Lower Quinton Witchcraft Murder

[Writerboy]

I actually wrote a play about this case because I was fascinated at how within such a short space of time the truth could get so distorted and these witchcraft rumours could become so popular. Having visited the village a few times and studied the Home Office files I think what is far more sinister than the witchcraft myth is just how many people in the village clearly know who was responsible.

The only thing that does puzzle me is the "witch's mirror" puzzle. This was supposedly a piece of glass Walton kept in his watchcase which disappeared when he was killed and was found in one of his outbuildings in 1960 when it was being demolished though they had been thoroughly searched at the time. Is there any truth in any of this do we know? I could find no reference to it in the police files so where Donald McCormick got it from is a mystery to me for his Murder by Witchcraft book, but then McCormick is famously a fantasist.

[sn_redditch]

>>Having visited the village a few times and studied the Home Office files I >>think what is far more sinister than the witchcraft myth is just how many >>people in the village clearly know who was responsible.
You need to back up a claim like this? From living in the village up to age of 20, and speaking to my father on a number of occasions - his best friend discovered the body - I don't believe your statement. Yes, my father and many other villagers had their suspicions, but this is very different from fact.

As far as I'm aware the "witch's mirror" puzzle is true.

[em614]

I actually wrote a play about this case because I was fascinated at how within such a short space of time the truth could get so distorted and these witchcraft rumours could become so popular. Having visited the village a few times and studied the Home Office files I think what is far more sinister than the witchcraft myth is just how many people in the village clearly know who was responsible.

The only thing that does puzzle me is the "witch's mirror" puzzle. This was supposedly a piece of glass Walton kept in his watchcase which disappeared when he was killed and was found in one of his outbuildings in 1960 when it was being demolished though they had been thoroughly searched at the time. Is there any truth in any of this do we know? I could find no reference to it in the police files so where Donald McCormick got it from is a mystery to me for his Murder by Witchcraft book, but then McCormick is famously a fantasist.

Yes, I think the villagers' reaction is the truly interesting thing. Attempting to provide positive proof that there was a causal (or otherwise mystical) link between the murder to Ann Tennant/Turner or the Charles Walton of the 1880s will lead us nowhere. We know that the veracity of Ann being killed in a ritualistic manner is hugely suspect (at the time national newspaper mocked their provincial ways for the mere suggestion that she was a witch) and that the Charles Walton of 1885 is unlikely to have been the same one or have actually undergone the experience. I know one of these stories from from Harvey Bloom's book, the other was from Clive Holland's 'Warwickshire' (1906/8(?)), so they were both local publications.

The thing that we really need to ascertain is how well known were these stories. I doubt Bloom or Holland were merely fabricating (I'm reminded of medieval historians in this sense, basing their works on known stories but applying little rigour), and they wrote well before the murder took place. These were local works, most likely based on local rumours, and Walton himself was rumoured to be involved in witchcraft (although I don't know the sources on this - whether he was or was rumoured to, who alleged it and when is a bit of a mystery - it reoccurs in accounts). So I'm willing to countenance the idea that there was some suspicion among the population, that rumours were circulating of witchcraft etc. Obviously Potter may have had personal motives but I'm interested in who else was implicated, whether anyone knew it was coming in advance, just how many knew what was going on and how many were genuinely perplexed.

In response to sn_redditch, p. 3: I think you're being a bit uncivil. You might think the link to witchcraft farcical but the fact is he was killed in an odd, not unprecented (at least in extant literature), way and the behaviour of the villagers was suspicious. Fabian and Spooner linked it to witchcraft in the course of their own investgation. I don't believe the villagers were involved in witchcraft; I think it's plausible that some segments believed Walton was, or was some sort of pagan oddball, it was legitimate to off him, or at least keep quiet about it.

On another note: how would I go about accessing Home Office files on this? Sorry if this sounds a bit naive.

[Appleby]

The Police File

The 'Home Office files' are presumably a reference to the Metropolitan Police file held at the National Archives in Kew. To access this you merely need to present yourself and obtain a Reader's Ticket, a process that takes about 30 minutes.
There is a link between the murders of Charles Walton and Ann Tennant (not Turner) as the Daily Mirror suggested in 1954, but it is certainly not the modus operandi which was quite different in the two cases (see my earlier posts).
Nothing on the Police file suggests that the murder was regarded as 'ritualistic' in 1945. It was seen as frenzied, however, and the message that the Deputy Chief Constable of Warwickshire sent to New Scotland Yard on 15 February 1945 stated that 'The murder was either committed by a madman or one of the Italian prisoners who are in a camp nearby'! Because of this, Detective Sergeant Saunders, an Italian speaking officer from Special Branch, arrived in the area on the evening of 16 February and, over the next few weeks, conducted scores of interviews with the Italian prisoners, numerous records of which are held on the file.
The picture that emerges from these interviews is of a prison camp regime that was entirely laissez faire. Prisoners were allowed to roam the area at will, on foot or on bicycle, and although, officially, there were days on which they were supposed to work in camp and days on which they were free, in practice, no record was kept of who was and was not in camp. On the afternoon concerned (Dr Webster had determined that Walton died between 1and 2 pm) some prisoners had gone into Stratford to see Moliere's The School for Husbands, while others had visited the cinema and seen Mr. Emmanuel, a 1944 Felix Aylmer film in which an elderly Jew travels to Germany before World War II to see for himself what was happening there. This was dismissed by more than one of the Italians as 'some sort of anti-German propaganda'.
It does not appear that any of the Italians was ever seriously considered to have killed Walton.
Surprisingly, the file reveals that there were four people in the vicinity when Charles Walton's body was found: Edith Walton, Harry Beasley, Alfred Potter and a Harry Peachey who happened to be passing by on the other side of the hedge when Walton's body was found. Indeed, it was Peachey who was dispatched to alert the police.
Moreover, the file also reveals that Walton's best friend, George Higgins, a 72-year-old of Fairview, Lower Quinton, was working in a barn no more than 300 yards from Walton at the time of his murder.
The major revelation in the file, however, is that no one was ever seriously suspected of carrying out the murder other than Alfred John Potter.
While there may have been talk of witchcraft, black dogs, Harvey Bloom's book etc., none of this found its way on to the file: I suspect that Fabian cared too much for his career to allow this to happen.
However, for the witchcraft theorists, it is worth mentioning that the heifer which is often quoted as having mysteriously died, belonged to Potter and expired on 13 February: it drowned in Doomsday Ditch.

[Appleby]

New Evidence

Anyone interested in this fascinating case should read the new article that appears on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Walton
This contains a wealth of previously unpublished material, including the real relationship between Charles Walton and Anne Tennant.