The Campden Wonder Case

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22166, 20 July 1935, Page 7 (Supplement)

The Campden Wonder Case

Unsolved Crime —No.

THE most mysterious fact in the murder mystery -which is known as the Campden Wonder is that there -ft as' no murder. Unless, of course, you count the deaths of John Perry's mother and brothcT on the scaffold where his confession sent them. In that case John's own death must be reckoned as suicide—for the confession hanged him as well. It all happened in Chipping Campden in the year 1660, only a few months ai'ter Charles 11. came back from his travels. Campden, once an important town, a flourishing centre of the Cotswold wool trade, is now only a lovely (and a singularly wellpreserved) relic of the days when the English knew how to build houses. Even in 1660 most of its importance had gone.

The houses in which the Perrys and the Harrisons lived are very likely still standing. If they are, 1 must have passed them hundreds of times, may well have been inside both of them, may even have considered the possibility of living in one or other of them. There are a great many houses in Campden which go back as far as 1660, and quite enough which go back still further. But, so far as I know, neither of these houses has ever been identified.

"William Harrison was a man of 70 on the day when this extraordinary story began. He was the steward or, as we should, say now, the agent, of Viscountess Campden, and part of his business was the collection of rents. On August 16, 1660, he set out for this purpose to a neighbouring village and at a late hour had not returned. It is an interesting fact, helping us to get an impression on that evening, that even now a special bell is rung at nightfall in the tower of Campden Church for the benefit or travellers who may have lost their way on the inhospitable wolds above the fown. Harrison, however, was not on the wolds, but in the flat country to the north. He could not have lost his way. It was st;ll light when Mrs. Harrison grew anxious and sent John Perry, his servant to look for him. Perry did not come bach either. Early in the morning she sent her son, Edward, to make a further search. On the road he met Perry, who reported no news, and they went together in the direction which "William Harrison had been known to take. At last they learnt that a hat, a comb and a band had been found in the road. These had belonged to William and they supplied bloody evidence of a violent deed. It is not surprising that when they returned to Campden, Perry was arrested on suspicion. He knew that his master was carrying a large sum of money—it was £'23. He had been absent all night with no particular explanation to offer. (He offered a good many later, including fear of the dark, being lost in a mist, and taking a nap in a hen-house.) He was not kept in very strict confinement. Part of the time he was in the local gaol—possibly the building now known as the town hall, which was so disastrously remodelled to celebrate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. Part of the time he was kept in the inn—which does not tel] so much. There were 17 in Campden when I first knew the town and certainly not fewer in Perry's time.

I suspect that this curious mode of detention represents a seventeenth century version of the third degree. In gaol he was interrogated by a justice of the peace and in the inn he was encouraged to talk by the neighbours. He did talk.

Quite soon he was sure that Harrison had been murdered, though he did not know by whom. He wavered between a. tinkor and a gentleman's servant. Anyhow, the body had been hidden in a bean-rick. When it was not found there, the feeling was only strengthened that John knew a great deal more than he had yet said. At last he produced a definite version of his story. His mother, Joan, and his brother, Eichard, had been pestering him ever since lie had entered Harrison's service to tell them when they could way-lay his master and rob him. Thus besought he had given way. On the fatal night he had met his brother and had i.old him precisely where Harrison was to he found. Having so directed the robber, he decided that he "in the meantime would walk a turn in the fields which accordingly he did." Presently, however, lie followed Richard and found him and Mrs. Perry, with "William Harrison lying on the ground. He said mildly that ho hoped Eichard would not murd?r his master. But Richard replied, " Peace, peace, you are a fool," and so strangled him. John then kept watch while his mother s.nd brother carried the body off " to throw it into the great sink, by Wallington's mill behind the garden." It was not. however, found there, any more than in the bean-rick — and for a very good reason which will presently appear. Its absence seemed a small detail to set against a credible and coherent story at last. Joan and Richard were arrested and, while they protested their innocence, John ntuok to his accusation, even identifying the cord with which the strangling had been accomplished. At this point two odd incidents came back to mind. In the previous year a thief had broken into an upper room of Harrison's house while the family were at church and had stolen £l4O belonging to Lady Campden. Also, only a iew weeks before Harrison's disappearance, John had told an absurd story of having been attacked by two men in white, armed with swords, whom no one else had seen. He now owned that his brother had committed. the theft with his connivance. The money, he said, had been buried in the garden, though just as with Harrison's body, it could not be found where he said it was. He had invented the men in white to create the impression that there were dangerous characters about. Accordingly the three were put on their trial at the next Assizes both for the robbery of 1659 and for the alleged murder of 16G0. Joan and Eichard continued to deny the charge of murder and John continued to accuse them, adding that they had attempted- to rioison him in prison. But the Judge felt some difficulty about a conviction for murder (this is, in fact, one of the classical cases) where 110 corpse had ever been seen.

'J'he capital charge was therefore dropped. But that of robbery-went on and to this Joan and fticliard both pleaded guilty. It seems that friends in Court advised them that they could claim the Inherit of the Act of Oblivion, which Itad followed the Restoration —sound advice *s far as it went. It may not the less have cost them their lives, for it cannot have but helped the idea that th<jy knew more about the murder than they admitted. Therefore the murder charge was revived at the next Assizes where there was another Judge who was not so squeamish and found himself perfectly well able to do without a corpse. 'John now retracted his statement, saying that he " was then mad, and knew not what he said." But it was too late. AH three were sentenced to death.

By EDWARD SHANKS

They were hanged on Broadway Hill, near where the Fish Inn now stands (it was built, 1 should judge, a little later), and they looked as they swung over that vast misty prospect of the Midland plain. Joan was turned off first. It was believed that she was a witch and that she had put a spell on her sons which i would \ prevent them from confessing while she lived. (She ought to have thought of it much earlier.) But Richard died after her, still protesting his innocence. John went up the last to the drop and they kept his body there in chains. At the end he said tliat he knew nothing of what had hap{K?ned to Harrison, but that " they might hereafter possibly hear." Now what made him say that? For he was right. They did. Less than two years afterwards the missing " corpse " t returned to Campden with the most pre- j posterous story that it is possible to imagine. Harrison said that he, a man of 70, had been kidnapped, carried all the way across England to Deal and put on : board ship, apparently in company with ; captives. After six weeks at sea j he was transhipped to a Turkish vessel, j Eventually he was sold to an elderly j Turkish physician near Smyrna. He does not say what price was paid ! for him, but his captors seem to have j reckoned that he would fetch about £7. j There he stayed until his master's j death, when he made his way back to ; England. 1 have no space to go into the mani- j fest and abundant impossibilities of Har- • rison's narrative. It was well for him i that he was never cross-examined on it I in a court of law. There was no way of ; reopening the case of the Perrys. He j was alive, and they were dead, and ! there was an end of it. It is remarkable that in his letter to j Sir Thomas Overbury, telling the whole I story, he does not- once refer to them. He is too busy thanking heaven for j what he calls his " happy deliverance." ! That is the story of the Campden ! Wonder, for an explanation of which, ! says the pamphleteer who tells it, we j must wait "till time, the great dis- I coverer of truth, shall bring to light i this dark and mysterious business."

Time has not yet been so obliging. But many distinguished intelligences—among them Andrew Lang, John Paget, Mr. John Masefield and Mr. Bernard Darwin —have done their best to nil time's place. Lang, I think, is generally considered to hold the field. But, in this instance at least, he deserves the unfriendly definition of an historian as a man who knows a great many things that ain't so. He tells us, for example, that Sir Thomas Overbury, to whom we owe our knowledge of the whole affair, was the magistrate before whom John Perry was brought for examination. For this there is not. so far as I can discover, a scrap of evidence. There is against it the strong negative evidence that Overbury does not say that he was. This need not, however, invalidate Lang's theory. He believes that Harrison was spirited away, possibly with his own connivance, to serve some mysterious ends which can. only be guessed at, and that John Perry suffered from the peculiar form of hysteria which makes people (there are many well-at-tested instances) accuse themselves of crimes which they have not committed. He dismisses with scorn the idea that Harrison suffered from what he calls " ambulatory somnambulism," by Tvliieh he seems simply to mean loss of memory. Why, he asks, should he have had such an attack just at that time and place? This it will be seen,* gives us two unconnected solutions of problems which do seem to lie very intimately connected. They are. for that reason alone, not very satisfying to the mind. But there are other objections to them.

To whose interest was it to have Harrison kidnapped ? Local gossip of the time suggested that his son wanted his job as steward, but that is a rather strong hypothesis. Lang vaguely thinks that some of the Roundheads of the neighbourhood may have deemed it well to have him out of the way " till the revences of the Restoration were accomplished." As for Perry's confession, does he show any of the signs of the hysterical self-accused ? He does not accuse himself at all for a long time, but- works up to it (or is worked up to it) by slow degrees. Even then his self-accusation is limited. In both the robbery of 1659 and the murder, he casts himself for a decidedly minor part. In neither has he done more than supply information to the criminals who plan deed and execute it.

To me he bears the marks of _ a j man who is, though not very intelligently, trying to save his own neck at j the expense of others. When he realises. ! at the second trial that, in spite of all j his efforts, his neck is still in danger, i he instantly retracts his confession. | Whether all three Perrys were con- j cerned in the attack on Harrison is a j question that is impossible to decide. : But I believe that there was an attack, j and that John thought that he had had at least a hand in murdering his master. 1 suggest that the old man was murderously assaulted and robbed, and that what was supposed to be his dead body was in fact thrown into " the great sink." His assadant (or assailants) would not be there when the cold water revived him and he scrambled [ out. He (or they) would think him : Hp did, however, scramble out and wander away, suffering lroin loss of memory induced by the brutal treatment he had received. What happened to him after that no one knows or ever will know. 1 here was no 8.8.C. to broadcast descriptions of missing England persons, and seventeenth century England did not, trouble itself about inoffensive and [ want-witted wanderers. The apparent j certuintv that he had been murdered j would delav remote inquiries until lie , had wandered out of reach of them. But one day his memory returned and he felt that the story of his loss was too thin to be believed—more especially as this would he the second time be would have had to report the loss at tho hands of robbers of money belong- ! in*r to Ladv Campden. He therefore made up one with a little more body IU ] !l have a. strong feel me that the origins of that ridiculous yarn of bis might be discovered in some contemporary romance of adventure. 11 thc\ were, then we should have gone a littie May toward bringing light to tins dark and mysterious business. Was John Perry alone guilty I very much incline to the belief that lie was. Eichard at any seems to have thought so. On the scnlfold he did "Kith creat. earnestness beseech his brother (for the satisfaction of the whole world and his own conscience) to declare vhat L *John had already, for what sood that was, retracted his original confession which implicated all three of them. Eichard could not have hoped for anything more from him, save a new confession, admitting his own sole guilt. Xf J am rieht, then to no one, not even to us to-day, was the Campden Wonder more of a wonder than to John Perry himself. He must have swung there on the top of Broadway Hill, asking himself, as life faded out, what the devil had become of the body he had so sensiblr disposed of in " the great "sink, by Wallington's Mill, behind the garden.