What Became Of Owen Parfitt?

: 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 prope
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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