Great Unsolved Crimes

by Rodney Castleden

  Alternatively, he may have known, somehow, that the assassination would take place in the wood and was establishing a cover for someone else. If he was planning to leave for France immediately (as he evidently did), he may have agreed to take the blame for a murder someone else was about to commit. It made no difference to him now; he was already guilty of three capital offences. While his flaunted presence on the south side of Loch Leven would or should have ensured an acquittal on a charge of murder at some point north of the ferry, it would have damned him utterly if the murder took place to the south – which it did.

  Could Allan Breck have been the murderer? He said repeatedly that he would welcome a chance of a fight with Campbell. He ‘wanted nothing more than to meet him at a convenient place.’ But, as his foster-father affirmed on the gallows, the Appin Stewart way was emphatically not to kill people in cold blood in an ambush. On the day of the murder, Allan Breck was wearing clothes borrowed from James, as he often did when on visits. He wore a short black coat with silver buttons and a scarlet lining. He also wore plaid trousers, in a striking blue and white striped pattern. This was not a stalking costume. This was not an outfit that any assassin would choose to wear when planning to lie hidden on a hillside. The boldness of the costume was designed, like his behaviour, to draw attention to him.

  Does Allan Breck Stewart’s borrowed clothing match Mungo Campbell’s description of what the murderer was wearing? Mungo described him as ‘a man with a gun in his hand, clothed in a short dun-coloured coat and breeches of the same.’ He was evidently persuaded to change this for the trial, where the murderer became ‘a man with a short dark-coloured coat.’ This was clearly meant to tie in with what the law officers knew Allan Breck was wearing. But there is no possibility of mistaking blue and white striped trousers for dun-coloured breeches, so it is obvious that Allan Breck was not the murderer. That is reinforced by Mor MacIntyre’s failure to recognize the man she saw on the road; she would have know Allan Breck well enough.

  Some believe that Donald Stewart was the murderer. He was in the area at the time of the murder, lived in the district, knew Allan Breck and could therefore have been the man for whom Allan was covering. But there is no real case for believing that Donald was the killer. He was in an hysterical state as the day of James of the Glen’s execution approached. He wanted to go to the gallows and give himself up to save James. His kinsmen tried to persuade him it would do no good, that it was too late and would only lead to a second hanging. In the end, they had to tie Donald up until after the execution was over. His behaviour is not evidence of guilt; only evidence of loyalty and love.

  Donald’s evidence at the trial nevertheless contains the clue we are looking for, the name of the assassin. Donald said he had gone to Allan immediately after the murder and accused him of being the murderer. Allan denied it, but said that he thought he would be accused of it. Because of that he would have to leave the country. Allan needed money, and asked Donald to get some from James for him. The next morning Donald went to James and in the course of the conversation he, Donald, had expressed regret that ‘such an accident as Glenure’s murder’ should happen in their country. James replied that he had been told, presumably by Allan Breck, that ‘one Sergeant Mor, alias John Cameron, had been threatening in France to harm Glenure.’

  At the trial it was briefly mentioned that Sergeant Mor had not been seen in Scotland for ten years, but that does not allow for his returning in secret. Sergeant Mor was an even wilder character than Allan. After fighting on the Jacobite side in the ’45, Mor organized a band of outlaws in the Western Highalnds. They robbed but never killed. Like Breck, Mor joined the French army. Like Breck, he hated Colin Campbell. The big difference, apart from the fact that Mor was even more of a brigand than Breck, was that Mor was a Cameron. As a Cameron, his attitude to the Red Fox was deadlier; he had no compunction about killing Campbell by stealth. Also, as a Cameron, he would not have seen that the murder of Campbell would have made things extremely difficult for the Stewarts, that it would jeopardize James of the Glen’s careful negotiations, and probably not even cared much that James of the Glen would lose his life in his place. As a brigand, an outsider, Mor would be likely to overlook all that.

  The only remaining problem is the location of the murder. Campbell breathed a sigh of relief when he crossed the Balluchulish ferry, knowing that he was now in Appin Stewart country. But the Cameron ambush was well planned. Armed Camerons were positioned at intervals all along the loch-side road from Fort William. Maybe they suspected that they needed a safety net, one more position just half a mile into Appin Stewart country. And what better place for an ambush than the Wood of Lettermore! Murdo Cameron, the man who organized the long ambush through Cameron country, had actually said that if the Red Fox escaped them there, he would not come alive through the Wood of Lettermore. This is as clear a statement as we are likely to find that there was one final sniper, a Cameron in the wood. That final, successful sniper must surely have been John Cameron, also known as Sergeant Mor.

  PART THREE: Unsolved Crimes of the Nineteenth Century (1801–1900)

  The Ratcliffe Highway Murders

  Towards the end of the nineteenth century, in the 1880s, London was gripped by something like mass hysteria by the Whitechapel murders. The Jack the Ripper murders in a peculiar and distinctive way became part of the twentieth century equivalent of Penny Dreadful culture. What is now generally forgotten is that there was an even more intense wave of hysteria in London over another crop of murders, the Ratcliffe Highway murders. In Whitechapel in the 1880s there was a certain amount of fear in the air, but the risks were clearly contained as the murderer (and just one man, probably) was only interested in killing lone prostitutes who were out on the streets very late at night. If you were not a prostitute and stayed off the streets at night you were safe. The Ratcliffe Highway murders were altogether more terrifying, as people of both sexes and all ages were murdered in their own homes.

  It was at midnight on Saturday, 7 December, in 1811 that London was shaken by the violent and inexplicable murder of an entire family. In spite of the lateness of the hour, the traders were only then shutting up shop for the night. Timothy Marr, who ran a draper’s shop, was one of them. On the night in question, he was still behind the counter after a busy day, gathering up the lengths of cloth out on display in the shop and putting them away on the shelves, helped by his shop-boy, James Gowen. There were various types of cloth, rough worsted, dyed linen, canvas for seamen’s trousers, serge for seamen’s jackets and cheap printed cotton. Marr also kept stocks of silk and muslin for his better-off customers.

  Timothy Marr sent his maidservant, Margaret Jewell, out to buy oysters for a late family supper, and she had left the shop door ajar because she expected to be back in a few minutes. It was midnight, but there were still shops open and it seemed safe to be walking the streets at that hour. Unfortunately, the shop where she was expecting to buy the oysters, Taylor’s oyster shop, had shut for the night and she had to try elsewhere. This brought her back past Marr’s shop, and as she walked past she looked in through the window and saw Mr Marr and the boy still at work. In the event she found no oyster shop open, though she was able to pay the baker’s bill, which was another of Marr’s errands.

  A gang of criminals meanwhile walked into Timothy Marr’s shop, pushed him to the floor and cut his throat. Then they grabbed hold of his shop-boy and murdered him too. Mrs Marr was in the kitchen, feeding her baby. She heard an extraordinary noise and scuffling upstairs, as she thought, so she laid the baby in its cradle and ran up to see what was happening. Then she was met by the men who had murdered her husband. She too was murdered – in the same way. The baby started crying in its cradle, and the intruders went in to silence it, fearing that the noise might attract the curiosity and concern of the neighbours; they cut the baby’s throat as well.

  Then the maidservant came back without the oysters. She found the shop door shut and locked, so she rang the be
ll. No one answered. But she did hear the soft tread of footsteps on the stairs, which she thought was her master coming downstairs to open the door for her. Then she heard the baby give a single low cry. Then nothing. No footsteps. Nothing. The watchman George Olney passed down the other side of the street, taking someone to the lock-up; he noticed Margaret standing at the door. She became angry that she had been locked out and frightened too. She could not understand why no one was answering the door. She started banging on the door and kicking it. Not knowing what to do, she just waited on the doorstep for half an hour, banging on the door from time to time.

  In due course, George Olney, the watchman, came round again, calling the hour at one o’clock, and asked her what she was doing. She explained that she had been locked out and thought it very strange, and he agreed that the family must be in. He had seen Mr Marr putting the shutters up, but later had noticed that they were not fastened. Olney remembered calling out to Marr at the time and hearing an unfamiliar voice answering, ‘We know of it’. Now he could see that the shutters were still unfastened. Olney knew there was something seriously wrong. He tugged vigorously on the bell and shouted through the keyhole, ‘Mr Marr! Mr Marr!’. The intruders, who were still in the house at this time, realized that they needed to get away. They scrambled out of a window at the back of the house, across some mud and followed a route that showed an intimate knowledge of the area. It included passing through an empty house in Pennington Street. The man living in the house next to it heard a rumbling noise as ‘about ten or twelve men’ rushed through it from the back and out into Pennington Street.

  The watchman wondered what to do. Mr Murray, a pawnbroker, lived next door. He was not a man to interfere in his neighbours’ lives, but he and his wife were being kept awake by Margaret’s banging on the door and wondered what was wrong, especially since there had been mysterious noises earlier on, including the cry of a boy or woman. Murray assumed that Marr was tired and irritated at the end of an exhausting day and was chastising the maid or the shop-boy.

  Mr Murray went out to see what was going on and discussed the situation with Margaret and the watchman. Murray decided to climb over the fence separating Mr Marr’s back yard from his own. This was quickly done and he got into the Marrs’ house from the back. Inside it seemed very quiet and still. He saw a light from a candle burning on the first floor and went up. The door into the Marrs’ bedroom was shut and he did not like to go in. He came back downstairs and found the first of the bodies. The fourteen-year-old shopboy James Gowen was lying near the door into the shop. The bones of his face had been shattered by blow after blow with a heavy object; his head had been beaten to a pulp. Blood and brains hung from the ceiling. This was the first of a series of the most appalling tableaux. He saw the body of Timothy Marr on the floor in the shop, and the body of his wife in the passage. The bodies were all still warm, still bleeding.

  Murray was nauseated by what he saw. He managed to stumble to the front door and get it open. ‘Murder! Murder! Come and see what murder is here!’ In England in 1811, public hangings were regarded as major entertainments, and visiting crime scenes to view murder victims was quite normal behaviour. Someone asked him about the baby, which Murray had not seen. People crowded in from the street and saw the baby with its head almost completely severed.

  The whole neighbourhood was soon in a state of alarm. The night watch mustered and a drum sounded the call to arms. By midnight a huge crowd had gathered in the street outside Marr’s shop to hear what had happened.

  One of the murder weapons was found in the Marrs’ bedroom. The bed was undisturbed. Beside it stood a chair, and resting against it was a heavy iron mallet or maul, completely covered in blood and human tissue.

  The bodies were laid out in the bedrooms and sightseers from all over the neighbourhood came to have a look. Scores of people of every class tramped up and down the narrow staircase to see the bodies of the murder victims.

  An inquest was opened on 10 December and a verdict of ‘wilful murder by person or persons unknown’ was brought in. The burial of the Marr family took place on 15 December 1811 at the Church of St George’s in the East, attended by an enormous crowd, silent apart from groans of pity.

  No one had any idea who could have done the murders, or why. Was it simple robbery? If so, why choose such a humble shop? Was it something to do with Timothy Marr’s past, perhaps the settling of an old score? Marr was only twenty-four, but that was old enough for him to have had a past. He had been to sea with the East India Company, sailing his last voyage in the Dover Castle in 1808. He had not sailed before the mast but as the captain’s personal servant. He was an agreeable young man, keen to please, but also ambitious. The captain, a man called Richardson, had promised to help him if he continued to serve him well. Timothy Marr wanted to leave the sea, marry the girl he was in love with, Celia, and set up a small shop. Ironically, he thought being a shop-keeper would be a safer life than his life at sea. When the Dover Castle docked at Wapping, Marr was signed off with a significant sum of money – enough to set him up in business. In April of 1811, Marr and his new wife found what they were looking for, cheap premises not far from the docks. Marr knew about the clothing needs of sailors, and there were huge numbers of sailors passing through the London Docks. Every year 13,000 ships passed through.

  But the location Timothy Marr chose, close to the docks, was a dangerous one. The docks were a major focus for criminal activity. In 1800, it was estimated that around 10,000 thieves preyed on the ships that were docked on the open river. Things improved when the London Dock opened in 1805, but only a little. There were still huge numbers of criminals in the area. The warehouses that stored goods awaiting export and imported raw materials awaiting collection were a great magnet for criminals. Timothy Marr lived and worked within a stone’s throw of all this crime. Very close to his shop was the twenty-foot high security wall of the London Dock.

  The Marr murders were horrible enough, but they were soon to be followed by more. Everyone in the vicinity of the Marrs’ shop felt vulnerable to attack by the merciless gang of murdering burglars, who were still at large, still unidentified; everyone was waiting for the same thing to happen again.

  Just twelve days later, on 19 December, it did. At around eleven o’clock at night, Mr Williamson, the licencee of the King’s Arms, No 81 New Gravel Lane, put up the shutters. He was fifty-six, a big, strong, burly man well able to deal with late drinkers or most kinds of troublemakers. It was a noisy, squalid area full of ship’s chandlers, lodging houses, pawnbrokers and pubs packed out with sailors. It was said that every ninth building was a pub. New Gravel Lane was no stranger to disorder. The King’s Arms had a tap-room and a private kitchen behind it on the ground floor, and a cellar with a flap-door opening on to the pavement for delivering barrels of beer. The Williamsons’ bedroom and that of Kitty Stillwell, their fourteen-year-old granddaughter, were on the first floor. Above those bedrooms were a couple of attic bedrooms, one occupied by Bridget Harrington who worked behind the bar, and the other by a young lodger called John Taylor.

  Williamson relaxed with a beer drawn by his wife and chatted with his neighbour, Mr Anderson, who was a constable. Williamson suddenly sat up, alert. There was something on his mind. ‘You’re an officer,’ he said. ‘There’s been a fellow listening at my door, with a brown jacket on. If you see him, you should take him immediately into custody. Or tell me.’

  Anderson said he certainly would, and for his own safety as well as Williamson’s. He said goodnight to the Williamsons, then returned to his own house. The man Williamson described as listening at his door was at the inquest described by John Turner, who remembered Samuel Phillips calling in for a drink with Williamson at twenty to eleven. It was Phillips who told Williamson that ‘there was a stout man with a very large coat on, peeping in at the glass door in the passage’. Williamson went off to challenge him, brandishing a candlestick, but came back having seen no one.

  Twenty minutes af
ter returning to his own house, Anderson was aware of a disturbance in the street. There were cries of ‘Murder!’ People started to gather in the street in front of the King’s Arms pub. The shouts of ‘Murder!’ were coming from a near-naked man climbing down the outside of the house from an attic window on a rope of sheets, shouting and crying incoherently. The watchman stood below, holding his lantern and rattle. The half-naked man was John Turner. Anderson rushed back indoors to get his constable’s sword and staff, and came out just in time to see John Turner come to the end of his rope. The last sheet ended eight feet short of the ground, and he fell this distance to be caught by the watchman, Shadrick Newhall. Then John Turner shouted, ‘They are murdering the people in the house!’

  Anderson quickly decided to force his way into the house through the cellar flap. This was done with the help of Mr Hawse, an axe-wielding butcher. Another man, Mr Fox, managed to get in through some wooden bars at the side of the house; for some reason he was carrying a cutlass. On looking round, the first thing they saw was the body of Mr Williamson, lying head downwards at the foot of the cellar steps, a terrible wound on his head, his right leg broken, his throat cut and a crowbar covered with blood by his side. They then went upstairs to the kitchen and found the body of Mrs Williamson, also with a head wound and a cut throat. Near her was the body of Bridget Harrington, her feet under the grate, with exactly the same injuries. Her throat had been cut right back to the neckbone. By some miracle, the granddaughter was still in her bed, unharmed, fast asleep. Someone carried her out into the street; she could not be left there.