Well, Alan, would you believe it? And thank you Geoff for the info and coordinates. My name is Peter, aged 74 and I live in Ipswich, a town in the news after its football team took a 7-0 thrashing by Chelsea, then went and beat Arsenal 1-0 in the Carling Cup semi. As I said, I am a writer and I write lots for Lincolnshire magazines. I will have one in the next Lincolnshire Poacher.
I recently wrote the following about the Strugglers Inn
Cathedral dog was stuffed by my ancestors
The item came at the very end of the first of the BBC’s two Antiques Roadshow
programmes from Lincoln Cathedral, and then came the shock realisation that my
ancestors had played a unique role in Lincoln’s macabre history.
Presenter Fiona Bruce showed a stuffed lurcher dog in a glass case and asked if
anyone knew the name of the animal.
I knew not the name of the lurcher, but I do now know that my maternal great
grandparents, William Roberts and Mary Clayton, must be the ones who had the
animal stuffed.
Fiona told viewers that the lurcher had belonged to the poacher William Clark,
“the last man to be hanged at Lincoln Castle, just a stone’s throw from here, in
1877, and his faithful dog used to follow him to the local hostelry, the Strugglers Inn
(interpreted by Fiona as ‘struggling meaning hanging‘), and when without his master,
he pined away.
“The landlord had him stuffed and placed across the bar. He was then found, a few
generations later, stuck away unwanted and unloved, and he was given away to the
castle museum where, in a touching end to the story, he was reunited with his owner,
William Clark, who is buried in the castle grounds. But one mystery remains: what’s
the dog’s name? No one has been able to find out.”
Fiona invited viewers to ‘phone in if they could solve that particular mystery.
My great grandparents, who remained unmarried, were in charge of the Strugglers
Inn from 1875 to 1890, and although William Roberts (who was by trade a sheep
dipper) was listed as the landlord, I strongly suspect that it was Mary Clayton, with
her family experience of the licensed trade, who ran the pub. She went on to become
sole publican of the Fox and Hounds Inn on Steep Hill after they left the Strugglers.
Roberts died a pauper in 1900 after living in Lincoln workhouse.
As for William Clark, he was sentenced to death at Lincoln Assizes on March 8th
1877, for the murder of Henry Walker, a gamekeeper at Norton Disney, the previous
month. He was arrested at Lowestoft, and at the trial two colleagues testified that they
had been with him when he shot Walker dead.
The hangman, on March 26th 1877 was William Marwood, a cobbler, of Church Lane,
Horncastle. At the age of 54, he persuaded the governor of Lincoln Castle goal to
allow him to conduct an execution. The efficient way in which he conducted the
hanging of William Horry without a hitch on April 1st 1872 assisted him in him being
appointed hangman by the Sheriffs of London and Middlesex, for which he was paid a
retainer of £20 a year plus £10 per execution.
Marwood developed the “long drop” technique of hanging, which ensured that that
the prisoners’ neck was broken instantly at the end of the drop, resulting in the
prisoner dying of asphyxia while unconscious.
This was considered somewhat more kind than the slow death by strangulation
caused by the “shot drop” method, which was particularly distressing to prison
governors and staff who were required to witness executions close up following the
abolition of public executions in 1868.
It would seem that my great grandparents looked after the lurcher during the
period of Clark‘s trial. The dog is said to have walked over to the castle to wait for
its master, but pined to death after the execution was carried out. It’s ghost is said to
haunt the castle grounds at night .
The Strugglers Inn, which my younger daughter Alison visited with friends last
year, was the nearest licensed premises to the castle regularly used by the
prison warders to ply prisoners with alcohol, to make it easier for them to face the
horror of the morning executions. However, some prisoners struggled with the
warders on being returned to the prison, hence another story which gave rise to the
name of the pub.
The story was of particular interest to me for as a young reporter in Lincolnshire
during the 1950s and ‘60s, I covered several murder trials when Assizes and Quarter
Sessions were held inside the castle walls.