With half a Pint of Poyson

So much for the historical record. Are we any closer to attempting a realistic reconstruction of the events surrounding the day of 29th November 1763? A tentative version might go something like this.

Three hundred years ago, at the turn of the eighteenth century, Hannah Smith - a young unmarried woman - gives birth to a son in the Parish of Wolstanton and names him Samuel. Life is hard for her and she travels beyond the Parish to find work so that she can nurture her child. Thirty years later, somewhere beyond the Parishes of Wolstanton, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Audley and Stoke-on-Trent, Samuel marries Martha and they have two children together. Samuel passes his own name to his son and their daughter Sarah comes into the world in 1742 in Samuel’s thirty-fifth year.

And then Samuel decides to move his family back to the Parish of his birth, perhaps attracted by the abundance of work at the Sneyd family’s 520 acre estate at Bradwall Park and their considerable interests throughout the expansive Parish of Wolstanton. Draining the marshy soil, managing the livestock and planting and harvesting the expanding areas of arable land is the work of many hands and the estate and all the neighbouring farms are beginning to prosper again after a period of drift and uncertainty.

As the principal landowners over the last two hundred years, the Sneyd domination of the district had long been secure. With large estates at Keele, Bradwall, Abbey Hulton, Tunstall and Bucknall, the Sneyd’s principal income derived from renting farmland and property to over 120 leasehold tenants. Around this time, the annual income of their Keele Estate under the care of Ralph Sneyd VI was an astronomical £2,377.18s.10d. Just to illustrate how the other half were living, the annual labourers’ bill at the Sneyd family seat of Keele Hall was a mere £16.4s.8d while the annual husbandry bill on that estate was £59.17s.10d.

However, with such deep roots in the Parish, the Sneyd family had also taken great care to balance their huge wealth by investing heavily in their own spiritual needs and those of the locals in the shape of Wolstanton Parish Church. In 1757 Edward Sneyd, the first of many younger sons to follow this path, having received the best education that money could buy at Oxford, takes up residence in the Parish rectory as the new Vicar. One year after becoming the new Vicar, Edward notes in the Parish register, ‘This year the Bells where all New hung by Thos. Sneayd, of Madeley.’ As this required some strengthening of the old 13th century tower before the full peal of bells was rehoused, it was a considerable undertaking which the Sneyds not only funded but, with the mention of a distant branch of the Sneyd family in Madeley, also ensured that the work was kept within the family.

This patronage of the church would last for years. In Samuel Lewis’ ‘Topographical Dictionary of England’ of 1831 is the note for the Parish Church of Wolstanton:

‘The living is a rectory, in the archdeaconry of Stafford, and diocese of Lichfield and Coventry, rated in the king's books at £32.3s.9d, and in the patronage of Walter Sneyd, Esq. There is also a chapel, called New chapel, the living of which is a perpetual curacy, endowed with £200 private benefaction, and £400 royal bounty, and in the same patronage.’

Meanwhile, in the same Parish, another family is beginning to prosper - albeit on a much more modest scale to the Sneyds. On 12 September 1736, six years before the birth of Sarah Smith, John Barlow and his wife Anne welcome their first son and heir Charles into the world.

The area around Red Street and Chesterton at this time, and for the next ninety years at least, is the home to many different branches of the Barlow clan and it is likely that the young Charles had his roots here - a familiar face amongst a growing network of aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces and cousins. Recorded in Sneyd documents and maps during these years are the names of George, James, John, Moses, Ralph and William Barlow - not only as Sneyd tenants but also land and property owners in their own right in Red Street and Chesterton. Charles was an ambitious young man driven by a determination to carve a prosperous niche for himself in the district in the same way that many of his relatives had done.

Just across the main road into Newcastle to the east, in the vast expanse of fields and woodland of Bradwall Park, the more modest Smith family had, by the early 1760s, settled down as agricultural estate workers in the employment of the leasehold tenant of the day Mr Marsh. In her young teens, Sarah Smith would either be working the fields along with her father, mother and brother or might even have found employment ‘below stairs’ as a scullery maid or part of the kitchen staff at Bradwall Hall.

At any rate, by the age of twenty she had caught the eye of the twenty-six year old Charles Barlow. Quite when, where and how they first met we cannot say but, in this thinly populated district, the inhabitants would be well acquainted with all their neighbours. Nor can we do more than guess at the nature of their relationship. Had it been a serious courtship or had Charles forced himself on young Sarah? Whichever, it certainly allowed Charles the opportunity to sow some of his wild oats.

But then imagine his shock one day in the spring of 1763 when Sarah tells him that she is expecting his child and asks him what he is going to do about it. Sarah, it is clear, might have fancied her own chances of climbing out of the peasant class into which she had been born. Her courtship with Charles had strengthened this hope and, now she was pregnant, it would only be natural for Sarah to make it clear to Charles that, if he were a gentleman, he would do the right thing by her and propose marriage.

Charles, however, had other ideas. He was determined, if anything, to marry above and not below his station. And so he bides his time - he would first wait to see the outcome of this unfortunate confirmation of his fertility. Perhaps the child would be still-born and he could then put the whole affair behind him. Maybe he did feel deeply enough about Sarah to endure a huge row with his father John in the matter of accepting his responsibilities and standing by the woman he’d deflowered. Only to realise that being cut out of his father’s will was not an option he could seriously consider.

As to when the birth took place, baptismal records for this period make no mention of the age of the children - but in a few years’ time this information would be recorded. And it seems that, infant mortality being as high as it was, parents tended to ensure their children’s entry into the church took place within weeks rather than months of the birth.

Did Charles, upon hearing that Sarah had delivered a healthy young daughter into the world and that Sarah herself was healthy, then decide that he must rid himself of this embarassment? Had Sarah, in desperation, threatened that if Charles did not marry her, she would have his name registered as the father in the Baptism Register anyway? And, having decided on a desperate course of action of his own, in thinking it through, did Charles consider the option of poison so that it might look as if Sarah had died from complications arising out of the birth?

Being a familiar face around the place, Charles clearly attracted little untoward attention when he turned up to visit Sarah on that late November day. Perhaps he’d prepared the ‘half a Pint of Poyson’ in such a way to make it seem that he was bringing her a medicinal cordial. “I hear you haven’t been feeling too well, darling, so I’ve brought you this. It’ll do you good, so drink it all down, there’s a good girl...” sort of thing. Before slipping away across the fields to his home where he would brood in silence for a time on what he’d just done. One thing is certain - Sarah never suspected the slightest treachery during Charles' visit until it was too late.

What kind of poison it was and in what doseage we cannot know. But it is unlikely to have been too long before Sarah realised what was happening to her and called desperately for help. Whether her family were able to be at her side as she passed away or not, the surge of anger at what Charles had done burst from her as she expressed her wish for his treachery to be recorded on her grave so ‘That all that read it may see’ what he’d done. If, in the last few moments left to her, she could bring him down and make him pay, those last few moments would not have been wasted. And then she found a calm peacefulness come over her as she took stock of her brief life. She knew that she was innocent and that God would stand by her as a friend. And, finally, what young dying mother would not take thought with those around her for the care of her newborn daughter? So that the young Sarah would live on and always remember her mother’s dying words.

With anything between fifty and one hundred and twenty graves needing to be dug each year in the six acre burial ground of Wolstanton Church, one might wonder where they found the space to bury generation upon generation of parishioners.

Surprisingly, perhaps, the time-honoured method was actually quite simple. The graveyard consisted of family plots and common ground. For families wishing to record the span of their ancestry, they would first choose a vacant plot and then they would maintain a modest payment to the church each year to retain it. On the occasion of the first member of the family to die, a large slab of stone would be placed over the grave with a short inscription recording the details of the departed life - right at the top of the stone leaving the rest blank. As the years go by, the husband or the wife of the first departed and all their children would be buried in the same grave so that, gradually, the once clean-faced stone becomes full of memorial inscriptions. The churchyard has many examples of family plots expanding so that four or five large gravestones fully inscribed now lie right next to each other and record the lives and deaths of many generations.

For common burials, a more earthy method is used to ensure the decent passage of ashes to ashes and dust to dust. When a family cannot afford a burial plot or a gravestone to bury one of their own, a simple wooden cross is hammered into the ground at the head of the grave. If the person is well remembered, perhaps flowers are planted in the earth above - and tended for as long as the person has someone to remember them. Over the years, the wooden cross weathers and rots and, when the grave-diggers are searching for a new burial site, when they see that only a fragment of the wood is left, they know that only earth and bone remain and they can respectfully redig the grave. Any bones found in these new pits are carefully removed, placed into a sack and taken the ossiery in the basement of the church.

It is most likely that Sarah Smith was herself buried in common ground on that dark December day in 1763 - they were not a wealthy family. As Samuel and Martha, their son Samuel and his wife Anne, along with Sarah’s newborn daughter, gather in the cold wintry air of the churchyard, and as they watch the simple wooden box being lowered into the grave and listen to their Vicar intone prayers for the departed, they find themselves in a world that has been turned upside down.

Grieving the loss of Sarah, wondering how they will care for the motherless young baby, and reeling from Sarah’s deathbed accusation, perhaps it is Samuel the son who takes the Reverend Edward Sneyd to one side and whispers that the family urgently need to speak to him about Sarah’s terrible dying words. Their Vicar is the only man they can turn to for advice as well as solace.

After baptising the infant Sarah and sensing a pain deeper than the loss of a daughter, perhaps Edward invites the family back to the warmth of the rectory across the road, sits them down, offers them some refreshment and listens to their story. Nodding his head to confirm that, yes, he does know the man Charles Barlow, Edward hears them in silence. Looking into the faces sitting opposite him and following the story as it passes from mother to father to son and back again - each time a new thread of Sarah’s recent life and dying words being teased out from memory - Edward would have no reason to doubt their sincerity.

Whether the Smith family opened the possibility with their Vicar that he might use his family connections to have the matter investigated or not, if Edward felt that an injustice had been done he also knew he had a duty to do whatever was in his power to right it.

In the Parish itself over the weeks and months following Sarah’s death, a dark rumour begins to pass about from whispered breath to cupped ear and the pious folk who hear this troubling tale cross themselves and mutter silent oaths. In such a small community, it is thought prudent that Charles should go away for a time and live with relatives in another district while the rumours die down.

Having relived the trauma of Sarah’s burial a second time on the death of the infant Sarah, the Smiths bide their time through the turn of the year, watch and wait as the snows and frosts recede and then, one Sunday morning after communion, their Vicar motions them to follow him into the vestry. With regret, Edward informs them that he has taken up the matter of Sarah’s accusation with his brother Ralph and that the matter will not be investigated. And, indeed, no such legal hearings into the matter exist in the extensive Court archives of the day at the Borough museum at Newcastle-under-Lyme.

But then Edward tells them that their recent tragedy has touched him deeply and that he would like to propose something that might bring them some solace. From a drawer in his desk, Edward takes out a piece of paper and reads it aloud. And having paused to let the words sink in, he says that, if the family agree, he will arrange to have these words carved upon a stone and the stone laid over Sarah’s grave so that her dying wish is respected. Edward knows that few of his parishioners are literate and the inscription on the gravestone will attract little attention - but will allow the poor Smith family to draw a line under their grief and, in the light of his brother Ralph’s indifference, allow Edward to see that the accusation is at least recorded.

Three years after Sarah’s death, Charles Barlow has returned to the Parish of Wolstanton with a new wife and they have begun a family. By 1772, with Mary and three children to support, Charles makes the most significant step of his career to date when he learns that the potter Thomas Steele, currently tenant at New House Farm, is planning to move his family and business to the neighbouring parish of Burslem and is seeking a reliable person to take over the tenancy.

By an extraordinary twist of fate, Sarah’s brother Samuel also hears this news and makes a provisional agreement to lease a couple of Thomas Steele’s fields. But when he discovers the name of the man who would be his neighbour, he has no choice but to back out of the arrangement.

However cool the relationship is between Charles Barlow and Samuel Smith, however deeply Samuel loathes Charles and however contemptuously Charles might treat Samuel on account of the rumours he spreads about the death of his sister, Samuel has the intense satisfaction of knowing something that Charles is clearly unaware of in spite of the fact that we know he was literate. About a mile and a half away, in the churchyard of Wolstanton, the fate of his sister is more than just a rumour - it is chiselled out on a great slab of stone above her grave so ‘That all that read it may see’ the guilt of Charles Barlow. Had Charles ever have come across the grave, it is unlikely that the inscription would have survived the encounter.

On 4 November 1778, almost exactly fifteen years after Sarah’s death, the Reverend Edward Sneyd is reminded of those dark days when Charles and Mary Barlow turn up one day with their children bearing a tragedy of their own - their third child James has died at the age of eight. With all due reverence, Edward buries the boy whom he himself baptised and offers his sincere condolences to the family. He’s glad to hear that, James’ death aside, Charles is doing so well at New House in Red Street.

Then next morning, when Edward opens the Parish Burial Register in order to write up the two burials he conducted the previous day, he realises that this is the perfect opportunity for him to plant an important clue so that anyone curious about the inscription on Sarah Smith’s gravestone might get a head start in picking up the trail. However unorthodox it was at this time to identify anyone but a Sneyd heir with the name of a property in the Parish Registers, to record a single burial twice in the same register is, quite possibly, unique to this day. That even the transcribers of the Parish Register Society failed to spot it in 1903 and that it would be 250 years before it eventually led to the identification of Charles Barlow was not Edward’s fault.

Between 1772 and 1799, Charles Barlow lives a prosperous life at New House Farm. He may have been a little late paying his rent now and again - but he never gets seriously in arrears.

His first son and heir, John, is clearly a chip off the old block. By the time that Charles decides to retire in 1798, John has married Elizabeth and started a large family of three sons and three daughters. Not wishing to take on his father’s lease at New House, John sets his eye firmly on his uncle James’ farm at Red Street.

And so Charles winds down his interest in New House and arranges a new lease on eight acres somewhere in the district of Chatterley where he can live out his days on his savings - paying just £2.6s.0d rent. [27] The last we hear of Charles is in 1803 when he hands over £4.12s.0d in rent for an area of land now measuring twelve acres. [28]

Copyright 2006 Jeremy Crick

Sneyd archive documents published with the permission
of the Special Collections & Archives, Keele University.

Red Street Farm today - it is the only farm in the district to survive from the 1700s. At the time of Sarah's death it was the home of James Barlow - and then, in 1830, a certain John Barlow is identified as the tenant. Is this man Charles' son or even his grandson?

[Fig 27]

[Fig 28]