CHAPTER VIII.

THE GAOL CALENDAR.

Newgate Calendars--Their editors and publishers--All based on

Sessions’ papers--Demand for this literature fostered by prevalence

of crime--Brief summary of state of crime in the first half of the

18th century--State of the Metropolis--Street

robberies--Burglaries--Henry Fielding on the increase of

robbers--The Thieves’ Company--The Revolution Club--Firearms in the

Law Courts--Causes of the increase of crime--Drunkenness--The Gin

Act--Gaming universal--Faro’s daughters--Lotteries--Repression of

crime limited to hanging--No police--The Charlies or

watchmen--Civil power lethargic--Efforts made by private societies

for reformation of manners--Character of crimes--Murders, duels,

and affrays--Richard Savage, the poet, in Newgate for murder--Major

Oneby for murder, commits suicide--Marquis de Paleoti for murdering

his man-servant--Colonel Charteris for rape, sentenced to death,

but pardoned--Crime in high place--The Earl of Macclesfield, Lord

Chancellor, convicted of venal practices--Embezzlement by public

officials--Crimes more commonplace, but more atrocious--Murder

committed by Catherine Hayes and her accomplices--She is burnt

alive for petty treason--Sarah Malcolm the Temple murderess--Other

prominent and typical murders--Jack Ketch hanged for murder--Wife

murderers, Houssart, Vincent Davis, George Price, Edward Joines,

John Williamson--Theodore Gardelle, the murderer of Mrs. King--Two

female murderers--Mrs. Meteyard--Her cruelty to a parish

apprentice--Elizabeth Brownrigg beats Mary Clifford to death.

Prison calendars obviously reflect the criminal features of the age in

which they appear. Those of Newgate since the beginning of the

eighteenth century are numerous and voluminous enough to form a

literature of their own. To the diligence of lawyers and publishers we

owe a more or less complete collection of the most remarkable cases as

they occurred. These volumes have been published under various titles.

The ‘Newgate Calendar,’ compiled by Messrs. Knapp and Baldwin,

attorneys-at-law, is one of the best known. This work, according to its

title-page, professes to contain “interesting memoirs of notorious

characters who have been convicted of outrages on the law of England;

with essays on crimes and punishments and the last exclamations of

sufferers.” There are many editions of it. The first I think was

published by Nuttall, Fisher, and Dixon, of Liverpool; a later edition

issues from the Albion Press, Ivy Lane, London, under the auspices of J.

Robins and Co. But another book of similar character had as its compiler

“George Theodore Wilkinson, Esq.,” barrister-at-law. It was published by

Cornish and Co. in 1814, and the work was continued by “William Jackson,

Esq.,” another barrister, with Alexander Hogg, of Paternoster Row, and

by Offor and Sons of Tower Hill as publishers. Early and perfect

editions of these works are somewhat rare and curious, fondly sought out

and carefully treasured by the bibliophile. But all of them were

anticipated by the editors of the ‘Tyburn Calendar,’ or ‘Malefactor’s

Bloody Register,’ which issued soon after 1700 from the printing office

of G. Swindells, at the appropriate address of Hanging Bridge,

Manchester. The compilers of these volumes claimed a high mission. They

desired “to fully display the regular progress from Virtue to Vice,

interspersed with striking reflections on the conduct of those unhappy

wretches who have fallen a sacrifice to the injured laws of their

country. The whole tending to guard young minds from allurements of vice

and the paths that lead to destruction.” Another early work is the

‘Chronicle of Tyburn, or Villainy displayed in all its branches,’ which

gave the authentic lives of notorious malefactors, and was published at

the Shakespeare’s Head in 1720. Yet another dated 1776, and printed for

J. Wenman of 144, Fleet Street, bears the title of ‘The Annals of

Newgate,’ and claims upon the title-page, that by giving the

circumstantial accounts of the lives, transactions, and trial of the

most notorious malefactors it is “calculated to expose the deformity of

vice, the infamy, and punishments naturally attending those who deviate

from the paths of virtue; and is intended as a beacon to warn the rising

generation against the temptations, the allurements, and the dangers of

bad company.”

All Newgate calendars have seemingly a common origin. They are all based

primarily upon the Sessions’ Papers, the official publications which

record the proceedings at the Old Bailey. There is a complete early

series of these session papers in the Library of the British Museum, and

another in the Home Office from the year 1730, including the December

sessions of 1729. The publisher, who is stated on the title-page to be

“T. Payne, at the corner of Ivy Lane, near Paternoster Row,” refers in

his preface to an earlier series, dating probably from the beginning of

the century, and a manuscript note in the margin of the first volume of

the second series also speaks of a preceding folio volume. These

sessions papers did not issue from one publisher. As the years pass the

publication changes hands. Now it is “J. Wilford, behind the Chapter

House, St. Pauls”; now “I. Roberts at the Oxford Arms in Warwick Lane.”

Ere long “T. Applebee in Bolt Court, near the Leg Tavern,” turns his

attention to this interesting class of periodical literature. He also

published another set of semi-official documents, several numbers of

which are bound up with the sessions’ papers already mentioned, and like

them supplying important data for the compilation of calendars. These

were the accounts given by the ordinary of Newgate of the behaviour,

confessions, and dying words of the malefactors “executed at Tyburn,” a

report rendered by command of the Mayor and corporation, but a private

financial venture of the chaplains. As the ordinary had free access to

condemned convicts at all times, and from his peculiar duties generally

established the most confidential relations with them, he was in a

position to obtain much curious and often authentic information from the

lips of the doomed offenders. Hence the ordinary’s account contained

many criminal autobiographies, and probably was much patronized by the

public. Its sale was a part of the Reverend gentleman’s perquisites; and

that the chaplains looked closely after the returns may be gathered from

the already mentioned application made by the Rev. Mr. Loraine, chaplain

in 1804, who petitioned Parliament to exempt his “execution brochure”

from the paper tax.[140]

In the advertisement sheets of these sessions’ papers are notices of

other criminal publications proving how great was the demand for this

kind of literature. Thus in 1731 is announced ‘The History of

Executions: being a complete account of the thirteen malefactors

executed at Tyburn for robberies, price 4_d._,’ and this publication is

continued from year to year. In 1732 “T. Applebee and others” published

at 3_s._ 6_d._ the ‘Lives of the most Remarkable Criminals,’ a volume

containing as a frontispiece the escape of Jack Sheppard from Newgate.

In the description of this book the public is assured that the volume

contains a first and faithful narration of each, “without any additions

of feigned or romantic adventures, calculated merely to entertain the

curiosity of the Reader.” Jack Sheppard had many biographers. Seven

accurate and authentic histories were published, all purporting to give

the true story of his surprising adventures, and bequeathing a valuable

legacy to the then unborn historical novelist, Mr. Harrison Ainsworth.

Again, Rich, the Manager of the Lincoln’s Inn Theatre, brought out

‘Harlequin Jack Sheppard’ in the year of that desperado’s execution, an

operatic pantomime founded upon his exploits. A little before this

another dramatic performance, the ‘Beggars Opera,’ having a criminal for

its hero, had taken the town by storm; and many strongly and with reason

condemned the degradation of national taste which could popularize the

loves of ‘Polly Peachum’ and ‘Captain Macheath.’ Besides these books and

plays there was a constant publication of broad-sheets and chap-books of

a still lower type, intended to pander to the same unwholesome taste,

while a great novelist like Fielding did not hesitate to draw upon his

personal acquaintance with crime, obtained as a police magistrate, and

write the life of Jonathan Wild.

The demand was no doubt fostered by the extraordinary prevalence of

crime. Criminal records would probably be read with avidity at times

when ruffianism was in the ascendant, and offences of the most heinous

description were of daily occurrence. New crimes cropped up daily. The

whole country was a prey to lawlessness and disorder. Outrages of all

kinds, riots, robberies, murders, took place continually. None of the

high-roads or bye-roads were safe by night or day. Horsemen in the open

country, footpads in or near towns, laid wayfarers under contribution.

Armed parties ranged the rural districts attacking country houses in

force, driving off cattle and deer, and striking terror everywhere. The

general turbulence often broke out into open disturbance. The Riot Act,

which was a product of these times, was not passed before it was

needed. Riots were frequent in town and country. The mob was easily

roused, as when it broke open the house of the Provost Marshal Tooley in

Holborn, “to whom they owed a grudge for impressing men to sell as

recruits to Flanders.”[141] “They burnt his furniture in the street;

many persons were killed and wounded in the affray.”[142] Now political

parties, inflamed with rancorous spirit, created uproars in the “mug

houses”; now mutinous soldiers violently protested against the coarse

linen of their “Hanover” shirts; again the idle flunkies at a London

theatre rose in revolt against new rules introduced by the management

and produced a serious riot.[143] In the country gangs of ruffians

disguised in female attire, the forerunners of Rebecca and her daughter,

ran a muck against turnpike gates, demolishing all they found. There

were smuggling riots, when armed crowds overpowered the custom’s

officers and broke into warehouses sealed by the Crown; corn riots at

periods of scarcity, when private granaries were forced and pillaged. A

still worse crime prevailed--that of arson. I find in ‘Hardwicke’s Life’

reference to a proclamation offering a reward for the detection of those

who sent threatening letters “to diverse persons in the citys of London,

Westminster, Bristol, and Exeter, requiring them to deposit certain sums

of money in particular places, and threatening to sett fire to their

houses, and to burn and destroy them and their families in case of

refusal, some of which threats have accordingly been carried into

execution.”[144] Other threats were to murder unless a good sum were at

once paid down. Thus Jepthah Big was tried in 1729 for writing two

letters, demanding in one eighty-five guineas, in the other one hundred

guineas from Nathaniel Newnham, “a fearful old man,” and threatening to

murder both him and his wife unless he got the money. Jepthah Big was

found guilty and sentenced to death.

The state of the metropolis was something frightful in the early decades

of the eighteenth century. Such was the reckless daring of evil-doers

that there was but little security for life and property. Wright, in his

‘Caricature History of the Georges,’ says of this period, “robbery was

carried on to an extraordinary extent in the streets of London even by

daylight. Housebreaking was of frequent occurrence by night, and every

road leading to the metropolis was beset by bands of reckless

highwaymen, who carried their depredations into the very heart of the

town. Respectable women could not venture in the streets alone after

nightfall, even in the city, without risk of being grossly outraged.” In

1720 ladies going to Court were escorted by servants armed with

blunderbusses “to shoot at the rogues.” Wright gives a detailed account

of five-and-twenty robberies perpetrated within three weeks in January

and February of the year above mentioned. A few of the most daring cases

may be quoted. Three highwaymen stopped a gentleman of the Prince’s

household in Poland Street, and made the watchman throw away his lantern

and stand quietly by while they robbed and ill-used their victim. Other

highwaymen the same night fired at Colonel Montague’s carriage as it

passed along Frith Street Soho, because the coachman refused to stand;

and the Duchess of Montrose, coming from Court in her chair, was stopped

by highwaymen near Bond Street. The mails going out and coming into

London were seized and rifled. Post-boys, stage-coaches, every-body and

everything that travelled were attacked. A great peer, the Duke of

Chandos, was twice stopped during the period above mentioned, but he and

his servants were too strong for the villains, some of whom they

captured. People were robbed in Chelsea, in Cheapside, in White Conduit

Fields, in Denmark Street, St. Giles. Wade, in his ‘British Chronology’,

under the head of public calamities in 1729, classes with a sickly

season, perpetual storms, and incessant rains, the dangerous condition

of the cities of London and Westminster and their neighbourhoods, which

“proceeded from the number of footpads and street-robbers, insomuch that

there was no stirring out after dark for fear of mischief. These

ruffians knocked people down and wounded them before they demanded their

money.” Large rewards were offered for the apprehension of these

offenders. Thief-catchers and informers were continually active, and the

law did not hesitate to strike all upon whom it could lay its hands. Yet

crime still nourished and increased year after year.

The Englishman’s house, and proverbially his castle, was no more secure

then than now from burglarious inroads. House-breakers abounded, working

in gangs with consummate skill and patience, hand and glove with

servants past and present, associated with receivers, and especially

with the drivers of night coaches. Half the hackney coachmen about this

time were in league with thieves, being bribed by nocturnal depredators

to wait about when a robbery was imminent, and until it was completed.

Then, seizing the chance of watchmen being off their beat, these useful

accomplices drove at once to the receiver with the “swag.”

Towards the middle of the century, Henry Fielding, the great novelist,

and at that time acting magistrate for Westminster, wrote:[145] “I make

no doubt but that the streets of this town and the roads leading to it

will shortly be impassable without the utmost hazard; nor are we

threatened with seeing less dangerous groups of rogues amongst us than

those which the Italians call banditti....” Again, “If I am to be

assaulted and pillaged and plundered, if I can neither sleep in my own

house, nor walk the streets, nor travel in safety, is not my condition

almost equally bad whether a licensed or an unlicensed rogue, a dragoon

or a robber be the person who assaults and plunders me?” Those who set

the law at defiance organized themselves into gangs, and co-operated in

crime. Fielding tells us in the same work that nearly a hundred rogues

were incorporated in one body, “have officers and a treasury, and have

reduced theft and robbery into a regular system.” Among them were men

who appeared in all disguises and mixed in all companies. The members of

the society were not only versed in every art of cheating and thieving,

but they were armed to evade the law, and if a prisoner could not be

rescued, a prosecutor could be bribed, or some “rotten member of the

law” forged a defence supported by false witnesses. This must have been

perpetuated, for I find another reference later to the Thieves or

Housebreaker’s Company which had regular books, kept clerks, opened

accounts with members, and duly divided the profits. According to the

confession of two of the gang who were executed on Kensington Common,

they declared that their profits amounted on an average to £500 a year,

and that one of them had put by £2000 in the stocks, which before his

trial he made over to a friend to preserve it for his family. Another

desperate gang, Wade says, were so audacious that they went to the

houses of the peace officers, and made them beg pardon for endeavouring

to do their duty, and promise not to molest them. They went further, and

even attacked and wounded a “head borough” in St. John’s Street in about

forty places, so that many of the threatened officers had to “lie in

Bridewell for safety.”

In Harris’s ‘Life of Lord Hardwicke’ is a letter from the solicitor to

the Treasury to Sir Philip Yorke, referring to “the gang of ruffians who

are so notorious for their robberies, and have lately murdered Thomas

Bull in Southwark, and wounded others. Their numbers daily increase, and

now become so formidable that constables are intimidated by their

threats and desperate behaviour from any endeavour to apprehend them.”

One of these ruffians was described in the proclamation offering rewards

for their apprehension as “above six feet high, black eyebrows, his

teeth broke before;” another had a large scar under his chin.

Still worse was the “Resolution Club,” a numerous gang, regularly

organized under stringent rules. It was one of their articles, that

whoever resisted or attempted to fly when stopped should be instantly

cut down and crippled. Any person who prosecuted, or appeared as

evidence against a member of the club, should be marked down for

vengeance. The members took an “infernal oath” to obey the rules, and if

taken and sentenced to “die mute.” Another instance of the lawlessness

of the times is to be seen in the desperate attack made by some forty

ruffians on a watch-house in Moorfields, where an accomplice was kept a

prisoner. They were armed with pistols, cutlasses, and other offensive

weapons. The watchman was wounded, the prisoner rescued. After this the

assailants demolished the watch-house, robbed the constables, “committed

several unparalleled outrages, and went off in triumph.” The gang was

too numerous to be quickly subdued, but most of the rioters were

eventually apprehended, and it is satisfactory to learn that they were

sentenced to imprisonment in Newgate for three, five, or seven years,

according to the part they had played.

The contempt of the majesty of the law was not limited to the lower and

dangerous classes. A gentleman’s maid-servant, having resisted the

parish officers who had a distress warrant upon the gentleman’s house

for unpaid rates, was committed by the magistrates to Newgate. “The

gentleman,” by name William Frankland, on learning what had happened,

armed himself with a brace of pistols, and went to the office where the

justices were then sitting, and asked which of them had dared to commit

his servant to prison? “Mr. Miller,” so runs the account, “smilingly

replied, ‘I did,’ on which the gentleman fired one of his pistols and

shot Mr. Miller in the side, but it is thought did not wound him

mortally. He was instantly secured and committed to Newgate.” At the

following Old Bailey sessions, he was tried under the Black Act, when he

pleaded insanity. This did not avail him, and although the jury in

convicting him strongly recommended him to mercy he was sentenced to

death. Another case of still more flagrant contempt of court may fitly

be introduced here. At the trial of a woman named Housden for coining at

the Old Bailey in 1712, a man named Johnson, an ex-butcher and

highwayman by profession, came into court and desired to speak to her.

Mr. Spurling, the principal turnkey of Newgate, told him no person could

be permitted to speak to the prisoner, whereupon Johnson drew out a

pistol and shot Mr. Spurling dead upon the spot, the woman Housden

loudly applauding his act. The court did not easily recover from its

consternation, but presently the recorder suspended the trial of the

woman for coining, and as soon as an indictment could be prepared,

Johnson was arraigned for the murder, convicted, and then and there

sentenced to death, the woman Housden being also sentenced at the same

time as an accessory before and after the fact.

Various causes are given for this great prevalence of crime. The long

and impoverishing wars of the early years of the century, which saddled

us with the national debt, no doubt produced much distress, and drove

thousands who could not or would not find honest work, into evil ways.

Manners among the highest and the lowest were generally profligate.

Innumerable places of public diversion, ridottos, balls, masquerades,

tea-gardens, and wells, offered crowds a ready means for

self-indulgence. Classes aped the habits of the classes above their own,

and the love of luxurious gratification “reached to the dregs of the

people,” says Fielding, “who, not being able by the fruits of honest

labour to support the state which they affect, they disdain the wages to

which their industry would entitle them, and abandoning themselves to

idleness, the more simple and poor-spirited betake themselves to a state

of starving and beggary, while those of more art and courage become

thieves, sharpers, and robbers.”

Drunkenness was another terrible vice, even then more rampant and wildly

excessive than in later years. While the aristocracy drank deep of

Burgundy and port, and every roaring blade disdained all heel-taps, the

masses fuddled and besotted themselves with gin. This last-named

pernicious fluid was as cheap as dirt. A gin-shop actually had on its

sign the notice, “Drunk for 1_d._; dead drunk for 2_d._; clean straw for

nothing,” which Hogarth introduced into his caricature of Gin Lane. No

pencil could paint, no pen describe the scenes of hideous debauchery

hourly enacted in the dens and purlieus of the town. Legislation was

powerless to restrain the popular craving. The Gin Act, passed in 1736

amidst the execrations of the mob, which sought to vent its rage upon

Sir Joseph Jekyll, the chief promoter of the Bill, was generally evaded.

The much-loved poisonous spirit was still retailed under fictitious

names, such as Sangree, Tow Row, the Makeshift, and King Theodore of

Corsica. It was prescribed as a medicine for cholic to be taken two or

three times a day. Numberless tumults arose out of the prohibition to

retail spirituous liquors, and so openly was the law defied, that twelve

thousand persons were convicted within two years of having sold them

illegally in London. Informers were promptly bought off or intimidated,

magistrates “through fear or corruption” would not convict, and the Act

was repealed in the hope that more moderate duty and stricter

enforcement of the law would benefit the revenue and yet lessen

consumption. The first was undoubtedly affected, but hardly the latter.

Fielding, writing nearly ten years after the repeal of the Act, says

that he has reason to believe that “gin is the principal sustenance (if

it may be so called) of more than a hundred thousand people in the

metropolis,” and he attributed to it most of the crimes committed by the

wretches with whom he had to deal. “The intoxicating draught itself

disqualifies them from any honest means to acquire it, at the same time

that it removes sense of fear and shame, and emboldens them to commit

every wicked and desperate enterprise.”

The passion for gaming, again, “the school in which most highwaymen of

great eminence have been bred,”[146] was a fruitful source of immoral

degeneracy. Every one gambled. In the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ for 1731

there is the following entry: “At night their majesties played for the

benefit of the groom porter, and the king (George II.) and queen each

won several hundreds, and the Duke of Grafton several thousands of

pounds.” His Majesty’s lieges followed his illustrious example, and all

manner of games of chance with cards or dice, such as hazard, Pharoah,

basset, roly-poly, were the universal diversion in clubs, public places,

and private gatherings. The law had thundered, but to no purpose,

against “this destructive vice,” inflicting fines on those who indulged

in it, declaring securities won at play void, with other penalties, yet

gaming throve and flourished. It was fostered and encouraged by

innumerable hells, which the law in vain strove to put down. Nightly

raids were made upon them. In the same number of the ‘Gentleman’s

Magazine’ as that just quoted it is recorded that “the High Constable of

Holborn searched a notorious gaming-house behind Gray’s Inn Road; but

the gamesters were fled, only the keeper was arrested and bound over for

£200.” Again, I find in Wade’s ‘Chronology’ that “Justice Fielding,

having received information of a rendezvous of gamesters in the Strand,

procured a strong party of the Guards, who seized forty-five of the

tables, which they broke to pieces, and carried the gamesters before the

justice.... Under each of the broken tables were observed two iron

rollers and two private springs, which those who were in the secret

could touch and stop the turning whenever they had flats to deal with.”

No wonder these establishments throve. They were systematically

organized, and administered by duly appointed officers. There was the

commissioner who checked the week’s accounts and pocketed the takings; a

director to superintend the room; an operator to deal the cards, and

four to five _croupiers_, who watched the cards and gathered in the

money of the Bank. Besides these there were “puffs,” who had money given

them to decoy people to play; a clerk and a _squib_, who were spies upon

the straight dealings of the puffs; a flasher to swear how often the

bank was stripped; a dunner to recover sums lost; a waiter to snuff

candles and fill in the wine; and an attorney or “Newgate solicitor.” A

flash captain was kept to fight gentlemen who were peevish about losing

their money at the door was a porter, “generally a soldier of the foot

guards,”[147] who admitted visitors after satisfying himself that they

were of the right sort. The porter had aides-de-camp and assistants--an

“orderly man,” who patrolled the street and gave notice of the

approaching constables; a “runner,” who watched for the meetings of the

justices and brought intelligence of the constables being out; and a

host of linkboys, coachmen, chairmen, drawers to assist, with

common-bail affidavit men, ruffians, bravos, and assassins for any odd

job that might turn up requiring physical strength.

As the years passed the vice grew in magnitude. Large fortunes were made

by the proprietors of gaming-houses, thanks to the methodized employment

of capital, embarked regularly as in any other trading establishment,

the invention of E. O. tables, and the introduction of the “foreign

games of roulet and rouge et noir. Little short of a million must have

been amassed in this way,”[148] individuals having acquired from £10,000

to £100,000 a-piece. The number of establishments daily multiplied. They

were mounted regardless of expense. Open house

[Illustration: FARO’S DAUGHTERS.]

was kept, and luxurious dinners laid for all comers. Merchants and

bankers’ clerks entrusted with large sums were especially encouraged to

attend. The cost of entertainment in one house alone was £8000 for eight

months, while the total expenditure on all as much as £150,000 a year.

The gambling-house keepers, often prize-fighters originally, or partners

admitted for their skill in card-sharping or cogging dice, possessed

such ample funds that they laughed at legal prosecutions. Witnesses were

suborned, officers of justice bribed, informers intimidated. Armed

ruffians and bludgeon men were employed to barricade the houses and

resist the civil power. Private competed with public hells. Great ladies

of fashion, holding their heads high in the social world, made their

drawing-rooms into gambling places, into which young men of means were

enticed and despoiled. This was called “pidgeoning,” and probably

originated the expression. The most noted female gamesters were Lady

Buckinghamshire, Lady Archer, Lady Mount Edgecombe, a trio who had

earned for themselves the soubriquet of “Faro’s Daughters.” Their

conduct came under severe reprehension of Lord Kenyon, who, in summing

up a gambling case, warned them that if they came before him in

connection with gambling transactions, “though they should be the first

ladies of the land,” they should certainly exhibit themselves in the

pillory. This well-merited threat was reproduced in various caricatures

of the day, under such heads as, “Ladies of Elevated Rank”; “Faro’s

Daughters, Beware!” “Discipline _à la_ Kenyon.”

The Government itself was in a measure responsible for the diffusion of

the passion for gambling. The pernicious custom of public lotteries

practically legalized this baneful vice. State lotteries began in the

reign of Elizabeth, and existed down to 1826. They brought in a

considerable revenue, but they did infinite mischief by developing the

rage for speculation, which extended to the whole community. The rich

could purchase whole tickets, or “great goes”; for the more impecunious

the tickets were subdivided into “little goes.” Those who had no tickets

at all could still gamble at the lottery insurance offices by backing

any particular number to win. The demoralizition was widespread. It

reached a climax in the South Sea bubble, when thousands and thousands

were first decoyed, then cruelly deceived and beggared. But lotteries

lingered on till the Government at length awoke to the degradation of

obtaining an income from such a source.

While crime thus stalked rampant through the land, the law was nearly

powerless to grapple and check it. It had practically but one method of

repression--the wholesale removal of convicted offenders to another

world. Of prevention as we understand it our forefathers had but little

idea. The metropolis, with its ill-paved, dimly-lighted streets, was

without police protection beyond that afforded by a few feeble watchmen,

the sorely-tried and often nearly useless “Charlies.” The administration

of justice was defective; the justices had not sufficient powers; they

were frequently “as regardless of the law as ignorant of it,”[149] or

else were defied by pettifoggers and people with money in their pockets.

“A mob of chairmen or servants, or a gang of thieves, are almost too big

for the civil authority to repress;”[150] and the civil power generally,

according to Fielding, was in a lethargic state. Yet private enterprise

had sought for some time past to second the efforts of the State, and

various societies for the reformation of manners laboured hard, but

scarcely with marked success, to reduce crime. The first of these

societies originated in the previous century by six private gentlemen,

whose hearts were moved by the dismal and desperate state of the country

“to engage in the difficult and dangerous enterprise;” and it was soon

strengthened by the addition of “persons of eminency in the law, members

of Parliament, justices of the peace, and considerable citizens of

London of known abilities and great integrity.” There was a second

society of about fifty persons, tradesmen, and others; and a third

society of constables, who met to consider how they might best discharge

their oaths; a fourth to give information; while other bodies of

householders and officers assisted in the great work. These in one year,

that of 1724, had prosecuted 2723 persons, and in the thirty-three years

preceding 89,393; while in the same period they had given away 400,000

good books. However well meant and well directed were these efforts, it

is to be feared that they were of little avail in stemming the torrent

of crime which long continued to deluge the country, and which has far

from abated even now.

The character of offences perpetrated will best be understood by passing

from the general to the particular, and briefly indicating the salient

points of a certain number of typical cases, all of which were in some

way or other connected with Newgate. Crime was confined to no one class;

while the lowest robbed with brutal violence, members of the highest

stabbed and murdered each other on flimsy pretences, or found funds for

debauchery in systematic and cleverly contrived frauds. Life was held

very cheap in those days. Every one with any pretensions carried a

sword, and appealed to it on the slightest excuse or

[Illustration]

provocation. Murderous duels and affrays were of constant occurrence.

So-called affairs of honour could only be washed out in blood. Sometimes

it was a causeless quarrel in a club or coffee-house ending in a fatal

encounter. Richard Savage the poet was tried for his life for a murder

of this kind. In company with two friends, all three of them being the

worse for drink, he forced his way into a private room in Robinson’s

coffee-house, near Charing Cross, occupied by another party carousing.

One of Savage’s friends kicked down the table without provocation. “What

do you mean by that?” cried one side. “What do _you_ mean?” cried the

other. Swords were drawn, and a fight ensued. Savage, who found himself

in front of one Sinclair, made several thrusts at his opponent, and ran

him through the body. Lights were put out, and Savage tried to escape,

but was captured in a back court. He and his associates were committed

first to the gatehouse and thence to Newgate. Three weeks later they

were arraigned at the Old Bailey, found guilty of murder, and cast for

death.[151] The king’s pardon was, however, obtained for Savage through

the intercession of influential friends, but contrary, it is said, to

the expressed wish of his mother. Savage was the illegitimate child of

the Countess of Macclesfield, the fruit of a guilty intrigue with

Captain Richard Savage, afterwards Earl Rivers. Lady Macclesfield was

divorced, and subsequently married Lord Rivers; but she conceived a

violent hatred for the child, and only consented to settle an annuity of

£50 upon him when grown to man’s estate, under threat of exposure in the

first publication of Savage’s poems. Savage, after his release from

Newgate, retired into Wales, but he continued in very distressed

circumstances, and being arrested for debt, lingered out the remainder

of his days in Bristol Gaol.

The case of Major Oneby is still more typical of the times. He was a

military officer who had served in Marlbro’s wars, and not without

distinction, although enjoying an evil reputation as a duellist. When

the army lay in winter quarters at Bruges, he had been “out,” and had

killed his man; again in Jamaica he had wounded an adversary who

presently died. After the peace of Utrecht Major Oneby was placed on

half pay, and to eke out his narrow means he became a professional

gambler, being seldom without cards and dice in his pocket. He was soon

known as a swaggerer and a bully, with whom it was wisest not to

quarrel. One night, however, he was at play in the Castle Tavern in

Drury Lane, when a Mr. Gower and he fell out about a bet. Oneby threw a

decanter at Gower, and Gower returned the fire with a glass. Swords were

drawn, but at the interposition of others put up again. Gower was for

making peace, but Oneby sullenly swore he would have the other’s blood.

When the party broke up he called Gower into another room and shut the

door. A clashing of swords was heard within, the waiter broke open the

door, and the company rushed in to find Oneby holding up Gower with his

left hand, having his sword in his right. Blood was seen streaming

through Gower’s waistcoat, and his sword lay upon the floor. Some one

said to Oneby, “You have killed him;” but the Major replied, “No, I

might have done it if I would, but I have only frightened him,” adding,

that if he had killed him in the heat of passion the law would have been

on his side. But his unfortunate adversary did actually die of his wound

the following day, whereupon Major Oneby was apprehended and locked up

in Newgate. He was tried the following month at the Old Bailey, but the

jury could not decide as to the exact measure of the Major’s guilt,

except that it was clear he had given the first provocation, while it

was not denied he had killed the deceased.

A special verdict was agreed to, and the case with its various points

referred to the twelve judges. The prisoner, who had hoped to escape

with a conviction for manslaughter, was remanded to Newgate, and

remained there in the State side without judgment for the space of two

years. Becoming impatient, he prayed the Court of King’s Bench that

counsel might be heard in his case, and he was accordingly brought into

Court before the Lord Chief Justice Raymond, when his counsel and those

for the Crown were fully heard. The Judge reserved his judgment till he

had consulted his eleven brethren; but the Major, elated at the

ingenious arguments of his lawyer, fully counted upon speedy release. On

his way back to gaol he entertained his friends at a handsome dinner

given at the Crown and Anchor Tavern.[152] He continued to carouse and

live high in Newgate for several months more, little doubting the result

of the Judges’ conference. They met after considerable delay in

Sergeant’s Inn Hall, counsel was heard on both sides, and the pleadings

lasted a whole day. A friend called in the evening, and told him when he

was making merry over a bowl of punch that eleven of the Judges had

decided against him. This greatly alarmed him; next day the keeper of

Newgate (Mr. Akerman) came to put irons on him, unless he was prepared

to pay for a special keeper to occupy the same room. Oneby was

indignant, but helpless. He felt the ground slipping from under his

feet, and he was almost prepared for the judgment delivered in open

court that he had been guilty of murder, his threat that he would have

Gower’s blood having had great weight in his disfavour.

Oneby spent the days before execution in fruitless efforts to get

relations and friends to use their influence in obtaining him a pardon.

But to the first he was so overbearing that they would not visit him in

Newgate, and the latter, if he had any, would not stir a finger to help

him. His last moments seem to have been spent between laughing at the

broad jokes of his personal gaoler, who now never left him, one John

Hooper, afterwards public executioner,[153] and fits of rage against

those who had deserted him in his extremity. He was further exasperated

by a letter from an undertaker in Drury Lane, who, having heard that the

Major was to die on the following Monday, promised to perform the

funeral “as cheap and in as decent a manner as any man alive.” Another

cause of annoyance was the publication of a broad sheet, entitled ‘The

Weight of Blood, or the Case of Major John Oneby,’ the writer of which

had visited the prisoner, ostensibly to offer to suppress the

publication, but really as an “interviewer” to obtain some additional

facts for his catch-penny pamphlet. The Major was so indignant that he

laid a trap for the author by inviting him to revisit Newgate, promising

himself the pleasure of thrashing him when he appeared, but the man

declined to be caught. On the Saturday night before execution Oneby,

learning that a petition had been presented and rejected, prepared to

die. He slept soundly till four in the morning, then calling for a glass

of brandy and writing materials, he wrote his will. It was brief, and to

the following effect:

“Cousin Turvill, give Mr. Akerman, for the turnkey below stairs, half a

guinea, and Jack Hooper who waits in my room five shillings. The poor

devils have had a great deal of trouble with me since I have been here.”

After this he begged to be left to sleep; but a friend called about

seven, the Major cried feebly to his servant, “Philip, who is that?” and

it was found that he was bleeding to death from a deep gash in his

wrist. He was dead before a surgeon could be called in.

In these disastrous affrays both antagonists were armed. But reckless

roysterers and swaggering bobadils were easily provoked, and they did

not hesitate, in a moment of mad passion, to use their swords upon

defenceless men. Bailiffs and the lesser officers of justice were

especially obnoxious to these high-tempered bloods. I read in

‘Luttrell,’ under date Feb. 1698, “Captain Dancy of the Guards killed a

bailiff in Exeter Street, and is committed to Newgate.” Again in 1705,

“Captain Carlton, formerly a Justice of the Peace for Middlesex, is

committed to Newgate for running a Marshal’s man through the body who

endeavoured to arrest him on the parade by the Horse Guards in St.

James’ Park, of which wound it is thought the man will die.” I can find

no mention of the fate which overtook these murderers; but the

‘Calendars’ contain a detailed account of another murder of much the

same kind, that perpetrated by the Marquis de Paleoti upon his servant,

John Niccolo, otherwise John the Italian, in 1718. The Marquis had come

to England to visit his sister, who had married the Duke of Shrewsbury

in Rome, and had launched out into a career of wild extravagance. The

Duchess had paid his debts several times, but at length declined to

assist him further. He was arrested and imprisoned, but his sister

privately procured his discharge. After his enlargement, being without

funds, the Marquis sent Niccolo to borrow what he could. But “the

servant, having met with frequent denials, declined going, at which the

Marquis drew his sword and killed him on the spot.”[154] The Marquis

seems to have hoped to have found sanctuary at the Bishop of

Salisbury’s, to whose house he repaired as soon as Niccolo’s body was

found. But he was arrested there after having behaved so rudely, that

his sword, all bloody with gore, had to be taken from him, and he was

conveyed to Newgate. His defence was weak, his guilt clear, and much to

his surprise, he was sentenced to be hanged. He declared that it was

disgraceful “to put a nobleman to death like a common malefactor for

killing a servant;” but his plea availed little, and he suffered at

Tyburn five weeks after the murder. Forty years later an English

nobleman, Earl Ferrers, paid the same extreme penalty for murdering his

steward. His lordship was tried by his peers, and after sentence until

his execution was lodged in the Tower, and not in Newgate. His case is

sufficiently well known, and has already been briefly referred to.

Another aristocratic miscreant, whose crimes only fell short of murder,

was Colonel Francis Charteris. Well born, well educated, well introduced

into life, he joined the army under Marlborough in the Low Countries as

a cornet of horse, and soon became noted as a bold and dexterous

gambler. His greed and rapacity were unbounded; he lent money at

usurious rates to those whom he had already despoiled of large sums by

foul play, and having thus ruined many of his brother officers, he was

brought to trial, found guilty of disgraceful conduct, and sentenced by

Court Martial to be cashiered. On his way back to Scotland, by falsely

swearing he had been robbed at an inn, he swindled the landlord out of a

large sum of money as an indemnity, and does not seem to have been

called to account for his fraud. In spite of his antecedents, Charteris

obtained a new commission through powerful friends, and was soon

advanced to the grade of Colonel. Moving in the best society, he

extended his gambling operations, and nearly robbed the Duchess of

Queensbury of £3000 by placing her near a mirror, so that he could see

all her cards. Escaping punishment for this he continued his

depredations till he acquired a considerable fortune and several landed

estates. Fate overtook him at last, and he became the victim of his own

profligacy. Long notorious as an unprincipled and systematic seducer, by

means of stratagems and bribes he effected the ruin of numbers, but was

at length arrested on a charge of criminal assault. He lay in Newgate on

the State side, lightly ironed, and enjoying the best of the prison

until the trial at the Old Bailey in Feb. 1730. He was convicted and

sentenced to die, but through the strenuous exertions of his

son-in-law, the Earl of Wemyss, obtained the king’s pardon. He died two

years later, miserably, in Edinburgh, whither he had retired after his

release. He was long remembered with obloquy. Dr. Arbuthnot, who wrote

his epitaph, has best depicted his detestable character, as a villain,

“who with an inflexible constancy and inimitable impunity of life

persisted, in spite of age and infirmity, in the practice of every human

vice except prodigality and hypocrisy, his insatiable avarice exempting

him from the first, and his matchless impudence from the latter, ... and

who, having done every day of his life something worthy of a gibbet, was

once condemned to one for what he had not done.” Dr. Arbuthnot appears

from this to have dissented from the verdict of the jury by which

Charteris was tried.

In times of such general corruption it was not strange that a deplorable

laxity of morals should prevail as regards trusts, whether public or

private. Even a Lord Chancellor was found guilty of venal practices--the

sale of offices, and the misappropriation of funds lodged in the

Chancery Court. This was the twelfth Earl of Macclesfield,[155] who

sought thus dishonestly to mend his fortunes, impaired, it was said, by

the South Sea Bubble speculations. He was tried before his peers, found

guilty, and declared for ever incapable of sitting in Parliament, or of

holding any office under the Crown; and further sentenced to a fine of

£30,000 with imprisonment in the Tower until it was paid. Lord

Macclesfield promptly paid his fine, which was but a small part of the

money he had amassed by his speculations, and was discharged. “To the

disgrace of the times in which he lived,” says the biographer of Lord

Hardwicke,[156] “the infamy with which he had been thus covered debarred

him neither from the favour of the great nor even from that of his

sovereign.”

Various cases of embezzlement by public officials previous to this are

mentioned by Luttrell. Frauds upon the Exchequer, and upon persons

holding Government annuities, were not infrequent. The first entry in

Luttrell is dated 1697, May, and is to the effect that “Mr. Marriott, an

underteller in the Exchequer, arrested for altering an Exchequer bill

for £10 to £100, pleaded innocency, but is sent to Newgate”; others were

implicated, and a proclamation was issued offering a reward for the

apprehension of Domingo Autumes, a Portuguese, Robert Marriott, and

another for counterfeiting Exchequer bills. A little later another

teller, Mr. Darby, is sent to Newgate on a similar charge, and in that

prison Mr. Marriott “accuses John Knight, Esq., M.P., treasurer of

customs, who is displaced.” Marriott’s confession follows: “He met Mr.

Burton and Mr. Knight at Somerset House, where they arranged to get

twenty per cent, by making Exchequer bills specie bills; they offered

Marriott £500 a year to take all upon himself if discovered. It is

thought greater people are in it to destroy the credit of the nation.”

Following this confession, bills were brought into the House of Commons

charging Burton, Knight, and Duncombe with embezzlement, but “blanks are

left for the House to insert the punishment, which is to be either fine,

imprisonment, or loss of estates.” Knight was found guilty of endorsing

Exchequer bills falsely, but not of getting money thereby. Burton was

found guilty; Duncombe’s name is not mentioned, and Marriott was

discharged. But this does not end the business. In the May following

“Mr. Ellers, master of an annuity office in the Exchequer, was committed

to Newgate for forging people’s hands to their orders, and receiving a

considerable sum of money thereon.” Again in October, “Bellingham, an

old offender, was convicted of felony in forging Exchequer bills; and a

Mrs. Butler, also for forging a bond of £20,000, payable by the

executors of Sir Robert Clayton six years after his death.” Later on

(1708) I find an entry in Luttrell that Justice Dyot, who was a

commissioner of the Stamp-office, was committed to Newgate for

counterfeiting stamps, which others whom he informed against

distributed. Of the same character as the foregoing was the offence of

Mr. Lemon, a clerk in the Pell office of the Exchequer, who received

£300 in the name of a gentlewoman deceased, and kept it, for which he

was turned out of his place. Other unfaithful public servants were to be

found in other departments. Robert Lowther, Esq., was taken into

custody on the 25th October, 1721, by order of the Privy Council, for

his tyrannical and corrupt administration when Governor of the Island of

Barbadoes. Twenty years later the House of Commons fly at still higher

game, and commit the Solicitor of the Treasury to Newgate for refusing

to answer questions put to him by the Secret Committee which sat to

inquire into Sir Robert Walpole’s administration. This official had been

often charged with the Prime Minister’s secret disbursements, and he was

accused of being recklessly profuse.

Returning to meaner and more commonplace offenders, I find in the

records full details of all manner of crimes. Murders the most atrocious

and bloodthirsty, robberies executed with great ingenuity and boldness

by both sexes, remarkable instances of swindling and successful frauds,

early cases of forgery, coining carried out with extensive

ramifications, piracies upon the high seas, long practised with strange

immunity from reprisals. Perhaps the most revolting murder ever

perpetrated, not excepting those of later date, was that in which

Catherine Hayes assisted. The victim was her husband, an unoffending,

industrious man, whose life she made miserable, boasting once indeed

that she would think it no more sin to murder him than to kill a dog.

After a violent quarrel between them she persuaded a man who lodged with

them, named Billings, and who was either her lover or her illegitimate

son, to join her in an attempt upon Hayes. A new lodger, Wood,

arriving, it was necessary to make him a party to the plot, but he long

resisted Mrs. Hayes’ specious arguments, till she clenched them by

declaring that Hayes was an atheist and a murderer, whom it could be no

crime to kill, moreover that at his death she would become possessed of

£1500, which she would hand over to Wood. Wood at last yielded, and

after some discussion it was decided to do the dreadful deed while Hayes

was in his cups. After a long drinking bout, in which Hayes drank wine,

probably drugged, and the rest beer, the victim dragged himself to bed

and fell on it in a stupor. Billings now went in, and with a hatchet

struck Hayes a violent blow on the head and fractured his skull; then

Wood gave the poor wretch, as he was not quite dead, two other more

blows and finished him. The next job was to dispose of the murdered

man’s remains. To evade identification Catherine Hayes suggested that

the head should be cut off, which Wood effected with his pocket-knife.

She then proposed to boil it, but this was over-ruled, and the head was

disposed of by the men, who threw it into the Thames from a wharf near

the Horseferry[157] at Westminster. They hoped that the damning evidence

would be carried off by the next tide, but it remained floating near

shore, and was picked up next day by a watchman, and handed over to the

parish officers, by whom, when washed and the hair combed, it was placed

on the top of a pole in the churchyard of St. Margaret’s, Westminster.

Having got rid of the head, the murderers next dealt with the body,

which they dismembered, and packed the parts into a box. This was

conveyed to Marylebone, where the pieces were taken out, wrapped in an

old blanket, and sunk in a pond.

Meanwhile the exposed head had been viewed by curious crowds, and at

last a Mr. Bennet, an organ-builder, saw a resemblance to the face of

Hayes, with whom he had been acquainted; another person, a journeyman

tailor, also recognized it, and inquiries were made of Catherine as to

her husband. At first she threw people off the scent by confessing that

Hayes had killed a man and absconded, but being questioned by several

she told a different story to each, and presently suspicion fell upon

her. As it had come out that Billings and Wood had been drinking with

Hayes the last time he was seen, they were included in the warrant,

which was now issued for the apprehension of the murderers. The woman

was arrested by Mr. Justice Lambert in person, who had “procured the

assistance of two officers of the Life Guards,” and Billings with her.

One was committed to the Bridewell, Tothill Fields, the other to the

Gatehouse. Catherine’s conduct when brought into the presence of her

murdered husband’s head almost passes belief. Taking the glass in which

it had been preserved into her arms, she cried, “It is my dear husband’s

head,” and shed tears as she embraced it. The surgeon having taken the

head out of the case, she kissed it rapturously, and begged to be

indulged with a lock of his hair. Next day the trunk and remains of the

corpse were discovered at Marylebone without the head, and the justices,

nearly satisfied as to the guilt of Catherine Hayes, committed her to

Newgate. Wood was soon after captured, and on hearing that the body had

been found, confessed the whole crime. Billings shortly did the same;

but Mrs. Hayes obstinately refused to admit her guilt. This atrocious

creature was for the moment the centre of interest: numbers visited her

in Newgate, and sought to learn her reasons for committing so dreadful a

crime; but she gave different and evasive answers to all.

At her trial she pleaded hard to be exempted from the penalty of petty

treason,[158] which was at that time burning, alleging that she was not

guilty of striking the fatal blow. She was told the law must take its

course. Billings and Wood hoped they might not be hung in chains, but

received no answer. Wood actually died in prison before execution;

Billings suffered at Tyburn, and was hung in chains near the pond in

Marylebone. Mrs. Hayes tried to destroy herself, but failed, and was

literally burnt alive.[159] The fire reaching the hands of the hangman,

he let go the rope by which she was to have been strangled, and the

flames slowly consumed her, as she pushed the blazing faggots from her,

and rent the air with her agonized cries. Hers, which took place on 9th

May, 1726, was not the last execution of its kind. In November, 1750,

Amy Hutchinson was burnt at Ely, after a conviction of petty treason,

having poisoned a husband newly married, whom she had taken to spite a

truant lover. In 1767, again, Ann Sowerly underwent the same awful

sentence at York. She also had poisoned her husband. Last of all, on the

10th March, 1788, a woman was burnt before the debtors’ door of Newgate.

Having been tied to a stake and seated on a stool, the stool was

withdrawn and she was strangled. After that she was burnt. Her offence

was coining. In the following year an Act was passed (30 Geo. III., cap.

48) which abolished this cruel custom of burning women for petty

treason.

Sarah Malcolm was another female monster, a wholesale murderess, whose

case stands out as one of peculiar atrocity even in those bloodthirsty

times. She was employed as a laundress in the Temple, where she waited

on several gentlemen, and had also access in her capacity of charwoman

to the chambers occupied by an aged lady named Mrs. Duncombe.[160]

Sarah’s cupidity was excited by the chance sight of her mistress’s

hoarded wealth, both in silver plate and broad coins, and she resolved

to become possessed of it, hoping when enriched to gain a young man of

her acquaintance named Alexander as her husband. Mrs. Duncombe had two

other servants, Elizabeth Harrison, also aged, and a young maid named

Ann Price, who resided with her in the Temple. One day (Feb. 2, 1733) a

friend coming to call upon Mrs. Duncombe was unable to gain admittance.

After some delay the rooms were broken into, and their three occupants

were found barbarously murdered, the girl Price in the first room, with

her throat cut from ear to ear, her hair loose, hanging over her eyes,

and her hands clenched; in the next lay Elizabeth Harrison on a press

bed, strangled; and last of all, old Mrs. Duncombe, also lying across

her bed, quite dead. The strong box had been broken open and rifled.

That same night one of the barristers, returning to his chambers late,

found Sarah Malcolm there kindling a fire, and after remarking upon her

appearance at that strange hour, bade her begone, saying, that no person

acquainted with Mrs. Duncombe should be in his chambers till the

murderer was discovered. Before leaving she confessed to having stolen

two of his waistcoats, whereupon he called the watch and gave her into

custody. After her departure, assisted by a friend, the barrister made a

thorough search of his rooms, and in a cupboard came upon a lot of linen

stained with blood, also a silver tankard with blood upon the handle.

The watchmen had suffered Sarah to go at large, but she was forthwith

rearrested; on searching her, a green silk purse containing twenty-one

counters was found upon her, and she was committed to Newgate. There, on

arrival, she sought to hire the best accommodation, offering two or

three guineas for a room upon the Master Debtors’ side. Roger Johnston,

a turnkey, upon this searched her, and discovered “concealed under her

hair,” no doubt in a species of a chignon, “a bag containing twenty

moidores, eighteen guineas, and a number of other broad pieces.” This

money she confessed had come from Mrs. Duncombe; but she stoutly denied

all complicity with the murder, or that she had done more than contrive

the robbery. She charged two brothers, named Alexander, one of whom she

desired to marry, and a woman, Mary Tracy, with the greater crime. Upon

her information they were arrested and confronted with her. She

persisted in this line of defence at her trial, but the circumstantial

evidence against her was so strong that the jury at once found her

guilty. She herself had but little hope of escape, and had been heard to

cry out on her first commitment, “I am a dead woman.” She was duly

executed at Tyburn. The Alexanders and Tracy were discharged.

I have specially instanced these foul murders as exhibiting

circumstances of atrocity rarely equalled in the records of crime.

Catherine Hayes and Sarah Malcolm were unsexed desperadoes, whose

misdeeds throw into the shade those of the Mannings and Kate Websters

of later times. But women had no monopoly of assassination, in those

days when life was held so cheap. Male murderers were still more

numerous, and also more pitiless and bloodthirsty. The calendars are

replete with homicides, and to refer to them in anything like detail

would both weary and disgust the reader. I shall do no more therefore

than briefly indicate a certain number of the more prominent cases

remarkable either from the position of the criminals, the ties by which

they were bound to their victims, or the horrible character of the

crime.

The hangman figures among the murderers of this epoch. John Price, who

filled the office in 1718, and who rejoiced in the usual official

soubriquet of “Jack Ketch,” was a scoundrel rendered still more callous

and cruel by his dreadful calling. He had begun life well, as an

apprentice, but he absconded, and entering the navy, “served with credit

on board different king’s ships for eighteen years.” On his discharge,

seeking employment, he obtained the situation of public executioner. He

might have lived decently on the hangman’s wages and perquisites, but he

was a spendthrift, who soon became acquainted with the interiors of the

debtors’ prisons for Middlesex. Once he was arrested on his way back

from Tyburn after a good day’s work, having in his possession, besides

fees, the complete suits of three men who had just been executed. He

gave up all this to liquidate the debt, but the value being

insufficient, he

[Illustration: ARRESTING THE HANGMAN ON A CHARGE OF MURDER ON HIS WAY TO

TYBURN.]

was lodged in the Marshalsea. When released, in due course he returned

to his old employment, but was soon arrested again, and on a serious

charge--that of a murderous assault upon a poor woman who sold

gingerbread through the streets. He had attempted to outrage her, and

maddened by her resistance, had ill-used her shamefully. “He beat her so

cruelly,” the account says, “that streams of blood issued from her eyes

and mouth; he broke one of her arms, knocked out some of her teeth,

bruised her head in a most shameful manner, and forced one of her eyes

from the socket.”[161] One account says that he was taken red-handed

close to the scene of his guilt; another, the more probable, that he was

arrested on his way to Tyburn with a convict for the gallows. In any

case his unfortunate victim had just life left in her to bear testimony

against him. Price was committed to Newgate, and tried for his life. His

defence was, that in crossing Moorfields he found something lying in his

way, which he kicked and found to be the body of a woman. He lifted her

up, but she could not stand on her legs. The evidence of others was too

clear, and the jury did not hesitate to convict. After sentence he

abandoned himself to drink, and obstinately refused to confess. But on

the day before his execution he acknowledged that he had committed the

crime while in a state of intoxication. He was hanged in Bunhill Fields,

and his body afterwards exhibited in chains in Holloway near the scene

of the murder.

Wife-murder was of common occurrence in these reckless times. The

disgraceful state of the marriage laws, and the facility with which the

matrimonial knot could be tied, often tempted unscrupulous people to

commit bigamy.[162] Louis Houssart was of French extraction, settled in

England, who married Ann Rondeau at the French church in Spitalfields.

After about three years “he left his wife with disgust,” and going into

the city, passed himself off as a single man. Becoming acquainted with a

Mrs. Hern, he presently married her. He had not been long married before

his new wife taxed him with having another wife. He swore it was false,

and offered to take the sacrament upon it. She appeared satisfied, and

begged him to clear his reputation. “Do not be uneasy,” he said; “in a

little time I will make you sensible I have no other wife.” He now

resolved to make away with the first Mrs. Louis Houssart, otherwise Ann

Rondeau, and reopened communications with her. Finding her in

ill-health, one day he brought her “a medicine which had the appearance

of conserve of roses, which threw her into such severe convulsive fits

that her life was despaired of for some hours; but at length she

recovered.” This attempt having failed, he tried a simpler plan. Dressed

in a white coat, with sword and cane, he went one evening to the end of

Swan Alley, where his wife lived with her mother, and finding a boy,

gave him a penny to go and tell Mrs. Rondeau that a gentleman wanted to

speak to her in a neighbouring public-house. When she left the house

Houssart went in, found his wife alone, and cut her throat with a razor.

“Thus murdered she was found by her mother on her return, after

inquiring in vain for the gentleman who was said to be waiting for her.”

Suspicion fell on Houssart, who was arrested and tried, but for want of

the boy’s evidence acquitted of the murder. But he was detained in

Newgate to take his trial for bigamy. While waiting sentence the boy, a

lad of thirteen, who knew of the murder and arrest, and who thought he

would be hanged if he confessed that he had carried the message to Mrs.

Rondeau, came forward to give evidence. He was taken to Newgate into a

room, and identified Houssart at once among seven or eight others. The

brother of the deceased, Solomon Rondeau, as heir, now lodged an appeal,

in the name of John Doe and Richard Roe, against Houssart, who was

eventually again brought to trial. Various pleas were put forward by the

defence in bar of further proceedings, among others that there was no

such persons as John Doe and Richard Roe, but this plea, with the rest,

was overruled, the fact being sworn to that there was a John Doe in

Middlesex, a weaver, also a Richard Roe, who was a soldier, and the

trial went on. The boy’s evidence was very plain. He remembered Houssart

distinctly, had seen him by the light of a lantern at a butcher’s shop;

he wore a whitish coat. The boy also recognized Mrs. Rondeau as the

woman to whom he gave the message. Others swore to the white coat which

Houssart had on; but the most damning evidence was that of a friend whom

he had summoned to see him in Newgate, and whom he asked to swear that

they had been drinking together in Newgate Street at the time the murder

was committed. The prisoner, however, owned that he did give the boy a

penny to call the old woman out, and that he then went in and gave his

wife “a touch with the razor, but did not think of killing her.”

Houssart offered this witness a new shirt, a new suit of clothes, and

twenty guineas to swear for him. The prisoner was found guilty and

hanged at the end of Swan yard in Shoreditch, on Dec. 7, 1724.

Vincent Davis was another miscreant who murdered his wife, under much

the same conditions. He had long barbarously ill-used her; he kept a

small walking-cane on purpose to beat her with, and at last so

frightened her by his threats to kill her that she ran away from him.

She returned one night, but finding that he had put an open knife by the

bedside, she placed herself under the protection of the landlady, who

advised her to swear the peace against him and get him imprisoned. Next

day the brutal husband drove her out of the house, declaring she had no

right to be in his company, as he was married to “Little Jenny.” But she

implored him to be friends, and having followed him to an ale-house

seeking reconciliation, he so slashed her fingers with a knife that she

came back with bleeding hands. That same night, when his wife met him on

his return home, he ordered her to light him to his room, then drawing

his knife, stabbed her in the breast. The poor woman bled to death in

half-an-hour. Davis after the deed was done was seized with contrition,

and when arrested and on his way to Newgate, he told the peace officer

that he had killed the best wife in the world. “I know I shall be

hanged,” he added; “but for God’s sake don’t let me be anatomized.” This

man is said to have assumed an air of bravado while he lay under

sentence of death, but his courage deserted him as the time for

execution approached. He had such a dread of falling into the hands of

the surgeons that he wrote to several friends begging them to rescue his

body if any attempt should be made at the gallows to remove it. He was

hanged at Tyburn on the 30th April, 1825; but the calendar does not

state what happened to his corpse.

George Price, who murdered his wife in 1738, had an analogous motive: he

wished to release himself from one tie in order to enter into another.

He was in service in Kent, his wife lived in lodgings in Highgate, and

their family increased far more rapidly than he liked. Having for some

time paid his addresses to a widow in Kent, he at length resolved to

remove the only obstacle to a second and more profitable marriage. With

this infernal object in view he went to Highgate, and told his wife that

he had secured a place for her at Putney, to which he would himself

drive her in a chaise. She was warned by some of his fellow-servants

against trusting herself alone with him, but “she said she had no fear

of him, as he had treated her with unusual kindness.” They drove off

towards Hounslow. On the way she begged him to stop while she bought

some snuff, but he refused, laughingly declaring she would never want to

use snuff again. When they reached Hounslow Heath it was nearly ten

o’clock at night. The time and place being suitable, he suddenly threw

his whip-lash round his wife’s throat and drew it tight. As the cord was

not quite in the right place he coolly altered it, and disregarding her

entreaties, he again tightened the rope; then finding she was not quite

dead, pulled it with such violence that it broke, but not till the

murder was accomplished. Having stripped the body, he disfigured it, as

he hoped, beyond recognition, then left it under a gibbet on which some

malefactors were hanging in chains, and returned to London with his

wife’s clothes, part of which he dropped about the street, and part he

gave back to her landlady, to whom they belonged. Being seen about, so

many inquiries were made for his wife that he feared detection, and fled

to Portsmouth.

Next day he heard the murder cried through the streets by the bellman,

and found that it was his own case, with an exact description of his

appearance. He at once jumped out of the window--the inn was by the

waterside--and swam to another part of the shore. Thence he made his way

into the country and got chance jobs as a farm-labourer. At Oxford he

found that he was advertised in the local paper, and he again decamped,

travelling on and on till he reached his own home in Wales. His father

gave him refuge for a couple of days, but a report of his being in the

house got about, and he had to fly to Gloucester, where he became an

ostler at an inn. In Gloucester he was again recognized as the man who

had killed his wife on Hounslow Heath by a gentleman who promised not to

betray him, but warned him that he would be taken into custody if he

remained in the town. “Agitated by the momentary fear of detection,

Price knew not how to act,” and he resolved at length to go back to

London and give himself up to justice. He called first on his former

master, was apprehended, and committed to Newgate. He took his trial in

due course, and was, on “the strongest circumstantial evidence ever

adduced against an offender,” cast for death, but fell a victim to the

gaol-fever in October, 1738.

I will mention a couple more cases of wife-murder, and leave this

section of criminals. The second marriage of Edward Joines, contracted

at the Fleet, was not a happy one. His wife had a violent temper, and

they continually disagreed. A daughter of hers lived with them, and the

two women contrived to aggravate and annoy Joines to desperation. He

retaliated by brutal treatment. On one occasion he pushed his wife into

the grate and scorched her arm; frequently he drove her out of doors in

scanty clothing at late hours and in inclement weather. One day his

anger was roused by seeing a pot of ale going into his house for his

wife, who was laid up with a fractured arm. He rushed in, and after

striking the tankard out of her hand, seized her by the bad arm, twisted

it till the bone again separated. The fracture was reset, but

mortification rapidly supervened, and she died within ten days. The

coroner’s jury in consequence brought in a verdict of wilful murder

against Joines. He was in due course convicted of murder, although it

was difficult to persuade him that he had had a fair trial, seeing that

his wife did not succumb immediately to the cruel injury she had

received at his hands. He was executed in December, 1739.

The second wife of John Williamson received still more terribly inhuman

treatment at his hands. This ruffian within three weeks after his

marriage drenched his wife with cold water, and having otherwise

ill-used her, inflicted the following diabolical torture. Having

fastened her hands behind with handcuffs, he lifted her off the ground,

with her toes barely touching it, by a rope run through a staple. She

was locked up in a closet, and close by was placed a small piece of

bread and butter, which she could just touch with her lips. She was

allowed a small portion of water daily. Sometimes a girl who was in the

house gave the poor creature a stool to rest her feet on, but Williamson

discovered it, and was so furious that he nearly beat the girl to death.

The wretched woman was kept in this awful plight for more than a month

at a time, and at length succumbed. She died raving mad. Williamson

when arrested made a frivolous defence, declaring his wife provoked him

by treading on a kitten and killing it. He was found guilty and executed

in 1760.

The victim of Theodore Gardelle was a woman although not his wife. This

murder much exercised the public mind at the time. The perpetrator was a

foreigner, a hitherto inoffensive miniature painter, who was goaded into

such a frenzy by the intolerable irritation of a woman’s tongue, that he

first struck and then despatched her. He lodged with a Mrs. King in

Leicester Fields, whose miniature he had painted, but not very

successfully. She had desired to have the portrait particularly good,

and in her disappointment gave the unfortunate painter no peace. One

morning she came into the parlour which he used, and which was _en

suite_ with her bed-room, and immediately attacked him about the

miniature. Provoked by her insults, Gardelle told her she was a very

impertinent woman; at which she struck him a violent blow on the chest.

He pushed her from him, “rather in contempt than anger,” as he

afterwards declared, “and with no desire to hurt her;” her foot caught

in the floor-cloth, she fell backward, and her head came with great

force against a sharp corner of the bedstead, for Gardelle apparently

had followed her into her bed-room. The blood immediately gushed from

her mouth, and he at once ran up to assist her and express his concern;

but she pushed him away, threatening him with the consequences of his

act. He was greatly terrified at the thought of being charged with a

criminal assault; but the more he strove to pacify the more she reviled

and threatened, till at last he seized a sharp-pointed ivory comb which

lay upon her toilette-table and drove it into her throat. The blood

poured out in still greater volume, and her voice gradually grew fainter

and fainter, and she presently expired. Gardelle said afterwards he drew

the bed-clothes over her, then, horrified and overcome, fell by her side

in a swoon. When he came to himself he examined the body to see if Mrs.

King were quite dead, and in his confusion staggered against the

wainscot and hit his head so as to raise a great bump over his eye.

Gardelle now seems to have considered with himself how best he might

conceal his crime. There was only one other resident in the house, a

maid-servant, who was out on a message for him at the time of his fatal

quarrel with Mrs. King. When she returned she found the bed-room locked,

and Gardelle told her her mistress had gone into the country for the

day. Later on he paid her wages on behalf of Mrs. King and discharged

her, with the, explanation that her mistress intended to bring home a

new maid with her. Having now the house to himself, he entered the

chamber of death, and stripped the body, which he laid in the bed. He

next disposed of the blood-stained bed-clothes by putting them to soak

in a wash-tub in the back wash-house. A servant of an absent

fellow-lodger came in late and asked for Mrs. King, but Gardelle said

she had not returned, and that he meant to sit up for her and let her

into the house. Next morning he explained Mrs. King’s absence by saying

she had come late and gone off again for the day.

This went on from Wednesday to Saturday; but no suspicion of anything

wrong had as yet been conceived, and the body still lay in the same

place in the back-room. On Sunday Gardelle began to put into execution a

project for destroying the body in parts, which he disposed of by

throwing them down the sinks, or spreading in the cock-loft. On Monday

and Tuesday inquiries began to be made for Mrs. King, and Gardelle

continued to say that he expected her daily, but on Thursday the stained

bed-clothes were found in the wash-tub. Gardelle was seen coming from

the wash-house, and heard to ask what had become of the linen. This

roused suspicion for the first time. The discharged maid-servant was

hunted up, and as she declared she knew nothing of the wash-tub or its

contents, and as Mrs. King was still missing, the neighbours began to

move in the matter. Mr. Barron, an apothecary, came and questioned

Gardelle, who was so much confused in his answers that a warrant was

obtained for his arrest. Then Mrs. King’s bed-room was examined, and

that of Gardelle, now a prisoner. In both were found conclusive evidence

of foul play. By-and-by in the cock-loft and elsewhere portions of the

missing woman were discovered, and some jewellery known to be hers was

traced to Gardelle, who did not long deny his guilt. When he was in the

new prison at Clerkenwell he tried to commit suicide by taking forty

drops of opium; but it failed even to procure him sleep. After this he

swallowed halfpence to the number of twelve, hoping that the verdigrese

would kill him, but he survived after suffering great tortures. He was

removed then to Newgate for greater security, and was closely watched

till the end. After a fair trial he was convicted and cast for death.

His execution took place in the Haymarket near Panton Street, to which

he was led past Mrs. King’s house, and at which he cast one glance as he

passed. His body was hanged in chains on Hounslow Heath.

Women were as capable of fiendish cruelty as men, and displayed greater

and more diabolical ingenuity in devising torments for their victims.

Two murders typical of this class of crime may be quoted here. One was

that committed by the Meteyards, mother and daughter, upon an apprentice

girl; the other that of Elizabeth Brownrigg, also on an apprentice. The

Meteyards kept a millinery shop in Bruton Street, Berkeley Square, and

had five parish apprentices bound to them. One was a sickly girl, Anne

Taylor by name. Being unable to do as much work as her employers

desired, they continually vented their spite upon her. After enduring

great cruelty Anne Taylor absconded; she was caught, brought back to

Bruton Street, and imprisoned in a garret on bread and water; she again

escaped, and was again recaptured and cruelly beaten with a

broom-handle. Then they tied her with a rope to the door of a room so

that she could neither sit nor lie down, and she was so kept for three

successive days, but suffered to go to bed at night time. On the third

night she was so weak she could hardly creep up-stairs. On the fourth

day her fellow apprentices were brought to witness her torments as an

incentive to exertion, but were forbidden to afford her any kind of

relief. On this the last day of her torture she faltered in speech and

presently expired. The Meteyards now tried to bring their victim to with

hartshorn, but finding life was extinct, they carried the body up to the

garret and locked it in. Then four days later they enclosed it in a box,

left the garret door ajar, and spread a report through their house that

“Nanny” had once more absconded. The deceased had a sister, a fellow

apprentice, who declared she was persuaded “Nanny” was dead; whereupon

the Meteyards also murdered the sister and secreted the body. Anne’s

body remained in the garret for a couple of months, when the stench of

decomposition was so great that the murderesses feared detection, and

after chopping the corpse in pieces, they burnt parts and disposed of

others in drains and gully holes. Four years elapsed without suspicion

having been aroused, but there had been constant and violent quarrels

between mother and daughter, the former frequently beating and ill-using

the latter, who in return reviled her mother as a murderess. During this

time the daughter left her home to live with a Mr. Rooker as servant at

Ealing. Her mother followed her, and still behaved so outrageously that

the daughter, in Mr. Rooker’s presence, upbraided her with what they had

done. He became uneasy, and cross-questioned them till they confessed

the crime. Both women were arrested and tried at the Old Bailey, where

they were convicted and sentenced to death. The mother on the morning of

her execution was taken with a fit from which she never recovered, and

she was in a state of insensibility when hanged.

Elizabeth Brownrigg was the wife of a plumber who carried on business in

Flower de Luce Court, Fleet St. She practised midwifery, and received

parish apprentices, whom she took to save the expense of keeping

servants. Two girls, victims of her cruel ill-usage, ran away, but a

third, Mary Clifford, bound to her by the parish of Whitefriars,

remained to endure still worse. Her inhuman mistress repeatedly beat

her, now with a hearth-broom, now with a horse-whip or a cane. The girl

was forced to lie at nights in a coal-hole, with no bed but a sack and

some straw. She was often nearly perished with cold. Once after a long

diet of bread and water, when nearly starved to death, she rashly broke

into a cupboard in search of food and was caught in the act. Mrs.

Brownrigg, to punish her, made her strip, and while she was naked

repeatedly beat her with the butt end of a whip. Then fastening a

jack-chain around her neck she drew it as tight as possible without

strangling, and sent her back to the coal-hole with her hands tied

behind her back. Mrs. Brownrigg’s son vied with his mother in

ill-treating the apprentices, and when the mistress was tired of

horsewhipping the lad continued the savage punishment. When Mary

Clifford complained to a French lodger of the barbarity she experienced,

Mrs. Brownrigg flew at her and cut her tongue in two places with a pair

of scissors. Other apprentices were equally ill-used, and they were all

covered with wounds and bruises from the cruel flagellations they

received.

At length one of the neighbours, alarmed by the constant moaning and

groanings which issued from Brownrigg’s house, began to suspect that

“the apprentices were treated with unwarrantable severity.” It was

impossible to gain admission, but a maid looked through a skylight into

a covered yard, and saw one of the apprentices, in a shocking state of

filth and wretchedness, kept there with a pig. One of the overseers now

went and demanded Mary Clifford. Mrs. Brownrigg produced another, Mary

Mitchell, who was taken to the workhouse, but in such a pitiable state

that in removing her clothes her boddice stuck to her wounds. Mary

Mitchell having been promised that she should not be sent back to

Brownrigg’s, gave a full account of the horrid treatment she and Mary

Clifford had received. A further search was made in the Brownrigg’s

house, but without effect. At length, under threat of removal to prison,

Mrs. Brownrigg produced Clifford “from a cupboard under a beaufet in

the dining-room.” “It is impossible,” says the account, “to describe the

miserable appearance of this poor girl; nearly her whole body was

ulcerated.” Her life was evidently in imminent danger. Having been

removed to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, she died there within a few days.

The man Brownrigg was arrested, but the woman and son made their escape.

Shifting their abode from place to place, buying new disguises from time

to time at rag-fairs, eventually they took refuge in lodgings at

Wandsworth, where they were recognized by their landlord as answering

the description of the murderers of Mary Clifford, and arrested. Mrs.

Brownrigg was tried and executed; the men, acquitted of the graver

charge, were only sentenced to six months’ imprisonment. The story goes

that Hogarth, who prided himself on his skill as a physiognomist, wished

to see Mrs. Brownrigg in Newgate. The governor, Mr. Akerman, admitted

him, but at the instance of a mutual friend played a trick upon the

painter by bringing Mrs. Brownrigg before him casually, as some other

woman. Hogarth on looking at her took Akerman aside and said, “You must

have two great female miscreants in your custody, for this woman as well

as Mrs. Brownrigg is from her features capable of any cruelty and any

crime.”