Smuggling & Smugglers in Sussex / The Genuine History of the Inhuman and Unparalleled Murders of Mr. William Galley a Custom-house Officer, and Mr. Daniel Chater, a Shoemaker, by Fourteen Notorious Smugglers, with the Trials and Execution of Seven of the Criminals at Chichester, 1748-9

by Anonymous

The prisoner Hammond desired the witness might be asked whether when they were at Old Mills’s, he did not offer to ride away, and make a discovery, but was prevented by the company.

Race said he never heard him say anything about it; but one of the company, which he believed was Richards, did threaten any of the rest who should refuse to go to the murder of Chater.

Ann Pescod deposed, that two men came to her father’s on the 15th of February, about one o’clock in the morning, and called for her father; that she asked one of them his name, and he said it was William Jackson. Her father who was then very ill, said they might come if they would; that Jackson did come in, and asked if they could not bring a couple of men there for a little while, to which she answered “No,” because her father was ill; and thereupon Jackson turned to the other man, and said, “We cannot think of abiding here, as the man is so ill,” and so they went away. She saw that Jackson’s hand was bloody.

She was ordered to look at the prisoners Jackson and Carter, and see if they were the two men that came, and she said Jackson was one, for that she took particular notice of him, his hand being bloody, and that she verily believed Carter was the other.

Then the King’s Counsel called William Scardefield, who deposed that he kept the Red Lion, at Rake, in the parish of Rogate, and that in the night, between the 14th and 15th of February, Jackson and Carter, with Steel and Richards, came to his house and called out to him, “For God’s sake get up and let us in”; then he let them in, and saw they were bloody. He asked them how they came to be so; and they said they had an engagement and lost their goods, and some of their men they feared were dead and some wounded. That they said they would go and call them that were at the other public-house; and while he was gone into the cellar, he heard horses come to the door; and some of the men went into the kitchen, some into the brewhouse, and some into the parlours. That he saw two or three men in the brewhouse, and there lay something like a man before them in the brewhouse, by the brewhouse door, and he heard them say he was dead. That some of them calling for liquor, he carried a glass of gin into the parlour, and saw a man standing upright in the parlour, with his face bloody and one eye swelled very much. That Richards was in the parlour with the man, and objected to his coming in, and Carter and Jackson and three others were then in the brewhouse, and Steel was with them. After they had drunk three mugs of hot, they got their horses out and sent him down for some brandy and rum, but when he came up with it they were gone 20 yards below the house, though several of them came back to drink, one or two at a time. That he did not know what became of the man that he saw in the parlour; but he observed they separated into two companies; that one of the company, a little man, asked him if he did not know the place where they formerly laid up some goods; and the prisoner Carter came back, and said they must have a lantern and spade. That Richards fell in a passion because he refused to go along with them, and upon seeing him coming towards them with a light, the company parted: that he saw a horse stand at a little distance, and there seemed to him to be a man lying across the horse, and two men holding him on, and he believed the person he saw lying across the horse was dead, but he was not nigh enough to see whether he was or not. That when they came to the place, one of the little men began to dig a hole; and it being a very cold morning, he, the witness, took hold of the spade and helped to dig; and in that hole the company buried the body that lay across the horse. That on the Wednesday or Thursday following, about twelve or one at noon, the prisoners Jackson and Carter, and all the rest of the company came again to his house; and the prisoners Richard Mills the younger, and his brother John, were sent for, and came to them.

Edward Sones proved that on the 16th or 17th of September last he found the body of a dead man in a well in Harris’s Wood, within 200 yards of Lady Holt House, and that there were two pieces of timber over the body. That he went immediately to get the coroner’s inquest, and when he came back he saw the man had boots on, and there was a rope about his neck; that the well is by Lady Holt Park, in the county of Sussex.

Mr. Brackstone produced the boots and a belt that were taken off the body, and given him by the Coroner.

Mrs. Chater, the widow of Daniel Chater, deposed that she remembered her late husband set out from Southampton on the 14th February last, and that she had never seen him since that time; she looked upon the belt produced by Mr. Brackstone, and said she knew it was the same belt her husband had on when he set out from home, by a particular mark in it; and she believed the boots produced were likewise her husband’s.

Mr. Sones proved also, that the horse which Chater set out upon was found about a month afterwards and delivered to the owner.

The King’s Counsel submitted it here.