Eliza SNELLING

• General Notes
  • Eliza's family is reputed to be connected to the famous Hindhead murder.
    
    In 1786, the ‘Devils Punchbowl’, where the sailor’s body was found, was the site of a ‘cottage industry’, broom making.  Since the area is very sandy and the soil very acid, it is an ideal habitat for broom, hence the broom making industry, which continued well into the C20th.  The heads of the families who carried out this trade were known as ‘Broomsquires’.
    
    Amongst these were the Snellings, who, along with several other families at the time had a smallholding at the bottom of the punchbowl.  They would have been very close to the events of 1786, but do not appear to have played any part in them.
    
    The nearest connection I can find –and it really is a very tenuous one, is that, according to a report at the time, a gentleman called ‘Staffy’ Snelling (and I cannot tell you what this nickname might mean or be short for) was apparently in the Red Lion at Thursley when the sailor met the three men who subsequently murdered him.  It is possible that ‘Staffy’ Snelling was a member of the same family who lived in the punchbowl, but the name was (and is) not uncommon in those parts so I cannot be sure. 
    
    I have found these references in Peter Moorey’s Who Was the Sailor Murdered at Hindhead, 1786: A search for his Identity (the author, 2000). Peter Moorey is descended from the punchbowl Snellings.
    
    Two country men came upon the murder scene shortly afterwards (and some accounts seem to suggest that they actually witnessed the murder), who raised the alarm. The murderers were pursued and arrested by a soldier, Thomas Doe and the posse that had been raised, at The Sun Inn at Rake, over the county boundary into Hampshire.  It is, of course always possible that a Boxall or Snelling were one or other of the two witnesses, but if this is the case, they apparently remained anonymous, so it seems unlikely, particularly as a contemporary newspaper report says that they were “…coming over Hindhead”, which suggests they were not local.
    
    It is possible that these two were called as witnesses at the trial, but had this been so their names might, I would have thought, have been known to history.  If you would like to pursue this avenue further, you will need to look at the records of the Assize Court where the trail took place.  These records are held at the National Archive at Kew
    

Details of Eliza's family with Arthur Andrew BATSFORD