When the artist J. M. W. Turner was walking between the villages of Mousehole and Paul in the summer of 1811 he paused for just long enough to make a rough pencil sketch of a granite monument that had caught his eye beside the road. The monument had been placed there some eighteen years earlier to commemorate the murder of an elderly woman – Martha Blewett – but local people quickly came to dislike the granite cross and fear the place where it stood. Eventually it was removed and broken up and this is the story of why . . .
Turner’s Sketch
The watercolourist J. M. W. Turner is often credited with initiating the artistic community’s love affair with Cornwall in the 19th century, a romance that saw this part of the country become a mecca for painters and sculptors, a trend that continues to this day. And it is said that it all began in the summer of 1811, when Turner visited Cornwall for the first time.
This was in the days before either bridge had been built over the Tamar so the artist crossed the river by rowing boat and embarked on a walking tour of the coast. Travelling light Turner walked from village to village, headland to headland, lodging at local inns and guesthouses, carrying with him just a few essential items, including his pencils and watercolour paints. Turner’s journey took him all the way to Land’s End and he filled six notebooks with sketches of the landscape he saw as he went.
He had been commissioned to produce images for a new guidebook but many of the sketches he made were clearly more for himself, perhaps in the same way that we now snap away with our cameras, Turner was recording memories of anything he saw that interested him. One of those scenes he captured, which is highly unlikely to ever have been considered for the guidebook, was of Martha Blewett’s cross.
It is a very rough drawing, just a few scrawled pencil lines but in the way only a true artist can he captures in those simple movements across the page a very recognisable scene. The cross with its distinctive rounded edges against the hedge, the trees above and the view down to a sea in the distance. And in addition to that he recorded something else too. The inscription that he could see cut into the stone – he shortened some of it to initials but it has been interpreted as reading:
“Remember the Almighty, the Kings of Kings, Lord of Lords hath in the table of his law commanded – Thou shalt do no murder.”
This detail is important because there are few other records of what was written on the cross and by the early 1900s the inscription had become completely unreadable, so Turner’s sketch is vital to our understanding.
But why was this cross erected and by who?
Martha
Martha Blewett was born in 1718 and baptised in Paul church, close to the village of Mousehole in 1719. Her father was John and it is believed that her mother was called Ann, although I haven’t been able to find a parish record to confirm that. Martha had one younger brother called William and she never married or moved very far from the village of her birth.
Paul church is where the most famous lady from Mousehole, Dolly Pentreath, said to be the last native speaker of Cornish, was buried in 1777, just a few years before Martha’s death. Both women were jousters, that is fish sellers, working out of Mousehole and given the tightness of these rural communities it seems likely that they would have known each other and it also seems likely that Martha was a Cornish speaker too, if only as a second language.
Despite her age she must have been fairly physically fit because at 74 she was still selling fish and salt door to door, though probably from necessity, walking from cottage to cottage and farmhouse to farmhouse in the area around Mousehole and Paul carrying her wares on her back. There is a suggestion that some of the goods that Martha was selling, namely the salt, may have been contraband, smuggled in from France and it may have been this rumour that made her a target.
Some people might have believed she was wealthier than she let on.
On the 26th November 1792 Martha Blewett was walking up Mousehole Lane, once known as ‘Pedn Olva’ or ‘Pednolver’, on the way to Paul Churchtown at about 9 or 10 in the morning when she was attacked. This lane is a narrow, single track road enclosed by high hedges on either side, there’s nowhere really to lie in wait for anyone, plus it was broad daylight, so it seems unlikely that she was ambushed. This was most likely a crime of opportunity, a chance meeting.
Her attacker was a 26 year old fisherman called William Trewavas (there are several variations on the spelling of his last name but I am going with the one that was recorded in the Paul Parish records) and some accounts say that at first he only meant to steal from the old woman, apparently he had heard the rumour that she carried a lot of money with her, money that she was saving to support herself in her old age.
According to the newspaper accounts he had taken what money she had (which was actually very little) and was walking away when Martha shouted after him that she recognised him and that she knew his name. One newspaper, the Cornish Telegraph, wrote that she shouted:
“I know you Willie Trewavas”
William panicked, he returned and slit her throat from ear to ear. The young man then ran down the hill and hid in a boat in Mousehole harbour where he was later discovered and arrested.
William Trewavas
William is known to have been local man, who was said to have been around 26 years old at the time of the murder. Trewavas is a fairly rare surname, mostly found in records for the Paul area but identifying William conclusively is not easy. It is thought that he was baptised in Paul church in October 1766 and that his parents were Williams Trewavas and Anne Yeaman, who married in Paul in 1748 but it is difficult to confidently verify that.
It is also uncertain exactly how William was caught, what gave him away while he was hiding in that fishing boat – whether there were any witnesses, or whether he just gave himself up – but on 14th December 1792 the Stamford Mercury newspaper reported that on Thursday 6th December “William Trewaver” was committed to Cornwall County Gaol for “the wilful murder of Martha Blewet” near Mousehole.
William was held in the prison in Launceston for the next four months, until the assizes were conveaned in the town towards the end of March 1793. The jury sentenced William to death for the murder of Martha Blewett and he was hanged but there seems to be some confusion or inconsistences about exactly when and where the execution took place.
Records at Launceston suggest that the execution of William Trewavas was at Bodmin on Thursday 28th March 1793. While newspaper reports at the time note the execution as being held at Launceston. Bodmin records say that the first execution at the jail took place in 1802 not 1793, although there was another gallows site at a crossroads in the town, and record William Trewavas’ execution as 20th March not 28th.
Ultimately the outcome is the same, William was hanged in March 1793 for the murder of Martha Blewett.
Martha had been buried in Paul churchyard on 27th Nov 1792 and the vicar later entered the following beside her name in the parish register:
“This aged person (Martha Blewett) on Monday the 26th November 1792, between nine and ten o’clock in the forenoon, as she was journeying on the road from Mousehole to Paul Church-Town; was robbed of all her little property, which she had by great industry and parsimony scraped together for the support of declining age; and most inhumanly murdered; her throat being cut from ear to ear. For which William Trewavas Junior of Mousehole fisherman ( a young man not exceeding the 26th year of his age) was on the Tuesday (the same evening that this unfortunate woman was buried) apprehended and from a variety of despositions and corroborating circumstances, committed to the county goal, as the person supposed guilty of this atrocious and bloody deed. The following is the inscription upon a cross erected in the Mousehole Road near the place where the body of Martha Blewett was found. “O remember the almighty the great king of kings, and lord of lords, hath in the table of his law commanded, Thou shalt do no murder”. Mr William Trewavas was tried at Launceston for the murder and found guilty; & suffered the punishment due to his offence on Monday 28 March 1793.”
And not long after Martha’s death a local man erected a granite cross beside the road at the spot that she had been killed.
The Monument
The man who paid for the granite monument, that was supposed to commemorate Martha, Sir Rose Price, was a wealthy land owner, a local magistrate and he is also a fairly problematic character for us today. The Price family made their money from sugar plantations in Jamaica, they were slave owners and Rose Price was actually a stanch anti – abolitionist and a very controversial individual, in his own lifetime, until his death in 1834. It seems that he (or possibly his father John) had the cross built but what his motives were for erecting it are not clear.
One photograph of the cross still exists (I have enhanced that faded image below) and from it it is possible to estimate that it was around 4 or 5 feet tall, raised up above the road on some granite steps. The cross had distinctive rounded ends and the words that Turner noted were apparently carved into the square panel in the middle of the cross head.
The exact wording has probably been lost to us because although in 1810 Turner noted it as saying: “Remember the Almighty, the Great Kings of Kings and Lord of Lords hath in the table of is law commanded – Thou shalt do no murder”, sixty years later William Lake, in his Parochial Guide to Cornwall printed in 1872, records it as the much more snappy “The Lord God Hath Said – Thou Shalt Do No Murder.” And a newspaper article in 1904 notes that the inscription was then completely unreadable. I like to think that Turner’s version is probably the most reliable since it noted it down while standing beside the monument . . .
The Murder Cross
Newspaper articles about the cross contain repeated references to the fact that local people did not like it. The monument became known as ‘the Murder Cross’ and must have served as a constant reminder of the awful, violent act that had taken place on that very spot. People understandably found it disconcerting, unsettling and upsetting. It also became the focus of superstition, villagers became afraid to pass it especially after dark, they believed that the place was haunted, and it was said that mysteriously no weeds or undergrowth would grow around it, though I would suggest that the photograph doesn’t quite back this up.
One newspaper described it as “an eyesore to the people of Mousehole”, another in the 1890s claimed that folk just didn’t want to see it anymore and that it had “recently been whitewashed”, perhaps in an attempt to cheer it up . . .
Things came to a head in 1923 when the road between Paul and Mousehole was widened. (Hard to imagine today as it is still a single track lane.) In the process it was decided that the community would take the opportunity and the cross would be removed, but it wasn’t just taken away. Apparently it was completely broken up and the pieces were built into the new hedge. In an act that again shows the superstitions connected to the cross, the stone bearing the infamous inscription was intentionally turned so that it faced inwards, the words effectively buried in the hedge, but perhaps predictably that was not the end of it. Local legend says that that particular piece of granite can still be identified because no moss will grow on it . . .
Final Thoughts
It is completely understandable why local people wanted the cross removed. I believe that it was not only because it was a reminder of a horrible event in the community’s past but that the motives of the man who erected it were questionable too. Martha’s name did not appear anywhere on the stone – it could not therefore be described as any kind of memorial to her! It was more like a righteous, accusatory pointing finger, telling the people of Paul and Mousehole that murder was wrong – as if they didn’t already know that!
There is one more thorny issue to contend with – was William Trewavas really guilty? There has been some suggestion that he was convicted on purely circumstantial evidence and had not actually committed the crime, so did the cross also come represent a terrible miscarriage of justice to the community? We must remember, as far as we know, and despite what the parish register says, that only Martha and her killer were witness to the attack.
If you want to see where the cross once stood you can find the the spot just past the gateway to the playing fields.
A little way up the hill there is a slightly wider area, a sort of dip in the hedge, and this I understand was where the monument once stood. This idea is backed up by some strange stones that can be seen in the hedge there.
There is a piece of granite close by with the word ‘Sarah’ carved into it and this was apparently placed there by one of the workmen who had been tasked with widening the road, and removing the cross, in 1923 – Sarah was said to be his daughter’s name. In his book, Departed Days – Mousehole Remembered, local historian, Douglas Tregenza, writes that the “CT 1887” which can also be seen on another stone was added to mark Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, cut into the granite by his relative Charles Tregenza, by hand, on his way home from work.
It seems that this little road has somehow become a strange repository for memories . . .
Further Reading/Listening:
I have created a podcast episode about this story if you would like to listen follow the links to where you get your podcasts
Turner in Cornwall – Follow in the artist’s footsteps
The Tangled Tale of the Ring & Thimble Stones
The Ukrainian Cross, Mylor Bridge
The Celtic Cross at Lamorna Cove
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