Jobling witnesses told a different story
WILLIAM Jobling, a drunkard, approached magistrate Nicholas Fairles and asked him for drinking money.
Before his death, the Magistrate testified that he would have been happy to give Jobling money, but for the fact that he’d already had enough to drink.
Hence, he tactfully refused. Jobling, according to Esther Doran and other witnesses, cockily told the magistrate that he “knew better”.
Esther later described how, “ ... another man (Ralph Armstrong) passed after them ... his hands behind him under his coat, and as he went along, he said ... ‘Let’s kill him’. He followed in the direction of Jobling and Mr Fairles.”
Jobling then reached for Fairles’s arm, while Armstrong grabbed him from behind and shouted, “Damn you, you old bugger, we’ll do for you!”
They then pulled him to the ground. From the victim’s own account it becomes clear that it was not only Armstrong who unseated the Magistrate from his mount, but Jobling also.
Armstrong’s words, “Let’s kill him” and “We’ll do for you” are as clear an indication as one can get that the pair not only intended to beat the Magistrate but also likely kill him.
Jobling’s statement in court that he watched from afar, in shock, as Armstrong attacked Fairless is also a lie.
Mary Taylor, Margaret Hardy and others described how Jobling held the old man down and shouted, “Kill him! Kill him!” while Armstrong pummelled him with a stone and a length of wood.
Mary Taylor described how, when she arrived at the scene with her aunt, they saw the horrific attack in full flight.
Mary’s aunt screamed: “You murdering villains, you have murdered the man!” Three more blows were struck before the men ran off.
Armstrong was never found, and was rumoured to have fled to Australia. Jobling was arrested by a police officer at the Shields Races later that day.
Fairless, who is so often demonised by Jobling’s supporters, actually displayed an astonishing degree of fairness. Despite the horrific nature of the attack, he was at pains to point out that Jobling had not actually struck him, not wanting the man to be accused of something he hadn’t done.
It is clear that the attack upon Fairless was not, as some of Jobling’s defenders would have it, a spontaneous, unpremeditated act.
The accosting of John Archer Foster just an hour earlier had mirrored exactly the same pattern.
In fact, the only difference between the attack upon John Archer Foster and the attack upon Nicholas Fairles was that Foster, realising the danger he was in, hastily paid up.
Had he not, it is entirely possible that he might have suffered the same fate as the Magistrate. Armstrong and Jobling had obviously developed a successful technique for intimidating their chosen targets into handing over money.
Were the miners impoverished? Yes, and cruelly so. Were they justified in going on strike? Undoubtedly.
However, the harsh conditions that were forced upon them cannot be used to justify murder, particularly when the villains concerned had spent the entire day getting inebriated on the little money they possessed. Jobling was not forced to beg money from Fairles.
Truth be told, Jobling wasn’t begging at all. Begging is what the starving do, not the drunk. Jobling was soliciting the Magistrate for drinking money, not pleading with him for sustenance.
Nicholas Fairles is sometimes painted not as the victim in the event, but almost as the perpetrator.
He has occasionally been caricatured as haughty, proud, possessing a callous disregard for his employees.
It is this alleged aloofness, coupled with a perceived stinginess when he refused to give the men some “charity”, that is said to have precipitated the attack.
In other words, to use the excuse of many a villain, “He was asking for it.”
As we’ll see next week, the truth was far different.
* Next week: The cowardly lies of William Jobling.
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Thursday 17 May 2012
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