The Ditton Murder Stone (Ned Stone)

Flagged by a Facebook post in the Widnes Historical Society group; the full story was found independently via the Liverpool Echo rather than needing the Facebook thread. On 19 January 1784, house carpenter Edward Culshaw (who lived in Crosby, per burial records) was walking along the road by Ditton Bank Farm, Widnes, carrying wages after travelling from Liverpool, when he was followed and shot in the head with a horse pistol by John Thoms, who robbed him of the money and his watch and left the pistol under the body. The case is notable as an early - possibly the first - use of forensic ballistics in a British murder conviction: the paper wadding used to pack the gunpowder and shot (commonly torn from whatever scrap paper was at hand, in this case a tavern song sheet) was found stuck in Culshaw's wound, and when Thoms was arrested that evening a matching torn song sheet, with tear marks that fit the wadding exactly, was found in his pocket. Thoms, described in the plaque as 'an Irishman', was tried and convicted of wilful murder at the Lancaster assizes, confessed, and was executed the next morning, his body handed to surgeons for dissection. An inscribed stone was originally placed at the roadside near Ditton Bank Farm; by the 20th century the inscription had deteriorated and the stone had suffered vandalism, so in 1949 it was relocated to the grounds of St Michael's Church, Hough Green, where a bronze plaque reproducing the original wording (quoted above) was added. FACEBOOK THREAD READ IN FULL (signed in): the comment thread on the Widnes Historical Society post turns out to disagree, sometimes sharply, on exactly where the stone originally stood before reaching St Michael's. Candidates offered by different local commenters: the roadside near Ditton Bank Farm (matching the Liverpool Echo's account); Liverpool Road near Quarry Court (Audrey Mottershead); and 'a few houses up from Crawford Avenue', which commenter Stephen Lewis Davies says is based on a 1900s map. A further commenter, Steven Vickerstaffe, says 'Old Ned's Stone' is marked on a historic map on the National Library of Scotland's maps website, and believes that marked spot is the original location - a genuine, checkable cartographic source, not yet verified independently here (see sources_needing_access). On the move itself, Louise Rix's account - that the stone stood outside a former Methodist church (the site is now Chapel Field clinic) and was only moved to St Michael's churchyard when that building was demolished - sits awkwardly next to the Liverpool Echo's cleaner account of a single move straight from the Ditton Bank Farm roadside in 1949; it's possible there were two moves, or that one of the two accounts is simply mistaken. Multiple commenters (Widnes Gardener, Paul Allen, and others) independently confirm the current position: visible over the churchyard wall at the top of Ditchfield Road, Hough Green, under trees near the front of St Michael's C of E. None of this changes the core Culshaw/Thoms story, which the Liverpool Echo's account (sourced separately) covers in more depth than any single Facebook comment.