THIS is a terrible tale of murder most foul in which an old man was garrotted with weaver’s twine beneath a thorn tree on the banks of the Tees on the outskirts of Darlington.
For decades afterwards, the writers of cheap ballads kept the story of the murder alive because there was a Shakespearian twist to the terrible tale: the victim, although dead, still managed to identify the guilty party in such a convincing way that the murderer was sent to the gallows.
The crime took place late on Saturday, June 5, 1624, at Baydale Banks Head, where the Baydale Beck – which flows from Mowden around the western edge of Darlington – meets the River Tees near the Baydale Beck Inn.
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Here, the body of Xpofer Simpson, a labourer of Thornaby, his throat garrotted by the twine, was discovered the following day by a young man named Averill, who rushed in shock to tell his father.
The balladeer takes up the story:
“Come tell me, child, my Averill mild, why harried thus you be?”
“Father! There is a murthered man beneath yon greenwood tree!”
“Ho! Neighbours mine – here Cornforth bold, and Middleton of might,
For there hath been a slaughter foul at Baydayle Head last night.”
Averill’s father called up his neighbour, strong William Middleton of Blackwell who, accompanied by brave Mr Cornforth, rode off in search of the murderer.
It was a Sunday morning and the church bells were still ringing, summoning the faithful to prayer, when the pair reached Aldbrough St John, where, without any ceremony, they seized the dead man’s nephew, Ralph Simpson, in his garden and dragged him back to the scene of the crime.
Other neighbours had been active, too, bringing the deputy coroner Francis Raisbie to the spot beneath the thorn tree where the body lay.
The grass had been trampled down around it, as if there had been a terrific struggle.
With witnesses gathering, 14 men were sworn in as jurors and the inquest was held there and then.
The Baydale Beck Inn, near where the murder took place, as it looked before it was rebuilt in 1911, and, below, how it looks today on the western approach to Darlington
The jury learned that Xpofer – really Christopher – had taken his nephew Ralph, a weaver, to Gunnerside to buy a little black horse for ten shillings.
They’d returned via Richmond, where Ralph had bought a pair of shoes. Then witnesses reported seeing them pass that Saturday evening through Manfield, ford the Tees and enter ‘Neather Countsclife’ (Low Coniscliffe).
Bartholomew Harrison, of Low Conny, testified that on Sunday morning, “before the sunne did arise”, he saw Ralph alone at Baydale, close to where the body was discovered.
Ralph denied ever being there but, when confronted with Harrison’s evidence, he suddenly remembered he had been going to Darlington to buy some boots but when he reached Baydale he realised he’d come out without any money. So he returned to Aldbrough.
Then Constable Thomas Emerson stepped forward and turned out Ralph’s pockets.
In them he found “a cord made of throumes (the warp ends of weaver’s web) which was bloody”.
Ralph said he used the cord to tie up his wallet, but he could not explain how it came to have fresh blood upon it.
Members of the jury watched as the cord was held up and compared with the marks on the body and then – crucially – they saw what happened when Ralph touched the carcase.
The jury report says: “Lastlye, wee applied the cord to the circle that was about the necke of the party murthered, and it did answer unto the cirkle; and wee caused the said Ralph to handle the bodye; and upon his handlinge and movinge, the body did bleed both at mouth, nose and eares.”
In Shakespeare, Macbeth says to Banquo’s ghost: “It will have blood – blood will have blood.” This refers to the old belief that when the unidentified murderer approached the body, it would bleed afresh.
With such incontrovertible evidence before them, the jury under that thorn tree concluded that Ralph “haith, by the instigation of the Devell or of somme secret malice, murdered and strangled Christopher”.
He was sentenced to death.
This terrible tale became popular among the travelling balladeers who made a living by selling their most up-to-date ditties. One of the several compositions entitled The Baydayle Banckes Tragedy ends with Ralph, before the week was out, being hanged in Durham:
Long crowds are facing Framwellgate, full thoughtfully and slow
And smothered all their footsteps sound as if on driven snow.
Yon man must die – he gazes up and views the gallows tree
With its sable cord suspended and he writhes in agony.
Oh Jesu, look in pity on that guilty son of clay,
Reveal to him Thy boundless love before he pass away.
A grave yawns open for him, but the fountain Thou hast given
The vilest soul can purify and make it meet for heaven.
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