History of the Lydden Valley »
CRIME »
The Murder of Mary Bax 1782
On 25 August 1782 Mary Bax was walking along the Ancient Highway from Deal to Sandwich carrying a parcel. She was 800 metres beyond the Chequers Inn when she was apprehended by a Swedish sailor, Martin Lash, who demanded the parcel. She refused, and in the struggle Mary Bax was struck many times and murdered; her body concealed in a ditch.
The murder was witnessed by a young boy, described as the son of 'a looker in the Marshes' (a looker was a shepherd). The boy ran back to Deal to raise the alarm.
Martin Lash was eventually apprehended in Folkestone asleep at the foot of one of the tombstones in the parish churchyard, still in possession of the stolen parcel. It transpired he had deserted his ship while it was in the Downs. He was taken to Maidstone Gaol, tried and executed.
The bleak lonely site of the murder is marked by Mary Bax's Stone (see above), situated on a bank just off the Downs Road. It can also be located on Ordnance Survey Maps. The inscription on the stone reads:
On this spot
August the 25th, 1782
MARY BAX, Spinster,
aged 23 years
was murdered by
MARTIN LASH, a foreigner,
who was executed for the same.
Theft of Sand 1868
Deal Walmer and Sandwich Mercury reported on 8 February 1868, William Allen, a labouring man, appeared in answer to a summons charged with removing sand from that part of the Sandhills belonging to Sir Walter James, the local Lord of the Manor of Northbourne.
The defendant was summoned before the County Magistrates the previous year for a similar offence, and he then stated, as an excuse, that he could not read a board prohibiting the removal of sand.
The Magistrates fined the defendant £1, and the costs, 10s, or in default one month's imprisonment.
