by P. D. James
It is important to remember on what very slender grounds Williams was first taken up:
The circumstances of suspicion which were alleged against him were that he had been more particularly seen there about seven o’clock on Thursday evening last; that on the same evening he did not go home to his lodgings until about twelve when he desired a fellow lodger, a foreign sailor, to put out his candle; that he was a short man and had a lame leg; that he was an Irishman; and that previous to this melancholy transaction he had little or no money, and when he was taken into custody he had a great deal of silver.
The Times report also states that there was a pound note in his possession. This preliminary evidence, slight as it was, all related to the murder of the Williamsons and Bridget Harrington. There was no mention at this stage of the murder of the Marrs and James Gowen. Interestingly enough, the Prime Minister in the House referred to the Marr murders as if they were unsolved. Williams was only accepted as the killer of the Marrs because he was accepted as the killer of the Williamsons. Yet the Williamson murder is the one in which the killer was seen and was clearly not identified as Williams. It was also the one for which, if Miss Lawrence’s evidence is true – and she revealed herself as a hostile witness with no love for the prisoner – Williams had some kind of alibi.
Williams made no secret of his friendship with the Williamsons, nor did he deny that he frequented the King’s Arms and had been there on the Thursday in question. But if being in the King’s Arms was, in itself, suspicious, it is astonishing that half the male population of the neighbourhood were not taken into custody. Equally, it is hardly of great significance that Williams did not return to his lodgings until after midnight. The district was notable for its late hours, and shops and public houses were frequently open as late as twelve o’clock. Richter testified during his examination on Boxing Day that Williams ‘was in the habit of keeping very bad hours’. In fact, if Williams did return to the Pear Tree after midnight – this is a point in his favour. The Williamsons were murdered soon after eleven o’clock and the King’s Arms was only a matter of five minutes’ walk from the Pear Tree. If guilty, Williams should have been home long before midnight. He would have had no motive for delay and every reason for getting himself off the streets and safely home before the general hue and cry was raised. The Pear Tree would have seemed his natural, and indeed his only refuge.
Williams’s explanation of his protest to his fellow lodger about the candle rings true, particularly when one remembers the constant risk of fire in the old houses near the river. And Williams was a sailor on East Indiamen. The East Indiamen were built of wood and, because of the possibility that they might have to defend themselves, were armed. Fire at sea on a wooden ship with gunpowder on board and little possibility of escape was a greater terror than storm or enemy action, and the fire regulations were strict and were stringently enforced. All candles on deck had to be extinguished by nine o’clock and those below by ten. Williams’s experience and training, both by land and sea, had taught him to dread fire. The sight of a lighted candle held by a man reading in bed after midnight would inevitably have provoked his protest. If, in fact, he had returned to his lodgings bloodstained, dishevelled and probably injured in the violent struggle with Williamson, a man considerably taller and stronger than himself, the most sensible way to avoid detection was to creep into bed, not to draw attention to his presence by arguing with a fellow lodger, particularly as the faint light from a candle held at a distance would hardly have presented much danger.
And there is the evidence of the pound note and the silver. Mrs Vermilloe testified that the money Williams deposited with her husband was not yet completely spent. Williams was certainly in need of money. Why otherwise had he pawned his shoes? But this situation was not strange to him, nor indeed, to any sailor. He came home rich and was soon poor. If his answer to this dilemma had been robbery and murder, it is strange that he should not have resorted to those means when he returned from previous journeys. No evidence was ever adduced to connect the small amount of money in his possession with the Williamson murder. Had he stolen and subsequently sold Williamson’s watch? It is surely inconceivable that the buyer would not have come forward. Was the pound note stolen from the King’s Arms? If so, it must surely have been bloodstained. It seems much more likely that the money in Williams’s possession came from the pawning of his shoes. The police officers who arrested him did not check the dates on the pawn tickets, but the fact that they were still in his possession was evidence of innocence. Williams was a vain young man, particularly about his appearance. If he had obtained money from the Williamson murders, surely one of his first actions would have been to redeem his shoes?
Williams was only asked for an alibi for the Williamson murders and he stated that, after leaving the King’s Arms, he had consulted a surgeon in Shadwell about the wound on his leg, had then gone on to a ‘female chirurgeon’ in the same neighbourhood in the hope of a cheaper cure, and had spent the rest of the night further west with some female companions and in visiting several public houses. He was not asked for the name of the surgeon or the female practitioner, and it is possible that he visited both too early in the evening for them to provide an alibi. But there was some corroboration of his story that he had been drinking. John Fitzpatrick and Miss Lawrence both testified that he had been drinking with Cornelius Hart in the Ship and Royal Oak at 11.15 p.m., a time which would give both men an alibi; while John Cobbett said that he had seen Williams with Ablass at Mr Lee’s public house. None of the witnesses strikes one as particularly reliable with the possible exception of Miss Lawrence. But insofar as there is evidence of Williams’s whereabouts on the night of Thursday, 19 December, it corroborates his story that he had been drinking in several public houses.
Then there is the allegation that Williams cut off his distinctive whiskers. This was apparently taken as an attempt at disguise but it is difficult to see why, since only Susan Peachy came forward with the description of a whiskered man. And, if Williams were concerned and feared that his whiskers may have been recognised, to cut them off immediately after the crime was to invite speculation and suspicion. There were plenty of acquaintances to testify that he normally wore them; he could hardly hope that the ruse would succeed. The sullen Richter, when giving his reluctant evidence, testified that he could see little difference in Williams’s appearance; and the truth may well be that Williams’s decision to trim his beard was a perfectly innocent and routine procedure. It may be significant that Williams apparently had himself shaved when he was in Coldbath Fields Prison, since the Lawrence drawing made in his cell after his death shows him to be without a beard. Equally natural, surely, is Williams’s surly ‘I know it’ when Harrison came dashing into his room to rouse him with the news of the Marr murder. The whole house must have been ringing with the news and Harrison himself admitted that Williams could have overheard him telling Mrs Vermilloe. A guilty man would surely have made some attempt to feign horror, astonishment and surprise.
From the time of his first examination, prejudice against Williams built up and the magistrates did nothing to control it. In his evidence Harrison openly admitted that ‘he had always an impression on his mind against the prisoner, and always wished for an opportunity of bringing forward some evidence against him’. Others were less blatant about admitting their prejudice but equally assiduous in indulging it. Mrs Orr, who admitted that she and her daughter ‘thought Williams an agreeable young man and never thought he could be one who would attempt to rob or murder’, nevertheless produced the chisel left outside her window ‘as further proof of his villainy’. Mr Lee, the landlord of the Black Horse, told his story of Williams pushing against his wife and shaking her pockets, as if to ascertain what money she had, and described how, on one occasion, he had taken the liberty of pulling out the till and putting his hand in it. Lee naïvely admitted, however, that ‘he never thought very seriously of this matter until he heard of Williams being apprehended
’. Richter first started the story that Captain Hutchinson had prophesied that Williams, if he returned to land, would be hanged. The captain subsequently corroborated this but was obviously embarrassed at the need to justify his statement. He made the excuse that a seaman, being under strict discipline, had few opportunities for villainy, and the particular incident which the Captain recalled – that Williams, while on shore, had passed himself off as the second officer of the Roxburgh Castle and had succeeded in borrowing a very small sum of money – was surely a venial sin for the butcher of Ratcliffe Highway. It was no doubt typical of Williams’s conceit that he should represent himself as an officer, and his pretension, combined with his quick temper, probably made him an unsatisfactory member of Captain Hutchinson’s crew. But, on the evidence, his captain’s prognostication of his end seems more like an outburst of irritation than a serious prophecy.
Nothing is known about Williams’s early life. But, after his death and burial, much was surmised, all of it predictably discreditable. The Newgate Calendar declares:
It is generally believed that his real name was Murphy and that he had changed it to that of Williams in order to escape detection of some crimes of which he had formerly been guilty. Of his early life little or nothing is known with certainty. Whether he was in his native country at the time of the unhappy troubles of 1798 can now be only a matter of conjecture: but it is certainly not unnatural to suppose that a monster capable of committing the late atrocities must early in life have lost that inate horror of bloodshed which forms so striking a feature in the moral constitution of man. In the dreadful paths of rebellion probably it was that he was first tempted to imbrew his hands in the blood of his fellow creatures. And amidst those terrible scenes of midnight murder which that unhappy country then afforded might his sinful conscience have been seared to every feeling of repentance and remorse.
Assuming that Williams was, in fact, born in Ireland he would have been fourteen at the time of the 1798 rebellion.
There seems to have been a general determination that the monster of Ratcliffe Highway should be Irish. The Irish were an unpopular, despised and feared minority, a perpetual source of irritation to the law-abiding citizens of East London. Since Williams was not Portuguese, it was highly appropriate that he should be Irish. Again no evidence was produced; it was all innuendo, a blatant example of racialism and anti-Catholicism which had no relevance to the crimes. Sheridan attempted to refute the story in the House and an anonymous correspondent writing in The Examiner of 9 January 1812, under the pseudonym Julius Hibernious, dealt robustly with the allegation and, at the same time, attempted to discredit the evidence of the Corporal of the Guard.
To keep the natives of Ireland ignorant and barbarous at home and to calumniate them to the rest of Europe was the object of every succeeding Chief Governor of that country.… It is no wonder, therefore, that an immediate attempt was made to impress the public with the belief that the horrid murders in Ratcliffe Highway were committed by Irishmen. The honest Corporal of the Guard and the finding of the letter addressed to Mr Nobody at Nowhere from his sworn friend Patrick Mahoney would no doubt some years ago have been promoted for a similar service to Ireland to the rank of Colonel. The ingenuity and cleverness displayed in the composition of that precious specimen of criminal correspondence would not have been lost upon men in power in that country.…
The Morning Chronicle of last week has furnished a second part to the honest Corporal’s letter from Paddy Mahoney. The paragraph to which I allude exhibits as notable a vein of invention and, no doubt, as patriotic a purpose, certainly more circumstantial details and the advantage of novelty in substituting the name of Murphy for Mahoney. I shall merely remark upon the above that it comes before us in a still more questionable shape than the story which was boldly deposed to by the Corporal. We have not heard from any person in the several examinations that Williams deposed to his having gone by any other name or to his being an Irishman. He stated himself to be a Scotsman. A hearsay was inserted in some of the newspapers that he was an Irishman; but this appears to have been a sly touch in the Murphy and Mahoney style, and for the same purpose. I do not mean to say that bad men are not frequently produced in Ireland as well as in England: but until a regular deposition to the substance of the Chronicle story is laid before the public I and other Irish readers have a fair right to believe it a fabrication, and I shall continue to believe without any reflection upon Scotland, a country which I respect, that the murderer was a Scotsman and that his real name was Williams.
But the campaign of innuendo, calumny and vilification continued. The Times contrasted the conduct of the two seamen, Marr and Williams. Marr was sober, diligent, peaceable and obliging. Williams was idle, drunken, dissolute and quarrelsome. The agreeable young man with the open manners who was so readily received into Mrs Orr’s house, no matter how late the hour; who nursed her baby and teased her daughter; the young man whom Mrs Williamson patted on the cheek and welcomed as a friend, was a monster hiding an insatiable blood lust beneath an agreeable face and insinuating manners. Certainly the sensitive and handsome face, shown in Lawrence’s portrait, was something of a problem to Williams’s detractors. It is not a strong face certainly, but it can hardly be said to bear the marks of ultimate depravity. But De Quincey is equal to this challenge:
A lady who saw him under examination (I think at the Thames Police Office) assured me that his hair was of the most extraordinary and vivid colour, viz. bright yellow, something between an orange and a lemon colour. Williams had been in India; chiefly in Bengal and Madras; but he had also been upon the Indus. Now it is notorious that in the Punjab horses of a high caste are often painted – crimson, blue, green, purple; it struck me that Williams might for some casual purpose of disguise, have taken the hint from this practice so that the colour might not have been natural. In other respects his appearance was natural enough and judging by a plaster cast of him which I purchased in London, I should say mean as regarded his facial structure. One fact, however, was striking and fell in with the impression of his natural tiger character, that his face wore at all times a bloodless ghastly pallor. ‘You might imagine,’ said my informant, ‘that in his veins circulated not red life blood such as could kindle into the blush of shame or wrath or pity, but a green sap that welled from no human heart.’ His eyes seemed frozen and glazed as if their light were all converged upon some victim lurking in the far background. So far his appearance might have repelled, but, on the other hand, the concurrent testimony of many witnesses and also the silent testimony of facts show that the oiliness and snaky insinuation of his demeanour counteracted the repulsiveness of his ghastly face and amongst inexperienced young women won for him a very favourable reception.
The young women must have been singularly naïve as well as inexperienced to have been seduced into overlooking such unprepossessing features as bloodless ghastly pallor, glazed eyes and hair dyed like that of a high caste horse.
No evidence was produced to prove that any of the three murderous weapons displayed so prominently on Williams’s bier was ever in his possession. Two of them, the maul and one of the ripping chisels, came from the Pear Tree, and Williams lodged there. But so did at least four other seamen, while numerous others had free access to the pub. Richter, Cuthperson and Harrison all knew where John Peterson’s tools were kept. Hart was a regular visitor. Mr Vermilloe used the maul to chop wood; his nephews played with it, whiling away the long hours while their mother was busy with the washing. Vermilloe had a curious idea of what constituted safe keeping, and it is apparent that anyone who lodged or visited the Pear Tree could have helped himself to one of Peterson’s tools. It is significant that Mrs Rice’s small son William testified that the maul had been missing for about a month, that is for a week before the Marrs were murdered. William may have been wrong. The evidence of a small boy about the passing of time is probably less accurate than his identification of an object. But the maul was an important toy to Mrs Rice�
�s children, who were probably not liberally provided with more orthodox playthings, and they must have missed it. It is unlikely that William was wrong and his evidence, if true, opens an interesting possibility. If Williams had taken the maul, where had he hidden it? It was hardly an object to stow under his bed or in his sea chest. And if Williams were planning murder, why should he bother to steal the maul? He knew where Peterson’s tools were kept, as did every other inhabitant of the Pear Tree. He could extract the maul when he needed it without the necessity of hiding it away in advance. The fact that the maul was missing for a week before it was used is one of the strongest indications that the murderer had access to, or had a friend living in, the Pear Tree, but did not himself live there. It also suggests that the maul and the chisel may initially have been taken for a purpose other than murder.
And then we come to the mysterious account of Williams’s visit late on the night of the Saturday before the Marrs’ murder to Mrs Orr’s. The more one examines this incident the more inexplicable it becomes, whether one chooses to view it in the light of his innocence or his guilt. There is no reason to doubt the truth of Mrs Orr’s story; it is the interpretation of the facts which presents a problem. The magistrates accepted the facts at their face value. Williams was heard by Mrs Orr when attempting to break into her house. Invited inside he had no alternative but to leave his incriminating weapon outside the window. Once within he settled down to chat with the old lady during which, with no attempt apparently at subtlety, he questioned her about the layout of her house and its relation to its neighbours, with the obvious intention either of robbing her and making his getaway, or of using the house and yard to gain entrance to some more promising property. He was stung into vehement and unreasonable anger by the arrival of the Watch and he tried to prevent Mrs Orr from admitting the man. When she insisted he crept out to retrieve the chisel but was too late. The Watch had already discovered it. Mrs Orr in her evidence put the official view. The chisel was ‘further proof of his villainy’; and Mrs Orr was suitably rewarded for her part in bringing the evidence forward.
