General Chat

i must not upset Jane

Back in May 1872 Cropton was the scene of a murder. Joseph Wood and his son were the two people murdered. At the time of the murders it was thought, by the locals, that these two men had emigrated overseas. Over a period of time their human remains and clothing were found at Joseph Wood's farm and the farm of a relative called Robert Charter. These findings led to a conviction of Robert Charter and he served twenty years in prison for his crime



i am related to the victims and murder

No but if the drunken kids outside don't stop bawling at each other there may be one soon!

Actually I do have a murderer but I'm not sure he counts as the link is by marriage.

My Nan went to Ronnie and Reggie's 21st birthday party 'cos she knew Violet. My nan said even then they were a pair of thugs.

Now you lot behave and dont upset Janet



RUNS

I put on another thread that I once interviewed the Kray twin's cousin.

He was a lovely quiet bloke who really only wanted a quiet life but because of his cousins,who were about thirty years older than him,trouble always came looking for him.

He moved well away from the East End,and who can blame him.

Really can't understand what went wrong with those two!

Some rich cousins of my dad had the tree done professionally some years ago. We are supposed to be descended from Sir William de Tracy, one of the knights who nobbled Thomas a Beckett at Canterbury Cathedral.

Dianne xx

Hi Keith


Great Uncle Bill had been a gamekeeper and kept shotguns, he shot his wife in 1946, he was 96 years old !

The Times said he was carried into court on a stretcher and pleaded guilty,
the judge took pity and sent him to the asylum, where he lived for another 6 years, happy as Larry,!!

His reason was that he had enough of her nagging him !

Lindsey pmsl

A chap I went to primary school grew up into a killer - He got his girlfriend pregnant - shot her in the stomach, went around to his mothers shot her and then set fire to the place.
He pinched my school duster (we used to have homemade ones with our name tag on them) when I was five - his first name was the same as my surname and he said no it was his, so maybe that was the start of things to come.

I have no idea what became of him apart from Jail at the time.

N.

keeps 2 eye on Gail

are you on farm ville Gail lol

No, but a cousin of my dads on one side of the family has told me that there are skeletons on my grandads side, but she will not tell me what it is. Funny because I've just traced a second cousin (Grandads nephew) and he did not know about my grandad. My gr aunt only kept in touch with two sisters, where has there was eleven in the family. I would love to know what the skeleton is.

Isn't that why you do genealogy Linda?

We have a prison not that far from here and lifers go there shortly before they are out on licence. They are allowed out to work. When this village grew a lot of tomatoes they would be down here packing them.

So we all grew up working alongside murderers and armed robbers in our school holidays.Could explain a lot!

This cousin and her children knows what it is but they wont tell me, I'm wondering which way to go now.

No but if s/l keep,s playing up there will be lol

The nearest I can get is this one - Florence Campbell was a relly of my wife (I wouldn't have any on my side, lol). Florence's father, Robert Tertius Campbell, made a mint from gold and banking in Australia - then bought the Buscot Estate in Oxfordshire (now owned by the National Trust...

Charles Bravo (1845 – 21 April 1876) was a British lawyer who was fatally poisoned with antimony in 1876. The case is still sensational, notorious and unresolved[1] It is also known as The Charles Bravo Murder and the Murder at the Priory.
It was an unsolved crime committed within an elite Victorian household at The Priory, a landmark house in Balham, London. The reportage eclipsed even government and international news at the time. Leading doctors attended the bedside and all agreed it was a case of antimony poisoning. The victim took 3 days to die but gave no indication of the source of the poison during that time. No-one was ever charged for the crime.
Background
Charles Delauney Turner was born in 1845, the son of Augustus Charles Turner and Mary Turner, and took the surname Bravo from his stepfather Joseph Bravo. He became a barrister and by the time of his marriage to Florence Ricardo (nee Campbell) he had fathered an illegitimate child.
His wealthy wife Florence had previously been married, in 1864, to Algernon Lewis Ricardo, son of John Ricardo MP but had been separated from her first husband because of his affairs and violent alcoholism. She in turn had had an extramarital affair with the much older Dr James Manby Gully, a fashionable society doctor who was also married at the time, and she had fallen out of favour with her family and society. Ricardo died in 1871 and Florence married Charles, a respected up and coming barrister, on 3 December 1875, terminating her affair with Gully.
Police enquiries in the case revealed Charles's behaviour towards Florence as being controlling, mean, violent, and a bully. The marriage was unbalanced where power was concerned. Florence was wealthier than Charles and had opted from the start to hold onto her own money, an option provided by new laws in England at the time (Married Women's Property Act 1870), and this led immediately to tensions within the marriage.
Their relationship was stormy and the poisoning occurred four months into the marriage. In a BBC docudrama, Julian Fellowes investigates the suspects; the household, Florence herself, her former lover Dr Gully, the housekeeper Mrs Cox and the likelihood of suicide. It also portrays Charles Bravo as a particularly crushing Victorian husband, totally lacking in feeling to staff, animals and his wife, his unreasonable treatment going beyond even the social expectations of the submissive woman in Victorian society.
A hypothesis is that Charles Bravo was slowly poisoning his wife with small cumulative doses of antimony (she had been chronically ailing since shortly after their marriage). It theorises that he wanted to control her fortune from the start and this was one way he would get his hands on it. When treating himself with laudanum for toothache before bedtime, it proposes that he inadvertently used the bottle of antimony to medicate himself.
The housekeeper Mrs Cox reportedly told police Charles admitted using the poison on himself when they were alone together, later changing her statement in the dock to deflect suspicion from herself to Florence.
His death was long, lasting from three (Fellowes) to more than four days (Ruddick) and painful. It was particularly notable that he did not offer any explanation of his condition to attending doctors, suggesting he had some personal implication to hide, not being the type to protect others.
Other investigators have offered different suggestions as to what happened to cause his death, including suicide, murder by the housekeeper Mrs. Cox whom he had threatened to sack, murder by his wife and murder by a disaffected groom whom he had discharged from employment at the Priory.
Aftermath
Two inquests were held and the details were considered to be so scandalous that women and children were banned from the room while Florence Bravo testified: the searching cross-examination launched the career of the lawyer George Henry Lewis. The first returned an open verdict. The second inquest returned a verdict of wilfull murder, however nobody was ever arrested or charged.
The household broke up after the trial ended and the twice widowed Florence moved away, dying of alcohol poisoning two years later.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bravo

Ah, but there was another of her ancestors - in the year 1378 at the Assizes at York, an indictment was laid against Richard of Sunderland at Northowram, in these words: “That on Friday, the Feast of St Martin, in the first year of the reign of King Richard II, he Richard of Sunderland feloniously slew at Halifax, Henry Matthewson of Northowram, with a ‘polhax’ and forthwith he fled. His chattels are nil, save the said polhax, value 3d.”
Simon

One of my uncles (by marriage) has the murderess Mary Cotton in his tree, she was pretty grim, glad she isn't ablood relative !! lo