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“The bruise over the eye had nothing to do with his death”

 

One of the first Holyland death entries on FreeBMD is in the second quarter of 1837; that of William Holyland, whose death was registered in the Blaby Union district of Leicestershire. His age, according to the GRO website, was given as 39, and initially I was confused by this; my database contains no-one by that name, born around 1798, in the Blaby district.

This first puzzle was solved when I visited the graveyard in the village of South Croxton, which is about 15 miles from Blaby on the other side of Leicestershire. I found the gravestone I had been looking for – but I also found the grave of William Holyland, who died on August 1837 age 39 (the exact day is unclear on the stone). This being next to other gravestones from the same family, identified William as the son of William Holyland and his wife Mary Geary; he had been baptised 15 miles away at Ratby on 13 March 1796, making him at least 41 when he died. His parents had subsequently moved to South Croxton and were also buried there.

This would be a short and uninteresting piece if that were the end of the story! However, I found a newspaper report from the following year regarding William’s older sister Amy Simpson nee Holyland. (1) Amy, or rather her husband, was being sued for slander; she had broken the windows in the house of one Thomas Willey and when taken to court, Amy “stigmatised (Thomas Willey) in foul language as the murderer of her brother”. The newspaper went on to say that the year previously, following an altercation between the Holylands and Thomas Willey, the latter had struck William Holyland on the head with a coal pick. "Poor Holyland” apparently “fell upon a hedge-stake, which greatly injured his side, and died in the course of 2 -3 weeks”. However, the report also stated that the coroner’s inquest had returned a verdict of “accidental death”.

What had happened here? I searched the papers from the year before and found the original inquest report. (2) William Holyland was reported as a “stout, muscular young man”; he was a farmer at Oadby (which is indeed in the Blaby Union registration district, although a few miles from the village of Blaby) and the day before his death, had been working as normal and had also walked to South Croxton and back (which fact tied him neatly to the gravestone!) He had been found dead in bed by his servant and sister the following morning.

William had indeed been hit three weeks’ earlier by Thomas Willey wielding a coal pick; he had suffered a black eye. The surgeon was summoned and leeches applied, but the injury was not serious and William was “very little indisposed”, although William’s sister declared that he had subsequently complained of great pain.

A post mortem was carried out and to the surgeon’s evident surprise, there was no sign of any injury to the brain that could have caused his death. Instead, death had been caused by the rupture of a blood vessel next to the heart. The build up of pressure from the blood released had constricted the heart and stopped it beating. (In modern parlance, this sounds like a spontaneous rupture of one of the coronary arteries, causing cardiac tamponade) (3). This was the fatal event, and “the bruise over the eye had nothing to do with his death”.  The jury returned a verdict, “Died by the visitation of God, --- and not from any blow he might have received”. The family had clearly not accepted this.


There is no way of knowing the cause of the rupture- it could have been congenital, inflammatory, or secondary to an infection, but however it happened, it was not the fault of Thomas Willey who understandably  had taken  exception to being slandered as a murderer!

1.       Leicester Mercury, Saturday August 11 1838

2.       Leicester Mercury, August 19 1837

3.       https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiac_tamponade

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