Yorkshire Almanac 2026

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

One John Holden living by Norwood Green having been in the country a-shearing had got some mony which when he came home, he gave to his wife. They being very poor, having 3 small children, he went down into Lightcliffe, lay in wait for his wife in the fields, he demanded money of her, she gave him 6d, he not content with that struck her off a stile, laid on her with a great staff, which he broke on her, paused her with his feet, set his foot upon her breast, dealt most barbarously with her, left her to go fetch another staff in the hedge to beat her with, that while she got crept to an house and so was secured from present death, yet had received mortal wounds, for this staking her was on Wednesday August 27 1673, and she died the Saturday night following, August 30, 1673.

The jury went upon her on Monday, and they found it manslaughter, thought it was clear that he lay in wait for her, but witnesses were shy in speaking. I spoke with some of the jury, they said she was barbarously and inhumanly dealt with, he had set his foot upon her breast, which stopped her passage that she could let down no meat. He fled twice, but the former time turned back, the latter was found in a neighbour-house, had not power to fly, he is exceeding sturdy – is sent to York Castle.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Dysphagia (1) W/G ·
• Heywood, Oliver (1630-1702) (34), Bolton-born nonconformist minister and diarist, active in the West Riding, resident at Northowram, ejected for his beliefs W/G ·
• Jury (7) W/G ·
• 📌Lightcliffe (2), village in Calderdale district in West Yorkshire/West Riding, three miles east of Halifax and two miles north west of Brighouse W/G ·
• Manslaughter (4) W/G ·
• Murder (38) W/G ·
• Norwood Green, West Yorkshire (1) W/G ·
• Oropharyngeal dysphagia (1) W/G ·
• Poverty (16) W/G ·
• West Riding of Yorkshire (150) W/G ·
• Witness tampering (1) W/G ·
• 📌York Castle (37) W/G ·

All tags.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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Similar

11 May 1674: A poor man at Ossett (Wakefield) punishes his child for taking a piece of bread

27 July 1612: Jennet Preston, the only Yorkshirewoman among the Pendle witches, is found guilty at York of the murder of Thomas Lister of Westby Hall, Gisburn (Ribble Valley)

18 June 1664: Jane Thompson of Craven, “a swinish drunkard,” dies of a barely-treated compound fracture

10 March 1665: Blizzards and Dutch attacks prolong Restoration-induced shortages of fodder and coal at Northowram (Halifax)

28 March 1692: On Easter Monday Francis Pemberton, Vicar of Bradford, sits all day in a Haworth pub, collecting his Easter dues, while Oliver Heywood preaches for next to nothing

5 September 1860: Friends of Elizabeth Mitchell (14), murdered by a fellow-servant at Upton (Pontefract), bear her to her grave at South Kirkby

28 April 1812: Luddites fatally wound the Marsden textile manufacturer William Horsfall on his way home from Huddersfield market

2 January 1673: Despite Charles II’s Declaration of Indulgence, Presbyterians Oliver Heywood and Christopher Richardson are detained while preaching at Lascelles Hall (Kirkburton)

11 April 1667: A hubristic Sam Mitchell impersonates a gypsy in a Halifax pub, and nemesis follows

21 July 1666: A white ghost army is seen by the Don near Sheffield

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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The year is transcribed as 1661, which is both impossible (the Act of Uniformity under which the Rev. Bloome was dismissed only passed in 1662) and unlikely (prior and subsequent entries are all for 1666).

I don’t get all the symbolism. Who did the army represent?

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