A sensational discovery has been made this week and we are enabled to tell our readers the whole story. It is that two men innocent of the crime with which they have been charged, have been in Northampton Gaol since July 11th, and are there still awaiting the Home Office order for their release. As justice is sometimes both halt and blind and the law is not so swift in amending blunders as in making them , these two men will probably remain in prison several more days until the slow moving authorities have satisfied themselves that they are really punishing the wrong men.

The victims of this gross miscarriage of justice, which in certain respects is unequalled in local history, are Robert Parker, of 30 Wellingborough Road, Higham Ferrers, a shoe operative, with a wife and eight young children, and Thomas Clarke, of Newtown, Raunds, a single labourer. They were hailed before the Thrapston magistrates on July 11th this year, and convicted on two charges of stealing vegetables from an allotment at Hargrave in this county, on the night of June 14th, and of assaulting P.C. Dolton - a young constable who was once stationed at Kingsley Park. Parker was sentenced to nine months hard labour and Clarke to six months.

Mr A J Darnell, of Northampton, who defended them, felt convinced of their innocence. When they were convicted he gave notice of appeal, and pursued his investigations with all the assurance born of confidence that they were not the culprits. He failed to find anything sufficiently tangible to re-open the case until September 25th, when he sent the following

Petition for Pardon

To The Right Hon. Aretas Akers Douglas, M.P., Secretary
To The Home Department, Whitehall.

1. This humble petition sheweth that Robert Parker, 30 Wellingborough Road, Higham Ferrers, shoemaker, and Thomas Clarke, of Newtown, Raunds, labourer, both in the Countv of Northampton, were at Thrapston Petty Sessions, held on July 11th, 1905, convicted of an assault upon P.C. Dolton while in the execution of his duty, on Wednesday, June 14th, 1905.

2. That the two prisoners were convicted by the magistrates, and sentenced, Parker to nine months and Clarke to six months hard labour.

3. That the evidence upon which the prisoners were convicted was weak and inconclusive, and their identification unfairly obtained and entirely uncorroborated.

4. That there are grounds for believing the convicted prisoners are not the real culprits, and that there are men living in Raunds who actually know the names of the guilty men and that an unprejudiced enquiry will prove the prisoners innocence of the offences for which these men are now suffering.

Your petitioners therefore humbly urge that an enquiry be made into the circumstances of the offence, the methods of identification of the prisoners, the evidence produced at the trial, and further facts which have arisen since their conviction with a view of bringing to light a grave miscarriage of justice, and procuring the King’s gracious pardon for an offence of which the prisoners are innocent.

The formal farce of having to plead for the gracious pardon of innocent men has a fine Gilbertian ring about it worthy more of the stage than the stern reality of this practical age.

One day last month certain important information reached the wife of Parker, as the result of which Mr. Darnell saw Mr. John Jeyes of Lower Priory Street, Northampton, better known as “Narrow” Jeyes. In the presence of the solicitor and Supt. Alexander signed a statement which purported to be a practical confession to him of the two men who were guilty of the crime. This statement was made on October 16th. Two days previously Jeyes had told Mr. Darnell of the men he believed to be Guilty. The Chief Constable of the county was informed of their identity, and at once communicated with the Home Office.

The Home Office, however, were in no hurry. After the Adolph Beck scandal they were getting used to this sort of petition. What did two more innocent men in prison matter for a few days or weeks? Just to show they were not to be hustled, they asked for more information. Mr Darnell set about obtaining it, and as the result of his enquiries went to Bedford Prison on Wednesday, and there found under remand a notorious character, William Wright, alias “Bringhurst Bob”, who made the following confession.

The Confession of Guilt

“I, William Wright, alias Bringhurst Bob, state that I was in company with ‘Patsy’ Clarke. We were going across the Hargrave allotments at night. There is a footpath, and we saw a man. We stood and looked at him, and then walked on. Clarke said ‘Look out, there’s a man coming’. When we looked round we saw a policeman straight behind us. He started to strike us with his staff. He knocked me down, struck me on the head, and made my head bleed. I was smothered in blood. When I got up Clarke and him were fighting. Clarke also received a bad blow on the forehead. I got the policeman down. We had no sticks and only hit him with the fists. When we had him on the ground he said, ‘I thought you were stealing, I didn’t think you were after rabbits.’ Clarke had lost his cap, and the constable pointing to it said, ‘You will find your cap there. I will not get up till you have gone away.’ In mistake Clarke picked up the constable’s helmet, and Clarke threw it amongst some beans in a field some distance away. Clarke wanted to know what force the policeman belonged to. He tried to look at the badge but it was too dark. He took the badge off. Blood was running freely from me and went on to the constable. We went over a single railway line and through Keystone. We went the next day to Geddington. I did not know anyone had been arrested for assaulting a policeman at Hargrave until John Jeyes informed me about it some two or three months ago. John Jeyes had seen Patsy Clarke and informed him about it before. I should have given myself up but for the Bedfordshire charge hanging over me. I cannot fix the date but I believe it was before Whitsuntide. ---- W. W. Wright”

Armed with this Mr. Darnell sent another appeal to the Home Secretary on Wednesday, but at the time of going to press with this page no answer was to hand.

A Mystery Explained

How this lamentable confusion of identity arose seems mysterious but it is easily explained. The two innocent men were at Tilbrook feast on the night of the assault. They had been drinking together until late and then started to walk home. They became tired and slept under a hedge until 3.30 next morning. They then went rabbitting in the vicinity of Hargrave allotments, and arrived at Raunds about 6.30 the same morning. They heard nothing of the assault until the afternoon, and the police, in enquiring into the movements of persons seen in the neighbourhood of the assault that morning, suspicion fastened upon them. Although the constable has asserted his belief that the prisoners are the men, his evidence is to be taken into consideration with the fact that the night was dark, and the possibility of a mistake in identification very easy.

Parker’s Wife Interviewed

A representative of the Independent saw Mrs. Parker at her home at Higham Ferrers on Monday, in the hope of being able to obtain further news concerning the case. A little woman, with a careworn face, she seemed naturally distressed and indignant. She asserted to our representative that she had all along believed in her husband’s innocence. “He may have got into bad company of late,” she said, “and did occasionally mix with companions I did not like, but he was incapable of knocking anyone one about in the cruel way he is accused of”. Until thrown out of employment he led a respectable, steady life, and it was only when food became scarce, and no money was coming in that he changed.

Parker, it may be mentioned was at one time resident at Northampton, and it was whilst working here that he met his present wife, who was a Miss Hales. He took a keen interest in Association football, and was at one time captain of the St Michael’s football club, of which he was a prominent and respected member. Mrs Parker then showed our representative a photographic group of St Michael’s football club, taken several years ago, and pointed out her husband occupying a prominent position in the group. The group also includes the Rev. G. C. Day, who was then curate of St Gabriel’s, an off shoot of St Michael’s Church. The accompanying photograph was taken from the picture. Mrs Parker stated that there were eight children of the marriage, the youngest being just under twelve months. During the nineteen weeks her husband has been in prison she has been in receipt of six shillings per week from the parish, which sum she has supplemented when the cares of her family permitted, with money earned at her sewing machine and in doing odd jobs such as the repairing and alteration of wearing apparel for people of the neighbourhood. “It has been a terrible trial,” she admitted. “It would have been bad enough if ‘Bob’ had been guilty, but knowing he never had nothing to do with it, the worry and strain have been almost unbearable.”

Parker’s father and mother live next door. The first named Mr. John Parker, is well known in nonconformist circles in the locality, having been a Wesleyan local preacher for something like thirty-five years. Naturally the imprisonment of their son on such a charge has been a great trial to them in their old age, and with the wife they are delighted that justice will at last be done. Mr. Darnell naturally came in for much praise for the trouble he has taken to see the wrong righted.

The Northampton Independent, Nov 18, 1905

This was the question Ald. Poulton put to the guests at the Mayor's luncheon in proposing the "Recorder & Borough Magistrates." No one offered a solution, so I will. My opinion is, first, that it is because she shall not see the injustices committed in her name. The papers are full every day of proofs that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. We do not want to go outside Northampton, however, to find it. The harsh sentences of the Recorder and the latest miscarriage of justice in our midst shows that Justice, when she likes, can be both brutal and blind. The two men, Clarke and Parker, who had been imprisoned, in Northampton gaol, by the Thrapston justices, for 20 weeks, on charges of which they are now shown to be innocent, have up to the time of going to press not received what is paradoxically termed a "free pardon," and there is not much likelihood that they will get compensation. The Home Secretary has shown his belief in their innocence, by ordering their release, but without a free pardon the conviction remains permanently recorded against them. If these men were well off instead of being very poor, or perchance if they happened to be "stars" in the football world, England would ring with the enormity of it. As it is no one, save their solicitor, seems to trouble much about it, indeed it seems to be accepted as one of the penalties of obscurity and poverty.