Murders took place throughout Victorian Britain, and all manner of motives lay behind them.
The Leytonstone Express and Independent, in its edition of Saturday the 14th of December, 1878, published details of a murder that had occurred in Kent:-
THE MURDER IN KENT
The following details have been received respecting the dreadful murder recently perpetrated near Sandwich.
It appears that a ploughing machine belonging to the victim, Mr. Arthur Gillow (son of Mr. W. Gillow, J.P.), having been damaged, a reward of £10 was offered for the conviction of the offenders, and bills to that effect were freely distributed in the public-houses and shop windows in the surrounding neighbourhood.
Prior to that the deceased had made a general reduction of his men’s wages of a shilling a week all round, but still their pay was liberal, one man who drove the engine in question receiving twenty nine shillings per week instead of thirty shillings as before.
STEPHEN GAMBRILL SUSPECTED
The inquiries of the police led them to attach special notice to a man living in Woodnesborough named Stephen Gambrill. He was what is termed “second boy” on the farm, in the employ of Mr. Arthur Gillow.
Gambrill, however, is married, and has a wife and two children.
The police could get no satisfactory account of the way the man spent the night, and his own account did not seem straightforward.
Moreover, a boy is said to have seen him following the deceased from Sandwich.
AT THE POLICE STATION
These and other circumstances, which certainly did not go beyond suspicion, induced the police to ask him to go down to the police-station at Sandwich, and allow his clothes to be examined.
He went down in the evening, and was detained in the reception-room at the police-station waiting for the arrival of the superior officer who was to make the investigation.
ATTEMPT AT SUICIDE
In the meantime the man lay down on a bench, and the policeman in charge gave him a rug to put over his legs.
After lying there a while the man pulled the rug up from his legs and covered his head with it, and almost immediately afterwards it was found that while thus hidden he had taken a knife and attempted to commit suicide by inflicting a fearful cut in his throat.
The officer in charge at once took the weapon from him, and called Dr. Scott, who sewed up the wound and stopped the blood, and it is thought that the man will get better.
He is now in the lock-up at Sandwich, and, as soon as he is sufficiently recovered. he will be brought before the magistrates for examination.
His wife is in great distress about him, but he has made no admission or confession at all, and is very sullen and reserved.
PEOPLE VISITING THE SCENE
Hundreds of people have been to the scene of the murder.
As is the case commonly in that neighbourhood the road lies open to the land without hedges.
The ploughing engine stands on the land close to the roadside, a short distance out of the village of Woodnesborough.
There are no trees or other hiding-places about.
SIGNS OF THE STRUGGLE
The signs of the struggle are still to be seen on the earth between the road and the engine, and also the place is plainly marked where the deceased lay in a pool of blood.
Two detectives have arrived at Sandwich with blood hounds to trace the murderers.
It is believed there were two.
AN INQUEST HELD
An inquest has been held at Woodnesborough, when Mr. Thomas Horn, surgeon, who examined the body of the deceased, found a wound about two inches long on the forehead, and another about the same length over the left temple, and at the back of his head an irregular wound, star shaped, below which the scalp was in a condition of pulp.
The jury then returned a verdict that the deceased, Arthur Gillow, was wilfully murdered by some person or persons unknown.
INTENSE EXCITEMENT
A correspondent states that the murder has created intense excitement through the whole district, as it is supposed to be connected with the agricultural labourers’ strike, and that Gambrill, whose wages had lately been reduced from 16s. to 15s. a week, is a violent tempered man, and was suspected some time since of cutting a horse’s tongue out.