Article from “The North Star” - Tuesday January 10, 1882
ACQUITTED.
What most unprejudiced people expected has happened; the prosecution in the Carlton Church burning case has broken down. Now that we have heard all, it proves to have been beyond belief –compounded of village gossip, vulgar spite, and official credulity. The wonder is how the Police ever came to accept as true the stories upon which they built their case. Under the criticism of cross-examination, and viewed dispassionately the charge of incendiarisim, turned‑out to be of the most monstrous description.
Let us re‑call the facts. Mr Sanger came to the parish a self‑made man." He had worked his way from the carpenter's bench up to the pulpit; educated himself by dint of the strength of will that was in him, and ultimately became Vicar of the parish in which he was so long curate. The church was in a tumble down state when he became its custodian‑unfit for the high purpose to which it was dedicated, and a disgrace to the community. By ceaseless energy, and a zeal which knew no flagging, the Vicar got together sufficient funds to build another and a worthier place of worship, consecrating to the work not only solicitations and appeals, but manual labour. He superintend the building of the church as if he meant to see that the smallest detail was conscientiously attended to, as the monks of old did‑working like the mechanic he once was, and adorning the inside and the outside of it with carving of acknowledged excellence. At last the building stood finished – a thing of beauty in a beautiful, district, and seemingly a heritage for coming generations. It may easily be imagined how the Vicar loved the new place – it was his very own, consecrated to its high and holy work by years of labour, both of head and hand.
Early on the morning of the 19th October last, this church was discovered to be on fire, hopelessly in the grip of the flames; the gray dawn saw it a smoking ruin. That it was the work of an incendiary was generally acknowledged to be beyond doubt: it burnt so rapidly, the flames shot‑up in so many different places, there was such a proved absence of anyone having been near it with a light for many days, that incendiarism was the one way to explain the unexplainable. Then where was the incendiary? The tongues of the village gossips were set wagging, one stirred up another’s imagination to remember a fitting‑in circumstance with that conspicuous absence of charity and fair play which characterises so many rural communities, the general belief was built up and promulgated that the Vicar was the guilty man. For causes which no one will palliate or excuse, aided by the love of evil‑speaking and innuendo which uneducated minds are prone to indulge in regarding those mentally and socially their superior, the parishioners did not like their parson; and this dislike had been shown in various ways, the culminating point being this charge of setting fire to his own Church. The police, clinging, to a single idea with the pertinacity which so often lands them in failure, took up this theory of the villagers, and for no other reason seemingly than that Mr Sanger had been guilty of domestic immorality, concluded that he must be an incendiary. ' They arrested him London under circumstances regarding which we desire, to say nothing; and the subsequent examination before the local magistrates extended over three days. The very full reports which we have placed before our readers will have shown how weak the prosecutor's case was from the beginning; as we have said, it was compounded of village gossip and vulgar spite, which the police unfortunately thought it their duty to fit in to a preconceived theory. Last nights decision therefore come with no surprise.
We have no hesitation in saying, accepting the incendiary theory as true, as it seems the only one feasible‑that the same malice which produced the minor, annoyances spoken of by' Mr Sanger' and 'the boy Bush and which had its origin in village vindictiveness intensified by a scandal that had only too much foundation in fact, produced the church‑burning. It was known how the Vicar loved the building, how he had worked for it day and night, how he regarded it as if it were a child of his; and some miscreant more vindictive than his fellows struck at him through the building. Who the culprit is, the police ought to find out - they must not fall back upon impossible " because they have been deluded into an elaborated mistake. We shall expect to, hear of active exertions being made bring so great a crime home to the person did it, Clearly the Vicar is not the man.
He had everything to lose by the calamity, and nothing to gain - the destruction of the building and the subsequent deplorable events of which it was the forerunner have blasted his prospects for life, and cast him farther back socially than the position from which he originally started. Mr Sanger would have completed the exchange which he was negotiating, and started life afresh, the secret of his sin buried in his own household away in far‑distant Cleveland. Put crash came this crime, burying beyond hope of resurrection the London “living" plan, and precipitating the events which have been detailed in these columns. We must dissociate the charge of immorality from the charge of church‑burning, and grieved though we are that any clergyman should have sinned as Mr Sanger seems to have done, it is some consolation to know that a bench of magistrates as well as the outside public have acquitted him of the still more serious charge of burning down a Church, peculiarly his own.