_CELEBRATED TRIALS_ AND JOHN THURTELL
Borrow's first book was _Faustus_, and his second was _Romantic
Ballads_, the one being published, as we have seen, in 1825, the other
in 1826. This chronology has the appearance of ignoring the _Celebrated
Trials_, but then it is scarcely possible to count _Celebrated
Trials_[65] as one of Borrow's books at all. It is largely a
compilation, exactly as the _Newgate Calendar_ and Howell's _State
Trials_ are compilations. In his preface to the work Borrow tells us
that he has differentiated the book from the _Newgate Calendar_[66] and
the _State Trials_[67] by the fact that he had made considerable
compression. This was so, and in fact in many cases he has used the blue
pencil rather than the pen--at least in the earlier volumes. But Borrow
attempted something much more comprehensive than the _Newgate Calendar_
and the _State Trials_ in his book. In the former work the trials range
from 1700 to 1802; in the latter from the trial of Becket in 1163 to
the trial of Thistlewood in 1820. Both works are concerned solely with
this country. Borrow went all over Europe, and the trials of Joan of
Arc, Count Struensee, Major André, Count Cagliostro, Queen Marie
Antoinette, the Duc d'Enghien, and Marshal Ney, are included in his
volumes. Moreover, while what may be called state trials are numerous,
including many of the cases in _Howell_, the greater number are of a
domestic nature, including nearly all that are given in the _Newgate
Calendar_. In the first two volumes he has naturally mainly state trials
to record; the later volumes record sordid everyday crimes, and here
Borrow is more at home. His style when he rewrites the trials is more
vigorous, and his narrative more interesting. It is to be hoped that the
exigent publisher, who he assures us made him buy the books for his
compilation out of the £50 that he paid for it, was able to present him
with a set of the _State Trials_, if only in one of the earlier and
cheaper issues of the work than the one that now has a place in every
lawyer's library.[68]
The third volume of _Celebrated Trials_, although it opens with the
trial of Algernon Sidney, is made up largely of crime of the more
ordinary type, and this sordid note continues through the three final
volumes. I have said that _Faustus_ is an allegory of 'man's inhumanity
to man.' That is emphatically, in more realistic form, the
distinguishing feature of _Celebrated Trials_. Amid these records of
savagery, it is a positive relief to come across such a trial as that of
poor Joseph Baretti. Baretti, it will be remembered, was brought to
trial because, when some roughs set upon him in the street, he drew a
dagger, which he usually carried 'to carve fruit and sweetmeats,' and
killed his assailant. In that age, when our law courts were a veritable
shambles, how cheerful it is to find that the jury returned a verdict of
'self-defence.' But then Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, Dr. Johnson,
and David Garrick gave evidence to character, representing Baretti as 'a
man of benevolence, sobriety, modesty, and learning.' This trial is an
oasis of mercy in a desert of drastic punishment. Borrow carries on his
'trials' to the very year before the date of publication, and the last
trial in the book is that of 'Henry Fauntleroy, Esquire,' for forgery.
Fauntleroy was a quite respectable banker of unimpeachable character, to
whom had fallen at a very early age the charge of a banking business
that was fundamentally unsound. It is clear that he had honestly
endeavoured to put things on a better footing, that he lived simply, and
had no gambling or other vices. At a crisis, however, he forged a
document, in other words signed a transfer of stock which he had no
right to do, the 'subscribing witness' to his power of attorney being
Robert Browning, a clerk in the Bank of England, and father of the
distinguished poet.[69] Well, Fauntleroy was sentenced to be hanged--and
he was duly hanged at Newgate on 30th October 1824, only thirteen years
before Queen Victoria came to the throne!
Borrow has affirmed that from a study of the _Newgate Calendar_ and the
compilation of his _Celebrated Trials_ he first learned to write genuine
English, and it is a fact that there are some remarkably dramatic
effects in these volumes, although one here withholds from Borrow the
title of 'author' because so much is 'scissors and paste,' and the
purple passages are only occasional. All the same I am astonished that
no one has thought it worth while to make a volume of these dramatic
episodes, which are clearly the work of Borrow, and owe nothing to the
innumerable pamphlets and chap-books that he brought into use. Take such
an episode as that of Schening and Harlin, two young German women, one
of whom pretended to have murdered her infant in the presence of the
other because she madly supposed that this would secure them bread--and
they were starving. The trial, the scene at the execution, the
confession on the scaffold of the misguided but innocent girl, the
respite, and then the execution--these make up as thrilling a narrative
as is contained in the pages of fiction. Assuredly Borrow did not spare
himself in that race round the bookstalls of London to find the material
which the grasping Sir Richard Phillips required from him. He found, for
example, Sir Herbert Croft's volume, _Love and Madness_, the supposed
correspondence of Parson Hackman and Martha Reay, whom he murdered. That
correspondence is now known to be an invention of Croft's. Borrow
accepted it as genuine, and incorporated the whole of it in his story of
the Hackman trial.
But after all, the trial which we read with greatest interest in these
six volumes is that of John Thurtell, because Borrow had known Thurtell
in his youth, and gives us more than one glimpse of him in _Lavengro_
and _The Romany Rye_. We recall, for example, Lavengro's interview with
the magistrate when a visitor is announced:
'In what can I oblige you, sir?' said the magistrate.
'Well, sir; the soul of wit is brevity; we want a place for an
approaching combat between my friend here and a brave from
town. Passing by your broad acres this fine morning we saw a
pightle, which we deemed would suit. Lend us that pightle, and
receive our thanks; 'twould be a favour, though not much to
grant: we neither ask for Stonehenge nor for Tempe.'
My friend looked somewhat perplexed; after a moment, however,
he said, with a firm but gentlemanly air, 'Sir, I am sorry that
I cannot comply with your request.'
'Not comply!' said the man, his brow becoming dark as midnight;
and with a hoarse and savage tone, 'Not comply! why not?'
'It is impossible, sir--utterly impossible!'
'Why so?'
'I am not compelled to give my reasons to you, sir, nor to any
man.'
'Let me beg of you to alter your decision,' said the man, in a
tone of profound respect.
'Utterly impossible, sir; I am a magistrate.'
'Magistrate! then fare-ye-well, for a green-coated buffer and a
Harmanbeck.'
'Sir,' said the magistrate, springing up with a face fiery with
wrath.
But, with a surly nod to me, the man left the apartment; and in
a moment more the heavy footsteps of himself and his companion
were heard descending the staircase.
'Who is that man?' said my friend, turning towards me.
'A sporting gentleman, well known in the place from which I
come.'
'He appeared to know you.'
'I have occasionally put on the gloves with him.'
'What is his name?'
In the original manuscript in my possession the name 'John Thurtell' is
given as the answer to that inquiry. In the printed book the chapter
ends more abruptly as we see. The second reference is even more
dramatic. It occurs when Lavengro has a conversation with his friend the
gypsy Petulengro in a thunderstorm--when all are hurrying to the
prize-fight. Here let Borrow tell his story:
'Look up there, brother!'
I looked up. Connected with this tempest there was one feature
to which I have already alluded--the wonderful colours of the
clouds. Some were of vivid green, others of the brightest
orange, others as black as pitch. The gypsy's finger was
pointed to a particular part of the sky.
'What do you see there, brother?'
'A strange kind of cloud.'
'What does it look like, brother?'
'Something like a stream of blood.'
'That cloud foreshoweth a bloody dukkeripen.'
'A bloody fortune!' said I. 'And whom may it betide?'
'Who knows?' said the gypsy.
Down the way, dashing and splashing, and scattering man, horse,
and cart to the left and right, came an open barouche, drawn by
four smoking steeds, with postillions in scarlet jackets and
leather skull-caps. Two forms were conspicuous in it--that of
the successful bruiser, and of his friend and backer, the
sporting gentleman of my acquaintance.
'His!' said the gypsy, pointing to the latter, whose stern
features wore a smile of triumph, as, probably recognising me
in the crowd, he nodded in the direction of where I stood, as
the barouche hurried by.
There went the barouche, dashing through the rain-gushes, and
in it one whose boast it was that he was equal to 'either
fortune.' Many have heard of that man--many may be desirous of
knowing yet more of him. I have nothing to do with that man's
after life--he fulfilled his dukkeripen. 'A bad, violent man!'
Softly, friend; when thou wouldst speak harshly of the dead,
remember that thou hast not yet fulfilled thy own dukkeripen!
There is yet another reference by Borrow to Thurtell in _The Gypsies of
Spain_, which runs as follows:
When a boy of fourteen I was present at a prize-fight; why
should I hide the truth? It took place on a green meadow,
beside a running stream, close by the old church of E----, and
within a league of the ancient town of N----, the capital of
one of the eastern counties. The terrible Thurtell was present,
lord of the concourse; for wherever he moved he was master, and
whenever he spoke, even when in chains, every other voice was
silent. He stood on the mead, grim and pale as usual, with his
bruisers around. He it was, indeed, who _got up_ the fight, as
he had previously done twenty others; it being his frequent
boast that he had first introduced bruising and bloodshed
amidst rural scenes, and transformed a quiet slumbering town
into a den of Jews and metropolitan thieves.
Rarely in our criminal jurisprudence has a murder trial excited more
interest than that of John Thurtell for the murder of Weare--the Gill's
Hill Murder, as it was called. Certainly no murder of modern times has
had so many indirect literary associations. Borrow, Carlyle, Hazlitt,
Walter Scott, and Thackeray are among those who have given it lasting
fame by comment of one kind or another; and the lines ascribed to
Theodore Hook are perhaps as well known as any other memory of the
tragedy:
They cut his throat from ear to ear,
His brain they battered in,
His name was Mr. William Weare,
He dwelt in Lyon's Inn.
Carlyle's division of human beings of the upper classes into 'noblemen,
gentlemen, and gigmen,' which occurs in his essay on Richter, and a
later reference to gig-manhood which occurs in his essay on Goethe's
Works, had their inspiration in an episode in the trial of Thurtell,
when the question being asked, 'What sort of a person was Mr. Weare?'
brought the answer, 'He was always a respectable person.' 'What do you
mean by respectable?' the witness was asked. 'He kept a gig,' was the
reply, which brought the word 'gigmanity' into our language.[70]
I have said that John Thurtell and two members of his family became
subscribers for Borrow's _Romantic Ballads_,[71] and it is certain that
Borrow must often have met Thurtell, that is to say looked at him from a
distance, in some of the scenes of prize-fighting which both affected,
Borrow merely as a youthful spectator, Thurtell as a reckless backer of
one or other combatant. Thurtell's father was an alderman of Norwich
living in a good house on the Ipswich Road when the son's name rang
through England as that of a murderer. The father was born in 1765 and
died in 1846. Four years after his son John was hanged he was elected
Mayor of Norwich, in recognition of his violent ultra-Whig or blue and
white political opinions. He had been nominated as mayor both in 1818
and 1820, but it was perhaps the extraordinary 'advertisement' of his
son's shameful death that gave the citizens of Norwich the necessary
enthusiasm to elect Alderman Thurtell as mayor in 1828. It was in those
oligarchical days a not unnatural fashion to be against the Government.
The feast at the Guildhall on this occasion was attended by four hundred
and sixty guests. A year before John Thurtell was hanged, in 1823, his
father moved a violent political resolution in Norwich, but was
out-Heroded by Cobbett, who moved a much more extreme one over his head
and carried it by an immense majority. It was a brutal time, and there
cannot be a doubt but that Alderman Thurtell, while busy setting the
world straight, failed to bring up his family very well. John, as we
shall see, was hanged; Thomas, another brother, was associated with him
in many disgraceful transactions; while a third brother, George, also a
subscriber, by the way, to Borrow's _Romantic Ballads_, who was a
landscape gardener at Eaton, died in prison in 1848 under sentence for
theft. Apart from a rather riotous and bad bringing up, which may be
pleaded in extenuation, it is not possible to waste much sympathy over
John Thurtell. He had thoroughly disgraced himself in Norwich before he
removed to London. There he got further and further into difficulties,
and one of the many publications which arose out of his trial and
execution was devoted to pointing the moral of the evils of
gambling.[72] It was bad luck at cards, and the loss of much money to
William Weare, who seems to have been an exceedingly vile person, that
led to the murder. Thurtell had a friend named Probert who lived in a
quiet cottage in a byway of Hertfordshire--Gill's Hill, near Elstree. He
suggested to Weare in a friendly way that they should go for a day's
shooting at Gill's Hill, and that Probert would put them up for the
night. Weare went home, collected a few things in a bag, and took a
hackney coach to a given spot, where Thurtell met him with a gig. The
two men drove out of London together. The date was 24th October 1823. On
the high-road they met and passed Probert and a companion named Joseph
Hunt, who had even been instructed by Thurtell to bring a sack with
him--this was actually used to carry away the body--and must therefore
have been privy to the intended murder. By the time the second gig
containing Probert and Hunt arrived near Probert's cottage, Thurtell met
it in the roadway, according to their accounts, and told the two men
that he had done the deed; that he had killed Weare first by
ineffectively shooting him, then by dashing out his brains with his
pistol, and finally by cutting his throat. Thurtell further told his
friends, if their evidence was to be trusted, that he had left the body
behind a hedge. In the night the three men placed the body in a sack and
carried it to a pond near Probert's house and threw it in. The next
night they fished it out and threw it into another pond some distance
away.
Thurtell meanwhile had divided the spoil--some £20, which he said was
all that he had obtained from Weare's body--with his companions. Hunt,
it may be mentioned, afterwards declared his conviction that Thurtell,
when he first committed the murder, had removed his victim's principal
treasure, notes to the value of three or four hundred pounds. Suspicion
was aroused, and the hue and cry raised through the finding by a
labourer of the pistol in the hedge, and the discovery of a pool of
blood on the roadway. Probert promptly turned informer; Hunt also tried
to save himself by a rambling confession, and it was he who revealed
where the body was concealed, accompanying the officers to the pond and
pointing out the exact spot where the corpse would be found. When
recovered the body was taken to the Artichoke Inn at Elstree, and here
the coroner's inquest was held. Meanwhile Thurtell had been arrested in
London, and taken down to Elstree to be present at the inquest. A
verdict of guilty against all three miscreants was given by the
coroner's jury, and Weare's body was buried in Elstree Churchyard.[73]
In January 1824 John Thurtell was brought to trial at Hertford Assizes,
and Hunt also. But first of all there were some interesting proceedings
in the Court of King's Bench, before the Chief Justice and two other
judges,[74] complaining that Thurtell had not been allowed to see his
counsel. And there were other points at issue. Thurtell's counsel moved
for a criminal injunction against the proprietor of the Surrey Theatre
in that a performance had been held there, and was being held, which
assumed Thurtell's guilt, the identical horse and gig being exhibited in
which Weare was supposed to have ridden to the scene of his death.
Finally this was arranged, and a _mandamus_ was granted 'commanding the
admission of legal advisers to the prisoner.' At last the trial came on
at Hertford before Mr. Justice Park. It lasted two days, although the
judge wished to go on all night in order to finish in one. But the
protest of Thurtell, supported by the jury, led to an adjournment.
Probert had been set free and appeared as a witness. The jury gave a
verdict of guilty, and Thurtell and Hunt were sentenced to be hanged,
but Hunt escaped with transportation. Thurtell made his own speech for
the defence, which had a great effect upon the jury, until the judge
swept most of its sophistries away. It was, however, a very able
performance. Thurtell's line of defence was to declare that Hunt and
Probert were the murderers, and that he was a victim of their perjuries.
If hanged, he would be hanged on circumstantial evidence only, and he
gave, with great elaboration, the details of a number of cases where men
had been wrongfully hanged upon circumstantial evidence. His lawyers had
apparently provided him with books containing these examples from the
past, and his month in prison was devoted to this defence, which showed
great ability. The trial took place on 6th January 1824, and Thurtell
was hanged on the 9th, in front of Hertford Gaol: his body was given to
the Anatomical Museum in London. A contemporary report says that
Thurtell, on the scaffold,
fixed his eyes on a young gentleman in the crowd, whom he had
frequently seen as a spectator at the commencement of the
proceedings against him. Seeing that the individual was
affected by the circumstances, he removed them to another
quarter, and in so doing recognised an individual well known in
the sporting circles, to whom he made a slight bow.
The reader of _Lavengro_ might speculate whether that 'young gentleman'
was Borrow, but Borrow was in Norwich in January 1824, his father dying
in the following month. In his _Celebrated Trials_ Borrow tells the
story of the execution with wonderful vividness, and supplies effective
quotations from 'an eyewitness.' Borrow no doubt exaggerated his
acquaintance with Thurtell, as in his _Robinson Crusoe_ romance he was
fully entitled to do for effect. He was too young at the time to have
been much noticed by a man so much his senior. The writer who accepts
Borrow's own statement that he really gave him 'some lessons in the
noble art' is too credulous,[75] and the statement that Thurtell's house
'on the Ipswich Road was a favourite rendezvous for the Fancy' is
unsupported by evidence. Old Alderman Thurtell owned the house in
question, and we find no evidence that he encouraged his son's
predilection for prize-fighting. In _The Romany Rye_ he gives his friend
the jockey as his authority for the following apologia:
The night before the day he was hanged at H----, I harnessed a
Suffolk Punch to my light gig, the same Punch which I had
offered to him, which I have ever since kept, and which brought
me and this short young man to Horncastle, and in eleven hours
I drove that Punch one hundred and ten miles. I arrived at
H---- just in the nick of time. There was the ugly jail--the
scaffold--and there upon it stood the only friend I ever had in
the world. Driving my Punch, which was all in a foam, into the
midst of the crowd, which made way for me as if it knew what I
came for, I stood up in my gig, took off my hat, and shouted,
'God Almighty bless you, Jack!' The dying man turned his pale
grim face towards me--for his face was always somewhat grim, do
you see--nodded and said, or I thought I heard him say, 'All
right, old chap.' The next moment--my eyes water. He had a high
heart, got into a scrape whilst in the marines, lost his
half-pay, took to the turf, ring, gambling, and at last cut the
throat of a villain who had robbed him of nearly all he had.
But he had good qualities, and I know for certain that he never
did half the bad things laid to his charge.
FOOTNOTES:
[65] _Celebrated Trials and Remarkable Cases of Criminal Jurisprudence
from the Earliest Records to the Year 1825_. In six volumes. London:
Printed for Geo. Knight & Lacey, Paternoster Row, 1825. Price £3, 12s.
in boards.
[66] _The New and Complete Newgate Calendar or Malefactors Recording
Register_. By William Jackson. Six vols. 1802.
[67] Cobbett and Howell's _State Trials_. In thirty-three volumes and
index, 1809 to 1828. The last volume, apart from the index, was actually
published the year after Borrow's _Celebrated Trials_, that is, in 1826;
but the last trial recorded was that of Thistlewood in 1820. The editors
were William Cobbett, Thomas Bayly Howell, and his son, Thomas Jones
Howell.
[68] The following note appeared in _The Monthly Magazine_ for 1st July
1824 (vol. lvii. p. 557):
'A Selection of the most remarkable Trials and Criminal Causes is
printing in five volumes. It will include all famous cases, from that of
Lord Cobham, in the reign of Henry the Fifth, to that of John Thurtell;
and those connected with foreign as well as English jurisprudence. Mr.
Borrow, the editor, has availed himself of all the resources of the
English, German, French, and Italian languages; and his work, including
from 150 to 200 of the most interesting cases on record, will appear in
October next. The editor of the preceding has ready for the press a
_Life of Faustus, his Death, and Descent into Hell_, which will also
appear early in the next winter.'
[69] Did the poet, who had an interest in criminology, know of his
father's quite innocent association with the Fauntleroy trial?
[70] Another witness attained fame by her answer to the inquiry, 'Was
supper postponed?' with the reply, 'No, it was pork.'
[71] I have already stated (ch. x. p. 111) that three members of the
Thurtell family subscribed for _Romantic Ballads_. I should have
hesitated to include John Thurtell among the subscribers, as he was
hanged two years before the book was published, had I not the high
authority of Mr. Walter Rye, but recently Mayor of Norwich, and the
honoured author of a _History of Norfolk Families_ and other works. Mr.
Rye, to whom I owe much of the information concerning the Thurtells
published here, tells me that there was only this one, 'J. Thurtell.'
Borrow had doubtless been appealing for subscribers for a very long
time. I cannot, however, accept Mr. Rye's suggestion to me that Borrow
left Norwich because he was mixed up with Thurtell in ultra-Whig or
Radical scrapes, the intimidation and 'cooping' of Tory voters being a
characteristic of the elections of that day with the wilder spirits, of
whom Thurtell was doubtless one. Borrow's sympathies were with the Tory
party from his childhood up--following his father.
[72] _The Fatal Effects of Gambling Exemplified in the Murder of Wm.
Weare and the Trial and Fate of John Thurtell, the Murderer, and his
Accomplices_. London: Thomas Kelly, Paternoster Row. 1824. I have a very
considerable number of Weare pamphlets in my possession, one of them
being a record of the trial by Pierce Egan, the author of _Life in
London_ and _Boxiana_. Walter Scott writes in his diary of being
absorbed in an account of the trial, while he deprecates John Bull's
maudlin sentiment over 'the pitiless assassin.' That was in 1826, but in
1828 Scott went out of his way when travelling from London to Edinburgh,
to visit Gill's Hill, and describes the scene of the tragedy very
vividly. Lockhart's _Life_, ch. lxxvi.
[73] Elstree had already had its association with a murder case, for
Martha Reay, the mistress of John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich, was
buried in the church in 1779. She was the mother of several of the
Earl's children, one of whom was Basil Montagu. She was a beautiful
woman and a delightful singer, and was appearing on the stage at Covent
Garden, which theatre she was leaving on the night of 7th April 1779,
when the Reverend James Hackman, Vicar of Wiveton in Norfolk, shot her
through the head with a pistol in a fit of jealous rage. Hackman was
hanged at Tyburn, Boswell attending the funeral. Croft's supposed
letters between Hackman and Martha Reay, which made a great sensation
when issued under the title of _Love and Madness_, are now known to be
spurious (see ch. x. p. 115). Martha Reay was buried in the chancel of
Elstree Church, but Lord Sandwich, who, although he sent word to
Hackman, who asked his forgiveness, that 'he had robbed him of all
comfort in this world,' took no pains to erect a monument over her
remains. On 28th February 1913 the present writer visited Elstree in the
interest of this book. He found that the church of Martha Reay and
William Weare had long disappeared. A new structure dating from 1853 had
taken its place. The present vicar, he was told, has located the spot
where Weare was buried, and it coincides with the old engravings. Martha
Reay's remains, at the time of the rebuilding, were removed to the
churchyard, and lie near the door of the vestry, lacking all memorial.
The Artichoke Inn has also been rebuilt, and 'Weare's Pond,' which alone
recalls the tragedy to-day, where the body was found, has contracted
into a small pool. It is, however, clearly authentic, the brook, as
pictured in the old trial-books, now running under the road.
[74] One of them was Mr. Justice Best, of whom it is recorded that a
certain index had the reference line, 'Mr. Justice Best: his Great
Mind,' which seemed to have no justification in the mental qualities of
that worthy, but was explained when one referred to the context and saw
that 'Mr. Justice Best said that he had a great mind to commit the
witness for contempt.'
[75] See an introduction by Thomas Seccombe to _Lavengro_ in 'Everyman's
Library.'