The role of Parish Officials and early Forensic Science
It’s Bowes in1827.
George Clarkson (25) farms at North Field, just off “Long Street”, on the course of the Roman Road between Barney and Bowes.
Eleanor Thompson is his housekeeper.
Anne Hamilton, her niece, is a farm servant and has left her daughter Mary Jane with her own mother in Kirkby Thore, Westmorland.
Thomas Donald is the Overseer for Bowes Parish, elected annually under the Poor Relief Act (1601).
Thomas Donald is also the elected Parish Constable - there was no County County Constabulary in North Riding before 1856.
Anne is pregnant and she sees Thomas Donald, the Overseer, responsible for the support of unmarried mothers. She tells him that Clarkson is not the father, that the father is in Kirkby Thore.
He places her in the care of Mrs Sarah Robinson in Lartington.
On April 19th 1827 twin sons are born. William and James, described by Mrs Robinson as two fine boys, are baptised as Catholics by Michael Ellis, chaplain at Lartington.
Clarkson visits and is overheard telling Anne that he would only marry her if she disposed of the boys by lying on them, telling her that Ruth had done it and now dresses well. She did not manage to achieve this.
Mrs Robinson barred him, but Anne’s aunt took all three back to North Field on April 25th.
The boys did not thrive and had spells of turning blue and having convulsions. George gave them some “boily” - bread soaked in milk, with white powder at the bottom. Anne tasted it and said her mouth and throat were burned and swollen, confirmed by Anne Hammond who laid out the babies.
They were buried on Wednesday May 9th - their bodies, hands and legs described as being black.
After their deaths Anne Hamilton said that she would still be prepared to marry George Clarkson.
Rumours started that the boys had been murdered and that George Clarkson was their father.
Thomas Donald, the Constable, investigated. Remarkably, for a Parish Constable in a remote part of the Yorkshire he used methods of which the famous Bow Street Runners would have been proud.
They searched Clarkson’s house and found a box of white powder, which burnt the tongue of one of the searchers. Thought to contain white arsenic, then easily available, e.g. in green dyes, a food adulterant (sometimes accidental), sheep dips, medicines.
They tested the lath and plaster wall through which Sarah Robinson claimed to have overheard the pair arguing.
The bodies were exhumed and Thomas Kipling, a Barnard Castle surgeon carried out post mortems on them. He tested the stomach contents and suspected that they contained arsenic.
Samples were sent to John Davies a chemical lecturer in Manchester who performed 7 different tests for arsenic and concluded that they were positive for arsenic. This was 5 years before Marsh’s definitive test was introduced.
George Clarkson was arrested and taken to York Castle prison.
The trial for the murder of James Hamilton, held at York Assizes, under Sir John Hullock, a judge who lived at Thorngate House in Barnard Castle, was widely reported in detail in newspapers in London and even in Ireland. The Star and Morning Herald were quoted.
Evidence appears to have been well presented by all the witnesses, though John Davies was hesitant and finally Sir John summed up.
The jury retired and returned after 1 3/4 hours deliberation and found the defendant ………..Not Guilty.
In view of this the trial for the murder of William was not pursued and George Clarkson was acquitted.
It is thought that the evidence of women was not taken as seriously as that of men and perhaps Anne Hamilton may have been seen to be a woman who already had one illegitimate child and may have been trying to entrap George Clarkson into marriage. We will never know.
Both appear to have disappeared without trace after the trial.
Report by Christine Price