Murder by Candlelight
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94 “What are you about”: Lives of the Most Notorious and Daring Highwaymen, Robbers, and Murderers (London: Milner, n.d.), 270.
98 “seemed quite unconcerned”: Chronicles of Crime, op. cit., II, 432.
99 some few sages: When James Boswell said that the philosopher David Hume professed to contemplate his own mortality with equanimity, Dr. Johnson replied, “Sir, if he really thinks so, his perceptions are disturbed; he is mad: if he does not think so, he lies.” Boswell then said that the actor Samuel Foote told him that “he was not afraid to die.” “It is not true, sir,” Johnson said. “Hold a pistol to Foote’s breast, or to Hume’s breast, and threaten to kill them, and you’ll see how they behave.”
100 “for this fraud”: Lives of the Most Notorious and Daring Highwaymen, Robbers and Murderers Compiled from Authentic Sources (Manchester: S. Johnson, 1844), 349.
101 “injured Englishman”: Ibid., 353.
101 “generous public”: Ibid., 351.
101 “Wanted, a partner”: Chronicles of Crime, op. cit., II, 450.
103 resumed their walks: The Spectator (1 April 1837) (London: Joseph Clayton, 1837), X, 291.
104 “command at any time”: Chronicles of Crime, op. cit., II, 435.
104 “feigned laugh”: Ibid.
104 “alarmed me”: Ibid.
104 “I thought it might”: Ibid.
104 “safest and most prudent”: The Spectator (1 April 1837), op. cit., X, 291.
105 Sarah Gale: Chronicles of Crime, op. cit., II, 452.
105 “bucket and mop”: Joseph Forster, Studies in Red and Black (London: Ward and Downey, 1896), 205.
106 “This female”: Chronicles of Crime, op. cit., II, 435.
106 “eleven sovereigns”: Lives of the Most Notorious (1844), op. cit., 365.
108 “truly right-minded”: “Memoir of Mr. Justice Coltman,” in The Law Magazine (London: W. Benning, 1849), XI, 298.
108 John Adolphus: “Mr. J. Adolphus,” The Illustrated London News, 26 July 1845, 64; James Grant, Portraits of Public Characters (London: Saunders and Otley, 1841), 217 et seq.; The Gentleman’s Magazine (September 1845) (London: John Bower Nichols, 1845), XXIV, 315; William Ballantine, Some Experiences of a Barrister’s Life (New York: Henry Holt, 1882), 71.
109 “perfectly indifferent”: Chronicles of Crime, op. cit., II, 439.
111 Blackstone: Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (New York: Banks and Brothers, 1884), 1035 et seq.
112 “cared nothing for death”: Chronicles of Crime, op. cit., II, 445.
112 “enraged at the deception” Even after his admission to the sheriffs, Greenacre continued to insist that he was not guilty of murder. When the Rev. Dr. Cotton, the Newgate chaplain, spoke of him as a murderer (in the “condemned sermon” he preached in Newgate chapel two days before the execution), Greenacre took offense and denied that the term could with justice be applied to him. In this he was certainly mistaken. A man who, without a considerable provocation, beats a person so that the person dies is guilty of murder whether or not he intended the person’s death: “he is guilty,” says Blackstone, “of murder by express malice; that is, by an express evil design,” for “no person, unless of an abandoned heart, would be guilty of such an act, upon a slight or no apparent cause.” If, however, the killer can prove that he acted upon a sufficient provocation, he is not guilty of murder. A man so provoked that he kills another man “by beating him in such a manner as shewed only an intent to chastise and not to kill him” is not a murderer in the eyes of the law, which “so far considers the provocation of contumelious behaviour, as to adjudge it only manslaughter, and not murder.” The provocation in question, however, must be something more than hard or taunting words: “No affront, by words or gestures only, is a sufficient provocation, so as to excuse or extenuate such acts of violence as manifestly endanger the life of another.”
112 told the sheriffs: : Ibid., 441.
113 “pain which is essential”: Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, trans. R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp (London: Kegan Paul, 1906–07), I, 406.
114 “summoned enchantment”: Ibid., II, 9.
114 “renunciation”: “Autobiography of a Mystic,” in The Church Quarterly Review (October 1898) (London: Spottiswoode, 1899), XLVII, 186.
114 “be given”: Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, op. cit., III, 423.
115 “cadaverous perfume”: Nietszche, Ecce Homo, op. cit., 270.
115 “a place of quite”: Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, op. cit., III, 456.
116 “kissed the rope”: Ibid., III, 457.
116 “Still more remarkable”: Ibid., III, 456–57.
116 “fanatical delusion”: Ibid., III, 457.
116 “presence of a violent”: Ibid., III, 455–56.
118 “state of beastly”: The Spectator (6 May 1837), op. cit., X, 416.
118 “smoking, drinking”: Diary of Sir Michael Connal (Glasgow: James MacLehose, 1895), 9.
119 “Gentlemen”: George Tancred, Rulewater and Its People (Edinburgh: Constable, 1907), 129.
120 “The dog died game”: John Heneage Jesse, George Selwyn and His Contemporaries (London: Richard Bentley, 1843), I, 354.
120 “was death’s counterfeit”: Arthur Griffiths, The Chronicles of Newgate (London: Chapman and Hall, 1884), 425.
120–121 “became as abject”: Andrew Knapp and William Baldwin, The New Newgate Calendar (London: Gunder, n.d.), III, 165.
121 “Encore un moment”: “She was so terrified,” Dostoevsky has Lebedev say in The Idiot, “that she did not understand what was happening. But when Samson [Charles-Henri Sanson, the executioner] seized her head, and pushed her under the knife with his foot, she cried out: ‘Wait a moment! wait a moment, monsieur!’ Well, because of that moment of bitter suffering, perhaps the Saviour will pardon her other faults, for one cannot imagine a greater agony.”
122 “’Neath the timbers”: Punch (London: Punch, 1849), XVII, 210.
123 “was totally unmanned”: “Execution of Greenacre,” in Annual Register (May 1837) (London: Rivington, 1838), 45.
123 “great self-possession”: See the entry on Greenacre in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
123 “Don’t leave me”: Ibid.
123 “Ten different witnesses”: Carlyle, French Revolution, op. cit., III, 110.
125 “quivering in mortal”: Charles Kingston, Remarkable Rogues (London: John Lane, 1921), 195.
125 “The question of motive”: The Trial of Mary Blandy, ed. William Roughead (Project Gutenberg, 2004).
129 essay on Sir Walter Scott: Thomas Carlyle, “Sir Walter Scott,” in Carlyle, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (London: Chapman and Hall, 1899), IV, 22–24.
130 “Veneration of great men”: Ibid., IV, 24.
131 lion-soirées: Ibid., IV, 23.
131 “I was charmed”: The Collected Letters of Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh Carlyle (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1990), XVI, 19–24.
131 “he never had a first love”: Hershel Parker, The Powell Papers: A Confidence Man Amok among the Anglo-American Literati (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2011), 276.
132 “first beloved”: Plato, Lysis 219c-d.
132 “was more to be pitied”: Parker, Powell Papers, op. cit., 276.
132–133 “one of those persons”: Peter Gay, The Naked Heart: The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud (New York: Norton, 1996), 182.
133 “trenchant opinions”: Gertrude Himmelfarb, Marriage and Morals among the Victorians and Other Essays (New York: Vintage, 1987), 13. And yet if Jane was not indeed the victim Carlyle made her out be—if she was not in fact laid a sacrifice on the altar of his genius—the fact that he should portray her as such argues a degree of self-absorption in Carlyle himself that might well have made for strains in a marriage. That he should transform the ordinary ups and downs of wedded life into a Greek tragedy that it wasn’t suggests that he was less in
terested in what his wife actually was than what, in his idealized conception of himself, she should have been. What a dereliction, in a hero-prophet, to have had a happy domestic life!
134 “entirely miserable”: James Anthony Froude, My Relations with Carlyle (London: Longman’s Green, 1903), 11.
134 “The chief interest”: Jane Welsh Carlyle’s Journal, October 1855–July 1856, in The Collected Letters of Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh Carlyle, op. cit., XXX, 259.
134 “realised what a tragedy”: Froude, My Relations with Carlyle, op. cit., 13.
135 Through the agency of Froude: A leaf from Jane Carlyle’s diary for June 1856 and four lines from the succeeding leaf are missing from the manuscript; they were possibly removed by Carlyle’s niece, Mary Aitken. The story of the “bluemarks” did not appear during Froude’s life; he related it in an essay, “Relations with Carlyle,” which was published by his children as a book, My Relations with Carlyle, op. cit., after his death.
139 throat was cut: Unless otherwise noted, all facts and quotations concerning The Murder in Mayfair have their source in (1) the transcript of the Trial of François Benjamin Courvoisier, June 1840, Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 6.0, 17 April 2011) (t18400615-1629) or (2) Lord William Russell (1767–1840), www.historyofparliamentonline.org / volume/1820-1832/member/russell-lord-william-1767-1840.
140 “adequate for”: Diary of John Adolphus, quoted in Yseult Bridges, Two Studies in Crime (London: Hutchinson, 1959), 65.
144 “Sovereignty of the People”: The Spectator (January 28, 1837), op. cit., X, 74.
151 towel and bedclothes: Tedman maintained that he had removed the towel from Lord William’s face. His memory might have misled him; Dr. Elsgood might have replaced the towel; or Tedman may have wished others to believe—may have wished himself to believe—that the police had been on the scene before the surgeon. Young, Mr. Latham’s butler, a presumably disinterested witness, distinctly “saw the napkin taken off his lordship by Mr. Elsgood, the surgeon.”
154 “a damned bore”: The Greville Memoirs (London: Longmans, Green, 1905–07), III, 126.
154 “most shocking”: The Letters of Queen Victoria, ed. A. C. Benson and Viscount Esher (New York: Longmans, Green, 1907), 278.
155 “The bed was”: Ibid., 279.
156 “Visionary servants”: Greville Memoirs, op. cit., IV, 293.
157 “wholly unaware”: Edward Harold Begbie, The Mirrors of Downing Street (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1921), 67.
160–161 “The circumstances”: Greville Memoirs, op. cit., IV, 293.
161 “no evidence”: Ibid., 294.
161 “He is rather”: Ibid., 293–94.
163 Lord Wriothesley Russell: Lord William Russell’s daughter, Eliza Laura Henrietta, married her first cousin, Lord Wriothesley Russell.
163 obsequies of Lord William: The Tablet, 16 May 1840.
164 “very pale”: Annual Register (1840) (London: Rivington, 1841), 230.
165 “Not guilty”: Ibid., 230.
165 “for they imagined”: Bridges, Two Studies in Crime, op. cit., 73.
166 “heavily in favour”: Ibid., 78.
166 “he appeared”: The Times, 20 June 1840.
166 “a communication of the facts”: Bridges, Two Studies in Crime, op. cit., 93.
166 “Let us have”: The Times, 20 June 1840.
166 “Call Charlotte”: Bridges, Two Studies in Crime, op. cit., 93.
166 “the greatest composure”: Ibid., 93–94.
168 “Tell Mr. Phillips”: Punch, op. cit., XVII, 223.
170 “Of course, then”: The Gentleman’s Magazine (November 1850) (John Bowyer Nichols, 1850), XXXIV, 524.
170 “extremely eloquent”: Ballantine, Some Experiences, op. cit., 78.
171 Disraeli: Michael Knox Beran, “Disraeli’s Ghost,” The Claremont Review of Books, Summer 2012, 35–37.
172 “absolute martyrdom”: Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (Boston: Ginn, 1901), xlviii.
172 “scheme of Courvoisier”: Thomas De Quincey, “Three Memorable Murders” (1854), in De Quincey, The Note-Book of an English Opium-Eater and Miscellaneous Essays (Boston: James Osgood, 1873), 62.
173 “sullen and reserved”: “Curious Trials connected with the Aristocracy,” in The Patrician (London: Churton, 1848), VI, 246.
174 “ought always to go”: Report of the Trial of Courvoisier (Chiswick: Chiswick Press, 1918), 112; The Spectator (27 June 1840) (London: Joseph Clayton, 1840), XIII, 609.
174–175 “This was the first”: Ibid.
175 “is his friend”: Bridges, Two Studies in Crime, op. cit., 110.
176 “different scenes”: The Examiner, 12 July 1840.
176 “to premeditate”: Ibid.
176 “history of thieves”: Ibid.
176 “be better concealed”: Ibid.
177 “had some altercation”: Ibid.
177 “When I opened”: Ibid.
179 “O God!”: Bridges, Two Studies in Crime, op. cit., 117.
179 “whether he was fully”: The Examiner, 12 July 1840.
179 “There it stands”: Bridges, Two Studies in Crime, op. cit., 113 et seq.
180 “was wont to say”: John Aubrey, “Brief Lives” (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1898), I, 111.
180 “possible he could”: Bridges, Two Studies in Crime, op. cit., 120–21.
181 “immense sway”: Ibid., 115 et seq.
181 “was steady”: Ibid., 118.
181 “turned his head”: Ibid., 116.
185 “much overrated”: Thomas De Quincey, “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts,” in Select Essays of Thomas De Quincey Narrative & Imaginative, ed. David Masson (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1888), 56.
185 “supremacy above all”: De Quincey, “Three Memorable Murders,” op. cit., 5.
186 “scenical features”: Ibid., 4.
186 “most chaotic”: Ibid., 8.
186 “the sure receptacle”: Ibid., 9.
187 “Exceeding darkness”: Ibid., 14.
188 “stationary”: Ibid., 18.
188 “We know of it”: P. D. James and T. A. Critchley, The Maul and the Pear Tree: The Ratcliffe Highway Murders 1811 (New York: Mysterious Press, 1986), 13.
188 “She had no fear”: De Quincey, “Three Memorable Murders,” op. cit., 22.
188 “rang the bell”: Ibid., 23.
188–189 “that led downwards”: Ibid., 24.
189 “one, two, three”: Ibid.
189 “Mr. Marr!”: James and Critchley, The Maul and the Pear Tree, op. cit., 13.
189 “Marr, Marr”: Ibid., 14.
189 “so floated with gore”: De Quincey, “Three Memorable Murders,” op. cit., 27.
191 “frenzy of feelings”: Ibid., 5–6.
192 “You are an officer”: The Examiner, 22 December 1811.
192 “I certainly will”: James and Critchley, The Maul and the Pear Tree, op. cit., 66.
192 “white as a corpse’s”: “Some Curiosities of Crime,” in Otago Witness, 2 June 1892.
192 “There’s murder inside”: Ibid.
192 “dreadful annunciation”: De Quincey, “Three Memorable Murders,” op. cit., 55.
193 “the wolfish dog”: Ibid., 56.
195 “suspended by the neck”: James and Critchley, The Maul and the Pear Tree, op. cit., 128.
196 “objective correlative”: T. S. Eliot, “Hamlet,” in Eliot, Selected Essays (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1950), 124 et seq.
198 “Damn you”: Martin Baggoley, Surrey Executions (Stroud: Amberley Publishing, 2013) (electronic edition).
199 “Monsieur can never”: Sabine Baring-Gould, The Book of Were-Wolves (London: Smith, Elder, 1865), 2.
199 “ghastly and revolting”: Ibid., 131.
201 “bloodhound”: De Quincey, “Three Memorable Murders,” op. cit., 19, 56, 11.
201 “of the most extraordinary”: Ibid., 9–10.
&
nbsp; 201 “cadaverous”: Ibid., 37.
202 “unnatural”: Ibid., 34.
202 “début”: De Quincey, “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts” (Supplementary Paper), op. cit., 72.
202 Titian: Ibid., 11.
203 “with an insatiate”: Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (New York: De Fau, 1906), I, 109.
203 “villainously pranked”: The Works of Charles Lamb (New York: A. C. Armstrong, 1886), III, v.
203 “All perils”: De Quincey, “Three Memorable Murders,” op. cit., 34.
204 “gathering agitation”: Thomas De Quincey, “A Sequel to the Confessions,” in De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, op. cit., 148.
206 Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols: The Times, 1 September 1888.
208 “one of the worst”: The Times, 11 April 1863.
208 “to get a young woman”: Ibid.
209 Emma Jackson: Ibid.
212 Ann Priest: Nicola Sly, Oxfordshire Murders (Stroud: History Press, 2012) (electronic book).
214 decent obscurity: Compare Gibbon: “My English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the obscurity of a learned language.”
214 outrage to her womanhood: The post-mortem examination conducted by Professor Kidd of the University together with three surgeons found that her “death resulted from blood loss following insertion of either a sharp instrument or a blunt and powerful instrument into her vagina, the instrument having been violently jiggled in different directions, causing deep cuts.” Sly, Oxfordshire Murders, op. cit.
215 had never been: E. M. Darlington, The Radcliffes of Leigh Lancashire: A Family Memorial (privately printed, 1918).
217 “is a dull dog”: Arthur Machen, The Great God Pan and The Inmost Light (London: John Lane, 1895), 116.
225 “will forget the terror”: Sir Melville L. Macnaghten, Days of My Years (New York: Longmans, Green, 1914), 55.
225–226 Nichols and Chapman: Ibid., 58.
226 “Dear Boss” letter: Ibid.
226 Stride and Eddowes: Ibid., 59–60.
226–227 Mary Jane Kelley: Ibid., 60–61; “The ‘Crank’ or Criminal of Whitechapel,” in The Alienist and Neurologist (St. Louis: Carreras, 1889), X, 102–04.
227 “too apathetic”: Augusta Larned, “Whitechapel, London,” in The Freemason’s Repository (July 1889) (Providence: E. L. Freeman and Son, 1888–89), XVIII, 507.