DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.70302#0067
EXTRAORDINARY MURDER.
51
course of dissipation, he gave a loose to his vicious incli-
nations, and particularly to his passion for women. Not
content, with debauching his mother’s maid-servants, he
afterwards acknowledged, in a paper written with his
own hand, that he had been the occasion of the murder
of a servant girl who was with child by him, and that he
had a criminal connection with his own sisters.
In the month of February 1724, one of his sisters was
delivered of a fine boy. Three days afterwards he went
at ten o’clock at night, to his brother Charles, who then
lived with him at his father’s, and told him he must take
a ride with him that niffht. He then fetched the child,
which they put into a long linen bag, and taking two
horses out of the stable, rode away to Annesley, in Notting-
hamshire, five computed miles from Butterley, carrying
the child by turns. When they came near the place,
William alighted, and asked whether the child was alive.
Charles answering in the affirmative, he took it in the
bag, and went away, bidding his brother stay till he should
return. When Charles asked what he had done with it,
he said, he had laid it by a hay-stack, and covered it with
hay.
After his condemnation, he declared that he had no
intention the child should die ; that to preserve its life,
he put it into a bag lined with wool, and made a hole in
the bag to give it air; and that the child was well dressed,
and was designed as a present for Mr. Chaworth of An-
nesley, and was intended to be laid at his door : but on
taking it from his brother, and approaching the house,
the dogs made such a constant barking, that he durst
not go up to the door for fear of a discovery, there being
a light in one of the windows ; that upon this disappoint-
ment he went back to some distance, and at last deter-
mined to lay it under a warm hay-stack, in hopes of its
being discovered early next morning, by the people who
h 2 came
51
course of dissipation, he gave a loose to his vicious incli-
nations, and particularly to his passion for women. Not
content, with debauching his mother’s maid-servants, he
afterwards acknowledged, in a paper written with his
own hand, that he had been the occasion of the murder
of a servant girl who was with child by him, and that he
had a criminal connection with his own sisters.
In the month of February 1724, one of his sisters was
delivered of a fine boy. Three days afterwards he went
at ten o’clock at night, to his brother Charles, who then
lived with him at his father’s, and told him he must take
a ride with him that niffht. He then fetched the child,
which they put into a long linen bag, and taking two
horses out of the stable, rode away to Annesley, in Notting-
hamshire, five computed miles from Butterley, carrying
the child by turns. When they came near the place,
William alighted, and asked whether the child was alive.
Charles answering in the affirmative, he took it in the
bag, and went away, bidding his brother stay till he should
return. When Charles asked what he had done with it,
he said, he had laid it by a hay-stack, and covered it with
hay.
After his condemnation, he declared that he had no
intention the child should die ; that to preserve its life,
he put it into a bag lined with wool, and made a hole in
the bag to give it air; and that the child was well dressed,
and was designed as a present for Mr. Chaworth of An-
nesley, and was intended to be laid at his door : but on
taking it from his brother, and approaching the house,
the dogs made such a constant barking, that he durst
not go up to the door for fear of a discovery, there being
a light in one of the windows ; that upon this disappoint-
ment he went back to some distance, and at last deter-
mined to lay it under a warm hay-stack, in hopes of its
being discovered early next morning, by the people who
h 2 came