by Jan Bondeson
A drawing of Daniel Good, from Famous Crimes Past and Present, Vol. I, No. 8.
Another drawing of Daniel Good, from Vol. 2 of Percy Fitzgerald’s Chronicles of the Bow Street Police Office.
The police suspected that the absconding Good might be hiding with his first wife, ‘Old Molly’ Good, who kept a stall in Spitalfields Market. Although some of Jane Good’s clothes were found in her wardrobe, there was no sign of the coachman. Not unreasonably, giving Good’s farcical escape from the police constable, and the delay in tracking down ‘Old Molly’ and Good’s other contacts in London, the newspapers were full of criticism of the police. The Times wrote:
The conduct of the metropolitan police in this case, as in those of the unfortunate Eliza Grimwood, Lord William Russell, and others, is marked by a looseness and want of decision which proves that unless a decided change is made in the present system, it is idle to expect that it can be an efficient detective force, and that the most desperate offender may escape with impunity.
After several weeks on the run, Daniel Good was caught in Tonbridge by a former policeman. He was speedily tried and executed, but the criticism did not abate. The Times wrote that the result of the cases, ‘of Eliza Davies, the barmaid in Frederick-street, Regent’s-park; of Richard Westwood, the watchmaker in Princes-street; and of Eliza Grimwood, in the Waterloo-road, the perpetrators of which still remained undiscovered’, showed the incompetence of the police just as clearly as the farcical hunt for Daniel Good, who had been caught more or less by chance. The result of this mounting criticism was the foundation of the Detective Branch of the Metropolitan Police, a team of eight crack officers led by Inspector Nicholas Pearce, which would assist in cases of serious crime and improve communication between the nine police divisions.
The end of Daniel Good, from the Curiosities of Street Literature (London 1871), sheet 195.
Is there any reason to suspect Daniel Good was involved in the murder of Eliza Grimwood? After all, he had a very bad reputation already before the murder of Jane Good, he was searching for female company in far from salubrious circumstances, and he was capable of murdering a woman in a brutal manner. Interestingly, there was once a newspaper story that Good may have been involved in the murder of Eliza Davies, although no evidence in favour of this was forthcoming.18 A drawing of him in the dock shows that he had dark hair and bushy whiskers. But this drawing, and the description of Good on one of the police reward posters, describe Good as a thin, wiry Irishman, about 46 years old, with a dark sallow complexion and long thin features, and bald on the top of his head. He was just 5ft 6in tall. This description does not agree with what we know about the Foreigner, with regard to age, height or looks. Moreover, Good was a penniless coachman and petty thief, and hardly the kind of person who could afford the company of Eliza Grimwood. And would several witnesses believe an Irishman to be French or Italian, when they had seen him close up and heard him speak? Although Good initially seemed a good suspect, there are too many discrepancies between him and the young, relatively tall, dapper-looking ‘Foreigner’.
On the night of 29 April 1844, the wife of one of the toll-keepers on Battersea Bridge saw a woman come up to the toll house, saying that she had been stabbed. Indeed, she had a dreadful gash in the right side of the neck, extending from the windpipe to the right ear. Before she expired, she gave her name as Sarah McFarlane, a widow living in Bridge Road, Battersea. When asked who had stabbed her, she said, ‘Dalmas’. It soon turned out that she was referring to Auguste Dalmas, a Frenchman who had been cohabiting with her for some time. Once he had been a respectable married man with three grown-up daughters, but after the death of his wife he had become very melancholic, losing interest in his work in a chemicals factory and falling into debt. The acquaintance with Mrs McFarlane had not lifted his depressed spirits for very long and it seemed to the police as if the Frenchman had ‘settled’ a quarrel with his paramour by stabbing her hard in the neck before absconding. Just like in the case of Daniel Good, posters describing Dalmas went up all over London, but the Frenchman remained in hiding for several days. The newspapers were scenting another police failure, hinting that the Dalmas case would be ‘added to those of Eliza Davies, Mr. Shepherd, Eliza Grimwood, and Mr. Westwood, for the cold-blooded murder of whom not a single individual has been brought to justice’. But it was not long before the sad, friendless Frenchman was discovered, trying to secure a bed in a dismal lodging-house. He was convicted for the murder and sentenced to death, but was reprieved due to symptoms of insanity and instead transported for life.19
So here at last we have a real ‘Foreigner’, a Frenchman who had been living in London for twenty years and who spoke very good English. At the time of the murder of Eliza Grimwood, he was living in Battersea not far away. He came from the South of France, may well have been able to speak Italian, and looked very swarthy, with dark hair. But once more there are some serious problems with this suspect. Firstly, he was about 50 years old when arrested, and thus at least 45 back in 1838, which seems too old to fit with the descriptions of the Foreigner, particularly since Dalmas was not a handsome sight – bald-headed and with a large scar on his forehead. The murder of Mrs McFarlane seems to have been an act of desperation from a man who had become increasingly deranged after the death of his wife early in 1843. Before this time, Dalmas had been the perfect citizen, people testified, honest and hard-working, and the author of a book on chemistry. Again, Dalmas does not fit the profile left by Eliza Grimwood’s murderer.
The take-home message from this section of the book is that out of these rather ‘promising’ murderers of women from 1839 to 1844, all three can be ruled out, with certainty, of being the Foreigner who murdered Eliza Grimwood in 1838; nor is there anything to suggest that any of them had any involvement in the murders of Eliza Davies or Mr Westwood. Their age and general appearance were wholly inconsistent with that of the Foreigner, who was after all seen by a number of independent witnesses, who provided similar descriptions of him.
14
THE MAIN SUSPECT
Lord William Russell was born in 1767, the son of Francis Russell, the Marquess of Tavistock, and the grandson of John Russell, the fourth Duke of Bedford.1 His father had died young, from the fall off a spirited horse, and his mother had also expired soon after, allegedly from a broken heart. Lord William was educated at Westminster School, where he did not shine; he never attended any university. Like many members of his distinguished family, Lord William took up politics, and he was elected as a Whig Member of Parliament for Surrey in 1789. The same year, he married Lady Charlotte Villiers, the eldest daughter of the Earl of Jersey; the marriage was a happy one, and produced seven children. When Lady Charlotte died prematurely in 1808, Lord William mourned her bitterly, and he made a habit of always carrying a gold locket containing a curl of her hair.2
Lord William Russell in middle age.
Lord William Russell’s two elder brothers succeeded as the fifth and sixth Dukes of Bedford, and his nephew Lord John Russell became a distinguished politician. Although Lord William was an ardent Whig himself and sat in Parliament for many years, his political colleagues unflatteringly described him as a ‘zero’ and ‘an accomplished driveller’. It was even commented that in spite of his many years in the Commons, he ‘never discovered any particular aptitude for business, nor did he often appear in debate’. Lord William dabbled in art and sculpture, and assisted his brother in building up his famous collection at Woburn Abbey. A painting of Lord William in middle age shows a distinguished-looking gentleman, dressed in fashionable attire. He spent much time abroad, travelling aimlessly around Italy and Switzerland. His nephew and namesake, whom he joined in Florence in 1822, wrote that ‘He appears such an unhappy wandering spirit that I was glad to offer him a home, but he is too restless to remain in it & wanders about from tavern to tavern without knowing why or wherefore. I quite pity him’.3
In the late 1830s, when his daughters were married and his surviving so
ns settled in life, Lord William took up residence at No. 14 Norfolk Street near Park Lane. This street had been laid out in the 1750s, and all its houses had been occupied by 1761. The houses on the west side were grander than those on the east, and had short gardens extending to Park Lane. Lord William’s house on the east side of Norfolk Street was a tall and narrow terraced Georgian town house with a lower ground floor and four upper floors. The kitchen, scullery and butler’s pantry were on the lower ground floor, and the dining room on the ground floor. Lord William had his drawing room and writing room on the first floor and his bedroom and dressing room on the second. The third floor housed the servants’ bedrooms.
Lord William Russell in old age, from Cleave’s Penny Gazette of 16 May 1840.
Lord William Russell’s house, No. 14 Norfolk Street, not far from Park Lane. From the Penny Satirist of 16 May 1840.
In 1840, when Lord William Russell was 73 years old, he remained in reasonable health, although hampered by asthma, deafness and a serious rupture that forced him to wear a truss day and night. A drawing of him shows an eccentric-looking, bald-headed, edentulous old cove. Although fully compos mentis, his habits were decidedly whimsical. For unknown reasons, he liked to put his watch in his mouth, and once, when he had lost his timepiece, some person suggested that he must have swallowed it by mistake. In 1840, the Duchess of Bedford described him as ‘Old William, who chatters more and more to himself every day’. Lord William had a large white sheepdog, of which he was very fond; he commissioned several paintings of his faithful canine companion, and exhibited them in the house. The elderly nobleman daily exercised this formidable animal in Hyde Park nearby; the dog did not live in the house at Norfolk Street, but was kennelled in the Ham Yard mews behind the property. There were two women servants employed at No. 14 Norfolk Street: the cook Mary Hannel and the housemaid Sarah Mancer. There had also been a footman named James Ellis, but he had left in late March 1840, to enter the service of the Earl of Mansfield. Lord William decided that the 24-year-old Swiss valet François Benjamin Courvoisier should become his successor, with a salary of £45 per annum.
François Benjamin Courvoisier was born in 1816, in the small Swiss village of Mont-la-Ville, where he had been educated at the local school before becoming a labourer at his father Abraham’s small farm. He had a sister, who went to live in Paris. He had come to London in early 1836, to join his uncle Mr L. Courvoisier, who had worked as the butler to a wealthy baronet, named in a newspaper as Sir George Beaumont, for not less than eighteen years. Since Courvoisier could speak no English at all, the only employment his uncle could help him secure was that of hotel servant at the French-speaking Hotel du Port de Dieppe, kept by Messrs Piolaine and Vincent, and situated at No. 2 Leicester Place, near Leicester Square. After about a month, he moved to a larger and more respectable hotel, the Hotel Bristol in Jermyn Street. Courvoisier learnt English with alacrity, and later in 1836 his uncle managed to get him a post as footman to Lady Julia Lockwood. He stayed there for seven months, before becoming second footman to the wealthy Dover banker Mr John Minet Fector MP. He was based at Mr Fector’s London town house in Park Lane, but occasionally accompanied his master to his country residence at Kearsney Abbey near Dover, and to his Scottish country estate. Although strictly supervised by Mr Fector’s butler, Courvoisier took every opportunity to enjoy the London nightlife; he had ideas above his station in life and was very fond of the ladies. At Mr Fector’s Scottish estate, he once visited a wedding in Thornhill, where his dancing aptitude was much admired.4 Although he looked older than his age (journalists presumed him to be 30 years old in 1840, rather than just 24), he was far from ugly, in spite of a low and receding brow, and keen always to be dapperly dressed. He spoke excellent English, with the French accent still audible.
The reason Courvoisier left Mr Fector’s large and wealthy household, and joined the elderly misanthrope Lord William Russell’s frugal abode in Norfolk Street instead, may well have been that Mr Fector’s butler had disapproved of his partying habits in London’s low life, and his partiality to young ladies of dubious virtue. Perhaps he reasoned that in a smaller household, where he was the only manservant, routines would be slacker, giving him more time for his nocturnal revels. Still, it must be remarked that neither Lady Julia Lockwood nor Mr Fector had any complaints about Courvoisier’s conduct: they thought him a good and attentive servant without any tendencies to laziness or dishonesty, and gave him excellent references. But the cantankerous Lord William Russell soon found faults with Courvoisier: he was slothful, unpunctual and generally unreliable, and this earned him more than one tongue-lashing from his elderly employer. Once, when Lord William had visited Kew, a gold locket had been lost, and Courvoisier had been blamed for not taking proper care of it.
On the morning of 5 May 1840, Lord William Russell had his breakfast and attended to his correspondence, before giving Courvoisier a number of messages. The elderly nobleman left the house on foot at half past twelve, walking with the aid of a stick. One of his messages was to have the bell-wire in his bedroom tightened, and this was done by an upholsterer, with good success. In the afternoon, the footman Henry Carr, in the employ of Mr Fector in Park Lane nearby, came calling to see his former colleague Courvoisier. The Swiss valet was pleased to see him, and invited him in to have tea with the other servants in the household; they had quite a jolly time, until the coachman William York, who lived in the coach-house in the mews behind No. 14 Norfolk Street, and who took care of Lord William’s dog, came calling at a quarter past five. With a start, Courvoisier remembered that one of Lord William’s orders had been to send York to pick him up from Brooks’s Club at five o’clock in the brougham!
York dashed off in the brougham, but when he reached Brooks’s, it turned out that Lord William had already left the premises. Back at No. 14 Norfolk Street, Courvoisier bragged to the two female servants that he would still be able to extricate himself from the situation, since his elderly employer’s memory was quite defective, and he would not remember at what time he had asked to be picked up at his club. But when Lord William arrived home in a hansom cab, his memory turned out to be in good working order, and he treated the scapegrace Courvoisier to another well-deserved tongue-lashing.
After the brougham debacle, Lord William’s day returned to its usual routine: he sat down to dinner at seven o’clock, and was waited upon by Courvoisier, and then he went up to his drawing-room. York came to collect the dog at nine, and an hour later Lord William rang for his China tea. Mary Hannel went out in the evening, but Courvoisier and Sarah Mancer remained at No. 14 Norfolk Street and had their evening supper together. The Swiss valet was in a gloomy frame of mind: he regretted that he had ever entered Lord William’s service, since his lordship was always so very cross and peevish. He quite startled his fellow servant when he angrily exclaimed, ‘Billy is a rum old chap. If I had half his money, I would not remain long in England!’ When Mary Hannel returned home later in the evening, Courvoisier offered to go out and fetch her a tankard of beer for her belated supper. This offer surprised both his fellow servants, since although the young Swiss enjoyed quite a decent salary, he was normally disposed to spend it entirely on his own amusements in London low life. The thirsty Mary Hannel swigged hard at the tankard of beer, and Sarah Mancer also had a small glass, after drinking which she felt quite drowsy. Still, she was able to prepare Lord William’s bedroom for the night, and light the fire in the hearth. His lordship went to bed not long after, followed by his two tired female domestics. The stage had been set, and the opportunistic killer had his sights set on his elderly victim. Without his faithful canine companion, the feeble old Lord William lay in his bed alone and unprotected, while his two female servants slept soundly in their beds on the floor above. The spectre of murder, late of Frederick Street, Wellington Terrace and Princes Street, was once more on the prowl, and death would be the result of its nocturnal visitation to the unsuspecting household at No. 14 Norfolk Street.
On Wednesday 6 May 1840, Sarah Mancer woke up at six o’clock, got dressed and headed downstairs; the cook Mary Hannel, who had swigged hard from the (adulterated?) beer the evening before, slept deeply and could not be roused. When Sarah went downstairs, she saw that the door to Lord William’s writing room was wide open, and that the room itself was in much disorder, like it had been searched by an intruder intent on plunder. Lord William’s Davenport writing table had been knocked over, and wads of letters and documents protruded from its drawers; even more correspondence was strewn on the floor. Lord William’s bunch of keys, which he never allowed to leave his keeping, lay on the hearth rug, and a screwdriver was on the seat of a chair. Suspecting that the house had been burgled during the night, Sarah Mancer continued downstairs. At the front door, which was unchained and unbolted, lay a pile of articles purloined from the house: Lord William’s large blue evening cloak, his gold-mounted opera glasses, his silver trinket box, and his gold pencil case, among other small gold or silver articles tied up in a napkin. The door to the ground-floor dining room was ajar, and the floor was scattered with silver forks and spoons. Sarah dashed upstairs and did her best to rouse the drowsy Mary Hannel. She then knocked on Courvoisier’s door, and although the Swiss valet was normally very fond of his morning’s sleep, he promptly answered the door fully dressed. She asked him if he knew of anything being the matter last night, as she expressed it, and he answered in the negative. When she explained that the silver and other valuables were strewn about, and that the house might well have been burgled, he went downstairs with her, and into the butler’s pantry, exclaiming, ‘My God, some one has been robbing us!’ Sarah urged him, ‘For God’s sake let us go and see where his lordship is!’ and they went up to the bedroom. When Courvoisier opened the shutters to the middle one of the three windows to the street, Sarah could see that the bed and pillows were full of blood, and she called out, ‘My lord!’ but Lord William did not stir. Not daring to examine the situation any further, she gave a scream and ran out of the room and upstairs to her own bedroom, then downstairs again and out into the street, where she frantically rang the bell at No. 22 and No. 23 Norfolk Street opposite. She managed to tell the other servants answering the door that the household at No. 14 had been burgled, that her master was lying still in his bloodstained bed and that he had almost certainly been murdered.
