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John MAPP
Classification: Murderer
Characteristics:
Rape
Number of victims: 1
Date of murder: December 22, 1867
Date of arrest:
2 days after
Date of birth: 1832
Victim profile:
Catherine Lewis, 9
Method of murder:
Cutting her throat
Location: Longden,
Shropshire, England, United Kingdom
Status:
Executed
by hanging
at Shrewsbury on 9th April 1867
Seldom can two people have died
for such a worthless trinket. Catherine Lewis was the eldest of the
five children of farm labourer John Lewis and his second wife.
Catherine spent the afternoon of Sunday 22nd December 1867 at the
Longden home of Ann Davies. Before leaving the house to go to Sunday
chapel nine-year-old Catherine asked Mrs Davies to pin a brooch on her
shawl. The brooch, Catherine said, belonged to her step-mother.
At 7.30pm Catherine came out of
the chapel on Longden Road after the service. Also attending the
service that Sunday evening was 35-year-old John Mapp. He had, in
1859, been transported to Australia for assaulting an old woman but
was now a farm labourer employed by Mr Whitfield of Longden Wood. Two
other chapel-goers were Jane Richards, a domestic servant at the
Whitfield farm, and Mary Hartshorn.
After saying goodnight at Longden
Common crossroads, Mary set off towards her home at Longden Common
while Jane, Catherine and Mapp set off along Long Lane to their
respective homes. Jane went as far the Whitfield farm and turned off,
leaving the other two to carry on along Long Lane.
John Aston was a sixteen-year-old
waggoner who was also employed by Mr Whitfield. On the Monday morning
he was set to ploughing a field along Long Lane. Also working in the
field that morning was Mapp, who was spreading manure. Around 10am the
two men stopped for their lunch. While they were eating Aston found a
bloodstained black straw hat stuffed into a holly bush. When he showed
the hat to Mapp he told the lad to bury it.
In the afternoon Aston put the hat
by the entrance of the field and a short time afterwards Mary
Hartshorn happened to be passing when she noticed it and thought that
she recognised it. Asking around, Mary found that Catherine had not
returned home the previous night, though this was not uncommon as she
sometimes stayed overnight with the Davies family. But when Mary
showed the hat to Mrs Lewis she became extremely upset. When Mr Lewis
saw the hat he immediately went out to search for his daughter.
It was Mr Lewis who found his
daughter's body. Finding marks of something being dragged he followed
them to an old hovel and Catherine's body was inside. Her throat had
been cut. Apart from her hat the only thing missing was the glass and
brass brooch. Suspicion of John Mapp was heightened when it was found
that a patch of blood near the holly bush had been covered over with
manure.
John Mapp lived nearby Summerhouse
Lane with his parents. When the house was searched the brooch was
found in his coat pocket and Mapp was arrested. There were also
bloodstains on his trousers and coat which he claimed came from a
nosebleed, and a bloodstained knife was later found in his home.
Mapp was tried on 23rd March at
Shrewsbury Assizes before Sir Fitzroy Kelly. It took the jury very
little time to find Mapp guilty and he was sentenced to death. Mapp
was hanged at Shrewsbury on 9th April 1867.
