The Unknown Sailor
The first recorded visit of the Unknown Sailor to the Red Lion Inn at Thursley was on 24 September 1786, when he was walking back from London to join his ship in Portsmouth. There, he met three other sailors: James Marshall, Michael Casey, and Edward Lonegon. He generously paid for their food and drink, and was last seen leaving with them for Hindhead Hill. However, the three sailors murdered him and stripped him of his clothes. They then made their way down the road from London to Portsmouth and were arrested a few hours later while attempting to sell the murdered sailor's clothes at the Sun Inn in Rake. The 2 October 1786 edition of The Hampshire Chronicle reads (x) :
Sunday last a shocking murder was committed by three sailors, on one of their companions, a seaman also, between Godalming – They nearly severed his head from his body, stripped him quite naked, and threw him into a valley, where he was providentially discovered, soon after the perpetration of the horrid crime, by some countrymen corning over Hind Head, who immediately gave the alarm, when the desperadoes were instantly pursued, and overtaken at the house of Mr. Adams, the Sun, at Rake. They were properly secured, and are since lodged in gaol, to take their trials at the next assizes for the county of Surrey.
Six months later, on Saturday 7 April 1787, they were hanged in chains on a triple gibbet close to the scene of the crime in Hindhead, after being tried at Kingston assizes two days earlier.
In his book Who was the Sailor murdered at Hindhead 1786 (1986), Peter Moorey argues the case that the Unknown Sailor's identity was Edward Hardman, born in 1752 in Lambeth, London.