commissioned to go to the cellar and fetch ale. They presently returned
with awe-struck countenances, beckoned to the Abbot to follow them, and
led the way along the cloisters down the cellar stairs. Curiosity,
though against the rule, was infectious, and all the monks crept _en
queue_ after the Abbot. When they reached the vault a shocking sight
presented itself to their eyes. Brother Jucundus lay with his head
against the butt of Malmsey, flourishing his tankard over his head, and
feebly, incoherently, trolling forth--
"In dulce jubilo-o-o,
Up, up, up we go-o-o."
It was too flagrant an offence to be passed over. A chapter of the Order
was at once constituted in the cellar itself. All the monks were
present. Unanimously it was decided that after solemn excommunication
with bell, book, and candle, the guilty brother should be walled up
alive on the scene of his crime in that very cellar.
The awful scene of excommunication was proceeded with. It took some
time, and during the ceremony Brother Jucundus gradually resumed
consciousness--the fumes of Malmsey slowly evaporated. A convenient
recess was found, where a heap of crumbling bricks lay prostrate. It was
the identical nook out of which a year and a day before Brother Jucundus
had escaped into the Cistercian Order and Abbey of St. Mary.
Into this niche therefore he was built. His terrible position had not,
however, as yet forced itself on the monk's brain; he still tasted
Malmsey, still was his heart buoyant, and with swelling lungs he roared
forth his song--
"In dulce jubilo-o-o,
Up, up, up we go-o-o."
Now, it happened that the clocks in St. Leonard's and St. Mary's
differed by a quarter of an hour. That of St. Leonard's was slower than
that of St. Mary's. Consequently it was only just dinner-time in St.
Leonard's Priory, and the cellarer, pitcher in hand, had just descended
the stairs, and was filling his vessel with small beer, when he heard
close to his ear, from behind the wall, a stentorian voice thunder
forth--
"In dulce jubilo-o-o,
Up, up, up we go-o-o."
The voice, the strain, the words were those of Brother Jucundus, who a
year and a day before had been immured at that very spot.
Down went the pitcher, and away fled the monk--amazement, admiration in
his countenance, "A miracle! a miracle!" in his mouth--to the monks,
just issuing from the church and the recitation of Sext and the office
for the dead around the body of their Prior, lately deceased, and that
day to be buried.
The whole community rolled like a tidal wave down the cellar-stairs, and
stood with breathless awe in a circle about the spot where twelve months
and a day before they had walled in Brother Jucundus.
It was a miracle--there could be no doubt of it. Eager hands tore down
the wall, and revealed the reverend brother, hale and rosy as of yore,
and at his side a loaf as fresh as when put in, and a pitcher still full
to the brim.
There could be no doubt but that this was a special interposition to
establish the innocence of the monk, and to indicate to the community
who was to be their future Prior.
With one voice they shouted, "Jucundus our Prior! Saint Jucundus our
head and father!"
On the shoulders of the enthusiastic brethren the miraculous monk was
carried up-stairs and installed in the Prior's seat in the
chapter-house.
Under him St. Leonard's jogged along very pleasantly, and he did much in
his long rule of the monastery for its discipline and good order, if not
to justify, at least to excuse the dissolution which fell on it
immediately after his death.
MARY BATEMAN,
WITCH AND MURDERESS.
Mary Harker was the daughter of a small farmer at Aisenby, in the parish
of Topcliffe, near Thirsk, where she was born in 1768. From an early age
she exhibited great quickness, which, instead of taking a direct course
and developing into intelligence, was warped into low cunning.
She received, for one in her situation, a good education--was taught to
read, and write, and cypher. But she very early showed a want of moral
principle, very possibly because it was never instilled into her by her
parents, and her first petty thefts having been pardoned or laughed at,
she grew bolder, and what had been occasional grew to be frequent, and
matured into a habit of peculation. Her father sent her into service at
the age of thirteen, in Thirsk, and for a while she either concealed or
did not yield to her propensity for theft. At all events, if she did
pilfer, she was neither suspected nor discovered.
At the age of twenty she left Thirsk for York, and after a year's
sojourn in that city, was detected in an attempt at robbery, and ran
away to Leeds, where, in 1788, she worked as a mantua-maker; but as her
knowledge of dressmaking was imperfect--she had only acquired it during
her twelvemonth at York, where her mistress had been a dressmaker--she
was able to work for the lower classes alone. She lived in Leeds for
four years, following this occupation and occasionally telling fortunes.
Her professed calling admirably served to introduce dupes to her, and
the servant-girls for whom she worked not infrequently introduced her to
their young mistresses.
In the year 1792 she married an honest, hard-working man named John
Bateman, who had made her acquaintance only three weeks previously. This
man, there is no reason for believing, was, at first at all events, an
accomplice in, or acquainted with, the crimes committed subsequently by
his wife, though afterwards it is scarcely possible to exculpate him
from connivance in them.
She now began openly to profess fortune-telling, the removal of spells,
the power of controlling the future, &c., in which, however, she did not
act in her own name, but as the deputy of Mrs. Moore, whom she
represented as a person endowed with the supernatural powers belonging
to the seventh child of a seventh child.
Whether such a person existed or not was never ascertained, but it is
certain that Mary Bateman, at the outset of her career, had some
accomplice, and she was from her youth fond of associating with gipsies
and other vagrants, from whom she learned the art she afterwards
practised.
The Batemans lodged in High Court Lane, Leeds, and she stole from a
fellow-lodger a silver watch, a spoon of the same metal, and two
guineas. The theft was discovered, and she was made to restore what she
had taken, but she was not prosecuted.
Several charges of obtaining silk goods under various names of persons
with whom she was acquainted were made and substantiated at this time,
but the shopkeepers, with mistaken clemency, regarding her as a poor
milliner, forgave her.
A poor man, a neighbour, who earned his living and supported his family
with the assistance of a horse and cart, sickened and died, leaving a
widow and four children, the eldest a boy about fifteen years of age.
The widow, who was only stepmother of the children, was persuaded by
Mary Bateman that the eldest boy meant to sell all the little property
his father had left, and appropriate the money to his own use, to
prevent which she advised the mother to sell the horse, cart, and
furniture as soon as possible, and to quit Yorkshire. This advice the
infatuated woman took, turned everything into money, left a share with
Mary for the children, and departed. Mary Bateman appropriated the sum
entrusted to her, and sent the children to the union.
A gentleman living in Meadow Lane, in Leeds, bought a leg of mutton at
the shambles, and requested that it might be sent home immediately.
Mary, ever on the watch for her prey, hastened to the bridge over which
the butcher's boy had to pass, and when she saw him approach, made
towards him in a great hurry, pretending she was the gentleman's
servant, scolded the boy for being so long upon the road, and taking the
mutton by the shank, gave him a slap on the back, telling him she would
carry it home herself. It is needless to say that carry it home she did,
but not to the gentleman's house. When dinner-time came the joint had
not arrived. The gentleman went to his butcher to inquire about the
neglect, but he was informed that the meat had been sent an hour ago,
and was taken from the boy by a woman, whom the butcher described, and
whom the gentleman recollected to have seen at the stall when he was
buying the meat, and whose residence he luckily knew to be in the Old
Assembly-room Yard, in Kirkgate. He accordingly posted down to her
house, and the first object that presented itself to his eyes on
entering it was his leg of mutton roasting before Bateman's fire. After
upbraiding Mary, she agreed to pay for the mutton, and the matter was
thus compromised.
In 1793 Bateman took a small house in Well's Yard, and furnished it
decently--by what means, unless from the proceeds of her frauds, it is
difficult to say, though it is due to the husband to admit that he was
never proved to be cognisant of any of her malpractices, and was
sometimes the victim of them. She once went to his workshop and took
with her a letter representing that his father, who was then town-crier
at Thirsk, was at the point of death.
Her husband instantly set off for that town, and had scarcely entered it
when he heard his father's voice in the market-place announcing an
auction. He hurried back to Leeds to inform his wife of the hoax that
had been practised upon them; but on his return he found his house
stripped of every article of furniture, which Mary had sold, in all
probability to hush up some robbery she had committed.
After some time they jointly found means to get fresh furniture, and
they took in lodgers, one of whom, a Mr. Dixon, discovered Mary in the
act of purloining money from his box. She was forced to refund it, and
make good several losses that Mr. Dixon had before sustained, but for
which he had not been able to account.
In the year 1796 a tremendous fire broke out in a large manufactory in
Leeds, and by the falling of one of the walls many unfortunate people
lost their lives. This calamity Mary Bateman turned to her own
advantage. She went to Miss Maude, a lady known for her charitable
disposition, and telling her that the child of a poor woman had fallen a
victim, and that she had not linen to lay the child out on, begged she
would lend her a pair of sheets. This request was complied with; but the
sheets, instead of being turned to such a benevolent purpose, were
pledged at a pawnbroker's shop. Three similar instances occurred at the
same time, and all the sheets were disposed of in the same way. Nor did
her frauds on the plea of this calamity end here. She went round the
town representing herself as a nurse at the General Infirmary, and
collecting all the old linen she could beg to dress the wounds, as she
said, of the patients who had been brought into the infirmary, but in
reality to dispose of them for herself.
Bateman, ashamed of the disgrace caused by his wife's conduct, entered
the supplementary militia, but he took with him his plague--his wife.
And here a wide field opened for a woman of her disposition. She
practised her old arts and learnt fresh ones. Of her exploits while in
this situation we have no information; but when she quitted the army
with her husband in the year 1796, on their return to Leeds, they took
up their residence in Marsh Lane, near Timble Bridge. Mary then began to
practise on a large scale. She herself, as she said, had no skill in
casting nativities or reading the stars, but a certain Mrs. Moore was a
proficient in this art, and to Mrs. Moore she referred all knotty
points. It is hardly necessary to say that Mrs. Moore had no existence
whatever.
The first experiment in witchcraft was made upon a Mrs. Greenwood, whom
she attempted to persuade that she, Mrs. Greenwood, was in danger of
committing suicide on account of domestic misfortunes, and that the
skill of Mrs. Moore would be necessary to prevent so dire a catastrophe.
Next she informed her that her husband, who was then from home, was
taken up for some offence, and placed in confinement; that four men had
been set to watch him; and that if four pieces of gold, four pieces of
leather, four pieces of blotting-paper, and four brass screws were not
produced that night, and placed in her hands to give to Mrs. Moore to
"screw down" the guards, her husband would be a dead man before morning.
In vain did Mrs. Greenwood plead that she had no pieces of gold; this
difficulty Mrs. Bateman proposed to overcome by suggesting to her that
she might borrow or steal them; the latter proposal startled her
intended dupe, and, fortunately for her, she had fortitude enough to
emancipate herself from the witch's trammels.
The family of Barzillai Stead, a person who had been unsuccessful in
business, next became the object of Mary's iniquitous exactions. Upon
the husband's fears she contrived to work with so much success, by
representing the bailiffs to be in continual pursuit of him, that she
obliged him to enlist, and to share his bounty with her and her
imaginary wise-woman. Her next object was to arouse the jealousy of the
wife: this she did by assuring her that it was the intention of
Barzillai to take with him, when he went to his regiment, a young woman
out of Vicar Lane, Leeds. In order to prevent this it became necessary
to "screw down" the rival queen; this was to be effected by the agency
of Mrs. Moore, but Mrs. Moore's screws would never drive without
money--three half-crowns were to be produced for this purpose, and two
pieces of coal; the coals were to be placed at the woman's door in Vicar
Lane; they were then to be laid on the fire--the woman was to be thrown
into a sound sleep--the fire was to communicate to her clean clothes,
which had been washed in contemplation of the intended journey, and, the
clothes being consumed, she could not of course elope without them. The
morning after this charm had taken effect, Stead left Leeds to join his
regiment, and left the imaginary woman of Vicar Lane behind him. Mary
was then left at liberty to play off the whole artillery of her frauds
upon the unsuspecting wife of Stead. To enter into all the expedients
she adopted to fleece this poor woman would swell this article to an
inconvenient length; suffice it to say that she obliged her to sell or
pawn every article in her house that would raise money, and drove her to
such a state of desperation as to lead her victim to attempt suicide.
While Mary Bateman was practising upon this woman, her dupe was
confined, and the Leeds Benevolent Society, finding her in a state of
destitution, determined to apply a guinea to the relief of her wants.
This sum was given to her in three payments of 7s., and out of this
guinea Mary Bateman had the inhumanity to extort 18s. by persuading the
credulous woman that she would "screw down" the Benevolent Society, so
as to force the managers to give her more alms.
The furniture and clothes were now all gone, and nothing remained but a
few tools left by Stead when he went into the army, but even these could
not escape the avarice of Mary Bateman, who was never at a loss for
expedients to effect her purposes. She persuaded Stead's wife that it
was in the power of Mrs. Moore--Mrs. Moore again!--to "screw down" all
the officers in her husband's regiment, and so to screw them that they
could not avoid giving him his discharge; but then money must be raised,
and how, when nothing remained in the house but the tools? They of
course must be sent to the pawnbroker's and every farthing they fetched
was paid to Mary to get her friend Moore to interpose her kind offices
for the liberation of the soldier. This charm failed, as the officers
were too much for the witch.
Mary Bateman next became acquainted with a tradesman's wife of the name
of Cooper. She persuaded this woman that her husband was about to
abscond, and take with him all the property he could raise, and that she
might not be left quite destitute, Mary prevailed upon her to convey as
much of the furniture as she could out of the house, including an
excellent clock, and to lodge all this furniture at Bateman's. There it
did not remain long. Mary took it all to the pawnbroker's, got for it
what it would fetch, and left the abused husband and his credulous wife
to redeem it at their leisure.
Blown upon as the credit of Mrs. Bateman's witchcraft then was, she
removed from Timble Bridge to the Black Dog Yard, at the Bank. While she
lived here one of her hens laid a wonderful egg, remarkable for bearing
this inscription--
"CHRIST IS COMING."
But as so singular a phenomenon was not likely to obtain all the credit
necessary for carrying into effect her fraudulent intentions unless
supported by some kind of proof, she had the ingenuity and cruelty to
contrive that two other eggs, bearing similar inscriptions, should be
deposited in the nest by the same unfortunate hen. Persons flocked from
all quarters to see the wonderful eggs, and they who dared to disbelieve
stood a good chance of being maltreated by the credulous multitude.
Mary's motive for producing those eggs is not well made out, but it is
supposed that she had at that time a notion of following the example of
Joanna Southcote, as she was then in the habit of attending the meetings
of the sect founded by that extraordinary woman. Mary succeeded in
realising no inconsiderable sum by means of these eggs, for she made
those who came to see the miracle pay a penny each for the gratification
of their curiosity.
Shortly after, the subject of this narrative contrived to ingratiate
herself, as she well knew how, into the good graces of a family of the
name of Kitchin, two maiden ladies of the Quaker persuasion, who kept a
small linen-draper's shop near St. Peter's Square, in Leeds. There is
every reason to suppose that she had deluded these unfortunate young
women with some idea of her skill in looking into futurity, or, at
least, that some of her friends--a Mrs. Moore or a Miss Blythe
perhaps--could read their destiny in the stars! For some time Mary was
the confidant of the Misses Kitchin. She was frequently at their house;
she assisted in their shop; and her interference extended even to their
domestic concerns. In the early part of September, 1803, one of the
young women became very ill; Mary Bateman procured for her medicines, as
she said, from a country doctor. These medicines, like those
administered afterwards to Perigo and his unfortunate wife, were of
powerful efficacy, and in the course of less than one week Miss Kitchin
died. In the meantime her mother, hearing of her dangerous situation,
came from Wakefield, and though in good health when she left home, the
mother as well as the second daughter took the same illness, and in a
few days both were laid in the grave, at the side of their ill-fated
relation.
Previous to the death of one of the sisters a female friend of the
family was sent for, and when she arrived the poor sufferer seemed
oppressed with some secret that she wished to communicate, but her
strength failing her, she expired without being able to do so.
Only ten days sufficed to carry off the mother and two sisters. The
complaint of which they died was said to be _cholera_--a complaint, let
it be remembered, attended by symptoms resembling those produced by
poison. It did not, however, suit the purposes of Mary Bateman to give
the disorder so mild a name. She represented it to be the plague, and
the whole neighbourhood shunned the place, and would as soon have
entered the most infectious wards of a pest-house as this dwelling.
Mary alone, in the face of all danger, was ready to afford her friendly
offices; and when the persons composing this unfortunate family were
buried, the door was closed, and a padlock placed upon it.
A physician of eminence in the town, on being called in to visit the
last surviving sister, was so strongly impressed with the opinion that
her sickness and sudden death had been caused by poison, that he
examined with much care many of the vessels in the house, inquired if
any water for poisoning flies had been used, and expressed a wish to
open the body; but the family being all dead, and no persons at hand who
thought themselves authorised to give that permission, the corpse was
interred unopened, and with it the opportunity for detection. During the
time of the fatal illness in the Misses Kitchin's house, Mary Bateman
was unremitting in her attention; she administered their food, and from
her hands the medicine was conveyed to their lips. Some time after the
death of these ladies their creditors looked over their effects, when it
was found that their house and shop had been plundered of almost
everything they contained: and to add to the embarrassment of their
affairs, the shop books were missing. The creditors only divided
eightpence in the pound.
Two young women, then servants in Leeds, had long been in Mary's toils,
and she had fleeced them pretty handsomely; and not only them, but their
friends, for she had prevailed upon one of them to rob her mother of
several articles, and amongst the rest of a large family Bible. When she
had got all from them that could be extorted without awakening the
suspicions of their friends, she sent both these deluded girls, at
different times, to seek service in Manchester, cautioning them, if they
met, not to speak to each other, on pain of breaking the charm. When
they arrived in Manchester, Mary contrived to keep up a correspondence
with them, and got from them even the clothes they wore, so that they
were almost reduced to a state of nakedness. One day these poor
destitute girls met in the streets of Manchester; the meeting being
quite unexpected, they both burst into tears, and their emotions became
so violent that further concealment was out of the question. They
thereupon related to each other their sad history, and by comparing
notes, found that they were both the dupes of Mary Bateman. They then
wrote to Leeds, and laid their case before their friends, who interfered
in their behalf, and got from the witch part of the property she had so
wickedly extorted.
The witch also contrived to ingratiate herself into the good opinion of
another young woman, and got from her several sums of money for the
purpose of curing her of an "evil wish" laid upon her by an old
beggar-woman whom she had refused to relieve. The cure was to be
effected by Miss Blythe, to whom a pocket-handkerchief was to be sent.
In due course the directions arrived, and Miss Blythe, who, like Mrs.
Moore, could never put her charms in motion without money, required that
different sums, amounting in all to five guineas, should be produced,
and as much wearing apparel as was worth about the same sum; but this
money and these clothes were only to be kept till the evil wish was
removed, and then to be restored to the owner. The period fixed for the
opening of the mysterious bags, in which these articles were deposited,
had arrived, when one day a person brought a fruit-pie to the young
woman, telling her that her sweetheart had sent it. This pie she tasted,
and let a fellow-servant partake with her, but though very nice in
appearance, the taste was hot and offensive; they in consequence
desisted from eating it, and the young woman took it down to Mary
Bateman to ask her opinion. Mary affected that she knew nothing herself
of such things, but she would send it to the sagacious Miss Blythe.
This, as the simple girl supposed, was done, and Miss Blythe informed
her that it was very well she had not eaten much of the pie, for if she
had, it would have been her last, as it was "full of poison!" Soon after
the girl opened the bags, and found that her guineas had turned to
copper and her clothes to old rags!