Part 1: (True Story) This Spirit Will Never Rest Until She Gets Justice

Photo courtesy of S. Hermann & F. Richter from Pixabay

…But 170 years later, it would appear that this is her fate…

“…we should pass over all biographies of ‘the good and the great,’ while we search carefully the slight records of wretches who died in prison, in Bedlam, or upon the gallows.”
~Edgar Allan Poe

Indeed, Mr. Poe…indeed. And others who lived and died in quiet tragedy, start to finish.

Like a young woman, Lydia Atley (also spelled Attley and Atlee in various records), who was in her late 20s when she disappeared on July 22, 1850.

Disappeared — and was presumed murdered.

In the tiny English village of Ringstead, it was no secret that Lydia was nine months’ pregnant with the child of William Weekley Ball. He was the local butcher and was married at the time. He and his wife, Hannah, had no children.

The February 29th 1864 edition of the Eastern Counties Gazette describes Lydia as being “of middle height, thin in person…Her hair was auburn in colour, nearly inclined to red, her face was slightly contracted on one side…”

It adds that “…she possessed a pair of innocent eyes, and a remarkably fine set of teeth of ivory whiteness, which she frequently displayed.”

She was not particularly intelligent and because of this, fell prey to those who took advantage of her. Villagers saw her as a vulnerable character and a victim in the ongoing saga with the butcher. She had already had an illegitimate child — a son, Henry, born March 10, 1846 — in the Thrapston workhouse. When he was 2 years old, she left him there so she could start a new life.

Lydia lived with her brother, John, who had kept the family home after their mother’s death just two months before the young woman’s disappearance.

Scratching out a meagre living, she sold nuts and oranges round the village in spite of a bad leg, and like her younger sister, Elizabeth, was a lacemaker. None of these brought enough money to support herself, let alone a child.

Lydia and Weekley Ball were overheard arguing in his orchard that night as she demanded that he support the child.

The argument became quite heated and one witness, Joseph Groom, overheard Lydia shouting, “Get off me for I believe you mean killing me tonight, Weekley Ball! The Lord have mercy on me, if I am going to die in the state that I am in!”

This was followed by her screams, which were heard by others besides Mr. Groom.

Those frightening screams were the last anyone ever heard of poor Lydia Atley.

The Magistrate’s Decision

Several of Ringstead’s residents came forward with whatever information they could offer as witnesses in this case. Most of them were relatives of the missing woman and one was an alleged brothel owner.

The police advertised in the Police Gazette and circulated flyers offering a £50 reward for evidence that would help them find Lydia.

No one came forward.

A few weeks after Lydia’s disappearance, Weekley Ball showed a letter to Thomas Green, the innkeeper at the Axe and Compass. The letter was supposedly from a man in Northampton who claimed to have seen Lydia alive and well.

Along with the absence of a body, the magistrates decided that there was insufficient evidence to charge Weekley Ball with murder and the matter was dropped.

However, the villagers would not let him off so easily. Certain that all they needed was a body to prove his guilt, gardens were turned over, woods, thickets and ditches were dug up, ponds and the River Nene were dragged.

All to no avail.

Still, they were convinced that he was guilty and a ballad was written about him. The Cruel Butcher of Ringstead first appeared at a fair in neighbouring Thrapston in October, 1850.

The ballad consists of nine verses in all. Here are the first three:

About that time we all do know
Up to the Black Horse that man did go
And for to have a glass of ale
And there he told a dreadful tale

Chorus
A cruel Butcher he hung should be
For killing of Lydia Atlee

And then from there he went straightway
To kill a sheep as he did say
To kill that girl it was his guile
Likewise to kill his lovely child

(Chorus)

When she got home and left her tray
To meet the man she went straightway
To get her bounty she did intend
Not thinking of her latter end

Life in the Ringstead area became unbearable for Weekley Ball and his wife, Hannah, so they moved to Ramsey, Cambridgeshire and began a new and prosperous life.

A Skeleton Is Found

Fourteen years later, the skeleton of a young woman was discovered just outside Ringstead.

The skull was found separately from the body (nearby), and the jaw was missing a molar. Lydia’s brother-in-law, Henry Dix, would later testify in Weekley Ball’s 1864 trial that two weeks prior to her disappearance, she had begged him to pull a tooth from that same position in her mouth. He was reluctant but “…drew the tooth with a pair of nippers.”

There were no fetal remains found with the skeleton. However, when I lived in Ringstead, I heard villagers’ speculations that made my blood run cold. For more than 150 years, some suggested that as he was a butcher, he had the tools and ability to remove the child from Lydia’s body and that he buried it well away from her to hide his crime, should her body ever be unearthed.

Was this a case of a bloodthirsty public making the evidence fit, perhaps? Did they want justice so desperately for the young woman they saw as a victim that they were willing to accuse an innocent man of something so heinous?

Or could their bizarre accusation be correct?

It has also been suggested that the fetus decomposed within those 14 years because baby bones decompose at a much faster rate than those of an adult.

A Charge of Murder, a Trial, and a Startling Twist

Immediately upon the discovery of the skeleton, Weekley Ball was again a person of interest. He was soon arrested and standing trial. Numerous witnesses were heard, and the aforementioned letter was finally produced. There were certain peculiarities about it that raised more questions than it answered.

Eventually, the author of the letter admitted that Weekley Ball had come to him in Northampton and pressed him to write it.

With mounting evidence against Weekley Ball, it looked like he would be convicted.

Suddenly, news stories appeared saying that three more skeletons had been found in the same area where the one in question had been discovered. The case against him fell apart and the charges were dismissed. There was no reason to suspect that Weekley Ball had killed anyone other than Lydia and no other people had been reported missing, much less implicating him in the process.

If he had killed Lydia, it had been in the heat of the moment when she went to him and pressured him for money.

Weekley Ball returned to Ramsey, where his business grew and he continued to prosper. Local records indicate that sometime later, he purchased two pieces of land (approximately seven acres) on the outskirts of the town.

On April 2, 1874 Hannah died at the age of 62. She is buried in the local cemetery.

Two years later, in 1876 Weekley Ball married Catherine Cattling, who was 12 years younger than he was. He died in November, 1896 the question of his guilt still hanging over his memory. He is buried beside Hannah and Catherine, who died in 1899, lies elsewhere in the same cemetery.

I suppose we will never know the truth of what happened to Lydia and her baby. And if ever there was a case for circumstantial evidence, this is it.

Perhaps Weekley Ball was wrongly accused, undeserving of the treatment he received and this ongoing question of his guilt.

But consider this:

A young woman, nine months pregnant. It’s late evening. She has no money. Her family is right there, in the village. She has nowhere else to go. She argues with the married father of her baby about money.

A witness hears her shouting as though she is being physically attacked.

A few people hear her scream. And that is the last that anyone ever hears of Lydia Atley.

What do you think? Could Weekley Ball have been innocent?

And if so, what else might have happened to this poor young woman who didn’t have the means to leave that village and suddenly vanished without a trace?

Whatever happened to her, and whether or not Weekley Ball was involved, 170+ years later it is unlikely she will ever get the justice she deserves.

Lydia’s spirit is said to haunt the village of Ringstead, where I lived for several years in a quirky stone cottage that I adored.

In fact, neighbours insisted that she was the ghost who inhabited that cottage with my family. But that’s another story for another day…

Continue to Part 2 here.

*Many thanks to David Ball (descendant of William Weekley Ball) for his countless hours of research that provided many of these details. His references are listed on this linked page.