Robin Longbottom examines how a sheep thief’s harsh sentence sparked calls for clemency – including from an unlikely source

WHEN Joseph Town – a butcher who had a shop in Upper Green, Keighley – found five of his sheep missing, he set off in search of them.

Whilst passing a slaughterhouse he saw two men, Robert Heaton and Thomas Bailey, killing and dressing sheep which he identified were his. Bailey offered to pay him £5 for them but Town refused and went to a magistrate and charged them with sheep stealing. Heaton was taken into custody, but Bailey absconded. Both lived at Bocking, Cross Roads, in the parish of Bingley and were considered to be respectable men. The case against Heaton was heard in March, 1846, and the jury acquitted him.

Meanwhile Thomas Bailey, who was Heaton’s brother-in-law, had fled to Ecclefechan in Scotland where he found work on the Caledonian Railway, then under construction. Over the next two years he worked on several rail projects until he was finally arrested in Scotland in June, 1848. He was brought before Judge William Erle at York Assizes on July 15, 1848, and pleaded guilty. Despite his previous good character, Erle sentenced him to ten years transportation. The harshness of the sentence was met with outrage in Keighley and Bingley. John Clough of Grove Mill in Ingrow, for whom Bailey had worked as a woolcomber, wrote personally to the court in support of his good character – as did William Busfield Ferrand of Harden Grange, Bingley. A petition was also drawn up and signed by leading members of Keighley and Bingley society, including Frederick and Joseph Greenwood, mill owners and justices of the peace; the vicars of both parishes; Poor Law guardians and remarkably by Joseph Town and his son Nathan, who had been the prosecutors in the case. After considering the appeal for clemency, Judge Erle's decision was that there were no grounds for reducing the sentence.

Bailey was transferred to Millbank Prison in London, where prisoners were held prior to transportation. He was incarcerated at Millbank until February 3, 1849, when he was transferred to the convict ship Neptune which sailed for Bermuda on February 8. At that time the Royal Navy was undertaking improvements to its dockyard at the capital, Hamilton. Convict labour was employed to quarry the stone, dress it and construct new sea walls. As there was no prison on the island, the convicts were kept in squalid conditions onboard redundant naval ships known as hulks.

Despite losing the first appeal, his friends and family did not give up hope and efforts were renewed in December, 1851. Bailey’s mother, Martha Roe, sent a petition to Sir George Grey, the Secretary of State for Home Affairs. Her petition was supported by letters from Joseph Greenwood JP of Springhead Mill, Oakworth, the family doctor William Sewell and Joseph Town, the original prosecutor. It pleaded for him to be set free on the grounds that when the offence was committed, he was in a state of “mental weakness” and that he had now served two-and-a-half years of the sentence. However, it appears that Sir George Grey took no action and so after he was replaced by Lord Palmerston in 1853, Thomas Waterworth, the lawyer acting for Martha Roe, wrote to him and raised the issue once again.

Coincidentally Waterworth’s letter arrived at the Home Office on March 11, 1853, the very day that Thomas Bailey was invalided back to Millbank Prison from Bermuda from where he was transferred to the Stirling Castle, a prison hulk, moored at Portsmouth. On February 18, 1854, after serving nearly five years, it was finally recommended that he should be released on licence.

Thomas Bailey was at last able to return to Keighley, where he no doubt received a jubilant reception.