WHEN Lizzie Pearson was found guilty of murder and hanged in 1875 her husband John might have been expected to move away from their village.

Some men linked to a crime like that would have wanted to escape any shame, finger pointing and gossip.

But Pearson, a railway platelayer, stayed on in Gainford among people he knew well.

He eventually married again and was sharing a house with his second wife, Margaret, when it was included in a fine picture of the village sketched around 1900.

The work by George W. Tennick shows the green, St Mary’s Parish Church and a line of cottages, known as Church Row, leading from the right of it.

Local historian Mike Stow, who provided the picture, also gave details of the residents. Postman Tom Tennick lived in the one nearest the church with his wife Frances and eight children.

When Tom retired in 1922 after 47 years’ service he had never missed a day’s work and was reckoned to have trudged 232,704 miles on his rounds.

Widow Jane Todd lived next door.

But Lizzie Pearson and her husband had lived in that property previously.

They moved from there to her uncle James Watson’s cottage, the fourth in the row, so they could look after him as he was ill.

He died in March 1875 at the age of 75 and Lizzie, a 28-year-old mother of four, was accused of poisoning him.

The cottage between the second and fourth ones was occupied by tailor Thomas Hutchinson, whose sign can be seen above his door.

A post-mortem showed the old uncle had been killed by strychnine – and Lizzie was found to have got her mother in law, Jane Pearson, to buy two threepenny packets of vermin killer for her. They contained strychnine.

She said she used one packet to kill 12 mice and intended to use the second one on mice as well.

She denied ever putting it in her uncle’s medicine or wishing to harm him.

But an inquest jury at the Lord Nelson public house decided she should be sent for trial charged with murder.

She was found guilty at Durham Assizes on the flimsiest of evidence and sentenced to death.

A petition was launched in a bid to get her reprieved but it was rejected.

Then she claimed to be pregnant.

This would have saved her from execution, but a doctor found it was not true.

It was reported that a lodger at her uncle’s house went away around the time of his death, but nothing was done to find and question him.

Lizzie, whose maiden name was Sedgewick, and who came from the Blackwell area of Darlington, died on the gallows in August 1875. John Pearson took over the tenancy of the dead man’s house.

He married Margaret some time later and she moved into the cottage.

The figure in the doorway in the picture might be her. John was born in Cockfield and was aged 57 in 1900. The cottages were built in the early 1700s.

The trees in the foreground with protective fences around them were planted in 1897 to mark Queen Victoria’s 60 years on the throne. The knife grinder seen in action was a regular visitor in those days.

THERE were so many casualties in the 1914-18 conflict that it was called the war to end all wars, and the thought of a lasting peace caused delight all round.

But doubt was cast on it when a memorial was unveiled at Stanhope to honour 33 local men who had been killed in action.

Octavius Monkhouse, a councillor and businessman who presided at the ceremony, declared that despite all the talk of hostilities ending for ever he felt the way things were going in the world meant there would be further wars.

His correct prediction is underlined by the fact that more names have since been added to the memorial – 14 from the Second World War and one from Iraq.

He had personal sorrow as his own son, Captain Joseph Monkhouse of the 6th Battalion Durham Light Infantry, was one of the 33 named on the memorial.

He was killed in a battle in Belgium in April, 1915, just 23 days after being best man at his sister Mary’s wedding at Cowshill in Weardale. Nineteen of the 33 served in the DLI. The memorial stone, which cost £300 and was paid for by public subscription, was erected just inside the boundary wall of St Thomas’s parish church, at a spot where there used to be a gate.

Stanhope Silver Band played a stirring march as it led a procession through the town.

The unveiling in 1922 was attended by the families of all the men who paid the supreme sacrifice, and by other troops who returned from the war.

The 14 added from the Second World War included a woman soldier, Private Annie Peart, 25-yearold daughter of Selbourne and Margaret Peart.

She served in the Auxiliary Territorial Service and died in July, 1946.

She is buried in Stanhope cemetery.

The one man named from the war in Iraq is Colin Wall, 34, a warrant officer in the Royal Military Police.

He was killed in action at Basra in 2003. Two seats have been placed in his memory on Crawleyside Bank, one by his parents and the other by his friends.

An oak tree was planted in tribute to him at Wolsingham School, where he was a pupil. Joseph Monkhouse’s 17-year-old brother Alfred was killed in a road accident near Stanhope three months after his death.

Their parents had a stained glass window installed at Heathery Cleugh parish church, Cowshill, as a memorial to the brothers.

Their grandfather had been vicar there for 25 years. The captain, who left a wife, Bessie, and daughter Ellen, three, was also commemorated on the Ypres Menin Gate memorial to the missing, Belgium.

Ken Heatherington has researched the names on all the war memorials in Weardale and produced 10 booklets with the details.

They are now in the Weardale Museum, where visitors are welcome to study them.

MAURICE, youngest of the five sons of John and Barbara Woodhams, whose lives were recalled here lately, was an active fellow despite the polio which afflicted him.

In his young years, around 1910, he spent a lot of time in St Vincent’s surgical home at Pinner, Middlesex.

As well as having treatment and being encouraged to move around he received training in a workshop.

Making and repairing boots and shoes was one skill he acquired, and he also stuck in well at school subjects.

Once back in Teesdale he played some cricket and a lot of table tennis, at which he was often a winner despite wearing calipers.

He joined a quilting class in Barnard Castle, doing excellent needlework as the only man alongside 15 ladies. He went on to have a career in a tax office, so he led a busy and useful life despite a handicap that might have tempted him to sit moping.

As reported in Dales Diary, his father was a long-serving postman and his four brothers served in the Second World War.