He Cursed The Church Clock From The Gallows... Poem by Mark Heathcote

Marriage-unconsummated to the widow,
Esquire Richard Rowland's swung from the gibbet.
In 1862 for the murder of his father-in-law,
life in debt, was forfeit, but was he the culprit?

'People they puzzled why he slept alone' Hurrah!
'We know the score' 'why he slept at home' at his old parents.
He killed Richard Williams; he's not innocent, blah!
'For the farmer; beat to his death good riddance.'

Said he, he must have had a fit on his way home,
he never made it. I'm an innocent man
Oh, yes, maybe he did have some rare kind of syndrome.
As the goal officers gazed at the hangman?

It's said he cursed the church clock from the gallows.
It didn't work again, not from them hallows.

Richard Rowland's

Everyone was a bit puzzled when 45-year-old Richard Rowland married a widow but continued to sleep alone at his parent's home. What was the purpose of that, they asked?

It was soon clear. In November 1861, four months after the probably unconsummated marriage, Rowland's waylaid his 70-year-old father-in-law, farmer Richard Williams, as the old man was on his way home after an evening out. He beat the farmer to death with a hammer, and when the body was found the next morning suspicion soon fell on him.

He must have had a fit on his way home, and never made it, Rowland's told police. Then, naively, he added: I don't think he was killed with a hammer.

He was charged with murder, and at Anglesey Assizes the prosecution deduced that the motive was to gain control of his father-in-law's Llanfairfaethiu, Anglesey, farm, through his new wife. He was hanged outside Beaumaris Prison on Friday, April 4th,1862, in what was to be the last execution at Beaumaris.