The murder of Mary Moore in June 1838 shocked the township of Chorlton, gave rise to lurid stories in the papers, three trials of the men suspected and was never actually solved.
Her gravestone can still be seen in the parish church yard on the green not far from where she lived.
She died out on a lonely lane near Dog House farm in what is now Whalley Range.
Dog House farm was run by the Chorlton family who farmed on the edges of Chorlton. And Mary worked for them.
One of her jobs was to take the farm fruit to the markets three times a week, and it was while returning alone with the money that she was beaten across the head and left to die in water filled ditch close to the farm.
Suspicion fell on a group of strangers out from Manchester playing pitch and toss nearby.
All were arrested and at the inquest held at the Red Lion they were presented as rough and ready and not at all nice to know.
But despite the press having become convinced of their guilt they could all prove that they were in Manchester at the time of Mary’s death.
By one of those rare chances the bag Mary had been carrying was tracked to Hulme and police now arrested a thoroughly disreputable chap who had worked at the farm and been overheard to ask questions about Mary’s route and the amount she regularly carried.
Moreover he fitted the part, with a list of temporary jobs, a dishonourable discharge from the army and a succession of addresses.
In short a drifter, and one who seemed on the margins of shady doings.
The inquest found him guilty and he was sent to trial at Liverpool.
Now the story twists and turns, not least because it was about a Chorlton woman who was murdered out in Whalley Range which was technically in the township of Withington.
The rest and there is lots more is in the Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy.*
Pictures; newspaper report from the Manchester Courier June 23rd 1838, detail of where Mary worked from the OS map of Lancashire 1841, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ gravestone from the collection of Andrew Simpson
*THE STORY OF CHORLTON-CUM-HARDY, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/the-story-of-chorlton-cum-hardy.html
She died out on a lonely lane near Dog House farm in what is now Whalley Range.
Dog House farm was run by the Chorlton family who farmed on the edges of Chorlton. And Mary worked for them.
Suspicion fell on a group of strangers out from Manchester playing pitch and toss nearby.
All were arrested and at the inquest held at the Red Lion they were presented as rough and ready and not at all nice to know.
But despite the press having become convinced of their guilt they could all prove that they were in Manchester at the time of Mary’s death.
By one of those rare chances the bag Mary had been carrying was tracked to Hulme and police now arrested a thoroughly disreputable chap who had worked at the farm and been overheard to ask questions about Mary’s route and the amount she regularly carried.
In short a drifter, and one who seemed on the margins of shady doings.
The inquest found him guilty and he was sent to trial at Liverpool.
Now the story twists and turns, not least because it was about a Chorlton woman who was murdered out in Whalley Range which was technically in the township of Withington.
The rest and there is lots more is in the Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy.*
Pictures; newspaper report from the Manchester Courier June 23rd 1838, detail of where Mary worked from the OS map of Lancashire 1841, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ gravestone from the collection of Andrew Simpson
*THE STORY OF CHORLTON-CUM-HARDY, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/the-story-of-chorlton-cum-hardy.html
My 3X gt grandparents owned and worked this farm along with several others farms. Dinah Cheetham [nee Chorlton] and John Cheetham.b. Dog House Farm .Dinah and John went to live there after they married and Dinah died there in 1853. John died in 1830 8 years before the murder of Mary, the farmgirl.
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