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Extract: - The suicide of Mary Gooch

Poverty is expressly said to have been the cause of the suicide of Mary Gooch, one of the last people in England to be buried beneath a crossroads. In 1820 Mary, a woman of 19 or 20, was living with a horse dealer called John Spring. They occupied a single downstairs room in the house of Amos Webb at 5 Schoolhall Street. They were desperately poor, behind with their rent, and had recently pawned all their clothes apart from the ones they stood up in. Mary suffered from epileptic fits and had twice tried to kill herself.

A suicide Pact

In despair, the couple made a suicide pact. Spring bought some laudanum, and also two oranges to make its taste more palatable. They drank it together and went to bed. Spring vomited in the night and survived, but Mary died the following morning. Spring sat with the corpse all day and in the evening he slit his throat, severing his windpipe. However Mary's brother was in the house at the time and was able to save Spring's life. At the inquest on Mary's body, Spring testified that 'he had known ever since last Bury Fair that she had been very anxious about the payment of the last half-years rent'.

The verdict

The verdict was suicide. In such cases the Inquest Jury very often added a rider that the deceased was of unsound mind; this would allow the burial of the body in sanctified ground. They did not do this in Mary's case and the Bury and Norwich Post recorded the details of the girls' burial:

In the dead of the night of Monday the body of the wretched victim to ungoverned passions was interred in the highway, and we believe, the disgusting forms which the law prescribes (he means, the driving of a stake through the heart), were evaded as far as possible. A grave had been dug at the Western approach to the town; but as a number of persons had collected there, and whispers were heard of some violent purpose, it was determined after midnight to select a fresh spot at the Risbygate, whither the body (enclosed in a shell), was conveyed comparatively undisturbed.