A Rediscovered Secret

On the 4th December 1763, five days after Sarah’s death, the Parish Burial Register records her internment with the simple line, ‘Sarah Dtr. of Samuell Smith burid Dec 4 1763’ [1]

Although there are many examples in the register of this period in which explanatory notes have been recorded to mark unusual circumstances - for example: ‘Thos. Booth Burid Cild with a waggon May 21 1769’ [2] - this single formal record of Sarah’s passing contains not a hint of the extraordinary allegation found on her gravestone.

I must confess that I was hoping for something more - even a heavily scored line through a now illegible entry below would have sufficed. Had the accusation against C–––s B–––w yet to be proclaimed in public by the day of Sarah’s funeral, only emerging in the clear light of day at the laying of the gravestone at a later date?

Remarkably, the Baptismal Register records another event on the same day as the funeral which would not only indicate a serious mixing of emotions amongst Sarah’s mourners but, crucially, also open up the most credible line of thinking as to a motive for her alleged poisoning. Again, it is a simple line written by the Vicar of the day, the Reverend Edward Sneyd: ‘Sarah Dtr. of Sarah Smith bas. born bapd. Dec 4 1763’ [4]

And so, after shedding their tears at the grave of their unmarried murdered daughter, the chief mourners, Samuel and Martha Smith, along with their son ‘Saml. Smith of this Parish, husbandman’ who had married ‘Ann Allen, of Astbury’ on Christmas Day just one year before these tragic events, would then have processed back round to the west door and taken their place at the font to witness their newly and base born granddaughter’s baptism by the Reverend Edward Sneyd.

The record goes further – just nine days later, whatever hopes and consolation the family had drawn from the new life of the baby Sarah were dashed. Inscribed in the Parish Burial Register, just three lines below her mother and noted as the 42nd burial of the year, is the simple inscription: ‘Sarah Child of Sarah Smith burid Dec 13 1763’. [3]

Had the child been born sickly, or had the family not been able to afford a wet nurse, or maybe the family just couldn’t cope with the trauma, we will never know. But, with the freshly dug grave of the child’s mother so near, it would seem to be a racing certainty that Sarah mother and Sarah daughter have lain together on the churchyard hill of Wolstanton these long years past.

And yet the base born Sarah is unmarked on the gravestone where there is clearly enough space below the chiselled words for the skilled mason who cut them to have recorded the infant’s brief span of life. Had he sketched out the characters of a fuller memorial - only for the family to decide, at the last moment, to ensure the shame of an illegitimate birth to their beloved daughter would fall, as a secret, into the grave itself?

Only to emerge from the dark cloak of history 250 years later.

Copyright 2006 Jeremy Crick

[figs 1, 3]

[fig 2]

[fig 4]