At three of the clock in the morning, Alice White perceived that her sister was not in her bed. She went downstairs, searched the house, and called her mother. Outside, at the brink of the well, they espied a bedgown and a portion of a blue petticoat rising above the water. They knew at once that the garments belonged to Ann. Her body was not brought into the house until seven o'clock. She was dead.
Alice had retired between nine and ten on the preceding evening; Martha and another sister were still awake. Ann was then dressing herself, that she might be ready to receive her lover. The night wore on without Alice knowing whether Nuttall had come, or what had transpired without. The chronicle does not relate at what hour the body was drawn from the water, nor who carried it; it records merely that it was borne into the house towards seven in the morning.
Ann White was above three-and-twenty years of age and was with child. For some six months past, John Nuttall, a youth of twenty, had visited the family at Sunnyfield. He dwelt at Harvesthills, five minutes' walk distant, in his father’s house and among his brothers. Alice had seen him come regularly to court her sister, commonly on a Saturday between eleven and midnight, and at times yet later. Ann was desirous to marry him; Alice related that she grew dejected whenever the nuptials appeared once more deferred. Borrow’s account dates her death to the 22nd of June, 1817, without specifying the day of the week in the witnesses' depositions.
The well was of such shallow depth that part of the apparel remained visible. John Hayworth described a stone cistern some four feet in length, divided by an upright flag. The water measured but six inches and a quarter on the one side, and a foot and a half near Ann’s head. She lay upon her belly. Her garments were decent and in no way disordered; no blood was to be seen. Round about the brink, the impressions of her clogs indicated, in Hayworth’s judgment, that she had struggled. Upon her throat he remarked the prints of a finger and thumb in front, and behind, the mark of an entire hand. He deemed it improbable that any adult could have drowned by misadventure in such a pit.
Mr. Joseph Lees, the surgeon, detailed other injuries: contusions upon the forehead, the nose, the chin, the knees, and the elbow; dark, livid marks above the elbows, as though the arms had been pinioned by a cord or some soft ligature; finger-marks beneath the elbows; and a wound between the shoulders. Upon the neck, the indentations of finger-nails had penetrated deeply into the flesh. Upon opening the body, he discovered blood extravasated about the brain, but neither fluid in the lungs nor in the stomach. He ascribed the death to constriction of the windpipe and the vessels of the neck, and not to drowning. Being interrogated as to his practice, he admitted he had been established on his own account for only five years. He likened the signs of suffocation to those of strangulation, while distinguishing both from drowning: he averred he had never observed a drowning without water in the lungs, citing an instance of a child drowned in a brook of but four inches' depth where such fluid had been present. His medical deposition named no assailant, but rebutted all supposition of an accidental fall.
A word spoken in season past supplied the prosecution with a putative motive. Early in April, whilst they were engaged in digging a ditch, a neighbour, James Ashbrook, inquired of Nuttall whether he intended for the fair. Nuttall replied that he must hoard his money. Ashbrook questioned him touching the young women of Sunnyfield. Thereupon Nuttall sought to borrow a sum of money from him. The neighbour consented, but desired to know to what use it was to be put. Nuttall was said to have answered that it was "to put a child to light," and thereupon struck the earth with his fist, swearing he would kill Ann in a passion. The reported speech did not establish what had taken place at the well; yet it afforded the Crown an antecedent warning, uttered whilst Ann was already pregnant.
At the Lancaster Assizes, on September 4, 1817, the prosecution laid this menace and the surgeon’s findings before the court. The learned judge, however, distinguished the tokens of violence from the evidence that identified the hand that dealt them. That attribution rested principally upon the testimony of John Knowles, a fellow prisoner who had not yet stood his trial upon a felony. Knowles related that Nuttall had unbosomed himself to him of a quarrel with Ann in the fold-yard, whither he had come from the company of an associate. She had demanded whether he would marry her; he had replied that he had given earnest to have the banns published. A dispute had ensued, followed by blows, strangulation, and the carrying of the body to the well. These words were alleged to have passed in hold: Knowles had entered the gaol two days after Nuttall. The record transmits them solely through the mouth of this fellow captive.
Knowles recounted, in truth, two successive tales. In the former, Nuttall laid the crime to Ann’s father: he claimed to have seen him bearing his daughter under his arm, and casting her into the well; he himself had then returned to bed, and heard of her death only on the morrow. Then, upon the morning following these conferences, Nuttall was said to have beckoned Knowles into the prison yard, confessing his great perturbation of mind. It was then, according to this deponent, that he related his own tapping at the casement, the altercation touching the paternity of the child and the marriage, and the violence that followed. No other witness called had seen the assault. The judge therefore observed to the jury that the identification of the murderer depended wholly upon Knowles. The accusation initially directed against the father formed no separate, independent deposition: it was likewise merely part of the discourse Knowles attributed to the prisoner.
The jury returned a verdict of guilty. The chronicle affords no circumstantial account of the passing of sentence; it records merely that he was executed on the Saturday following his conviction, and that he confessed his guilt before being launched into eternity. The judicial record thus preserves, side by side, two disparate orders of proof: the marks upon the body, demonstrating violence and refuting accidental drowning according to Mr. Lees, and the narrative of Knowles, which fastened that violence upon Nuttall. It was this latter testimony, retailing these successive confessions, that the court presented as the hinge upon which the prisoner's identity turned.