Falsehood and Truth
Soon as the forward girl is grown
To sixteen years of age,
Our daughter is no more our own,
A lover’s all her rage.
Air from Gretna Green, a musical farce, Charles Stuart (1783)
It was late afternoon when Casberd started to lay out the defence case. The courtroom was airless and hot, and the participants and observers uncomfortable in their hard seats, but they knew the best was yet to come. What improprieties would the Bowditches allege against genteel Miss Glenn? They were rumoured to be shocking. Would the Bowditches’ witnesses be credible? Would they even able to stand upright in the witness box? Some of them had been seen drinking in pubs in the town. And what of the greasy-faced solicitor, Oxenham, and the mysterious document? How would he defend himself? Was he respectable? Was he telling the truth?
Casberd started by telling the court of the defendants’ hitherto spotless characters but he seemed less than confident about the case he had taken on. ‘I am not so blind and so void of understanding as not to see and feel that the case which has been made out is most undoubtedly a strong case…. But gentlemen, you have heard only one side… I have a body of evidence to adduce on the part of the defendants, which, if I am not misinstructed – and I have no reason to suppose that any misinformation has been given to me upon the subject – testimony, I say, which will give to this case a very different character and complexion from that which it at present wears.’ He expressed surprise that the case was being heard in Dorset. Why were the defendants not tried in Somerset, where ‘the body of the charge took place’?
The case, continued Casberd, essentially consisted of one person’s word against others’, but he found some aspects of the prosecution’s story ‘perfectly unaccountable’. Maria had had ample opportunity to tell her aunt and uncle (‘the friend of her bosom, her patron and guardian’) about the threats to her – six whole days between 15 September, when Mrs Mulraine and Betsey Bowditch called on Maria in North Town, and the night of 21 September, when she was taken away. The people making these alleged threats were ‘in a very inferior situation in life to herself’ so she really would have had no cause to take them seriously or do as they told her.
As for the abduction itself, it was not credible that she could have been taken forcibly under such circumstances. Maria shared her bedroom with two of her cousins and this room was next to the room where her uncle and aunt slept. Her accusation against Mr Oxenham, a respectable solicitor whose aim was to succeed Mr Kinglake, was likewise unbelievable.
Casberd said he would bring witnesses of ‘unquestionable veracity’ who would swear to Oxenham’s presence elsewhere at the time he was alleged to be in William Bowditch’s house. He would also call on the Reverend George Henry Templer, Thomas Paul’s nephew, ‘a person of great respectability in life,’ who would swear that Maria ate heartily while at Thornford and was in good spirits on the night he saw her, in fact, ‘rather better spirits than the rest’. Maria’s disappearance was not a case of ‘coercion,’ he said, but rather of ‘election,’ much like any other case of elopement.
He reminded the court that a disparity in circumstances of life was not a legal barrier to marriage and that although Maria was said to have an inheritance, that was all she had – she did not possess an independent fortune. If Maria was cut off without a shilling she would not have been a very good marriage prospect anyway.
John Oxenham was called. He said he had not met Maria before she came to his office with Henry James Leigh. He claimed to know nothing of her before he read the paragraph about the elopement in the Taunton Courier and said he was busy in the office at Mary Street on the morning of Saturday, 20 September, when she alleged he made her sign the document. From about nine o’clock, he was, he said, with his client Mr Weaver and later with Mr Henry Foy, Mr Slade and ‘I think’ Mr Uttermere. ‘I never produced any deed, paper or writing to Miss Glenn antecedent to the time she came to the office with Mr Henry Leigh, that I swear most positively.’
Pell cross-examined him about the letters he presented to Maria and Leigh in his office. Oxenham claimed that he had only shown them in response to a proposal from Mr Leigh that the prosecution would be abandoned if it could be proved that the story Maria told was not correct. This was spin. Oxenham had been challenged to produce the documents that Tuckett, Maria and Leigh knew he had in his possession and that they were confident were forgeries.
‘You are very properly the solicitor of some of the defendants?’ asked Pell.
‘They have come to me upon some occasions,’ replied Oxenham.
‘But you are now concerned for these defendants?’
‘When the indictment was preferred I was not, but to the best of my recollection I have not seen Mr Paul. Mrs Bowditch came to me.’
‘However, you are now solicitor for them all?’
‘For all that have appeared.’
Oxenham was vague on the details of the letters. Asked who gave them to him, he replied that Mrs Bowditch had done so ‘but I cannot exactly say. They were brought to me in the course of business. I speak to the best of my recollection.’ Nor could he say when she had brought them to him: ‘It was soon after Miss Glenn went away… I cannot say how long,’ nor if she brought them both at the same time. He admitted that he knew William Bowditch’s house. It was in a court at the head of East Street, possibly a quarter of a mile from his office. He thought it might take between eighteen and twenty minutes to walk (it would have taken five or ten). He had known Mrs Bowditch for many years, he said.
‘Was she your client at the time?’
‘She has been at my office several times.’
Pell lost patience. ‘I have been disposed, Mr Oxenham, to treat you with the greatest respect. You have been asked the plainest question possible on the part of an attorney. Was she a client of yours?’
‘I never considered her as a client of mine. She has been at the office, I believe about writings,74 but she was never a client until I was employed about this business.’
He was vague about the exact date, after the abduction, that the Bowditches came to him for professional advice ‘It may have been three weeks or a month… all I recollect is that it was shortly after [Mr Tuckett had threatened a prosecution]’. He was reminded that he was on oath.
Although he knew Tuckett, he denied knowing that he had a niece living with him. Then he was asked when he knew for the first time that James Bowditch intended to marry.
‘I believe on Saturday, the 20th of September it was that William Bowditch called at Mr Kinglake’s office. Here, my Lord,’ he said, addressing the judge, ‘I beg leave to observe that he called upon me to advise him, and I considered it a confidential communication, but if your Lordship thinks I ought to disclose it, I will.’ After all the evasiveness of his evidence – he used the phrase ‘to the best of my recollection’ four times; ‘I cannot exactly/positively say’ eleven times and ‘it is impossible for me to answer’ three times; and there were liberal sprinklings of ‘I think,’ ‘I dare say,’ ‘might have been,’ and ‘I don’t remember’ – Oxenham was at last offering material information.
Justice Park, however, saw it differently, and said: ‘An attorney has no right to disclose the secrets of his client.’
Pell objected. ‘The witness may surely be allowed to answer that question, or so much of it as relates to whether William Bowditch did call upon him upon business respecting the marriage of his brother or some of the family.’
Park, however, was intransigent. ‘A professional gentleman is not at liberty to state further.’
Oxenham told the court that William had come to him on Saturday evening between eight and nine o’clock, about thirty hours before the abduction, but offered no further details. Questioned about the letters, he said he had understood that when Maria had handed back the first letter and said ‘she might have written it except the direction [address]’ it was an admission that she had written it. The letters were then put in as evidence. The first, miss-spelt and ungrammatical, was accepted by the defence, who were keen to keep out the other, which purported to be a coded message to Mrs Mulraine sent on the day of the abduction and which even they did not claim was in Maria’s handwriting. Park wanted them both in because they were brought to Oxenham by Mrs Bowditch. But even he, it appears, swallowed the defence’s claim that ‘she [Maria] expressly asserts that one is not [her handwriting], but does not deny the other,’ although this is not what she had done at all.
After Oxenham, the defence called a string of witnesses ready to swear to seeing Maria in compromising situations with James Bowditch. Contrary to Casberd’s assurances to the jury that some of them had no connection whatsoever to the Bowditch family, this turned out to be true for only one of them.
First was James Bowditch’s friend and neighbour Charles Puddy, who swore that he often saw Maria walking with James Bowditch.
‘Did he [Bowditch] keep at a respectful distance, or did he appear to be familiar with her?’ asked the defence barrister Henry Jeremy.
‘They seemed a little in the sweethearting line.’
He had seen them in the farmyard and Maria had asked Puddy to help her up on the wheat mow while James was pitching to it. He had never seen Bowditch kiss Maria but he had noticed a ‘kindness’ between them, he said, starting two weeks after she first came to Holway, and he had teased Bowditch about it. Once, he said, Maria had asked him to catch the pony for her because James was sulking and would not do it. Puddy claimed that Maria had once borrowed his wife’s saddle in order to ride to Gotton75 with James. He also told the court that he had heard Maria ask James to go up to her bedroom to shut a window that was stuck and that Maria had walked over to Puddy’s own house with one of the Bowditch sisters to see a print of an eloping couple. On the day of the christening of Mrs Mulraine’s child, he insisted he had seen her in Taunton. She was with James Bowditch and she later told him that she had stood godmother to the little girl.
Samuel Mansfield, a labourer at Holway Farm, said he had seen Maria and James several times ‘walking arm in arm very loving together’ in the fields on the farm, in the garden and in the summer house, and he had seen them kiss in the hay wagon. In the kitchen at Holway, he said, Maria had sat on Bowditch’s knee.
Pell cross-examined.
‘Are you one of Mrs Bowditch’s family?’
‘I am a labouring man there.’
‘You only work at Mrs Bowditch’s then?’
‘Yes.’
‘You know Miss Glenn very well?’
‘Yes.’
‘Now, Sir, turn your head round to the right. Now I ask you this question. Is that the young lady you have been describing, by whom all these things have been done?’
Mansfield stared at Maria but made no reply.
No answer.
‘Was she the lady who sat down on Mr James Bowditch’s knee in your presence?’ asked the judge.
‘Not in my presence.’
‘Then, Mr Mansfield,’ said Pell, ‘did you see her set upon James Bowditch’s knee?’
‘Not in my presence. I was walking through the passage.’
‘Still, it was in your presence, for you saw it?’ said the judge.
‘Yes, my Lord.’
‘You know who the young lady was?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sure of it?’
‘Yes. Miss Glenn.’
The judge pointed to Maria. ‘Was it that young lady?’
‘I don’t think that was the lady.’
Here the court erupted and proceedings were halted for a few minutes.
‘Brother Pell,’ said the judge. ‘This cannot be endured.’
‘It is really inexcusable, my Lord. I am ready to jump out of court myself.’
Anne and William Warren, who lived opposite the Tucketts in North Town and were well placed to see people coming and going to French Weir Fields, were just as weak. They had family connections with the Bowditches76 and Anne was, according to Tuckett, a particular friend of his former servant Jane Marke, who was one of the defendants. Anne said that she had seen Maria and James Bowditch together one evening at the beginning of September. She described seeing Mary Ann Whitby come out of the Tucketts’ house to speak to Bowditch and then Maria doing the same. Maria nodded her head towards French Weir Fields, indicating that she would meet him there. James went on and Maria went up the steps to speak briefly to Mary Ann and then ran to catch him up. When she reached him, she looked back towards the house before taking hold of James’s arm. Maria was wearing a light-coloured shawl and a straw bonnet. Anne admitted that while she thought Maria’s behaviour very improper she had not mentioned it to Mr or Mrs Tuckett. She had been too busy. She did, however, talk about it with her neighbour Mrs Northam, who saw it all too.
Her husband William, a bricklayer, had a similar tale. He had seen Maria and James on two occasions talking together in the evening in the middle of September. They were standing each one side of a little thorn hedge. Pell, scenting prey, decided to have some fun.
‘Why don’t you stand up, my friend?’
‘I do.’
‘Have you been dining?’
Warren misunderstood the question. ‘Not today.’
‘Have you been drinking with somebody?’
‘I cannot say that I have not had a pint today.’
‘Only one pint?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘Where did you drink that pint?’
‘At some public house in the town.’
‘Have you been in any more public houses than one?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘How many?’
‘One.’
‘You mean one more than one?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is that two?’
‘Two, Sir.’
Warren had been drinking with ‘one of the businesses who is got outside,’ Samuel Poole, who was due to appear next. He and Poole had been joined by two other witnesses, John Burroughs and Joseph Broom (another witness), and with one of the defendants, William Bowditch.
Poole, a mason, told a very similar story to Warren. He had seen Bowditch walking towards French Weir Fields and Maria running after him ‘as fast as she could run’ but he had also seen them walking around town arm in arm, between six and seven o’clock in the evening.
John Burroughs’ story was almost exactly the same. He had seen James Bowditch approaching the Tucketts’ house, speak to Mary Ann Whitby, who went into the house. Then Maria emerged and the couple walked off arm in arm towards French Weir Fields. Burroughs said Maria was wearing a white gown but no shawl or bonnet (inappropriate and improper dress for a young lady, and unusual in a young woman who normally insisted on wearing a bonnet that hid her face.) He gave a precise date. It was the Thursday before Maria ‘went off’. Justice Park wrote in the margin of his notes: ‘This Thursday was 18th and if the Rev Mr Cooper speak true in the afternoon of that Thursday and on Friday morning the 19th at 8 o’clock J. and W. Bowditch were with him 34 miles from Taunton to procure a licence.77 The witness was mistaken or lying.’
Mary Priest, who was married to Mrs Mulraine’s cousin,78 said that Maria would sometimes call at her house enquiring for Mrs Mulraine; on one occasion Maria arrived with James; and on another Maria came looking for James and asked Mrs Priest to go to William Bowditch’s to fetch him. Then they went out walking, arm in arm. Mary Priest said she had been at the christening of Mrs Mulraine’s child, where she saw Betsey Bowditch and Maria stand godmothers, while James Bowditch had been godfather. Afterwards she had gone to Holway for a celebratory dinner with the Bowditches, Maria, Gertrude and Anna Eliza Tuckett. Pell for the prosecution warned her to be careful. He asked her to repeat her claim that Maria had been at the christening and had stood godmother to the child, and told her that the clerk who officiated at the christening would be giving evidence later.
James Scarlett, the journalist married to Mary Bowditch, swore that Maria had been on the excursion to Gotton (the outing referred to by Charles Puddy). ‘How did you go?’ asked Stephen Gaselee. ‘We walked,’ said Scarlett, in direct contradiction of Puddy’s earlier testimony that the party had ridden over and that Maria had borrowed a saddle from his wife expressly to do so.
Joseph Broom, a labourer, said he saw Maria at the entrance to the pump house at Holway, where she had told him that she was to be married to James Bowditch. One day in August, he said, Maria went with Bowditch towards St Mary Magdalene and returned two hours later. Joking, he said to her, ‘Miss, is the knot tied?’ and she, also in jest, responded: ‘Aye, and so tied that thank God it cannot be untied.’ She regularly called James Bowditch into the house, he said, and he had seen her put her arm around his neck.
Next it was the turn of Thomas Paul’s nephew the Reverend George Henry Templer, the clergyman and magistrate who had shared a dinner table with Maria at Thornford.
Mr Jeremy, for the defence, asked him about Maria’s demeanour during the meal. Did she display gaiety or sadness?
‘With respect to sadness there was not the least, but with respect to the other word, I beg to say something,’ he said. ‘With respect to the word gaiety, there was an observation made by me jocosely with respect to the cheese. It was said by me to Mr Paul, and said jocosely to him, “I believe your ribbons have been taken out of this cheese.” There was a jocose answer returned to me, and the lady certainly did smile on that occasion.’ After this, the ladies left the table.
‘Did she [Maria] eat an ordinary dinner?’
‘I beg to be particular here, because I have heard a great deal upon the subject. The dinner was roast beef, and I helped the lady myself. She ate what was put on her plate, except, I believe, the skin and fat which attaches to roast beef.’ He offered to get his servant to corroborate this, but Pell stood up and objected on the grounds that one witness could not speak for another. There were seven more defence witnesses to hear and then the prosecution’s answering witnesses. Judge Park was clearly feeling the strain.
He berated the barristers. ‘It is very irregular, and equally so for you all to jump up and do nothing. You both jump up just as I was going to ask a question. It is improper to refer to what another person is to give in evidence, but everybody need not jump up about it.’
Maria ate the vegetables, a boiled apple pudding and the cheese, said Mr Templer.
‘Did she eat part of the pudding or of the vegetables?’
Park reprimanded Jeremy again for asking leading questions.
Templer, when asked what Maria ate, said, ‘I will repeat as nearly as I can recollect what she ate: she ate of the roasted beef and some of the apple pudding.’
Pell wanted to know about the beef that Mr Paul said he had eaten earlier in the day, which had ruined his appetite. He asked Templer if he remembered saying, ‘I should think this young lady has done something of the same kind.’
‘I made some observation, turning round to the lady, but I wish to observe that the lady did not sit next to me.’
Pell was becoming exasperated. ‘That is a plain question put to you by a plain man and capable of a plain answer. I put it to you as a gentleman, whether or not in the course of this conversation about the beef steaks and speaking of Miss Glenn, who is now before you, you said, “I should think this young lady had done so too?”’
Templer replied: ‘I turned to the young lady, and I believe I said, “Ladies, you have taken a luncheon too.”’ Pell reminded Templer that this was not what he had told Tuckett and his friend Doctor Thompson when they called on him at his home. On that occasion, he had told them that he could not tell whether Maria had eaten her beef dinner or not.
‘Upon my honour …’
Templer was reminded that he was there on oath. It was not a matter of honour.
‘I do not believe I did say so.’
This was not an answer to the question. Pell wanted a straight yes or no, but Templer persisted in hedging. ‘I stand here wishing to speak the truth, and I say again, I do not believe I did say so.’ Park intervened. ‘Mr Templer, you must answer the question.’
‘Upon my word, I doubt if that question was put to me in the conversation at my house, but I think that someone asked me if she had eat a hearty dinner.’
‘What do you mean by a hearty dinner?’ asked the judge.
‘Certainly a hearty dinner was speaking largely, and I said, no, when I helped her, I did not help her largely.’
‘Mr Templer, am I to have an answer one way or the other to the question I have put? Will you swear that you did not say to Mr Tuckett in the presence of Doctor Thompson that you could not tell whether she had eat her dinner or not?’
‘I do not recollect everything that passed in my house. I cannot say I did not say it, but I do not believe that I did.’
Templer was dismissed and his servant, Edward Jones, sworn in. In the weeks that followed Maria’s rescue, Jones had claimed that Maria had been seen by others in the kitchen at Thornford sitting on James Bowditch’s knee, kissing him with her arms around his neck while they played dominoes. Now, in court, he was asked by Casberd about what he had seen with his own eyes. He had observed exactly what Maria ate for dinner (even though he had not sat at the table with her). It was precisely as Templer had said. ‘Master helped her to the roast beef, and she ate it all, except a little bit of the skin of the meat which was left. Master also helped her to the apple pudding, and she ate that.’ She was in good spirits, he observed, and after dinner she went to the kitchen with James Bowditch, where they played dominoes and she put her arms around his neck. The next morning Maria and James and William Bowditch, along with Juliana and Thomas Paul and Susan Bowditch, had breakfasted together in the kitchen.
‘Did you hear James Bowditch say anything?’
‘Not a word.’
‘Did Miss Glenn say anything?’
‘I heard her say something about that she had learned to make butter, and should learn to make cheese, as she had an idea about it.’
Stephen Gaselee for the prosecution challenged Jones. ‘This is not the story you told Mr Tuckett, is it? Did you not earlier tell Mr Tuckett that you paid little attention to the dinner guests and that you had been told Miss Glenn was Bowditch’s sister?’
He denied it.