If you have a lawbreaker in your family, contemporary newspaper reports can add invaluable detail to an otherwise skeletal family tree.
Discovering serious criminals among your ancestors is a risk for family historians. It can be a source of embarrassment if not shame. But it can also lead to a wealth of information about the individuals concerned and social conditions at the time. By an odd inversion of justice, the more egregious the crime the more copious and colourful will be the newspaper accounts that the genealogist can draw upon.
Murder in the Family
Consider the murder of Nevell Norway in February 1840. Norway was murdered one night as he rode alone on horseback from Bodmin in the English county of Cornwall to his home six miles away near Wadebridge. The story electrified the county, partly because Norway was so well respected and partly because of the brutal nature of the attack.
Search and Arrest
The area will have seemed far more remote 168 years ago than it does now. But out of sight of the main road and the modern Camel Valley cycle trail the steep, thickly forested valleys and narrow, winding tracks may lead even the modern visitor to lose all sense of direction.
Nevertheless finding and arresting the murderers took only a few days. A neighbour directed the police to James Lightfoot in the village of Burlawn, two miles from the site of the murder. Lightfoot had returned home late on the night of the murder. Shortly afterwards his brother William betrayed himself through some remarks to a work mate.
Newspaper Records
The leading local newspaper, the West Briton, provides compelling portraits of the main characters in the case and sharply contrasting images of mid-nineteenth century Cornish society. Norway had established himself as a modestly prosperous merchant. His house in Egloshayle had its own stable and was home to three live-in servants.
Both the Lightfoot brothers left school at the age of eleven and worked locally as apprentices, loading boys and agricultural labourers. Both were often drunk and involved in petty crimes. While the mining industry was still growing in other parts of nineteenth century Cornwall, the Wadebridge - Bodmin railway was recently completed and nearby Padstow was among England’s largest embarkation ports for North America, neither James nor William had travelled more than a few miles from their birthplace or worked with anything other than muscle power.
Trial and execution
The evidence against William and James was overwhelming. While they had no legal representation, they confessed verbally and by signing written statements and there is no reason to doubt their guilt. The jury reached its verdict after just two minutes of discussion in their seats within the courtroom.
The death sentence was practically automatic even though methods of criminal justice were then being debated. Shortly before the trial the West Briton carried a thoughtful discussion of the value of executions as a deterrent to crime. But that did not help the Lightfoot brothers. They went to the gallows on 13th April, at Bodmin jail before a crowd of 20,000 people, just 66 days after they attacked Nevell Norway.
Aftermath: the Victim's Family
A public subscription raised £3,500 for Norway’s widow Sarah and their six children, a huge sum at a time when a labourer would hardly make a pound for two weeks’ work. But Sarah died later in 1840 and is buried in Egloshayle churchyard together with her husband.
The 1841 census shows four of the children living in Egloshayle with Sarah’s sister Maria. In 1844 Maria married Nevell’s brother Edmund and they continued to raise the family. By 1851 the eldest son Arthur had married Georgina Shute and was working in his uncle Edmund’s wine importing business. Among other distinguished descendants was the author Nevil Shute, whose real name was Nevil Shute Norway, born in London in 1899.
The Criminals' Family
Several of the St Breock Lightfoots moved to Australia soon after the murder, joining a common route out of the faltering Cornish economy. James’ wife Maria and their one-year-old daughter went to live with Maria’s parents in Wadebridge, where they are listed in the 1841 census, though there is no record thereafter. William’s wife, yet another Maria, and her three daughters were living in the St Columb workhouse in 1841. By 1851 only two daughters were listed, then aged 12 and 10. There the trail ends; the fate of their elder brother is also a mystery.
As for your reporter, his five-greats grandfather was an uncle of Nevell Norway’s killers. Close enough to dine out on, but distant enough for the neighbours to feel fairly safe.
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