On Broadbury was hung in chains a man called Welland. He was a tramp, and crossing the Down, he came to a cottage inhabited by two old sisters and a girl, and he murdered them and robbed the house. He then made his way to Hatherleigh. Entering a tavern on the way, he had some ale, and asked:
"Have you heard of a shocking murder that has been committed on Broadbury?"
No, they had heard nothing of it.
"Well," said he. "There was two old ladies there. And, as I came through Okehampton, I heard tell that they had been murdered by an old soldier who was on his way to Holsworthy."
He went on—but, as suspicion was roused, he was followed, caught, and found to have in his possession some silver spoons that could be identified as having belonged to the old women.
He was hung on Broadbury near the Roman camp. The stump of the gallows remained—and the cross-beam is in the barn of a farm close by. Now, here is a curious fact. Whilst the body was hanging, as the women came from market every Saturday they were wont to throw up to him a bunch of tallow dips for him to eat, and they generally succeeded in getting the candles to catch in his chains. As the tallow disappeared in the week—pecked by birds—the women concluded that Welland had actually fed on them. Obviously the idea was still prevalent that life continued to exist in the body after execution.[1] The gallows was standing in 1814. In the Burial Register, Bratton Clovelly, we have, 1779:
| "1. Grace Peard, widow, was buried | Nov. 5. |
| 2. Patience Rundle, widow ,, ,, | Nov. 5. |
| 3. Mary Rundle, daughter of Willm. & Patience Rundle, was bur. | Nov. 5. |
| These 3 were Barbibly murdered." |
The body eventually fell to pieces, and the bones were buried in one of the many tumuli dispersed over Broadbury.
- ↑ John Paget in his Hungary and Transylvania, 1850, relates how that, after the suppression of a rising of the peasantry in the former, a number of the insurgents were hung in chains, and that their relatives invested the corpses in new clothes every New Year's Day.
