Suicide of a Hadleigh Celebrity."Cunning Murrell's" Blacksmith Dies By His Own Hand.
The Story of the Witch-Bottles.
Steve Choppen, of Hadleigh, who had nearly completed the Psalmist's allotted span of life, has died by his own hand. A martyr for many years to rheumatic gout, which caused pains in his head and hands, he has at last succumbed to them, and went out and hanged himself in a wood shed at the rear of his cottage. He had been sleeping in the same room as his little grandson on Friday night and rose at seven and went outside. Some time afterwards the boy followed his grandfather and found him hanging by a rope from the rafter, with a chair beside him, he having evidently fastened the noose first round his neck, then round the rafter, and finally swung from the chair.
The old man was a well-known character some fifty years ago, chiefly for his trade connection with "Cunning Murrell," a man whose wizard headquarters were at Hadleigh and whose influence reigned supreme through South-East Essex. Choppen, who was a blacksmith, made the iron witch-bottles for Murrell, in which were placed blood, water, fingernails, hair and pins; which bottles, screwed up airtight, were set on fire by way of process against witches, and frequently burst with great devastation, thus signalising the destruction of the diabolical influence. Murrell is still remembered with awe by many of the agricultural labourers in the country districts.
Mr. Arthur Morrison, in the October "Strand," contributes an article entitled "A Wizard of Yesterday," in which, in the course of a sketch of Murrell's life, the following reference occurs to Choppen:
On our way to discover the wizard's son we called on Mr. Stephen Choppen, the smith who made the witch-bottles. He was long retired from the smithy, and was living in his own little house on the village outskirts. The smithy wherein he made the bottles is gone, and one of the terrible new shops stands on the site. Steve Choppen had no witch-bottle to show us, for the last had been exploded long ago, but he had the cunning man's spectacles - a quaint and clumsy instrument, with circular glasses and ponderously thick iron rims. The narrowness of the space between the sides showed the wizard's head to have been a small one, and, indeed, he was an extremely small man in every way, by the descriptions of a dozen people.
Steve Choppen had his anecdotes, also, told with a terse humour of his own. He was not a superstitious man, but he admitted that the first of the witch-bottles gave gave him trouble in the forging, for which he could not account. The iron wholly refused to be welded - till Cunning Murrell arrived and blew the fire, when all went well. The last vanished in a way that Steven Choppen described somewhat thus:
"Old Buck Murrell - that's the son you're going to see; his name's Edward, but every one calls him Buck - old Buck Murrell, though he can't as much as read, after his father died he got an idea to do a bit of hocus pocus on his own account, just to keep up the family reputation. So he finds a chap as suspects a witch, an' he gets the last o' the bottles tha old man had left an' he makes it ready and fills it up just as his father used to do. 'You mustn't speak a word,' says he to the chap, 'else you'll spoil the charm,,' an' with that he shoves the bottle on the fire. Now this bottle must ha' been one o' my best, an' it holds the bilin' stuff an' steam in for a long time, they two a'sittin' either side the grate a'waitin'. Presently the other chap gets impatient, and says he, 'I don't believe this 'ere bottle's a good 'un.' 'Danged!' shouts Buck, 'You've spiled the charm!" An' at that 'Bang!' goes the bottle, an' bundles the pair of 'em over neck and crop on the floor, down comes all the pots and kettles with a run, and when they gets enough sense in 'em to look round they finds the whole chimney-breast blowed up, mantelpiece, grate, an' all, an' pretty nigh one side o' the house fetched out. That was the end o' the last bottle, an' old Buck Murrell, he aren't been in the witchcraft line since."
The bottle that ended in this ignominious devastation nevertheless had provided, soon after its making, a striking example of the overpowering influence of superstitious fear. Soon after it had cooled Steve Choppen and some of his friends disrespectfully christened it in beer. One after another took a pull from it, till it came to the turn of the bellows-boy. When he had drunk, some wag began solemnly to "chaff" the lad, and others took it up. "Nobody wouldn't give much for your chance o' bein' an old man, Jim," they said, "a-helpin' to make the thing first, an' now a-drinking bewitched beer out of it." It was an empty enough piece of chaff, but it is a fact that it terrified the wretched boy, who went home, sickened, and never came to the smithy again; for in a little while he died."
Grays and Tilbury Gazette, and Southend Telegraph. 10th November 1900.
