The Scrooby Murder

THE SCROOBY MURDER AND THE GIBBET

In the early hours of 3rd July 1779, John Spencer, a shepherd of North Leverton, murdered William Yeadon the Scrooby toll bar keeper and his mother Mary Yeadon in the tollbar house. Spencer had spent the evening playing cards with the tollbar keeper, and returned to the house later under the pretext that a drove of cattle wanted to pass. Having committed his brutal crime with a hedge stake and taken what money he could find, he was apprehended while dragging the bodies across the road towards the river nearby. He escaped, but was arrested a few days later, tried at Nottingham Assizes, and after conviction executed there. After his body had hung for the prescribed time, it was removed to Scrooby to hang in chains from a newly constructed gibbet adjacent to the scene of the crime, with the hedge stake placed in his right hand. A few weeks later an escort of soldiers in charge of a deserter passed the gibbet and the sergeant in command fired at and hit the corpse, causing a stench which was almost unbearable for days afterwards. The sergeant was court-marshalled and reduced to the rank of private. The gibbet post with its withered and weatherbeaten arm stood in testimony to the crime until April 1846, when it collapsed. A portion of the oak upright post survives in the collections of the Doncaster Museum.