Charles Walton

Charles Walton (12 May 1870 – 14 February 1945) was an English man who was found murdered on the evening of 14 February 1945 (St. Valentine's Day), at The Firs farm on the slopes of Meon Hill, Lower Quinton, in Warwickshire, England. The foremost police detective of the era, Chief Inspector Robert Fabian, led the investigation into Walton's death. The chief suspect for the murder was the manager of The Firs, Alfred John Potter, for whom Walton was working on the day he died. However, there was insufficient evidence to convict Potter and the case is currently the oldest unsolved murder in the Warwickshire Constabulary's records. The case has earned some notoriety in popular culture due to its supposed connection with the local belief in witchcraft.

Background Charles Walton was born on 12 May 1870 to Charles and Emma Walton. An agricultural worker, he lived in Lower Quinton all his life. He was a widower who shared a small cottage, 15 Lower Quinton, with his 33-year-old niece Edith Isabel Walton, whom he had adopted thirty years previously upon the death of her mother. Walton was described as something of a loner who had earned a reputation as a trainer of horses in his youth. It is said that he did not socialise with his neighbours but was not disliked.

Walton walked with a stick because of his rheumatic joints. However, he sought casual farm work wherever he could find it and, for the previous nine months, had been working for a local farmer, Alfred Potter, whose farm was known as The Firs.

That day Edith Walton was working as a printer's assembler at the Royal Society of Arts, which had relocated to Lower Quinton for the duration of the Second World War.

Alfred Potter's account of events On 17 February Potter was interviewed for a second time, on this occasion by Detective Sergeant Webb. Potter stated that Walton had usually worked about four days each week, but never in wet weather. Potter stated that he paid him eighteen pence an hour and usually at the end of each fortnight, although sometimes by the week. He said that he left it to Walton to say how many hours he had completed and implied that Walton was sometimes paid for hours he had not actually worked. He had last paid Walton for the fortnight ending 10 February, when he had given him £2.15s.0.

Alfred Potter Alfred Potter was forty years old at the time of the murder and managed The Firs for L. L. Potter & Co. which was a company owned by his father.

Ann Tennant Ann Tennant was a resident of Long Compton, fifteen miles from Lower Quinton, and was murdered at the age of eighty. On 15 September 1875, at about 8 o'clock in the evening, Ann Tennant left her house to buy a loaf of bread. On her way back, she met some farm workers returning home from harvesting in the fields. One of the group was a local man, James Heywood, who had known Ann's family for many years. Heywood was simple-minded and was seen as something akin to a village idiot. It is known that he had also been drinking cider. Without warning he attacked Ann Tennant with a pitchfork, stabbing her in the legs and head.

A local farmer named Taylor heard the commotion and ran to Ann's aid. He restrained Heywood until a constable arrived. Ann was taken to her daughter's house but died of her injuries at around 11.15 that night. Heywood claimed that Ann was a witch and that there were other witches in the village whom he intended to deal with in the same way. Although committed to trial for murder, he was found not guilty on the grounds of insanity and spent the rest of his life in Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. He is recorded as dying there, at the age of 59, in the first half of 1890.

On 13 February 1954, the eve of the ninth anniversary of Walton's murder, the Daily Mirror revisited the killing of Ann Tennant and alleged similarity between that event and Walton's murder. The report stated: "The police have found one other link between the killings, but I am pledged not to reveal it."

Claims of witchcraft The two reports that Fabian wrote on the case in 1945 and which are preserved in the police file make no mention of witchcraft, ritualistic killing, black dogs, natterjack toads or blood sacrifices. However, twenty-five years later he wrote the following:I advise anybody who is tempted at any time, and on any pretext, to venture into Black Magic, witchcraft, Satanism – call it what you will – to remember Charles Walton and to think of his death, which was so clearly the ghastly climax of a pagan rite. There is no stronger argument for keeping as far away as possible from the villains with their swords, incense and mumbo-jumbo. It is prudence on which your future peace of mind and even your life could depend.

It has been claimed that Fabian was acquainted with two pieces of local history. The first related to the murder of Ann Tennant by James Heywood, on the grounds that she was a witch. In many accounts, it has been erroneously claimed that Ann was pinned to the ground with a pitchfork and slashed with a bill-hook.

Gerald Gardner stated in his book The Meaning of Witchcraft: ... the Whispering Knights are not a circle; they are not Druidical, and they are about twelve miles away, as the crow flies, from Lower Quinton. Nor was Charles Walton killed on St Valentine's Eve; and as no one knows for certain just what the Druid's ceremonies were, it is impossible to say that his death was a reproduction of one. Apart from these details, the description is accurate.