Murder by Candlelight
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7 “a gentleman of fortune”: The Sporting Magazine (May 1823) (London: Pittman, 1823), XII, 113.
7 “particularly neat and clean”: The Fatal Effects of Gambling Exemplified in the Murder of William Weare (London: Thomas Kelly, 1824), xi.
8 “flattered himself”: Ibid., xiv.
8 “Crœsus of the great community of gamesters”: “Crockford and Crockford’s,” in Bentley’s Miscellany (London: Richard Bentley, 1845), XVII, 142.
8 [Thurtell] advertised: Charles Mackie, Norfolk Annals (Norwich: Norfolk Chronicle, 1901) I, 190.
9 “coaxed and dandled”: Sir Walter Scott, quoted in J. G. Lockhart, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott (Paris: Baudry’s European Library, 1837–38), III, 143. Scott was alluding to Edmund Burke’s characterization of the career of the fifth Duke of Bedford.
9 “having voted, dined, drunk”: Byron, Don Juan, in The Complete Works of Lord Byron (Paris: Galignani, 1831), 615.
9 “If one could suppose”: The Creevey Papers (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1904), 422.
9–10 “Lady Londonderry”: Ibid.
10 “so naked”: The Letters of Horace Walpole (London: Richard Bentley, 1840), II, 270.
10 “a sharp, cunning, luxurious”: Charles Greville, quoted in George W. E. Russell, “Lord Beaconsfield’s Portrait-Gallery,” in Cornhill Magazine (January 1907), 30.
10 “multitudes of the squalid”: The Tatler, 29 December 1830.
10 “with the most rank”: “Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons, appointed to inquire into the Education of the Lower Orders in the Metropolis,” in The British Review (London: Hatchard, 1817), IX, 54.
10–11 “on tiptoe to pay”: Edward Gibbon Wakefield, England and America: A Comparison of the Social and Political State of Both Nations (London: Richard Bentley, 1833), I, 61. Wakefield was an adventurer who attempted to make his fortune by kidnapping an heiress, Ellen Turner of Pott Shrigley; he was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment in Newgate for his part in the Shrigley abduction.
11 “without a single shred”: Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons (London: Gale and Fenner, 1816), 451.
13 “appropriately denominated ‘hells’”: Fatal Effects of Gambling, op. cit., xxi.
13 “proprietors, or more properly”: “Gaming-Houses,” in The Westminster Review (October 1829) (London: Robert Heward et alia, 1829), XI, 321.
13 “a Select Club”: Ibid., XI, 317.
13 “as a bait”: Ibid., XI, 318.
13 “visit to the French hazard-table”: Ibid.
13 “thus allured”: Ibid.
14 “extravagant vulgar indulgence”: George Otto Trevelyan, The Early History of Charles James Fox (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1881), 42.
14 “fine full figure”: A Narrative of the Mysterious and Dreadful Murder of Mr. W. Weare (London: J. McGowan, n.d.), 90.
14 “cheap and good”: Pierce Egan, Recollections of John Thurtell (London: Knight & Lacey, 1824), 36.
15 “a good flat”: Fatal Effects of Gambling, op. cit, xiv.
15 “Swell Yokel”: Ibid.
15 “even to bull-dog fierceness”: Pierce Egan, Boxiana; or, Sketches of Modern Pugilism (London: G. Virtue, 1829), III, 287.
16 “exercise and abstinence”: William Hazlitt, “The Fight,” in Literary Remains of the Late William Hazlitt (New York: Saunders and Otley, 1836), 223.
17 “man of low birth”: Fatal Effects of Gambling, op. cit., x.
18 “dark idol”: Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (Boston: James R. Osgood, 1873), 151.
18 “that boy”: Ibid., 18.
18 “unfathomed”: The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1890), III, 347.
18–19 “I must premise”: Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, op. cit., 151.
19 “I went off”: Ibid., 151–52.
19 “violent biliousness”: James Hogg, De Quincey and His Friends (London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1895), 213.
19 “tossing and sleepless”: Grevel Lindop, The Opium-Eater: A Life of Thomas De Quincey (New York: Taplinger, 1981), 258.
20 “from one of Mr. Peacock’s”: “The Drama,” in The Harmonicum, January 1823, 16.
20 “I will take you to a better place”: Walter Frith, “John Thurtell’s Second Trial,” in The Monthly Review, June 1907, 106.
20 “It was the most dreadful”: Ibid.
20–21 Ensor’s account: Ibid., 105–07.
21 “the warehouse is on fire”: Ibid., 105.
23 “one Saturday”: Fatal Effects of Gambling, op. cit., 479.
24 “keep a good look-out”: A Complete History and Development of all the Extraordinary Circumstances and Events Connected with the Murder of Mr. Weare (London: Jones & Co., 1824), 250.
24 “no doubt deterred”: Fatal Effects of Gambling, op. cit., 483.
25 “It was lucky for him”: Ibid., 483.
25 “Damn and blast Wood”: Complete History and Development, op. cit., 248.
26 “Mr. Weare, how are you?”: Ibid., 250.
27 “You dare not say a word”: Narrative of the Mysterious and Dreadful Murder, op. cit., 9.
27 “I do not forget this treatment”: Complete History and Development, op. cit., 250.
27 “clean and purify”: Carlyle, Reminiscences, op. cit., 232.
27 “Either the human being”: De Quincey, Suspiria de Profundis (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1879), 38.
27 “with the foul”: Carlyle, Reminiscences, op. cit., 179.
27 “into effete Prose”: Thomas Carlyle, “The Diamond Necklace,” in Carlyle, Historical Essays (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 136.
27 “mystic deeps”: Thomas Carlyle, Signs of The Times, in Guide to Carlyle (New York: Haskell House, 1920), 80.
28 “suspend men from bed-posts”: Carlyle, “The Diamond Necklace,” op. cit., 136.
28 “dim millions”: Thomas Carlyle, History of Friedrich the Second Called Frederick the Great (New York: Collier, 1897), IV, 40.
28 “poetical humbug”: Thomas Moore, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron (Paris: Baudry’s European Library, 1833), II, 443.
28 “Sentence printed if not”: The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson 1834–1872 (Boston: Ticknor, 1888), I, 93.
28 “hieroglyphic page”: Carlyle, “The Diamond Necklace,” op. cit., 90.
29 “I wish you would take a walk”: Complete History and Development, op. cit., 7.
29 “You made a bad business”: Ibid., 252.
29 “I know that”: Ibid., 252.
29 “on the spot”: Ibid., 251.
29 “You would de damned”: Ibid., 252.
29 “will you be in it”: Fatal Effects of Gambling, op. cit., 176.
31 “liquor up”: Charles Hindley, The Life and Times of James Catnach (London: Reeves and Turner, 1878), 145.
31 “A more silent”: “Old Lyon’s Inn,” in Ballou’s Monthly Magazine (July 1890) (Boston: Studley, 1890), LXXII, 43.
31 “cards, hazard”: Complete History and Development, op. cit., 251.
32 Miss Malone: The Trial of John Thurtell and Joseph Hunt (London: Sherwood, Jones, 1824), 30–31.
33 “Have you got every thing”: Complete History and Development, op. cit., 251.
34 “I am sure”: Fatal Effects of Gambling, op. cit., 492.
34 “the chaise is ready”: Ibid., 493.
34 Cumberland Street: Trial of John Thurtell, op. cit., 31.
35 loin of pork: Ibid., 23.
35 “Here they are”: Ibid., 16.
35 “We know Jack is”: Complete History and Development, op. cit., 255.
35 “sing a good”: Trial of John Thurtell, op. cit., 33.
36 “You get out here”: Fatal Effects of Gambling, op. cit., 494.
36 Bow Street Horse Patrol: Fairburn’s Edition of the Whole Proceedings of the Trial of John Thurtell (London: John Fairburn, 1824), 37.
36
landlord of the White Lion: Trial of John Thurtell, op. cit., 32.
37 stagnant water: Honoré de Balzac, Lost Illusions, trans. Ellen Marriage (London: J. M. Dent, 1897), 44.
38 “a charming”: Lytton Strachey, Portraits in Miniature and Other Essays (London: Chatto & Windus, 1931), 70.
39 “I then heard groans”: Fairburn’s Edition of the Whole Proceedings, op. cit., 39.
39 “I had my wife”: Horrid Effects of Gambling Exemplified in the Atrocious Murder of Mr. Weare (London: Hodgson, n.d.), 25.
41 “He seemed to think”: Early Letters of Thomas Carlyle (London: Macmillan, 1886), II, 230.
41 “a loud, roaring”: Carlyle, Reminiscences, op. cit., 122.
42 “not only did more”: John Ruskin, Præterita (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 6–7.
42 “What sort of person was Mr. Weare?”: In fact, this exchange seems not to have taken place during the trial. The historian Albert Borowitz believes that the writer had in mind a passage in the Observer of 2 November 1823, in which it was reported that Probert “always maintained an appearance of respectability, and kept his horse and gig.” Percy Fitzgerald, in his Chronicles of the Bow Street Police-Office, points to a similar reference in the Morning Chronicle.
42 “The gig of respectability”: Carlyle, Reminiscences, op. cit., 190.
43 “This is my friend Hunt”: Fatal Effects of Gambling, op. cit., 495.
43 “Now I’ll take you”: Ibid., 158.
43 “hardly above five feet”: Carlyle, Reminiscences, op. cit., 152.
44 drug-laden dreams: The images in this paragraph are derived from De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, op. cit.
44 “was broad noon”: Ibid., 120.
44 “It is just by”: Fairburn’s Edition of the Whole Proceedings, op. cit., 25.
44 “This is the place”: Ibid.
45 “This is all”: Ibid.
45 “As we were going”: Fatal Effects of Gambling, op. cit., 496–97.
45 “I never had”: Ibid., 497.
45 “like the devil”: Trial of John Thurtell, op. cit., 18.
45–46 “fought with me”: Fatal Effects of Gambling, op. cit. 497.
46 “about the jugular”: Trial of John Thurtell, op. cit., 18.
46 “jammed the pistol”: Ibid.
47 “hot from slaughtering”: Borowitz, Thurtell-Hunt Murder Case, op. cit., 169.
48 “as I have turned”: Complete History and Development, op. cit., 258.
48 “very cordially”: Ibid.
48 “You think me”: Ibid.
48 “tip them a stave”: H. B. Irving, A Book of Remarkable Criminals (New York: Doran, 1918), 298.
50 “world of ordinary life”: The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey (London: A. C. Black, 1897), X, 392–94.
50 “Hence it is”: Ibid., 393.
51 Dionysian dowry: See Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1989), 266.
51 “horrible mixture”: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1967), 39.
51 “re-establishment”: De Quincey, “On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth,” op. cit., 393.
52 “I suppose”: Complete History and Development, op. cit., 258.
52 “We may as well”: Ibid.
53 “That’s your share”: Trial of John Thurtell, op. cit., 18.
53 “This is a bad”: Complete History and Development, op. cit., 259.
54 “mighty labyrinths”: De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, op. cit., 59.
54 Charles Lloyd: Thomas De Quincey, Literary Reminiscences (Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1851), 157 et seq.
54 “never to pay”: De Quincey, “On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth,” op. cit., 389.
55 “the great alphabet”: De Quincey, Literary Reminiscences, op. cit., 167.
55 “sympathy must be”: De Quincey, “On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth,” op. cit., 391.
55 “I think that would”: Trial of John Thurtell, op. cit., 24.
55 “You shall not”: Ibid., 19.
56 “very fine moonlight”: Horrid Effects of Gambling, op. cit., 21.
56 “heard something dragged”: Pierce Egan’s Account of the Trial of John Thurtell and Joseph Hunt (London: Knight & Lacey, 1824), 64.
56 “hollow noise”: Horrid Effects of Gambling, op. cit., 21.
57 John Harrington: Pierce Egan’s Account, op. cit., 64; Fairburn’s Edition of the Whole Proceedings, op. cit., 43; Trial of John Thurtell, op. cit., 11.
59 “a great deal stained”: Complete History and Development, op. cit., 262.
59 “We Turpin lads”: Ibid., 117.
59 “would never do”: Fairburn’s Edition of the Whole Proceedings, op. cit., 35.
60 “O John”: Complete History and Development, op. cit., 262.
61 “Then I’m baked”: Trial of John Thurtell, op. cit., 20.
61 “they can do nothing”: Fatal Effects of Gambling, op. cit., 462.
62 “will be better”: Fairburn’s Edition of the Whole Proceedings, op. cit., 27.
62 “to pick up some”: Lockhart, Life of Sir Walter Scott, op. cit., I, 115.
63 “turns upon marvelous”: Sir Walter Scott, “Romance,” in The Prose Works of Sir Walter Scott (Paris: Galignani, 1827), V, 700.
63 “exulting demoniac”: Sir Walter Scott, The Bride of Lamermoor (London: Archibald Constable, 1895), 488.
63 “a sort of romance”: Familiar Letters of Sir Walter Scott (Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1894), 178.
63–64 “I never saw”: The London and Paris Observer (Paris: Galignani, 1857), 665.
64 “Is that you, Jack”: Egan, Recollections of John Thurtell, op. cit., 40.
64 “John, my boy”: Borowitz, Thurtell-Hunt Murder Case, op. cit., 36.
66 “gentlemen of the first”: Fatal Effects of Gambling, op. cit., 75.
66 “it was pork”: Trial of John Thurtell, op. cit., 36.
66 “plum-colored frock-coat”: Borowitz, Thurtell-Hunt Murder Case, op. cit., 143.
66 “clung to every separate”: Ibid., 173.
66 “Cut me not off”: Ibid.
67 “strong desperate man”: Edward Herbert, “A Pen and Ink Sketch of a Late Trial for Murder,” in Spirit of the English Magazines, 1 April 1824. “Edward Herbert” was a pseudonym of John Hamilton Reynolds.
67 “cannot but give”: Complete History and Development, op. cit., 194–96.
67 “all Sir Walter’s”: David Masson, “Thurtell’s Murder of Weare,” in Select Essays of Thomas De Quincey Narrative & Imaginative (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1888), 180.
67–68 “Very unsatisfactory”: The Journal of Sir Walter Scott 1825–1832 (Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1891), 228.
68 “strange intricate”: Ibid., 607.
68 Scott’s visit to the cottage: Ibid., 607–08.
68 “Indeed the whole”: Ibid.
68 “took care always”: Lockhart, Life of Sir Walter Scott, op. cit., IV, 63.
69 “I am glad of it”: “Prize-Fighting,” in The United Service Journal and Naval and Military Magazine (January 1834) (London: Henry Colburn, 1834), 62–63.
69 “since the calamitous”: The Newgate Calendar (London: Robins and Co., 1828), IV, 402.
73 Toward the end of December 1836: Unless otherwise noted, all facts and quotations relating to The Mystery of the Mutilated Corpse have their source in (1) the transcript of the Trial of James Greenacre and Sarah Gale, April 1837, Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 6.0, 17 April 2011) (t18370403-917), (2) “Edgware-Road Tragedy,” in Annual Register, April 1837, 37–42, or (3) the entry for James Greenacre in Dictionary of National Biography (New York: Macmillan, 1890), XXIII, 61 et seq.
74 “like to His glorious body”: Philippians 3:21.
77 “It was what”: “The Edgware Road Murder,” in The London Medical and Surgical Journal (London: Mic
hael Ryan et alia, 1837), I, 62.
80 “hardly light enough”: New Letters of Thomas Carlyle (London: John Lane, 1904), I, 53.
80 “Only once!”: Matthew Arnold, “Samuel Taylor Coleridge,” in The English Poets, ed. T. H. Ward (New York and London: Macmillan, 1894), IV, 111.
82 Crimley Hall: Kimberley Hall, in fact; but the name came to be spelled as it was pronounced. The pedigree which traces the descent of the Wodehouses from Sir Constantine de Wodehouse, a knight who in the reign of Henry I is said to have married an heiress of the Botetorts, has been pronounced spurious by at least one genealogist. See Walter Rye, “Doubtful Norfolk Pedigrees,” in The Genealogist (London: George Bell, 1879), 129–32. The specious derivation would perhaps have amused the most illustrious of the family’s scions, P. G. Wodehouse.
83 “womb that never bare”: The Annotated Book of Common Prayer (London: Longmans, Green, 1907), 283.
83–84 “remarkable peculiarity”: Patriot, 13 April 1837.
87 “an ocean that no”: Honoré de Balzac in Twenty-Five Volumes (New York: Peter Fenelon Collier & Son, 1900), XV, 350.
87 “ghosts in the open air”: Baudelaire, “Les Sept vieillards.”
87 his sister’s landlady: Max Décharné, Capital Crimes: Seven Centuries of London Life and Murder (London: Arrow, 2013), 214.
88 Mr. Gay’s inquiries: Décharné, Capital Crimes, op. cit., 214.
89 north wind: New Letters of Thomas Carlyle, op. cit., I, 48.
90 “countenance presented”: The Chronicles of Crime (London: Reeves and Turner, 1886), II, 433.
92 “Babel din”: Wordsworth, The Prelude, quoted in John Williams, Wordsworth: Romantic Poetry and Revolutionary Politics (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989), 123.
92 “such a silence”: New Letters of Thomas Carlyle, op. cit., I, 48.
93 “enlightened Philosophism”: Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution (London: Chapman and Hall, 1896), I, 4.
93 “algebraic spectralities”: James Anthony Froude, Thomas Carlyle: A History of His Life in London 1834–1881 (London: Longmans, Green, 1890), II, 359.
93 “sometimes insane”: Richard Garnett, Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson (London: Walter Scott, 1888), 66.
93 “Gorgons, and Hydras”: Charles Lamb, “Witches, and Other Night Fears,” in The Works of Charles Lamb (New York: Crowell, 1882), III, 114.