Platt was the last person to see Tom and Bill alive.

Importantly, he was the only person to see the three Irishmen he so carefully described, despite it being a casual encounter.

He would also know that the older Bradbury would be alone in the pub for quite some time. Also, the surname Platt is very close sounding to the words “patts, patts” possibly uttered by Bill on his death bed.

Arguing against Platt being a suspect is the fact that he was 63 years old, and that he would easily be overcome by the strong and fit Thomas.

We shouldn’t forget, too, that he was a friend of both men. With regards the Irishmen he allegedly saw, they may have been real, or perhaps, and despite being innocent of the crime, he realised that his name sounded uncomfortably like Bill’s last words, thus making him a prime suspect, and he invented the three Navvies to explain it away.

The theory goes that father and son fought each other, each inflicting fatal wounds on the other.

An unlikely scenario, given the nature of the wounds, but one that might be considered.

The Huddersfield Chronicle of 5 th April 1853 published a letter from a Robert Whitehead in Australia, in which he recounts meeting a man from Saddleworth in a pub there.

The man told him that an acquaintance of his, James Hill, had confessed to him a few years previously that he committed the murders.

Hill was a travelling peddlar in Saddleworth at the time, and had robbed and murdered the Bradbury’s, though he had not intended to kill them.

He fled the scene to Nottingham, where he committed a further robbery, for which he was transported to Australia. Here he committed a murder, and was hanged in 1848. Is this confession reliable? And is James Hill the murderer?

The men seen by Reuben Platt as he walked with Tom into Greenfield.

The brief conversation they had convinced Bradbury that they were a bad sort, and that he knew one of them as having stolen some trousers from his father.

Bradbury was known for his quick temper, and he would have been unlikely to have let the theft go lightly at the time.

Despite him and Reuben Platt watching to make sure they passed by the Moorcock Inn, did the Irishmen decide to double back and seek revenge?

A servant girl who, rumour had it, was having an affair with Tom Bradbury, and who almost certainly bore one, if not two, of his children.

The affair may be the reason that Tom was living with his father, having become estranged from his wife.

Interestingly, Esther was accused of murdering her new born child at the same inquest as the Bradbury murders, and was later convicted of the crime at York Crown Court.

That in itself seems a remarkable coincidence, and if the rumours were true, might it not be possible that she, or more likely members of her family, sought to avenge the girl who was so roughly used and discarded, with Tom being blamed for the Esther’s situation.

Between 6 and 7pm on the day of the murder, a group of workers from Greenfield Mill got into an argument with five men, dressed as farm labourers and wearing slouching hats, who passed by.

After they parted, the group of five continued on the road towards Holmfirth, which, of course, would have taken past the Moorcock.

Is this the group of “Pats” (‘Paddys’, or Irishmen) that William Bradbury spoke about with his dying breath?

Father and son, James and Joseph Bradbury (no relation to the victims), were accused of poaching, and due to stand trial in Pontefract on this charge on 3 rd April 1832, the day after the murders.

Tom Bradbury was due to testify against them in the court, and they were expected to receive harsh sentences. It would certainly be in their interests if Tom didn’t show up to give evidence.

The pair were seen drinking in the Church Inn, Uppermill, on the evening of the murder.

Further evidence of their involvement might be seen in their announcement in Pontefract that Tom wouldn’t be testifying against them as he would be “in hell at that time”, before news of the murder had reached the court. Did they have knowledge of events because they were involved? Or was it just wishful thinking and bravado?

The Burn Platters were itinerant peddlars and gypsies who periodically arrived on the moors to pick heather in order to sell on.

They had a long running feud with Thomas, who would try and extort money from them, with physical violence and threats of throwing them off the moors. Perhaps they had decided enough was enough, and came for revenge?

Might these be the meaning of the final words spoken by William Bradbury, “plats, plats” instead of “pats, pats”?

A stonecutter from Manchester, employed in the area.

At about 9.30 on the Monday evening, he was on his way to visit another stonecutter, Joseph Matthews who lived further up the Holmfirth Road. He passed by the Moorcock Inn and heard noises coming from the building, and, arriving at Matthew’s hut he said that “he thought old Bradbury had some rough company”.

Perhaps he and Joseph Matthews had called in for a quick drink, and found the old man alone…

Mullins was observed to pass the house of Benjamin Broadbent, of Hard End, in Marsden.

He was dressed as a navvy, and had two black eyes, and crucially his clothes were noticed to have blood on them. He was arrested, and at the inquest he gave an account of himself.

He had, he said, been working as a navvy at Methley, near Wakefield.

On Tuesday 3 rd April he had got into a fight with another navvy, resulting in his bruised and bloody condition, and his dismissal from his employment. Rather than seek new work, he had decided instead to visit his wife in Cumbria. He was released following the inquest.

Matthew Marsh, a friend of both victims, recalled an incident that occurred the year before the murders.

Thomas, returning from the pub, maliciously pushed down a wooden building in which a number of navvies were sleeping.

Some of them were injured in the collapse, and they swore revenge against him, vowing that they would murder Thomas once their work on the road was completed, and before they left England.

Did the navvies hold that grudge, and make good on this promise?