PIG, PUBS, and PEOPLE : CHAPTER 4
VILLAGE EVENTS
There have been a number of major events in East Haddon over the years that have affected the lives of the residents. The following are descriptions of a few of them, the first two having taken place in the latter years of the nineteenth century, but still having repercussions well into the twentieth....
The Strange, Sad Tale of Annie Pritchard
In a village not far from Northampton,
A poor woman’s body was found
A victim of sad mutilation
And covered with many a wound,
Her head had been cut off from her body,
Fromm her shoulder her arm had been torn
What a heartaching scene it must have been
She’d been lying there since early dawn.
Annie Pritchard at Birmingham dwelling,
To McRae she was living next door
What possess’d her alas there’s no telling,
Her lips they are closed evermore,
It is said that she left her relations,
And to Northamptonshire went away,
A poor simple plan. She went with a man,
And that man George Andrew McRae...
Madly in love with McRae she had been,
His plausible tongue to her so bewitching,
Led her astray as you all must have seen,
Tho’ a wife and young children McRae had living;
In Birmingham close by where poor Annie did dwell,
Such entreaties to her he must have been giving,
That she left her home and by murder she fell.
Above are excerpts from a song entitled “The Althorp Horror” that was written shortly after the extraordinary and brutal murder of Annie Pritchard came to light in 1892. Her body, or what remained of it, was discovered near East Haddon in August of that year. On a particularly hot day a local man was travelling down what is now the A428 road and his attention was drawn to a sack lying in a ditch by the nauseating stench emanating from it. He tried to open it, thinking it must contain an animal carcass, and was startled to find white flesh inside. He could not bear to investigate further, because the smell was so intense, and so he went to seek help in the village. A short time later, a group of East Haddon men were at the scene, and John Chapman volunteered to climb down into the ditch and have a look at the contents of the sack. It turned out to be a woman’s body, minus the head and parts of the arms, but still wearing a blood-stained dress.
It was decided that an autopsy would be necessary, and Dr Churchouse was called from Long Buckby. He arrived during a heavy downpour, and conducted his examination on a table in the kitchen of the Red Lion pub. He confirmed that the body was that of a young woman, and that she had been dead at least three weeks. He concluded that a heavy knife, a hatchet or a saw had been used to sever the limbs. An inquest was held into the death at the same location on 8 August. There was apparently one significant clue: the name E.M.RAE, Northampton appeared on a sugar bag which formed an inner lining to the sack. It was established that this was one of the bags used by Edward Macrae, a bacon factor in Northampton, in which to send goods all around the country. Numerous people would have been in possession of such bags, so this evidence was initially discounted because it had no apparent relevance.
As to the identity of the victim, it was at first thought to be a Mrs Tite, who had been missing from her home in Northampton for some time. Her mother thought the clothing, which was of good quality, was at least similar to that worn by her daughter when she was last seen. However, Miss Tite returned home soon after the reports appeared in the local press. The investigation seemed to be losing impetus, and the mystery of who the murderer and victim could have been no nearer to being solved. Then a local journalist, ignoring the conclusion of the investigating authorities about the sugar bag, published a drawing of the label in his newspaper. The proprietor of a second-hand clothing business, Mrs Bland, saw the picture and recalled buying some women’s and babies’ clothing from the bacon factor’s brother, Andrew George MacRae. She had remembered this particularly, because it had seemed strange for him to be selling the baby’s clothes so soon after becoming a father. She contacted the police, and they brought McRae in for questioning.
The facts gradually emerged, despite MacRae’s vehement denials of any wrongdoing. MacRae had been living in Birmingham with his wife and two children, but had left them to join his brother’s business in Northampton. A near neighbour, Annie Pritchard, with whom he had been having an affair, left home at about the same time, leaving a note to say she was going to New York with an artist friend, Guy Anderson, and that they intended to get married. She was in fact carrying MacRae’s child, and soon joined him in Northampton, where they set up home together. The baby was born in June 1892. In July, they vacated heir lodgings in St John’s Street with the intention of moving to Duke Street, but they never arrived here. A woman helped them in the move by carrying the baby, but she left them at Dychurch Lane, where Edward MacRae’s business was based, and neither the mother nor the baby were seen alive again.
Andrew MacRae appeared in a pub the following day in an agitated state, saying he had been up all night washing bacon. Over the next few days, several people observed thick smoke coming from the Dychurch Lane premises that Andrew managed and there was a smell of burning bones. Subsequent events indicate a degree of panic on his part, or perhaps carelessness. On 23rd July, he sold the clothing to Mrs Bland, and two days afterwards he bought a quantity of lime. On the 26th, he hired a trap twice from a Mr G. Ward and was seen driving it out of town by a Mrs Morrell. It later transpired that this was how MacRae had taken away the body and then disposed of it in East Haddon. MacRae sold Mrs Morrell a trunk with the initials A.P, clearly marked on it. The police searched the Dychurch Lane works and found remains of bones and light brown hair under a copper and a slimy fatty fluid inside it. The whereabouts of the baby was never established but the police believed it had been burned in the copper.
Despite MacRae’s claims that Annie Pritchard was now in New York with Anderson, with all the circumstantial evidence pointing to him the jury at his trial had few doubts and found him guilty of her murder, on Christmas Eve 1892. He continued to protest his innocence and turned on the jury, saying: “Each and every one of you this day has become what you have made me – a murderer. You have widowed a good devoted wife and made fatherless loving children. Go to your homes with clear consciences if you can, for as long as you live your consciences will accuse you.” He was hanged, aged 36, on 12th January 1893.
Annie Pritchard’s burial took place at East Haddon cemetery following a funeral service conducted by the Congregational Minister from Long Buckby. The vicar of St Mary’s Church at the time had refused to have the body buried in the churchyard, because it was not complete and was of a murder victim. Wreaths covered Annie’s coffin – sent by people in the county who had been touched by her story – and 100 parishioners followed the coffin to the burial service. Public subscription also paid for the headstone on Annie’s grave, which reads; “I was a stranger and ye took me in.” There are tales of a face appearing on the headstone and of footsteps being heard on the hill where the body was found. Well-wishers erected a stone beside the ditch to show where the body had been found but this was later removed by the authorities as being unsuitable.
Although the murder took place more than 100 years ago, the case still holds a fascination for the people of Northamptonshire, and particularly East Haddon. The treatment of the victim both in life and after her death was truly appalling. East Haddon residents were clearly moved by the tragedy, and their response was commendable – especially in view of the fact that their only connection with the affair was because the murderer had, by chance apparently, chosen to dispose of the body in the parish.
The Diphtheria Epidemic and its Consequences
In 1889 a serious outbreak of diphtheria occurred in East Haddon. There were 134 recorded cases and 17 people died. It is thought that the seriousness of the epidemic was due to the whole village attending a party given by the Sawbridges in their garden. Bad weather meant that everyone sought shelter in the marquee, allowing the disease to spread easily. Public health inspectors instituted several improvements to village life in order to prevent further epidemics:
The church cemetery was closed to further burials because of the danger of disturbing the older bones and risking disease from them.
The new cemetery was opened in 1891.
A new water tower was erected in the Post Office garden because existing water supplies were too close to village privies, from which there was a risk of contamination.
New drains were laid, consisting of closed pipework leading to open ditch drains along main roads; they smelt foul. A modern sewerage system with a sewage farm to the north of Holdenby Road was not constructed until 1954.
Mains Water, Gas and Electricity Arrive in the Village
Ken Craddock remembers that when his father took over the bakery in 1925, they had no mains water and all their water had to be collected from the pump opposite their house. They also had a well in the garden, but its water was not drinkable and could only be used on the garden. Water was originally provided for the village from the water tower in the garden at the back of the Post Office. The two 5000 gallon tanks in the tower were fed from springs by means of ram pumps, which were replaced in 1932 by electric ones. There is a story that the man responsible for maintaining the water supply used to go to the pub sometimes at midday and sleep off the effects of the alcohol in the afternoon, leaving the village without water. Whatever the truth of the matter, the water tower provided water to the houses of the village situated at a higher level for only part of the day. Maurice Fletcher recalls that his family’s well once caused his father to have an accident.
The cottage we lived in, in St Andrew’s Lane, was joined to the next one at the roof by an archway in the centre. Halfway through that there was a well for our drinking water. Father used to go to work on a motorbike. On a Saturday, if he’d got any money, he used to stop on the way home and have a drink or two. I had the lid off one day and was looking down this well and there was a frog in it. He came round the corner and his front wheel went straight down the well. He wasn’t very happy!
Dick Craddock regards the arrival of mains water, sewerage, gas and electricity as the major improvements to village life in the last century, but laments the loss of the shops. Elsa Talbot remembers that the introduction of mains sewerage caused a “great upheaval” and that when each home was provided with mains water, the village water pumps were removed; an indent is still visible in the Village Hall where one of these stood.
According to Paul Capell, gas supplies arrived in East Haddon from neighbouring Long Buckby in 1937. Prior to having gas, many people in the village used paraffin for cooking, as did Paul’s mother. The paraffin was delivered by Bailey’s of Long Buckby. Long Buckby had had gaslights for some time, and Paul remembers how lamplighters used to come out in the evening to light the lamps. When it was decided to lay gas pipes to East Haddon, the trenches were dug manually and the joints between the pipes sealed with clay before lead was poured in on top. Paul Capell says:
We had gaslights then, and a gas cooker. It was very modern. We moved to No. 1 Clifden Terrace in 1937, the Coronation year, when the gas was connected up into Northampton. Everyone had gas because we had to pay a service charge for electricity and no one could afford it. We couldn’t get electricity laid on after the First World War until 1928. Gas was connected for nothing but there was a service charge for electricity.
Street lighting was late arriving in East Haddon, and one of Marjorie Wightman’s earliest memories of the village is walking home from the Plough in “absolute darkness”, which was quite a shock because she was used to busy well-lit Birmingham.
A Fire in the Village
In September 1950, there was a serious fire in the six (now three) cottages at the St Andrew’s Road end of the Terrace. It was thought that the fire started in a wooden beam stretching across a chimney stack, and the fire brigade said it could have been smouldering in the roof a week beforehand. Dickie Neale claims to have been the first to spot the fire: “I happened to be walking up from Freddie Smith’s... and I saw this smoke pouring out from the side of one of the chimneys.” Dickie told Jack Adams, who lived there, “but he said ’Oh, that’s nothing’. Within an hour the whole lot was alight.” The firemen from Long Buckby took their engine up St Andrew’s Road and drew water from a dew pond in St Andrew’s Field. They drained the pond, and it never refilled.
It was decided to evacuate the houses, and while the firemen were trying to remove the corrugated iron covering the thatch, people from the village came and formed a human chain between the houses and Church Lane and passed every single household item to safety. It was a quite extraordinary event because without any organisation the villagers banded together to save the goods – even the bottled plums that one of the residents had recently prepared from her garden! Farmers had brought their tractors and trailers to the bottom of the steps on Church Lane, where the property was loaded onto them and taken to the Village Institute to be stored. The tractors went backwards and forwards in the dark without any lights, loading and unloading. There was some concern that there might have been a spark amongst all the goods piled up in the Institute, so a vigil was mounted all night. Tom Farmer was due to be married the next day and the Institute had been booked for his reception. This was now out of the question, so it was transferred to the school – a supposedly alcohol-free zone, but not on this occasion!
The response of the East Haddon residents to the fire is looked back on as a remarkable example of a village community pulling together in a time of crisis.