By W. W. RavenhiU, Esq. 51 



It may be well to mention here, that Mr. Harrison's house had 

 been broken open the year before and £140 stolen, in the day time, 

 whilst the entire household (including Perry) were at Church. But 

 there were no traces of the robbery beyond a ladder standing against 

 the window which had been entered, and the ploughshare which had 

 been used to burst the fastening. The thieves had not been 

 discovered. 



There was yet a stranger story. John Perry had some weeks 

 before been seen in a garden at Campden by some neighbours, 

 running away with a sheep pick in his hand, and crying aloud with 

 fear. He said he had been attacked by two people dressed in white 

 with swords, and that he had defended himself with the pick, and 

 just as the neighbours came the men had run away. He shewed 

 some sword-cuts on the pick handle, and dents on a key, which 

 chanced to be in his pocket, as proofs of the combat. 



brought by the infant child of the deceased against the four prisoners who had been 

 acquitted came on for trial. " The evidence was so strange," says Serjeant Maynard, 

 " I took exact and particular notice of it." An ancient and grave person, minister 

 of the parish, said that the body being taken up out of the grave thirty days 

 after the party's death, and lying on the grass, and the four defendants being 

 present they were required each of them to touch the dead body. Okeman's wife 

 fell upon her knees and prayed God to shew tokens of her innocency. She then 

 touched the corpse, and the brow, which before was of a livid and carrion colour, 

 began to have a dew or gentle sweat arise on it, which increased by degrees till 

 it ran down in drops upon the face ; the brow turned to a lively and fresh colour 

 and the deceased opened one of her eyes and shut it again ; and this opening the 

 eye was done three several times ; she likewise thrust out the ring or marriage 

 finger three times and pulled it in again ; and the finger dropped blood from 

 it on the grass. Sir Nicholas Hyde, Chief Justice, doubting, asked who else 

 saw this, when the minister of the adjoining parish, also a grave and reverend 

 person, corroborated the facts. The first minister said he dipped his finger in the 

 blood from the body, and surely believed it to be blood. Other proofs, having 

 a direct bearing on the murder, were given, e.g. (1) the body found undisturbed, 

 the chUd by it. (2) Throat cut from ear to ear, and neck broken. How could 

 the latter have happened Hfelo de se P (3) No blood on the bed, save a tincture 

 where the head lay. (4) Streams of blood under the bed, from the head of it one 

 towards the centre, from the foot another in the same direction ; also blood clots 

 on the bed mat. (5) The knife sticking in floor, bloody and a good distance from 

 the bed, ,the point towards it, the haft from it. (6) Print of a thumb and four 

 fingers of a left hand on the body. 



We may presume — for we are not told — that this appeal or re-trial came to 

 nothing, but at anyrate Mrs. Okeman's innocence was proved ! 



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