Children Stories - What Became Of Owen Parfitt?

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What Became Of Owen Parfitt?

from The Strange Story Book

In the early part of the eighteenth century a family named Parfitt were
living in a small town in the West of England called Shepton Mallet. We
are not told how many children they had, but some probably died young,
for the only two we hear about are the eldest daughter Mary and her
brother Owen, about fifteen years younger.

Owen was apprenticed by his father to a tailor as soon as he had reached
the proper age, and learnt his trade thoroughly. But he hated sitting
still sewing all day long, and one morning his stool waited for him in
vain, and some hours later a message was brought that he had enlisted
under the king's banner. Little was known of him for many years:
occasionally a report was carried by some pedlar or old soldier that
Owen was serving in this country or in that, but after a while even
these rumours ceased, and at length people forgot that such a person as
Owen Parfitt had ever existed. His parents were dead; only his sister
was left to remember him.

* * * * *

Then suddenly he appeared amongst them, bent and crippled with wounds
and rheumatism, and unrecognisable by anyone but Mary. Together they set
up house, and Owen again got out the board and the big scissors and the
chalk and the wax which his sister had carefully kept, and announced to
the town of Shepton Mallet that he was going to become a tailor once
more. However, the cottage which the brother and sister had taken proved
inconvenient in many ways, and after a time they moved to another, near
the high road, with the main street lying at the end of the garden. Here
he used to sit in the evening when his work was done, and talk with
some of his old friends who would lean over the gate and tell him all
the news.

As time went on, Owen's rheumatism grew worse and worse, till at length
he was too crippled to move without help, and by and bye he became
unable to stir hand or foot. Mary had grown very old also, for her
eightieth birthday had long been past, and though no cottage in Shepton
Mallet was cleaner than hers, she was very feeble, and Owen looked
forward with terror to the day when she would certainly break down. But
Mary was not the woman to give in while there was any strength left in
her, and when she found that she could not get her brother outside the
door by herself, she engaged a girl called Susannah Snook, living about
fifty yards away, to come and assist her. Between them they carried him
along the passage to a chair placed, if the weather was fine, outside
the house door, and there they left him, warmly wrapped up, while his
bed was made and his room put tidy.

It was in the afternoon of a June day in 1768 that Owen Parfitt, dressed
in the night things which he always wore, with an old greatcoat over his
shoulders, took up his usual position in the little garden. No one seems
actually to have seen him or spoken with him, but then it was haymaking
season, and the fields round the Parfitts' cottage were filled with
people, while it is only reasonable to suppose that the turnpike road
opposite had many carts and horsemen passing up and down. Be this as it
may, there was the old man taking his airing, 'plain for all folks to
see,' when Susannah, having made him comfortable, turned and went back
to Mary. After the bed had been made and the room put to rights, the
girl went home, but she must either have quitted the cottage by a back
door, or else the helpless old man must still have been sitting where
she left him. In any case, in about half an hour the news reached her
that Owen had disappeared, and his sister was almost distracted.

Susannah flew back to the cottage as fast as her feet would take her,
and found Mary weeping bitterly. The girl at once tried to find out what
had happened, but the old woman was so upset that this was not very
easy. Bit by bit, however, Susannah discovered that after she had
returned home, Mary had gone upstairs for a short time, and on coming
down again was struck by the silence.

'Owen, are you there?' she cried, but there was no answer. 'Owen!' she
repeated in a louder voice, but still there was nothing. Then she went
to the door and found the chair just as she and Susannah had left it,
but with no trace of her brother save the greatcoat which was lying on
the back.

'Did you hear no noise?' asked the girl, after listening to her story.

'No; nothing at all. I just came down because I had finished what I had
to do upstairs!' And Susannah added, on telling her tale, 'the chair,
when I looked, was exactly as we had placed it.'

The alarm once given, the neighbours lost no time in making a thorough
search of both town and country for some distance round, even of the
most unlikely spots. Ponds and wells were dragged, ditches examined,
outhouses explored; though why anyone should wish to hide a harmless
old cripple in any of these places, nobody stopped to ask, still less
how it could have been done in broad daylight. But in spite of the
thorough nature of the hunt, which did not cease even during a sharp
thunderstorm, and went on all that night and the next day, neither then
nor later was any trace ever found of Owen Parfitt.

* * * * *

As far as we know, nothing further was done about the matter for nearly
fifty years, when some gentlemen happened to hear the story and were
interested in it. They sought out all the old people in the town who had
known the Parfitts and questioned them as to what had happened. Of
course, the worst of this kind of evidence is that no kind of notes had
been taken down at the time, and also that the love of astonishing their
hearers by wonderful details which never occurred is a great temptation
to many. On the whole, however, the witnesses in the inquiry into Owen
Parfitt's disappearance seem to have been more truthful than usual.
Susannah Snook, the last person living to see the old man, told her
tale as it has been already set down, and her account was closely borne
out by that given by another old woman as far as her own knowledge went.
Then followed some men, whose clothes had been made by Parfitt as long
as he had been able to work, and who had helped in the search for him.
One of these declared that Owen was 'neither a very good nor a very bad
man, but was said sometimes to have a very violent temper.' Yet, even if
this was correct, it does not throw much light on the mystery.

The general opinion of the neighbours at the time of the vanishing of
Parfitt was that he was carried off by demons, and indeed the whole
affair was so strange and without reason that their view was hardly to
be wondered at. The discovery of part of some human bones under a wall
near Parfitt's cottage gave a new turn to their thoughts, but this
happened many years after the disappearance of Owen, and were held, when
examined in 1814, to be the bones of a girl supposed to have been
murdered. One witness only contradicted Susannah's evidence, and that
was Jehoshaphat Stone, who swore Mary Parfitt had assured him that she
had come downstairs hastily after hearing a noise, to find her brother
gone and the chair displaced. But this fact he did not know of his own
knowledge, and Susannah, when asked about the displacing of the chair,
declared for the second time that the chair was exactly as she had left
it, and that Mary had expressly said she had heard no noise.

One more question remained to be put, and that was if the old man had
any money about him which might have led to his kidnapping or murder,
though this seems very unlikely. One witness said he had a small pension
amounting to about seven pounds a year, but an old woman who was related
to the Parfitts 'was quite sure he had nothing of the sort,' and even if
he had contrived to save a little during the years when he could still
work at his trade, it must soon have gone in the days of his
helplessness. At any rate, he would hardly have had it upon him when he
was dressed in his night things, without any sort of pocket to put it
in.

'But was he a totally helpless cripple?' inquired Dr. Butler, the
future Bishop of Lichfield, to whom the evidence was sent by the
gentlemen who had collected it. 'Be very careful, gentlemen, to discover
whether he walked to his chair on the day of his disappearance, or
whether he was capable of walking so much as a few yards; for there
seems to have been a rumour that a person of his description was seen
wandering that evening near Frome ten or twelve miles distant.'

In accordance with Dr. Butler's wish, a close examination was made into
this matter, but none of the witnesses had ever seen Parfitt on his feet
or attempting to use them for many years before he vanished. But
supposing, as has been sometimes known, that a sort of miracle had been
wrought and his powers of walking had come suddenly back, how could he
have got from Shepton Mallet to Frome in broad daylight, past cottages
and along roads where everyone knew him, without being recognised by a
single person on the way?

'I give it up,' as they say about riddles; and Dr. Butler 'gave it up,'
too.

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What Became Of Owen Parfitt?