August. — Two men named John Walker and Mark Sharp, were tried at Durham assizes before judge Davenport, for the murder of Anne Walker, convicted, and afterwards executed. This Walker was a yeoman of good estate, and a widower, who lived at Lumley, near unto Chester-le-Street, and the deceased was a young woman who was his kinswoman, and kept his house, she was supposed to be with child, but would not disclose by whom. She was removed to her aunts in the same town, called Dame Caire, and after she had been there some time, Sharp, a collier from Lancashire, being a sworn brother of the said Walker’s, came to Lumley one night, and they two that night called her forth from her aunt’s house and she was not heard of after for some time. Now comes the marvellous part of the story. About fourteen days after the murder, there appeared to one Graham or Graime, a fuller, at his mill, six miles from Lumley, the likeness of a woman with five wounds in her head, who declared herself to be the spirit of Anne Walker, and mentioned that Walker and Sharp had murdered her in a place which she named. In consequence of the repeated visits, injunctions, and threats of this apparition, Graime related the whole matter to a justice of the peace, search was made, and the body found in a coal pit with five wounds in the head, together with a pick and bloody shoes and stockings belonging to Sharp. The prisoners were apprehended, but found bail to appear at the next assizes; they then came to their trial and were both found guilty and executed as above stated. [LRS]

 

 

• LRS — Local Records or Historical Register of Remarkable Events by John Sykes, Published in 1833 in two volumes