Chapter 31

A Pair of Child Murderers Caught at Last 1602

According to legend, Elizabeth I was sitting under an oak tree in the grounds of Hatfield Palace in Hertfordshire when she was told that she was to become queen. The princess had grown up at the palace and had returned to live there by November 1558 when the news came of the death of her half-sister Mary. In the penultimate year of Elizabeth’s reign, nearly half a century after she was told she had ascended to the throne, grave news of death was once again doing the rounds in Hatfield. This time it involved the murder of a young child, a despicable crime where the suspects were identified almost immediately. Yet the perpetrators were not brought to justice until after the old queen was long dead and then, in the most sensational circumstances, by a girl who also happened to be called Elizabeth.

Court records show that on the 1st August 1606 a widow called Agnes Dell and her son George, a baker, were brought before the Hertford assizes accused of a bloody murder, one which had occurred four years earlier on 4 July, 1602. In the aftermath of what must have been a sensational case at the time, two popular pamphlets were speedily published revealing the details of how the Dells had come to be in the dock. One was called The Horrible Murder of a Young Boy while the other was entitled The Most Cruell and Bloody Murther Committed by an Inkeepers Wife, called Annis Dell and her Sonne George Dell. When it comes to details of the case the two accounts vary, but the essence of the story is the same. From the latter report we learn that at some time in early 1602, a rich yeoman called Anthony James and his wife Elizabeth, who lived in Essex, were targeted by a gang of thieves. All the household’s servants were away, leaving only the couple and their two children – a boy and a girl – in the house. After breaking in, the robbers ransacked the place and then murdered the couple with their daggers, but could not bring themselves to do away with the youngsters too and carried them off instead. According to the former account the boy, a redhead, was aged three and the girl was four but the other report indicates that they are older.

Arriving in Hatfield, then called Bishops Hatfield, twenty miles north of London the criminals halted at an inn, run by Annis Dell (Annis being the Medieval form of the name Agnes). Once lodged at the inn the criminals offered Agnes a share of their booty if she would advise them on what to do with the children, who were also called Anthony and Elizabeth after their parents. It may be that Dell’s establishment was already known to them as a safe place in which to hide or fence goods, roles often played by drinking establishments in Tudor England. Agnes Dell told the gang that the boy, Anthony, should be killed and that the girl, Elizabeth should have her tongue cut out. According to The Horrible Murder she swore three times to her villainous visitors never to tell anyone about the matter.

Over the next few hours, as the party got drunk, the children were seen by both a local labourer, Nicholas Deacon and a tailor called Henry Whilpley who took notice of the red-headed lad as he was particularly taken by the boy’s expensively made green coat.

However, by the next day the children had disappeared. In The Most Cruell and Bloody Murther we learn that the children had been brought down during the night and that the girl had been left with Agnes and George, her son, while two robbers stuffed cow dung in Anthony’s mouth then heartlessly slit his throat in the yard behind the inn. George then helped tie his body to a stake and led the thieves to a pond a mile out of the town. Agnes followed with Elizabeth in tow. The men threw Anthony’s corpse in the pond. Then Agnes violently grabbed Elizabeth held open the girl’s jaw and cut out her tongue with a knife. She even forced the poor child to throw the bloodied piece of flesh in the pond after her brother. According to The Horrible Murder Elizabeth was then abandoned in the hollow stump of a tree. In the official record it is George Dell, not the robbers, who was said to have been responsible for cutting Anthony’s throat.

Three weeks later, some men were hunting wild fowl near the pond when their dogs picked up the scent of the dead body, which was soon dragged out. Presumably an inquest followed because we learn that both Deacon and Whilpley recognised the boy’s coat, which had been exhibited locally to see if anybody recognised it. They testified that they had seen him at the Dell’s inn. Agnes Dell was sent for by the local justice, Sir Henry Butler, but denied knowledge of the children. Nevertheless the air of suspicion lingered over her and she was bound over to answer at the next assizes.

In fact, for the next four years, Dell and her son were brought before the assizes more than once but on each occasion no new evidence having come to light, it was found that there was no case against them to be heard. Meanwhile ‘Mother Dell’ who had been in debt, now seemed to have come into money and spent significant sums improving her property. As the Lent assizes of 1606 became due it appeared that the case would be dismissed once and for all.

In the hours after her ordeal, Elizabeth had been found by a pedlar and spent the next few years begging from place to place. Finally, however, she had found herself back in Hatfield and, suddenly recognising the Dell’s inn, began shrieking. The ‘extraordinarie noyse’ she was making soon drew a crowd. The child’s exhortations only got louder when Dell and her son appeared on the scene. Whilpley the tailor also came out to see what all the fuss was about and recognised the girl as having been with the missing boy at the Dell’s place. Taken inside Dell’s property Elizabeth also seemed to gesture that she knew the old layout of the house, before the Dells had improved it. Suspicions again being aroused about the Dells, the girl was brought before the local justices. When they discovered that she’d had her tongue cut out they questioned her as best they could with hand gestures. When Elizabeth was shown Anthony’s coat, which had been kept, she was overcome with emotion and refused to be parted from it. Examined by the justices once more the Dells remained ‘obstinate’ and denied ever having seen the girl before.

The case was now the ‘only table talk in the country’ but since Elizabeth could not speak, no indictment could be drawn up against the Dells. Then, we are told, something strange occurred. Elizabeth, who had been taken into the care of the parish, was playing with another girl when a cock crowed. The other girl began crying ‘cock-a-doodle-doo’ and then, summoning her strength so did Elizabeth. Her friend ran home to spread the news saying: ‘The dumb girl can speak’. The news spread like wildfire. Having regained the power of speech she was again brought before Sir Henry Butler, and was able to explain to him everything that had happened. He asked her who had cut out her tongue and she said, ‘the olde woman and her sonne, that killed her brother and put her into the tree.’ Then he asked her who had brought her to the old woman’s house and she said, ‘a man and a woman that had killed her father and her mother and taken a great bagge of money from them.’ Elizabeth added that, ‘the man and woman had given a great deale of that money to the olde woman and that the old woman did at that time did lift up her hands three times and did sweare three times that she would never tell anybody who they were.’

Stiffly examined by several other justices the authorities were now satisfied enough by her tale to bring the Dells to trial. The surviving court records reveal that they were both indicted for murder and that ‘at Hatfield they assaulted Anthony James.’ George Dell was alleged to have, ‘cut his throat with a knife (worth 1d) and threw his body into a pond.’

Agnes and George Dell pleaded not guilty but, together with the testimony of Elizabeth as well as Whilpley, Deacon and others they were found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. The pair were put to death on 4 August 1606.

A tale of a girl who has had her tongue cut out, yet manages to speak may sound fantastical. It’s certain that some elements of the story, as told in the pamphlets, has been embellished. In them, her seemingly miraculous ability to utter words is credited to divine intervention. Yet there are several sources for this story and it’s not particularly unusual for a child who has witnessed something deeply traumatic to have lost the power of speech temporarily through the experience. Perhaps the injury to her tongue was not as extreme as the accounts would have us believe or was an exaggerated detail. Yet there is little doubt when comparing the pamphlets to the official legal records that the tracts were based on real and extraordinary, events.