Beschreibung:

Murder Map. Radclyffe (W & T), Map of the Roads, near the spot where Mary Ashford was Murdered, Surveyed by Rowland Hill & George Moorcroft and published by Rowland Hunter, 1817, engraved broadside map with two insets, one of the 'Fields on an Enlarged Scale', the other 'A Section of the Pit', descriptive text below the map, old folds, slight staining, some marginal fraying closed tears, some tears crudely repaired on the verso, 440 x 370 mm (Quantity: 1) Rare. Only two copies were found on COPAC (both in the British Library). The only known published map by Rowland Hill, the founder of the 'Penny Post'. A murder of a pretty young girl had taken place near his school, at Erdington, a few miles northeast of Birmingham. The circumstances had produced much newspaper coverage but no adequate map to inform the public of the all-important topographical context. Hill measured all the features that had been mentioned in the trial and produced the above map. Mary Ashford had gone dancing on the evening of 26 May at the ominously named Tyburn House (right of centre on Hill's map). There she met Abraham Thornton, the son of a local landowner, and left the dance in his company. Her battered body was discovered the following morning in the pit (shown in cross-section as an inset on the map). A post-mortem showed that she had been raped and that she had been a virgin. Thornton was immediately arrested and charged with Mary's murder. At his trial, several witnesses testified that they had seen Thorton walking along another road at the time of the murder and the prosecution had no witnesses to counter these testimonies. The jury acquitted him; however, local and national opinion regarded Thornton as the murderer and an old law was dug up to see him face justice again. It was the ancient custom of “appeal of murder,” which was evoked by Mary’s brother, William and Thornton once again found himself arrested. However, this old law of “appeal of murder” meant that, instead of a trial in front of a jury, Thornton would face a “trial by combat.” Thornton was by all accounts a large solidly built man, whereas William was small and slight and understandably, declined to fight, and Thornton was released again. Thornton was widely regarded by the general public as guilty, and in the face of increasing harassment, he left England and settled in America. The only positive to come out of the case was that parliament almost immediately abolished the law which allowed 'trial by combat' for the 'appeal of murder'.