Notorious Strumpet, Dangerous Girl

I came across the story of  Sarah Wardle purely by chance where her exploits were  reported in the “Staffordshire Advertiser” in early 1818. I read of her escape from prison and wondered whether she had managed to evade the authorities. The answer to my question was revealed in an Australian book published in the 1970s “Notorious Strumpets and Dangerous Girls” on female convicts in Tasmania where her case is fully described.

She was born in Ipstones in the 1780s and fell foul of the law for attempting to pass fake money in Leek in the summer of 1817. Passing counterfeit money could have lethal consequences as a fellow Moorlander discovered when George Fearns of Bottomhouses went to the gallows in 1801 for dealing in forged notes. A forged bank note had been found on Sarah and at the Summer Assize at Stafford she was found guilty and sentenced to death although her sentence was later commuted to 14 years transportation to Van Dieman’s Land( modern day Tasmania). She was incarcerated in Stafford Jail while passage to Australia was arranged and she was due to sail in a prison ship in the spring of 1818. Sarah was described as being of medium height, brown hair and married with 3 children. She was 34.

One January morning a ladder was found propped up against a wall at the jail and Sarah had made her escape. The prison authority was dubious that a woman of middling years could have escaped and suspicion fell on a prisoner George Walker and a turnkey named Bould in assisting her. Reading the account one is struck by how much felons were involved in the running of the jail. Sarah had worked in the Infirmary with Walker where, it seems, a relationship was struck up. Prisoner’s families could come and go as they pleased and Sarah’s 13 year old daughter was a frequent visitor bringing with her food and money which was used to bribe jailers or alternatively Sarah may have used sexual favours to get out of the prison.

 Sarah’s escape was widely reported and the Bank of England in an unprecedented step increased the reward money to £60 from £10. Walker went to trial and freely admitted his responsibility in her escape- she had simply walked out of the front gate at the right time. Walker received Sarah’s punishment and he was transported for 14 years.

 But what of Sarah?

In March 1822 a Staffordshire woman was visiting Gloucester when she saw Sarah Wardle standing in the doorway of a pub. She denied it, but the visitor was right. Sarah had passed herself off as a servant whose mistress was visiting Ireland leaving her behind in England. She became friendly with an elderly couple who ran a pub in Gloucester. The old woman died and Sarah was intending to marry the widower when she was discovered. In the meantime Sarah slipped away and evaded capture.

She was finally arrested in East London living under the name of Ann Layshaw. This time there was no escape and she set sail on a convict ship for Tasmania arriving in the colony in June 1823. She married Charles Jefton in Tasmania and died in 1853.

Ghosts of Staffordshire Moorlands- Halloween Special

A couple recounted to me a curious episode when they were driving on the A53 near Flash. It was early in the morning and on the road they saw dressed in a very old fashioned way a rider on the road. The man was wearing a long brown cloak with an unusual design at the neck and a pipe stove hat, in short he was dressed for a person from the early 19^th century. The couple were driving towards Buxton and were passing a path on the left which the horseman was turning to use. After only a few yards down the track the man and horse disappeared in mist in front of their eyes. The couple told me emphatically that they had seen something unexplained. They later carried out research which suggested the sighting was well known.

It is nearly Halloween and people will be out looking to see if they can experience a ghost. I have never seen anything although I did hear something odd in a Georgian house in Lancaster- it was the sound of a child skipping on bare floorboards in an empty carpeted room. I have frequently been told very strange incidents that have happened to local people. A Farmer told me that his dead father called to him over some fields at Rushton. A man claimed that a well in his house near Ipstones was haunted. A work colleague was clear that she saw the ghost of a child at a house in Leek. Locals in Bradnop claim that a ghostly dog haunts the grave of a dead Highlander. A friend researching a 19^th century murder in the Peak District got the uneasy impression that he was being watched when taking photographs of the scene.

People seem to believe in them and in increasing numbers, both in Britain and in the US. In the case of the later over 50% and the proportion has gone up markedly since the Second World War. And women are more likely to believe than men. The idea that the dead remain with us in spirit is an ancient one, and one that offers many people comfort; who doesn't want to believe that our beloved but deceased family members aren't looking out for us, or with us in our times of need?.

But I shall end by recounting another Moorlands ghostly horseman- the Headless Horseman- who rides the hills around Onecote. It is a well established legend which many locals will know. I was talking to a local woman whose grandfather farmed at Onecote. One autumn evening he recounted the story of the Horseman to his young grand daughter. As he finished the tale they could hear in the lane leading to the farm the clip clop sound of a horse getting closer and closer to them. The sound unnerved the old man as he feared that the spectral rider was near. Fortunately it was a van with a flat tyre making the “trotting” sound.

Wandering Jew

Before Rowan Williams the last bearded Archbishop of Canterbury was the Staffordshire Moorlands born Gilbert Sheldon who was the See of Canterbury from 1663 to !677. 

Sheldon recounted a curious story to the writer and gossip John Aubrey about an exotic visitor to Ipstones in the 1650s. A poor crippled man of the village was disturbed one Sunday by a knock at the door. The stranger desired a glass of beer, which was given him. The stranger asked the old man how long he had been ill and told him that he could cure him by an herbal preparation. The old man was told that he must also constantly and fervently serve God. The cure seemed to work although no one else saw the stranger who was curiously dressed in a purple shag gown wandering the streets of Ipstones. Sheldon intimated that the visitor was the Wandering Jew.

The story of the Wandering Jew commonly called Ahasuerus or sometimes Cartaphilus is an ancient one. The legend began to spread in Europe in the 13th century. The original account concerns a Jew who taunted Jesus the way to the Crucifixion was then cursed to walk the earth until Christ returns.

After his fate is declared he became a penitent Christian who did good deeds and issued pious warnings to the people he encountered

There were claims of sightings throughout Europe, since at least 1542 in Germany up to 1868 in New York. Joseph Jacobs, writing in the 1911 commented 'It is difficult to tell in any one of these cases how far the story is an entire fiction and how far some ingenious impostor took advantage of the existence of the myth'.

As a representation the character became symbolic of the fate of a benighted people oppressed over the ages. The figure of the doomed sinner, forced to wander without the hope of rest in death till the millennium, impressed itself upon the popular imagination, and passed thence into literary forms .The Wandering Jew features in work from Chaucer’s Pardoners Tale onwards. Works by Hans Christian Andersen, the German poet Schiller, Shelley and Alexander Dumas all feature him.

Horace Barks's War 1914-8 Part 1 Mobilisation

I knew Horace Barks in the last years of his life. In 1982 I was elected as a Councillor in Stoke and put on the Museums Committee. Horace was a former Chairman of the Museums Committee and an Alderman of the City. He had been born in Ipstones in 1896 and I knew about his First World War service and that he had been involved in the Somme. Horace was also a strong supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He was press officer at the time and he proved an able spokesman and given his service in the trenches he validated the pacifist position. One of his last acts was to send a food parcels to the Greenham Common women.

In the autumn of 1981 Horace gave an account of his war service to a local historian Michael Ollershaw who produced an account in a local magazine in 1988

On the wars outbreak Horace enlisted into The Reserve Battalion, which was later, became the 2/5 North Staffs part of the 46th North Midland Division. Horace recalls spending Christmas at Saffron Walden in Essex. An incident that happened on Christmas night made an impression on the young Barks.

“ I remember sleeping in a house similar to this, but the walls between the walls were very thin. We were there at Christmas 1914. There was a father and son called Jones and the father got very drunk. He was in his late 30s. I suppose that they were doing a little bayonet charging on the wall and the bayonet came through the wall above my head. I was a bit worried by Jones”

He narrowly missed going over the top in the Neuve Chappelle offensive in the spring of 1915 but a transport problem- they were supposed to be conveyed to the front by London buses meant there section in the line was taken by the Duke of Wellington Regiment. That regiment suffered badly in the subsequent engagement.

Horace had a rough calculation of the losses one could normally expect “going over the top”

“ If you were over 800 strong the normal thing we would mean between 100-150 would be killed, about three times would be wounded and about 150 would come back”

Part of the problem with the failure of the attack was a shell shortage. Horace spoke to a man from Leek in an artillery battery who told him that “they got a shell a gun a day perhaps”.

King’s regulation always unsettled him..” each morning we had to listen to them being read out and at the finish. and shall be shot or such less punishment as the act decrees those last words. I must have heard them so often”

There is an interesting account of the “Live and Let live” way in which both sides engaged

“ I was on the firing step. There was an old soldier from the Notts/ Derby next to me. I could see the heads and shoulders of three German soldiers wearing the pork pie hat in a gap in their parapet. The old soldier said, “ what’s up chum”. I had got it into my head to shoot that sort of game”

“ I was not a blood thirsty fellow. I was an Internationalist but on the other hand that was what I came for I suppose”

The old soldier suggested that I shoot at a chimney He said that we had it pretty quiet and we want it to remain so. If you manage to hit anybody- he did not think I would- they might reply with shells.

“ Live and let live could be disturbed by the arrival of a young officer referred to as a Thruster”. Barks recalled a conversation with Sir George Wade of the pottery firm and an officer in the Machine Gun Corps who wanted to pursue the war with more aggression.

“ When I relieved a bunch of French soldiers south of Armentieres one of the chaps asked if I wanted a wash in the morning. We went over the top and there was a brook running through No Man’s Land between the two lines and they said if you went out to wash the Germans would be on the other side of the brook. 

Sir George said that I would stop that when I am in charge. The British fired over the heads of the Germans. I thought that it was a bit filthy to shoot to kill although a nice wound would have done some of them good”

Wandering Jew and Ipstones

Before Rowan Williams the last bearded Archbishop of Canterbury was the Staffordshire Moorlands born Gilbert Sheldon who was the See of Canterbury from 1663 to !677.

Sheldon recounted a curious story to the writer and gossip John Aubrey about an exotic visitor to Ipstones in the 1650s. A poor crippled man of the village was disturbed one Sunday by a knock at the door. The stranger desired a glass of beer, which was given him. The stranger asked the old man how long he had been ill and told him that he could cure him by an herbal preparation. The old man was told that he must also constantly and fervently serve God. The cure seemed to work although no one else saw the stranger who was curiously dressed in a purple shag gown wandering the streets of Ipstones. Sheldon intimated that the visitor was the Wandering Jew.

The story of the Wandering Jew commonly called Ahasuerus or sometimes Cartaphilus is an ancient one. The legend began to spread in Europe in the 13th century. The original account concerns a Jew who taunted Jesus the way to the Crucifixion was then cursed to walk the earth until Christ returns.
After his fate is declared he became a penitent Christian who did good deeds and issued pious warnings to the people he encountered

There were claims of sightings throughout Europe, since at least 1542 in Germany up to 1868 in New York. Joseph Jacobs, writing in the 1911 commented 'It is difficult to tell in any one of these cases how far the story is an entire fiction and how far some ingenious impostor took advantage of the existence of the myth'.
As a representation the character became symbolic of the fate of a benighted people oppressed over the ages. The figure of the doomed sinner, forced to wander without the hope of rest in death till the millennium, impressed itself upon the popular imagination, and passed thence into literary forms .The Wandering Jew features in work from Chaucer’s Pardoners Tale onwards. Works by Hans Christian Andersen, the German poet Schiller, Shelley and Alexander Dumas all feature him.