In the autumn of 1834, Joseph Moseley and William Garside had been condemned for the murder of Thomas Ashton. Yet, several weeks after the verdict was pronounced, they remained in their cells awaiting execution. The sheriff of the county palatine of Chester refused to act; the sheriff of the city of Chester maintained that the burden fell no more upon him. Two public officers thus cast the sentence back and forth between them, while the prisoners lay languishing under condemnation. Their trial had settled their guilt; it remained only to be determined who was bound to lead them to the scaffold.
The crime dated back to the 3rd of January, 1831. Thomas Ashton, the younger son of a master cotton spinner, had taken tea with his father at Hyde, and subsequently walked down to a newly erected factory some third of a mile distant. He quitted the premises about half-past six o’clock. By eight, his lifeless body was discovered lying upon the road home. He had received a pistol charge through the heart. The slugs had torn a wide wound in his chest and made two distinct exits through his back; their slight dispersion indicated, according to the chronicle, that the assassin stood close upon him when he fired.
Pelham sets the outrage against the background of the wage disputes then convulsing the cotton mills of the Manchester district. Workmen banded into unions were contending for uniform price lists. At Hyde, customary rates still prevailed; at Ashton, the master spinners refused all advances, feeding a sullen discontent. The chronicle links the crime to this fevered climate, whilst observing that the deed of a handful of men cannot be held to convict all organised labour. The court, for its part, sat to judge but two individuals.
Ashton’s violent death struck the country with consternation. His family and the government together offered a reward of two thousand pounds for the apprehension of the murderers, accompanied by an offer of pardon to any accomplice who should turn King’s evidence, provided he had not himself fired the fatal shot. Constables and runners were dispatched in every direction. Yet the investigation made no swift progress; years elapsed without the arrest of the principals.
In April 1834, William Moseley, then confined in Chester Castle for another offence, revealed what he knew. He named as the prime instigator a man called Samuel Scholfield, and directly implicated both Garside and Joseph Moseley, his own brother. The two were forthwith apprehended at Oldham. For the first time, the magistrates possessed a circumstantial narrative, delivered by one who professed to have been an actor in the conspiracy.
The trial opened at the Chester Assizes on Thursday, the 7th of August. William Moseley stood as the crown’s principal witness. He related that Scholfield, whom he described as a union man, had proposed the murder on account of the wages paid by the Ashtons. The men were said to have agreed to the deed for the sum of ten pounds. They met near the factory at Woodley, and there lay in wait for the young spinner. Shortly before seven o'clock, according to this testimony, Garside stepped forward and discharged his piece. The three confederates fled, leaving Ashton dead upon the highway. The blood money was reportedly paid that very evening, whereafter the conspirators bound themselves by oath to perpetual silence.
This deposition did not fall from the lips of an untainted witness. Closely pressed under cross-examination, William Moseley acknowledged that his character was blackened by a long catalogue of misdeeds. Yet Pelham affirms that other witnesses corroborated his narrative in material particulars. The printed record does not recount each point of confirmation; it states only that the jury held the proof sufficient. Both prisoners were found guilty, and ordered for execution on the following Saturday.
The Saturday came, but the sentence was not executed. The sheriff of the county palatine and the sheriff of the city of Chester each disclaimed the duty of carrying out the capital judgment. The gaol authorities apprised the convicts of the dispute, but neither officer would yield. Mr. Baron Parke granted a respite until the 18th of August, that the point of law might be determined. This unexpected reprieve afforded the authorities an occasion to examine the men afresh. Both, according to Pelham, confessed their participation in the deed, yet both denied that Scholfield had taken any part in it. Garside asserted that he had himself offered to turn King’s evidence, and that had his overtures been received, “the whole truth” would have come to light. He added that the authorities had been fed nothing but a tissue of falsehoods. This protestation did not dissolve his conviction; it merely cast a contradictory account into a case already thick with the self-serving declarations of prisoner and informer alike.
On the morrow of the trial, William Moseley was removed to Stockport. Upon his information, Scholfield was taken into custody; he denied the charge and was committed. Meanwhile, the fate of Garside and Joseph Moseley hung suspended upon the jurisdictional feud. On the 16th of August, they obtained a further respite until the 18th of September, and yet another until early November, in order that the Court of King’s Bench might adjudicate the dispute between the two sheriffs.
The point at issue was no longer whether the prisoners had been lawfully condemned, but what executive hand had power to give effect to the judgment. The Attorney General laid before the judges that an Act of Parliament had recently abolished the ancient palatine court of Chester, substituting the ordinary King's assizes, though a saving clause had preserved the ancient liabilities of the city magistrates and citizens. The city sheriff pleaded that his duty of execution had been owed only to the extinguished palatine jurisdiction; if any liability survived, he argued, it devolved upon the mayor and citizens at large. The sheriff of the county palatine proved equally resolute in refusing the office. The Attorney General moved for the necessary writs of habeas corpus and certiorari to bring the prisoners up and settle the matter without delay.
On the 11th and 13th of November, Garside was placed at the bar of the Court of King’s Bench. His counsel pleaded the royal proclamation, which had promised two thousand pounds and a free pardon to any accomplice not being the actual assassin. Garside, it was urged, had made disclosure to the Cheshire authorities, and was therefore entitled to his discharge. The Attorney General replied that the jury had expressly found that Garside himself had pulled the trigger. Lord Chief Justice Denman upheld the objection: the royal grace could not extend to the man whom the verdict branded as the actual perpetrator of the murder. The court thereupon ordered that execution be done by its own Marshal, assisted by the sheriff of Surrey.
The convicts were transferred to the King’s Bench Prison. Garside presented a further petition renewing his counsel's plea, but it was rejected. On the 25th of November, the two men were conducted to Horsemonger Lane Gaol. Pelham records that during his confinement, Garside had endeavoured to shift the guilt of the fatal shot upon another. The chronicler names “Joseph Moseley” as the man thus accused, though he had earlier depicted William Moseley as the crown witness. This confusion of names leaves the true object of the recrimination uncertain. Pelham adds that Garside retracted his varied statements only at the eleventh hour.
At nine o’clock, Garside was the first to mount the scaffold. His dying words were: “All the statements which I have made at different times since my conviction are false.” He thus wiped away his former utterances, yet offered no new account by which the conflicting versions of the trial might be judged.
Scholfield was brought to the bar in his turn in April 1835. The grand jury ignored the bill of indictment against him, and he was discharged. The conviction of Garside and Joseph Moseley had thus held fast, whilst the man denounced as their instigator escaped even a trial by jury. From the body found upon the Hyde road to the sentence stayed by the squabbling sheriffs, the affair had traversed three years and several irreconcilable testimonies. The law in the end determined who should hang the condemned; it never dispersed the shadows left behind by those who had spoken.