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The Campden Wonder

JamesWhitehead

JamesWhitehead

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We do not appear to have mentioned this curious case anywhere on the Board before. Here is a site devoted to it:


http://www.campdenwonder.plus.com/

"This website is dedicated to the study of an intriguing incident in English history, an enigma which has remained unsolved for nearly 350 years. The Campden Wonder is perhaps the most baffling "murder" case of all time.

A man disappears and is feared murdered for the rent money he was collecting. His servant confesses to having robbed and killed his master and implicates his own mother and brother in the crime. Despite the fact that no body has been found, the three are tried, convicted and hanged.

Two years later the supposed victim returns home, safe and well. How does he explain his sudden disappearance and two-year absence? His story only deepens the mystery. He claims he was kidnapped by three unknown horsemen and, aged 70, sold into slavery in Turkey, where he eventually escaped and made his way home.

All this set against the backdrop of the English Civil War and Restoration, amid rumors of witchcraft and suspicions of espionage and betrayal.

Many people have attempted to explain the mystery of the Campden Wonder, but still no entirely satisfactory explanation has been proposed. This website is intended to serve as a focus for the study of this fascinating true story from English history."
 
My guess is that the individuals who were executed for the non-existent murder of Mr. Harrison had arranged for his sale into slavery.

They couldn't very well defend themselves with "No, we didn't kill Mr Harrison - we merely arranged for him to be kidnapped and then sold into slavery in a far-off despotic, Anti-Christian empire."

Because that was also a capital crime.
 
Is there enough evidence that it all happened as described or could this be an early example of an urban legend?
Are there record of the three Perrys being executed?
Harrisons account of being in Turkey is peppered with people from or knowing about, places in Lincolnshire, a county that he could have come from and his employers were closly linked with, coincidence?
They were turbulent times and political intruge could be playing a factor in the whole story.
 
I'd think you were really onto something if this were a tale from 1270 AD as opposed to 1670. The latter year is considered modern British history and in most areas of England the court records are intact. And people have been wondering about and speculating about the Campden Wonder ever since....well, since whatever happened....happened.

But it would surely be interesdting to study facsimiles of the original documents.
 
The site does not contain fascimiles but it does examine the original sources, attempting to translate the highly abbreviated Latin of some key documents. The main source remains Overbury's account though, written some sixteen years after the events. As strange tales go, it is well documented and the official documents appear to confirm the outline of the tale.

A lot of missing pieces and not a picture we can make out. :)
 
JamesWhitehead said:
The main source remains Overbury's account though, written some sixteen years after the events.
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That's not all that long as these things go. Many top British police officials didn't committ their memories of the Jack the Ripper investigations to paper for a lot longer period than that.

And many World War Two memoirs continued to be written and published for a long time after 1961 (16 years after the War ended).
 
I've read about this case and been totally baffled by it for years!

None of it makes any sense--why on earth would a man implicate not only himself but his clearly innocent family members in a crime that called for the death penalty? A crime that in fact never even happened?? :shock:

Unless there is some truth to the claims that the people in this case were somehow involved in espionage or something of the kind--the man who confessed to the nonexistent "crime" may have been attempting to explain away the "victim's" prolonged absence from home? In which case he must have believed that said "victim" would return in time to save him and his family from hanging?

But he still was taking a huge gamble--and in fact he and his relatives paid with their lives.

It just doesn't make sense!!

Don't you love a good mystery that refuses to be solved? ;)
 
synchronicity said:
None of it makes any sense--why on earth would a man implicate not only himself but his clearly innocent family members in a crime that called for the death penalty? A crime that in fact never even happened??
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But the family wasn't innocent if they had in fact been the people who'd abducted Mr. Harrison and sold him into slavery, or arranged for that crime. And that would have also brought the death penalty.
 
That's true.

But then a 70-year-old man doesn't strike me as a particularly "desirable" slave. Wouldn't the captors have picked someone young and strong instead?

Or do you have a different theory that you would like to explain? I'm interested in hearing what you think about this mysterious case! :D
 
synchronicity said:
But then a 70-year-old man doesn't strike me as a particularly "desirable" slave. Wouldn't the captors have picked someone young and strong instead?
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That depends on what the Turks were looking for. Mr. Harrison was an intelligent Englishman who could read and write and who apparently could keep English books.

That may have been a valuable commodity to a Turkish trade office. If so, he was performing nothing more strenuous than clerical work, not loading marble slabs onto barges.

The fact that Harrison escaped and made his way back to England shows that he was in excellent physical and mental health for 72.
 
Another possibility is that the Perrys contracted with three ruffians to kill Harrison, but those outlaws instead sold Harrison to slavers, without informing the Perrys of this fact.

Thus the Perrys believed Harrison was dead!
 
Maybe they left him somewhere thinking he was dead, then when he came to, he laid low, scared to go back until he heard that they had been hanged for his murder, returned and made up the slavery story to cover his cowardice or even to ensure he didn't get arrested himself for not coming forward during the murder trial.
 
But why would Harrison have been scared to go back? The community would have been on his side and taken even swifter care of the Perrys. Harrison wasn't the villian here but the victim of a major crime.

The reason I don't believe the Perrys could have been the sole miscreants involved in this crime is that Harrison afterwards testified that he had been attacked by three men. He gives no slightest indication that his assailants had actually been two men and an old lady.
 
I know a guy who received quite a bad beating and it had a psychological effect on him. This guy was ex army and definately knew how to handle himself but it left him crying like a baby for weeks afterwards. His doctor described it as something similar to shellshock.
 
QuaziWashboard said:
I know a guy who received quite a bad beating and it had a psychological effect on him. This guy was ex army and definately knew how to handle himself but it left him crying like a baby for weeks afterwards. His doctor described it as something similar to shellshock.
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Yes, but in that case Mr. Harrison would most likely have claimed that he'd been beaten so badly that he'd endured amnesia (whatever they called it in 1670) for two years before eventually recovering his memories.

Why in the world would he concoct a wild story about slavery in Turkey?

If Harrison simply wanted to make up a yarn, shangaied to the North America colonies would have made a lot more sense.

So the most likely explanation is that the Perrys confessed to murdering the man because they believed him dead, at their hands or at least upon their instructions.
 
OldTimeRadio said:
QuaziWashboard said:
I know a guy who received quite a bad beating and it had a psychological effect on him. This guy was ex army and definately knew how to handle himself but it left him crying like a baby for weeks afterwards. His doctor described it as something similar to shellshock.
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Yes, but in that case Mr. Harrison would most likely have claimed that he'd been beaten so badly that he'd endured amnesia (whatever they called it in 1670) for two years before eventually recovering his memories.

Why in the world would he concoct a wild story about slavery in Turkey?

If Harrison simply wanted to make up a yarn, shangaied to the North America colonies would have made a lot more sense.

So the most likely explanation is that the Perrys confessed to murdering the man because they believed him dead, at their hands or at least upon their instructions.
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You're probably right, all I'm saying is, after an experience like that, you can never be cirtain what kind of effect it's going to have on the victim. My mate didn't actually tell us what had really happened to him for several months afterwards (it was his wife who told me about the crying) and every time I spoke to him about it, he came up with a different story. First it was an accident at work, then an accident on his motorbike, then an accident while he was helping his mate do some DIY. He'd completely forget what he'd told me the last time, so his stories sounded more and more outlandish every time, and this is a guy whose normaly as sharp as a razor mentaly. Imagine if it had had a similar effect on Mr. Harrison and he had some kind of mental breakdown, ran away, and ended up living on the streets as a beggar or something. Would an English gentleman in 1670 admit such behaviour to anyone? Remember people saw mental illness much differently then than they do now. If he recovered enough to return home a couple of years later, I can imagine him making up a fantastic tale of slavery and escape to cover the truth.
 
Yes, I have no problem with that. But whether Mr. Harrison was abducted to Turkey OR spent a couple of years begging through the streets three towns over, it remains likely that the Perrys believed Harrison to be dead, and that they had a criminal connection with that death, and they thus "confessed" to a murder which in fact had never actually taken place. And that DOES offer a consistent explanation for the enigmaa of the Campden Wonder.
 
Perry's mother and brother's 'confession' is a bit suspect. They seem to have only confessed to 'robbery' after being 'prompted' to do so and asked to 'take advantage of his Majesty's gracious Pardon and Act of Oblivion,' which I think they thought would save them from execution. When it became apparent that they would indeed still be executed, they changed their plea back to 'not guilty' which they stuck to right up until their deaths.

The Judge of Assizes at that time, Sir C. T. refused to try them on the second charge, because the body had not been found, but they were then tried upon the other charge of robbery, to which they pleaded Not Guilty. However, a whispered conversation took place and they soon afterwards pleaded Guilty and humbly begged to be allowed to take advantage of his Majesty's gracious Pardon and Act of Oblivion, which was granted to them.

However, although they pleaded Guilty to this charge, probably having been prompted to do so by people who did not wish to waste time and trouble the Court with their trial, given that the Act of Oblivion would pardon them in any case, afterwards, and at their deaths, they all denied that they were guilty of this robbery and also denied that they knew who did it.
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What I find strange is how completely different William Harrison's version of events is from John Perry's version. Why would John Perry confess his own involvment, and involve his own family, when all he had to say was that he had been out searching for Harrison and couldn't find him, especialy when he had corroborating evidence from four other men?

The fact that Mrs Harrison had sent her servant Perry the previous evening to meet his master, and that he had not come home that night, made people suspect that Perry had robbed and murdered Harrison. So the next day Perry was brought before a Justice of the Peace, who questioned him about his master's absence, and why he had himself stayed out the night he went to meet him. Perry told this story. After his mistress had sent him to meet his master, some time between 8 and 9 pm, he had gone down to Campden Field, a couple of hundred yards towards Charringworth, where he met a man called William Reed from Campden. He had told Reed what he was doing, and had also told him that, since it was getting dark, he was afraid to go on and therefore intended to go back and fetch the horse belonging to his master’s son Edward and come back with him. He had gone to Mr. Harrison's garden gate, where they had separated and he had stayed still. A man called Pierce had come by, and Perry had gone again with him a few hundred years into the fields, and, as before, he had come back with him to his master's gate, where they had also separated.

Perry went on to say that he had entered his master's hen-roost and spent about an hour in there lying down but had not gone to sleep. When the clock struck twelve, he had got up and walked towards Charringworth until it had become very misty and he had got lost and spent the rest of the night lying under a hedge. At daybreak on the Friday morning he had gone to Charringworth, where he asked a man called Edward Plaisterer whether he had seen William Harrison. Plaisterer told Perry that Harrison had been with him the previous afternoon, and had collected £23 from him, but did not stay long with him. Perry then went to see William Curtis, also from Charringworth, who also told him he had heard that Harrison had visited Curtis’s house the day before, but he had been out and had not seen Harrison. Perry stated that he had then set off back towards home, at about 5 am, and had met his master's son on the way and had gone to Ebrington and Paxford with him as has already been said.

Read, Pearce, Plaisterer, and Curtis were questioned and confirmed Perry’s story so far as it concerning them.
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all sources;
http://www.campdenwonder.plus.com/Story.htm

Perry seemed to just suddenly change his version of events during his custody for no apparent reason, a confession that his mother had cohearsed them into a robbery plot, his brother had done the actual killing (by strangulation) and that he himself had asked his brother NOT to kill Harrison, obviously in the hope of recieving a lighter sentence.
If William Harrison's account is true (and we really have no reason not to believe him) then Perry's account must be a lie. Was he simply trying to get his mother and brother into trouble as revenge for some unknown event in the past, and did this plan backfire on him?
 
QuaziWashboard said:
Why would John Perry confess his own involvment, and involve his own family, when all he had to say was that he had been out searching for Harrison and couldn't find him, especialy when he had corroborating evidence from four other men?
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But participation in searches for murdered/missing people is no guarantee of innocence in those abductions and/or killings. Modern police are trained to make lists and even take photographs of ALL searchers as well as ALL attendees at the victims' funerals. While that procedure may be modern, there's no reason to believe that murders only recently began taking part in "searches" for their own victims.
 
OldTimeRadio said:
QuaziWashboard said:
Why would John Perry confess his own involvment, and involve his own family, when all he had to say was that he had been out searching for Harrison and couldn't find him, especialy when he had corroborating evidence from four other men?
Click to expand...

But participation in searches for murdered/missing people is no guarantee of innocence in those abductions and/or killings. Modern police are trained to make lists and even take photographs of ALL searchers as well as ALL attendees at the victims' funerals. While that procedure may be modern, there's no reason to believe that murders only recently began taking part in "searches" for their own victims.
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Yes, all this is true, but what I'm saying is, even if Perry was guilty, if their was no body or evidence of Perry's involvement, why would Perry suddenly 'confess' his involvement and involve his own mother and brother when all he had to do was stick to his original story and he'd get away with it scott free.
Harrison said that he spent from Thursday until Sunday travelling to a 'place by the seaside called Deal' with the three men who accosted and kidnapped him. At no point does he mention that any of them were hiding their identity from him in any way and at no point does he identify his own servant Perry as one of the culprits, a man who he would be cirtain to recognise. Infact, how could Perry be travelling to Deal for three days with Harrison and be seen by the four corroborating witnesses searching for Harrison in the Charringworth area at the same time?
Harrison would have no reason not to identify Perry if Perry was indeed involved.
Perry claimed that Harrison was strangled, Harrison said he was stabbed. Perry claimed that Harrison was dead, Harrison turning up in the flesh disproved this. In other words, Perry's confession doesn't stand up to legal scrutiny so if Perry's confession of involvement was a lie, what was his motive for lying?
The only reason I can think of is that he wanted to get his mother and brother into trouble and could only claim to have witsessed the 'alledged' offence by involving himself to a lesser degree.
 
Reading the story again, the author admits that the evidence for the actual age of Mr Harrison is unclear. He might have been 70 or he could have been younger (and then a better prospect for slavery).
My geography is shaky but if you were to shanghi someone in Gloucestershire why take them to Deal, in Kent, to ship them away?
It would have been much easier to take him down the river Severn and off past Bristol onto the American colonies, or down the coast of France and Spain to the north coast of Africa. The river Severn is tidal and navigable up to Gloucester. The ride to Deal would have endangered anyone to discovery and would have probably taken them close to London, if not through it. Deal was a well known haunt of smugglers and if Harrison did leave England by that route he might have left of his own accord, possibly on a spying mission for his employers, crossing over to eithre France or Holland. If secrecy was involved then Perry as a loyal servant might have come up with his tale fully expecting his master to return and save him. If Harrison was captured on his mission and then later escaped he could hardly say that he had been sent on a covert spying mission, but would have to concoct his own story, which would be different to Perrys if he had not had time to check out what had happened at home first.
This might explain the story about his wife commiting suicide after his return. She may have betrayed him and would expect him to exact revenge on his return.
 
tilly50 said:
Reading the story again, the author admits that the evidence for the actual age of Mr Harrison is unclear. He might have been 70 or he could have been younger (and then a better prospect for slavery).
My geography is shaky but if you were to shanghi someone in Gloucestershire why take them to Deal, in Kent, to ship them away?
It would have been much easier to take him down the river Severn and off past Bristol onto the American colonies, or down the coast of France and Spain to the north coast of Africa. The river Severn is tidal and navigable up to Gloucester. The ride to Deal would have endangered anyone to discovery and would have probably taken them close to London, if not through it. Deal was a well known haunt of smugglers and if Harrison did leave England by that route he might have left of his own accord, possibly on a spying mission for his employers, crossing over to eithre France or Holland. If secrecy was involved then Perry as a loyal servant might have come up with his tale fully expecting his master to return and save him. If Harrison was captured on his mission and then later escaped he could hardly say that he had been sent on a covert spying mission, but would have to concoct his own story, which would be different to Perrys if he had not had time to check out what had happened at home first.
This might explain the story about his wife commiting suicide after his return. She may have betrayed him and would expect him to exact revenge on his return.
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That's a darn good theory, especialy the covert spying mission, but if Perry's version of events was just a cover story would he have at first claimed to have no knowledge about Harrison's disappearence then change his story to one that incriminates himself, his mother and his brother in such a serious crime as murder? Remember, he was locked up in custody for a while before his 'confession.' Surely in that time he would have come up with a better cover story that wasn't as dangerous to himself and his family?
Maybe Harrison was involved in smuggling, Perry either found out about it or was employed by the government to inform on Harrison, told his family about it and the government supplied him with a story because they didn't want the smuggling operation to know they were on to them, promising that he and his family would be safe, but infact using it to do away with any witnesses to the government's covert operations.
 
I'm surprised that the late Dr. Margaret Murray didn't explain the Campden Wonder as some kind of a clandestinely pagan ritual drama or pageant culminated by the human sacrifice of three willing victims. It would have been grist for her mill.
 
Am I the only person to see the title and mentally sing "doo dah, doo dah" after it?

Anyway, I agree with Tully that the Gloucester - Kent thing doesn't make sense. Gloucester does have its own docks, and back then there were multiple mini-ports on the estuary all the way down to Bristol which was the main Atlantic hub port in Southern England. Why on Earth go cross-country?
 
stu neville said:
Am I the only person to see the title and mentally sing "doo dah, doo dah" after it?

Anyway, I agree with Tully that the Gloucester - Kent thing doesn't make sense. Gloucester does have its own docks, and back then there were multiple mini-ports on the estuary all the way down to Bristol which was the main Atlantic hub port in Southern England. Why on Earth go cross-country?
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No you're not!
It made me think of the perfume popular around there too: Eau de doo dah day.

The Wiki article suggests the suspects were given dodgy legal advice and only pleaded guilty in the anticipation of a pardon, given the absence of any body.
What a mistaka to maka!
 
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