In the latter half of the eighteenth century it is not difficult to find forms of punishment that can never be squared with the civilised veneer of what has always been called the Age of Reason. In 1757 a woman was burned to death in York for adultery; at Tyburn another woman was burned for coining in 1789. Most of the many hangings that took place were for theft; by a 1736 law, servants stealing from masters could be hanged. In Scotland, in 1697, there had even been an execution for blasphemy.
It is hard to imagine the vulnerability of country people in the eighteenth century; there was no police force, merely village constables. Private law suits were the only course of action, and if a crime was committed against you, your next step was to find a constable and hopefully some witnesses as well.
In North Lincolnshire at this time, Scunthorpe was a tiny dot, along with other villages in the area. Luckily for most inhabitants of the area then, most criminals were inefficient and crime was mostly opportunist. There were highwaymen and footpads, of course. Dick Turpin himself was passing through Axholme to the Goole area around 1730. His favourite northern public house, the Dragon at Welton, is not too far north. But serious crime against the person was not common. For instance, in the 1770s, there were only six cases of murder at Lincoln Assizes, and only one resulted in an execution. In the same decade there were only eight robberies brought to court, and three cases of rape.
Historians have talked about the ‘high level of personal violence’ at this time, and the literature of the period certainly supports this. The novels of Daniel Defoe and Henry Fielding testify to the generally tough and aggressive society of rural England up to the middle of the century. In the area between Epworth and Barton, there were plenty of violent and nasty assaults, in keeping with this trend. A typical crime of that era, repulsive to the modern reader, is the story of one William Paddison of Kirton Lindsey, who ‘mayhemmed his wife’ – that is, he broke her leg in a brutal and vicious way, angling it over a doorway and stamping on it. He was apparently set on breaking her other leg but neighbours intervened. There was a great deal of savage rage and assault in the family. One of the most terrible has to be the Flixborough man, called Ellis, who attacked his wife Sarah in a way that is beyond all reason. He actually threatened her life on several occasions, but one day set fire to the bed in which Sarah and their child were sleeping. He lit a dry furze bush under them. People reported that shortly before he had stalked her with a pitchfork, threatening to kill her.
In Willoughton near Kirton, we have a typical case of a crime against another vulnerable group – servants. A shepherd and farmer there were brought to court by his servant, Mary Baker. He had kicked and beaten her, punched her face and thrown her against a wall. It was so severe that she was in extreme pain for a week.