The people of East Side were absorbed with the affair for weeks – and their memories of the time were to be revived unexpectedly when the discovery of a skeleton eleven years later led to a murder trial.
In the newspaper reports of the trial [1] we can hear the actual voices of the villagers themselves, and their testimonies reveal a vivid picture of life at the time – lived under the scrutiny of close neighbours, often outside the houses, in the street.
The past is brought alive: rising at dawn; shared loomshops in the yards; men drinking late at night in the kitchen of a public house; a labourer breaking stones at the roadside in return for parish relief; the local habit of poaching in the Crathorne game preserves; the little shops run by the women of the village in their own homes; the long distances people were accustomed to walk; the clothes they wore; how the village governed and policed itself; the emigration ships sailing from Whitby.
The missing man's name was William Huntley. He had a very odd appearance, his head being large and strangely-shaped. William Jackson, draper and hatter, said of him:
he had rather a particular shaped face, and a large head. He took a very large hat, and the last time he came to me I had some difficulty to fit him.Mr Garbutt, the solicitor, gave this description to the court:
Very low between the eyes; very long behind in the head; his head sloped off particularly from the forehead.A tooth protruded from his bottom jaw and pushed out his lower lip; the village boys used to make fun of him.
