7. The Campden Wonder executions were of “murderers” whose victim wasn’t dead
In 1660, William Harrison decided to go for a walk near the small town of Charingworth, Gloucestershire. When he failed to return in a timely fashion, concerned locals searched for him, finding only some items of clothing which were torn as if by a sharp blade. They were also stained with blood, but nobody or other evidence of a crime was found. The 70-year-old Harrison had been seen in the village of Ebrington, evidently unharmed, but from there his travels were unknown. Eventually, servants of the Harrison family, John Perry, Richard Perry, and their mother Joan, were found to be guilty of murdering their master, a crime to which John Perry confessed. John’s confession was that he had personally been innocent of the crime, committed by his brother and mother.
Perry claimed the body would be found in a pond, though it wasn’t, and the three were convicted of murder and hanged in Gloucestershire, Joan being executed first as a defense against her casting a spell over her sons’ execution (she was suspected of witchcraft as well as murder). Many months later the allegedly dead Harrison returned to Charingworth, very much alive, though his tale of his whereabouts strained credulity. He claimed to have been sold into slavery, to a Turkish master, though the value of a 70-year-old slave seems questionable. Clearly, there had been no murder, and thus the execution of the two Perry’s and their mother for that crime was wrongful, though they were never officially pardoned by the errant courts.