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Today, fiery Black Country clan the Baggotts would be airing their many differences on the Jeremy Kyle show.

For theirs was, indeed, a tangled mess of rows, drinking and extra-marital affairs.

Furnaceman Moses Baggott Jnr listed drinking, violence and womanising among his many vices.

Long-suffering wife Esther was no shrinking violet and was involved in an extra-marital affair with boat builder Edward Caudwell, described by newspapers of the day as “a nasty piece of work”.

She had also been bound over by magistrates for attacking her husband’s mistress, Elizabeth Turner.

Add to the mix, Esther’s fearsome father-in-law, Moses Snr, who shared his Heathfield Bridge home with the warring couple, and you have a simmering stew of tension waiting to boil over into unbridled violence.

That it did, in November, 1867. Three men walking across a frozen field near Hollyhead Road, Moxley, Wolverhampton, spotted what they believed to be a bundle of clothes.

A closer inspection revealed the terrible truth.

It was the body of 35-year-old Esther, her face covered in blood, jaw smashed and nose crushed. She had been badly beaten and strangled.

Despite there being three prime suspects – Caudwell, Moses Jnr and Moses Snr – Esther’s killer was never collared.

Today, The Sunday Mercury lays the evidence before our readers, and reveals why we are sure we have uncovered the murderer.

In the mid-1800s, Moxley, under a pall of smog from pits, foundries and ironworks, was a tough community with a wild west reputation for brawls. Friday and Saturday nights were studded with pub fights as men washed away the working week’s grime with pots of strong ale.

In fact, before her grisly death, Esther had taken a jug of beer to her husband’s workplace – Marshalls Ironworks in Portway Road, Wednesbury – where he later claimed to have been toiling until 2am next day.

On the way home, Esther stopped at James Whitehouse’s beer house for a quick drink herself. It was the last time she was seen alive.

Just after 9pm on that bitterly cold Saturday night, William Evans, waiting to start his shift at a nearby colliery, heard blood-curdling screams.

He believed the sounds were made by women pit workers playing a prank, and took no notice.

He was not to know that the cries, in all probability, came from Esther as she was bludgeoned and dragged across the field.

Officers involved in the murder hunt seem to have scant regard for key information uncovered during the case:

n SUSPECT No 1: The first person the three shocked individuals stumbled across as they ran for help was Moses Baggott Snr. He informed officers that he was searching for his daughter-in-law. It was a strange show of concern from someone who clearly hated the woman.

n SUSPECT No 2: Esther’s lover, Edward Caudwell, of Baggotts Bridge, Darlaston, had form. He had publicly threatened to “do her in” after she failed to turn up for a date. On the very day of Esther’s death, he had called at her mother’s house, claiming he had a secret he wanted to impart to his girlfriend. On the night of the murder, Caudwell had been on something of a pub crawl.

n SUSPECT No 3: Husband Moses Baggott Jnr also had form, and a well-earned reputation for violence. Only three weeks before losing her life, Esther had returned to the matrimonial home following yet another blazing row.

The police certainly had no shortage of suspects but they also had a stack of alibis. Moses Jnr said he was at work, Caudwell claimed to have returned home from the boozer at 8pm, something that could not be collaborated by witnesses.

But Esther’s death did not stem the bad blood that seeped from the love triangle – and trouble erupted only hours after the inquest, held at the George Inn, Moxley.

After they had removed the body and opened the bar, Moses Jnr stayed behind and sat, brooding, on a bar stool, his mood darkening with each drink.

When Caudwell strode in, trouble was expected.

Moses confronted his rival and Caudwell, loathe to face a man with a hard-earned reputation on the cobbles, backed down and licked his wounds in a number of drinking houses. It was shortly after emerging from one of those hostelries that Caudwell again came face-to-face with enraged Moses.

He was punched and kicked to the ground, whereupon Moses placed one hamfist around his victim’s windpipe.

“I’ve got you now, you bastard,” he screamed. “Will you confess?”

Caudwell croaked: “Moses, I’ve nothing to confess about!” and then cried out for help.

After a sustained beating – so serious that Moses was charged with assault – Caudwell was left in a pool of blood. He managed to crawl home, suffering internal bleeding, black eyes and severe lacerations, and Dr Hancox was called.

Stipendiary magistrate Isaac Spooner sentenced Moses to two months’ hard labour for the assault, but the case was much more significant than the handful of paragraphs it generated in the local press.

For a start, it proved Moses Jnr possessed a short fuse and murderous temper. He would kick a man when he was down, then kick him again and again.

More importantly, it uncovered a chilling fact.

Esther had been badly beaten and smothered by a hand placed over her nose and mouth. Moses Jnr had badly beaten Caudwell, then placed a hand over his nose and mouth, too.

That, the Sunday Mercury believes, places the husband firmly in the frame – a man, despite his own philandering, who perhaps found Esther’s deepening relationship with Caudwell too much to bear.

MOSES BAGGOTT JR

So what happened to Moses Baggott Jr?

To avoid the campaign of whispers in his own community, he left the Black Country with long-term girlfriend Elizabeth Turner.

They settled in Sheffield and married on May 18, 1869.

Perhaps he again walked down the aisle to prevent Elizabeth spilling the beans about his first wife’s death.

But it was a doomed marriage.

Elizabeth, sick of the slaps and Moses’ tinderbox temper, packed her bags and left.

And she made sure there was a great deal of water between her and her ne’er-do-well husband.

She arrived in New York on May 15, 1871, and never returned.

Documents show that by 1871 Moses Jnr was lodging at 79 Carlisle Street East, Brightside, Sheffield.

After marrying a third time, died on September 5, 1890.

Saddled with an uncontrollable temper, as hot as the foundries he worked in, and a criminal record for violence, he was lucky not to meet the hangman earlier.