A synchronicity between two English murders?

There's an interesting article on Mysterious Universe about the similarities between the murders of Mary Ashford in 1817 and Barbara Forrest in 1974, both in what is now the Erdington suburb of Birmingham:
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/04/s...s-murders/

It seems quite a bit has been written about this case in the past. According to online sources, the similarities do sound striking, but although the older case is well documented - it's of legal interest because it was the last case in which the archaic right to trial by combat was invoked - most of the accounts of the 1974 murder that are available online are discussions of those similarities, and there seems to be a tendency to exaggerate them.

For example, the MU article says that Mary Ashford's body, like Barbara Forrest's, was found in what is now Pype Hayes Park. That's not right - Mary Ashford's body was found to the north-west of the present-day park. It's difficult to pinpoint exactly where Barbara Forrest's body was found, but it looks as though the two sites were about a kilometre apart.

It may be that one would need to go back to newspaper reports of the second trial to check whether other points of similarity have also been exaggerated.

I did a bit more delving, and from what should be reasonably reliable sources it seems the following similarities hold water:
(1) The women were both killed in Erdington, apparently about 1km apart (the sites are often claimed to be much closer - even "under the same tree"!)
(2) They were both 20 at the time
(3) They were both killed after visiting public houses on a late May holiday Monday - 26 May 1817 and 27 May 1974 (not on exactly the same date as sometimes claimed, and not both at Whitsun, as Whitsun fell a week after the bank holiday in 1974).
(4) In both cases a man named Thornton was tried for the murder but acquitted.

I think that makes a strange coincidence, but other similarities are claimed that would make it much stranger - that the women shared the same birthday, that they had both changed their dress at a friend's house before a dance, and that they both had premonitions before their deaths. I wonder if those may be embellishments.

I did a bit more delving, and from what should be reasonably reliable sources it seems the following similarities hold water:
(1) The women were both killed in Erdington, apparently about 1km apart (the sites are often claimed to be much closer - even "under the same tree"!)
(2) They were both 20 at the time ...

Or more probably Mary Ashford was 19, as her gravestone says she was "in the 20th Year of her age":
https://sclhrg.org.uk/history-spot/123-a...e-463.html

Or more probably Mary Ashford was 19, as her gravestone says she was "in the 20th Year of her age":
https://sclhrg.org.uk/history-spot/123-a...e-463.html

However, apparently she was 20 after all, as there is the baptism of a Mary, daughter of Thomas Ashford and Ann, on 31 December 1796, at Aston, Warwickshire (in which parish Erdington was). This does seem to be the right Mary, as it's preceded by the marriage of Thomas Ashford and Ann Coleman in the same parish on 31 December 1791. Accounts of the murder mention Mary's grandfather and uncles with the surname Coleman.
https://www.familysearch.org/

But based on her baptism in December it seems unlikely Mary would have had the same birthday as Barbara Forrest, whose entry in the index of death registrations gives her date of birth as 16 February 1954. (Dates of birth weren't normally recorded in parish registers at this time.)
https://www.freebmd.org.uk/

I guess we can dissect the details until the cows come home. Perhaps it could be approached from an opposite direction. That is, consider possible reasons why is this case might be (or might not be) of interest to us:

1. curiosity about apparently improbable coincidence of unrelated events
   
2. variation of 1 above, showing how seemingly improbable events are commonplace, using mathematical analysis
   
3. variation of 1 above, showing how seemingly similar events are in fact different
   
4. possibility of history repeating itself (some sort of stuck record)
   
5. possibility of certain locations carrying an imprint (for better or worse) which influences the flow of events in its vicinity
   
6. possible demonic activity responsible for certain events
   
7. possible past-life influences (could take many forms - multiple possibilities)
   
8. consideration of synchronicity from a Jungian perspective
   
9. our pattern-recognition, such as seeing images in a fire or in clouds, joining the dots
   
10. looking for meaning
    
11. consideration of whether any such meaning applies to the unfortunate participants, or to ourselves as observers
    
12. debunking or dismantling of evidence
    
13. boredom and disinterest
    

There are surely others too. These are simply ideas, all of which I could relate to (though some more than others).

I guess we can dissect the details until the cows come home. Perhaps it could be approached from an opposite direction. That is, consider possible reasons why is this case might be (or might not be) of interest to us:

Better still, we could dissect the cows until the details come home ...

On this case, I just think if everything that's been claimed about it were true, it would be an anomaly requiring some kind of explanation.

But some of the details have certainly been exaggerated in some versions, and some others look difficult to confirm or deny. I do think it's a useful example of how tales like this get taller as they are repeated.