It’s always quite exciting to discover that your relatives had a role to play in sensational events of the day. Last week we visited Wigwell Grange in Derbyshire, site of a murder in August 1863. We were able to park just by the wall of the estate, and could see over into the grounds, as well as the farmhouse opposite where Reuben Conway lived and worked.
Who was Reuben Conway?
Joseph Bunting Thickett and Jane Frost were Ari and Eva’s 6x great-grandparents. Their daughter Ellen married a farmer, Joseph Conway, in 1828, and one of their seven sons was Reuben Conway, who was born in 1838 in Wirksworth.
Reuben worked as a farm servant and carter, and at the time of the 1861 census he was listed at Wigwell Grange, about a mile and half from Wirksworth, working as a carter for a farmer called Joseph Bowmer. The owner of the house was Captain Francis Goodwin, a magistrate, who lived there with his granddaughter Elizabeth.
On 21 August 1863, Reuben was the person who discovered Elizabeth after she had been attacked by her fiancé, George Victor Townley, at a spot known as Bowmer’s Bottom Gate, on the turnpike road to Wirksworth. According to a report in the Derbyshire Advertiser and Journal a week later, Townley had “for sometime past been paying his addresses to Miss Goodwin, who had latterly manifested an attachment towards another gentleman in the neighbourhood. About a fortnight ago Miss Goodwin wrote a letter to Townley to inform him that she wished their engagement to be broken off”. He had requested an interview with her, and Elizabeth had told the housekeeper to let him in if he came to the house. They went for a walk in the grounds, and then Elizabeth came back inside but told the housekeeper that she was going to meet him again.
At the inquest, held at Wigwell, Reuben Conway gave his deposition as follows:
“I was going home last night after eight o’clock, and when I got to Mr Bowmer’s bottom gate, I heard a moan. I thought something was amiss, and I ran till I got to a small gate some distance below, where I saw Miss Goodwin guiding herself by the wall. She turned her head to me, and said, ‘Take me home – there’s a gentleman down there that’s cut my throat.’ I placed my arm round her, and she walked about twenty yards. She said she could not walk any further, I must carry her. I put my arms round her and carried her about twenty yards. I felt the blood trickle down me as I carried her. Whilst I was carrying her she asked me if I could see a gentleman. I looked round and saw him at a distance. I laid her down and went towards him. I asked him who had been murdering Miss Goodwin. He said he had stabbed her. She said, ‘Take me home, take me home,’ and I told him to help me carry her. He laid hold of her head and I laid hold of her body and we carried her some distance. We then laid her down, and he began putting something around her neck to stop the bleeding. He asked me to get someone to help us, and I ran to Mr Bowmer’s. I met the servant lad in the yard, and told him to get a horse and go to Wirksworth as fast as he could for the doctor and the police. He did so and I went and called to Mr Bowmer. I got a lantern and ran back again with it, and found the prisoner sitting beside Miss Goodwin, holding something to her neck. I asked him if she was living, and he said, ‘Yes.’ She said ‘Take me home,’ and we carried her a little further. As we carried her he kissed her several times, and kept calling her ‘Poor Betsy’. He did all in his power to stop the bleeding, and appeared quite calm, and talked rationally. He said he thought she would not die, but she said she was dying. I told her to pray, and she exclaimed several times, ‘Lord, have mercy on me.’ Mr Seeds, of Wirksworth, came up in his cart, and his brother got out and helped to carry her. We met my uncle and he wanted to know who had done it, when the prisoner replied ‘I know who’s done it, and he knows (meaning witness) – I’ve done it.’ He admitted it also to Mr Bowmer; afterwards we met the Captain, and he asked who had done it, when prisoner replied that he had.” (Derbyshire Advertiser and Journal, 28 Aug. 1863, p. 8.)
George Victor Townley was taken to Derby Gaol. The day before the Winter Assizes at the Crown Court on Thursday 10 December, Reuben Conway, along with the other witnesses, travelled to Derby and stayed at the Midland Hotel, while the prisoner’s relatives were at the County Hotel. Tickets had been sold to members of the public, and the hall was full. “An eager crowd, principally of the lower orders of society, are gazing through the iron palings fronting the County Hotel … The galleries and bodies of the hall is filled with the elite of Derby society” (Derbyshire Times, 12 Dec. 1863, p. 3).
What happened to George Victor Townley?
The jury took six minutes to find Townley guilty, and he was sentenced to death. In an article titled ‘Moral insanity and psychological disorder: the hybrid roots of psychiatry’,[1] David W Jones discusses the case in the context of whether Townley was insane.
Townley was not hanged, but instead was sent to the Bethlem Hospital in London, where he was found to be of sound mind, and sent to Pentonville for life. However, he committed suicide in February 1865 by “jumping over the staircase railings in Pentonville Prison on his return from chapel” (Derbyshire Advertiser and Journal, 17 Feb. 1865, p. 5).
What happened to Reuben Conway?
Reuben Conway had married Hannah Wood in 1862. They had ten children. Reuben became a farmer at Derby Hills Farm, Windley, and died there in May 1911.
In 1901 the case was turned into a story by Arthur Conan Doyle (see https://www.elleryqueenmysterymagazine.com/the-crime-scene/stranger-than-fiction-january-2024/).
[1] History of Psychiatry, 2017, Vol. 28(3), pp. 263–279; http://doi.org/10.1177/0957154X17702316.
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