The argument started between two brothers, James and Dennis Napper, and it quickly escalated into a physical fight. The boys’ father, Daniel, stepped in to try and separate his sons, much to the disgust of James, who felt that his father was taking sides against him.
The following evening, 31 August 1854, Daniel and his wife Mary Ann went out drinking in Trowbridge with twenty-three-year-old James. James’s anger at his father spilled over and the boy began taunting Daniel, hurling insults at him, rolling up his sleeves and putting up his fists as if to fight him. Before long, the fight became reality, as James threw a punch at his father, hitting him squarely in the face and knocking him to the ground. As Daniel lay helpless, James delivered a few well-aimed kicks to his ribs and sides, continuing to swear at his father and threatening to kill him. His mother, Mary Ann, enthusiastically egged him on, telling James to ‘Kill the old bastard!’ and urging him to ‘Beat the old bastard’s brains out!’ She eventually joined in the fight herself, grabbing Daniel’s hair and using it to bang her husband’s head repeatedly on the road, all the while swearing that she would murder him.
By now, Daniel was practically insensible but James and Mary Ann hadn’t finished with him. James grabbed his father by his shoulders and roughly pulled him into a sitting position, telling him, ‘Wake up, you sleepy old bastard’. Rather than helping his father to his feet, James then gave him a violent shove backwards so that Daniel’s head once again hit the ground hard.
The attack on Daniel Napper took place in front of several bystanders, all of whom were later to say that it happened so quickly that they had little chance to go to his aid. One man, cloth worker James Brown, did try to help, kneeling on the ground and gently lifting Daniel half upright. However, even while Daniel was cradled in Brown’s arms, his son was still attempting to hit him and threatening to give anyone who took his father’s part a good hiding.
Fore Street, Trowbridge. (Author’s collection)
Eventually, James and Mary Ann were pulled away from their victim and walked off homewards, leaving Daniel lying where he had fallen. They had only gone a few yards when they stopped and turned round to yell a few more threats that if Daniel came home that night they would finish him off.
With the violent and unpredictable James and Mary Ann out of the way, the witnesses rushed forward to help Daniel to his feet. After resting for a short while, he tried to walk home but had only taken a couple of steps when his legs buckled beneath him and he staggered and fell. He was helped to his feet again and escorted home. Surprisingly, Mary Ann and James didn’t carry out their threat to finish him off but allowed him inside the house and put him to bed.
By the following morning, it was only too obvious that Daniel had been very severely injured in the fight. Mary Ann sent for a surgeon, Mr Stapleton, but by the time Stapleton arrived, Daniel was already dying. At a later post-mortem examination it was found that, as well as severe bruising all over his body, Daniel had a fracture at the base of his skull and a ruptured artery
An inquest was opened and the coroner heard from the many people who had witnessed the attack on Daniel Napper, including William Pearce, who had been walking by when the fight had occurred and Mr John Mayell, the landlord of the Bear Inn, outside whose premises the attack had taken place. Once all the evidence had been presented, the coroner looked to the inquest jury for a verdict. They were unable to agree. Of the thirteen-man jury, six were for wilful murder while the remaining seven argued for a verdict of manslaughter against both James and Mary Ann Napper. The jury were completely deadlocked and neither side were prepared to concede.
The coroner took the unusual step of ordering the jury to be locked up overnight but, by the next morning, the split between them remained the same and they insisted that they would be unable to reach a compromise. The coroner was eventually forced to discharge the jury, even though they had failed to reach agreement, and pass the case onto the magistrate’s court. There, just two days later, the witnesses gave their evidence again and the magistrates determined that the two accused should stand trial at the next Wiltshire Assizes. The charge against them was to be wilful murder.
The trial opened at Salisbury in March 1855, before Mr Justice Erle, with Mr Hodges prosecuting. Once again the court heard from the numerous people who had witnessed the attack, including James Brown, William Pearce and John Mayell. They also heard from the surgeon, Mr Stapleton, who testified to the extent of Daniel Napper’s injuries and the cause of his death.
Once all the evidence had been heard, Mr Justice Erle summed up the case for the jury, paying particular attention to explaining the difference between murder and manslaughter to them. The jury retired only briefly before returning to pronounce both defendants ‘Guilty of manslaughter.’
The judge deferred his decision on sentencing the prisoners for a few days, eventually deciding that James Napper should be imprisoned for eighteen months and Mary Ann for six months.
The Napper’s were a notorious family who, at the time of the fatal attack on the head of the family, were very much feared in the Trowbridge area. Son Dennis Napper had just returned from transportation, while the victim, Daniel, had also been transported for theft in his youth. In 1839, Daniel himself had been tried for the murder of William Bishop, a common peddler. He had been extremely fortunate to escape conviction because of a minor legal error in the indictment. When the local newspaper printed an account of the murder, they wrongly reported that prior to the fight the Nappers had been drinking in the Bear Inn at Trowbridge. They were quick to retract this statement, presumably at the instigation of landlord John Mayell, who, according to the newspaper was ‘naturally desirous to remove the impression that such a decidedly bad lot as the Napper family were numbered among his customers.’