Richard Taylor knew where to conceal the nine shillings. His father had shown him the trick; the boy had even demonstrated that nothing could be detected from without. The coins were slipped into a small pouch, the pouch pressed into the palm, and the mitten drawn over the whole. On 4 March 1831, Richard set forth for Aylesford to collect the family’s parish relief. At thirteen years of age, he was well accustomed to the journey and knew the hour he was expected to return. He was to be home by three o’clock. That evening, his father waited in vain.
The Taylors lived in Strood. The father was an indigent tallow-chandler, to whom this parish relief of nine shillings came each week as an essential succour. Before departing, Richard had asked him for his pocket-knife, wishing to cut hazel wands along the road home to fashion a bow and arrows. He wore a blue jacket, brown trousers, and a neckerchief. These garments, the knife, and the mitten arranged to safeguard the money belonged to nothing more than the ordinary preparations for an errand entrusted to a child.
At Aylesford, the parish overseer, Cutbath, handed the customary sum to the boy. He was seen placing it in his hand precisely as his father had instructed him. Then he set out on his return. When night fell, the Taylors remained in ignorance of what had detained him. On the morrow, the father travelled the road himself. At Aylesford, the payment was duly confirmed: Richard had indeed arrived, and the money had been paid into his hands. All that could be established ended there, at the moment he turned his steps toward home.
More than two months went by. On 11 May, a man named Izzard took a path through a wood, some two miles from Rochester. A short distance from the turnpike road, in a ditch, he came upon the body of a boy. The mitten upon the left hand had been slashed away. The clothing was disordered and stained with blood. Duly summoned, the parents hastened to the spot. The search for the missing child was now transformed into the pursuit of his murderer.
Mr. Seaton, the surgeon, examined the remains on the following day. Despite the advanced state of decomposition, he discerned a wound to the throat inflicted by a pointed instrument. A search of the surrounding brushwood brought to light a common knife with a white horn handle, already encrusted with rust. Inquiries concerning this implement led directly to the neighbouring parish workhouse, where the Bell family resided. The knife was said to belong to one of the sons, John Amy Bird Bell. The constables thereupon apprehended the father and his two boys: John, aged fourteen, and James, aged eleven.
Following the coroner’s inquest, Richard had been interred without his pockets having been searched. The magistrates ordered the grave to be reopened. They required, moreover, that the Bell brothers attend the exhumation, that their countenances might be observed. John maintained an absolute silence. James was bidden to descend into the pit and search the dead boy’s garments. He obeyed, and clambered back out bearing a knife.
This was not the horn-handled weapon discovered in the wood. It was the very knife Richard’s father had lent him for his bow and arrows. It had remained undisturbed within his clothing. The money, however, was gone. A vital distinction was thus established between the two implements: the one had directed suspicion toward John; the other belonged to the Taylors, recovered from the earth by a child suspected of having shared in their son’s murder.
The examinations were resumed. Following a remand in custody, James spoke. His brother, he declared, had lain in wait for Richard in the wood while he himself kept watch outside. They had known for some time why the boy travelled so regularly to Aylesford. According to James, they had contemplated killing him to seize the money, though various circumstances had delayed their design until 4 March. John had subsequently given him one shilling and sixpence for his pains.
The magistrates accepted the younger boy’s testimony as King's evidence. The father was discharged, notwithstanding the suspicions that had attached to him regarding assistance rendered after the deed. John was committed to stand his trial at the assizes. On the road to Maidstone, he confirmed his brother’s account. He pointed out the pond wherein he had washed the blood from his hands, and then the opening in the hedge through which he had enticed Richard into the thicket.
According to the words recorded in Camden Pelham’s chronicle, John had initially walked beside him, engaging him in talk. He had led him into the wood, taking many circuitous paths, before sitting down and feigning that he had lost his way. Richard sat down beside him; he wept, professing that he knew not the path out of the woods. John then fell upon him. To find the nine shillings, he was forced to search: the hiding place devised with the father had held fast until that final moment.
John even gave an exact account of the coins. There were three half-crowns, a shilling, and a sixpence. The latter two had been given to James. Having thus detailed the division of the spoil, he asked that his brother be compelled to witness his execution, that he might take warning from it. The child who had stood sentinel upon the road became, in the elder’s words, the one who must be saved from meeting a like end.
On 29 July 1831, at the Maidstone Assizes, John was tried for the murder of Richard. Pelham describes him as remaining utterly impassive throughout the proceedings and the pronouncement of the sentence of death. He exhibited emotion only when the learned judge decreed that his body should be delivered over to the surgeons to be dissected. Returned to his cell, he wept. On Sunday, his mother visited him; he reproached her bitterly, declaring that she had brought him to his ruin. That evening, following the chaplain’s sermon, he made a further confession.
It is in this final declaration that the chronicle records Richard’s supplications. The child, comprehending the fate awaiting him, had fallen to his knees, offering his money, his knife, his cap—all that John might desire—if he would but spare his life. These words come down to us solely from the youth who professed to have slain him. The victim had no voice to recount the journey beneath the boughs, nor the moment when the winding paths became an inescapable snare.
On the Monday morning, at half-past eleven, the tolling of the prison bell announced the hour. John mounted the scaffold in the company of the chaplain. A concourse estimated by Pelham at eight thousand souls had assembled before the gaol. The boy begged for mercy and exhorted the onlookers to take warning from his miserable end. The sentence of the law was carried out; the body was subsequently delivered to the surgeons of Rochester.
The two Bell brothers followed very different roads after their confessions. James had testified; John was hanged. For the Taylors, neither the verdict nor the sentence could alter the ending of that errand on 4 March. The little pouch had been meant to keep the money safe; the knife, to shape a boy’s bow. More than two months after his departure, it was that very knife which had been drawn up from the grave.