elisha wyatt

Subject :            Elisha Wyatt (b 1799 – d 1885)

Researcher :      Margaret Rose

Merrow man’s moment of madness with axe

Elisha Wyatt’s seemingly quiet life as a farm labourer in Merrow came crashing down after he struck a neighbour with an axe following a dispute over access to the local well.

Elisha was born on 3rd May 1799 at Blewbury, Berkshire (now Oxfordshire), about 14 miles (23km) south of Oxford.  He was the youngest of probably 10 children of Edward Wyatt and his wife Elizabeth. Elisha was baptised three days later at Blewbury’s St Michael’s Church.

In July 1815, when Elisha was 16, his father Edward died in Blewbury, but by then, Elisha may already have moved to Guildford, about 45 miles (72km) south-east of his home village.  One of his older sisters, Ann, had married James Luxford in Chiddingfold, Surrey in 1806. They settled in Guildford, so Elisha could have been living with them when he married Frances Etherington on 10th October 1820 at Guildford’s St Nicholas Church.  Frances, about eight years older than Elisha, was the daughter of John and Sarah Etherington from Lurgashall, Sussex.

The couple did not remain in Guildford, as their first son William was baptised in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire in July 1822.  Elisha was noted as a labourer on the baptism record, but what circumstances had made Elisha and Frances move over 30 miles (48km) north from Guildford is not known.  A second son George was born in High Wycombe in about 1826, although no baptism record has been traced.

Elisha and Frances appear to have had no other children and by the time of the 1841 Census, were back in Surrey, living in Merrow Street, Merrow with their younger son George, an agricultural labourer like his father.  Their elder son William, also an agricultural labourer, had left home and was working for a farmer in Elstead. He married in Puttenham in 1845 and settled in Elstead.  George married two years later in Merrow and stayed close by in Merrow and later West Clandon.

Little changed for Elisha and Frances over the coming years as they remained in Merrow Street, although Frances had taken on work as a charwoman by the time of the 1861 Census.

‘Murderous Assault’

Elisha’s life, apparently heading quietly into his later years, took a shocking turn in September 1864 when, aged 65, he was arrested for attacking and injuring a woman with an axe. 

In his trial at the County Bench in Guildford, it was heard that Elisha (written as Elijah in newspaper reports) had had a running dispute with his neighbour Louisa Keil about her access to the local well which Elisha claimed was through his property. 

This came to a head on 22nd September when Louisa found that Elisha had driven posts into the ground to block her path to the well.  She told the County Bench that she went up to him saying: ‘Mr Wyatt, it is no use your doing that, I shall have a thoroughfare through the yard’.  Elisha responded: ‘If you touch it, I will cleave your arm’.

With Elisha issuing more threats, Louisa called for help from a woman who was working for her.  The woman, Diana Hill, put her hand one of the posts as she spoke to Elisha, and when she refused to take it away, despite further threats from him, Elisha struck her on the back of her neck with the rear of the axe, causing her to fall to the ground.  The doctor who examined Diana told the County Bench that she had sustained extensive bruising and had not regained the use of her left arm.

In his defence, Elisha said that the two women had threatened to ‘tear his eyes out’ so that he was ‘obliged to strike the woman’.

Despite his plea, the County Bench sentenced Elisha to 4 months with hard labour in Wandsworth Gaol for ‘aggravated assault’.  His record described him as 5 feet 6 inches (1.68m) tall, weighing 9 stone 6 pounds (69.9kg), with grey hair, blue eyes and a ‘fresh’ complexion.

With Elisha now in prison, the Guildford Union stepped in to give Elisha’s wife Frances, now 70, poor relief for ‘husband in prison’ which would’ve helped keep her out of the workhouse. After Elisha’s release at the end of January 1865, he returned to be with Frances in Merrow, although whether it was in the same home as before is not known *.

Final years

Before long, Elisha began to receive poor law relief himself, including help with medical bills, as Frances had become ill. She passed away in Merrow in November 1866 from ‘dropsy’ aged 74.

Life for Elisha became even tougher. He spent 18 days in the Guildford Union Workhouse around 1868-69, and in late 1870/early 1871 received a small amount of poor relief for being ‘infirm, no work’.  The last record showed that he had moved to Merrow Common, but the April 1871 Census has no record of him being there or indeed anywhere else.  The most likely explanation for this is that he was simply missed by the enumerator.  Elisha was almost certainly living alone, so it would’ve been easy for this to happen.

The next record traced for Elisha is the 1881 Census, which showed him to be an inmate of the Guildford Union Workhouse as an 81-year-old widowed gardener. 

There are no other surviving poor law accounts, or any admission/discharge records for the Workhouse to show how long he had been there or where he had been living beforehand.  Both of his sons had passed away – his eldest William had died in October 1878 when he was thrown from his cart on his way home to his farm in Hankley Common, Elstead, while his younger son George had died from heart disease in Guildford’s County Hospital in May 1871.

Elisha almost certainly spent the rest of his life in the Workhouse, passing away there on 29th January 1885, aged 85, from ‘decay of age’.  He was buried at Merrow’s St John’s Church on 2nd February, like his wife Frances and their son George.

 

February 2023, updated April 2025

Editor: Mike Brock

*Maps of East and West Merrow in 1839 can be found on the Merrow Resident’s Association website   

Spike Lives is a Heritage project that chronicles the lives of inmates, staff and the Board of Guardians of the Guildford Union Workhouse at the time of the 1881 Census.  The Spike Heritage Museum in Guildford offers guided tours which present a unique opportunity to discover what life was like in the Casual/Vagrant ward of a Workhouse. More information can be found here

Sources

  • Ancestry.co.uk
    FindMyPast.co.uk / British Newspaper Archive
    General Register Office                  GRO.gov.uk
    Surrey History Centre, Woking      Surreycc.gov.uk

For a full list of references click here