On 20 February 1771, Richard Mortis stood before the Old Bailey charged with willfully and maliciously shooting Thomas Parkinson, the younger.
The jury found him guilty.
He was sentenced to death.
He was hanged on 27 March 1771.
The Background: Poaching and Resentment
Thomas Parkinson, junior, was the son of a steward managing estates in Hertfordshire for Lord Salisbury and Lord Monson.
He had previously laid an information against Mortis for poaching.
That grievance did not fade.
A fortnight before the shooting, a witness heard Mortis declare:
“I wish I had known before he had gone, I would have bestowed a week’s time on him, but I would have killed him before he had gone.”
He reportedly added that had he known Parkinson would inform against him, he would have “cleft him down” with his axe.
The motive was clear.
The Night of 29 December
On the evening of 29 December, Parkinson had been shooting with companions and later stopped at the Bull Inn near Brompton.
Mortis followed him throughout the day.
He entered the inn shortly after Parkinson and sat apart.
Nothing was said between them.
When Parkinson left for home, about a mile and a half distant, Mortis went ahead of him.
It was, Parkinson testified, “a remarkable moonlight night.”
At a gate near a grove, Parkinson saw Mortis waiting.
They walked together through fields. Mortis forced conversation about hares and partridges.
At one stile, Parkinson heard what he described as the “snick of a gun.”
Mortis agreed — perhaps an owl, he suggested.
Moments later, as Parkinson reached another gate:
Mortis fired.
The Shooting
Parkinson testified:
“The prisoner fired at me: I reeled a little: I looked up and saw the pistol in his hand.”
He was shot in the neck and shoulder at close range.
Mortis allegedly cried:
“There, d—n you, take that,”
and swore repeatedly.
Parkinson fled, pursued by Mortis, and reached the house of Richard Cawdell.
Witnesses described him as “in a very bloody condition.”
Surgeons later extracted numerous small shot from his neck, shoulder, mouth and tongue.
The wound narrowly missed the jugular vein.
Had the shot struck slightly differently, the surgeon said, death would have been certain.
Arrest
A group of men set out and found Mortis at home, dressed and ready.
He denied everything.
No pistol was found.
But the prior threat, the pursuit, the proximity, and the wound were compelling.
The Defence
Mortis claimed innocence.
He said he had been hunting with Parkinson the previous day and had no firearms.
But the earlier threat to kill, testified by William Spencer, weighed heavily.
Verdict and Sentence
The jury returned:
Guilty.
The sentence:
Death.
Richard Mortis was executed on 27 March 1771.
Poaching and the Law
In eighteenth-century England, poaching was not merely rural trespass.
Game laws protected the rights of landowners and aristocrats. Informers who prosecuted poachers often became targets of resentment.
Violence arising from poaching disputes was not uncommon — but shooting an informer elevated the matter to capital crime.
Why This Case Matters
The Mortis case reveals:
- The volatility of rural class tension
- The severity of eighteenth-century capital law
- The fragility of life in isolated countryside settings
- The importance of prior threat evidence in criminal trials
It also demonstrates how thin the line was between attempted murder and murder itself.
A few inches spared Parkinson’s life.
Mortis was not spared his own.
Capital Punishment in 1771
In 1771, England’s “Bloody Code” was still in full force.
More than 160 offences were technically punishable by death.
Attempted murder by shooting clearly fell within that framework.
Execution at Tyburn remained a public spectacle.
Sources
- Old Bailey Proceedings, 20 February 1771, trial of Richard Mortis
- Execution record, 27 March 1771
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