‘REDDITCH… wicked beyond belief….
So says ex-journalist and top-selling Worcester author Bob Blandford whose new book ‘Worcestershire Bird’ profiles thousands of the County’s direst and most desperate real-life criminals, revealing the darkest undersides of Redditch, Feckenham and Tardebigge among others.
“The towns and their surrounding villages may not have been on a par with crime-rife Worcester, Dudley and Stourbridge, but when they were, the dastardly deeds of their inhabitants were about as dark as any committed anywhere else in the County or even nationally,” said Bob.
It’s a comment borne-out by the tales of the six Redditch men executed at Worcester for crimes committed in the immediate area: James Wiggett, executed 1793 for theft at Tardebigge; William Morris, hanged 1795 for burglary and theft at Feckenham; John Holward hanged 1815 for housebreaking and robbery also at Feckenham; William White for the rape of Ann Davis at Beoley the same year; and William Clements and John Batty for burglary at Paxford, both hanged on Friday, March 22, 1816.
They are among graphic accounts of the 38 men ‘hanged by the neck until dead’ at Worcester County Gaol: “…some folk are going to be very shocked!” said Bob.
‘Worcestershire Bird’, stretching to 516-pages is packed with never- before-seen photographs, is a no-holds-barred insight into Worcester City and County gaols, their inmates and their lives and crimes, drawing its name from con-speak for ‘time’, derived from bird-lime with which gaolers coated prison walls to prevent prisoners escaping.
It is set for formal launch in the city on December 3 – 100 years to the day since the last execution at HM’s Castle Street Hotel, the pet name attached to the County Gaol by as many as 300,000 inmates in its 108-year history.
The book additionally outlines what life was like on the Inside and tells the tale of some 2,000 Worcestershire convicts and 2,500 more transported from the city and county to Australia.
Local cases include:
Richard Daniel sentenced to three months at Worcester Gaol for placing a huge quantity of gunpowder against his neighbour William Whitcombe’s house at Tardebigge with intent to do damage and bodily injury to the occupant and his wife
The landlord of the Woodman Inn at Astwood Bank who had slashed his wife’s throat before twice dragging the razor across his own in 1901
Phoebe Knight (27) charged with murder at Redditch in 1910 after throwing herself and her two children – William (4) and another, a mere baby, still unnamed – into the canal. Sentence: one day in gaol – which she’d already served while on remand at Worcester and was immediately released
Elizabeth Odell charged with alleged concealment after she dumped her still-born baby in a coal-house in Redditch in 1921
Not that all the tales are gruesome accounts of deadly doings-in…
In 1921, Alfred Timmins, 40 year-old Redditch carpenter said he had no recollection of marrying Mabel Doris Stanton, his wife Rebecca still being alive and living in the town with their four children: “…I must have been drunk at the time’ he told the court – the officials not even vaguely amused. Nine months’ hard.
Worcestershire Bird is available from Waterstones, Worcester Tourist Information Centre at the Guildhall, and other outlets from November 25 as well as on Amazon, and direct from the author at [email protected]
