Grime

Top criminal barristers Sasha Wass QC and Jeremy Dein QC explore a grisly Victorian-era murder.

Lancashire, 1863. On a cold January evening on the outskirts of Haigh, near Wigan, engine tender James Barton started his night shift at the Bawk House pit. He was carrying his prized silver pocket watch. Workers arriving the following morning were mystified to find that James wasn’t there, and a frantic search for him began.

As the sun came up, signs of Barton’s grim fate emerged. It was clear he had been brutally assaulted with a crowbar in the workers’ cabin and then incinerated in one of the mine’s furnaces. His charred remains were found, but there was no sign of his pocket watch.

Despite huge rewards offered for information about the crime, it was three years before anyone was brought to justice. The family of 30-year-old blacksmith Thomas Grime handed in Barton’s pocket watch to the authorities. When questioned by police, Grime admitted being present when the murder was committed, but he accused others of carrying out the fatal assault.

However, Grime alone was convicted of murder. And, on 1 September 1866, outside Liverpool’s Kirkdale jail, Thomas Grime was hanged.

Now, over 150 years on, Thomas Grime’s relative Marie is looking into his case and has called on the barristers for help analysing the legal complexities. Sasha and Jeremy look at the police investigation into multiple suspects, and call upon a psychologist to try to get to the bottom of what led Thomas Grime to be the only man charged with James Barton’s murder. Will they be able to overturn his conviction?