Two famous 19th century murder cases in Chorlton-cum-Hardy have been much written about on this Blog and elsewhere.
These being that of P.C. Nicholas Cock on the 1st August, 1876 and the slightly less famous one of Francis Deakin on the 5th May, 1847.
However, there was a third “murder” in the township just three years after that of P. C. Cock which is a good deal less well-known.
On the 17th July, 1879, two men, Peter Cawley and John “Lion” Coombes were out in the fields, haymaking when they were involved in a fight or scuffle of some kind.
As a result, Peter Cawley, suffering from abdominal pain, was taken to the Manchester Workhouse Infirmary, Crumpsall where he subsequently died on the 21st July, 1879.
It was alleged that the incident was an unprovoked assault by Coombes on Cawley in which he had forced him to the ground and sat on him, and so caused the fatal injury. As such, four days after Peter Cawley’s demise on the 25th July, John Coombes was indicted at Manchester County Police Court on a charge of “willful murder”. (1)
The case came before the Grand Jury at the Liverpool Assizes on Wednesday, the 30th July when the murder charge was dismissed.
However, the defendant was then charged with the lesser offence of manslaughter. This case was heard the following Monday, the 4th August. (justice was swift in those days!) The jury brought in a guilty verdict against John Coombes, who had offered no defence to the charge and he was sentenced to seven years penal servitude. (2) The following day, 5th August, The Manchester Evening News carried a more detailed report of what had happened between the two parties in the field on the 17th July. Apparently, after words had been exchanged, Coombs threatened to throw Cawley in a ditch which ran along the edge of the large field and in an attempt to do so dragged him for some distance across the field.
Peter Cawley was 28 years old and was living in Sale, Cheshire when he died. Apart from these facts included in the press coverage of the case I could find no other details of his life.
It is hard to be certain regarding John Coombs’s origins but it is most likely that he was born in Baguley, Cheshire in the June quarter of 1855. Assuming this is indeed the correct individual his story can be told thus. His parents were, Joseph, a market gardener and one-time provision dealer, and his wife Elizabeth (née Walker). He was the eldest of nine children; six daughters and three sons (3). In 1871 the family had moved from Baguley to Hawthorne (Lane), Stretford, Lancashire.
There is also some evidence that, at the time of his conviction, he was a new husband having been married to Jane Passant in the Barton registration district of Lancashire in the June quarter of 1878. Hannah Passant (Coombs) born in Stretford in the same quarter as this marriage suggests that John was also the father of a young daughter.
Of revealing significance, the couple disappear from the records (4) until the birth of a second child, a son, John William P., is recorded in Manchester in the September quarter of 1888. In the census return of 1891, John, Jane, and their two children are shown residing at 12, Diggle Street, New Cross, Manchester. John was employed as a carter.
The interval between the two births would of course coincide with the seven-year prison term passed on John Coombs at his trial.
In the census of 1901, the family are living apart. John is recorded as residing with his brother, Simeon, a farmer, at Floats Lane, Baguley, Cheshire. His wife, Jane, and daughter, Hannah, meanwhile are living with his wife’s twice widowed sister, Letitia Ravenscroft, at 68, Russell Street, New Cross, Manchester. (5)
Pictures; Grave of Francis Deakin, 2020, from the collection of Tony Goulding, Hawthorn Farm from an oil painting by J. Montgomery m 80023 and Manchester Union Workhouse 1910 by B. Robinson m 52691 Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass
1) As reported in the Edinburgh Evening News on 26th July, 1879.
2) Penal Servitude was a sentence of imprisonment with hard labour introduced in the mid nineteenth century as an alternative to transportation, when the number of convicts being accepted by the Australian authorities began to decline.
3)One of these sons was, Simeon who John was later residing with in the 1901 census.
4) There is an entry in the 1881 census for a Hannah Coombs, a child of the right age, in the record of the Union Workhouse, Winton, Eccles, Lancashire.
5) The son, John William, was recorded in the 1901 census as an inmate of the Prestwich Union Workhouse. He later joined the British Army with the 1911 census recording him as serving with the Royal Horse Artillery in South Africa. Hannah, married Robert Watson Thompson in Manchester during the September quarter of 1902. In the 1911 census Jane (Coombs) was recorded as working as a housekeeper for William Henry Craig, a chemist’s assistant at 413A, Oxford Road, Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester.
Due to difficulties arising from there being multiple households to investigate coupled with three different spellings of the family surname some of the above is a little more speculative than usual.
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