Murder of the Black Museum 1875-1975: The Dark Secrets Behind a Hundred Years of the Most Notorious Crimes in England

by Honeycombe, Gordon

  As if in a daze, as if tied to the now empty pram, Eleanor Pearcey walked on for over a mile through the quieter, richer streets around Abbey Road, finally abandoning the pram in Hamilton Terrace, between Maida Vale and St John’s Wood. She then began the long walk home through the shadowed streets. In all, she walked about 6 miles that night.

  Evidently the horror of her deeds was too much for her. She was seen about 8 pm by a friend – possibly before she started out on her terrible errand – standing on a pavement near her home, staring vacantly about her, her face drawn and pale, her clothes much disordered and her hat askew. The friend, who had at first failed to recognise her, assumed that Mrs Pearcey was drunk and passed on without a word.

  Eleanor Pearcey seems not to have returned to her home until late at night. For at about 10 pm, Frank Hogg called on her. He had a latch-key and let himself in. No one answered his calls. Apart from a lamp in the bedroom, Mrs Pearcey’s rooms were in darkness, he said later. He peered, he said, into the front parlour, saw nothing untoward and withdrew. But he left a note saying ‘Twenty-past ten. Cannot stay.’

  Frank Hogg later alleged that he was unaware that his wife and Mrs Pearcey were on friendly terms. It seems that after calling at the house in Priory Street on his way home from work about ten o’clock, he walked on to Prince of Wales Road, where his wife’s absence had apparently caused no alarm. It was assumed in the Hogg household that Phoebe had gone to visit her sick father in Rickmansworth. Nonetheless, Frank Hogg sat up until 2 am awaiting her return.

  On Saturday morning he left home soon after six o’clock and went to work – he was employed in the furniture-moving business by his brother. He came home for breakfast about 8 am. About the same time the Hoggs’ landlady, Mrs Styles, who had heard rumours of a murder in Hampstead, said to Clara Hogg: ‘Have you heard of this dreadful murder?’ ‘What do you mean?’ asked Clara, adding ‘Tell me all about it. My sister-in-law has not been home all night. You gave me quite a turn. We have been enquiring in all directions and can’t find a trace of her.’ Clara went out to buy a morning paper and read that the body of a woman, brutally murdered, had been found by a police constable in Hampstead on Friday night. She talked to her brother and he set off for Rickmansworth to see if his wife was there. She decided to visit Mrs Pearcey.

  Eleanor Pearcey was at home, and the two women conversed in the front parlour. Clara Hogg asked Mrs Pearcey if she had seen or heard of Phoebe. Mrs Pearcey said ‘No.’ Clara rephrased the question and Mrs Pearcey then replied: ‘Well, as you press me, I will tell you. Phoebe wished me particularly not to say anything, and that is why I said “No.” She did come round at five o’clock. She asked me to mind the baby for a little while, and I refused. She also asked me to lend her some money. I could not lend her any, as I only had 1s 1 ½d in my purse.’ Phoebe, said Mrs Pearcey, then left the house. Clara Hogg was puzzled: she thought it most unlikely that her sister-in-law, who had a horror of being in debt, would ask for a loan, even a small one. However, she made no comment, only remarking that she intended to visit the Hampstead police and to ask to see the body of the woman who had been murdered the night before, in case it was Phoebe. She asked Mrs Pearcey to accompany her, for moral support.

  For some reason, Mrs Pearcey agreed – she could, after all, have invented some excuse. But her part in the murder of Mrs Hogg had probably been blotted out of her mind. DI Thomas Bannister took the two women from the police station to the Hampstead mortuary, where they were both shown the body of Mrs Hogg. The baby’s body was not found until the morning of the following day.

  Eleanor Pearcey said she was unable to recognise the unwashed, bloody mask of the woman on the mortuary table. ‘That’s not her,’ she said. ‘It’s not her. It’s not her! Let’s go away!’ She became hysterical. Clara said: ‘That’s her clothing.’ But she could not identify the features.

  DI Bannister took the two women out of the room and said to Clara: ‘Surely if she is a relative and you have been living together, you can form a reliable opinion as to whether it is the person or not.’ Both women were brought back to look at the body. Clara was still doubtful, and when she attempted to touch the corpse’s clothing, Mrs Pearcey cried out: ‘Oh, don’t touch her!’ and tried to pull Clara away. ‘Don’t drag me!’ scolded Clara. A doctor in attendance at the mortuary was then asked by Bannister to wash the face of the corpse. When this was done, Clara said: ‘Oh, that’s her. Don’t drag me!’ she added again.

  Detective Murray then took both women to see the bassinette, which Clara Hogg identified. Sergeant Beard was sent to accompany the women back to 141 Prince of Wales Road, where Frank Hogg and Mrs Styles were questioned. He was searched and in a pocket his key to 2 Priory Street was found. All three women and the unhappy husband were then asked to come to Hampstead police station for further questioning, and Mrs Pearcey was detained there. DI Bannister, mystified and made suspicious by her excessive and odd reaction in the mortuary, asked if one or two of his men could inspect her apartments. She agreed and said: ‘I would like to go with them.’

  About 3 pm she returned to Priory Street with Sergeants Nursey and Parsons. They examined her rooms. One of the sergeants then went out to send a telegram to DI Bannister. The other sergeant stayed and engaged Mrs Pearcey in conversation in the front parlour, where she played the piano and sang. She also talked about her ‘poor dear dead Phoebe’, whom she loved so much, and about the ‘dear baby, who was just beginning to prattle, oh, so prettily’.

  On receiving the telegram, DI Bannister went straight to 2 Priory Street. He spoke to Mrs Pearcey, questioned her as well as her neighbours and searched her rooms with one of his sergeants; she appeared to him to be distraught and her speech was somewhat incoherent. In the bloodstained kitchen he found two carving-knives, their handles similarly stained. A recently washed apron and skirt were also discovered, as well as a stained rug, smelling strongly of paraffin as if an attempt had been made to clean it. The curtains were missing – they and a bloody tablecloth were found in an outhouse. In the fender of the kitchen grate was a long, heavy poker with a ring handle: it was smeared with matted hair and blood.

  Bannister took the knives and the poker into the parlour, where Mrs Pearcey was now whistling and affecting indifference. Asked what she had been doing with the poker, she responded: ‘Killing mice, killing mice!’

  She could offer no sensible explanation for the bloodstained rooms. Bannister said to her: ‘Mrs Pearcey, I am going to arrest you for the murder of Mrs Hogg last night, also on suspicion of murdering the child, Phoebe Hogg.’ Mrs Pearcey jumped up and said: ‘You can arrest me if you like. I’m quite willing to go with you. But I think you have made a mistake.’ He took her to Kentish Town police station. On the way she commented: ‘I wouldn’t do such a thing. I wouldn’t hurt anyone.’

  In the police station, she was charged and searched. When she removed her gloves, her hands were seen to have cuts on them. She wore two rings: one of brass, the other a broad gold wedding ring, which was later proved to have been removed from Phoebe Hogg’s fingers. The search also revealed that Eleanor Pearcey’s underclothes, unchanged for twenty-four hours, were saturated with blood. They were removed and she was supplied with workhouse garments.

  Mrs Pearcey appeared at the Marylebone police court on 27 October charged with the murder of Mrs Hogg. She was sent for trial at the Central Criminal Court in the Old Bailey and appeared there, before Mr Justice Denman, on 1 December 1890. Mr Forrest Fulton and Mr CF Gill led for the Crown and the accused was defended by Mr Arthur Hutton. Still wearing her workhouse clothes, Mrs Pearcey gave no evidence and remained stonily impassive throughout the trial, seemingly indifferent to everything. The trial ended on its fourth day, when she was found guilty and sentenced to death.

  Eleanor Pearcey was hanged at Newgate Prison on Tuesday 23 December 1890, on a bitterly cold and foggy morning. A crowd of about 300 people gathered outside the prison gates. A reporter in the Pall Mall Budget wrote:

&
nbsp; The bell of St Sepulchre’s church commenced tolling at a quarter to eight, the tones ringing out sharply on the morning air. It had no effect upon the crowd, many of whom were women, and obscene and ribald jokes could be heard among every group, the females especially being fiercely denunciatory of the convict’s conduct … At one minute before eight o’clock a yell from the crowd proclaimed the fact that the black flag was hoisted, and directly after the crowd gave vent to their feelings in a loud cheer.

  The day before her execution, Mrs Pearcey was visited by her solicitor, Mr Palmer. She asked him to distribute certain trinkets as keepsakes to relatives and friends. She also asked him to put an advertisement in the Madrid papers, addressed to certain initials. Mr Palmer inquired if this had anything to do with the case. ‘Never mind,’ said Mrs Pearcey. He asked her: ‘Do you admit the justice of the sentence?’ ‘No,’ she replied. ‘I do not. I know nothing about the crime.’ ‘Are you satisfied with what we have done for your defence and the efforts we have since made on your behalf?’ ‘I am perfectly satisfied,’ she said. He continued: ‘If you have any facts to reveal and will let me know them, even at this late hour, I will lay them before the Home Secretary in the hope of obtaining mercy.’ ‘I have nothing more to say,’ she replied. ‘Don’t forget about those things. Goodbye.’ She walked away across the yard to her cell.

  She had repeatedly asked to see Frank Hogg, and permission had at last been given for him to visit her between two and four o’clock that Monday afternoon. Her expectation of seeing him again was great. But as time passed and he did not appear, she became ‘nervous and impatient’. When she realised that he would never appear she was overcome, and lay on her prison bed, her hands over her face, sobbing. After a while she controlled herself and got to her feet, her face now quite calm and composed. She sat down at a table in the cell and began to read.

  Her executioner was James Berry, a Yorkshireman and a former policeman and boot salesman, aged forty-two, who had been hangman since 1884. During this more recent occupation he hanged 131 people, including five women. In his autobiography he described Eleanor Pearcey’s last hours:

  The night before her execution was spent in the condemned cell, watched by three female warders, who stated that her fortitude was remarkable. When introduced to her, I said: ‘Good morning, madam,’ and she shook my proffered hand without any trace of emotion. She was certainly the most composed person in the whole party. Sir James Whitehead, the Sheriff of the County of London, asked her if she wished to make any statement, as her last opportunity for doing so was fast approaching, and after a moment’s pause she said: ‘My sentence is a just one, but a good deal of the evidence against me was false.’ As the procession was formed and one of the female warders stepped to each side of the prisoner, she turned to them with a considerate desire to save them the pain of the death scene and said: ‘You have no need to assist me, I can walk by myself.’ One of the women said that she did not mind, but was ready and willing to accompany Mrs Pearcey, who answered: ‘Oh, well, if you don’t mind going with me, I am pleased.’ She then kissed them all and quietly proceeded to her painless death.

  She weighed 9 stone and was given a 6 ft drop. Reporters, who had been excluded from the execution by special order of the sheriff, were also refused permission to see the body, which was, however, viewed by the coroner’s jury.

  Her final message duly appeared in the papers. It was: ‘Have not betrayed – Eleanor.’ After her death, Frank Hogg sold several items and furnishings connected with the murder, including the poker and the pram, to Madame Tussauds for a large fee, and for many years these items and a tableau containing a waxwork of Mrs Pearcey was a popular attraction there.

  DR CREAM

  THE MURDER OF MATILDA CLOVER, 1891

  There is a kind of crazy vanity in murderers that prompts some of them to put their heads in the lion’s mouth. They go out of their way to meet and talk to the investigating police, and often pose as conscientious citizens eager to assist police enquiries. In addition, such murderers sometimes cannot resist writing taunting letters to the police or notes containing useless information. One man who pushed this literary bent to extremes was Neill Cream.

  At about 7.30 pm on 13 October 1891, a young prostitute, Ellen Donworth, aged nineteen, was plying her trade along Waterloo Road when she staggered and collapsed on the pavement. A man called James Styles ran to her and half-carried her to her nearby lodgings in Duke Street, off Westminster Bridge Road. She was in agony, but she was able to gasp that a tall gentleman with cross-eyes and a silk hat had given her some ‘white stuff’ to drink from a bottle when she met him earlier that evening in the York Hotel in Waterloo Road. She died on the way to hospital. A post mortem revealed strychnine in her stomach. A jeweller’s traveller was later arrested in connection with her death but soon released.

  The coroner officiating at her inquest, Mr GP Wyatt, received a letter on 19 October from ‘G O’Brian, Detective’. It said: ‘I am writing to say that if you and your satellites fail to bring the murderer of Ellen Donworth, alias Linell … to justice, I am willing to give you such assistance as will bring the murderer to justice, provided your government is willing to pay me £300,000 for my services. No pay if not successful.’ Another letter, from ‘H Bayne, Barrister’ was sent to Mr WFD Smith, MP, a member of the newsagent family, WH Smith and Son Limited. The letter said that two incriminating letters from Ellen Donworth had been found in her possession and the writer offered his services as ‘counsellor and legal adviser’.

  A week after her death, on 20 October, the cries of another prostitute, twenty-six-year-old Matilda Clover, aroused the house of ill-fame in Lambeth Road run by Mother Phillips, in which she had a room. Matilda was also mother of a two-year-old boy. Writhing and screaming in agony she managed, before she died, to say that a man called Fred had given her some white pills. A servant-girl, Lucy Rose, recalled seeing this Fred, who was tall and moustached, aged about forty, and wore a tall silk hat and a cape. Matilda’s death was attributed to DTs caused by alcoholic poisoning – not unreasonably, as she drank heavily, morning, noon and night. She was buried in a pauper’s grave in Tooting in southwest London.

  A month later, a distinguished doctor in Portman Square, Dr William Broadbent, was astonished to get a letter on 28 November 1891 from ‘M Malone’ accusing him of the murder of Matilda Clover, who had been ‘poisoned with strychnine’, and threatening him with exposure unless he paid £2,500. In December, Countess Russell, a guest at the Savoy Hotel, received a blackmail note naming her husband as Matilda’s murderer. Then the poisoner’s epistles and murderous activities suddenly ceased. He had fallen in love and had become engaged.

  But several months later, on 12 April 1892, two more young prostitutes died in agony. They were Emma Shrivell and Alice Marsh, who both lived in second-floor rooms in 118 Stamford Street, a brothel run by a woman called Vogt. Before they died, the girls told a policeman that a doctor called Fred had visited them that night and after a meal of bottled beer and tinned salmon he had given each of them three long thin pills. He was stoutish, dark, bald on top of his head, wore glasses, and was about 5 ft 8 in or 9 in. The policeman, PC Cumley, recalled seeing such a man leave the building at 1.45 am. It was established later that both prostitutes had been poisoned with strychnine, and the newspapers speculated wildly about the identity of the Lambeth Poisoner. Could he be Jack the Ripper, whose activities had suddenly ceased in 1888?

  ‘What a cold-blooded murder!’ exclaimed Dr Neill (as Thomas Neill Cream called himself) when he read about the inquest on the two girls in a newspaper on Easter Sunday, 17 April. He told his landlady’s daughter, Miss Sleaper, that he was determined to bring the miscreant to justice. A tall, bald, cross-eyed, broad-shouldered man, who wore tall hats and glasses specially made for him in Fleet Street, Dr Cream had rented a second-floor room in 103 Lambeth Palace Road since 9 April, after returning to London from Canada. He had stayed there before, between 7 October the previous year an
d January, when he took a trip to America. In December, he had become engaged to a girl called Laura Sabbatini, who lived with her mother in Berkhamsted. He made out a will in her favour. On Christmas day he dined with the Sleapers in his lodgings, joining in their family entertainments, singing hymns in the evening and playing the zither. He was no trouble, going out at night alone to places of entertainment and debauchery.

  In those days, that area south of the River Thames between Westminster and Waterloo bridges was thronged with bars, theatres, prostitutes and other amusements. There was Astley’s circus and playhouse; the Surrey, with its rowdy melodramas (gallery, 6d; pit, 1s); the Canterbury music-hall, with its picture gallery; and the Old Vic – which had, however, become respectable, with blameless programmes and temperance bars, since Emma Cons became director in 1880.

  Cream was ready, it seems, to converse with any man about plays or music, but his favourite topic was women, about whom he spoke quite crudely. He would describe his tastes and pleasures and exhibit a collection of indecent pictures that he carried about with him.

  An article published later in the St James’s Gazette said he dressed with taste and care and was well informed. It continued: ‘His very strong and protruding under jaw was always at work chewing gum, tobacco or cigars … He never laughed or even smiled … He occasionally said “Ha-ha!” in a hard, stage-villain-like fashion, but no amount of good nature could construe it into an expression of gentility.’ The article also referred to his ‘never-ending talk about women’ and referred to the fact that he swallowed pills that he said had aphrodisiac properties.

  In the same lodging house as Dr Cream was Walter Harper, a young medical student from St Thomas’s Hospital. Cream told Miss Sleaper most forcibly that it was Harper who had killed the girls. The police had proof, he said, and the girls had been warned by letter. Miss Sleaper, a girl of spirit, replied that he must be mad. Unabashed, Cream wrote to young Harper’s father, a doctor in Barnstaple, accusing his son of the murders and offering to exchange such evidence as he had for £1,500. He wrote: ‘The publication of the evidence will ruin you and your family for ever, so that when you read it you will need no one to tell you that it will convict your son … If you do not answer at once, I am going to give evidence to the coroner at once.’