Benjamin Couch DANBY

(~1772 - ~1832)

Hannah GURLING

Benjamin Couch DANBY

bd. 17^th July 1806

Bapt. 3^rd Aug 1806, St Clement Danes, Westminster

dd. 19^th Dec 1832, Enfield Chase

Buried. 23^rd Dec 1832, St Andrew’s Enfield

Pictures of Dawn’s trip to the murder sceneê

The Brutal Murder of Benjamin Couch Danby

Benjamin Couch Danby apparently took to the sea at a young age. Upon his return from his last voyage to India in 1832 he found that his father had passed on and left the bulk of his considerable fortune in trust to his sisters. Benjamin was left with an allowance of a mere guinea a week.

He then moved from London, apparently to avoid getting in with the wrong crowd, and moved in with his cousin Hannah Addington and her husband Peter, a baker in the village of Enfield, “where he met with a very kind reception” [Times 24^th Dec]. It seems that the villagers generally found him a little oddly dressed but otherwise very likeable and “free hearted”. It was however suggested Benjamin may have been disposed to be flash with his money but certainly he was generous with it. He spent his time at Enfield helping Peter with his deliveries.

On the 19^th December 1832, still in possession of some shot and a pipe bowl that Peter had lent him earlier to go shooting, Benjamin left the Addington’s around 20 to 6 in the evening. He ended up in The Crown and Horseshoes (also known as Three Horse Shoes) , playing dominoes and drinking gin with a couple of local reprobates by the names of William Johnson, who had a reputation for violence, and Samuel Fare (aka Sleath), ‘a person who appeared to have no occupation’ who often claimed handouts from the parish; a baker called Richard Wagstaff and a young lad called Samuel Cooper.

Come closing time Benjamin was unsteady on his feet and the landlady requested that the others see him home for fear that he would drown in the river on the way back to the Addington’s house. Wagstaff suspected that Johnson and Fare meant to rob Benjamin and tried to call young Cooper away. In the end Wagstaff went home and Johnson, Fare and Cooper went off with ‘young Danby’ up Chase Side, past the Addington’s House and left into Holt White’s Lane, where, the next morning Benjamin was found dead in a ditch. His body “presented a horrible and ghastly spectacle. The face was cut and slashed in a most dreadful manner, the flesh was scored out, as it were, in five places; and the right whisker was completely cut away and hung suspended to the jaw by a small piece of skin. In the throat of the murdered man they observed a deep stab, inflicted in the manner practiced by a butcher in killing a sheep, the knife having been turned in the wound” [The Times 24^th Dec 1832].

Within the hour the police arrested Johnson, Fare and Cooper. Cooper’s cap was drenched in Benjamin’s blood and Fare was found to be in possession of four knives, some money thought to be stolen from Benjamin and the pipe bowl Peter had lent him. There were some discrepancies in the accounts of the prisoners but Cooper finally called the constable to ‘tell all’. According to Cooper there was a scuffle during which Fare may have robbed Benjamin. Johnson then proceeded to attack him. Halfway through he attempted to incite Cooper to finish him off. Cooper refused and Johnson did the job himself threatening Cooper not to tell. For fear of his life Cooper held his tongue until his arrest.

Fare’s actions at least seem to have been pre-meditated. One witness, Thomas Newman, testified that on the 18^th December Fare had asked him “if that was the man who had got all that money which they talked so much about…for if he could light on him in the dark he would cut his wizen, but he would have some of it” [Court Proceedings PRO ref PCOM 1/29]

At the trial of the 4^th Jan 1833 at the Old Bailey, the jury took to two hours to agree that Cooper was telling the truth and return a verdict of guilty on Johnson. The judge accordingly sentenced Johnson to death. He was executed on the 7^th of January. Fare was later tried and convicted of robbing Benjamin and transported for fourteen years. Young Cooper was detained to give evidence but otherwise there was insufficient evidence to implicate him in either the murder or the robbery and he was released.

The Times concludes that “it would seem that the commission of this dreadful crime has arisen entirely from the free and imprudent conduct of the deceased in associating with almost every vagabond whom he met in public houses and to whom the exhibition of his purse was a sufficient temptation to commit murder” [28^th Dec]. But whether Benjamin actually had a significant amount of cash on him is debatable. Whilst the officers who searched Fare found on him a key to a box he had containing 11/, thought to be his proceeds from the robbery and Mr Perry, Landlord of the Crown and Horseshoes testified that he saw the Benjamin’s purse and that it appeared to contain about 12 to 15/, “friends of the deceased…asserted that it was impossible he could have had more than 3/” on him [Times 24^th Dec]. In either case Fare must have been disappointed with his spoils.

Benjamin’s funeral was apparently very well attended.

As an interesting aside to this tale, in his A-Z of Enfield Pubs, Gary Boudier states that the essayist Charles Lamb had visited the Crown and Horseshoes that night and that he had been invited to join in the game of dominoes Danby and his assailant were playing. Although “Lamb could not remember Benjamin Danby he did know the boy’s father from the Temple, where he had a hairdressing business” [p59]. Certainly Lamb did live in that part of Enfield at the time of the murder and, as Lamb was the son of a lawyer’s clerk born in the Inner Temple; it is certainly possible that the Lambs and the Danbys were acquainted. The court proceedings however, whilst making many references to Charles Jackson who instigated a game of dominoes that night before leaving early, there is no reference to a Charles Lamb here or in the Times. Is it possible that Lamb and Jackson are one and the same? Or was Jackson’s visit and event independent of Lamb’s?

The murder and trial are extensively documented in the Complete Newgate Calendar Vol 5, the Times of the 24^th, 25^th, 27^th, 28^th Dec 1832 and 5^th Jan 1833, and the Court Proceedings can be viewed and the National Archives at Kew.

A Trip to the Scene of the Murder

Being as Enfield is on my doorstep it seems almost rude not to pay a visit to the scene of the Crime, so this is just what I did. On entering the Crown and Horseshoes I asked the young lady behind the bar if any of the staff would know anything of the history to the Pub. The lady’s name was Sam and it turns out she’d researched the whole saga for a college project and earned an A*. She was of invaluable help, able as she was to point out the area of the pub which would have corresponded to the old taproom in which Danby and Johnson had been drinking

The Crown and Horseshoes as it is today	A pint in the Tap Room. I didn’t get into a game of dominoes with any shady characters
	A modern building just over the little canal called the New River just in front of the Crown and Horseshoes. Our Ben hasn’t been forgotten by the town planners it seems
Holt White’s Lane now known as Holtwhites Hill William Wheeler discovered Benjamin’s body in the ditch between Pinnock’s Beer Shop and the junction with Parsonage Lane…. Er so somewhere along here then?	.

Full Murder Story é

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