| On Wednesday 13th May 1795
at about 8 o’clock in the evening George
Errington, a wealthy London barrister, was shot
by his former mistress, Anne Broadrick, in the
drawing room of his house in Grays Thurrock. That
the murder took place in front of his wife of a
few months and that Mr Errington had figured in a
notorious divorce case added to the considerable
national interest when it was reported in the
London press. Interest has continued, at least
locally, ever since and has relied on information
in the more sensational contemporary publications
especially the ‘Pocket Magazine’.
Extracts from this monthly were re-printed in
numbers 3 and 27 of the Society’s Journals.
However the press of the day, in the way to which
we are still accustomed, used imagination to
supplement fact. We had been led to believe, for
instance, that Anne had declaimed the memorable
phrase ‘I have come Errington to fulfil my
dreadful promise’ as she shot him. The
‘Newgate Calender’, another
contemporary news sheet, claimed to reproduce a
letter Anne Broderick had written to Errington
requesting a meeting, which contained the
theatrical threat ‘Recollect, however,
Errington, ere you send a refusal, that the
roaring of the tempest and the lightnings from
heaven are not more terrible than the rage and
vengeance of a disappointed woman’. Now at last the truth, as far as it can be extracted after 200 years, can be revealed. In the last half of 2004, Mr. Tom Errington contacted the Society through the internet, initially concerning Belmont Castle (see Notes & Queries in this issue). Mr Errington is a descendant of the murder victim and, within the last two years, has had access to substantial quantities of family papers including the court documents from Anne Broadrick’s trial. He has kindly agreed that we can publish some of the information relevant to the case. The family papers do not however give the complete story and in order to satisfy as far as possible the readers’ curiosity, some reliance has also been put on the account of Anne Broderick’s trial in the Shire Hall at Chelmsford which was carried at some length in the Chelmsford Chronicle of July 24th 1795. This account where it coincides with the information supplied by Mr Errington corresponds reasonably well and has none of the sensationalism of the London press. |
George Errington 1756 - 1795 |
In the following pages the information supplied by Mr Errington is reproduced in a different font.
