As dawn was rising on the 17th of June 1839, men were on their way to work via the Trent & Mersey canal in the small Staffordshire town of Rugeley. Unfortunately for them, this same morning, they would discover a body in the canal. It was that of 37-year-old Christina Collins.
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Christina was born Christina Brown in New Radford (now Radford) in Nottingham. Her father, Robert Brown, was an inventor, but the family fell on hard times despite his intelligence and brilliant ideas. Towards the end of his life, he became depressed and attempted suicide before dying in 1818. Christina was an educated woman and was reportedly not too impressed with the change of circumstances and the lack of money. A local newspaper, reporting after her death, said she had been ‘well formed to move in a different sphere, but the unforeseen events which occurred in Mr Brown’s family, when the children were young, blighted all of their prospects, and left them without friends or protectors to guide them in the rugged paths of existence’. Christina’s mother went to work after Robert’s death and worked in nursing until her sixties. His son, Alfred, attempted to further his father’s inventions, but a lack of funding prevented him from doing so.
Christina married a man named Thomas Ingleby, a magician initially from Dundee. His advertising declared:
‘Mr. Ingleby, the greatest man in the world, most respectfully informs the Nobility, Gentry and Public in general that, in consequence of his superior excellence in the Art of Deception, he has had conferred upon him, in the last week, the title of Emperor of all Conjurors by a numerous assemblage of Gentleman Amateurs; and particularly through the trick of cutting a fowl’s head off and restoring it to life and animation’ (Mike, is that you?).
As time went by, Christina joined Thomas’s performances. She started with recitations and various songs before including dancing as well. Thomas died in 1832, leaving his younger wife a widow; they had no children together.
In 1838, Christina married Robert Collins. Robert was an ostler, someone who was employed to look after the horses of those staying at an inn. He had no high social status, and work could sometimes be scarce, but Christina adored him. They moved to Liverpool together to search for work, with Christina working as a seamstress at 3 Crosshall Street; Robert wasn’t as successful. In May 1839 he decided to travel to London to find work; he found it, working as an ostler again and lodging at 10 Edgware Road. Although he was working, he was, understandably, missing his wife. I found a section of one of the letters that Christina wrote him during this time, referring to him as Collins as she always did:
‘My dear Collins, sorry I am to read your wandering letter to me. Do,refers my dear strive against that misfortune which I fear awaits you. The loss of reason is dreadful’.
I believe this to be referring to his mental state while alone, without his wife, in the capital city, but it may be an insight into hers. Either way, it seems now like a rather eerie foreshadowing.
It was the 15th of June 1839 when Christina left her job as a seamstress to travel to her husband. Robert had sent her a guinea (£1.05); the railway line was too expensive for them, but she found a freight-carrying narrowboat that would take her for 16 shillings (80p). The narrowboat was manned by Captain James Owen, boatmen George Thomas & William Ellis and a cabin boy, William Musson (who I’ve also seen referred to as Muston but more often as Musson). James Owen was a married 39-year-old man from Brinklow. George Thomas, also called Dobell, was a 27-year-old single man originally from Wombourne. William Ellis, also known as Lambert, was a 28-year-old from Brinklow and illiterate. William Musson was a teenager from Chilvers Coton.
Whilst travelling, Christina had complained to canal officials in nearby Stoke on Trent about the boatmen’s somewhat fruity language and the increasing attention they were paying her as the only woman on board. William Brooke, a porter for a Pickford (a transport company) boat, confirmed that the boat arrived at Stoke midday on 16th June. He later said he heard Christina say to George Thomas ‘leave me alone. I’ll not have anything to do with you!’. Brookes later surmised that they were ‘making free with the spirit which was the cargo’ (stealing a cheeky drink from the items they were supposed to be moving). In Stone, witnesses later said that Christina was worried that ‘the men were going to meddle with her’, but unfortunately, there was no room on the London coach, so she had to continue her journey by boat. Later that day, the boat arrived at Aston Lock, about a mile and a half from Stone. Christina had arrived slightly earlier; she had taken to walking along the towpath rather than travelling with the intoxicated boatmen. She intended to rejoin them when they had hopefully sobered up a little. Christina sat and waited for the boat to catch up while sharpening a penknife she was carrying on the steps of the Lock keeper’s cottage (later, one of the men had a cut on his face, but it’s not conclusive what caused the cut). John Tansley, the assistant clerk at Aston Lock, later said that as the boat pulled up, the men ‘cursed her eye and wished she was in hell flames, for he hated the sight of her’. As she boarded the boat, James Owen offered her a drink (although the post-mortem later showed no alcohol in her body, so it’s unlikely she drank it).
Thomas Blore was the captain of a boat called The Emerald that passed them near Sandon. Blore said he heard James Owen referring to Christina in crude, coarse terms, saying he would do what he wanted with her or he would ‘burke her’ (this referred to an executed man from a decade before; he would smother his victims then sell the bodies to medical practices. Lovely). Around this time, Christina decided she would be safer to walk on the towpath again. Another boat captain, Robert Walker, said he passed her on the towpath before meeting with James Owen’s boat. One of the men asked Robert Walker if they had seen a woman on the towpath before describing what he would do with her in not-so-polite language. At the Hoo Mill lock, the keeper, James Mills, and his wife Anne were woken by someone screaming around midnight. They looked through their bedroom window to see three men and Christina with her legs hanging down at the side of the cabin. She screamed, ‘I’ll not go down, don’t attempt me!’. Anne Mills asked who she was; one of the men replied that she was a passenger and that her husband was with her. That seemed to appease the Mills because I can’t find any information of them doing anything after this. Around 1.30 a.m. on Monday, William Hatton passed by James Owen and George Thomas at the bank, and they asked if Hatton had seen a woman, to which he replied he hadn’t:
‘Owen: Have you not seen one anywhere?
Witness: No.
Owen: Have you not seen one between here and the Turnover Bridge?
Witness: No, I have not seen a woman anywhere.’
At 5 a.m. on Monday, 17th June, boatman Thomas Grant was travelling through Brindley Bank, near the aqueduct, in Rugeley. He noticed something floating in the water and, as he pulled closer, realised it was a woman's body. He stopped the boat and used a hook to pull her out with the help of John Johnson; Johnson was a wharfinger (keeper of a wharf) who was crossing the aqueduct at the time. Johnson took Christina’s lifeless body to the town via the sandstone steps next to the canal. She was taken to The Talbot Inn in Rugeley town (for those of you from Rugeley, it was on the corner of Wolseley Road and Anson Street and was demolished in 1877. Not to be mixed up with The Talbot Arms which is where The Shrew is now).
It wasn’t far away from Rugeley, at Fradley Junction, James Owen supposedly told a Pickford’s clerk there that one his passengers had drowned:
’I am afraid that a very bad job has happened; I had a passenger booked at Preston Brook, and I believe she is drowned”.
Witness said, “What makes you think so?”
Owen: She attempted to do it once before, and I pulled her out again”.
Witness: “You ought to have taken more care of her and have left her at the first place you came to”.
Owen: “I think she was off her head”.
Witness: “What makes you think so?”
Owen: “She kept crying out “Collins, Collins, Collins”’.
James Owen also said, ‘I cannot think what has become of her; she appeared to be deranged; she had got into the canal once up to her knees, and I pulled her out and took her into the cabin.’
The police were sent for. It took less than an hour after the discovery of Christina before the boat crew were in custody; some were still slightly drunk from the whisky they had ‘acquired’ from the cargo hold. Christina’s shoes and crushed bonnet were found in the boat's cabin. The arresting officer, William Harrison, later testified that the men were still ‘tipsy’ and quite abusive when they were handcuffed. He claimed one of them muttered, ‘damn and blast the woman’. The cabin boy, William Musson, was never charged but supposedly informed the authorities that William Ellis was asleep at the time of the murder as he could hear him snoring. There were no eyewitnesses as to what happened to Christine; the boatmen assumed she had either committed suicide or simply fell in the canal during the night and accidentally drowned.
While this happened, Christina’s body was still at The Talbot Inn. Hannah Phillips was employed to remove Christina’s clothes with the help of Elizabeth Matthews; Christina was wearing a dark-coloured dress and a fashionable handkerchief around her neck. The left sleeve was ripped out, the cuff on one hand was damaged, and her underwear was torn across the front. Thomas Grant and John Johnson were adamant that they hadn’t torn or damaged the clothing when removing her from the canal. The local surgeon, Samuel Barrett, later examined the body at the inquest:
’there were two minor bruises below the elbow of the right arm. Opened the body and examined it internally; observed some froth in the mouth of the throat; the cavities on the right side of the heart were gorged with a dark coloured blood, also the vessels leading to the lungs; the viscera were all healthy and sound; there was a frothy mucus about the mouth and throat, and about a pint of water in the stomach. Had been in practice at Rugeley twenty-one years, and conceived that death was caused from suffocation through drowning ‘.
At the first trial, in the Summer of 1839, Judge Williams heavily directed the jury to find the men not guilty of the allegations of serious sexual assault. Two surgeons claimed she had been raped, but there was insufficient evidence to convict the boatmen.
A second trial, this time for murder, took place on 16th March 1840 at Shire Hall, Stafford and at 9 am, the boatmen pleaded not guilty in a firm and distinct tone in front of Judge Gurney. During this trial, prosecutors called Joseph Orgill (I have also seen him referred to as George) to the stand. Orgill had been a cellmate of Captain James Owen and was a key witness for the prosecution; he was currently in prison, facing 18 months for bigamy. He claimed that Owen confessed that:
‘Thomas and (William) Ellis had committed rape and mauled her to death’.
Orgill claimed that James Owen had told him, ‘The other two men committed the rape upon her and mauled her to death, but I am free from it. I am afraid it will be a hanging job; what do you think about it?”
I said, “I can't tell”.
He said, “I'll tell you all about it.’
He supposedly went on to describe how George Thomas and Michael Ellis repeatedly raped Christina, saying:
‘The woman had a pair of trowsers on, and before they could commit the rape, they pulled a knife out, and one held her whilst the other cut her trowsers open. She screamed very loud, but I don't think they heard her at the lock’ (I know about the spelling, but this is how it’s written in the original account from The Staffordshire Advertiser).
Orgill went on to say James Owen had claimed:
‘When I tried to have to do with her, she said, Oh Captain, what are you doing? Oh, my Collins, Collins, I wish you was here. I was in the boat when we came to Colwich lock; it was then the boy's turn and mine to go to bed. Dobell and Lambert called me several times, but being drunk with whiskey and one thing or another, I was very loath to get up, but I did get up; the boy went to drive the horse, and I went to steer the boat. The other two men went into the cabin to the woman and began drinking whiskey; the woman jumped up and tried to make her escape, but they (Dobell and Lambert) pulled her back again; she had got halfway over, into the hatches, they pulled her into the cabin and committed rapes upon her again. ‘.
When Orgill asked if the woman was dead, he said, “I think she was completely mauled to death”’.
The issue with Orgill was that he had been all but promised a pardon if he made a statement about the case that would help convict the boatmen. Legal historian Dr Philip Handler stated in 2020:
‘Orgill maintained that he knew nothing of the pardon until the trial – but we have a letter where the prison governor had said to Orgill that a pardon would be the outcome. He must have lied (when he told the jury otherwise).’
Orgill’s character was also called into disrepute by those who knew him in his hometown of Burton; they wrote to the home office claiming he was a 'completely disreputable character whose evidence shouldn’t be given any weight at all.' On top of this apparent confession, Christina’s widowed husband Robert Collins was called to the witness box. He sobbed as he told the court how he identified his wife’s body, seriously tugging on some heartstrings. As he left the witness box, he ‘shook his head at the prisoners in a very mournful, but still revengeful, manner’.
The jury gave their verdict: guilty. The Judge passed the sentence:
‘James Owen, George Thomas and William Ellis, after a long and patient hearing of the circumstances of this case, and after due deliberation on the part of the jury, you have been found guilty of the foul crime of murder, murder of an unoffending and helpless woman who was under your protection and who, there is reason to believe, was the object of your lust; and then, to prevent detection for that crime, was the object of your cruelty. Look not for pardon in this world. Apply to the God of Mercy for that pardon which He alone can extend to penitent sinners and prepare yourselves for the ignominious death which awaits you. This case is one of the most shocking that has ever come under my knowledge, and it remains to for me to pass upon you the awful sentence of the Law, that you be taken from whence you came, and from thence to the place of execution, and that you, and each of you, be hanged by the neck until you are dead, and that your bodies afterwards be buried within the precincts of the prison. And may God have mercy on your souls.'
Captain James Owen and boatman George Thomas were sentenced to hang. James Owen’s wife visited him in prison but became so upset she would be ‘thrown into as fit’. William Ellis was given a last-minute reprieve from his death sentence; he heard the news just as the three men were receiving the last Sacrament. William Ellis was supposed to be transported to Australia as punishment instead and was returned to Stafford prison to wait for this. He became a completely transformed character whilst awaiting deportation, with the prison governor, Thomas Bruton, writing a letter suggesting that he maybe shouldn’t be transported after all:
‘My Lords and Gentlemen, understanding it is your pleasure to recommend the Court of Quarter Sessions to apply for Her Majesty’s Pardon for William Ellis, who was convicted of murder at the Spring Assizes, 1840 (with two other persons since executed) and who now remains in this Prison under sentence of transportation for the remainder of his life, I beg most respectfully to report his conduct during the very long time he has been in my custody. It is now nearly two years and a half since he was committed for trial, at which period he was an ignorant man and not capable of reading and writing, but since his conviction, he has applied himself so strenuously of his own free will and desire to improve himself that for some time past he has been able to read well and write tolerably so, and his general conduct during the whole of his imprisonment has been most exemplary. I must therefore, take leave to recommend him to your favourable consideration as a reformed man and a deserving object of the Royal Clemency.’ I cannot find anything to say whether William Ellis was eventually transported to Australia.
On the 11th of April 1840, nearly 10,000 people attended the hanging of James Owen and George Thomas. It took place on portable gallows, wheeled out so people could see the hangings, in Gaol Road, Stafford (nearby Rugeley). The Hangman was William Calcraft, who had been appointed executioner in 1829. His assistant was Thomas Cheshire, and Calcraft asked him to join him in Stafford for the execution of James Owen and George Thomas. Cheshire agreed and had a few relatives in Rugeley, so decided to incorporate work with family visiting. It turned out his family wasn’t all that keen on spending time with a Hangman’s assistant, so Cheshire chose to call into the Shoulder of Mutton Inn (for those of you in Rugeley, this pub stood where the clock tower now is in the town centre before being demolished in 1878). He ended up seriously drunk (we’ve all been there; we’ve all been out ‘just for one’) and actually forgot he was supposed to be helping with a hanging (although forgetting you’re hanging someone is a different level of drunk). As it happened, Calcraft wasn’t overly keen on Cheshire, so he wasn’t too bothered. He asked the prison governor, Thomas Bruton if any prisoners would make a suitable assistant. George Smith was in for debt and agreed to the assistant position in exchange for his debt being paid off. His job during the execution was to jump and hang off the legs of the victims if the drop didn’t kill them quickly enough. George Smith became a hangman and was famous for being the executioner of Doctor William Palmer, the Rugeley poisoner (and there’s an article for in the future!).
When the time arrived ‘the Chaplain appeared first, reading the funeral service of the Church of England, followed by the two culprits, the executioner and the Governor and officers of the prison. The men walked with a firm step and ascended the steps of the drop without assistance. The executioner immediately placed the ropes around their necks, shook hands with them, and as the Chaplain pronounced the words, ‘In the midst of life we are in death’, and the fatal bolt was drawn, and the wretched men ceased to live. Their bodies were much convulsed’. The men were hanged for an hour, as was typical at the time, before being cut down and buried within Stafford prison grounds. James Owen and George Thomas protested their innocence to the end.
To this day, the steps at Brindley Bank, Rugeley, are called The Bloody Steps after Christina Collins's body was pulled up from the water and supposedly stained the steps with her blood. The steps were sandstone, but concrete ones have long since been built parallel to the original ones. There is a long-standing legend that the steps will occasionally bleed on their own. There are also many rumours about the area being haunted; many people I spoke to had either experienced an eerie feeling/seen something out of the ordinary, or knew someone who had. Christina is buried in the nearby graveyard of St Augustine’s church. Even now, there are always flowers left at her graveside. Her gravestone, paid for by the occupants of Rugeley at the time, reads:
‘To the memory of Christina Collins, wife
Of Robert Collins, London, who having Been
Barbarously treated was found dead in the
Canal in this parish on June 17th 1839, age 37 yrs.
This stone was erected by some individuals of the
Parish of Rugeley in communication of the end
Of the unhappy woman’.
An exhibition ran in Stone briefly and included a wooden sculpture next to the canal that was in memory of Christina. However, some people found it disturbing, with one person describing it as’ this terrifying sculpture, with its twisted neck, naked torso, missing arms, large pudenda, and strange jagged line down its centre, seems to point to the agony of her last hours.' Sounds delightful. In popular culture, this case also inspired Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse story, ‘The Wench is Dead’.
BBC daytime TV show Murder, Mystery and My Family reinvestigated the case on behalf of George Thomas’s family and discovered the conviction was not necessarily safe. Criminal barrister Jeremy Dean said on the programme, ‘what we do know is that Orgill gave evidence in highly questionable circumstances, and that’s a matter of very serious concern. Ultimately, without his evidence, there was no evidence of murder – and yet George Thomas, a young man, was hanged and lost his life.' Judge David Radford said, ‘this evidence constituted inadmissible hearsay. It was anyway evidence given by a man of little credibility in exchange for a free pardon. The reality is that there were no eyewitnesses to assist any jury as to how or why Mrs Collins came to be in the canal or how and why she drowned. There was no evidence of physical or sexual assault. I am in absolutely no doubt that demonstrably and unarguably, this was a completely unsafe conviction of murder.’
I don’t think we will ever really know what happened to Christina Collins. Even Mr Sergeant Ludlow said at the original trial, ‘she might have accidentally fallen into the water; she might have thrown herself in; or she was thrown in by the wilful act of the prisoners, or by some of them’. Whatever you think happened, whether it was murder or a tragic accident, it’s a sad story of the loss of a life that will forever be entwined in Rugeley's history.
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‘Good Christian people, pray attend
Whilst I relate to you
Concerning of a murder foul,
It is, alas, too true.
A helpless female, much beloved
Was travelling to her home,
Three boatmen seized her as she sat
The water was her home.
A letter she had just received
From her beloved friend,
It was her husband, you shall hear
That did for her then send,
Upon the water she did go,
It was the nearest way,
But sad to tell she was never more
Did see the light of day.
James Own then did her affright.
The wretched woman cried,
Dobell he said, “’Tis all in vain,
All help it is denied”.
Ellis he then assisted them,
They bruised her body sore,
Their hearts did never more relent
Till life it was no more.
‘Twas on the 17th day of June
This murder it was done.
They did complete the awful deed
Before the rising sun.
Loud were her shrieks, but all was vain,
She all her strength did try,
To save her life she struggled long,
But now she was to die.
Her voice grew faint, life’s ebbing stream
Did flow upon the boat,
The glassy eye convinced them all
That they the deed had wrought.
They threw the body overboard
To hide the crime they’d done,
But Providence did so ordain
The body should be found.
In Staffordshire these monsters were,
In Rugeley, you shall hear.
They now in prison lie condemned,
Their sentence is past here.
Christina Collins lost her life
By their most ruthless hand,
May God prepare them all in time
To meet at His right hand.’
(From the front page of the broadsheet at the time)
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