Christopher Slaughterford of

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

was executed in

Guildford Guildford () is a town in west Surrey, around southwest of central London. As of the 2011 census, the town has a population of about 77,000 and is the seat of the wider Borough of Guildford, which had around inhabitants in . The name "Guildf ...

July 9, 1709, for the murder of Jane Young, his fiancée. His case is very important, as he was the first person in modern

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

executed for murder based exclusively on

circumstantial evidence Circumstantial evidence is evidence that relies on an inference to connect it to a conclusion of fact—such as a fingerprint at the scene of a crime. By contrast, direct evidence supports the truth of an assertion directly—i.e., without need ...

. He is also famous for supposedly finding his fiancée's killer, one of his servants, in the form of a

ghost A ghost is the soul or spirit of a dead person or animal that is believed to be able to appear to the living. In ghostlore, descriptions of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to rea ...

. Slaughterford was the last person seen in Jane Young's company on October 5, 1703. He exhibited tell-tale signs of his innocence in that he cooperated fully with all police investigations and had previously been acquitted at trial in Kingston. He had a strong alibi, yet some neighbors who did not have such strong alibis still testified to his guilt at his second trial. The date of his execution, he wrote and signed the following statement:

"Being brought here to die, according to the sentence passed upon me at the Queen's-Bench bar, for a crime of which I am wholly innocent, I thought myself obliged to let the world know, that they may not reflect on my friends and relations, whom I have left behind me much troubled for my fatal end, that I know nothing of the death of Jane Young, nor how she came by her death, directly or indirectly, though some have been pleased to cast reflections on my aunt. However, I freely forgive all my enemies, and pray to God to give them a due sense of their errors, and in his due time to bring the truth to light. In the mean time, I beg every one to forbear reflecting on my dear mother, or any of my relations, for my unjust and unhappy fall, since what I have here set down is truth, and nothing but the truth, as I expect salvation at the hands of Almighty God; but I am heartily sorry that I should be the cause of persuading her to leave her dame, which is all that troubles me. As witness my hand this 9th day of July."

Legend

As a ghost, he is said to appear in chains, with the cut noose around his neck, holding a staff in one hand, and a burning brand in the other, crying "Vengeance, Vengeance!" According to the legend, the guilty servant saw him and killed himself.

In popular culture

Slaughterford is

Monster in My Pocket ''Monster in My Pocket'' is a media franchise developed by American company Morrison Entertainment Group, headed by Joe Morrison and John Weems, two former senior executives at Mattel. The focus is on monsters and fantastical and legendary cr ...

#107.

External links

The Newgate Calendar: The Innocent Wrongly Accused: Christopher SlaughterfordPalgrave
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20070313051313/http://www.keithdickinson.com/Monsters/myth/slaughterford.htm Keith Dickinsons's Monsters and Mythbr>Spooky Surrey
{{DEFAULTSORT:Slaughterford, Christopher Slaughterford, Christopher Year of birth unknown