Edward Buckland

Edward Buckland murdered Judith Pearce.

Around 2am on 14 November 1820  Judith Pearce and her grandaughter were asleep when they heard someone breaking into the house. Judith Pearce struck a light and they both went downstairs to see a window broken in and a man enter through it. The ran into the buttery and shut the door and held it shut but the man started to smash the door down with a hatchet. When he had enough space to get the hatchet through he hit Judith Pearce on the head. The girl tore her handkerchief from her neck and bound Judith Pearce's head. The light then went out and Judith Pearce went upstairs to get another and then came back downstairs. Judith Pearce left the girl to keep the door while she forced a hole through the wattle-and-dab wall with a hatchet and they both ran out into the garden. However, the man had gone back through the window and was now in the garden at the garden gate where he hit Judith Pearce with the hatchet and tried to grab the girl but she managed to escape his grasp and sprang off across a brook at the bottom of the garden and ran to the village of Sutton-Benger to get help.

When she returned with help Judith Pearce was dead.

The evidence against Edward Buckland was circumstantial.

Edward Buckland was a gipsey and scarcely five feet tall.

see Royal Cornwall Gazette - Saturday 24 March 1821