To our trusty and well-beloved the Justices of our High Court, the Sheriffs of London and Middlesex, our Justices of Assize for the Western Circuit, the High Sheriff of the County of Devon, the Governor of our Prison at Holloway and all others whom it may concern. By her Majesty’s command:
Whereas Thomas Dudley and Edwin Stephens were at a general gaol delivery holden at Exeter on the 1st day November 1884 before the Mr Baron Huddleston tried on an indictment for murder, and the jury having found Special Verdict, they were bound over to appear at the next assizes for Cornwall for sentence after judgement had been pronounced by the Queen’s Bench Division at the High Court of Justice.
And whereas the said Thomas Dudley and Edwin Stephens did on the 4th day of December 1884 appear before the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court of Justice, and were by the said Court adjudged guilty of murder, and on the 9th day of December 1884, were sentenced to death and were by the said Court ordered to be detained in our prison at Holloway.
We, in consideration of some circumstances humbly represented unto us, are graciously pleased to extend Our Grace and Mercy unto them and to grant them Our Pardon for the crime of which they stand convicted, on condition that they may be imprisoned, without hard labour, for the term of six months, to be reckoned from the date on which judgement was pronounced upon them, namely from the 4th day of December 1884.
Our will and pleasure therefore is that you do give the necessary directions accordingly, and for so doing, this shall be your warrant. Given at our Court of St James the 11th day of December 1884, the 48th year of our reign.
Far from a relief, the term of imprisonment came as a brutal shock to both men, who had believed Collins’s assurances that they would be released immediately. Philippa had visited Tom on Friday afternoon, and though he appeared in low spirits, he told her they expected to receive the Queen’s Pardon and be home on the Sunday.
She had been preparing to leave home at ten on the Saturday morning, to make a final visit before his release, when a telegram was delivered giving news of the six-month sentence.
Before their sentence was confirmed, Tom and Stephens had been treated as ‘first-class misdemeanants’, allowed to exercise together in the grounds, receive visits and letters, wear their own clothes and have food brought in. Now they were deprived of all their previous privileges and placed under the numbing silent regime, in which even the brutality of hard labour would have been some relief from the darkness and silence of their cells. Separated from each other and all their fellow inmates and forbidden to speak, they were locked up for twenty-three hours a day, released only for divine service and silent exercise in the prison yard.
Tom’s bleak state of mind was not improved by the knowledge that his carefully accumulated savings had been consumed in the cost of his defence and that, as the wife of a convicted murderer, Philippa was barred from resuming teaching at Newtown Board School or any other establishment.
Tom wrote to the home secretary from gaol, on the standard form supplied by the prison, detailing the date and place of conviction, the crime, the sentence. His rambling, impassioned plea for greater clemency was received by the Prison Commission on 8 January 1885.
To the Right Honourable Sir William Vernon Harcourt, Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department.
I beg to call your attention what our terrible sufferings while in our 15 feet boat for 24 days. The only food we had for the first 11 or 12 days was one half pound of Turnips and, say, at the most three pounds of raw Turtle each, and you may say next to no water, only our owen urin to drink day after day.
For the next 8 days not any food whatever and five days of which, not one drop of water. Can any one on shore judge the state of our bodys and what must our poor brain and mind have been when that awful impulse came to put the poor lad out of his misry?
For he was dying at the time, the salt water killed him and the terrible deed was done for the sake of somthing to eat and exist upon. That gastly food, it makes my blood run cold to think about it now, and would to God I had died in the boat. I should have saved the pain from those belonging to me whatever.
I can assure you I shall never forget the sight of my two unfortunate companions over that gastly meal. We all was like mad wolfs, who should get the most. For men, fathers of children, to commit such a deed we could not have our right reason, and it cannot be expected that we had, straining our eyes day and night over the horizon looking for help. What mortal tongue can tell our sufferings but our owen?
About the 15th day, when lots was spoken about and we all was about the same in bodly health, Brooks must admit that I offered my life did the lot fall to me. I was quite prepared to die, I have God for my witness, but no one else would hear of it.
But it was not to be done until the last possable moment and I feel quite sure had we not that awful food to exist upon not a soul would have lived until we was rescued.
But as I have said before, I wished I had died rather than to have pain cast on those who are dear to me, or had let the poor lad died we should not have had many hours to wait I am sure.
Then to be rescued just at death’s door, and receive every kindness from the hands of strangers for 38 days, and to be landed in our owen native country and tell the truth as I did of our sad tale to be cast into prison but thanks to God not for long. We were allowed to return to our happy homes then, to live extra well to get up our bodly strength for three months. But then comes the pain again that recalls all the terrible past. It makes my sad affair doubly hard to bare.
I therefore beg of your further consideration: First, that I trust you may see fit to advise our Gracious Majesty the Queen to grant her humble servant a free pardon, and let me return to my happy home and get my living honistly as I have done at sea since I was not ten years old.
I can say that neither man or woman can say I ever done either an unjust action and every master living I have served since a lad was at Exeter to speak on my behalf. Three came all the way from Scotland but was not allowed.
Secondly, if you cannot advise a pardon, I pray the sentence may be dated from the day I was tried at Exeter, November 6th.
Thirdly, that you will advise an exception and allow me to hear from and write my wife or see her at stated times you may think fit to sanction on my behalf, different from the regulations of the prison. Then my mind would be at rest to know all was well home.
Fourthly, I further pray you will allow an exception to the diet and allow me one good meal daily, namely the hospital dinner that I was supplied with at first for a few days, or that you will allow me to provide one at my expense.
I trust favours asked will receive your merciful consideration, and that you will take into account the unhappy circumstances that have placed me in this position, and that I may receive a favourable reply.
He was granted the right to receive letters and occasional visits from Philippa, but Harcourt rejected the other requests. The home secretary also received numerous other petitions on behalf of the two men from all over the country, including the places most closely associated with the tragedy: Tollesbury, Falmouth and Southampton.
We the undersigned of Tollesbury in the county of Essex, unanimously resolve that a petition should be presented to you, Sir, asking your intercession with Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, begging for a free pardon on behalf of Thomas Dudley, now lying in Holloway Jail.