On Saturday 12^th September 1857- 150 years ago – The Bristol Times, owned and edited by Joseph Leech, who later built Burwalls, began its “painful duty to record one of the most dreadful and mysterious murders that has taken place in the neighbourhood of Bristol for some years!. The story competed successfully with stories of the Indian Mutiny. For weeks the local press wrote about “The Late Horrid Murder in Leigh Woods”.

A decade before the completion of the Suspension Bridge, Leigh Woods was still undeveloped. Nightingale Valley was a romantic walking place, particularly for city dwellers coming bty Rownham Ferry, past the New Inn and the Tea Houses, not yet destroyed for the Railway.

On Friday afternoon Mr. Wort, a Leigh Court game keeper, noticed a partly buried handkerchief “on a small plateau of greensward on the north side of the top of Nightingale Valley”. On picking it up, it dripped blood. He notice more on the turf, and then looked over the edge, where he saw the body of a woman, on her back, about 12 feet down, “most foully murdered” with her head nearly severed from her body by a deep gash in the throat and a small wound in the left temple, from a gunshot. The frightened Mr. Wort ran to Long Ashton Police Station, and later helped Superintendent Jones carry the body, on a cart, down to the New Inn at Rownham. Jones locked the body up in the stable, sent a constable on foot to Yatton to notify the Coroner, and must have started talking to the press.

The Saturday papers carried details of the victim’s clothing: “ grey alpaca frock, trimmed with an embroidered frill around the neck and down the front; her underclothes consisted of two skirts (one a corded moreen and the other a while skirt) and such other articles as are generally worn by persons moving in a respectable sphere of society. She had on a pair of kid boots, laced at the sides, with military heels which appeared to have been recently soled”. Her hair was dark brown; she was of middling stature and apparently about 30 years of age.

“Great as was the excitement caused on Saturday it increased a hundredfold on the succeeding day; early till tlae a stream of people poured to Rownham and Nightingale Valley. Soon after 3 the public were admitted to view the corpse”. But despite the gawping of the multitude, the visits from searchers for “runaway wives” and “lost daughters”, the body was not identified.

Crowds again massed when the Inquest opened on Monday at the New Inn. Mr. Rudd Lucas of Long Ashton was charged to do a post-mortem, presumably in the stable, as the press records that on Tuesday the now decomposing body was removed to “the dead house at Long Ashton Church”, and could give details of the victim’s more intimate underwear, which was marked “C.P.” with stays of a distinctive type and a manufacturers mark “R”, At the reopened Inquest on Saturday, Rudd Lucas reported the cause of death as the throat wound, not the bullet in the head, and that whilst the victim was not a virgin, she was not pregnant and had not been raped. The jury recorded an open verdict – “murdered by person or persons unknown”.

Within a week the victim was identified and the police had a suspect.

A washerwoman recognised the “C.P.” as the way Charlotte Pugsley marked her underwear when both worked for the Hon. Mrs. Hutchinson at Dorset House on Clifton Down (now the Royal Marines). She also recognised a distinctive decayed tooth in the decomposing body. A fellow servant was found who confirmed the identification. Bristol and Bath police methodically traced Charlotte from job to job after leaving Dorset House, ending with her as Head Cook at the Rev. Bythesea’s house at Freshford, outside Bath.

The staff there recognised the clothes, and the markings, and told the story of charlotte’s departure on the Wednesday of the week in which she was found murdered. She had given notice, saying she was to marry and emigrate to America; she had drawn out her savings (£7) in Bath and boxed up her belongings, including new clothes. That afternoon, John William Beale came to collect her, saying they were going to Bristol, where he had business to do, then to Southampton to marry in St. Mary’s Church and then on to America. The butler had accompanied them to the station at Lympley Stoke, and then arranged for Passenger to Bristol”. The police discovered from staff at Temple Meads that the boxes had not been claimed that evening as Beale had disputed the charge, but had been paid for and moved to the Midland office on Thursday morning as Beale said he was emigrating fom Liverpool; they were finally removed at a later time unrecorded or remembered.

The stupendous sum of £100 was offered as a reward for Beale, who was described as “about 30, slight build, usually in a frock coat and waistcoat, wearing rings, normally employed as a butler or single handed servant in gentlemen’s families and thought to be in the Daventry area recently. Well known in Clifton and Bath”. It was not needed. Police in Bath, where Beale’s parents and sister lived, discovered he was working for a Captain Watkins near Daventry. Inspector Norris travelled there, and with the local police, surprised and overwhelmed Beale. They found the three boxes, opened, and the keys; one loaded pistol and one “recently discharged”; a dirty shirt with blood on the wristband, and a clasp knife. Beale had had leave for a week from Captain Watkins “to visit his sick father and bury his sister”, and had returned with the boxes containing, he said, his late sister’s clothes. Meanwhile, the Bath police found witnesses who said Beale had told them he was in Bath because Captain Watkins had a week’s shooting near Bradford-on-Avon, and had found Beale’s father and sister in good health.

Norris brought Beale back to Bristol by train. 3,000 people were waiting at Temple Meads. The police were overwhelmed as the crowd tried to get at Beale. Norris was knocked down, with Beale on top of him, before they were rescued and got into a fly, which took them “at all speed” to the Court House at Flax Bourton.

Beale made his one and only statement. He was not guilty of Charlotte’s murder. They were just good friends, arising from being in service together. Each had often lent the other money as “one good turn deserves another”. Whilst at Dorset House, Charlotte was to be married to someone of whom Mrs. Hutchinson disapproved and made Charlotte break off the relationship. (Other witnesses later confirmed this). But the relationship had continued, and Charlotte had agreed again to marry her admirer and emigrate with him. She had asked Beale to come down from Daventry to collect her, and see them off, as he (Beale) was her only trusted friend. The admirer, John James Thomas, whom Beale described as short, with a dark complexion, had met them off the train at Temple Meads and calling Charlotte his wife “took her off up Temple Street”. Beale waited, with the keys to the boxes till gone midnight, but they did not return. He did not know what to do on the Thursday as he had to got to Bath, and on Friday returned to Daventry taking the boxes with him to look after them. He had opened them only to look for clues about where Charlotte and/or Thomas might be. He kept the pistols for the protection of Captain Watkins and his property, and to shoot rabbits, which had recently done; the clasp knife was to finish off wounded rabbits, and to skin and gut them – hence the blood.

By now the Court House was besieged. Beale was remanded for a week to Taunton Goal, and then had to be smuggled out to another fly to get him away. When he returned, the police outwitted the crowds by getting him off the train at Long Ashton Station, and taking him to the court in an omnibus! The scene was set for the legal proceedings to begin.

By the time Beale appeared in front of the Justices for the second time, the press had reported that he was married. His wife lived near him in Daventry, working as a dressmaker. Then it was discovered that Beale and Charlotte had left Mrs. Hutchinson’s at the same time, and Charlotte lived with Beale and his wife at Flora Cottages in Victoria Square. Moreover, she left “owing to the jealousy of the wife having been excited”. On the other hand, the press discovered the virtuous life of Charlotte, which was an almost perfect Victorian morality tale. Born illegitimate in Bishops Lydiard, at one month old she had been put by the parish into the care of “Old Betty Mullins” for 2/- a week, from which she was removed at age 10, by Mrs. Warre, brought into the local big house, allowed to eat with the servants, taught to read and write, and trained in domestic and social skills. She had left to go into service as a cook, worked in Bristol and London, periodically returning to see Old Betty Mullins and Mrs. Warre, before settling in the Bristol/Bath area, working in Clifton, at Brentry House, and in Bath, finally at Freshford, always highly regarded and always described as reserved in her manner. She had some very good friends in a family in Bath, with whom she stayed between jobs, and to whom, to their great surprise, she introduced Beale as her prospective husband and to say farewell before emigrating a couple of days before Beale appeared at Freshford. Her boxes contained various books of a devotional nature, and the hymn book a fellow servant had given her on leaving Freshford. How was it possible to make sense of all that?

At the court, the police produced evidence about the finding of the body, the medical evidence witnesses from Freshford, from Temple Meads who destroyed Beale’s story about the Wednesday evening, and from Daventry who told of his other untruths. However, the best the police could manage to connect Beale with Leigh Woods was a woman living near the New Cut who saw a couple in mid-morning walking several times around the Bedminster Bridge area “near the new hospital” before finally walking off towards Hotwells, (she identified Beale whom she knew from 11 years earlier), and two lads, aged 12 and 13, who were “hazeling” in Leigh Woods late that afternoon, said they had seen “two lovers” walking in the woods, had heard a pistol shot a little later, and swore they recognised Charlotte from the description of her clothes and Beale as they saw him in court. It was enough, together with the boxes, pistols and knife, and the evidence of Beale’s inconsistent explanations of his activities for the Justices to send him for trial.

Beale appeared at the Somerset Winter Assizes in Taunton Castle before the Hon. Sir James Shaw Willes and a Grand Jury on Tuesday 22^ndDecember. “There was considerable excitement to gain admission”. “The accommodation for reporters was wholly inadequate and some of them were indebted to the Governor of the Gaol for seats in the dock” (!)

Mr. Stone, opening for the Crown, made much of the concealment of the body “in a naturally formed vault” in the cliff face, and Beale’s local knowledge having been brought up in Long Ashton. He further blackened Beale’s character by telling that Beale had given away some of Charlotte’s dressed in Daventry “to a person of some considerable attractions” (whom he later produced for the Jury to have a look at). He explained, in a surreal touch, that he could not produce Captain Watkins to refute various of Beale’s stories as after being subpoenaed, he had been killed on the South Devon Railway between Totnes and Newton Abbot.

The prosecution witnesses repeated the remand hearing evidence, and whilst the two lads were not produced, two new witnesses were, who told of seeing a couple round about Nightingale Valley in the late afternoon, arm in arm or the woman’s head on the man’s shoulder, Charlotte being identified by her clothing. Sarah Gulliver admitted receiving clothes, boots and other things from Beale, but indignantly insisted she sent her husband to collect them and only after assurances from Beale that as they were his dead sister’s his wife would not wear them.

Mr. Saunders, defending, protested repeatedly about “the almost unheard prejudice” against Beale. He conceded there must have been “some secret understanding between Beale and Charlotte”. He also conceded all Beale’s false accounts, but, he argued, none of that proved murder. He also emphasised the absence of notice. Beale and Charlotte were obviously on good terms, and even the highly suspect witnesses who identified them so dubiously in Leigh Woods reported an obviously loving couple. In conclusion, Saunders argued the charge had simply not been proven beyond reasonable doubt.

The case was over in a day. The Jury needed only 5 minutes to find Beale guilty. The Judge lectured him “for cruelly seducing that girl from the house in which she had respectable employment” and for “fraudulently inducing her into marriage and emigration”. He refrained from speculating about the murder itself and its motivation. Donning the black cap, he sentenced Beale to death.

With obvious inside knowledge, accounts were published of the daily efforts, until late at night, of the Gaol Chaplain, and the Rev. H.P. Liddon, the nephew of the Gaol Surgeon, to persuade Beale to confess before meeting his God. (Liddon was a close friend of Pusey and Keble, and at the time Vice-President of the new Theological College at Cuddesdon. He ended his career as Canon of St. Paul’s Cathedral, famed for his sermons and his influential position in London society. Liddon seems to have known Beale as a butler when he was a house guest somewhere). On the Sunday before his execution, Liddon preached “the condemned sermon” in the Gaol Chapel to Ecclesiastes xii.7. He was with Beale at 6 am on his last day. After breakfast, Beale went with all the other prisoners, except the debtors, to a service in the chapel, received the sacrament, and was taken out to execution. Before climbing the ladder up on the leads of the Gaol roof, and out onto the scaffold, Beale was again asked and replied “no, nothing”. Now pinioned by the Public Hangman, Beale faced, for his last moments, a crowd of 10,000 to 12,000, “almost entirely of the lower orders, and no inconsiderable portion women and children, and it is due to them to state that they behaved with a decorum which is not often witnessed upon such occasions”. Beale showed no trepidation, and seems to have died very quickly, as least by the standards of the time. Most of the crowd did not stay to see his body cut down; it was buried in the prison.

So Beale went to his death without confessing, which is what the clergy, the press and the public clearly wanted him to do. That was still worthy of comment when Latimer wrote his History of Bristol some 30 years later. Initially Beale told the story of Charlotte going off with someone else from Temple Meads, but the he clammed up. On the Sunday before his execution he told Liddon he was not the murderer and that Charlotte died “by another hand”, but Liddon could not break his silence again. Nor, it seems, could his father or his sister when they were allowed to visit. Was he guilty? The case had weaknesses. The evidence was circumstantial. What about motive? The evidence linking Beale with Leigh Woods on the day was suspect. But Beale had told one false story after another to different people about what he was up to, and he did have Charlotte’s boxes. Why did he go back to Daventry and not try to vanish, let alone take Charlotte’s boxes with him? And so the questions go on and on; the story is indeed gruesome and, I think, still retains its mystery. I am sure readers will have questions of their own.

What is not in doubt is the awful death of poor Charlotte Pugsley in such a beautiful place

When you next walk there, you my care to pray for her; but at least remember her.

© Derek Smith