past and present
Murder of William Lilley
Sentence of David Booth and Aaron Savage
Thursday 13th January, 1866
The Silverwood Poaching Affray.
His Lordship, yesterday morning, passed sentence on David Booth and Aaron Savage, who, on the previous day, had been convicted of night poaching, at Silverwood, near Rotherham.
Addressing the prisoners, he said - You have been convicted of having been out poaching with companions to the number of three or more altogether, and armed with the intent to take game, and the circumstances under which you were guilty of this offence are of the most serious character. There probably never was a case of conviction in this statute under circumstances as lamentable as those which attended the commission of your offence. The man whose duty it was to watch the game of his employers found you and a number of other persons engaged in the illegal object of endeavouring to take game, and he was knocked down, and, when down, disabled. He was beaten on the head for some ten minutes and killed; and the whole neighbourhood said it was a murder. You, even, talked of it yourselves as a murder. The instinct and feeling of the whole neighbourhood declared it to be a murder, and all the facts of the case were distinctly proved. We had the melancholy spectacle - melancholy as regards the administration of justice - after all the facts were proved, of seeing one of the murderers clap his hands in the dock because what all the people in the neighbourhood declared to be a murder, had been declared in this court to be only manslaughter. However, you have not been convicted of manslaughter even, and I must attend to the fact in the sentence I have to pronounce upon you, that you have only been convicted of the minor offence; and there are circumstances in the case of each of you which to some extent distinguish your conduct favourably from the conduct of those who have been convicted of the higher offence. It has not appeared before me that either of you were guilty, at all events to the same extent as the others, of the atrocious cruelty of the persons who sent poor Lilley out of this world, leaving his wife and seven children dependent upon charity for their support.
As to you, Booth, there is less excuse for you a good deal than for Savage. It has appeared clearly you were one of the gang of poachers. You knew very well what the probable consequences of going at night, armed with bludgeons, must be. You had a bludgeon of your own, and nets, and all the apparatus of carrying out this wicked pursuit of going out at night, armed with intent to take game - wicked not merely for the purpose of taking what does not belong to you - that is a very minor part of the charge - but because; it inevitably leads to collisions, in such cases, with the keepers, and probably to serious injury, done by them to the poachers, or by the poachers to the keepers. The sentence upon you, Booth, is penal servitude for seven years.
As to you, Savage, there are circumstances favourable to you. In the first place, it seems probable that you had not, at least in that neighbourhood, been out poaching recently, for the person in whose house you lived swore that he had never known you out late at night before. You, at all events, had no bludgeon of your own. You do not appear to have had any nets, and all the circumstances of the case tend to the conclusion that you were acting under the influence of that good-for-nothing man, Woodhouse (the approver). He told you to get a bludgeon as you went along; and when you got one, I do not find, except in Woodhouse's evidence, on which I cannot altogether rely, although he has been confirmed to a considerable extent, that you acted so brutally or cruelly as any of the others. The sentence upon you is that you be kept in penal servitude for five years.