was the mysterious stranger seen in the woods that morning? Why did the prosecution discount the footprint trail from the body that simply disappeared?
The judge advised the jury that this would be a case they would have to judge on the circumstantial evidence, and encouraged them to be certain. They left the court for twenty-five minutes, before returning a guilty verdict. The judge passed the death sentence, and Hubbard left the dock without visible emotion.
The defence was quite right: the case was full of holes and based on Hubbard’s motive rather than any hard evidence. A picture was painted of a well-planned revenge murder, luring Benjamin out in the early hours, waiting to shoot him and then robbing him. It was chilling. Hubbard was placed in the condemned cell at Norwich, and attempts were made to secure a reprieve. The Home Secretary’s decision read simply:
“Mr Hardy regrets that he could not see sufficient grounds to justify him in advising her Majesty to interfere with the course of law.”
His wife and brother visited him, and with the assistance of the prison chaplain, Hubbard confessed.
He said he’d left home at 3am, to meet two companions - one of whom was John Jude - in the woods. They had some booze, then went off to steal pheasant eggs and poach rabbits. Benjamin arrived at the scene, and stood one side of the gate, facing the other three.
“When we came up he could see we had pheasants eggs as one of them was carrying the eggs in a handkerchief by his side. My uncle said to be “You, Master Hubbard? I have suspected you a long while; now that you have just been promised a house and home and work as long as you live, and I will not screen you [protect you] one bit” At this time, one of my companions said “Shoot the bugger, if you don’t, I will, give me the gun”. My uncle said “I should think you would never do that, you blood-thirsty rascals” and began to get himself behind the clap post of the gate. Seeing that, I immediately clapped my gun to my shoulder and shot him down before he could do so.”
The three men then went through his pockets and split the money they found. One of them knelt down to give the impression that someone had been waiting for Benjamin, then the men separated. Hubbard went to sleep in the field he worked in, and was woken by the cries for help after Benjamin’s body was found.
Hubbard was executed on Castle Bridge, on a scaffold erected between the gatehouses. His nerve failed him on the morning of his death, not helped by a dental abscess. He was helped to the scaffold, and seemed quite oblivious to the enormous crowd gathered around Castle Meadow. He died easily, with the thud of his fall heard at the Bell Hotel. He was buried within the castle walls, where he still lies. He was twenty-two.
So, this apparently well-orchestrated and planned crime, this grand revenge was just some poaching gone wrong. It doesn’t appear to have occurred to the police that more than one person could have been present when Benjamin was shot. Hubbard’s two accomplices were never charged with any crime, although they were accessories to murder at worst and perjurors at best. Perhaps the police thought there was no point: lessons had been learned.
This was a family murder, in a village where most people were related to some degree. Gossip claimed that Hubbard was a good, chapel-attending sober man until his marriage, when he had become angry and resentful of Benjamin, and started drinking. It’s possible that Benjamin did not get on with his stepmother, and this fracture rippled down the generations. After all, as his mother and grandmother died when he was only six, Elizabeth Black II was the only mother-figure Hubbard had ever really known.
In a letter to his wife, published posthumously, he absolved her of any blame for the murder, saying she had not known where he was. But perhaps she had, and perhaps she’d turned a blind eye. Poaching was nothing unusual in an estate-centred village, indeed it could be considered a perquisite.
Mary Ann Lingley moved to Fincham after the execution. She lost her younger daughter in April 1869, and remarried in November 1869. She was widowed in 1880, remarried in 1881, and died in 1899. Her older daughter died, childless and unmarried, a few months after her.
Anna Black did not remarry, and stayed in Barton Bendish until she died in 1897.
Benjamin Black
(1818-1867)