This weeks case is that of highway robbery which took place in Sheffield Park. When the two guilty men were found and punished, no one expected the grisly end they would experience at the hands of so called ‘friends.’. It is hard to reconcile that this actually happened in a place like Sheffield.
On the night of Tuesday 5 October 1830 a man called Henry Youle from Handsworth was on his way home through Sheffield Park when he passed the toll bar at Intake. It was around 8 pm when he saw what he presumed to be a drunk lying on the ground, and was about to pass him when he heard the man say ‘don’t leave me.’ Youle, stopped and got closer and saw that he was not a drunk, but was bleeding badly and had some terrible injuries to his head and face. Youle went over and managed to get him into a sitting position. The man told him that he had been assaulted by three men. He gave his name as Jonathon Habershaw and said that earlier that night, around 5.30 pm he had gone to Sheffield and had been returning home.
Suddenly he heard three men coming up behind him. They were about to pass him when he felt a terrible blow to the back of his head and was felled to his knees. The injured man told his rescuer that as he lay prone on the ground, he received several more heavy blows which soon left him unconscious. When he finally recovered his senses, he could not get up. Youle willingly help the badly injured man to his feet and the two of them managed to get Habershaw to his home. Once there, he searched his pockets and found that his silver watch as well as some money was missing from his pockets.
A neighbour called Joseph Hunter went to fetch a local surgeon Mr James Ray and as he went along the same footpath in which his neighbour had been injured, he came upon a large pool of blood. A large hedge stick also lay on the ground which he picked up and he placed it over the hedge with the intention of collecting it on his way back. Hunter then alerted Mr Ray who stated that he would soon be at Mr Habershaw’s house and the neighbour returned back to his house, picking up the hedge stake as he did. Meanwhile back at Habershaw’s house, Constable Wilde had been called and he took details of the stolen items which the injured man described. The injured man said that the robbers had taken a watch with a chain seal attached, two sets of keys and £1.6s 10d in change.
When Hunter returned with the hedge stick they examined it by candlelight and saw that the end was all bloody. Constable Wilde took the weapon away with him as evidence. The next day he heard a report that two men had been seen offering a silver watch and seal for sale. They were both aged nineteen and were called Charles Turner and James Twibel. The officer was told that he would find them at the Green Man public house in Sheffield Park. Constable Wilde went immediately to the public house and asked the men where they had got the watch from. Turner immediately said that he had bought it from a travelling man at the Rotherham Races, which had been held in September.
The constable searched the two prisoners and although Twibel had nothing in his possession, Turner had a silver watch, a seal and two sets of keys. The two men were quickly arrested and charged with being concerned in the robbery. Consequently they were brought before the magistrates on Friday 8 October. The room was crowded to excess as witnesses and curiosity seeker gathered to hear details of the case. Constable Wilde told the bench that the injured man was the underground steward at the Deep Pit Colliery at Manor Fields Park. The two men were charged with ‘assaulting him in a manner so ferocious as to endanger his life.’ Wilde produced some clothing which he held up to show the large amount of blood which the victim had sustained.
He also showed the bench the heavy hedge stick which had been found near the pool of blood and was presumed to be the weapon used in the attack. The surgeon Mr Ray stated to the court that he had visited the injured man, who he could see was in a very dangerous condition. He said that he had received several violent contused wounds on his head and face which had been inflicted and had left his face very swollen and bruised. The poor man could barely see as his eyes were so swollen that he could not open them. The surgeon admitted that even three days later, his patient was still not out of danger from his injuries.
Constable Wilde showed the surgeon the hedge stick used in the attack which was still covered in the victims blood. Mr Ray stated that it was in all probability the same weapon which had been used by the robbers in the attack. Mrs Habershaw also gave evidence and identified the stolen watch as one that had previously been owned by her husband. Other witnesses gave evidence of seeing the prisoners near the place where the attack had been carried out. The two prisoners were then remanded in custody until Saturday 16 October 1830. By the time they were brought into court they had been joined by a third man, called George Sidney Priestley aged 18.
It seems that the prisoner Charles Turner had been taken to the bedside of Jonathan Habershaw for the purpose of identification. The injured man readily confirmed that the prisoner was one of the men who had attacked him. At this point, Turner told the constable whose custody he was in, that he wanted ‘to tell him all about it.’ He then proceeded to make a statement blaming James Twibel for hitting the man with a piece of iron in such a savage manner. Turner said that on the day of the robbery, he had been with Priestley and Twibel for most of the day. Later that evening they had got to a place called Manor Lane, when they saw Mr Habershaw approaching.
His two companions had some grudge against the underground steward and Turner muttered something to the effect that he would like to see the man ‘felled like a great sheep.’ Turner confessed that he pulled up a large hedge stake and hit the man on his head so hard that he was knocked to the ground. Then Priestly held him down whilst Twibel attacked him several more time with a weapon, which he described as the piece of iron. Turner said that he wanted to leave at that point, but the other two prisoners would not let him go. He stated clearly that there had no intention of robbing the man to begin with, but just because his two friends had held some grudge against him.
Turner then told the court that afterwards he became sick every time he thought of being involved in the vicious attack. He said that it had affected him so much that he took to his bed. His father had gone to his bedside and asked him what was the matter, and he had confessed it all to his father. He said that he had decided to confess after having a conversation in the cells of the Town Hall with Constable Wilde’s assistant, a man called Benjamin Jackson. He had informed the prisoner that he could redeem himself by turning Kings Evidence against the other two men, and stating that after all it had been Twibel who had delivered the first blow.
The prisoner Twibel was also questioned, but he still maintained that he ‘knew nothing at all about it.’ After hearing all the evidence, the magistrates ordered that the prisoners be sent to take their trial at the next York Assizes. Charles Turner and James Twibell appeared before the judge Mr Justice Parke on Monday 21 March 1831. However it would seem that the third prisoner George Sidney Priestly was going to be tried separately. Mr Emsley was the prosecution and he gave the jury the details of the case. He said that Mr Habershaw’s injuries were so severe that he had been confined to bed for a fortnight, and had been unable to leave his house for three weeks.
Mr James Ray gave the medical evidence and when shown a piece of iron rail which had been found on the prisoner Twibel, he confirmed that it might well have been used as the weapon with which he had attacked the injured man. Three other witnesses gave evidence that all the prisoners had been seen in the vicinity of the attack on the night in question. Then Priestly was brought before the judge to give his evidence. Despite the fact that he had already admitted his part in the robbery, he now denied everything. Mr Justice Parkes ordered that he would be charged with being involved himself and he was removed from the court by constables.
The two remaining prisoners now said nothing in their own defence before the judge summed up for the jury. The remainder of the trial was captured vividly by a reporter of the Sheffield Independent dated Saturday 26 March 1831.
The report read:
‘His Lordship immediately put on the black cap, and after an address, in which he precluded all hopes of mercy being extended to them, and implored them by penitence and prayer, during the short period that would be allotted to then in this world, to endeavour to make their peace with their offended God, he then proceeded to pass the awful sentence of death in the usual terms. During the judge’s address, the prisoners wept aloud and cried out for mercy.’
George Sidney Priestly was brought back before the judge on Friday 1 April 1831 charged with cruelly assaulting Jonathan Habershaw, robbing him of his watch and some silver. Once again Mr Emsley acted for the prosecution and he read out the previous statement made by the prisoner confirming that he had witnessed Turner and Twibell beating the victim and robbing him. Several witnesses were brought before the jury stating once again that he had been seen near the spot at the time when the attack had been carried out. However none of them could swear positively that it was the man in the dock they saw that night, owing to the darkness of the night.
When Priestly was asked if he had anything to say in his own defence, he stated that the statement he had made at the magistrates court was true. However when he appeared at the Assizes before the judge he had retracted his statement due to pressure from the other two prisoners. They had sworn to take his life if he gave evidence against them. There was also another friend of theirs in the cells who was a witness called Butcher and he added his threats to the two prisoners. The man Butcher was recalled, but he denied threatening the prisoner in any way. Due to the lack of identification the jury brought in a verdict of ‘not guilty’ and Priestly was discharged.
However the gruesome fate of his two compatriots did not end quite so well. On Saturday 13 April 1831 Charles Turner and James Twibell were executed at York according to the justice of the time. As was usual their bodies were left hanging for a full hour to make sure that life was extinct before they were taken down. Usually the remains would have been handed over to surgeons for dissection, but if, as in this case, they had been applications from relatives or friends for burial, their bodies were handed over to them. However in the case of Charles Turner and James Twibel, their friends had other ideas.
The Sheffield Independent dated Saturday 30 April 1831 simply reported that:
‘We regret to state that on Monday and Tuesday the friends of these unhappy youths made a public exhibition of their bodies in Sheffield. The price of admission to the room where the bodies were exposed, varied according to the means of the applicant.’
Thankfully by the following day the demands of the more respectable citizens of Sheffield were taken notice of, and the remains of the two men were finally buried in the Old Church Yard in the town. However due to the great publicity given to the case, large groups of curious people still gathered at the grave yard, just to watch the internment of the bodies of the two hanged felons.