Historic setting provides stage for HYT production

Joshua Slade was the last person to be hanged for murder in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, in a case dotted with twists and turns. Arrested for the murder of the Reverend Joshua Waterhouse in the nearby village of Stukeley, during a botched burglary, Slade initially looked likely to escape punishment for his crime. However, he subsequently confessed in graphic detail to killing Waterhouse, was sentenced to hang and was executed on 1 September 1827.

A shocking crime for the community at the time, yes, but not well remembered within the mainstream population nearly 200 years later. However, the time-travelling gifts of theatre have put the crime back into the public gaze locally with Huntingdon Youth Theatre (HYT)’s production The Trial of Joshua Slade, which featured an exciting history lesson for cast, crew and its audiences. The play was performed for a four-night run in the very courtroom at the now Huntingdon Town Hall, where young Slade was tried and convicted.

“Courtroom number one was where we actually performed the trial

re-enactment, and that courtroom is exactly as it was the day he was tried,” says Dominic Whitehead, HYT’s founder and chair. “It’s only had a few licks of paint and some IT facilities put in but most of it is intact with the dock, all the woodwork, all the seating – the jury benches are exactly as they were so our re-enactments took place in the right place in the right setting. And we were lucky enough to be able to use the Assembly Room in the upstairs of the building to perform the first half of the play.”

Whitehead’s wife, Beryl-Anne, had researched the crime itself at the National Archives in Kew “so we had all the trial documents,” Dominic says. “And we learned an awful lot about the murder and the run-up to it, so we were able to write a play which actually had the murder, the finding of the body, the investigation and inquest. We did that in the Assembly Room upstairs, and then we took our audiences down into the courtroom for the second half, where we enacted the trial and then told the story of what happened to Slade afterwards.”

Beryl-Anne was allowed to break the seal on the old documents that nobody had opened since 1827. “We were asking, should we doing this sort of thing, and the National Archives are saying, yes, you should, because these documents are here to be read – it’s not enough for them to be museum exhibits. This is an archive!” Whitehead says.

HYT, which Whitehead describes as “a completely inclusive theatre group,” had the good fortune to experience a variety of special activities in preparation for the production. “The kids found it educational. They learned an awful lot,” Whitehead says. “They were surprised it was a real case and were incredibly excited when we took them down to the courtroom. They met the mayor (of Huntingdon), they went through the town hall.” Also exciting for the young troupe, was playing real, named characters such as the case investigators, the local surgeon, a constable, the coroner, the judge and Slade himself.

Asked to describe the impact of the special venue for HYT’s constituents of cast, crew and audiences, Whitehead says, “The venue was quite special. As an amateur historian, I found it quite evocative, and I think the audience found that as well. A lot of audience feedback told us that they didn’t realise there had been such events here. So, yes, evocative, quite an unusual set of circumstances.”