On Monday 8th September 1817, four men were standing on the scaffold sentenced to death for the ghastly murder of two servants in Pendleton four months previously
One of them William Holden spoke to the onlookers
“I am now going to meet my God and in the face of him I am innocent of the concern as of a child yet born”
Another David Ashcroft said
“You are all assembled here to see four innocent men sufferI would not now tell a lie for all the world”
As the ropes were placed around their necks the four sang a hymn:
I’ll praise my maker while I’ve breath
And when my voice is lost in death Praise shall employ my nobler powers
My Hours of praise shall ne’er be passed
While life and thought are being last
Or immortality endures
The story began four months earlier on the 26th April and a house in Pendleton that of Thomas and Margaret Littlewood who ran a grocer shop in Salford
That Saturday they had been working at the shop, returning in the evening to find several neighbours gathered near the house
Inside was a grisly scene , two servants found murdered one Hannah Partington aged 20 lying in her blood on the floor, the other Margaret Marsden 75, dead in the chair, a poker bent and bloody lying on the dresser a long with a stained cleaver
One hundred and sixty pounds in notes and gold were missing,it was a staggering amount at the time, along with some silver plate
Four me. Had been seen loitering around earlier in the day, they were described and hunted down , two on St George’s Road one on Slik Street Newton Lane and a fourth in the Swan Inn on Sugar Lane .William Holden 47, James Ashcroft the elder 53, James Ashcroft the yiunger 32,David Ashcroft 48 and John Robinson 53, the latter acquitted as there was neither evidence to link him to the crime nor to the other four
The four were found guilty at the Lancaster Azzizes, yet no blood was found on them despite the murder scene being covered in it and none of the missing property
Witnesses came forward saying the Ashcrofts and William Holden were seen leaving the house carrying bundles and they were later spotted in various public houses in Manchester.
James Jnr and William Holden were seen later in the day in Hanover Street in Manchester betting large amounts (5 shillings a throw) on the toss of a coin.
However two of the men had bank notes and gold which according to the report at the time, no satisfactory evidence was given as to where it came from
All four denied murder but the jury would immediately return a guilty verdict somewhat swayed by the testimony of the final prosecution witness William Collins, a man James Snr had shared a cell with, and to whom he supposedly confessed.
26 years later a man called John Holden, who lived in Atherton, made a death bed confession saying that he had murdered the two women and that innocent men had been hung but Holden died the day after making the so called confession
The case remains a mystery, there were accusations of corruption,Holden and Hannah were rumoured to be lovers and both Holden and James Jnr mentioned being taken to see the bodies, and of being so shocked and moved by the sight that they kissed them. This would have been significant, as there was a belief at the time that a corpse would bleed anew at the touch of its killer
So did four innocent men hang?
