History of Great Dunmow

Great Dunmow
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History of Great Dunmow >> Great Dunmow Snippets

Great Dunmow Snippets

When researching for this website we often find a little snippet of information on a location or subject which may be of interest. Here's one for Great Dunmow.

Penny Illustrated Paper

15 March 1862

Murder at Dunmow, Essex.

On Saturday last, about eleven o’clock at night, several young men hearing a noise, apparently of persons quarrelling, opposite the Doctor’s Pond, Dunmow, hastened to the spot, where they found a man standing there who had just been stabbed by some one with a sharp instrument, and at the same moment two men were seen escaping across the Downs.

The person thus desperately assaulted walked only a few yards across the road before he fell, and, being taken into the Star yard, died almost directly.

It was soon found that the deceased was named James Barnard, from Cophill, near Shafford, in Bedfordshire, a young married man, about twenty years of age, who travelled the country as a hawker of umbrellas, braces, clothes-lines, etc.

It transpired that he had been out in his calling, and was going home to his lodgings at the Bell, Church-end, where his wife was. He was said to be a quiet, inoffensive person.

On Sunday evening the police obtained a clue which led to the apprehension of a man named John Button, one of the two men who were seen on the Downs. Button voluntarily confessed that he was present when the assault took place, although he did not touch the deceased, and that a man named Henry Eagle, of Little Easton, was the person who had blows with the deceased, and must have been the perpetrator of the dreadful dead. Button further willingly and earnestly detailed the conversation he had with Eagle as they were going home.

Steps were immediately taken by Superintendent Rogerson to apprehend Eagle, who was taken at the house of a relative and brought to the Dunmow station.