The Reverend Anthony Plow was returning from a walk when the rear door of the parsonage resisted his hand. Someone was holding it fast from without. Rounding the house, he came upon Miles Wetherill in the yard. The young weaver had courted Sarah Elizabeth Bell, formerly a servant in the Plow household, and could not reconcile himself to their enforced separation. Plow demanded what business he had there. Wetherill raised a pistol; the cap snapped, but the weapon misfired. He then fell upon the clergyman with a hatchet.
Plow managed to scramble back into the house. Jane Smith, Elizabeth Spink, and Mary Hodgson ran forward to assist him. Wetherill pulled a second trigger, but once more the piece failed. He struck Jane about the head. She collapsed with hands raised, crying for mercy. Plow succeeded in escaping through the front door and reaching a neighbouring house. According to his deposition, Wetherill pursued him across the yard, discharging his weapon yet again.
The assailant turned back inside, calling aloud for Sarah. Jane had fled into the dining room. Wetherill thrust his arm between the door and the jamb, or forced the entrance, and fired. She died instantly. Elizabeth and Mary had striven to hold him back; one had seized him by the hair, the other had wrenched the hatchet from his grasp. He did not retaliate against them. In the kitchen, he reloaded his weapon and ascended the stairs toward the bedchamber of Mrs Plow, who had recently been confined in childbirth.
The nurse, Margaret Ball, sought to bar his way. Wetherill thrust her aside, declaring he would do her no harm. He knew, he asserted, that the woman he sought lay below. When Ball went down to admit those arriving from outside, he entered the bedchamber. Mrs Plow had concealed herself beneath the bedclothes. He fired toward the bed without striking her, then beat her about the face and head with the hatchet. She shielded herself with her arms until she lay motionless. Believing her dead, Wetherill ceased his blows. She survived her wounds.
The infant received no blow. The contemporary report in the Home News, reprinted in the Southland Times, states that the child died after being separated from its wounded mother. This indirect death must not be confounded with those of Jane and Anthony Plow, which the sources attribute directly to Wetherill’s violence.
He was taken into custody without offering resistance. The solicitor Eastwood, among the first to render aid, stated that he observed the prisoner closely: he appeared neither intoxicated nor in the throes of a fit of madness. Wetherill spoke with composure of what he had done, requesting that the money found upon his person be sent to his mother. In his pocket was a portrait of Sarah. He declared he wished to die holding it. When asked why Jane was dead, he replied that two others would have perished had his pistols done their work.
The outrage occurred at Todmorden on 2 March 1868. The Pitaval corrupts the locality into "Trimorden" and its optical transcript reads 1863 in the opening sentence; the contemporary press places the events at Todmorden in 1868. The dates of Plow’s decease and of the trial likewise vary between accounts; they remain attributed to their respective sources in the documentary note.
Wetherill was about twenty-three years of age. He resided with his mother and had borne the reputation of an orderly young man. In 1867, he had conceived an attachment to Sarah, then seventeen years old and employed in the Plow household. He applied to the clergyman for leave to pay his addresses. Plow refused, deeming the young woman too young, and bound him by a promise not to speak with her. They nevertheless continued to meet in secret. Upon discovering these clandestine interviews, Plow dismissed Sarah in November.
To Wetherill, this dismissal appeared an intolerable injustice from which he could not turn his mind. He accused the parson of having destroyed Sarah’s livelihood and good name. He declared he would return to the parsonage, whether they willed it or not, and take his revenge. Plow was said not to have seen him near the premises after February 1868. Yet shots were heard in the vicinity, and the back door was struck by pellets. The witness could not establish that Wetherill had fired them.
The correspondence traces the shifting course of his resentment. In the autumn, Wetherill still advised Sarah to leave her place if she so desired, while confessing how bitter the parting would be to him. After her dismissal, the tone altered: the Plows, he wrote, had ruined their happiness, and he would never forgive them. In November, he threatened to disclose a secret concerning Jane Smith, whom he held responsible for the rupture. Sarah implored him to abandon all thought of vengeance. She made no promise to return; her letters sought rather to soothe a fury whose danger she clearly perceived. This epistolary thread reveals not a sudden impulse, but an escalation: dismissal, grievances, threats. These very words were to be read aloud at his trial, after the deed.
Sarah had secured a new situation near York. On 1 March, Wetherill journeyed thither to see her. They spoke and exchanged a portion of their correspondence; he gave her a locket and urged her to return to the neighbourhood of Todmorden. She refused, being well satisfied with her new place. The meeting concluded without open discord, yet nothing had been resolved. Upon departing, he wrote that he despaired at leaving her, entreating her to keep the locket. On the following day, he purchased powder, lead, and percussion caps from a gunsmith. The distance traversed to see Sarah, followed by his return to Todmorden equipped with this ammunition, lends the eve of the assault a deliberate progression; the sources do not record the thoughts he harboured upon the road.
At the assizes, Sarah confirmed that he had spoken to her of revenge on the eve of the attack. Her deposition thus corroborated what the letters had foreshadowed and what the purchase of powder, lead, and caps rendered tangibly evident. None of these elements, taken alone, fully defined their relationship. Taken together, they laid bare the gulf between Wetherill’s reproaches—laying the blame for their separation upon the Plows and Jane—and Sarah’s unwavering answer: she would not return to her post, and she besought him to lay aside his threats. The jurors heard this progression. The prosecution rested upon the unbroken chain of grievances and preparations; the defence sought to interpret the very brutality of the assault as a token of insanity.
Plow did not appear at the bar: he succumbed to his injuries prior to the hearing, though his earlier deposition was received. The jury returned a verdict of guilty against Wetherill for the murder of Jane Smith. The Spectator corroborates the conviction and the capital sentence; its polemical reference to the "murders" does not alter the precise indictment of the verdict. The Pitaval describes a composed prisoner and a judge who dismissed the plea of insanity. No independent medical determination is established by these accounts.
The death of Plow was the subject of a separate coroner’s inquest. The coroner excluded journalists, despite the remonstrances of the jurymen. This second inquiry likewise returned a verdict of murder, but the Pitaval notes that it bore no further legal consequence: Wetherill had already received sentence of death for Jane. He was hanged at Manchester on 4 April, alongside Timothy Flaherty, another condemned felon. The compilation records that a vast concourse attended the execution.
Jane Smith died within the walls where she served; Anthony Plow subsequently succumbed to his wounds. Mrs Plow survived, but her newborn child perished following their forced separation. Sarah, having departed Todmorden before the outrage, returned to bear witness regarding the letters; the sources consulted here follow her no further after the trial.