Part 1
Background
My grandmother Alice Spencer was born near Netherbury, Dorset (@netherbury-dorset-england-dt6-5), in 1872. She was brought up there, but by the age of 19, she was living at the home of a printer and stationer in Newport, Monmouthshire, where she was a domestic servant. Ten years later, in the 1901 census, she is shown to be living in the home of a farmer and his family near Wool, Dorset where again she was a domestic servant. Two years later, on 17 June 1903, she married Thomas Crayden at All Saints Church, Clapham, close to where she had been staying with her sister Annie and her husband.
Alice and Tom had four children, two boys and two girls, and the youngest daughter was Vera Edith, known as Ciss to her brothers and sister, was born in 1906, the last child of the family to be born in Kilburn, London, where they lived when first married. By 1911, the family had moved to Shiplake, in Oxfordshire, where Tom worked as a gardener, and in 1935, Vera married William Atkinson at the Parish Church of St Peter and St Paul in Shiplake. They had two children, Rosemary and myself. When Tom retired, he and Alice moved to a house in Binfield Heath built by their son-in-law George Johnson. They named it “Bowood”, a name that meant nothing to me at the time but I later realised that it was the name of a village in Dorset where Alice had grown up.
However, having set the scene, the story I want to tell is not about Alice, but about her brother – and my great uncle - Henry Thomas Spencer, who was nine years older than her.
Henry was the third child and second son of John and Eliza Spencer. He was born in 1857 and was baptised at Halstock Parish Church on 30 April 1857. Two of his unmarried aunts, Keturah and Sarah, had by then made arrangements to emigrate to Australia and, as they were due to sail less than three weeks later, Henry’s christening might well have been the last event to bring the family together before they left Keturah and Sarah left these shores.
John and Eliza were recognised for being diligent in sending their children to school, but by the age of 14, Henry had left school and was assisting his father in his trade as a carpenter and wheelwright.
Ten years later, around the time of his 24th birthday, Henry married Ellen Dinah Henley at Symondsbury parish church. The church was about four miles from the home in which Henry had grown up and about two miles from Ellen’s home in Broadoak.
Ellen was the only child of John and Eliza Henley; she had been born in Colyton, Devon, the home town of her father John Henley in 1859. John Henley had married Eliza Dollin on 4 June 1857 in Symondsbury, where Eliza lived, but presumably they then moved back to Colyton. However, by the time Ellen was two years old, she and her parents had moved to Broadoak.
After the marriage, Henry and Ellen spent their honeymoon in Portland with Henry’s aunt, Lucy Sampson and her husband George and their four children. Lucy and George had married in Netherbury in 1860; George was a widower who had been living in Netherbury prior to the marriage, and the couple remained there for at least eleven years after they were married, but George was from Portland and by the time Henry and Ellen were married in 1881, they had gone back to Portland and were living in Brandy Row, Chesil.
After their return from their honeymoon, Henry and Ellen went to live next door to Ellen’s parents in Broadoak and Henry became an employee of his father-in-law. Mr Henley was a carpenter who also repaired wagons in the yard adjoining his house, and Henry’s experience with his father’s related trade must have been invaluable. Both cottages were typical simple country dwellings immediately next to the road through the hamlet that leads to Shaves Cross. They were low, detached dwellings, with cob walls and a thatched roof and with a yard alongside each, Mr Henley’s being somewhat larger.
Soon after returning to Broadoak, Ellen became unwell, and the blame was put on a damp bed in which she had slept at Lucy and George’s, although George strongly denied it, saying that his feather beds were some of the best in England!
Ellen got a little better, but her illness persisted into September so she moved to stay at her parents’ home so that her mother could care for her. Henry went repeatedly to the Henley’s house to see his wife, but he told a number of people that his in laws refused to allow him to see Ellen. He also told them that on Saturday 8 October, his mother-in-law pushed him out of the door and told him never to come there again.
Over that weekend, he determined to return to live with his parents in Netherbury, and he spoke to his father-in-law about seeing a solicitor in Bridport to arrange a formal legal separation from Ellen. It is unclear – and it later became the cause of some dispute – as to who was the driving force in this. Was it Henry or was it his ‘in-laws’?
Early on the following Monday, Henry met his father-in-law in the workshop and told him that he could not be happy with his wife any more, and that he intended to ‘give her up’. Mr Henley went to work and seemed to assume that Henry would go to Bridport to arrange the separation.
Mr Henley was working with a boy, Henry Chubb, who he also employed. During the morning, Mr Henley went back to his house and then returned to work with the boy. Soon afterwards, as there was still no sign of Henry, Mr Henley asked the boy to go to Henry’s house to see if he was there. Henry Chubb returned and told Mr Henley that he had found Henry Spencer’s body hanging in an outhouse at his home.
Two days later, on Wednesday 12 October, an inquest was opened. It was usual at the time to hold inquests in a neighbouring house with the local coroner and a jury of local men, and that is what happened in this case. The story of Henry and his brief marriage was told to the inquest through a series of witnesses, including Mr and Mrs Henley, Ellen Spencer, Henry Chubb and John Spencer, Henry’s father. Judging by the interjections of the jurymen, the background was already known to most of those present. The long account in the Bridport News of 14 October 1881 shows that it was a fairly rowdy affair. The jurymen asked a number of leading questions and were clearly already placing the blame for Henry’s death onto Mr and Mrs Henley.
The coroner, Mr N. C. Loggin of Bridport, attempted to keep order, but he had some strong words to say about the quality of the witnesses.
Then, asking the jury to adjourn the inquest, he had some devastating things to say about Mr and Mrs Henley. He said that it looked very much to him as if it was a matter that might come to manslaughter, and if it did, it would be against John Henley and Eliza, his wife. He continued by saying that to his mind it was very clear that there had been improper conduct on their part. He described Mrs Henley as a virago who had been “lording it” over her husband, her son-in-law and everyone else, and if she, through her improper conduct had caused Henry’s death – “whether by his hand or not mattered little” – she would be held responsible for it.
The coroner went on to criticise both Mr and Mrs Henley for the evasiveness with which they had given evidence, but he said he felt it right to adjourn the proceedings so that they could be properly represented in view of the serious charges that the jury wished to level against them.
The inquest was resumed on Monday the following week, and on that occasion Mr Lock of Dorchester represented Mr and Mrs Henley. The same witnesses were called again along with two neighbours and they gave broadly similar evidence and Mr Lock took the opportunity to cross-examine them.
The events of the morning that Henry died were revisited and there were suggestions that ‘someone’ (presumably Mr Henley) could have killed Henry and hung the body in the closet for Henry Chubb to find, but having made the suggestion, it was then discounted.
The resumed inquest also heard quite a lot about Henry’s indifferent health, and there is a suggestion that it was caused or exacerbated by the Henley’s neglect of him after their daughter returned to live with them.
It seems clear that at this second inquest, one of two things happened. Either the Coroner was intimidated by the presence of the Henley’s solicitor or, having heard the evidence a second time, he changed his mind about the suspicions he had had earlier. In any event, he directed the jury that a verdict of murder was not an option for them in the light of the evidence and he went on to say that if they found a verdict of manslaughter, he did not consider that any criminal jury would agree.
The jury quickly came to the verdict that “the deceased committed suicide by hanging himself through temporary insanity”. The Coroner then called Mr and Mrs Henley back into the room and said he had “been desired by the jury to express their views on the manner in which they had treated the deceased; although the evidence showed that they had kept within the law, it disclosed that there had been harsh treatment and he dwelt upon the same fact that he had mentioned in his summing up respecting the manner in which he had been received at their house. In conclusion, he said that he “hoped that they would take the matter to heart and would regret the manner in which they had treated a fellow creature who was so closely bound to them by ties of relationship.”
It seems from this that there was a malicious intent that is not fully apparent from the reporting of the evidence.
And there the matter could have ended. A sad story, but one that was not altogether unfamiliar then as now. But three weeks later, there was a further twist in the tale that was quite sensational – as Part 2 will show.
Part 2
The Riot at Broadoak
In the Dorset of late Victorian times, it was not uncommon for Guy Fawkes Night, November 5, to be celebrated with an excess that would not be tolerated at other times, especially amongst the working classes. There are several records of celebrations that got out of hand in various parts of the County. Sometimes they became entwined with another Dorset tradition – Skimmington Rides; these consisted of a rowdy procession of villagers making their way to the homes of miscreants creating as much noise as possible with pots and pans. They were often a way of expressing moral disapproval of conduct between married couples, such as henpecked husbands, shrewish wives or of unfaithfulness, and they would often include straw effigies of the victim or perpetrator. Thomas Hardy gives a fictional account of a Dorset Skimmington Ride in his novel The Mayor of Casterbridge.
On the early evening of Saturday 5 November 1881, three weeks after Henry’s death, a mob formed in Salwayash, the home village of the Spencer family; up to 200 people gathered, according to the later Police account. A number were “attired in various grotesque costumes”, some men were dressed in women’s clothes, some had ‘blacked up’ faces and they also carried four straw effigies that represented Mr and Mrs Henley, Ellen and their dog. From Salwayash, the mob made their way to Broadoak, stopping on the way for alcoholic refreshment provided by people whose houses they passed.
Arriving at Broadoak banging kettles and blowing horns, they surrounded the Henley’s house and workshop, breaking all the windows with sticks and stones, and the mob then set light to the effigies, which burned fiercely, having been doused in paraffin. They attempted to set light to the thatched roof, but it had been a particularly wet autumn, and the fire failed to get a hold, so instead they thrust the burning effigies through the broken windows, setting fire to the curtains and shouting “push the devil through the windows and drive the b******rs out.”
They next turned their attention to the front door, forcing it off its hinges and taking it away and hanging it from the ‘broad oak’ from which the village got its name. A neighbour later recovered the door and took it back to the house although it was smashed in pieces.
Ellen went upstairs to try to remove some items from the vicinity of the window, but when she looked out, she saw a man who fired a pistol at her. Fortunately, it was a blank, as were other shots – about twenty in all – that were fired at Mr Henley during the evening. As for Ellen, her hair and her head were singed and she was struck by at least two stones “causing her considerable pain.” She hid behind a chest of drawers to avoid further injury, and said she later heard someone say “We’ll have the b******rs out and kill them.”
The mob then turned their attention to the gates to the workshop yard, which were completely removed, and the waggons in the yard were either set on fire or otherwise damaged. The local paper reported that “every attempt was made to render useless anything that was capable of destruction.”
The mob had arrived in the early evening, and although they periodically went away – it was said that they went to a nearby friend’s house where they were given more alcohol - they kept returning and renewing their assault until they finally left well after midnight. The Henleys had used the temporary absence of the rioters to escape into the outbuildings, but later a neighbour came across Mr and Mrs Henley and Ellen wandering around outside and frightened to go back into the house.
During the evening, someone had been sent the three miles to Bridport to report the matter to the Police. However, they were preoccupied with maintaining order in the town and it was in the early hours of the following morning before P.C. Chaffey and P.C. Sprackling arrived. On their way into the village, they came across a waggon-load of men on the road back to Salwayash who were fairly obviously the culprits, but nothing could be proved at that point. The policemen identified two of Henry’s brothers, Samuel and Frederick Spencer, and the police seemed to know that the waggon was being drawn by a horse belonging to John Spencer, Henry’s father. In the hamlet, all was quiet, but the constables found the house to be “a perfect wreck”. No witnesses were willing to positively identify the perpetrators, blaming the fact that they were disguised, although it seems more likely that they were unwilling to say who was responsible.
However, one name did come up, though. Several people, including Ellen, said they were sure that one of the mob was Samuel Spencer, which confirmed what the Police had seen.
Part 3
The Police Court Hearing
Five men appeared at the County Police Court sitting at Bridport on Monday 20 November 1881. They were Henry Caddy, John Woodford May, Arthur Martin, Henry Cook and Samuel Spencer. Four had been on remand and the fifth, Samuel Spencer, had been arrested earlier that day in Maiden Newton. Sam was my great uncle; he was still alive in the 1950s and when I was a child, I met him several times when he came from Dorset where he still lived, to visit his sister - my grandmother Alice Crayden (nee Spencer) - and her husband Tom in Binfield Heath.
The five were charged that:
“together with divers other persons whose names are unknown to the number of 150 persons, on 5 November 1881 at Symondsbury in the county of Dorset, then and there being riotously and tumultuously assembled together to the disturbance of the Queen’s peace, unlawfully and with force did enter a certain dwelling house, the property of this claimant there situate.”
This charge was made under the Malicious Damage Act 1861 24th and 25th Vict. c.97 s.12. There was also consideration given to adding a charge under section 11, as the rioters had allegedly tried to destroy an outbuilding, but the Justices said that they would decide if any amendment was necessary after hearing the evidence.
The courtroom was packed “with an excited throng” whose sympathy was clearly with the prisoners and there were “frequent interruptions of an unseemly character.” (1)
Mr Howard, of Weymouth appeared for the prosecution, and opened proceedings by outlining in an extremely theatrical fashion the events of the 5th November. He first called Charles Pomeroy, Mr Henley’s neighbour and employer to give evidence. Pomeroy said he had called at the Henley’s in the early part of the evening to collect his wages and Mr Henley asked him to stay as he had heard that there was trouble brewing. Giving his evidence, Pomeroy described at length what must have been a terrifying ordeal. He spoke of the noise from a crowd of men using horns and camp kettles and carrying effigies. He spoke of the attempt to set fire to the Henley’s house, the firing of the pistol, the malicious damage and the threats to kill. But although Pomeroy could confirm that several of the defendants had been present, he could not say that it was them specifically who had caused any of the damage or had entered the house.
It was Charles Pomeroy who went for the police and returned with PC’s Spracklin and Chaffey, and it was he who went with the officers in search of the mob. He told the Court that the men who they intercepted included the defendants and he could identify Samuel Spencer, his brother Fred (who was not charged) and he could identify John Spencer’s horse pulling the waggon on which they were conveyed. There seems to have been a dispute about whether he had identified a man named William King as the ringleader; he said he had not done so, but told the Court that he considered Arthur Martin to be the ringleader.
Mr Howard next called Henry’s widow, Ellen, who was reported to be ill and she was allowed to be seated to give her evidence. She gave a vivid account to the Court about the mob and the attempts to set fire to the house. She said that she had been hit by three stones, two in the lower part of her body and one in the head, and a shot from a pistol had singed her hair and burnt the skin on her head. She had hidden behind a chest of drawers.
Ellen was questioned about the identity of the attackers, and she said that the only person she could positively identify was Samuel Spencer, who “seemed to be officiating very busily and taking a very active part.”
The next witness for the prosecution was Esau Elliot, a farmer who lived close to the Henley’s. It seems clear from the questions he was asked that he was suspected of aiding and abetting the rioters by giving them somewhere to keep their waggon and by plying them with alcohol, but he flatly denied this. He also had ample opportunity to come to the aid of the Henley family, but he did not do so and the Court eventually declared him a hostile witness, saying that they wouldn’t be surprised if he eventually came back to Court, charged with being an accessory before the fact.
Both Elliot and his wife, who gave evidence later, said that on the day in question, 5 November, Mrs Spencer and one of her daughters had visited their home, leaving at about 10 pm; this would be Henry and Samuel’s mother and sister. There seems to be some significance in this, but it is not clear from the account what that may be.
Charles Parris was a smith who had an outdoor licence to serve beer. When he was called he appears to have been as unhelpful as the Elliots. He said there were a number of men – perhaps seventy or eighty in number, none of whom he recognised – who passed his house in the early part of the evening and he followed them. He said he did not see a disturbance at the Henley’s house and when he went home later he used a different route. He acknowledged that there was cask of cider outside his house, but he had no idea how it got there. About fifty people stopped there on their way back to Salwayash. He said that none of them drank, but he did when asked to do so, and he reiterated that all those present were “perfect strangers” to him. It may or may not be a coincidence that Parris’s wife was Samuel and Henry Spencer’s second cousin.After hearing again from Mr Henley regarding the damage to the outbuilding and from Ellen, who described again her own and her mother’s distress at the time of the incident and afterwards, the Justices retired to consider their decision. When they returned, they announced that the defendants should be committed for trial at the next Quarter Sessions under Section 12 of the Malicious Damage Act. They did not think that the evidence was sufficient to commit them under Section 11, which, they said, was just as well as it would have been a more serious charge.
Bail was refused, although the legal representatives were invited to apply to a Judge if they wished to challenge the decision.
The prisoners were led out of the building to the cheers of the crowd and were said to be “but little disconcerted at the result”. An “excited crowd loitered about the streets for some time” and the witnesses were escorted from the building by police officers as there were fears for their safety. When Mr Henley and his daughter left the Court, they were followed a hissing and yelling crowd to the Coffee Tavern, where they were guarded by five policemen. They were later accompanied home by a Police escort.
At 8 am the following morning, the prisoners were taken by train to HM Prison in Dorchester.
Part 4
The Death of Ellen Spencer
An important witness to have been called in the case of “riotous assembling” at Broadoak at the Dorchester Sessions this week, died on Friday morning [30 December 1881]. it Is generally believed that the sad end of her husband by hanging a few months since, and the subsequent midnight disturbance by a mob at her father’s cottage on 5th November, added to the excitement at the late trial of prisoners at the Bridport County Police Court last month have gradually preyed on the mind of Mrs Spencer, and to some extent probably hastened her end. It will be remembered that the deceased declared at the late trial that she was “struck by three stones thrown from the mob, one stone hitting her in the head and two in the lower part of her body. A shot fired from a pistol passed so close to her that her hair was singed and the skin of her head was burnt.” Deceased was in a delicate state of health at the time and there is but little doubt that a combination of alarms and excitements has acted seriously.
Western Gazette – 6 January 1882
Part 5
The Quarter Sessions Case
On 4 January 1882 the five prisoners who had been committed for trial at the Bridport County Police Court appeared at the Quarter Sessions at Dorchester. All were on bail, having been granted bail by a judge in chambers on 30 November 1881, nine days after being committed for trial.
All five pleaded guilty to the charge of riotous assembly and to a second indictment of assaulting Ellen Spencer.
It seems clear that there had been some plea bargaining before the case came up, and that Mr Willes for the prosecution and Mr Lock for the defence had reached an understanding. Confirming that his clients were pleading guilty, Mr Lock said “technically speaking, there certainly was a riot and damage done to the house of Mr Henley (but) this was only another instance of the licence which certain people assumed to themselves on the historical event of 5th November.”
He went on to say that there was no desire on the part of Mr Henley to pursue the case against the prisoners. They had “expressed themselves extremely sorry” for what they had done and they had already made some reparation and more was planned. In view of the fact that they had spent nine days in prison before getting bail, he asked the Court to consider dealing with the matter by binding over the prisoners to keep the peace for a period that would extend beyond the next 5th November.
Mr Willes said that the prosecution was in agreement with this approach and asked that the prisoners be bound over for twelve months. He said that the object of bringing the case was to show that people could not take the law into their own hands.
The Deputy Chairman, John Floyer, then addressed the prisoners. Mr Floyer was seventy years of age and was a member of parliament for Dorset, the county in which he was born. He had been an MP for Dorset from 1846 until 1857; he was re-elected in 1864 and would serve until 1885. He was a Deputy Lieutenant of the County and a Justice of the Peace, and had been High Sheriff of Dorset in 1844.
Mr Floyer pointed out the prisoners’ reckless behaviour and said that there was no doubt that they had rendered themselves amenable to the Act under which they were charged. He then went on to lecture them about the responsibility of the magistrates to ensure that good order was kept, even when “the old customs”, which he himself supported, were being celebrated.
He acknowledged that counsel on both sides were content that the matter should be dealt with leniently, since there was no indication that such behaviour would be repeated, but he warned that if it was, then the Court would deal with the matter much more seriously, hinting of the probability of a prison sentence.
Mr Floyer then said that he was happy to accept the suggestion of the prosecution and the defence and he bound over each of the prisoners for twelve months in the sum of £20 and the prisoners were discharged.
It seems a peculiar end to the criminal case and on the face of it, a very lenient disposal. The highly charged atmosphere of the Police Court seemed to have been diffused by the time of the Quarter Sessions when, although the riot was acknowledged and the number of participants settled on as in excess of 150, both sides wanted to ‘talk down’ the seriousness of what had taken place. Why?
In the first place, Mr Henley, the prosecutor, was unable to appear at Court. His daughter had died only five days previously and his wife was said to have been “bodily in a very weak condition” after the ordeal of the riot, the Police Court case and the death of Ellen. The Bridport News suggested that “as Mr Henley felt himself unequal to the task of appearing in Court, the case was thereupon virtually compromised.”
One can guess at a few other factors that affected the result. Firstly, the defendants had spent a short time in custody and secondly, reparation had been, or was being, made. Thirdly, there is the amount of the bind over sum - £20. This amount could have been forfeited if the feud was renewed in addition to a likely prison sentence.
It is very difficult to translate the value of money in 1882 to the present day, but a labourer’s annual wage then would have been about £30(1). Three of the indicted men were labourers and one, Arthur Martin, a farmer farming 30 acres; the fifth, Sam Spencer, was a carpenter. Nothing is known about Martin’s financial situation, but he had a wife and young family and a servant, but aside from him, £20 would represent upwards of six months’ wages. A substantial sum that all of them would be reluctant to put at risk by renewing the feud.
All in all then, they probably thought that although things were bad enough, they could have been worse.
Again, this could have been the end of the matter, but there was still one sad twist to come.
Part 6
The Death of Eliza Henley
On 20 March 1882, not much more than two months after the Quarter Sessions case, Eliza Henley took her own life.
At about one o clock on that Monday, Mr Henley had gone to collect timber from a neighbouring property. Charles Pomeroy, who had been with the Henley family during the riot of the previous 5 November, remembered that at about that time Mrs Henley brought him a cup of coffee and told him the time, and so Charles stopped for his lunch. Afterwards, he went for a short walk, during which time Mr Henley returned. Two local men named Broomfield arrived with a wagon load of timber arrived shortly afterwards, and Mr Henley called to Pomeroy to come and help unload it. Getting no reply, he unloaded it himself with the help of the Broomfield brothers.
When the job was done, he offered the brothers some cider, and went into the house to get some cups. There he found his wife lying on the floor; at first he thought she had had a fit, but it was soon apparent that she was dead. He called out to one of the Bloomfield brothers and then saw that she was lying on a gun that had been kept hanging over the mantelpiece since the events of 5 November.
The gun was an old fashioned (even by the standards of the day) muzzle loading weapon, the single barrel of which Eliza had put into her mouth and, in the colourful description of the Bridport News, “blown her brains out”. It was a terrible scene, with “her brains and portions of her skull blown all over the place”, again according to the report of the inquest in the Bridport News.
The inquest heard a good deal about Mrs Henley’s state of mind in the preceding months. Mr Henley said that his wife had been “frightened, very much” by the events on 5 November, and she had not really been “like herself” afterwards. Of course there was then the highly charged Police Court hearing later that month and then the death of her daughter in late December.
However, Mr Henley thought that she had been “about lately as usual” and had been performing “her usual household duties”. PC House said that he had seen and spoken to Mrs Henley quite a bit since the previous November. He said that she was “in a very low way” after the riot, and after the death of Ellen she gradually got worse. However, he too thought that she had been better recently, and he had had a long conversation with her on the Friday previous to her death and he thought she was rather better. She had some needlework in her hand, which he had not seen for some time, and she “talked better and seemed to be mending.”
Charles Pomeroy was less positive, however, when he gave evidence to the inquest. He said that on the previous Saturday Mrs Henley had come in to the workshop with the gun and put it down at his feet. He knew that it was kept loaded and he noticed that it was cocked. He said to her “Why, that gun is fully cocked; you don’t ought to meddle with that gun.” She pulled the trigger, but the gun failed to fire as “the cap was a bad one.” Pomeroy disarmed her, and she told him she had taken the gun down to dust it and begged him not to tell her husband, so he did not do so.
As suicide was a crime at that time, the normal verdict was “suicide whilst the balance of the mind was disturbed”, thus allowing the defence of temporary insanity. Such was the case with Eliza Henley. The jury returned a verdict that “the deceased destroyed herself by blowing her brains out whilst in a state of temporary insanity.” She was 53 years old.
John Henley lived a further two and a half years, dying in September 1884 aged 52 years.
Part 7
Conclusion
The story of Henry Spencer, the nature of his death, and the events that his death set in train are tragic in any context and the more so when I consider that my own family was involved. For me, my own link with this story feels a strong one, made stronger by the fact that I met one of the protagonists, my great uncle Sam, who I remember as a gentle man with a lively sense of humour.
There is a wealth of information available, courtesy of the Dorset History Centre and made available online by Ancestry International, and FindMyPast have a newspaper archive that includes the Bridport News from which much of my material has been obtained.
In fact there is almost too much! Newspaper reports were very full in those days, which is very helpful in some respects, but it is also possible to read between the lines sometimes as there are tantalizing hints at a further untold story.
In particular, I think there is a hint that John Henley could have been involved in the death of Henry. As I said in Part 1, Mr Henley had returned to the house during the morning on the day of Henry’s death; later he sent Henry Chubb to look for Henry Spencer, and Chubb found him hanging in the outbuilding. Might this have been staged earlier by John Henley? Was this one reason why the coroner adjourned the inquest to allow the Henleys to seek legal advice?
Similarly, we are reliant upon the testimony of Mr Henley about the circumstances whereby he discovered his wife’s body. It certainly appears that she took her own life, but there is no independent corroboration. At the very least, it was irresponsible to leave a loaded gun over the fireplace within easy reach of someone who was understandably in a deep state of depression.
It is unlikely that we will ever know more than we do at present, and I have to stress that my speculation has absolutely no firm evidence to back it up. The verdict in both cases was that the cause of death was suicide, and in the absence of proof to the contrary, my thoughts must be simply speculation.
Before I began to investigate my family history, I ignorantly assumed that life in nineteenth century rural Dorset passed uneventfully. How wrong I was!
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Sources: Bridport News, 11 November 1881, 25 November 1881, 6 January 1882, 24 March 1882; Dorset County Chronicle, 25 November 1881, 5 January 1882; Western Gazette, 25 November 1881, 11 November 1881*, 6 January 1882, 24 March 1882; Mulhall M.G., The Dictionary of Statistics London: Routledge 1899
*The article is entitled “Boycotting the Henleys”. The first recorded use of the word “boycott” is in The Times of London eleven months earlier on 9 December 1880. It derived from the name of an Irish land agent, Captain Charles Boycott.
updated by @david-atkinson: 06 Dec 2015 09:45:20
Background
My grandmother Alice Spencer was born near Netherbury, Dorset (@netherbury-dorset-england-dt6-5), in 1872. She was brought up there, but by the age of 19, she was living at the home of a printer and stationer in Newport, Monmouthshire, where she was a domestic servant. Ten years later, in the 1901 census, she is shown to be living in the home of a farmer and his family near Wool, Dorset where again she was a domestic servant. Two years later, on 17 June 1903, she married Thomas Crayden at All Saints Church, Clapham, close to where she had been staying with her sister Annie and her husband.
Alice and Tom had four children, two boys and two girls, and the youngest daughter was Vera Edith, known as Ciss to her brothers and sister, was born in 1906, the last child of the family to be born in Kilburn, London, where they lived when first married. By 1911, the family had moved to Shiplake, in Oxfordshire, where Tom worked as a gardener, and in 1935, Vera married William Atkinson at the Parish Church of St Peter and St Paul in Shiplake. They had two children, Rosemary and myself. When Tom retired, he and Alice moved to a house in Binfield Heath built by their son-in-law George Johnson. They named it “Bowood”, a name that meant nothing to me at the time but I later realised that it was the name of a village in Dorset where Alice had grown up.
However, having set the scene, the story I want to tell is not about Alice, but about her brother – and my great uncle - Henry Thomas Spencer, who was nine years older than her.
Henry was the third child and second son of John and Eliza Spencer. He was born in 1857 and was baptised at Halstock Parish Church on 30 April 1857. Two of his unmarried aunts, Keturah and Sarah, had by then made arrangements to emigrate to Australia and, as they were due to sail less than three weeks later, Henry’s christening might well have been the last event to bring the family together before they left Keturah and Sarah left these shores.
John and Eliza were recognised for being diligent in sending their children to school, but by the age of 14, Henry had left school and was assisting his father in his trade as a carpenter and wheelwright.
Ten years later, around the time of his 24th birthday, Henry married Ellen Dinah Henley at Symondsbury parish church. The church was about four miles from the home in which Henry had grown up and about two miles from Ellen’s home in Broadoak.
Ellen was the only child of John and Eliza Henley; she had been born in Colyton, Devon, the home town of her father John Henley in 1859. John Henley had married Eliza Dollin on 4 June 1857 in Symondsbury, where Eliza lived, but presumably they then moved back to Colyton. However, by the time Ellen was two years old, she and her parents had moved to Broadoak.
After the marriage, Henry and Ellen spent their honeymoon in Portland with Henry’s aunt, Lucy Sampson and her husband George and their four children. Lucy and George had married in Netherbury in 1860; George was a widower who had been living in Netherbury prior to the marriage, and the couple remained there for at least eleven years after they were married, but George was from Portland and by the time Henry and Ellen were married in 1881, they had gone back to Portland and were living in Brandy Row, Chesil.
After their return from their honeymoon, Henry and Ellen went to live next door to Ellen’s parents in Broadoak and Henry became an employee of his father-in-law. Mr Henley was a carpenter who also repaired wagons in the yard adjoining his house, and Henry’s experience with his father’s related trade must have been invaluable. Both cottages were typical simple country dwellings immediately next to the road through the hamlet that leads to Shaves Cross. They were low, detached dwellings, with cob walls and a thatched roof and with a yard alongside each, Mr Henley’s being somewhat larger.
Soon after returning to Broadoak, Ellen became unwell, and the blame was put on a damp bed in which she had slept at Lucy and George’s, although George strongly denied it, saying that his feather beds were some of the best in England!
Ellen got a little better, but her illness persisted into September so she moved to stay at her parents’ home so that her mother could care for her. Henry went repeatedly to the Henley’s house to see his wife, but he told a number of people that his in laws refused to allow him to see Ellen. He also told them that on Saturday 8 October, his mother-in-law pushed him out of the door and told him never to come there again.
Over that weekend, he determined to return to live with his parents in Netherbury, and he spoke to his father-in-law about seeing a solicitor in Bridport to arrange a formal legal separation from Ellen. It is unclear – and it later became the cause of some dispute – as to who was the driving force in this. Was it Henry or was it his ‘in-laws’?
Early on the following Monday, Henry met his father-in-law in the workshop and told him that he could not be happy with his wife any more, and that he intended to ‘give her up’. Mr Henley went to work and seemed to assume that Henry would go to Bridport to arrange the separation.
Mr Henley was working with a boy, Henry Chubb, who he also employed. During the morning, Mr Henley went back to his house and then returned to work with the boy. Soon afterwards, as there was still no sign of Henry, Mr Henley asked the boy to go to Henry’s house to see if he was there. Henry Chubb returned and told Mr Henley that he had found Henry Spencer’s body hanging in an outhouse at his home.
Two days later, on Wednesday 12 October, an inquest was opened. It was usual at the time to hold inquests in a neighbouring house with the local coroner and a jury of local men, and that is what happened in this case. The story of Henry and his brief marriage was told to the inquest through a series of witnesses, including Mr and Mrs Henley, Ellen Spencer, Henry Chubb and John Spencer, Henry’s father. Judging by the interjections of the jurymen, the background was already known to most of those present. The long account in the Bridport News of 14 October 1881 shows that it was a fairly rowdy affair. The jurymen asked a number of leading questions and were clearly already placing the blame for Henry’s death onto Mr and Mrs Henley.
The coroner, Mr N. C. Loggin of Bridport, attempted to keep order, but he had some strong words to say about the quality of the witnesses.
Then, asking the jury to adjourn the inquest, he had some devastating things to say about Mr and Mrs Henley. He said that it looked very much to him as if it was a matter that might come to manslaughter, and if it did, it would be against John Henley and Eliza, his wife. He continued by saying that to his mind it was very clear that there had been improper conduct on their part. He described Mrs Henley as a virago who had been “lording it” over her husband, her son-in-law and everyone else, and if she, through her improper conduct had caused Henry’s death – “whether by his hand or not mattered little” – she would be held responsible for it.
The coroner went on to criticise both Mr and Mrs Henley for the evasiveness with which they had given evidence, but he said he felt it right to adjourn the proceedings so that they could be properly represented in view of the serious charges that the jury wished to level against them.
The inquest was resumed on Monday the following week, and on that occasion Mr Lock of Dorchester represented Mr and Mrs Henley. The same witnesses were called again along with two neighbours and they gave broadly similar evidence and Mr Lock took the opportunity to cross-examine them.
The events of the morning that Henry died were revisited and there were suggestions that ‘someone’ (presumably Mr Henley) could have killed Henry and hung the body in the closet for Henry Chubb to find, but having made the suggestion, it was then discounted.
The resumed inquest also heard quite a lot about Henry’s indifferent health, and there is a suggestion that it was caused or exacerbated by the Henley’s neglect of him after their daughter returned to live with them.
It seems clear that at this second inquest, one of two things happened. Either the Coroner was intimidated by the presence of the Henley’s solicitor or, having heard the evidence a second time, he changed his mind about the suspicions he had had earlier. In any event, he directed the jury that a verdict of murder was not an option for them in the light of the evidence and he went on to say that if they found a verdict of manslaughter, he did not consider that any criminal jury would agree.
The jury quickly came to the verdict that “the deceased committed suicide by hanging himself through temporary insanity”. The Coroner then called Mr and Mrs Henley back into the room and said he had “been desired by the jury to express their views on the manner in which they had treated the deceased; although the evidence showed that they had kept within the law, it disclosed that there had been harsh treatment and he dwelt upon the same fact that he had mentioned in his summing up respecting the manner in which he had been received at their house. In conclusion, he said that he “hoped that they would take the matter to heart and would regret the manner in which they had treated a fellow creature who was so closely bound to them by ties of relationship.”
It seems from this that there was a malicious intent that is not fully apparent from the reporting of the evidence.
And there the matter could have ended. A sad story, but one that was not altogether unfamiliar then as now. But three weeks later, there was a further twist in the tale that was quite sensational – as Part 2 will show.
Part 2
The Riot at Broadoak
In the Dorset of late Victorian times, it was not uncommon for Guy Fawkes Night, November 5, to be celebrated with an excess that would not be tolerated at other times, especially amongst the working classes. There are several records of celebrations that got out of hand in various parts of the County. Sometimes they became entwined with another Dorset tradition – Skimmington Rides; these consisted of a rowdy procession of villagers making their way to the homes of miscreants creating as much noise as possible with pots and pans. They were often a way of expressing moral disapproval of conduct between married couples, such as henpecked husbands, shrewish wives or of unfaithfulness, and they would often include straw effigies of the victim or perpetrator. Thomas Hardy gives a fictional account of a Dorset Skimmington Ride in his novel The Mayor of Casterbridge.
On the early evening of Saturday 5 November 1881, three weeks after Henry’s death, a mob formed in Salwayash, the home village of the Spencer family; up to 200 people gathered, according to the later Police account. A number were “attired in various grotesque costumes”, some men were dressed in women’s clothes, some had ‘blacked up’ faces and they also carried four straw effigies that represented Mr and Mrs Henley, Ellen and their dog. From Salwayash, the mob made their way to Broadoak, stopping on the way for alcoholic refreshment provided by people whose houses they passed.
Arriving at Broadoak banging kettles and blowing horns, they surrounded the Henley’s house and workshop, breaking all the windows with sticks and stones, and the mob then set light to the effigies, which burned fiercely, having been doused in paraffin. They attempted to set light to the thatched roof, but it had been a particularly wet autumn, and the fire failed to get a hold, so instead they thrust the burning effigies through the broken windows, setting fire to the curtains and shouting “push the devil through the windows and drive the b******rs out.”
They next turned their attention to the front door, forcing it off its hinges and taking it away and hanging it from the ‘broad oak’ from which the village got its name. A neighbour later recovered the door and took it back to the house although it was smashed in pieces.
Ellen went upstairs to try to remove some items from the vicinity of the window, but when she looked out, she saw a man who fired a pistol at her. Fortunately, it was a blank, as were other shots – about twenty in all – that were fired at Mr Henley during the evening. As for Ellen, her hair and her head were singed and she was struck by at least two stones “causing her considerable pain.” She hid behind a chest of drawers to avoid further injury, and said she later heard someone say “We’ll have the b******rs out and kill them.”
The mob then turned their attention to the gates to the workshop yard, which were completely removed, and the waggons in the yard were either set on fire or otherwise damaged. The local paper reported that “every attempt was made to render useless anything that was capable of destruction.”
The mob had arrived in the early evening, and although they periodically went away – it was said that they went to a nearby friend’s house where they were given more alcohol - they kept returning and renewing their assault until they finally left well after midnight. The Henleys had used the temporary absence of the rioters to escape into the outbuildings, but later a neighbour came across Mr and Mrs Henley and Ellen wandering around outside and frightened to go back into the house.
During the evening, someone had been sent the three miles to Bridport to report the matter to the Police. However, they were preoccupied with maintaining order in the town and it was in the early hours of the following morning before P.C. Chaffey and P.C. Sprackling arrived. On their way into the village, they came across a waggon-load of men on the road back to Salwayash who were fairly obviously the culprits, but nothing could be proved at that point. The policemen identified two of Henry’s brothers, Samuel and Frederick Spencer, and the police seemed to know that the waggon was being drawn by a horse belonging to John Spencer, Henry’s father. In the hamlet, all was quiet, but the constables found the house to be “a perfect wreck”. No witnesses were willing to positively identify the perpetrators, blaming the fact that they were disguised, although it seems more likely that they were unwilling to say who was responsible.
However, one name did come up, though. Several people, including Ellen, said they were sure that one of the mob was Samuel Spencer, which confirmed what the Police had seen.
Part 3
The Police Court Hearing
Five men appeared at the County Police Court sitting at Bridport on Monday 20 November 1881. They were Henry Caddy, John Woodford May, Arthur Martin, Henry Cook and Samuel Spencer. Four had been on remand and the fifth, Samuel Spencer, had been arrested earlier that day in Maiden Newton. Sam was my great uncle; he was still alive in the 1950s and when I was a child, I met him several times when he came from Dorset where he still lived, to visit his sister - my grandmother Alice Crayden (nee Spencer) - and her husband Tom in Binfield Heath.
The five were charged that:
“together with divers other persons whose names are unknown to the number of 150 persons, on 5 November 1881 at Symondsbury in the county of Dorset, then and there being riotously and tumultuously assembled together to the disturbance of the Queen’s peace, unlawfully and with force did enter a certain dwelling house, the property of this claimant there situate.”
This charge was made under the Malicious Damage Act 1861 24th and 25th Vict. c.97 s.12. There was also consideration given to adding a charge under section 11, as the rioters had allegedly tried to destroy an outbuilding, but the Justices said that they would decide if any amendment was necessary after hearing the evidence.
The courtroom was packed “with an excited throng” whose sympathy was clearly with the prisoners and there were “frequent interruptions of an unseemly character.” (1)
Mr Howard, of Weymouth appeared for the prosecution, and opened proceedings by outlining in an extremely theatrical fashion the events of the 5th November. He first called Charles Pomeroy, Mr Henley’s neighbour and employer to give evidence. Pomeroy said he had called at the Henley’s in the early part of the evening to collect his wages and Mr Henley asked him to stay as he had heard that there was trouble brewing. Giving his evidence, Pomeroy described at length what must have been a terrifying ordeal. He spoke of the noise from a crowd of men using horns and camp kettles and carrying effigies. He spoke of the attempt to set fire to the Henley’s house, the firing of the pistol, the malicious damage and the threats to kill. But although Pomeroy could confirm that several of the defendants had been present, he could not say that it was them specifically who had caused any of the damage or had entered the house.
It was Charles Pomeroy who went for the police and returned with PC’s Spracklin and Chaffey, and it was he who went with the officers in search of the mob. He told the Court that the men who they intercepted included the defendants and he could identify Samuel Spencer, his brother Fred (who was not charged) and he could identify John Spencer’s horse pulling the waggon on which they were conveyed. There seems to have been a dispute about whether he had identified a man named William King as the ringleader; he said he had not done so, but told the Court that he considered Arthur Martin to be the ringleader.
Mr Howard next called Henry’s widow, Ellen, who was reported to be ill and she was allowed to be seated to give her evidence. She gave a vivid account to the Court about the mob and the attempts to set fire to the house. She said that she had been hit by three stones, two in the lower part of her body and one in the head, and a shot from a pistol had singed her hair and burnt the skin on her head. She had hidden behind a chest of drawers.
Ellen was questioned about the identity of the attackers, and she said that the only person she could positively identify was Samuel Spencer, who “seemed to be officiating very busily and taking a very active part.”
The next witness for the prosecution was Esau Elliot, a farmer who lived close to the Henley’s. It seems clear from the questions he was asked that he was suspected of aiding and abetting the rioters by giving them somewhere to keep their waggon and by plying them with alcohol, but he flatly denied this. He also had ample opportunity to come to the aid of the Henley family, but he did not do so and the Court eventually declared him a hostile witness, saying that they wouldn’t be surprised if he eventually came back to Court, charged with being an accessory before the fact.
Both Elliot and his wife, who gave evidence later, said that on the day in question, 5 November, Mrs Spencer and one of her daughters had visited their home, leaving at about 10 pm; this would be Henry and Samuel’s mother and sister. There seems to be some significance in this, but it is not clear from the account what that may be.
Charles Parris was a smith who had an outdoor licence to serve beer. When he was called he appears to have been as unhelpful as the Elliots. He said there were a number of men – perhaps seventy or eighty in number, none of whom he recognised – who passed his house in the early part of the evening and he followed them. He said he did not see a disturbance at the Henley’s house and when he went home later he used a different route. He acknowledged that there was cask of cider outside his house, but he had no idea how it got there. About fifty people stopped there on their way back to Salwayash. He said that none of them drank, but he did when asked to do so, and he reiterated that all those present were “perfect strangers” to him. It may or may not be a coincidence that Parris’s wife was Samuel and Henry Spencer’s second cousin.After hearing again from Mr Henley regarding the damage to the outbuilding and from Ellen, who described again her own and her mother’s distress at the time of the incident and afterwards, the Justices retired to consider their decision. When they returned, they announced that the defendants should be committed for trial at the next Quarter Sessions under Section 12 of the Malicious Damage Act. They did not think that the evidence was sufficient to commit them under Section 11, which, they said, was just as well as it would have been a more serious charge.
Bail was refused, although the legal representatives were invited to apply to a Judge if they wished to challenge the decision.
The prisoners were led out of the building to the cheers of the crowd and were said to be “but little disconcerted at the result”. An “excited crowd loitered about the streets for some time” and the witnesses were escorted from the building by police officers as there were fears for their safety. When Mr Henley and his daughter left the Court, they were followed a hissing and yelling crowd to the Coffee Tavern, where they were guarded by five policemen. They were later accompanied home by a Police escort.
At 8 am the following morning, the prisoners were taken by train to HM Prison in Dorchester.
Part 4
The Death of Ellen Spencer
An important witness to have been called in the case of “riotous assembling” at Broadoak at the Dorchester Sessions this week, died on Friday morning [30 December 1881]. it Is generally believed that the sad end of her husband by hanging a few months since, and the subsequent midnight disturbance by a mob at her father’s cottage on 5th November, added to the excitement at the late trial of prisoners at the Bridport County Police Court last month have gradually preyed on the mind of Mrs Spencer, and to some extent probably hastened her end. It will be remembered that the deceased declared at the late trial that she was “struck by three stones thrown from the mob, one stone hitting her in the head and two in the lower part of her body. A shot fired from a pistol passed so close to her that her hair was singed and the skin of her head was burnt.” Deceased was in a delicate state of health at the time and there is but little doubt that a combination of alarms and excitements has acted seriously.
Western Gazette – 6 January 1882
Part 5
The Quarter Sessions Case
On 4 January 1882 the five prisoners who had been committed for trial at the Bridport County Police Court appeared at the Quarter Sessions at Dorchester. All were on bail, having been granted bail by a judge in chambers on 30 November 1881, nine days after being committed for trial.
All five pleaded guilty to the charge of riotous assembly and to a second indictment of assaulting Ellen Spencer.
It seems clear that there had been some plea bargaining before the case came up, and that Mr Willes for the prosecution and Mr Lock for the defence had reached an understanding. Confirming that his clients were pleading guilty, Mr Lock said “technically speaking, there certainly was a riot and damage done to the house of Mr Henley (but) this was only another instance of the licence which certain people assumed to themselves on the historical event of 5th November.”
He went on to say that there was no desire on the part of Mr Henley to pursue the case against the prisoners. They had “expressed themselves extremely sorry” for what they had done and they had already made some reparation and more was planned. In view of the fact that they had spent nine days in prison before getting bail, he asked the Court to consider dealing with the matter by binding over the prisoners to keep the peace for a period that would extend beyond the next 5th November.
Mr Willes said that the prosecution was in agreement with this approach and asked that the prisoners be bound over for twelve months. He said that the object of bringing the case was to show that people could not take the law into their own hands.
The Deputy Chairman, John Floyer, then addressed the prisoners. Mr Floyer was seventy years of age and was a member of parliament for Dorset, the county in which he was born. He had been an MP for Dorset from 1846 until 1857; he was re-elected in 1864 and would serve until 1885. He was a Deputy Lieutenant of the County and a Justice of the Peace, and had been High Sheriff of Dorset in 1844.
Mr Floyer pointed out the prisoners’ reckless behaviour and said that there was no doubt that they had rendered themselves amenable to the Act under which they were charged. He then went on to lecture them about the responsibility of the magistrates to ensure that good order was kept, even when “the old customs”, which he himself supported, were being celebrated.
He acknowledged that counsel on both sides were content that the matter should be dealt with leniently, since there was no indication that such behaviour would be repeated, but he warned that if it was, then the Court would deal with the matter much more seriously, hinting of the probability of a prison sentence.
Mr Floyer then said that he was happy to accept the suggestion of the prosecution and the defence and he bound over each of the prisoners for twelve months in the sum of £20 and the prisoners were discharged.
It seems a peculiar end to the criminal case and on the face of it, a very lenient disposal. The highly charged atmosphere of the Police Court seemed to have been diffused by the time of the Quarter Sessions when, although the riot was acknowledged and the number of participants settled on as in excess of 150, both sides wanted to ‘talk down’ the seriousness of what had taken place. Why?
In the first place, Mr Henley, the prosecutor, was unable to appear at Court. His daughter had died only five days previously and his wife was said to have been “bodily in a very weak condition” after the ordeal of the riot, the Police Court case and the death of Ellen. The Bridport News suggested that “as Mr Henley felt himself unequal to the task of appearing in Court, the case was thereupon virtually compromised.”
One can guess at a few other factors that affected the result. Firstly, the defendants had spent a short time in custody and secondly, reparation had been, or was being, made. Thirdly, there is the amount of the bind over sum - £20. This amount could have been forfeited if the feud was renewed in addition to a likely prison sentence.
It is very difficult to translate the value of money in 1882 to the present day, but a labourer’s annual wage then would have been about £30(1). Three of the indicted men were labourers and one, Arthur Martin, a farmer farming 30 acres; the fifth, Sam Spencer, was a carpenter. Nothing is known about Martin’s financial situation, but he had a wife and young family and a servant, but aside from him, £20 would represent upwards of six months’ wages. A substantial sum that all of them would be reluctant to put at risk by renewing the feud.
All in all then, they probably thought that although things were bad enough, they could have been worse.
Again, this could have been the end of the matter, but there was still one sad twist to come.
Part 6
The Death of Eliza Henley
On 20 March 1882, not much more than two months after the Quarter Sessions case, Eliza Henley took her own life.
At about one o clock on that Monday, Mr Henley had gone to collect timber from a neighbouring property. Charles Pomeroy, who had been with the Henley family during the riot of the previous 5 November, remembered that at about that time Mrs Henley brought him a cup of coffee and told him the time, and so Charles stopped for his lunch. Afterwards, he went for a short walk, during which time Mr Henley returned. Two local men named Broomfield arrived with a wagon load of timber arrived shortly afterwards, and Mr Henley called to Pomeroy to come and help unload it. Getting no reply, he unloaded it himself with the help of the Broomfield brothers.
When the job was done, he offered the brothers some cider, and went into the house to get some cups. There he found his wife lying on the floor; at first he thought she had had a fit, but it was soon apparent that she was dead. He called out to one of the Bloomfield brothers and then saw that she was lying on a gun that had been kept hanging over the mantelpiece since the events of 5 November.
The gun was an old fashioned (even by the standards of the day) muzzle loading weapon, the single barrel of which Eliza had put into her mouth and, in the colourful description of the Bridport News, “blown her brains out”. It was a terrible scene, with “her brains and portions of her skull blown all over the place”, again according to the report of the inquest in the Bridport News.
The inquest heard a good deal about Mrs Henley’s state of mind in the preceding months. Mr Henley said that his wife had been “frightened, very much” by the events on 5 November, and she had not really been “like herself” afterwards. Of course there was then the highly charged Police Court hearing later that month and then the death of her daughter in late December.
However, Mr Henley thought that she had been “about lately as usual” and had been performing “her usual household duties”. PC House said that he had seen and spoken to Mrs Henley quite a bit since the previous November. He said that she was “in a very low way” after the riot, and after the death of Ellen she gradually got worse. However, he too thought that she had been better recently, and he had had a long conversation with her on the Friday previous to her death and he thought she was rather better. She had some needlework in her hand, which he had not seen for some time, and she “talked better and seemed to be mending.”
Charles Pomeroy was less positive, however, when he gave evidence to the inquest. He said that on the previous Saturday Mrs Henley had come in to the workshop with the gun and put it down at his feet. He knew that it was kept loaded and he noticed that it was cocked. He said to her “Why, that gun is fully cocked; you don’t ought to meddle with that gun.” She pulled the trigger, but the gun failed to fire as “the cap was a bad one.” Pomeroy disarmed her, and she told him she had taken the gun down to dust it and begged him not to tell her husband, so he did not do so.
As suicide was a crime at that time, the normal verdict was “suicide whilst the balance of the mind was disturbed”, thus allowing the defence of temporary insanity. Such was the case with Eliza Henley. The jury returned a verdict that “the deceased destroyed herself by blowing her brains out whilst in a state of temporary insanity.” She was 53 years old.
John Henley lived a further two and a half years, dying in September 1884 aged 52 years.
Part 7
Conclusion
The story of Henry Spencer, the nature of his death, and the events that his death set in train are tragic in any context and the more so when I consider that my own family was involved. For me, my own link with this story feels a strong one, made stronger by the fact that I met one of the protagonists, my great uncle Sam, who I remember as a gentle man with a lively sense of humour.
There is a wealth of information available, courtesy of the Dorset History Centre and made available online by Ancestry International, and FindMyPast have a newspaper archive that includes the Bridport News from which much of my material has been obtained.
In fact there is almost too much! Newspaper reports were very full in those days, which is very helpful in some respects, but it is also possible to read between the lines sometimes as there are tantalizing hints at a further untold story.
In particular, I think there is a hint that John Henley could have been involved in the death of Henry. As I said in Part 1, Mr Henley had returned to the house during the morning on the day of Henry’s death; later he sent Henry Chubb to look for Henry Spencer, and Chubb found him hanging in the outbuilding. Might this have been staged earlier by John Henley? Was this one reason why the coroner adjourned the inquest to allow the Henleys to seek legal advice?
Similarly, we are reliant upon the testimony of Mr Henley about the circumstances whereby he discovered his wife’s body. It certainly appears that she took her own life, but there is no independent corroboration. At the very least, it was irresponsible to leave a loaded gun over the fireplace within easy reach of someone who was understandably in a deep state of depression.
It is unlikely that we will ever know more than we do at present, and I have to stress that my speculation has absolutely no firm evidence to back it up. The verdict in both cases was that the cause of death was suicide, and in the absence of proof to the contrary, my thoughts must be simply speculation.
Before I began to investigate my family history, I ignorantly assumed that life in nineteenth century rural Dorset passed uneventfully. How wrong I was!
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Sources: Bridport News, 11 November 1881, 25 November 1881, 6 January 1882, 24 March 1882; Dorset County Chronicle, 25 November 1881, 5 January 1882; Western Gazette, 25 November 1881, 11 November 1881*, 6 January 1882, 24 March 1882; Mulhall M.G., The Dictionary of Statistics London: Routledge 1899
*The article is entitled “Boycotting the Henleys”. The first recorded use of the word “boycott” is in The Times of London eleven months earlier on 9 December 1880. It derived from the name of an Irish land agent, Captain Charles Boycott.
updated by @david-atkinson: 06 Dec 2015 09:45:20
