Researching family histories can lead to all sorts of things – like, in Linda Gatto’s case, a book about the murder of a six-year-old ancestor in Brimington over 130 years ago. Barrie Farnsworth talks to Linda about her remarkable discovery and her book, Rags to Bones.
A CHILD IS LOST, villagers searching through the night, a body is found and an itinerant hawker seen in the vicinity – these are the ingredients of a murder that took place in August of 1881 in Brimington. The newspapers of the day covered the story in great detail: the arrest, the inquest, the funeral, the magistrates’ hearings, the frenzy of the locals who wanted to take the law into their own hands, the incarceration of the alleged murderer, the trial before a High Court judge and the verdict…