The Disappearance of Maria Glenn by Naomi Clifford

Author:Naomi Clifford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: TRUE CRIME / Murder / General
ISBN: 9781473863323
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2016-05-24T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

Inside

Stone walls do not a prison make.

Richard Lovelace,

‘To Althea, from Prison’ (1642)

Taunton went into shock, and then into action. Just over a week after the verdicts, the Bowditches’ friends and supporters held a meeting in a room at the London Inn in Taunton. Its aim was to decide ‘the best means of affording relief to Mrs Joan Bowditch and her afflicted family.’ Many of Taunton’s most powerful citizens were there: William Wilkinson (grocer, tavern-keeper, bailiff and returning officer), Lieutenant Colonel Hugh Alcock (a neighbour of the Tucketts), Doctor Robert Kinglake, one of the founders of Taunton Hospital and William Kinglake’s brother,116 John Buncombe (banker) and Thomas Woodforde (the surgeon-banker father of Tom Woodforde).

The first decision of the committee was to open a subscription for the relief of the family and to start a petition, to be presented to both the Prince Regent and to Parliament, showing that the alleged conspiracy had been in Maria’s full knowledge and with her active cooperation. The hope was that if one of the local MPs were minded to talk about the case in the House of Commons, the publicity would help to overturn the convictions or at least reduce the sentences.

Those who attended the meeting had no doubts about the injustice of the Bowditches’ sentences. The chairman of the committee, John White, a starchmaker, passed round the disputed letters for all to inspect.117 How or where he came by them, we do not know. Hugh Alcock, whose son had given an affidavit in support of the Bowditches, stated that his three daughters knew Maria by sight and had seen her frequently with James Bowditch. Doctor Kinglake told the meeting that he had treated Betsey Gibbens in childbirth and the ‘dreadful agitation of mind excited by the prosecution’ had led directly to her death. John Oxenham stated that he had started an action for defamation against George Lowman Tuckett.

There were also practical matters to attend to, not least the running of Holway Green Farm. Neighbouring farmers Richard Gadd and Downing Blake offered to take it on.

Thousands of handbills listing the resolutions of the meeting were printed. Tuckett said later that ‘there was not a printer in Taunton who was not employed to print an edition of them.’ They were posted around the town, and campaigners went door to door collecting contributions and signatures. Soon over a thousand people had signed and the fund for the relief of the family reached £200.118

‘It seemed as if the spirit of some fiend had entered their hearts to goad them on in their fury and to render them blind and insensible to the wrongs which they were committing,’ wrote Tuckett later of the people of Taunton. He could not understand why, ‘under the mask of charity,’ they had ‘loaded’ Maria with guilt while seeking to remunerate ‘conspiracy and perjury’. Nor could he recognize, still less accept, that the feeling against Maria was fuelled by his insistence on justice at any price.

Many of those who signed the petition in support of the Bowditches knew that the family were at fault.

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