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discredit Heddings as quickly as possible. Although Heddings claimed that he had been in the company of several others when Slade had confessed, no one else was able to corroborate his statement.
    Joshua Slade was then invited to give his version of events:
    I saw Heddings come from the Bell, as I was in the Swan along with John Hawkes. Hawkes said, ‘Tell Heddings to come in.’ I went out to him and tapped him on the shoulder; he said ‘What do you think of this concern?’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’
    He said, ‘I have a strong suspicion of old Wright.’ These were his very words. He then said, ‘I am sorry the old man is dead; I would as leave half the parish had died as him, for I counted on having a quarter of barley from him this week.’ Hawkes can prove that I was in the Swan, and only went out for a minute to call Heddings to have some drink.
    Hawkes was called to give evidence, but did not appear.
    The defence addressed each of the prosecution’s points. With regards to the blood on Slade’s clothes Mrs Garner clearly remembered that Slade had cut his finger and thumb while cutting bread and that this had occurred on Monday 24 June. Under cross-examination Sergeant Storks admitted, ‘I said the only mark of blood I could swear to was on the left side of the trousers, and the prisoner gave a very probable cause for it’. When asked about the blood on Sykes’ bill he continued, ‘It is a very difficult thing to swear to blood. To the best of my belief it was human hair on the bill, and there was some stain on the handle. What I thought was human hair might have been the hair of a sheep’s face, but it was not wool.’
    As for the knife which had been found in Slade’s possession, Wilson, the surgeon, was cross-examined and conceded: ‘Other instruments of a similar shape and size would inflict such a wound. I believe the corrosion on the knife is caused by coloured animal matter; the blood of a sheep would produce the same effect.’ With regards to the footprints, the Lord Chief Baron argued that as Francis and Woods had not visited the tunnel until six days after the murder it would be reasonable for Joshua Slade to have innocently travelled that route on numerous other occasions.
    In his summing up the Lord Chief Baron addressed the jury. He stressed that the case predominantly rested on the statement of Heddings and that all the other evidence presented had been circumstantial. He warned the jury that Heddings’s testimony was given in the same order and identically worded to the testimony he had given magistrates just over two weeks earlier and suggested that it had all the hallmarks of a prepared story. In conclusion he said that he trusted that the real criminal would soon be arrested.
    By this point the general feeling was that Joshua Slade would be acquitted, but after retiring for a mere twenty minutes the jury returned the verdict of guilty. Lord Chief Baron passed the death sentence adding that Slade’s ‘body afterwards be dissected and anatomised’.
    Immediately following this Heddings’s own trial commenced. He was found guilty of theft, largely on evidence given by Joshua Slade’s brother John. Heddings was also condemned to death.
    John Slade was released and eventually found employment as a labourer.
    On being returned to his cell the chaplain foiled Slade’s attempt at suicide. Slade continued to protest his innocence, insisting that while he had been a thief he had never been a murderer. On the morning he was due to hang, Thursday 2 August 1827, the Lord Chief Baron ordered a twenty-four hour stay of execution.
    On the following day the under-sheriff arrived from Cambridge with a second stay of execution deferring the execution until 1 September. During the day of 3 August Joshua Slade had said final farewells to several members of his family. Later that day he asked to see the chaplain and