When John Chapman, a young (27) labourer working at Bude, took a shotgun and chased along the Holsworthy road after his unfaithful wife Sarah, who was running off with a man called William Robinson, James Oxenham, who was one of the witnesses at Chapman's trial for murder at Exeter Crown Court, said he did not try to stop him for he appeared "in that wist way" that he was afraid to try it. Oxenham also said that "within a minute or two after the act (Chapman had shot his wife in the back and killed her on the spot) "prisoner appeared in a very wist state, and someone said to him, 'John, your wife is dead;' on which he asked - 'Is she? who killed her?"
Up-country newspaper reports did not use the word wist. They either gave it as wished or translated it to 'in dreadful distress of mind' or some such. I did not know the word wist but I like it. I'd like it to be related to witches and witchcraft.
Chapman had found his wife with her arms about her latest lover at the public house of a man called Bunce. William Lloyd, another witness, said 'there had been a sham wedding that morning .....between Robinson and Mrs.Chapman over a broom.' In his written evidence to the Court, Chapman confirmed this in that 'he found her, in the midst of a number of men who were celebrating a sham wedding between her and Robinson. A man had a prayer book, and there was a broom upon the floor.'
It seems crazy that people still bothered with prayer books and broomsticks as though they believed these gave some sort of legitimacy to their shenanigans
The Exeter jury took the view that Chapman didn't know the gun was loaded. Chapman was found guilty, but of manslaughter, and sentenced to serve a year in Exeter's prison.
Source: The Exeter Flying Post, 8th August 1822.
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