Re: Tales from the mid 19th Century
William Marshall was taken into custody by Thomas Sweeting, one of two paid policemen in Ripon at that time (the police force, as we know it, only began in 1829, when the first Metropolitan Police Force was established as a result of Robert Peel's Police Act. Sweeting had been appointed police officer in 1831). Sweeting took Marshall to the House of Correction, where he was left in the care of Thomas Stubbs, the gaoler. The following day, Saturday 17th June, Marshall was taken the short distance from the prison to the workhouse on Allhallowgate, where the bodies of the drowned children were laid out. The jury present then heard evidence from witnesses.
These are the first three.
Mary Harrison stated that about nine o’clock on Friday morning, I took up a hair cord belonging to William Addison, and I went to the door of Addison’s shop; I saw William. Marshall, the father of the deceased, sitting in the corner of the hay-loft; near his house. I said, Marshall, what are you doing there? He rose up immediately, and gave a dreadful shriek and was like a madman. I was afraid, he was nearly falling from the loft, and so I cried out for William Addison, his wife’s brother.” Addinson went to him, and I went to my own house. I, about a quarter of an hour afterwards, I went out to him and Addison who I heard talking at my door. I said “Marshall, what’s to do, you have frightened me.” He said, Oh, Mistress, I have drowned my two children.” I said, “don’t talk such nonsense. You have done no such thing. How did you get that into your head? He said, “Oh, but I have, I have drowned my William and my dear bairn.” I said, “don’t talk in that way. He said “Oh but I have.” I could not believe him but I went into his house at last, with a neighbouring woman, Caroline Balmforth, and I desired her to go up stairs; I went up afterwards, and found the children dead, and observed their hair were wet;. They were laid out dead; one of them was laid upon the bed, the other upon a crib near it; when I went back to my own house, Marshall was lying on the kitchen floor; I said Marshall, Oh! what have you been doing; come you must get up.” He said, “No, let me lay.” Addison came in, and helped him into his own house.
I am in the habit of supplying the family with milk, which I generally take into the kitchen. I frequently saw William Marshall, and there could not have been a more affectionate father, nor kinder husband than Marshall. I have seen him ride the infant in a go-cart.
William Addison, dyer, said, I am the brother to Marshall’s wife, and reside the next door but one to him; I was at work in my back shop on Friday morning a little after nine o’clock; Mrs. Harrison, last witness, came out of her own house, and said something which I did not exactly hear. She had a piece of hair chord in her hand; I asked her what she had said, and what she wanted; she went to the other shop door, and looked up into the hay-loft, and called out, Oh! man; what are you doing up there. She then called out to me, William for God’s sake, what’s the matter with Marshall? Marshall immediately darted down the ladder and approached me; he was quite wild and terrific; Mrs. Harrison called out to me to take hold of him; I laid hold of him; he then told me that he had drowned two of his children; he saw he had not completed his work, a few minutes longer would have done it - he had himself to destroy. I took him into Mrs. Harrison’s back kitchen; he threw himself on the floor, and repeated his declaration of what he had done. I did not see that Marshall had a rope or any thing else in his hand, or about his person, to injure, himself. I have known Marshall for twenty years. When I first knew him he was of a very cheerful disposition although never really talkative. I observed an alteration nearly two years since, from cheerfulness to lowness of spirits and dejection. Marshall had made a little go-cart for the infant, with which he used to draw the child about. I’d seen him the day before. He seemed to be in cheerful mood and was nursing his youngest child.
I’d seen Marshall on the 30th May, when he looked very ill and dejected. I asked him, “Marshall, how do you feel yourself? I suppose you have had another of those attacks” Marshall replied “Yes and a very severe one.” I asked him how those attacks affected him. He said, “I have spoiled some boots after an attack upon my nerves. It struck up into my brain, and I can not describe my feelings at the time. I can not tell what will befall me and I can not avoid it.”
Caroline Balmforth, ‘I was the first to go up the stairs. There were a few drops of water on the stairs. Both children had been wrapped up as if they were asleep. About a fortnight before this matter happened Marshall’s wife came to me, and in consequence of what she said, I went to her house, where I found William, who looked quite wild. I asked him how he was, and he said he ailed nothing. Afterwards he said, “Where am I?” I replied, “you are at home with your wife and family.” He looked very wild at his wife, and said, “she is not my wife, I am going.” He said this in quite a wild manner, and upon a laugh. I went immediately to Dr. Smith as I thought that Marshall was not in his right mind.