Maskell and Gillam, who were farm-labourers, were passing through a
place called Rottingdean, near Preston, in the neighbourhood of
Brighton, when, on their arriving at a particular nook, much frequented
on account of its rustic beauty, called the Hole-in-the-Wall, they
fancied that they perceived that the earth had been disturbed. They
pushed away some of the mould with a stick, and observed a piece of red
printed cotton protruding, but at the time they took no particular
notice of the occurrence. On their return home, however, to their
respective families, they mentioned what they had seen, and Gillam's
wife remarked that it was possible that a child might be buried
there,--the offspring of some illicit connexion. The idea was adopted by
Gillam, and on the following morning, at six o'clock, accompanied by his
wife and some other persons, he again proceeded to the same spot, for
the purpose of making a further search and investigation. He enlarged
the opening he had made in the ground, and taking hold of the protruding
cotton, he drew nearly a yard of it out of the earth, and his wife
remarked that she was sure that it was the gown of a grown-up person.
Upon this, it was determined to convey intelligence of the transaction
to a constable, and Elphick, the officer of the village of Preston, was
summoned to their assistance. On his arrival, he recommended that the
search should be further prosecuted, and Gillam procured a spade, for
the purpose of digging round the spot. As every spadeful of earth was
removed, the suspicions of the persons assembled were more strongly
confirmed, and at length, at a distance of about eighteen inches only
from the surface, a human thigh was found,--immediately afterwards
another thigh was dug up; and then a large bundle, wrapped in a dress
made of the same description of cotton as that first seen, was produced.
The horror-stricken crowd which by this time had assembled was scarcely
surprised, on this bundle being opened, to find that it contained the
trunk of a human body; but they were still further alarmed at perceiving
that the head and arms were wanting. The body was still clothed in the
stays, chemise, and petticoats; and the gown, which had first attracted
attention, appeared to have been loosely wrapped over it, and an effort
had been made to tie it round with a cord, which presented the
appearance of a petticoat-string.
The fact of this dreadful discovery spread like wildfire through the
neighbouring village, and soon found its way to Brighton; and crowds of
persons thronged to the spot, induced as well by feelings of curiosity,
as a desire to ascertain whether they were able to identify the remains
as those of any person who might be known to them. Amongst others who
were thus impelled to the spot, was a Mrs. Bishop, the wife of a
labourer at Brighton, who speedily declared her belief that the body was
that of her sister; and the comparison of the gown with a piece of
cotton sewn into her patch-work quilt, which had been given to her by
her sister, and with which it corresponded in pattern in every
particular, convinced her that she was not mistaken in her belief.
An investigation was now immediately set on foot with a view to the
discovery of the means by which the body had been placed in the position
in which it had been found, which resulted in a conviction that the
husband of the deceased, John Holloway, a labourer employed on the Chain
Pier at Brighton, had murdered her, and had thus disposed of her
remains, in order to conceal the circumstance of her death. From the
inquiries which were made, it was elicited that the unhappy deceased was
a native of Ardingley in Sussex, and at an early period of her life had
quitted her native village for the purpose of procuring service. At the
age of twenty-five she filled a situation as household servant in a
public-house at Brighton, and there unfortunately she formed an
acquaintance with Holloway, then only nineteen years of age, which
terminated in an illicit connexion and her pregnancy. While in this
condition, the unfortunate young woman was compelled to quit her
situation, and, being driven to a state of destitution and want, she
applied to the parish-officers for relief. The result of her application
was, that Holloway was taken into custody upon a bastardy warrant, and,
at the instigation of the parish-officers, was compelled to marry Celia
Bashford, the unfortunate object of his seduction. Holloway, it appears,
was the son of a driver in the Royal Engineers, and had exhibited
considerable waywardness of disposition in his youth. He had
successively filled the occupations of a butcher's boy, a baker's boy,
and a bricklayer's labourer; and now, upon his marriage, he enlisted in
the Blockade Service. A union founded upon such a connexion was not
likely to produce much happiness to either of the contracting parties;
and the difference of age and habits tended still further to produce an
estrangement between Holloway and his wife. During the six years which
intervened between the marriage and the death of the unfortunate woman,
they scarcely lived together for two consecutive months; and at length
Holloway, having quitted the Preventive Service in the year 1829,
obtained employment on the Chain Pier, which was then in the course of
construction, and took a woman named Ann Kennard to live with him as his
wife, Celia Holloway then residing with her friends. Shortly after this,
Holloway was again taken into custody by the parish-officers, in
consequence of his leaving his wife chargeable upon the poor-rates; and
at this time an order was made by the magistrates, that he should make a
weekly allowance to her of 2_s._ Kennard, it appears, was usually
employed to convey this pittance to Mrs. Holloway, and frequent quarrels
took place between them; but Holloway also occasionally visited his
wife, and she once or twice staid with him for a few days, during
Kennard's absence. This state of things continued until about five weeks
before the discovery of the murder, at which time Mrs. Holloway was
living with a Mrs. Symonds, at No. 4, Cavendish-place North, Brighton,
expecting in about a month to be put to bed of her third child by her
husband, those which had before been born being both dead. The unhappy
woman had made the usual preparations on such occasions, and Mrs.
Symonds and her daughter had assisted her in making and washing such
baby-linen as she would require.
Holloway at this time commenced his diabolical scheme for her murder.
Calling upon her, he expressed a wish that their former animosities
should be forgotten, and that they should again live together as they
had done when they were first married. The foolish woman, who had
throughout expressed and exhibited the fondest affection for him,
listened to his proposals, and it was arranged that he should fetch her
on a certain day, to conduct her to lodgings which he had taken for her,
the locality of which, however, he did not describe. On Thursday the
14th of July, Holloway called for his wife at Mrs. Symonds'; but he
first took away her boxes, in which she had previously packed her own
clothes and her baby-linen. Mrs. Holloway expressed some apprehension
that he would not go back; but he kept his promise, and returned for her
in about an hour, and took her away, attired in a gown similar in
pattern to that in which her body was subsequently found wrapped. From
this time she was never again seen alive. We have already stated, that
it was on the 13th of August that the body of Mrs. Holloway, and the
circumstance of the murder, were discovered. We shall now proceed to
detail the occurrences which subsequently took place.
No sooner were the mutilated remains of the unfortunate deceased dug
from the ground, than an instant search was set on foot by those
present, with a view to the discovery of the remaining members of her
body. This, however, proved unavailing; but in a ditch close by, and in
an adjoining field, some portions of a box were found, bearing the marks
of bloody fingers, and also of coagulated blood, which appeared to have
oozed upon its inner surface. These portions of the box, like the gown,
were soon recognised as having belonged to Mrs. Holloway, and steps were
in consequence at once taken to secure her husband and his paramour,
Mrs. Kennard. The latter was first found, residing at a house No. 23,
High-street, Brighton, and was immediately taken into custody; and
Holloway, on the same evening, learning that inquiries had been made for
him, surrendered himself into custody.
In the mean time, the remains of the deceased woman had been conveyed to
the barn of a farm at Preston, there to await a coroner's inquest, and
surgical assistance had been called in, in order that a minute
examination of the body might be made. Mr. Hargreave and Mr. Richardson,
surgeons of Brighton, were selected to perform this duty, and their
evidence was taken at the inquest which was held on the following day
(Sunday) at the Crown and Anchor, Preston. They stated, that the body
was in a state of considerable decomposition, and that they were unable
to ascertain, from any appearances which it presented, what had been the
cause of death. The legs, arms, and head appeared to have been removed
from the body with considerable nicety and skill; and, from the aspect
of the points at which the severance had been made, they were inclined
to believe that a butcher or a surgeon had performed the operation. They
were not cut off as if a saw had been employed to divide the bone, but
they had been cut from the sockets of the various bones with great
precision. They had subsequently made an internal examination of the
body of the deceased, and, from the appearances which they observed,
they believed that the deceased had arrived at a period of her
pregnancy within a short time of its completion. They were inclined to
believe that parturition had actually commenced, brought on no doubt by
alarm or over exertion, when the death of the mother terminated the life
of the child. The head of the deceased woman, it was added, was taken
off at the sixth cervical vertebra.
This evidence, together with proof of the circumstance of the deceased
having quitted her lodgings in the manner which we have described,
wearing the gown in which her body was found wrapped, and carrying the
box, the fragments of which had been discovered, and of Holloway's
frequent expressions of ill-will towards her, constituted the whole of
the testimony produced before the coroner's jury; and upon that a
verdict of "Wilful Murder against John Holloway" was returned, and he
was committed to Horsham jail to await his trial at the Assizes.
The woman Mrs. Kennard, however, as we have already stated, had been
taken into custody; and it became the duty of the magistrates to proceed
further with the investigation of the circumstances of this atrocious
case affecting her. She was brought up before the Brighton bench of
magistrates on the Monday, for the purpose of being examined; but before
any evidence was adduced, she begged to be allowed to make a statement.
She then said that she had been married to the prisoner Holloway under
the name of Goldsmith, (his mother's maiden name,) on the 16th of March,
1830, at Rye; and she assured the magistrates of her perfect innocence
of all participation in the crime charged against her. The evidence
which had been taken before the coroner was then again produced; and
other witnesses were called, whose testimony more particularly affected
the prisoner. These persons deposed, that for about three months before
the period at which the murder was supposed to have been committed, Mr.
and Mrs. Goldsmith (as the prisoner and Holloway were called) lodged at
the house, No. 7, Margaret-street, Brighton. About the time of the
murder, from Thursday the 14th to Sunday the 17th of July, they were
observed to be rather irregular, and Holloway, on the Saturday night,
was out until a very late hour. On the Friday the prisoner called at the
house of Mrs. Leaver, a neighbour, and requested that she would lend her
a wheelbarrow, but this request was not granted until the following day,
in consequence of the absence of the husband of the woman from home. On
the Saturday, however, Holloway went for the barrow himself; and on the
same night, after Mrs. Leaver had retired to bed, and at a late hour,
she heard it return to the yard at the back of her house. Subsequently
to the apprehension of the prisoner, an examination of the apartment
which she and Holloway had occupied in High-street was made, and many
articles, recognized by Mrs. Symonds as having belonged to the deceased,
were found concealed behind the drawers; while the landlady of the
house, Mrs. Thomas, stated that she had purchased various articles of
baby-linen from the prisoner, which were also identified as those which
had been prepared by the murdered woman.
This was the whole of the evidence which was produced upon this
examination; but on the next day a discovery was made of a most
important character to the case. The high constable of Brighton had
displayed the most unremitting anxiety in his exertions to discover the
head and arms of the deceased woman. Every inch of the ground in the
neighbourhood of Rottingdean had been minutely examined, under the
apprehension that they might be concealed there, but without effect; and
on Tuesday night, Mr. Folkard, as a last resource, directed that the
privies of the houses in Margaret-street should be searched. The men had
proceeded in their investigation for several hours; but when almost all
hope was destroyed, they declared that they found their progress impeded
by a solid substance, which turned out to be a human leg with the
stocking on. This discovery was immediately succeeded by the production
of the other leg similarly clothed; of the two arms, covered with the
remains of the gown found at Rottingdean on the body, and lastly of a
bed-tick containing the head of the unfortunate woman, from which almost
all the hair had been removed.
This new and important feature in the case was immediately communicated
to the magistrates, by whose directions Messrs. Hargreave and Richardson
proceeded to examine the newly-discovered remains; and the result of
their inquiry was an expression of the certainty of their being portions
of the same frame with the body which had been found near Preston.
The police during the week used every possible exertion to procure fresh
evidence, and many new and important disclosures were made; but, on the
following Saturday, all doubts which might have been entertained of the
guilt of Holloway were set at rest, by his confession of his having
committed the murder. It had been already discovered that, a few days
before the murder, he had taken a house, No. 11, North Steyne-row, or,
as it was more familiarly called, Donkey-row, in which it was supposed
the murder had been committed; and the statement which he now made of
his guilt confirmed the suspicions which had been entertained. He
informed the magistrates, in whose presence he detailed the
circumstances of his crime, that he had long contemplated depriving his
wife of life; but for three months had been unable to induce her to
accompany him out at night. At last he persuaded her that he had taken
lodgings, at which they were again to live together; and having first
removed her box and bedding, conducted her to a little house in
Donkey-row. Having arrived at the intended scene of slaughter, he shut
the door, and knocked her down; she resisted with all her strength, but
he threw himself upon her, and succeeded in strangling her. She screamed
out, but he stifled her cries; and finding her cease to struggle, he
took out his pocket-knife, and cut her throat in two places, so as to
make his bloody scheme more secure. He then considered how he should
dispose of the body, and determined upon removing it piecemeal. With
this view he separated her head from her body, and afterwards divided
her, limb from limb, at the joints. The head, arms, and legs he disposed
of in the privy, where they were found; and the trunk and thighs he
resolved to inter in Lover's-walk, a retired place which he had before
marked. For this purpose he emptied her clothes from her box, and in
their room deposited the dreadful and, as it turned out, the first
evidence of his enormous guilt. This box he conveyed in a barrow to the
place already described, where he dug a hole, and, as he thought,
effectually disguised every sign of his atrocious cruelty. Fortunately,
he omitted completely to cover the whole of the gown in which the trunk
was tied up; and thus his guilt was discovered. The box he broke to
pieces, and scattered about. In conclusion, he expressed an anxious
wish that Kennard should suffer no punishment for her supposed
implication in a crime of which, he declared, she was wholly innocent.
A gentleman who was present at the confession, describes the scene in
the following terms:--"I may truly say, that of all the awful and
distressing scenes I ever witnessed (and it has been my lot to witness
many), the confession of this wretched man far exceeded them. That he
began his statement with an air of calmness it is true, but it was what
no one who looked on him could mistake for that of indifference. Such,
indeed, as it was, it continued only through the relation of his first
acquaintance with the murdered woman, his subsequent marriage to her,
and his quarrels with her friends. When his remarks approached the scene
of the murder, his firmness altogether deserted him; long, long was it
before he could pronounce the dreadful words which recorded his guilt;
and, in the meantime, his cries, yea, almost his shrieks, for the mercy
of God upon his soul, were most horrible, most appalling. One of the
magistrates was so overcome as to be obliged to leave the room; and if
the prisoner had not been supplied with a glass of water, he would,
apparently, have fainted. We have read of the agonies of the rack, but
who shall describe the agonies of remorse? I witnessed them then, and
never, never shall I forget them--those agonies which, I may literally
say, amidst weeping and wailing, and gnashing of teeth, drove the
wretched culprit to sign his own death-warrant, by unburdening a
conscience which would not let him rest day or night."
On Monday, 22nd of August, Mrs. Kennard was again examined before the
magistrates. The discovery of the head, &c. was then proved in evidence,
and some witnesses were called with a view of showing the prisoner's
implication in the transaction of their concealment. These persons
stated that, at about the time of the murder, they saw Holloway going to
his house in Margaret-street, carrying a large bundle in a sack, and
followed by the prisoner, who appeared to be anxiously watching the
load; and that, at about the same time, but on another occasion, they
had also seen them together, Holloway carrying a small tick bag, similar
to that which had been found in the privy. Other persons proved that
Holloway had rented the house in Donkey-row at 2_s._ 6_d._ per week, and
that Mrs. Kennard had been seen there with him; while a witness, named
Mary Marchant, who lived in the house next to that occupied by Holloway
in that Row, gave very remarkable testimony. She proved that, on the
night in which Holloway first went to the house, she heard some one,
after she had been in bed for some time, cough and groan in an
extraordinary manner. She remarked the circumstance to her husband, who
also heard the noise, and observed, "That poor woman must be very ill."
They, however, heard no more. On the next day the shutters of the house
were not taken down; but on Saturday she observed Holloway and the
prisoner go away from the house with a wheel-barrow, containing a box
made of wood, similar to the pieces which had been found near
Rottingdean.
The prisoner betrayed much anxiety while this witness was being
examined; and, notwithstanding the repeated advice of the magistrate to
be silent, she persisted in making a statement which surprised every one
who heard it. She declared, in the most solemn manner, that she was not
with the prisoner on the Thursday night (the night when the deceased
was inveigled from her lodgings) or on the Saturday night (the time
when it was supposed Holloway and the prisoner removed the body to
Preston from Donkey-row, in a box upon a wheel-barrow), for she was
quite positive she never stirred from her lodgings at Mr. Leaver's, in
Margaret-street, on those nights. She remembered (she said) that
Holloway went out with the barrow which he had borrowed, and he came
home to her, before ten o'clock, and said he was going a smuggling. He
asked her to let him have her gown, shawl, and bonnet, to disguise
himself; and after endeavouring to prevail upon him not to do that which
was so dangerous, she let him have the things. She then went to bed, as
she had no others to wear. He was out till twelve o'clock that night,
and at six o'clock the next morning she found the gown, shawl, and
bonnet, in the room below.
Other witnesses were examined, whose testimony was not very material,
except as corroboratory of that which had been already received; but a
pawnbroker produced a shawl, which had been pledged with him for 1_s._
6_d._ on the 15th of July, by the prisoner, who gave her own name and
address, and which was identified as having been worn by the deceased on
the day of her quitting Mrs. Symonds's house.
This was all the evidence produced on this day; but on the following
Thursday a new discovery was made, which also excited considerable
observation. On the day in question a workman named Allen, who was
employed in an unfinished house in Trafalgar-street, on proceeding to
his work, found that a chemise, deeply stained with blood, had been
thrown into the building since he had left work on the preceding night.
The shift, on being examined, was found to bear clear and distinct marks
of blood having flowed down its centre from the top nearly to the
bottom, but there it appeared to have met with some obstruction, and,
diverging to the right and left, it had stained a spot on each side
nearly six inches wide, and had then again met below, but had then
ceased to flow any further. The garment was exhibited to Mrs. Symonds,
who had no hesitation in declaring her positive conviction that it had
belonged to the deceased; and the impossibility of either of the
prisoners having thrown it in the place where it was found, tended to a
conclusion that other persons had been engaged with them in the murder.
In consequence of the suspicions raised by this circumstance, two men,
named White, (_alias_ Jenkins), and Thomas Carver, were taken into
custody. They were proved to have occupied the house in Donkey-row after
Holloway had left it, but no other circumstance could be elicited
against them. They, however, with Mrs. Kennard, were remanded for
farther examination.
At the next inquiry before the magistrates, only one new fact was
produced in evidence against the female prisoner, which was highly
important, as it traced her to the vicinity of Lover's-walk on the night
on which the body was buried, and she was committed for trial; but the
other prisoners, White and Carver, were discharged.
In the course of the time which intervened between her committal and the
trial, Holloway made a new confession, going more into detail upon the
subject of the circumstances of the murder. As some of the facts stated
by him affected his fellow-prisoner, it was deemed advisable that she
should be present while he made his statement. The following comprises
the main details contained in this declaration:--