On the 27th June, 1777, Dr. Dodd was taken in a cart with another condemned prisoner from Newgate to Tyburn and executed.
His bad luck attended him to the last, for he went cheerfully to the place of execution under the impression that the executioner would be able to cut him down and hand him over to his friends before it was too late to restore him to life. Unfortunately for him the scheme miscarried. A contemporary account thus describes the incident: “Just before the parties were turned off Dr. Dodd whispered to the executioner. What he said cannot be known; but it was observed that the man had no sooner driven away the cart than he ran immediately under the gibbet, and took hold of the doctor’s legs, as if to steady the body; and the unhappy man appeared to die without pain; but the groans, prayers and tears of thousands attended his exit.”
That Dr. Dodd was hanged at Tyburn is unquestionable, but it was commonly believed at the time that the plan arranged with the executioner had proved successful, and that after being cut down, he was handed over to his friends, who applied restoratives, and when he was well again smuggled him over to France, where he lived quietly for many years until his death.
There is no reliable evidence of this rescue from the gallows, and although a few years ago it was stated that an account appeared in a newspaper of 1784, of the life of Dr. Dodd in France, the present writer has been unable to find any mention of this in the papers of that date.
The trial popularly known as “The Great Matlock Will Case” is a good illustration of the way in which the internal evidence of documents may afford definite proof of their authorship.
In the year 1856 a surveyor named Nuttall who lived at Matlock died leaving an estate worth about £60,000. He had no near relatives, and the only other occupant of his house at the time of his death was his housekeeper, Catherine Marsden. Her sister’s husband, John Else, had been employed as a clerk for many years by Mr. Nuttall, and wrote in a handwriting so similar to the surveyor’s that people were frequently at a loss to tell by which of the two their letters had been written.
Nuttall had had his will drawn up by a solicitor, and had made a copy of it in his own writing, which was signed and witnessed. In this copy certain additions benefiting Else had been introduced between the lines. A number of codicils to this will were subsequently discovered when Else had become appointed successor to Nuttall, and these were signed and witnessed by a local farmer and a surgeon, so that if these codicils were not genuine, there was conspiracy to defraud and perjury on the part of these witnesses. The genuine nature of the signatures was vouched for by a bank clerk, who stated that he would have at once paid money upon cheques so signed.
The case was first tried before a jury at the Derby Assizes in 1859, and the codicils were pronounced genuine. The Master of the Rolls, not being satisfied with the verdict, directed a second trial, which took place in 1860, and this time the jury decided that the codicils were not genuine. The plaintiffs then appealed first to the High Court and then to the House of Lords and a new trial was ordered.
The final trial came on before the Lord Chief Justice (Cockburn) in 1864, and lasted for eight days. The jury decided against the genuineness of the codicils, mainly upon the characteristics of the writing and spelling.