This is a strange story about tenant farmers and greedy landowners

And about three nineteenth century mysteries that remain unsolved

The Barnet Scarecrow could be found in the middle of Lister’s Field

It was never visited by anyone as it was said to be a harbinger of ill fortune

My story is also about a farmer named Josiah Painter

Who was suspected to be involved in the disappearances

Of George Mallory Stephens in 1839 his son Matthew in 1861

And Matthew’s son Adam in 1891

There was the common factor

This being that they had served notice on Josiah Painter

For non payment of monies owed

In 1891 Josiah Painter would have been ninety-five

But no hindrance of age was noted by the people who knew him well

He was also involved with a Mary Bell and had been so since his wife died

But hard as they tried the police could not find any evidence that connected

Painter with the murders if they were murders at all as no bodies were ever found

Indeed all three members of Stephens family had just disappeared

If you wonder of my interest the reason is that I was born and raised in Barnet

And knew all the stories and legends of the Barnet Scarecrow from a young age

And because of this I had decided to write a book in collaboration with a local history society

What I did find very chilling was that no date of death was even recorded for Josiah Painter

Indeed he was recorded as still the being the tenant of the farm in 1911

Which was a nonsense because of his improbable age

There was also a mention of him in the St Andrews parish magazine in 1916

But this is vague and I have not been able to confirm the content

It is known that he lost wider members of his family in the Great War

But I have not been able to confirm this clearly from any reliable source

In theory Josiah Painter had vanished just like the three members of the Stephens family

And up to month ago I was drawing a complete blank

The farm itself was demolished in 1935 so that houses could be built nearby

I had exhausted all my lines of enquiry

A farmer from Lincolnshire who also had an interest in the mystery then contacted me out of the blue

He was distantly related to the Stephens family whose line died out when Adam vanished in 1891

He asked if anybody had ever looked closely at the scarecrow or scarecrows

Although I was not positive I told him of the local legends and their impact

The Lincolnshire Farmer then asked me whether the construction of the scarecrows had ever been considered and I had a distinct feeling that he was going to be able to solve the mystery

He suggested that over the years the successive scarecrows had actually been the human remains of the missing landowners and that Painter himself had actually started the rumours about the terrors of the area

Nobody would suspect that the wretched scarecrow was actually a putrid corpse

When weathering and decay had taken its toll then he would just replace the scarecrow

The new scarecrow would be of a classical construction

He would bury the bones of the missing men in Lister’s Field as if nothing had ever happened

It was so simple as to be brilliant

Hide in the plain sight

The Lincolnshire Farmer agreed and later informed me that a corpse had been used as a scarecrow in Lincolnshire in the 1850s but the miscreant had been careless and was later hung

Later over a beer I said that whilst the scarecrow theory was very likely to be true what bothered me was the very advanced age that Josiah Painter seemed to have reached without dereliction

And that there were no proven records of his death

I was asked about the source information confirming Josiah’s date of birth

The parish records noted that a Josiah Painter had been born in the December of 1796

That was all I had

No other information existed

The Lincolnshire Farmer further asked if I had ever been to Whitby

And that is where I will close this strange tale

Please with the facts presented

Make up your own minds

And do sleep well