A cannibal on the prowl- the gruesome case of Sam Thorley Leek 1777

The proverb "Coming to Leek out of the noise" was still popular enough in the early 20^th century. I wonder if anyone still uses it? It is a saying which has a history and a history that could be not more gruesome. Most people in the early 21^st century will have heard of the fictional exploits of Hannibal Lecter- the creation of the writer Thomas Harris whose terrifying desire to eat human flesh has gripped modern audiences. Well, Leek played its part in a real case of cannibalism which dates from the end of the 18^th century and it’s from this case that the saying sprang. The basic details are outlined in the diary of the Rev Jonathan Wilson, Master of Congleton Grammar School and Vicar of Biddulph which was published in 1876 in the Leek Times to mark the 100^th anniversary of this most shocking murder

Saturday 23^rd November 1776While at dinner heard of a most abominable murder a woman cut into a score of pieces in Prester Fields BrookSunday 24^th November 1776The murderer detected and lodged in the town hallMonday 25^th November 1776Sam Thorley the murderer sent to ChesterThursday 11^th April 1777
At school after dinner the boys are given leave to go and see Sam Thorley drawn on the gibbet

Gibbeting a body after a hanging was a fate reserved for the most heinous of crimes. The body would hang in a metal cage for a long time. The idea being that the horror of the image would act as a deterrent, warning people that they would suffer the same end if they acted criminally. In order to preserve the body pitch was used which could be a very successful preservative. There was a case in Warwickshire where the body of a man hanged in 1766 was still on display 60 years later
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How Sam Thorley came to deserve this fate I will now tell.

Samuel Thorley was not an intelligent man and was described by his contemporaries as "half thick". He was born in Astbury in the 1720s and up to the events of late 1776 lead a quiet, unremarkable life. He worked as a labourer on local farms and carried on his life honestly. He jobbed about in the slaughter houses of Congleton carrying out the butchering of livestock, a skill that was to have terrible consequences. He was also employed to dig graves at Astbury.

On Wednesday 20^th November 1776 Thorley came across Ann Smith a well known tramping ballad singer who had come to sing at the Lammas Fair in Congleton the following Friday.

Three days later her body was found dismembered by boys in a ravine where the footpath crosses a brook called the Howty. The sight was made more terrible as early snow had fallen and the whiteness contrasted with the bloody remains of the woman.

Later on that Wednesday Thorley was seen with a blood stained apron which seemed to be full of pork. A witness named Hannah Oakes is approached by Thorley and is asked to boil up the "pork" for his supper. He ate some and fell sick and she is told to feed the rest of the meat to the dogs. She acted otherwise and keeps it back when she heard of the disappearance and murder of Ann Smith. She gave the meat to a constable who gives it to a local doctor name Reade who on examining the meat pronounced it to be human flesh

Thorley’s blood stained appearance at first excited no suspicion on account of his employment as a butcher. He later became excited when he heard people talk about the discovery of the body and makes the statement to Hannah that will live on many years after his death

"Folks will be laying this job onto him and he would go to Leek out of the noise".
He went to Leek on the Sunday and was quickly caught by the constable and bought back to Congleton to be imprisoned prior to the trial at Chester

The proverb has been said to owes its rise and popularity due to the self incriminating remark of Thorley
What led to the horrible fate of Ann Smith?

Thorley admitted all at the trial and gave an account of the fateful encounter. Smith met him in a local wood and asked him to borrow a knife to cut up bread and cheese which she was carrying for her dinner. When she finished she ran off laughing and waving the knife at him as she ran. He followed her to the brook took the knife from her and in a rage cut her throat and then began to butcher her. Thorley was always reckoned to be dangerous if provoked, today we would say that he had anger management problems.

There were sufficient doubts about his intelligence at the trial to set a test to see whether he was sufficiently compos mentis to stand trial. Thorley was set to count a score of nails and having succeeded in the task was thought to be a sufficiently component candidate for the gallows

He was hanged at Broughton near Chester from the old fashioned method of driving a cart from under Thorley leaving him to strangle slowly. It was not until the middle of the next century that the scientific method of hanging using a weight/ height ratio devised by executioner William Marwood was employed which caused death to be instantaneous.
　
But this story has one final grim twist. The grotesque horror of the case was compounded by the wagoner who carried the body back to be gibbeted at Congleton got drunk and lost the body when it fell out of the cart on his way through the Delamere Forest. After a prolonged search the body was found and conveyed to Congleton where the Rev Wilson young charges witnessed the educative experience of seeing Thorley strung up one more time..

Arthur Berry on the Lost Pubs of Burslem Part 1 Listener 1979

I sat down and wept when I remembered the lost pubs of Burslem- the demolished Star that stood when the Moonglow Ballroom stands now, on the corner of the street of the Preacher and the Tote office. It was a gaunt dark building, nicknamed the Star of Bethlehem; a grimy stuccoed Star the colour of years of wet smoke. From the outside it looked forbidding and empty lit only be one or two naked light bulbs. Its doors were difficult to find. Its main door, on the corner of the square had been screwed down for some reason on the inside covered with a sheet of painted plywood. Only the side doors would let you in and these were narrow and difficult to open. One was in Queen Street and the other down William Clowes Street, opposite the Dolphin. Behind the blocked up main door was the weighing machine, which didn’t work, that stood in a passage leading to a closed smoke room.

For all its dreary appearances the Star was the highest drinking temple in the town. Nothing has been the same since it was knocked down. No pub has more lamented. It was a place filled with snugs. And in these snugs were little stoves each with a bucket of coal and a shovel. The snugs were the haunt of Guinness drinking old women who sat night after night, squat as toads, drinking and watching, eating and taking it all in.
There was one I remember Mrs Potts. God rest her soul! Who never stopped eating pork sandwiches all the days of her life, and the great chops must have chommelled herds of pigs down. I do not think her stomach had been empty for half a century before. She sat there, night after night, filling her face with roast pork and Guinness. I heard one man say that she would have eaten a bat in a straw or a raw monkey if it had stood still. But she knew what her pleasures were and what they were and she attended to them every night in the snug of the Star.

The snugs were often called pairing pens. Gossip had it that certain publicans for a consideration would lock one and turn the other way while the lascivious occupants attended to their carnal pleasures. I did not see this myself, but I was an innocent at the time and would not understand it if I had.

Behind these small cubicles was the big main taproom, a wooden floored L shaped bar, with cane bottom seats round the wall and a few little heavy iron-legged tables. These tables had been wiped with damp cloths that they were stripped bare of varnish. And the main bar was the same. Raw, wet wood covered with damp beer mats. There were spittoons around the bar on the floor and an old rose wood piano in the corner; and once there had been a big stove pot, but even in these days they had been ripped out and replaced by a pitiful but convenient heating arrangement.

How terrible has been the loss of these stove pots- the magnificent dark stoves that were once the heart of every taproom- elegant dark shapes that stood there with such dignity, such presence like a totem. To sit against one of these on a winter night and feel the rich heat and watch the clear amber beer was a benediction. Men would come early doors to get a seat on one of the wooden forms against it. And how the stovepipes were fitted at all angles to get to the ceiling. To watch a publican’s dog lying asleep in front of one of them was to watch luxury.

The loss of these stoves was a great blow. I always like to see the way the world works- where the heat comes from. Men have watched fire for millions of years. To give a form like a stove to hold a fire was the perfect blending between nature and art; to watch the publican lift the top and put on a shovel of coke was to watch a high priest attending to a ritual of life.

To go in say the Sea Lion in Waterloo Road and to get into the place when it was fresh mopped and the new beer mats were laid out on the tables and the ash trays were clean and the stove was cracking with fresh coke and the red quarries were gleaming red and the bar pumps were shining and the dominoes and the cards were waiting and the publican had a clean collar and tie on and all the world was ship shape- this was happiness or at least as nears to it as I will ever come.

What could be nicer, fresher than the smell of newly whitewashed gentlemen’s? I have patronised public houses because the gentlemen’s smelled so fresh But then, I have patronised pubs for very strange reasons. I used to go to the Black Lion because it had two brasses across the doors. This pub was flush with Queen Street and I used to press forward as though it was bulging out on to the narrow pavement. I remember the pleasure of having a couple of halves on a Saturday dinnertime, before going to watch the Vale play at the Old Recreation Ground.

Burslem was filled with pubs in those days, one every few yards- The Rose, The Shamrock and the Thistle, the Waterloo Stores, Norris Wine Vaults, The New Vaults, the Albion, The Mason’s Arms, the Durham Ox, The Hole in the Wall, the Jig Post. Gone, gone, gone every one!

The Butterton Poltergeist 1877

In April the Daily Mail reported on a case of poltergeist activity in the West Midlands. The case followed the classic type of poltergeist activity pots and pans thrown around the kitchen, blinds moving up and down, lights going on and off, doors locking themselves, chairs flying across the room, and cupboard doors opening and banging shut before being ripped off their hinges among other phenomena. The strange occurrences started a couple of weeks after Mrs Manning and her children moved into the Coventry council house. The disturbances became more malevolent when the poltergeist pushed the family's two dogs down the stairs resulting in horrific injuries to one of the pets, which resulted in it having to be put down. A chair moving across the floor on its own was also captured on film. The housing association who owns the property sent a priest who blessed the house and the phenomena temporarily abated for a couple of weeks before starting up again. Derek Ancora the medium was then called in who identified the source of the problem as Jim who died in 1900 at the age of 58 of a heart attack. Ancora exorcised the spirit.

The first poltergeist case identified in the UK was the Tedworth Drummer of Wiltshire. A sudden case of drumming began in the home of a local magistrate called Mompesson in the spring of 1662. Activity increased children were lifted into the air, shoes flung at a person’s head, chamber pots emptied on a bed and the leg of a horse forced into its mouth. The events were linked to an itinerant conjuror and drummer William Drury who had been arrested for trying to obtain money with forged documents. He was brought before Mompesson who let him off with a warning and confiscated his drum and told him to leave the district. The drumming started soon afterwards. There were reports that the drum was lifted by unseen hands and gave off booming hands. After several nights the sleepless magistrate had the drum destroyed but the noises continued. At this point the other strange manifestation began to be witnessed. Drury was suspected but this line of enquiry ended when it was found that Drury was in jail in Gloucester many miles away. A committee w set up by King Charles II concluded that no human agency could be deduced.

The Moorlands has its own case of poltergeist activity. In July 1877 the village of Butterton was subject to a bizarre occurrence a humble cottage in Back Lane and dating from 1617 the former home of Hannah Gould was subject to periods of sustained noise and thumping which struck terror into the hearts of the villagers. Hannah had died the previous February at the age of 80 and locals assumed that it was her ghost that was causing the commotion. Anxious villagers consulted with church elders. They contacted the old women’s son who was reluctant to become involved and still the noise was heard constantly and the local vicar Mr Cantrell who lived close by Back Lane. The next Sunday villagers gathered in old Hannah’s house where it is reported that the rapping continued and furniture rocked. Eventually suspicion fell upon a serving girl in the village who is thought to have engineered the event to gain access to the property.

What causes poltergeist activity?

 Aside from accusations of hoax and exaggeration, which although applicable to a number of cases by no means apply to them all, the most popular theory is that the poltergeist is caused unwittingly by a human agent, usually a teenage girl. Researchers believe that a troubled adolescent unconsciously manipulates objects using psychokinesis (PK), a type of energy generated in the brain. According to researchers at the Rhine Research Center Institute for Parapsychology at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, poltergeist activity is the physical expression of psychological trauma. However, more natural explanations are often the cause of what appears to be a poltergeist disturbance.

Perhaps this might help to cast light on some poltergeist cases . However, this does not explain how enough power is generated to move objects such as heavy pieces of furniture, or to shower a room with stones, make objects appear from nowhere, or start fires, if accounts of such phenomena can be trusted.
There are also a number of poltergeist cases where the people involved have no psychological problems at all, and where there are no adolescents in the household.

How can we explain these?

A further point is that there are millions of troubled teenagers all over the world, but the vast majority do not cause poltergeist activity to occur. Other researchers have suggested that 'spirit entities' are responsible for the phenomena, perhaps generating the power by attaching themselves to suitably disturbed teenagers. But the very nature of these hypothetical 'spirits' means that scientifically at least, they cannot be properly investigated. . However, if accounts of the more extreme unexplained occurrences alleged to be caused by poltergeist activity are themselves exaggerated, or even completely unreliable, which is entirely possible in older cases, then no further explanation is required.

Nevertheless, the inability to find a convincing explanation for the phenomenon, the significant amount of cases exhibiting similar characteristics occurring over a long period of time in widely different cultures, and the bizarre but somehow consistent nature of the phenomena, make the poltergeist perhaps the most baffling and enduring of unexplained mysteries.

Concern for home care for the elderly- a local case.

The two women who arrived at my till looked close to exhaustion and they wanted to void their feelings of contempt at the management of the company they worked for. I was a sympathetic ear. They worked for Care UK one of the largest care companies in the UK. They had previously worked for Sue Ryder who had lost out in the contract to Care UK some time ago. Home Care UK were recently the centre of a Panorama programme of abuse of the elderly at a Bristol care home.

The women were caustic about the management of the company describing the management as "Twats". According to them the management were incompetent and lazy. The training of new front line staff was negligible and the workload crushing. One of the women told me that the company practised " call cramming which she said was illegal. As many as 10 old people were seen over the course of a morning with workers rushing from home visit to home visit.

These women also mentioned the impact on their pay and conditions, which had deteriorated. Costs had been driven down as the company which offered the lowest value had been taken on with a damaging impact on both the care offered and the impact on staff who had to put up with gruelling schedules.

This account is timely as a soon to be published interim report by the Equalities Commission shows the terrible care which elderly people have to endure. There are reports of people left in soiled clothing for long periods. Of people left in their homes not visited and visited in very brief periods as the private companies rush home visits. One woman in the national report was seen by 32 different carers in a two-week period
The research also found that due to the strict time controls on visits, which could last as little as 15 minutes, some elderly patients had to choose between being washed or having a cooked meal.

The two women were adamant that under increasingly stressful circumstances they were trying to deliver decent home care but pressures the consequence of cost and work load were contributing to their worn out and demoralised state

Mark Twain visits Leek November 1899

Mark Twain perhaps America’s most distinguished men of letter visited Leek on Wednesday 29^th November 1899. His signature appears in the visitor’s book of the Nicholson Institute in a very clear and strong hand. Samuel Langhorne Clemens the real name of Mark Twain was born on the 30^th November 1835. It is therefore possible that he celebrated his 64^th birthday in the town. This is a matter for conjecture because an extensive search of the Leek Times has revealed no additional information about the visit and one has to conclude that the visit was private and secret.

Mark Twain was one of the most celebrated writers in the world in the 1890s He had created Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn’ two of the best loved and enduring characters in world literature so the lack of comment in the local press is mystifying. News of this most celebrated of authors would have certainly made the headlines and press coverage would have been extensive. It should be said that Leek at the end of the 19^th century was well used to receiving high profile visitors. Indeed a reading of the newspapers reveals a very rich cultural and political heritage. In October 1899 the pioneer of investigative journalism who would later die on the Titanic WT Stead spoke at a well attended anti Boer war rally in the town and in December the first Labour MP Keir Hardie spoke in Leek and was fully reported in the Times.

Twain when he visited Leek that late autumn day had endured many tribulations. Since 1895 he had more or less been on a permanent lecturing tour in order to clear debts following the collapse of his publishing firm. The following year his beloved daughter Susy died of meningitis at the family home in Connecticut while Twain was forced through circumstances to stay in England. Just prior to his visit to Staffordshire Twain had undergone a health cure in a sanatorium in Sweden where he had stayed for several months before returning to Britain in October 1899. His main preoccupation as a writer in these years was the production of political essays and what exercised him most was the colonial wars that both the United States and Britain were engaged America in the Philippines and Britain in a war in South Africa- the Boer War. Twain was bitterly opposed to both military adventures. He had a card printed, which bore the slogan

"I bring you the stately maiden called CHRISTENDOM- returning bedraggled, besmirched and dishonoured from pirate raids in South Africa and the Philippines; with her soul full of meanness, her pockets full of boodle and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies. Give her soap and towel, but hide the looking glass".

The Leek Times in late November was full of news from the South African War and one can make an assumption that as a journalist himself Twain might have read the edition. The newspaper printed the previous Saturday 25^th November was full of bad news. The British were suffering reversals in places, which would become very well known to the general public- Kimberley, Belmont, and Colenso. A small news item in the paper noted the capture of a journalist named Winston Churchill following an attack on an armoured train. A Leek man was wounded at the Battle of Modder River.

The Boer War certainly divided opinion in Leek the architect Larner Sugden wrote a lengthy letter defending the Boers describing them as "intrepid peasants" for which he received much obloquy. The war was going so badly that the reservists were being called up. In fact a childhood memory my grandmother had as a 9 year old were the soldiers in their red coats marching to Stoke Station to the war at about this time.

Further delving into the newspapers of the time uncovers fascinating snippets of information. Interestingly there is a review of a novel called " One hour and the Next" by Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland on the conditions of the mills in Leek largely written in dialect. The Duchess herself would be fictionalised in Arnold Bennet’s " The Card". And on the subject of fiction and in a story that might have come from the pen of Thomas Hardy there is a description of an elderly man in a letter recounting a boyhood incident when he visited a witch who lived in Russell St. She would discourage the many black witches in the town by throwing a "dashun" of salt into the fire when one passed.

A perusal of the pages would rapidly disabuse you of the notion that this was a golden age for children. Mortality was very high whether it is through disease or by accident. Clarice Burgess aged 8 of Garden Street was reported killed when she was hit in the head by a wooden seat of a swing while playing on Westwood Recreational Grounds. Arthur Sheldon 9 was sentenced to three strokes of the birch for annoying Mr JPF Smith of King St by ringing his doorbell frequently.

The sports writer for the Times seemed to have a Twain- like sardonic turn of phrase describing a poor season for Leek Town

"the unexpected happened on Saturday last Leek actually won a game and against the Congleton Hornets".
Many of the stories had almost a modern ring and the late Victorian’s were equally concerned with lawlessness and excessive drinking. Writing in November 1899 the Chief Public Health Officer was deeply concerned at the easy availability of alcohol.

"The returns of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue show on the whole that users of alcohol consume about 25% more than alcohol users of 50 years ago…. English people today do breath less poisons than their fathers and grandfathers did, they voluntary swallow much more" Such opinions were supported by a very well organised temperance movement in Leek who were strongly of the view that drink did the poor no good at all. The members of the Leek Board of Guardians put this view into practical action and stopped the one-pint ration of beer for the Christmas dinner of the workhouse inmates. As Twain himself wrote a few years earlier in "Pudden’head Wilson’s Calendar "Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits."

The Execution of Napoleon Cheadle Market Place May 1814

The town of Cheadle will feel sensibly the beneficial effects of a lasting peace of which there is now a prospect from the extensive manufacturers established in the town. Saturday last was a day set for rejoicing at that place. The bells began to ring at an early hour and several cannon situated on a hill, which overlooks the town, were fired at a signal. The British colours were hoisted at a signal and other flags with appropriate descriptions were displayed at various places in the town.

A well-wrought effigy of Buonoparte was carried through the streets in a cart preceded by an excellent band of musicians and attended by an executioner and confessor. He was conducted to the gallows erected in the Market Place and after due ceremonies had been observed he was launched off. After the hanging for sometime he was a burned and large amount of gunpowder deposited on his body.

Between 40 and 50 gentlemen of the town sat down at an excellent dinner at the Wheatsheaf Inn where Colonel Bulkeley presided and filled the chair with great credit and pleasure to the company. After dinner the chairman made an eloquent address to the company where he congratulated them for the happy change of affairs on the continent. Many loyal and patriotic toasts were drunk. An abundant quantity of provisions was sent to different inns in the town to be consumed. 700 of the poorest classes were regaled, each one having three pints of ale. 100 gallons of fine brown stout were distributed in the market place. 600 females were divided into groups to have tea drinking in different homes.

At 11 the inhabitants were greeted with 21 discharges of cannon repeated at 4 in the afternoon as gentlemen in the town in the Wheatsheaf were toasting the King. Manifestations of loyalty into the late hours and concluded with a brilliant display of fireworks.

Farewell to Coffee Clique

Coffee has been known and popular in Europe since the 17th century and in the following century Staffordshire Pottery manufacturers were selling ware to supply the burgeoning market I both tea and coffee. From then both have retained their popularity. In the Victorian period the Temperance Movement in Leek were keen to promote non-alcoholic alternatives to beer.

There are now about a dozen cafes in Leek in the town centre. After last week that number was reduced by one as Coffee Clique in Getliffes Yard closed. I don’t suppose anyone has written an obituary for a café before but I mourn the passing of this establishment and the energy that Julie Lovatt put into the enterprise over its 5 years of existence. Julie is expecting a child in August,but in truth the business has been experiencing difficulties as a consequence of the continuing recession last Friday it bowed to the inevitable. It is a great pity. I have worked closely with Julie and her staff. Julie particularly bought energy and ideas to a town that desperately require them. She encouraged the café as a place for local artists to show their work. Local writers used the café. It was the first Internet café in town and she worked well with others to utilise the potential of café and the Yard.. These last months have been very hard for her but throughout this period she has great fortitude and unvarying consideration. She has always been cheerful and considerate. I wished the same creativity and energy that she displayed could have been shown by the District Council. She, like other local businesses in the town, only saw the merciless side of the Council in pursuit of Council Tax arrears using bailiffs at the earliest opportunity. The seeming indifference of the Council to local traders has been documented elsewhere.

I hope she does comes back to run another café. I suggested the name Jabobytes for this future Internet café venture. The name not only having historical resonances but also serving as a base for the thinkers and doers of the town.