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‘Dreadful Murder at Chestnut Bottoms’ by Harry Riley

“Prisoner at the Bar; stand up straight! Is there anything you wish to say before sentence is passed?”

The illiterate man in the dock at the Assize Court looked straight ahead and in a faltering voice; addressed the bewigged judge. “It was the demon drink what did for me your ‘onour, infected me mind and brought them voices to me ‘ead. I loved my Marfa and the kids and would not ‘ave done what I did overwise.” He hesitated before continuing in a stronger voice: “I fink I’m ready to meet me maker now and join ‘em in ‘eaven.”

The crowded courtroom booed and jeered as Mr. Justice Peacock, put on his black cap and struck his gavel down on the bench for silence.

“The sentence is death by public hanging!” 

 It was hardly more than a shack in the forest. After a period of sustained rainfall the patched roof would leak in several places and the earthen floor of the sparse interior would become soft and spongy with mud, churned up by the barefoot children. Inside this hovel lived Tom Chapman, a gamekeeper’s assistant, Martha (his common law wife) and three youngsters.

They scratched a hard living from forest kill; a rabbit or two, the meat mixed with a few sparse vegetables grown behind the low wicker fence, and mixed into a rough stew.

Michael Everton, the official gamekeeper and his family lived on a slightly higher plane. They kept chickens and a pig and occasionally a little of their surplus fare would trickle down the line to the ragged Chapman’s. This was life in the raw in rural Nottinghamshire in 1840.

Tom and Martha rubbed along together as best they could in this miserable squalor. To gain a brief respite from the daily grind, the forester-cum-handyman would drink himself silly from home-brewed liquor, distilled from woodland sloe berries.

In spite of this, when sober he was known to be a kind and considerate worker who did his best to bring up his brood in a ‘God Fearing’ way.

The previous winter had been a hard one and they had lost two of their children to pneumonia. At harvest time Martha and the other women would help bring in the crop. The