Cheltenham Journal and Gloucestershire Fashionable Weekly Gazette.
Saturday 28 September 1861
A serious rape case – an assault of a very serious nature was perpetrated on the person of a young woman, 19 years of age, named Ann Butcher, the daughter of a labourer residing at Cam, on the evening of the 24th inst. It appears that the young woman was passing along Shatford’s lane, in the parish of Stinchcombe, about seven o’clock, when she was stopped by a labouring man from North Nibley, named Henry Bruton, who threw her down and committed a most indecent assault upon her. Proceeding on the road, crying and in great distress, about half an hour afterwards she met Mr Superintendent Monk, of the county police, to whom she related the particulars of the case. He at once accompanied her to Mr Leonard, surgeon, Dursley, who, after an examination, was perfectly satisfied that a criminal assault had been recently committed. The superintendent then proceeded to Nibley Mill, where he arrested Bruton on the charge. When in custody his clothes were examined, and indications found which proved beyond a doubt the prisoner’s guilt. He was taken before Captain Morse, at Dursley, on Thursday, and committed to the assizes on the capital charge.
We actually have a description of Henry from the register of prisoners at Gloucester Gaol, prior to his sentence of being transported for 14 years.
‘5’2″ tall, light brown hair, light blue eyes, round face, fair complexion, and middling stout’
He arrived on the HMS Clyde at the Swan River Colony on 29th May 1863, with 319 other transportees.
In 1868, he married Susan Flaherty, a recent immigrant, at Albany, in Western Australia. They had two children, and Henry died in 1874, aged 36, and was buried in Albany.
Going back in time, Henry was living on Gazards Row in 1841, with his grandparents, Joseph, a woollen weaver, and Sarah. His uncle Joseph was also living in the household. The family were living in poverty – in 1808, Joseph was unable to pay the parish Highway Rate, and, in 1849, Sarah was in receipt of outdoor relief.
There’s no baptism record for Henry but we know, from later records, that his mother was Mary, born 1808. In 1851, Joseph the elder has died, and Henry (listed as a visitor’) is living in Nibley with Sarah, Joseph, and his mother, a spooler.
In 1861, Henry was living at Horses Green (near Forthay), boarding and working as an agricultural labourer. Mary was in Dursley Union in ’61 and ’71, listed as an ‘imbecile’ and was admitted to the lunatic asylum in 1862, to be released in 1865. She died in 1872.
North Nibley One-Place-Study 