Partridge

A Yorkshire man committed a murder and robbery at Monkfield, a lone farm about a mile away, belonging to a family called Partridge.  He then went abroad.  Returning, unrecognised, after a number of years he made some reference to plundering a nest of partridges and leaving for fear of the gamekeepers. He was taken before a magistrate and confessing his crime was sentenced to be hanged alive in chains at the cross roads.  There is no indication of the period of this crime. (Leaflets of Local Lore.)  Again no reference in 18th Century Assizes records.  It may be an account of the 1680’s murder - though that has no reference to a period of years elapsing between crime and punishment

Joyce Brown reports it as “One of the  best-known stories connected with the gibbet concerns a murder in the early 1700’s of a man called Partridge, probably from Bourn.  The crime took place in Monk’s Field and the culprit escaped to America.  Some years later he returned and boasted in a Caxton Inn about his crime.  He was arrested, tried, convicted and hung alive in a cage suspended from the gibbet to die of starvation.  Legend also has it that a local baker took pity on him and gave him some bread, for which he also suffered the same fate.”