The butchers of Syston (part three)

Fox and Hounds, Syston: author's print collection, origin unknown

This is the third part of the story about the family of Elizabeth Toon and her husband, William Holyland. (If you didn't read The butchers of Syston (part one), click here.) or (part two), click here.

On Whit Monday, 24th May 1847, a holiday, many men were in the Fox and Hounds public house, Syston, at the top of High Street, where it still is today. The landlord in 1847 was a Mr Bishop. The crowd included William Holyland, a man called Wheatcroft, William Needham, an older man called Adcock, who might have been William's neighbour from Cramp Street, Thomas Adcock, who would have been about 75 years old, but could have been any one of many other Syston Adcocks--they go back in Syston as least as long as the Toons, and there were three Adcock households on Cramp Street in 1841. Also in the pub that day was John Bevans--the brother of William Holyland's brother-in-law (William's sister Theodosia's husband's brother), the coal merchant. John Bevans was about thirty years old, in good health, and described as "stout". he'd been at the Fox since lunchtime, and was sitting with the guy named Wheatcroft. John Bevans and Wheatcroft ordered a glass of gin and water each, but before they could drink it, Wheatcroft and Mr Adcock argued; Wheatcroft, who was a big, powerful man, struck Mr Adcock on his hat. Adcock fell down; and a rather drunk William Holyland fell upon Wheatcroft, possibly in defense of old man Adcock. Wheatcroft and Holyland were then fighting, striking each other several times.

John Bevans then rose from his seat, saying, "Gently, my lads! Give over," but he didn't join the fight or interfere further. The three fighters--Wheatcroft, Holyland, and I guess Adcock--then rushed from the Fox and Hounds tap room into the passage, followed by John Bevans. They carried on the fight in the passage: Bevans was, at this point, talking to his sister (not sure if this is Bevan's sister, or Holyland's).

Holyland got up off the floor, and said to Bevans, "You! You'll take his part!" and punched him in the head. Bevans reeled, dropped to the floor, immediately unconscious.

Ten minutes later, John Bevans was dead. He did not utter another word.

The inquest was held at the Fox and Hounds--talk about revisiting the scene of the crime. Mr Dalley and his assistant carried out a post-mortem examination, where they found that the late John Bevan's brain was much distended with an "effusion of blood", in both parts of the brain, and at the base of the skull, which must have been caused by the rupture of one or more blood vessels. Mr Dalley said that the injury would have been caused by external violence such as a blow or a fall; that the man was otherwise healthy.

The inquest declared that the cause of death was manslaughter. William Holyland was arrested on the charge, and committed for trial at the Summer Assizes.

His trial was held on July 31st 1847, before Mr Baron Rolfe and a special jury. (Might have been this Baron Rolfe, but I'm not sure.) The first witness to be called was William Needham, who described what had happened in the Fox and Hounds that day. He knew both William Holiday, and the deceased John Bevans, very well, and had known them both for a long time. He'd never seen them argue before. Needham said that William Holyland had had "several jugs of ale", but still knew "what he was about". He testified that Wheatcroft and Adcock had started the disturbance, and that he had seen Wheatcroft, a powerful man, strike Adcock, but that he didn't know why Holyland had joined the fight.

Mr Macaulay, the defense for William Holyland, said that it was all very sad... but that there were different degrees of manslaughter. That the calamity would never have happened, if not for the bullying conduct of Wheatcroft. And that the final act would never have happened, if John Bevans had not interfered when William Holyland was defending old man Adcock. That the blow was not struck with ill-feeling, but from an impulse of self-defence. The defense did not deny that the blow had shortened John Bevans' life, but urged the judge and jury to consider the amount of drink that the deceased had also consumed, which predisposed the brain's blood vessels to rupture.

The judge summed up the evidence. The jury found William Holiday, related by marriage and friendship to his victim, John Bevans, and husband of Elizabeth Toon: guilty of manslaughter.

In passing sentence, the judge said that he agreed that there were some mitigating circumstances, but that he must meet the crime with a level of punishment that showed William Holyland that it was not conduct to be taken lightly... but William Holyland was sentenced to just four months imprisonment, with hard labour. Not very nice, but it could have been worse... he could have been deported to Australia and sentence to ten years, or more.

The Leicestershire Mercury remarked that the court "seemed to astonish the court".

But wait... there's more. There will be a (part four) to this story. It's not over yet. It gets worse in part four.

References: Leicestershire Mercury, Leicester Chronical, through http://findmypast.com and other sources.

The butchers of Syston: part one

Family history research is more than dates and ages and numbers of children and bloodlines; it's trying to find the stories, and always wondering: why did they do that? It's an enormous, multi-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, with many missing pieces, and some that have been forced into the wrong hole but look like they fit until you take a glance from another angle. Sometimes you follow the trail of your own blood; sometimes you find yourself researching the third-cousin of your great-great-great aunt's husband's brother-in-law. And sometimes you find information that makes you think, here's another story about a little too much time at the pub after a long hard week... until you find the part that breaks your heart. This story is one of those. I'll be writing it in installments. This is part one.

I'd researched the direct blood line of the Toons, years ago, and I'm still stuck at Christopher Toon, my eighth great-grandfather, who was born about 1600, probably in Rotherby, Leicestershire, or somewhere close to Rotherby. Not making any more progress with Christopher's ancestry, I decided to start filling in some of the gaps between myself and great-great-X-times-great Chris; and I found Elizabeth Toon, my great-great-aunt. Elizabeth was a daughter of James Toon (1767-1849) and Ann nee Possnett (1778-1834). Elizabeth was born in Syston, and was baptised there on 26th October, 1810, together with three of her older brothers, Richard (my great-great grandfather), William and Thomas.(Why all together? Why wait until Richard was nine years old?) Elizabeth was one of a family of thirteen children or more (James married twice: at least three children with Mary nee Sarson, ten with Ann nee Possnett, but still not quite as many as Richard would have).

Syston, at the time of this story, was a village, centered around the Green and the church of St Peter's and St Paul's. Syston's population was 1,264 in 1821, 1349 in 1831, and 1,421 in 1841.The 1851 census lists only 1,669 people. People had large families, and people were related, and people had done business with each other and grown up together all their lives. They might travel to Leicester, the big city, or to Loughborough or Melton Mowbray, the closest market towns, or they might visit nearby villages such as Barkby, Hoby, Rotherby, Queniborough... but it was a small community. And there were a heck of a lot of butchers for such a small community.

I digress. We didn't get to the butchers, yet.

When Elizabeth Toon was 22 years old, on 8th July, 1833, she married a young man called William Holyland. William was two years younger, aged 20. And yes... he was a butcher, or at least he was a butcher by 1841, when the census was taken and the Holyland family, now with children Doubleday and Harriett, lived on Cramp Street in Syston. I'll come back to that name. 

I'm not sure where Cramp Street was: somewhere near Brook Street and Chapel Street, but it has either disappeared, or has been renamed. There were at least six butchers and their families living on Cramp Street in 1841: John Adcock, William Hubbard, William Swain, Thomas Chamberlain and his younger brother, and William Holyland. In 1841, a butcher most likely did his own slaughtering... maybe in the back yard. It was probably a good idea that all the butchers lived on one street.

Let's go back to that name: Doubleday. That was the boy's name, and the only first name that was given for him on the 1841 census, when he was six years old. (His full name was Thomas William Doubleday Holyland). Doubleday was a family name, and it came from his paternal grandmother: it was her maiden name. "Doubleday Holyland" has a special ring to it: he must have been very proud of his name! Can you imagine? All the other kids were John, or Thomas, or William, or Joseph... and he was Doubleday. That could make or break a boy. But it wasn't Doubleday who was to get into trouble, at least not in the 1840's and 50's. It was his dad.

William Holyland came from a family of four or five children (there might have been more, but I haven't found them yet... and there might have been fewer, his two sisters might have been just one, who switched names, or someone didn't believe what they'd heard, and wrote Phyliss instead of Theodosia). William was the second-eldest, with his brother Thomas (born 1810) the oldest; then sisters Phyliss and Theodosia around 1815, and younger brother Charles, born in 1817. Sister Theodosia married Thomas Bevan, same age as herself. Thomas was a Syston lad; his dad, also Thomas, had been a coal merchant, working Syston Wharf, somewhere near Lewin Bridge, and running a pub too (this was either the Gate Hangs Well, close to Lewin Bridge, or the Hope and Anchor, right on the canal). After Thomas Bevan's dad died in 1831, his mother continued running the pub, and his brother John, born 1817, was the coal merchant. Remember that name. John Bevan (sometimes spelled Bevans) was a coal merchant.

Thomas Bevans? Yes. He was a butcher. That's at least seven butchers in Syston in the 1840s, for a population of about 1400 people. 

I imagine that butchery in those days was hard, physical work. You'd have to subdue and slaughter the cows and pigs and sheep, and then use knives and saws to prepare the meat for sale. You didn't have power implements, nor did you have the refrigeration. (Makes me think of the account of the pig, in Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure, which was written many years later in 1894.) I imagine that all of these Syston butchers were burly, strong men, and I have evidence to suggest that at least some of them spent much time in Syston's many public houses. Syston had a lot of public houses: maybe one for every 100 or so members of the population.

But that story is for another day. For now, remember these names: Holyland, Bevan, Adcock. And Wheatcroft, whose first name is a mystery, as is his hometown, and whether or not he was a butcher. But Wheatcroft was in Syston, in a pub, with Holyland, Bevan, and an elderly man called Adcock, one fateful day in 1847.

Part two of this story can be found here.