So now it is over. Thank you to those who have been interested enough to read it. I cannot find out (although I'm sure I could if I went to Chester and researched it) when the men were finally executed.
The Verdict
Scene: Same as before.
Time: Ten minutes later.
Usher: The jury have reached a verdict.
Judge: Already? It has only been less than ten minutes. Well tell us, how do you find the defendants, guilty or not guilty?
Foreman of the Jury: Guilty, My Lord for both James Garside and Joseph Mosley.
Judge: Then gentleman you are of opinion that Garside inflicted the mortal wound?
Foreman: Why, my lord, I don’t know how we can say that.
Judge: If you disbelieve the accomplice as to so material a fact as that, gentlemen, you had been reconsider it.
(So the jury quickly confer together again. The judge and other members of the court are looking impatiently at them.)
Foreman: My lord, the question appears to very intricate that we beg your lordship’s leave to adjourn.
Judge: Very well, but I am instructing the bailiff to keep you without meat, drink or fire except candle, and you are to be conducted to the grand jury room where you can consider this.
Scene 5 - the same but an hour later.
Judge: Well, jury have you reached a decision to this very intricate question I posed for you?
Foreman: Yes, we have my Lord.
Judge: And what is it?
Foreman: We think that Mr. James Garside fired the gun, my lord.
Judge: Will the defendants stand. (They do so). I am perfect satisfied with the opinion which the jury expressed of your guilt, and that you, James Garside, shot him in a single instant, upon the spot, without giving him a moment’s time to reflect and endeavour to make his peace with his God. And you committed this atrocious crime from the basest of all possible of human motives - from the love of gain.
For you therefore, either of you, there cannot be in this life, the slightest hope.
I should be deserting my duty and unfit for the situation I hold, if I were to tell you to expect mercy on this side of the grave. There is not a human being who can feel the slightest commiseration for you.
I must tell you that you have but a few hours to live. In a very short time - in forty-eight hours, you must be hurried into eternity; and all I can do is to beseech you to pass that short interval in humble and earnest endeavors to make your peace with God for that dreadful crime, and many others which you must have committed before you could have been brought to commit this - and to do so by entreating him to extend his mercy to you, not through your merit, but through your Saviour and Redeemer.
No one dare hold out the expectation to you that your prayers well be granted; but no one dare say that even at this late hour, the gates of mercy are shut against you.
All I can do is to exhort you to repent, and with the spiritual assistance you have, to endeavour to procure pardon for your dreadful and enormous crime. I have told you that you cannot expect mercy here, and therefore I precede to pass the dreadful sentence of the law, and that is - that you James Garside and you Joseph Mosley -be taken from hence to the prison whence you came, and that you be taken from thence on Friday next to a place of execution, and that you be there respectively hanged up by the neck till your bodies be dead, and that your bodies be then taken down and buried within the precinct of the said prison, or such other prison as you maybe confined in after this your sentence, according to the form of the statue then made and provided and the Lord have mercy on your most miserable souls.
(The prisoners sink back into the arms of the officers behind them, and they are removed from the bar.)
Epilogue
I have written up this play as if the action took place over several days. In fact, it all happened in a twelve hour period on the one day, finishing at ten minutes past eleven o’clock.
The story didn’t end on that Friday as the judge had predicted however. The Manchester Guardian reports the following:
Chester, Friday noon
Very considerable excitement prevails in this city today, in consequence of the uncertainly as to the parties bound to see execution done on the men convicted of the murder of Mr. Ashton, and the consequent granting of a reprieve for ten days by Mr. Baron Parke.
Heretofore criminals condemned to death have been handed over by the sheriff of the county to the sheriffs of the city, and by them executed in front of the city gaol; but an act of parliament has recently passed taking away the palatinate jurisdiction in the county; and the city sheriffs now contend that they are by that act of parliament exonerated from the obligation of seeing execution done on the criminals; and that the obligation now attaches to the sheriff of the county, who by the common law, is bound to take care that the sentence is carried into effect.
We understand, that, as soon as the trial was concluded, the city sheriffs sent a formal notice to the judge that they would refuse to obey any order made upon them to execute the prisoners.
The sheriff of the county at the same time declared, as we understand, that he would risk the consequences of a criminal information rather than carry the sentence of the law into effect.
The judge, Mr. Baron Parke, we believe, concurred in the opinion of the city sheriffs; but as he had no means of compelling the sheriff of the county to discharge his duty, he had no course left but that of respiting the prisoners (which is case of murder he is empowered to do by a recent act of parliament) until the dispute can be in some way decided.
His lordship therefore granted a respite for ten days; but we do not see how a decision of any competent court can be procured in that time, as the judges are all on circuit; and unless the city or the county authorities should give way or some promise can be hit upon, for continuing the execution so as to produce the claims of neither, the respite will provably have to be extended too a more distant period.
In the mean time, we believe the prisoners both assert their innocence and of course, have made no further disclosures. On being told that Schofield the man alleged to have paid the wages of the murder was in custody, they both said that he knew nothing about it. It is understood that William Mosley is gone or going over to Stockport to Attend the examination of Schofield.
BACKGROUND OF THE MURDER
Living and working conditions were certainly no worse in Hyde than in most of the cotton towns. The Ashtons who became the town's largest employers provided good facilities for their workers. Hyde played its part in the social unrest which was such a feature of the early 19th century. A seventeen year old Hyde youth was among those killed at the famous Peterloo Massacre at St. Peter's Field, Manchester in 1819.
The murder of the young mill owner Thomas Ashton in 1831 by men in the pay of the Unions who were angry at their exclusion from Ashton's mills became national news.
The town was a stronghold of the Chartist Movement which, from 1837-1848, posed a severe threat to public order with its demand for massive political reforms.
The Ashtons were among the earliest cotton pioneers in Hyde. From 1800 they worked as a family business with mills at Gerrards Wood and Wilson Brook at Godley. Six brothers were involved in the business which, as well as coal and cotton, also established the calico printing works at Newton Bank.
In 1823 the brothers separated, Samuel and Thomas taking the major shares; the former establishing himself at Apethorn Mill and soon after building Woodley Mill, while Thomas ran the factory at the Hollow. The Ashtons were particularly noted for running mills that did both spinning and weaving, a successful practice when most mills concentrated on one process.
Thomas Ashton Jnr. (presumably the son of the murdered man) was born in 1808 and ran his father's business with his elder brother from 1845. He continued his father's tradition of providing good conditions for the workers. The estate at Flowery Field was a testament to the Ashtons' work and they were amongst the first employers to provide day schools for their child workers.
Thomas Ashton Jnr. was one of the most prominent Liberals in the North West but he always refused to stand for Parliament. It was, however, his son, the future Lord Ashton, who became the town's first MP in 1885. Thomas Ashton Jnr. earned particular note for his conduct during the Cotton Famine of 1861-5, keeping his mills running despite the high cost of cotton, and even managing to build a new mill at Throstle Bank, thus saving many of his employees from unemployment.
Thomas Middleton talked of Ashton's 'high sense of public duty', and he certainly was active in numerous causes. He was President of the Mechanics Institute for five years, the founder of Hyde Sick Kitchen and a great promoter of local education.
It was no surprise that Ashton became Hyde's first Mayor on its incorporation as a borough in 1881. Two years later he laid the foundation stone for the impressive new Town Hall which opened in 1885. Thomas Ashton died in 1898, by which time his business employed thousands of people in three extremely modern mills. Of all the Hyde cotton firms the Ashton Brothers & Co Ltd have survived the longest. Not until 1968 were the mills taken over by Courtaulds.
References:
Manchester Guardian on line, Guardian digital archive
Tameside.gov.uk
Ancestry.co.uk
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