In the early afternoon, after listening to the repeat of The Archers, the most pleasing thought struck him: no work that day at Police HQ; no worries about an evening meal; no anxieties for the morrow, except perhaps those occasioned by his newly awakened consciousness of infirmity – and of death. But not that even that worried him too much, as he'd confessed to Lewis: no next of kin, no dependants, no need for looking beyond a purely selfish gratification. And Morse knew exactly what he wanted now, as he sat upright, clean, cool, relaxed, against the pillows. Because, strange as it may seem, for the present he wouldn't have given two Madagascan monkeys for a further couple of chapters of The Blue Ticket. At that moment, and most strongly, he felt the enthusiasm of the voyager – the voyager along the canal from Coventry to Oxford. Happily, therefore, he turned to Murder on the Oxford Canal, Part Two.
Chapter Ten
A Proven Crime
Although at the time there were a few conflicting statements about individual circumstances in the following, and fatal, sequence of events, the general pattern as presented here is – and, indeed, always has been -undisputed.
The 38-odd mile stretch of the Coventry Canal (of more interest today to the industrial archaeologist than to the lover of rural quietude) appears to have been negotiated without any untoward incident, with recorded stops at the Three Tuns Inn at Fazely, and again at the Atherstone Locks, further south. What can be asserted with well-nigh certitude is that the Barbara Bray reached Hawkesbury Junction, at the northern end of Oxford Canal, an hour or so before midnight on Monday, 20th June. Today, the distance from Hawkesbury Junction down to Oxford is some 77 miles; and in 1859 the journey was very little longer. We may therefore assume that even with one or two protracted stops along the route, the double crew of the 'fly' boat Barbara Bray should have managed the journey within about thirty-six hours. And this appears to have been the case. What now follows is a reconstruction of those crucial hours, based both upon the evidence given at the subsequent trials (for there were two of them) and upon later research, undertaken by the present author and others, into the records of the Oxford Canal Company Registers and the Pickford & Co. Archives. From all the available evidence, one saddening fact stands out, quite stark and incontrovertible: the body of Joanna Franks was found just after 5.30 a.m. on Wednesday, 22nd June, in the Oxford Canal – in the triangular-shaped basin of water known as 'Duke's Cut', a short passage through to the River Thames dug by the fourth Duke of Marlborough in 1796, about two and a half miles north of the (then) canal terminus at Hayfield Wharf in the city of Oxford.
For the moment, however, let us make a jump forward in time. After a Coroner's inquest at The Running Horses Inn (now demolished, but formerly standing on the corner of Upper Fisher Row by Hythe Bridge in Oxford) the four crew members of the Barbara Bray were straightly charged with the murder of Joanna Franks, and were duly committed to the nearby Oxford Gaol. In the preliminary trial, held at the Oxford Summer Assizes of August 1859, there were three indictments against these men: the wilful murder of Joanna Franks by throwing her into the canal; rape upon the said woman, with different counts charging different prisoners with being principals in the commission of the offence and the others as aiders and abettors; and the stealing of various articles, the property of her husband. To a man, the crew pleaded not guilty all charges. (Wootton, the boy, who was originally charged with them, was not named in the final indictments.)
Mr Sergeant Williams, for the prosecution, said he should first proceed on the charge of rape. However, after the completion of his case, the Judge (Mr Justice Traherne) decided that there could be no certain proof of the prisoners having committed the crime, and the Jury was therefore directed to return a verdict of 'Not Guilty' on that charge. Mr Williams then applied to the Court for a postponement of the trial under the indictment for murder, until the next Assizes, on the grounds
that a material witness, Joseph Jarnell, formerly a co-prisoner in Oxford Gaol, and previously committed for bigamy, could not be heard before the Court until he had obtained a free pardon from the Secretary of State. Oldfield, the boat's captain, was understood to have made some most important disclosure to Jarnell while the two men shared the same prison-cell. Although this request was strenuously opposed by Oldfield's Counsel. Mr Judge Traherne finally consented to the suggested postponement.
The Judge appointed for the second trial, held in April 1860, was Mr Augustus Benham. There was intense public feeling locally, and the streets leading to the Assize Court in Oxford were lined with hostile crowds. The case had also excited considerable interest among many members of the legal profession. The three prisoners appeared at the bar wearing the leather belts and sleeve waistcoats usually worn at that time by the canal boatmen, and were duly charged with "wilful murder, by casting, pushing, and throwing the said Joanna Franks into the Oxford Canal by which means she was choked, suffocated, and drowned". What exactly, we must ask, had taken place on those last few fatal miles above the stretch of water known as Duke's Cut on the Oxford Canal? The tragic story soon began to unfold itself.
There are more than adequate grounds for believing that the journey from Preston Brook down to the top of the Oxford Canal at Hawkesbury was comparatively uneventful, although it soon became known that Oldfield had sat with Joanna in the cabin while the boat was negotiated through the Northwich and Harecastle Tunnels, However, from the time the Barbara Bray reached the lonely locks of Napton Junction – 30-odd miles down from Hawkesbury, and with Oxford still some 50 miles distant – the story appears to change, and to change (as we shall see) dramatically.
William Stevens, a canal clerk employed by Pickford & Co., confirmed [2] that the Barbara Bray reached the Napton Locks at about 11 a.m. on Tuesday 21st June, and at the boat remained there, in all, for about an hour and half. "There was a woman passenger on board", and she complained immediately to Stevens about "the conduct of the men with whom she was driven to associate". It would, he agreed, have been proper for him to have logged the complaint (the Barbara Bray was, after all, a Pickford Co. transport); but he had not done so, confining his advice to the suggestion that the woman should report forthwith to the Company offices in Oxford, where it should be possible for her to switch to another boat on the last leg of her journey. Stevens had witnessed some shouted altercations between Joanna and a member of the crew, and remembered hearing-Joanna speak the words: "Leave me alone – I'll have nothing to do with you!" Two of the men (Oldfield and Musson, he thought) had used some utterly disgraceful language, although he agreed with Counsel for the defence that the language of almost all boatmen at these times was equally deplorable. What seemed quite obvious to Stevens was that the crew were beginning to get very much the worse for drink, and he gave it as his opinion that they were "making very free with the spirit which was the cargo". Before setting off, the woman had complained yet again about the behaviour of the men, and Stevens had repeated his advice to her to reconsider her position once the boat reached the terminus of the Oxford Canal – where a partial off-loading of the cargo was officially scheduled.