History – the day Henley’s oldest resident saw a man wanted for murder

For Mrs Moore had a remarkable memory. She could recall events from 75 years earlier, retelling them in minute detail. She could even remember the exact time that some of the coaches were due to reach Henley, and the days coaches went to different Warwickshire towns. Although both her sight and hearing were failing, her memory was said to be as good as it had been in her youth.

Ann Moore was born at Preston Bagot on 6 March 1835; her father Charles worked at Manor Farm as an agricultural labourer. She was one of at least 11 children, not all of whom survived, and by the time she was six, she said she had been orphaned. Ann was then informally adopted by family friends who ran the White Horse Inn in Henley. She started work from a young age as a servant, waiting on the coaches that pulled up at the inn.

There was one that came to Henley from Oxford; it would reach the former at 3pm and then return to Oxford at 3pm the next day. One of Mrs Moore's key memories was seeing a horseman on a grey horse galloping along Henley's High Street, pulling up suddenly outside the White Horse Inn and calling for ale. She hurried out with a foaming tankard, and – while still on the horse – the man swigged it straight back and then rode off into the night. It turned out that the striking horseman was on the run having just committed a murder.

His name was James Crowley, and he was the well-educated son of a ‘respectable’ farmer, William Crowley, who lived in Spernall, near Alcester. James had a bad temper and had developed ‘dissipated’ habits. His despairing father had, after several incidents, given Crowley an allowance of £1 a week, and a horse, on condition that he moved away from home. He was so scared of his own child that he employed a 6ft tall agricultural labourer, William Tilsley, to protect him, swearing him in as a constable in order to give him more gravitas.

In December 1842, James had demanded his father pay him an extra allowance for the festive holidays. His father refused. On Christmas Day, James armed himself with a double-barrelled gun, and made his way to his father’s house. His family – father William, mother Nancy and his older sister, Maria – saw him approach and locked their front door, running upstairs. James, finding that he could not get in the house, started breaking the windows. William Tilsley, who was just 20 years old, then went outside and told him that if he didn’t stop, he would arrest him.

James shouted: “Damn your eyes, I’ll shoot you!”. He raised his gun and shot William Tilsley through the eye, killing him dead on the spot. He then threatened to shoot anyone who dared to lay hands on him, climbed onto his horse, and rode off, ‘carrying with him a brace of pistols’. Ann met him as he was fleeing from Spernall.

He managed to hide for nearly two years, initially sailing to America, before secretly returning to England in March 1844. In December that year, he was tracked down to Chester. Two police officers – one from Spernal, one from Alcester – were sent to Chester to investigate. They reported their information to the superintendent of Chester police, who sent some of his officers to a pub where James had been staying. He had, however, left the pub some time previously but the policemen discovered that he was expected at another pub, the Castle and Falcon. They headed there, and found James Crowley sitting at the bar with a glass of ale. They managed to take him by surprise and seize him by the arms before he had a chance to grab the pistol he always carried with him.

He had been betrayed by a woman he had been living with in the city.

After a hearty final breakfast of eggs, toast and a pint of ale, 31-year-old James was executed at Warwick on 18 April 1845. He had committed the murder three years earlier – which would mean Ann was pulling pints at the age of seven. She could not have been working formally, but perhaps simply helped out her friends' parents.

Alternatively, it could be an embellishment of the truth, Ann seeing the horserider and perhaps someone else serving him a pint. Her chance meeting with a murderer, however, understandably stayed in her memory: the swashbuckling horserider a very unusual occurrence in Henley. In her interview with the Herald, Ann stated that after her childhood, she moved away from the area, and didn't return to Henley until 1875, not detailing why.

Once she had returned, she lived in various houses, and at the time of her 95th birthday, was living with her son Frank on the High Street. Her memories, although good, appear to have been somewhat selective.

She remembered her childhood and work experiences as largely happy, but looking at parish registers and census returns suggests a more difficult experience. Not only was she one of the youngest children born to her parents Charles and Sarah, but they had lost children before she was born, and her youngest brother Charles died before he reached his second birthday.

Her father was in his 50s by the time she was born, and although she only mentioned her mother dying when she was young, and that she was orphaned at six, it seems that her father actually died when she was 15. Was this again a selective memory, or a local newspaper embellishing her truth? If her father was still alive when she was sent to the Henley pub to stay with friends, it could be that he simply could not bring a young girl up on his own, without her mother.

The 1851 census records an Ann Moore, servant, of similar age and birthplace, as a pauper in the Warwick Workhouse. It seems likely that this was the orphaned Ann, and that this is why she had 'moved away' from the Henley area. After leaving the workhouse, Ann was able again to find work as a servant, working for Eliza Parker at her home in Preston Bagot.

In 1865, she married Edward Moore, a bootmaker from Rowington, and settled in his hometown.

It’s possible that Edward was a relative of Ann’s. The couple had five children – Eliza, Thomas, Frank, William among them – before they moved to Henley in 1875. This is where they lived for the rest of their marriage, seeing their sons marry, and William make them grandparents. Then, in 1916, Edward died, leaving his wife a widow at the age of 80. Her son, Frank, appears to have remained living with his parents after his marriage, and he and his wife Rosa now took on the job of looking after his mother in her old age.

The nonagenarian Ann had a good sense of humour, and only a few months before her 95th birthday had been smoking cigarettes at the entertainment that had been put on for the town’s old people. She had spent time there having ‘fun’ with the High Bailiff of Henley, who, although a grandfather, was referred to by Ann as “Harry Hawkes and his fun”, as though he was a youngster. She was confident of reaching her 100th birthday, and had already arranged a dance with a neighbour for that day: “It is all agreed on!” she laughed to the Herald reporter. Sadly, she didn’t get to have her dance; Ann died three years short of her centenary, in 1932.

Because of her age, Ann received an obituary in the Stratford Herald, despite her humble origins. It was noted that only a week before her burial, the oldest male inhabitant of Henley had also been buried at the age of 93: therefore the village had lost its two oldest residents.

Again, in her obituary, Ann’s amazing memory was noted, but also her ‘bright and happy’ disposition. It was only in October 1931 that she had started to really become frail, following a fall, but before that, she was active, and ‘pottered’ about in her garden, as well as keeping chickens. She regularly talked to friends and relatives about her experiences of Victorian Henley, and the year before her death, she was the oldest voter to go to the Henley polling station, being keen to vote in the general election.

Ann was not only a long-living local resident, but a much loved one, whose memories – even if slightly faulty – of Henley and of one particular murderer enchanted and intrigued those who came into contact with her.