Henry John Hatch (1818–1895) was a British clergyman who was sent to prison for the indecent assault of two female children in his care. Following the conviction for perjury of his main accuser – one of the children – he was granted the Royal Pardon and embarked on a series of court actions to win compensation for wrongful imprisonment. Early life Henry John Hatch was born on 2 January 1818 in Chertsey, the second of 12 children of the Reverend Thomas Hatch, vicar of Walton-on-Thames, and his wife Anna Maria Ellen née Birch. Henry was educated at Eton and Magdalene College, Cambridge, and around 1840 he went to Australia to work as a tutor. While he was there he met and married Esther "Essie" Dillon, daughter of John Dillon, a solicitor of Sydney originally from Dublin, and in 1847 or thereabouts Hatch returned to England with his wife. In 1849, he was ordained at Lichfield and became a curate, and in 1851 he was appointed first chaplain to the New Surrey House of Correction, built on Wandsworth Common. Hatch's father, Thomas Hatch, was Lord of Sutton Manor. When his father died in 1851, Hatch had to manage his father's estate, and look after his six unmarried sisters and administer their marriage settlements. Hatch and his wife had no children of their own, so in 1856, 11 years after they were married, they adopted an orphan, Lucy Harriet Buckler. Actions in the Court of Chancery – at least one of them brought by Hatch himself – together with an ill-fated journalistic venture, dissipated Hatch's entire cash reserves. In 1859, when Lucy was now seven and needed educating, Hatch and his wife decided to employ a governess and take on some paying pupils to defray the cost and provide some extra income. They advertised in The Times, and Thomas and Caroline Plummer brought their daughters, Mary Eugenia, aged 11, and her seven-year-old sister Stephana Augusta to Wandsworth to receive tuition. The Plummers were a well-off family from Broad Blunsdon in Wiltshire. The arrangement did not last long, because Caroline Plummer feared that a violent thunderstorm was an act of God against her for "abandoning her children with strangers" and removed both children the following day. Eugenia was only at Wandsworth for two weeks; Stephana for just one night. Trial Two months later, Henry received a letter from his bishop saying that the