On Saturday 7th September 1850, William Marsden set out from his home at Scammonden to sell three cows in Halifax. William came from a family which had lived at Scammonden for at least a century before. His father James farmed 26 acres at Cowgate Hill and supplemented the family income with earnings as a publican. William at 21 was James’s eldest son. He was unmarried and lived with his parents, brother Joseph and six sisters at the Brown Cow Inn which James had opened during the late 1830s. William was, by all accounts, "...a very steady young man and attentive to his business...". His trip to Halifax was not entirely successful. He sold one of the cows but returned home with the other two unsold. Whatever disappointment this represented cannot, however, explain subsequent events.

William’s return from Halifax would have been a walk of about six miles mostly along the road to Denshaw which passes within about half a mile of the Brown Cow. He did not go straight home. At about 5 pm, just beyond Sowerby Bridge, he stopped at the Triangle Inn and bought two glasses of brandy. Unusually, he asked for pen and paper and scrawled a brief note which he took with him when he left. After a further two miles, he stopped at the Golden Lion Inn in Ripponden where he obtained change for a five pound note from the landlady, Mrs. Hoyle, and possibly had more to drink before facing the last couple of miles walk home. On the way, he gave a little boy a small sum of money to drive his cows back to his father’s. He was not to be seen alive again. Back at the Brown Cow his parents and sisters waited up for him but when he had not returned by two in the morning, retired to bed.

The next morning at seven he had still not returned but in the back yard one of his young sisters found his hat, waistcoat and topcoat laid beneath one of the bedroom windows. There was money in the waistcoat, reputedly between £20 and £30 in sovereigns, together with the note penned in the Triangle Inn. More disturbing, hat, coat and waistcoat were all found to be bloodstained. The bloodstains on the topcoat suggested a wound to the left side of the neck.

The surrounding area was searched over the next few days but there was no trace of William or any further clue to his fate. On the following Wednesday, several men dragged Dean Head reservoir but failed to recover a body. It was not until the Friday afternoon, over a week later, that William’s body was discovered floating on the surface of the reservoir. The body was recovered and brought to the Brown Cow where the Halifax Deputy Coroner, Charles Gleadall (or Gledhill) held an inquest the following day. His verdict was "found drowned...without any marks of violence". No suggestion was made that William had committed suicide.

The inconclusive outcome of the inquest avoided the problems of securing a Christian burial which would have resulted from a suicide verdict and so his body was buried in St. Bartholemew’s churchyard in what was to become the family grave. This already held the remains of his nine year old brother James who had been killed six years previously while trying to stop a runaway horse. The inscription on the tombstone reads "...also William, son of the above [James and Hannah Marsden] who departed this life September 7th 1850 aged 21". This inscription is followed by a short verse.

We are left with something of a mystery. He had clearly returned home and suffered injuries the evidence of which suggests that his throat had been cut. There were no signs of any struggle and the substantial sum of money found in his waistcoat pocket rules out the possibility that he was the victim of a violent robbery. All of the clues suggest that William killed himself. It seems unlikely, however, that he died as a result of his injuries. There is no suggestion that the quantity of blood was copious and few traces were found other than on his clothing which would seem to have been removed after the injury was sustained. Moreover, the distance from the inn to the reservoir is about half a mile, a long distance to walk for a man who had suffered a mortal wound. We are left to conclude that having failed to inflict a sufficiently serious injury, he threw himself into the reservoir and drowned.

What then of the coroner’s inquest? If, as suspected, his neck wounds were no more than superficial, it is quite possible that the decomposition resulting from a couple of weeks immersion in water made them difficult to detect. The coroner too may have felt some sympathy for the family. The shame which they would have faced from a suicide verdict may have influenced his decision and led him to record what today we would call an "open verdict".

And what of the note scribbled with borrowed pen and paper at the Triangle Inn? The almost illegible scrawl was addressed to his sister Mary, who at 24 was the eldest of James and Hannah’s children. It read:

It is the lines of this verse which are inscribed on his tombstone. There can be little doubt that these few words make his intentions abundantly clear.

We are left with no clue as to why this "very steady young man" should have been so intent on ending his life. The family while not obviously wealthy were certainly not poor and materially his life would have been better than many. We are again left to speculate. Why did he address his note to his sister? The dedication conveys an unusually close affection. Was his relationship with her something beyond the socially acceptable? Had he suffered some humiliation while in Halifax from which he felt he could not recover? Perhaps the isolation of life on the Pennine moorland simply became too great. We shall, unfortunately, probably never discover the answer.

The Brown Cow Inn still stands above Dean Head. After the deaths of James and Hannah Marsden within six months of each other in 1874, the inn was run for a few years by their unmarried daughter Rose Hannah. By 1891, however, the Brown Cow was no longer in the family’s hands. The present landlady, Chris Parker, has taken an interest in the inn’s former owners and with local historian Kath Brown has provided me with much of the information upon which this article is based. Further information was supplied by Steve Marsden (050/128). I am indebted to them all for their assistance.

Leeds Mercury 21 August 1841

Leeds Mercury 14 September 1850

Huddersfield Chronicle 14 September 1850

Huddersfield Chronicle 5 October 1850

Census returns 1841-91

Parish Registers Scammonden

Monumental Inscription Scammonden Churchyard