Goonhilly Downs — highwaymen

The highwaymen of Goonhilly Downs

The events of the night of 20th August 1820 had the population of the village of Trease out of their beds. There was the sudden sound of a pistol as William Hancock of Mullion was shot and clubbed from his horse at Bray's Corner where he had been on his way home from Helston market. Then came more shots and the sound of galloping horses as another farmer, William Jose, together with his wife, fled from the highwaymen on the road.

Men with pitchforks and flintlock guns came running, shouting, chasing shadows through the night, but to no avail. But everyone knew where 'the usual suspects' could be found.

In those days Goonhilly Downs was a bleak and deserted place. The road from Helston to St Keverne passed along its northern edge, and around the landmark known as Dry Tree were crude cottages and hovels where vagrants and other unemployed labourerers lived at subsistence level. It was widely believed that the unruly occupants of this area of Goonhilly Downs were the source of the cattle rustling and other thefts that had plagued the Lizard in recent years.

At a cottage occupied by the Thompson brothers a gun was found that had been recently fired. There was also strands of grey horsehair that matched that of William Hancock's horse sticking to an old scythe handle which might have been used as a club. And at another nearby cottage, the occupant John Barnicott was found to be limping, and William Hancock had stated that one of the highwaymen had been injured by his horse.

John Barnicott and the two older Thompson brothers were dragged off to the inn at Cury Cross where William Hancock had been carried. As he lay dying he identified John Barnicott and John Thompson as his assailants, but he was less sure about Thomas Thompson, the third accused. Along with the statement William Jose was to give, it was evidence enough.

In March of 1820 five men stood trial for murder and highway robbery at Launceston Assizes. John Barnicott, aged about 23, and the three Thompson brothers, John aged aged 17, Thomas aged about 16, and William who was only 14 years old. With them was another sixteen-year old, William Daw, who the Thompson Brothers had tried to blame. Today they sound like children, but in those days a male of 14 had come of age, and therefore could be hanged.

Life was hard on the Lizard Peninsula in the early Nineteeth Century, and probably none of the locals would have shed a tear when the news reached them that John Barnicott and John Thompson had been found guilty and hanged by the neck until they were dead - in the presence of 'a great concourse of spectators' according to the local press.

John Thompson went to his death protesting his innocence, blaming William Daw and his younger brothers for the crime. But in those hard times the locals wouldn't have been too concerned about the niceties of the law.

The case against the other accused had been dismissed, but no doubt there were some who would have preferred to have seen all the suspected highwaymen strung up - including 'Old Mall', the mother of one the boys, who some claimed to be a witch.

The families of the cattle thieves and highwaymen who lived on Goonhilly Downs should be exterminated or packed off to the colonies. There were few in the Nineteenth Century who did not subscribe to the old adage - bad blood will out.