1709: Christopher Slaughterford, “Vengeance, Vengeance!”

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The aptly named Christopher Slaughterford hanged on this date in 1709 — condemned, quite possibly wrongfully, for murdering his fiancee Jane Young.

Slaughterford owned a maltings at Shalford in Surrey and was known to be paying court to Miss Young when the latter went missing on the evening of the 5th of October, 1703. She turned up weeks later, dead in a pond and it was clear from the state of the body that it had been no accidental fall.

The closest relations of the victim in such cases are natural first suspects, and it was no exception with Slaughterford. With his neighbors murmuring, he turned himself in and stood trial at the Kingston assizes, winning acquittal: there was no firm evidence against him.

But the good people of Shalford not being satisfied with this outcome subscribed a second, private prosecution against Slaughterford. Some witnesses swore they’d been seen together that evening; Slaughterford and his lodger said he’d been at home. Such information as survives does not license one to make a categorical assertion of Slaughterford’s innocence but even for the time it was no better than a weak circumstantial case.”Some of the depositions against him seem very striking; yet the testimony in his favour is equally clear. There appears nothing in the former part of his life to impeach his character; there is no proof of any animosity between him and the party murdered; and there is an apparent contradiction in part of the evidence against him,” laments the Newgate Calendar. “The charitable reader must, therefore, be inclined to think this man was innocent, and that he fell a sacrifice to the prejudices, laudable, perhaps, of his incensed neighbours.”

Slaughterford for his part carried his denial of guilt all the way to the noose, signing this statement on the day of his hanging.

GUILDFORD, JULY 9, 1709

Being brought here to die, according to the sentence passed upon me at the Queen’s-Bench bar, for a crime of which I am wholly innocent, I thought myself obliged to let the world know, that they may not reflect on my friends and relations, whom I have left behind me much troubled for my fatal end, that I know nothing of the death of Jane Young, nor how she came by her death, directly or indirectly, though some have been pleased to cast reflections on my aunt. However, I freely forgive all my enemies, and pray to God to give them a due sense of their errors, and in his due time to bring the truth to light. In the mean time, I beg every one to forbear reflecting on my dear mother, or any of my relations, for my unjust and unhappy fall, since what I have here set down is truth, and nothing but the truth, as I expect salvation at the hands of Almighty God; but I am heartily sorry that I should be the cause of persuading her to leave her dame, which is all that troubles me.

As witness my hand this 9th day of July.

While the Young family was poor, they were in respect of Slaughterford’s life mightier than the sovereign herself: a private prosecution admitted no intervention by other courts or crown once a conviction was secured. Perversely, he’d have been better off having been convicted at his first trial, when the unreliable evidence might have recommended him as a good case for mercy.

Having been shown no clemency in life, Slaughterford offers none in death. Legend has it that his angry spirit now haunts the High Street of Guildford where he hanged, bearing a halter about its neck and a terrible cry of “Vengeance, Vengeance!” upon its spectral lips.

On this day..

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