Beneath the Flooring of Netherwood
When Charles Burton set about dismantling a barn at Netherwood, he was not searching for a man lost to the world for four-and-twenty years. The carpenter was employed by the tenant then occupying the farmstead, formerly held by Thomas Clewes. In a corner, beneath the wooden flooring, he came upon a clothed skeleton, a joiner’s rule, and a pair of shoes remarkably preserved. Burton recognized the rule: it had belonged to his brother-in-law, Richard Heming, who had disappeared in the summer of 1806. Thus begins the narrative that the 1830 pamphlet entitled The Murdered Murderer.
The tract assigns the discovery to the 21st of January 1830, yet dates the opening of the inquest to Tuesday, the 19th of January. The printed account thus places the inquiry two days prior to the exhumation; this discrepancy remains unexplained in the text.
The Murder of Parker
The first crime belonged to Midsummer Day, the 24th of June 1806. Toward five o’clock in the afternoon, two passers-by heard the discharge of a gun, followed by a cry. Hastening toward the sound, they perceived a man stooping beside the Reverend Mr. Parker, rector of Oddingley. The stranger dropped a bag and fled. A pursuer almost overtook him, but the fugitive turned and threatened him with his piece, whereupon the witness abandoned the chase.
Parker was found mortally wounded by gunshot; his garments had caught fire, and his head bore grievous injuries. On the following day, the coroner’s jury returned a verdict of “wilful murder against some person or persons unknown.” The pamphlet designates Richard Heming, a carpenter and wheelwright of Droitwich, as the primary suspect of the hour: he had vanished immediately after the deed and had reportedly been seen near the body. Such suspicion did not constitute a judicial finding of guilt. The county magistrates offered fifty guineas for his apprehension; the government offered one hundred, together with a pardon to any accomplice whose information should lead to the conviction of the principal. Heming never re-emerged.
The tract observes that the inhabitants well knew Parker to be at open variance with several of his parishioners concerning the tithes. It records hostile declarations attributed to certain farmers and to the former Captain Evans, a local magistrate. Yet the first coroner’s jury had named no instigator: its printed finding remained “person or persons unknown.” The tales of rancour, the alleged menaces, and Heming’s disappearance formed a web of suspicion, not the legal proof of an established conspiracy.
A Barn, a Rule, and Fading Recollections
In 1830, the discovery shifted the light from Parker to Heming. The skeleton lay buried in its clothing; beside the bones lay a carpenter’s rule, shreds of cloth, a knife, a whetstone, and a few coins. Mr. Pierpoint, the surgeon, measured the frame at five feet three inches. He judged that the fractures to the skull had been inflicted prior to burial and were sufficient to have caused death, but he could assign no date to the demise, nor state with precision the deceased’s age. He noted only that the remains were neither those of a very young man nor of an aged one.
Identification rested upon several recognitions, all preserved in the form of oral testimony. Burton swore the rule was Heming’s own. His widow, Elizabeth Newbury, stated she had last seen him on the day of Parker’s murder: he had departed at dawn upon some “dirty job” for Evans, speaking of drawing stakes from a pool. She recognized the shoes as well, and believed she knew the teeth. In her eyes, the effects and the remains were those of her husband; the pamphlet records her conviction, though it offers no independent judicial confirmation.
The witnesses of 1830 were largely aged folk recounting what they remembered of events from 1806. Joseph Colley asserted he had heard Heming say he had a hard job to do at Oddingley. He also reported having seen Heming and Clewes drinking together, imputing to Clewes a bitter reference to the “Bonaparte of Oddingley,” whom he understood to be Parker. Susan Surman testified that Heming had lurked in a meadow near the parsonage with a bag resembling a gun-case; she recounted seeing him wait and ask whether Clewes had come to Barnett’s. Her deposition placed men and objects upon the landscape, but did not describe the assault itself.
Other accounts were more circuitous. A former servant of Clewes remembered his master appearing greatly agitated at the news of the murder, yet could not say what he then knew. John Collins stated he had glimpsed Heming and Clewes near a coppice before the assassination, though he had heard none of their discourse. He explained that this encounter had bred suspicion of Clewes in his mind, yet had not prompted him to speak in 1806. As the inquest was resumed, memory intertwined with conclusions formed long after the event.
The strife over the tithes recurred in multiple depositions. Thomas Barber stated he had heard Clewes offer fifty pounds to any man who would shoot Parker. Joseph Perkins reported that Evans had declared there was no more sin in shooting the rector than in destroying a mad dog. Parker’s widow testified that her husband had often spoken to her of threats. Conversely, the men thus implicated denied or extenuated the words; several deponents conceded they had not witnessed the scenes they related. The pamphlet thus sets out declarations of very unequal weight, without every allegation being corroborated.
The Confession of Clewes
After several days of hearings, the coroner’s jury received depositions pointing to Thomas Clewes as a man likely possessed of information regarding Heming’s death. The foreman of the inquest, William Bass, swore a separate deposition before a magistrate stating his belief that Clewes was privy to the murder, and that justice would be served by his arrest and examination. Brought before the coroner, Clewes denied any part in Heming’s death, protesting he had nothing to fear. He was nevertheless committed to gaol for further examination. This investigative detention was not a conviction.
The pamphlet next transcribes an extensive declaration which Clewes is said to have delivered to the coroner. He asserted that, on the morning following Parker’s death, George Banks came to inform him that Heming was secreted in the meadows. That evening, Evans allegedly summoned him to the barn. Clewes stated he found there Evans, Joseph Taylor, and a man he believed to be George Banks; Heming was concealed beneath the straw. According to this account, Taylor struck Heming upon the head, after which Evans and Taylor placed the body into a pit dug within the barn. Clewes insisted he had remained upon the raised floor and protested that he was not the actual perpetrator.
Clewes added that Banks and John Barnett had given him six-and-twenty or seven-and-twenty pounds to assist Heming’s flight; Evans had promised him five pounds for his silence. He also spoke of a mare sold without payment ever being demanded, and of a loan from Barnett. These were his own assertions, neither supported by independent evidence nor amounting to a judicial finding of guilt.
The remaining witnesses offered partial corroborations and direct contradictions. Elizabeth Jones, once a servant to Evans, stated that Heming had come to her master’s house on the morning of Parker’s murder. She also recounted having found a gun in a bag hidden in a hay-rick; Heming had returned for it a week later, explaining he had put it there because of the rain. Jones returned the weapon and saw him no more. She denied, however, several particulars of Clewes’s confession: she maintained that Heming was not in Evans’s house on the night of Parker’s death, and swore she had never seen provisions carried to any concealed man.
The Barnetts likewise contested parts of the statement. William Barnett denied certain utterances and stated he could not recall his brother’s presence at Pershore Fair, where Clewes claimed to have received the money. Examined before the coroner as to his knowledge of the confession, he replied that certain details had been withheld from him; the record notes his hesitations and denials. George Banks was apprehended after a confession by Clewes was communicated to the Reverend Mr. Clifton, according to the concluding paragraphs. The pamphlet does not record the outcome of any criminal trial of Banks or the Barnetts.
What the Inquest Proved—and What It Left in Shadow
On the final day—the 5th of February, according to the heading—the coroner’s jury returned a verdict of wilful murder against Thomas Clewes and George Banks, naming John Barnett as an accessory before the fact. The text states that a portion of the summing-up and the jury’s return occurred on the preceding Thursday, introducing a second chronological perplexity regarding the sittings of the 4th and 5th of February. The pamphlet furnishes no subsequent judgment of a court of assize, no trial verdict, and no sentence pronounced against the three men.
In 1806, the inquest upon Parker concluded with a verdict of murder against persons unknown; in 1830, that upon the skeleton indicted Clewes, Banks, and Barnett in the presumed death of Heming. Clewes’s declaration set forth a version of events, not a legal adjudication. The identification of the skeleton reposed upon material relics and personal recollections; the surgeon could assign no date to the death.
The pamphlet promised the “murdered murderer” and a “full” confession. Its pages deliver instead uneven degrees of certainty: a corpse unearthed beneath a barn, recognized effects, aged words recalled, an accusatory declaration, and the verdict of a coroner’s jury. The floor of Netherwood closes the inquiry into Heming with a formal accusation from an inquest, but without a trial whose issue is recorded. And the murder of Parker remains, within these leaves, under the finding returned in 1806: a crime whose author was never brought to judgment.