Crime legend
Mary Ashford and the last trial by battle
Who will take up the glove?
Stand where it happened
- What's there
- Suburban road near a stream
- Legend from
- Real 1817-18 case
- Tone
- Dark
He threw down the gauntlet, and walked free.
Mary Ashford, a 20-year-old servant, was murdered on her way home from a dance at the Tyburn pub on Whit Sunday 1817, and her body was found in a pool by what is now Penns Lane. Abraham Thornton was acquitted. When her brother William appealed, Thornton claimed trial by battle; William refused, and Thornton went free. The law was ended in 1819. Her grave is at Holy Trinity, Sutton Coldfield.