The Maul and the Pear Tree

by P. D. James

  Nor were all the proceedings in open court. A magistrate could order a witness to be brought to his house, and could there interrogate him in private. He could visit a witness in prison, as Capper had visited Vermilloe. It is probable that only a small minority of the magistrates were corrupt. Most were honest and conscientious, anxious to get at the truth. But truth was too often an early casualty in the undisciplined and prejudiced courts over which they presided.

  The Morning Post published on Christmas Day, reported the proceedings extensively. John Turner again described the man he saw. He stated:

  While he was going downstairs he was sure he heard a man walking slowly in the sitting-room, and that his shoes creaked, and that he was confident the man could not have nails in his shoes. When he got to the door he only saw one man in the position, and dressed in the manner, described in his examination before the Coroner.

  The prisoner was here brought forward and the magistrates particularly questioned the witness, whether he thought the prisoner at the bar was the man? The witness could not state that he was, but said that he had seen him two or three times in Williamson’s house. He did not know whether he was in the house on Thursday night last.

  It is interesting to follow the working of the magistrates’ minds by observing the order in which they called their witnesses. Clearly they hoped that Turner, their key witness, would identify Williams as the murderer. But whether or not he did, some confirmatory evidence would be desirable. The killer of Williamson and Marr must have been blood-stained, and might well have sent his blood-stained clothing to be washed. So, hopefully, they called Williams’s laundress.

  Mary Rice was examined. She washed for the prisoner for more than three years. She knew his stock of linen perfectly well, but had not washed for him for the last fortnight.

  The magistrates here rigidly examined the witness.

  Q. Have you not seen blood on his shirts?

  Yes, I have. On one of them.

  Q. Have you seen any blood on his shirts since last Saturday week?

  Yes, I have. One of his shirts was bloody about the collar, like the mark of two fingers.

  Q. Was there no other part stained?

  I took no particular notice; his shirt was torn at the breast.

  Q. Did you not take notice of the shirt being torn?

  Yes, but judged the prisoner had been quarrelling – he might have had the shirt torn.

  Q. When was it you had this shirt without being torn?

  Last Thursday week.

  Q. Will you swear there were no other marks of blood on the shirt?

  There was a little blood on the arms and several spots on other parts of the body; but, taking no particular notice at the time, I washed it and kept the shirt in order to mend it.

  Q. Have you washed out all the stains?

  I think I must, for I boiled it well in hot water.

  Q. What linen have you generally washed for the prisoner?

  Four linen shirts and some stockings; but never any white handkerchiefs. The prisoner used to wear black handkerchiefs.

  (The prisoner wore a white neck handkerchief on his examination.)

  *

  To be meaningful, this passage needs to be read with other newspaper accounts of Mrs Rice’s evidence. The London Chronicle makes it clear that the washerwoman (who was Mrs Vermilloe’s sister-in-law) was speaking of two shirts she had washed for Williams. The first – ‘which was very much torn about the neck and breast, and had a good deal of blood on it about the neck and arms; she supposed he had been fighting … was before the murder of Mr Marr, but the second was four or five days afterwards’. This ‘was also very much torn, and marks of blood on it, which appearances she attributed likewise to fighting…. She remembered the prisoner’s fighting in her house with a lodger of hers, and that then he had a shirt torn to rags, but this was three weeks back.’

  The examination of Mrs Rice brings out several points. It shows the crude nature of the interrogation of witnesses, the readiness of the magistrates to ask leading questions, and their extraordinary naïvety in assessing the evidential value of a torn and bloody shirt. It shows too, that they were clearly confused between the two crimes. Mrs Rice had washed Williams’s bloody shirt four or five days after the murder of the Marrs, but before the murder of the Williamsons. It could have no relevance, therefore, to the crime on which Williams was taken up. And, apart from the likelihood of a murderer sending his bloody shirt to his own washerwoman, what was the significance of the tear? Williamson struggled with his assailant; and the killer’s clothes on this occasion must have been blood-stained, and might well have been torn. But the Marrs were annihilated with ferocious suddenness, and it is unlikely that any of that pathetically unaware household put up a fight. The evidence of Williams’s shirt points clearly to a tavern brawl some time before the murders at the King’s Arms.

  Mrs Vermilloe, the landlady of the Pear Tree, was next examined. The Morning Post reported:

  Q. Is your husband in confinement?

  Yes, he is in prison for a debt of £20, and has been for seven weeks.

  Q. Is there a chest of tools in your house?

  Yes. It belonged to a person now gone abroad. She had never looked into it; knew it contained two or three mauls; one of them her husband sometimes used, and it lay in the yard.

  Q. Did you ever notice the marks on the mauls?

  Yes, on one or two. They were marked J.P., and belonged to one of her lodgers who had gone abroad since February last. His name was John Peterson.

  Q. Did you ever know the mauls were missing?

  Not till Monday, when there was enquiries made.

  Q. Could you identify the maul if you saw it?

  I don’t know.

  The magistrates here ordered the fatal maul to be produced. The witness was extremely agitated and burst into tears. After some pause and a chair being handed to her she recovered from her fright.

  Q. On your oath will you say that this is not the maul?

  I don’t know.

  Q. Will you swear it is the maul?

  I can’t say.

  Mr Markland – Is the maul similar to the one you have seen in your house?

  Yes, it is something like it.

  According to the London Chronicle reporter other material points came out during Mrs Vermilloe’s cross-examination. She said that she had known the prisoner ‘for some years’. There had been two or three mauls in Peterson’s tool chest three weeks ago, but within that time they had disappeared. ‘The box which contained them was always unlocked, and anybody in the house might have access to it. It was in the same room where the prisoner’s sea-bed was deposited.’ When the maul was produced Mrs Vermilloe ‘shrunk back with horror and consternation. It was with great difficulty she could be got to look at it steadily’. But then the washer-woman jumped to her feet:

  Mrs Rice interposed, and said, that her little boys could speak positively as to the identity of the maul, as she had frequently heard them describe a broken-pointed maul with which they used to play in the square before their aunt’s door.

  The boys were sent for. During the absence of the messenger, the prisoner begged to account for the manner in which the shirt, given to the laundress on Friday night fortnight, became torn and stained with blood. He said he had been dancing with his coat and waistcoat off, at the house where he lodged, about half past eleven o’clock at night; and his sport being stopped by the watchman, he had retired thus undressed to the Royal Oak to treat his musician. In the Royal Oak he met with a number of Irish coal-heavers playing at cards, and they insisted on his playing with them. He consented, after much entreaty, and lost a shilling’s worth of liquor. He was then for retiring peremptorily, when a scuffle ensued between him and one of the party, who seized him by the shirt collar, which he tore, and then struck him a blow in the mouth, which cut his lip, and from that wound issued the blood which stained his shirt.

  The magistrates told him to confine himsel
f to the shirt found bloody on Thursday week, to which caution he paid no apparent attention.

  The Morning Post reported the examination of the next two witnesses as follows:

  Michael Cuthperson and John Harrison, the prisoner’s fellow lodgers at the Pear Tree, stated that the prisoner came home on the morning of the murder about one o’clock. Cuthperson was in bed but not asleep. The watchman was going past one o’clock. He was positive that the prisoner said, ‘For God’s sake put out the light, or else something will happen’ – but was not certain whether it was the same morning as the Marrs’ murder.1 Harrison went to bed about twelve and awoke when the prisoner came home, but did not take notice of the prisoner. They all slept in the same room.

  The maul was then produced. Harrison thought it was like one that the children had played with in the yard.

  It was then that the eleven-year-old William Rice made his appearance and came excitedly into court. His evidence was important. Children, and particularly boys, are usually excellent witnesses. They have a keen eye, a retentive memory for anything which interests them; and, being untroubled by the irrational doubts and divided loyalties which can afflict their elders, usually give their evidence simply and without self-consciousness. William was such a lad. When he took the stand Mrs Vermilloe burst into tears so vehemently that she had to be taken out of the court. Mrs Vermilloe’s histrionics must have added to the drama of the occasion, but they would hardly have made the task of the magistrates any easier. But William was unaffected by his aunt’s distress. The magistrates eyed him sternly but benevolently and, before showing him the maul, cunningly asked William to describe it. This he did, mentioning the broken tip. The weapon was then produced. The child carelessly took it up, tried to carry it, and looked on it with what the Morning Post described as ‘the most composed innocence’. The magistrates asked him if this was the same hammer with which he and his brother had played. He said it was. He had not seen it for about a month, but he was positive that this was the maul with which he had played at being a carpenter – ‘and he dared to say that his brother would say the same’.

  William Rice was the last witness examined. It was very late by now, the heat of the crowded courtroom was oppressive and the magistrates, conferring softly together, decided that it was time for the hearing to be adjourned. At this point the prisoner attempted to speak, but the Morning Post reported that ‘the first question he asked was of such a tendency that he was desired to desist’.

  What did John Williams say to provoke the magistrates to silence him? Did he shout out an accusation against someone who was considered above suspicion? Was he provoked into abuse or defiance by tiredness, the lateness of the hour? By frustration that he was ignorant of the strength of the case building up against him? We shall never know. He was taken back to Coldbath Fields Prison. The courtroom cleared. Carriages were summoned, horses brought by grooms to the door. The poor of Wapping made their way home through the darkness in companiable groups, talking over the evidence, speculating fearfully on the future. The magistrates went home to their late dinners in the comforting knowledge that they had finished a good evening’s work. And tomorrow was Christmas Day.

  1 Either the witness or the reporter was confused. From the first examination of Williams it is apparent that the candle incident related to the night of the murder of the Williamsons

  SIX

  Feast of the Nativity

  In the year 1811, The Times was published as usual on Christmas Day. It cost sixpence halfpenny – the equivalent of forty pence today [1971] – and for this the reader was offered four pages, each containing five columns of print. Of the twenty columns published on 25 December 1811, eleven were taken up with advertisements; one and a half were devoted to an angry letter from Publicos denouncing, with a wealth of Latin, a Christmas production at Westminster School of Terence’s Adrian; a further one and a half columns covered dispatches from James Monroe in Washington; there was a brief dispatch from Wellington in the Peninsular, and a column describing a dinner given in Dublin by the Catholics of Ireland to the friends of Religious Liberty. There were only two news headlines. One, captioned Nottingham, December 22nd, led a quarter of a column of print about the activities of the Luddites. The other, Murders in New Gravel Lane, covered two whole columns, setting out the evidence given before the Shadwell magistrates on Christmas Eve. Perhaps it was as well, for otherwise the various authorities all over the country who were avidly collecting clues and examining witnesses would have had no means of knowing what had happened at the central point, Shadwell.

  The Times contained no reference at all to Christmas in its news columns, and only a few references in its advertisements. T. Bish (Contractor) offered lottery tickets as Christmas presents with the prospect of a £20,000 win; his slogan: ‘the tickets are few, the prizes numerous’. A book-seller of Paternoster Row begged leave to announce ‘to the Nobility, Country and Public in General, that he has recently printed the following little Books for the amusement and instruction of Youth…. The History of Little Ellen, or the Naughty Girl Reclaimed: a story exemplified in a Series of Figures, 6/6d. coloured….’ There were plenty of patent medicines offered, and tucked away discreetly in a corner at the bottom of the back page:

  Currie and Co continue, with unabated ardour, the eradication of those disorders which are the consequence of illicit indulgence. In professing the cure of these complaints they hold out no inducement to vice, but sensible as all men must be of the existence of such calamities, they offer their assistance as regularly educated Surgeons of London and of the Royal College of Edinburgh. In all cases of Syphilitic infection, and in every complaint of Debility, whether arising from destructive habits, long residence in a warm climate, free living or any other cause, the patient may rely on a speedy restoration to vigorous health.

  More topical, however, was a prominently displayed advertisement in Christmas week:

  Guns, pistols, Blunderbusses etc. – To be SOLD, for about half the first cost, several beautiful DOUBLE and SINGLE BARREL GUNS, by Maston, and all the best makers; excellent Air Guns, Holster Pistols or Muskets and every other bore, House Pistols and Blunderbusses, with or without bayonets; house cutlasses and swords, and pocket pistols of every sort, from two to fourteen barrels the pair. The whole are warranted, and a trial allowed, or exchanged within twelve months. A great quantity of the best Dartford gunpowder, also flints and every kind of shooting tackle.

  In 1811 Christmas was still a religious rather than a commercial feast. There were no Christmas cards, and although it had from ancient times been the custom to decorate houses with ivy and bay leaves, no one in England had yet adopted the German tradition of lighting the greenery with candles. The old-fashioned Christmas feasts described by Addison and Smollet (a century before Dickets ‘invented’ Christmas) still survived in rural parts and country squires who had recently set up houses in London tried to keep up something of the tradition of hospitality. The emphasis was on vast quantities of food and drink, though this year public-spirited men had contributed their share towards the defeat of Napoleon by undertaking not to drink French wines. Prisoners were not forgotten. By direction of the Lord Mayor those in the City were to receive ‘one pound of beef, a pint of porter, and half a threepenny loaf each, pursuant to annual custom’. For one lad, though, it was all too much. The London Chronicle records:

  Gluttony, – Tuesday morning a journeyman weaver, at Bethnal Green, engaged, for a trifling wager, to eat 4lbs. of fat bacon raw, 4lbs. of boiled potatoes, and half a quartern loaf, and to drink two pots of porter, and a pint of gin, within one hour, which he completed six minutes under the time, but was soon after taken with violent sickness, and is not expected to survive.

  To the poor and starving cooped up in the slums of Wapping and Shadwell this Christmas brought nothing but fear and misery. The Bill of Mortality for the London parishes for the last week of 1811, with its catalogue of ague, cowpox, eaten by lice, flux, French pox, gravel, grief,
jawlocked and tissick is a poignant and grotesque record of the afflictions of the age. It was published to warn the Court and nobility of any dangerous epidemic or infectious disease, and they could hardly have been reassured by the figures that year of sixty-eight deaths from consumption and ten from smallpox. Most of the dead were the commonplace victims of disease, poverty, ignorance and neglect. It was the footnote to the table which struck cold to the heart this Christmas Day: ‘Murdered – three at St Paul’s, Shadwell’.

  Panic was still very near the surface. In Greenwich it broke out. The Times reported:

  Greenwich was thrown into great consternation during divine service on Christmas Day; but it was in the Church the panic spread most effectually. While the clergyman was reading the Litany, the alarm drum beat to arms. The congregation were struck with amazement and horror, and everyone trembling for his friends and home, apprehensive the murderers were in the neighbourhood. Scarcely had the first moments of surprise and enquiries passed when the Sexton stood up in the Church, and after solemnly demanding silence with an ‘O YEZ! O YEZ!’, said, ‘This is to give notice, that the commander of the River Fencibles1 desires every man will repair to his post, there to do his duty.’ The horror now was at its height; the only doubt was whether the French had landed or assassins were murdering and robbing in the town. All flew out of the Church, and in the scramble several were hurt, but none seriously. It was found that a large party of Irishmen, who had been drinking freely, had quarrelled; but whether with the town’s-people or among themselves was difficult to ascertain; for it appeared, that they did not much care with whom they quarrelled, so that they could get in a little fighting, and that they had been knocking down and insulting every person they met. The River Fencibles having assembled, seized about fifteen of the ringleaders, whom they conveyed on board a tender, and the others found it prudent to sneak out of the way.