Scotsman's Stump

UPDATED FROM AN ANONYMOUS VISITOR SUBMISSION (8 Sep 2026, same IP address as Ben's Written Stone submission 31 minutes earlier - unconfirmed whether it's also him), then checked in detail against David Holding's 'Murder in the Heather' (read in full via the archived Cottontown text) and against Lancashire Past's own account, since both were already cited here. Most of the submission checks out well, but one claim in this archive's own prior text is corrected below, one detail in an already-cited source turns out to be wrong, and two of the submission's more specific claims could not be verified anywhere and are flagged rather than repeated as fact. George Henderson, a 19-year-old packman from Annan, Dumfriesshire, worked for a Blackburn cloth firm (Holding names the family as Jardine); he lodged at the Old Cock Inn, Blackrod, on 8 November 1838, and set out the next morning through thick mist across Winter Hill to meet fellow packman Benjamin Burrell at Garbutt's beer house, Five Houses, before the two of them were to dine at the Black Dog Inn, Belmont. He arrived at Garbutt's after Burrell had already left, had a drink, and went on alone into worsening fog. Around midday, 14-year-old Thomas Whowell, on his way to bring his brother's dinner to a coal pit, heard moaning and saw blood near a ditch and ran for help (Lancashire Past names the people he found as James Fletcher and his daughter Mary Entwistle, then inconsistently calls her Elizabeth a sentence later - an error in that source, not resolved here). Henderson had been shot in the head at very close range (black-powder burns were found on him) and was still able to speak - reported phrases include 'Oh Jamie, Jamie, they have robbed me' and 'I should have sent a parcel off on Monday'. He died at Garbutt's around 2.30pm; his pocket had been turned out but his pack of goods was untouched. His employer offered a GBP100 reward. CORRECTION TO THIS ARCHIVE'S OWN PRIOR TEXT: the previous version of this entry said Whittle was 'acquitted at a second trial' - this is wrong. Per Holding's book (which reproduces the actual court record) there was only ever one trial: R v Whittle, Lancashire Lent Assizes, Liverpool Crown Court, before Baron Parke, dated in the document as '2nd April, 1829' - an obvious period clerical error for 1839, the same conclusion the visitor submission reached independently. James Whittle, 22, a local collier and occasional poacher who lived at Five Houses, was arrested after being seen on the moor with a gun before and after the shooting, and after failing to help recover Henderson's body or view it afterwards; he had no witness for his claimed alibi of being at home. An inquest at the Moorgate Inn, Horwich (now the Blundell Arms) opened 13 November 1838 and returned a verdict of Wilful Murder after adjourning to 16 November. NOTE: Lancashire Past, also cited in this entry, calls this the 'Moorcock Inn' - Holding's book, quoting contemporary press reports directly, consistently gives 'Moorgate Inn', matching the visitor submission; treat Lancashire Past's naming as the error here. At trial, prosecution witness testimony was mixed - one witness, James Halliwell, gave confused and possibly fabricated evidence, and a boy witness was found to have been told to 'stick to his story' - but packman Benjamin Burrell testified that a man resembling Whittle had aimed a gun at him on the moor that morning, then lowered it and claimed he'd been aiming at birds, though Burrell could not positively identify him since his hat was pulled down. The defence argued the crime made little sense so close to Whittle's own home given how openly he'd been seen with a gun. The jury deliberated about two hours and acquitted him; no one else was ever charged. Holding traces Whittle's later life: he never went shooting again, went blind before his death, and died 16 April 1871 aged 55, buried at Horwich Parish Church - and states plainly that he considers Whittle innocent. THE MARKER'S HISTORY: a tree was planted at the spot immediately afterward, later replaced by a wooden post ('stump'), itself gradually damaged by souvenir hunters; a since-deleted Horwich Heritage web page (found only as a search-engine snippet here, not the live page) refers in passing to 'the erection of wooden posts', weakly supporting the idea of more than one wooden marker over time, but no source found here corroborates the visitor submission's specific claim of a metal post installed around 1887 - treat that date as unconfirmed. In 1912, an iron pillar taken from a cotton mill in Halliwell was hauled up the hill by Tom Hutchinson and brothers Don and B.F. Davies (per Lancashire Past); it has stood ever since. In 2018, Horwich Heritage Centre volunteer Roy Davies - a surname that recurs from the 1912 installation, though no source here states a family connection - sandblasted and repainted the pillar and had its plaque recut, work reported by the Bolton News as the stump's first attention 'since the 1920s'. UNVERIFIED: the submission's claim that Henderson was buried at Mount Street Chapel, Blackburn (which Holding's book corroborates directly - contemporary press describes his funeral cortege ending at 'the Presbyterian Church in Mount Street', packed with over 1,000 mourners) is solid. But the further claim that the chapel and burial ground were later cleared and his remains reinterred at Pleasington Cemetery, and that the lost original gravestone (erected by his employer) carried a Roman-numeral date error reading MMCCCXXXVIII (2338) instead of MDCCCXXXVIII (1838), appears nowhere in Holding's book, nowhere in Lancashire Past, and could not be found via general search - it may be true and simply undocumented online, but it should be treated as an open claim rather than fact until a source is found.