The following are newspaper reports that appeared in the Daily Universal Register, which later became the Times.

February 15th 1786
On Saturday morning the following extraordinary circumstance occurred ar Kentish Town. A man named Osmond, who gets his livelihood by keeping cows and selling milk, and dwells in a small house adjoining the scite of ground on which the old chapel stood, was heard to groan piteously between the hours of one and two; his wife, who had slept on the ground floor with a nurse child, went upstairs to him, and found him a most miserable spectacle; it appearing that he had received a violent blow across the forehead with a large iron bar, that served to fasten the window of the room on the same floor, and that the blow had been repeated, till the whole table of the scull was lacerated and crushed in a dreadful manner.    The man is yet living, and was yesterday rather better, but it is feared that he cannot possibly recover. A lad who lived with Osmond as a servant, and was discharged for neglect of duty, is in custody on suspicion of having perpetrated this fact.    A variety of extraordinary circumstances are in circulation in the village, but as this lad will be put upon trial, humanity forbids their publication.

February 21st 1786
Sunday morning died, Mr. Horsman, milkman, of Kentish Town, who was on Saturday morning the 11th inst. so inhumanly maimed and mangled, as mentioned in this paper some days ago.

February 24th 1786
Joseph Rickards, late servant to Horseman, the milkman in Kentish Town, who was barbarously murdered in his sleep, on Monday last, after peremptorily denying for a considerable time any knowledge of that attrocious transaction, confessed to Sir Samuel Wright and Mr. Ardington, that he alone was the perpetrator of that horrific deed. His trial will come on at the Old Baily this morning.    He does not appear to be more than sixteen years of age; and , it is said, confessed himself instigated to the dreadful act by the most diabolical principle of revenge.

February 27th 1786
Richards, the unhappy wretch convicted for the murder of Horseman, at Kentish Town, has made a full confession of his guilt to the Ordinary of Newgate, and has promised to repeat it at the place of execution.    He has fully exculpated the wife of the deceased.

February 28th 1786
Yesterday morning Joseph Richards, a youth about eighteen years, who was convicted on Friday last, for the wilful murder of Walter Horseman, with whom he lived servant, was executed at Kentish Town, opposite the house where the horrid fact was perpetrated.    The malefactor came out of Newgate about twenty minutes before eight o'clock, and with some alertness stepped into the cart, which conveyed him through Smithfield, Cow-Croft, and by two smallpox hospitals to the spot where he was removed from that society, of which he had proved himself a most unworthy member, at a time of life when such atrocity of guilt as he possessed, has been seldom known to degrade humanity.    In his way to the place of execution, the convict appeared to be in a state of mind bordering upon stupefaction: he had no book, nor did he employ the short remnant of time in those preparations for eternity which his miserable situation rendered so indispensably necessary.
Before being turned off, the prisoner desired to see the widow of the deceased; she was sent for to her house, but was gone to London: he declared he had no accomplice in the fact, and that he was induced to the perpetration thereof by the supposition, that after the decease of his master he should succeed to his business as a milkman.    Just before coming to the village, he burst into tears, and when he came to the place of execution, wept bitterly; his expressions of sorrow and contrition being only interrupted by fervent appeals to Heaven for mercy till the last moment of his existence.    He desired his hat might be given to one and his buckles to another man; and he also made some other trifling dispositions.
One of the Sheriffs and a great number of their officers on horseback and on foot, attended the above occasion.    Considering the nature of the criminal's offence, and the disposition of the English to behold spectacles of horror, the crowd was not near to great as might have been expected, owing, no doubt to the fall of snow and going so early.    The body of the malefactor was conveyed from Kentish Town to Surgeon's Hall for dissection, without a shell, and covered only with a coarse cloth, which by the motion of the cart was frequently so removed, that the head and different parts of the body were frequently seen by the passengers on the road and in the streets.

Top

Home