Condemned, R.C. Bridgestock [most romantic novels TXT] 📗

At six foot, Jeremiah was said to be a giant of a man in comparison to those around him, who were less able to afford the luxury of a comfortable home, and food aplenty. Charley discovered that Jeremiah had been born in 1819 in Halifax, on Beacon Hill. He was the eldest of five children, of which only he survived childhood. His mother died in childbirth. His father was a struggling tailor. Jeremiah, it was said, had a fascination for fabrics, and an attraction to wealth. The local farmer’s wife, a God-fearing woman, taught him to read and write, and he laboured on the farm to pay his way. On his father’s death, Jeremiah was determined to escape poverty. The farmer agreed to take him under his wing, and Jeremiah worked long hours, turning his hand to carding, the process of preparing wool fibre for spinning by separating all the fibres and removing impurities. Alderman made various modifications to the carding machine, thereby improving its ability to disentangle, clean and intermix fibres.

With the help of the farmer, his invention was patented. When the farmer’s wife died, the farmer decided to put Jeremiah in charge of the yarn side of the business. At work he became desperate to make a name for himself, and such was his ambition that he became increasingly competitive, which upset several businessmen, including neighbouring mill owner Sir George Pickles, who accused Alderman of stealing and implementing Pickles’s ideas.

Weekly, a pair of shire horses pulled the farmer’s cart to The Piece Hall in Halifax, where Alderman quickly became well-known for selling to the international buyers owing to his amiability. However, Jeremiah was fortunate that the animals knew their own way home without the need of their master’s ministration, as it was understood that Jeremiah couldn’t resist a jug of ale or two with his fellow yarn makers after the dealing had been done, which is when it was said further ideas were discussed for him to steal and pass off as his own.

It was reported that, when the farmer died childless, he left the farm to his young protégé. Jeremiah Alderman’s fortunes continued to rise. And when the sixteenth-century farm croft later burnt down, reputedly by an unfortunate strike of lightning, Jeremiah gave instructions for Crownest to be built.

It had long been the boast of the elder businessman, Sir George Pickles, that no one could see into his private grounds, owing to its high walls and impenetrable gated access. However, so ambitious and competitive did Jeremiah Alderman become that he decided to combat this, ensuring that in the building of Crownest above on the hillside, he could see all the toing and froing of his rival’s workers in the valley, no matter what time of day or night.

Charley sat back in her chair, rubbed her eyes, and blessed the fact that the feud between the two men had become legendary, resulting in a plethora of information being to hand. By now, her piqued curiosity was so keen that she read on.

Charley learnt that in middle age Jeremiah suffered terribly with gout, triggered it was thought by obesity and heavy drinking. Jeremiah’s long-suffering wife, Roselyn, gave him three children, but in his drunken rages, he was reported to have become increasingly violent.

In quick succession Alderman patented more machine adaptations. His greed was such that his workers laboured thirteen hours a day, as young as some were, from six in the morning to seven at night. With the workforce becoming unsettled and fearing for their jobs, Jeremiah became more suspicious of others – even his own family. Alderman’s physician was reported to have said at the time that his lifestyle was affecting his mental state. It was only money, and the local power he wielded it seemed, that had kept him out of an institution.

As time passed, Jeremiah’s health deteriorated, and he began to upset more people, leading to a series of court cases challenging Alderman’s patents as copies of others’ work, namely that of his rival, Pickles. Other yarn manufacturers jumped on the bandwagon and more lawsuits were pursued by others, who claimed that Alderman had stolen their ideas.

Eventually, despite his considerable wealth, Jeremiah Alderman could not prevent himself being sent to the gallows in 1868, for the murder of his wife Roselyn, by decapitation. It was said by the judge presiding over the murder case that Crownest had become a macabre place of torment.

Charley let out a long sigh. She was so tired. She kneaded her cheeks with her fingers. Her neck and shoulders pained her, but she felt compelled to continue tracing the family history.

After the relatively early deaths of both their parents, the Alderman children continued to live at Crownest, the eldest son Felix who was four years the senior of sister Catherine, and nine years to Seth, proclaimed himself master of the house and owner of the prosperous mill. Like his father before him, he ruled the roost with an iron will, and he too, took to drinking heavily. Similarly, he was sentenced to death in 1872, this time by the way of the gibbet.

The office’s central heating had begun pumping out, and Charley’s eyes felt dry and increasingly heavy, but still she felt compelled to continue. She read that a well-known poacher by the name of John Ackroyd was initially arrested for the murder of Felix Alderman’s maid, Mary Shire, after giving himself up to a member of the local militia, Matthew Cragg. The intense brutal questioning and incarceration did nothing, Cragg said, to gain a confession from Ackroyd, who reportedly told him only that that he had ‘sin her off’. However, Cragg was not to be fooled into believing that Ackroyd had killed her. Ackroyd had more money in his pocket when arrested than Cragg earned in a year. Instead of charging the prisoner, Cragg decided to enlist Ackroyd as the main prosecution witness, and after he’d been given that role, Ackroyd talked. Ackroyd finally confessed that whilst checking his traps