Christina Collins's Grave

Christina Collins, travelling by canal narrowboat from Liverpool to London to join her husband, was raped and murdered by boatmen on the Trent & Mersey Canal near Rugeley. Her body was carried up steps by the Talbot Inn afterwards nicknamed 'The Bloody Steps'. Two of the crew, James Owen and George Thomas, were hanged in 1840 before a crowd of around 10,000; a third was transported. A 2022 TV re-investigation concluded the convictions may not have been safe. The case directly inspired Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse novel 'The Wench Is Dead'. Like the Mary Ashford entry, this marks her grave (St Augustine's churchyard) rather than the exact crime site. MORE DETAIL FOUND (secondary, not yet cross-checked against original assize records): Capital Punishment UK gives a considerably fuller account than captured above. The crew are named in full - James Owen (39, captain), George Thomas (alias Dobell), William Ellis, and cabin boy Isaac Musson (not charged; asleep at the time). The three adults were first tried for RAPE at the Staffordshire Summer Assizes 1839 and the jury failed to convict; the murder charge was postponed to the Lent Assizes, Stafford, 16 March 1840, before Mr Baron Gurney, where a guilty verdict followed - turned by a fellow Stafford Gaol prisoner, Orgill, to whom Owen had reportedly confessed. Ellis was reprieved at the last minute (transported for life instead); Owen and Thomas were hanged by William Calcraft on 11 April 1840, with a prisoner named George Smith volunteering as assistant hangman in exchange for early release - he went on to become a hangman in his own right. A statue of Christina now also stands on the canal bank, in addition to the churchyard headstone described above. None of this has been checked against the original Staffordshire assize records or contemporary press - worth doing before treating the fuller version as settled (see sources_needing_visit).