In the Shadow of the Noose: Mad Earl Ferrers: The Last English Nobleman Hanged for Murder

by Randall, Dan Alexander

  Going back to the horse incident, she said that Earl Ferrers had pistols and a hammer with him when he came to collect the mare, and had hurt her husband so badly after she had been knocked to the floor that a surgeon had to be fetched to treat him. ‘He took the mare away by force of arms and if anybody came to hinder him he said he would blow their brains out.’

  The Honourable Robert Shirley was next to give evidence.

  He had not seen his eldest brother for four years, he said – not since, characteristically, Ferrers had stormed into his home in Burton-on-Trent with concealed pistols and waving a ‘snick-or-snee’ – a large fighting knife – and threatened his family.

  He said he believed him to be ‘rather turned in the head’, and that he was ‘transported into passions without any adequate cause.’ After that particular incident, he said, he had written to his older brother, Captain Washington Shirley, stating that he thought the Earl a lunatic, and saying that he would join with him in taking out a commission against him.

  The Lords seem to have been sceptical, at best. Sir Charles Pratt, the Attorney-General, certainly was. He cross-examined Shirley on the suggestion that his brother’s insanity was proved by his having been ‘transported into passions without any adequate cause’.

  ‘I should be glad to know whether you deem every man that is transported with anger without an adequate cause, to be a madman?’ he said, eyebrows doubtless touching his wig. If a nobleman could not beat an errant servant all the Lords in the House would find themselves in the dock!

  The star witness at the trial that afternoon was the eminent ‘mad-doctor’ Dr John Monro, an expert in insanity and physician at the notorious mental asylum Bethlem Hospital, better known as Bedlam. He had looked after Laurence Shirley’s uncle Henry, the third Earl Ferrers, when he had become insane.

  When asked to describe the usual symptoms of lunacy, the doctor said, ‘Uncommon fury, not caused by liquor, but very frequently raised by it. I do not know a stronger, a more constant, or a more unerring symptom of lunacy than jealousy, or suspicion without cause or grounds…’

  Monro became increasingly uncomfortable as Ferrers ran through a list of his bizarre behaviour – including quarrelling with friends without cause, going armed where there is no danger, spitting in a mirror, talking to himself, drinking hot coffee from the spout of the pot, being seized with fits of rage. He was asked whether each such action might be considered a symptom of lunacy. The doctor replied that they might.

  ‘Is it common to have such a disorder in families in the blood?’ asked Ferrers.

  ‘Unfortunately, too common,’ came the reply.

  Some may have believed that the Lord was suffering from some sort of mania in court that day as he called witness after witness with the sole intention of proving his own insanity, revelling in their repeated confirmations of that lunacy – and ignorant or careless of the obvious anguish and consternation this was causing his noble family.

  ‘Was I generally reputed to be a madman, or a man in his senses?’ he asked the next witness, one Roger Griffiths, a man he knew in London.

  ‘Generally reputed a lunatic,’ said Griffiths. ‘Some said cracked in his head.’

  He recalled Mr Goostrey to the stand to ask him if he thought him ‘remarkably jealous and suspicious.’

  ‘Very remarkably so.’

  Eventually, the Lords decided that the Earl had made his case – such as it was – and prevented his from recalling any more witnesses.

  ‘My Lords,’ he said, ‘I have done with my evidence. But it is impossible for me to sum up, and what I have to offer to your Lordships I have reduced into writing, and desire the clerk may read it.’

  In his wordy letter, he tried further to prove his insanity, claiming to have ‘an unhappy disorder of mind, which I am grieved to be under the necessity of exposing.’ Towards the end of the letter he showed his lack of remorse for what he had done, saying, ‘My life is in your hands, and I have everything to hope, as my conscience does not condemn me of the crime I stand accused of; for I had no preconceived malice and was hurried into the perpetration of this fatal deed by the fury of a disordered imagination.’

  *

  CHARLES YORKE, the corpulent Solicitor-General, then had his moment, summing up the evidence for the Lords sitting in judgment. He said Shirley did not deny killing Johnson but claimed that he was ‘incapable, knowingly, of doing what he did’ and therefore, ‘insists upon an incapacity of and insanity of mind in his defence.’

  The Lords then sat through long and doubtless tedious legal definitions of insanity (both partial insanity of mind, where the sufferer is ‘competent as to some matters, and not so as to others’, a judge and jury deciding whether the perpetrator was mad at the time the crime was committed, and total insanity, which is ‘perfect madness’ and will absolve the perpetrator of all guilt). Lunacy while drunk was no defence in law, said the lawyer, because it is a ‘voluntary contracted madness’ and ‘shall have the same judgment as if he were in his right senses.’

  He asked the Lords, ‘Is the noble prisoner at the bar to be acquitted from the guilt of murder on account of insanity… could he, did he, at that time, distinguish between good and evil?’

  Mr Yorke’s bias was exposed somewhat, as he described Lord Ferrer’s animosity towards his servant and his vengeful nature – citing the fact that he tried to drive Johnson out of his farm, with the intention of allowing his mistress’s father to rent the land instead – and stating, ‘It was plain, his Lordship gradually wrought himself up to a resolution of destroying Mr Johnson.’

  He claimed that the act of murder was clearly premeditated. On the Sunday before the shooting, the Earl had invited Johnson to visit him at 3pm on Friday. He had locked the door of the room they were in. He had produced a paper for Johnson to sign admitting that he had betrayed his master. He had tested the gun before the shooting. And, after he had shot Johnson and failed to kill him, he had told Dr Kirkland that he intended to shoot him again.

  ‘The evidence shows that his conduct was not absurd, but rational and consistent,’ said Mr Yorke. ‘The same crime has been committed in all ages, upon grounds as slight, by men who never thought of setting up the defence of lunacy.’

  As to the question of whether Earl Ferrers knew that what he had done was wrong, the Solicitor-General waxed lyrical about how he had sent for a surgeon and immediately asked him whether he thought the servant would live; how he had told Johnson’s daughter that he feared prosecution, and had said that if she did not press charges he would look after her family; how he had insisted that Mr Johnson not be moved for fear that word would get out and he would be seized.

  Obviously enjoying his time in the limelight, Mr Yorke said, ‘This is the substance of the evidence which has been offered for the King; and it not only proves the fact, but proves it to be murder. What is the evidence produced by the noble Lord to weaken the force of it? In the first place, there is none which applies to the time of committing the act… no general evidence has been offered which proves his lunacy or insanity at any time.’

  Taking each defence witness in turn, he highlighted their inability to prove that the Earl was mad and stated that Ferrers had murdered an old and faithful servant ‘in cold blood’ and in a ‘most deliberate and wilful manner.’

  At the end of the Solicitor-General’s summing-up, the Lord High Steward ordered that Lord Ferrers be returned to the Tower – a journey of three miles – and the Lords were invited to leave the Hall.

  Indeed, Ferrers was in the Tower when the Lords traipsed back into court, and was no doubt pacing up and down, concerned for his fate, when they delivered their verdicts in absentia.

  The youngest baron, George Lord Lyttleton, stood up, removed his wig and was asked, ‘What says your Lordship? Is Laurence, Earl Ferrers, guilty of the felony and murder whereof he stands indicted, or not guilty?’

  The most junior member of the House of Lords put his right hand on his breast, bowed his
head and said, ‘Guilty, upon my honour.’

  Each of the further 35 Lords, five Viscounts, 55 Earls, the Marquis of Rockingham, 15 Dukes, and the Lord Privy Seal, were asked the same question and gave the same reply.

  The last to give his verdict was the Lord High Steward, who declared, ‘My Lords, I am of the opinion that Laurence Earl Ferrers is guilty of the felony and murder whereof he stands indicted, upon my honour.’

  The verdict was unanimous and it was ordered that Lord Ferrers be returned to Westminster Hall to hear the outcome.

  The news was delivered swiftly, the Earl was taken back to the Tower and court was adjourned till the following day.

  Chapter 7

  THE TRIAL, DAY THREE – THE SENTENCE

  LORD FERRERS’ REACTION to the shameful news that his peers believed him a murderer is not recorded – no doubt, the aristocratic stiff upper lip prevented him from showing his feelings – but he was returned to court at 11am on April 18, 1760, to plead for his life.

  There was no doubt that he had failed to live up to the Ferrers family motto: Honor Virtutis Praemium (Honour is the reward of virtue), and now faced the consequences.

  Several members of the royal family, including the King’s 21-year-old grandson Prince Edward, were at Westminster Hall to watch proceedings.

  Blaming his family for persuading him to attempt a defence of insanity, the disgraced nobleman admitted that his only hope now was to avoid the death penalty. He thanked those gathered for ‘the fair and candid trial your Lordships have indulged me with’, and apologised for troubling the peers with ‘a defence I was much averse to… but was prevailed upon by my family to attempt.’

  Ironically, by far the highest hurdle for Ferrers during the trial had been his own conduct during the case.

  Horace Walpole, who had been in court each day, later described its ‘pomp and awfulness’ in a letter to his friend, the MP George Montagu. ‘In general he behaved rationally and coolly,’ wrote Walpole, ‘though it was a strange contradiction to see a man trying by his own sense to prove himself out of his senses. It was more shocking to see his two brothers brought to prove the lunacy in their own blood, in order to save their brother's life. Both are almost as ill-looking men as the Earl.’

  In a heartfelt address to the Lords, in which Earl Ferrers stated that he was suffering from ‘agony of mind’, he said, ‘I hope your Lordships will, in compassion to my infirmities, be kind enough to recommend me to His Majesty’s clemency.’

  A ripple of chatter ran through the courtroom, which was ended with a proclamation for silence. Then, the Lord High Steward, Robert, Lord Henley, addressed the prisoner in his usual verbose, pompous fashion. It is recorded in full below only to show how Henley was swaggering and ostentatiously enjoying the occasion.

  ‘Laurence Earl Ferrers; His Majesty, from his royal and equal regard to justice, and his steady attention to our constitution, hath commanded this inquiry to be made, upon the blood of a very ordinary subject, against your Lordship, a peer of this realm: your Lordship hath been arraigned; hath pleaded, and put yourself on your peers; and they have unanimously found your Lordship guilty of the felony and murder charged in the indictment.

  ‘It is usual, my Lord, for courts of justice, before they pronounce the dreadful sentence pronounced by the law, to open to the prisoner the nature of the crime of which he is convicted; not in order to aggravate or afflict, but to awaken the mind to a due attention to, and consideration of, the unhappy situation into which he hath brought himself. My Lord, the crime of which your Lordship is found guilty, murder, is incapable of aggravation; and it is impossible, but that, during your Lordship’s long confinement, you must have reflected upon it, represented to your mind in the deepest shades, and with all its train of dismal and detestable consequences.

  ‘As your Lordship hath received no benefit, so you can derive no consolation from that refuge you seemed almost ashamed to take, under a pretended insanity; since it hath appeared to us all, from your cross-examination of the King’s witnesses, that you recollected the minutest circumstances of facts and conversations, to which you and the witnesses only could be privy, with the exactness of a memory more than ordinary sound; it is therefore as unnecessary as it would be painful to me, to dwell longer on a subject so black and dreadful.

  ‘It is with much more satisfaction, that I can remind your Lordship, that though, from the present tribunal, before which you now stand, you can receive nothing but strict and equal justice; yet you are soon to appear before an Almighty Judge, whose unfathomable wisdom is able, by means incomprehensible to our narrow capacities, to reconcile justice with mercy; but your Lordship’s education must have informed you, and you are now to remember, such beneficence is only to be obtained by deep contrition, sound, unfeigned, and substantial repentance.

  ‘Confined strictly, as your Lordship must be, for the very short remainder of your life, you will be still, if you please, entitled to converse and communicate with the ablest divines of the Protestant church, to whose pious care and consolation, in fervent prayer and devotion, I most cordially recommend your Lordship.

  ‘Nothing remains for me, but to pronounce the dreadful sentence of the law; and the judgment of the law is, and this high court doth award, that you, Laurence Earl Ferrers, return to the prison of the Tower, from whence you came; from thence you must be led to the place of execution, on Monday next, being the 21st day of this instant April; and when you come there, you must be hanged by the neck till you are dead, and your body must be dissected and anatomized.

  ‘And God Almighty be merciful to your soul.’

  At that, the chamber erupted in a babble of noise and chatter, and Earl Ferrers was led away.

  Chapter 8

  EXECUTION OF AN ARISTOCRAT

  IN THE EVENT, the execution was delayed, at Ferrers’ request.

  He was hoping for a pardon from the king, but this never came. He then requested to be beheaded at the Tower of London, the fate a century and a half earlier of his ancestor Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, and one which he thought his noble rank deserved. The king denied him this, too, and ordered him to be hanged like a common criminal in front of the masses at Tyburn.

  ‘He has done the deed of the bad man,’ said King George, ‘and he shall die the death of the bad man.’

  And so it was that the noble Earl found himself in his landau, with a funeral hearse behind him carrying his own coffin, on that slow journey to his doom.

  In her book, Passages From the Diaries of Mrs Philip Lybbe Powys, the author describes how she watched the carriage take the Earl to his execution: ‘I think I never shall forget a procession so moving; to know a man an hour before in perfect health, then a lifeless corpse.’

  As the procession headed to the top of Tyburn Road – modern-day Oxford Street – they could see the spectator seating which had been erected in the open field, at what is now Marble Arch, for the occasion. Rows and rows of London’s finest ladies and gentlemen, dressed in their finest silks, jostled for the clearest view in the best seats, craning their necks for the arrival of the unfortunate Earl. Below them, the common multitude – apprentices given the day off, respectable businessmen, and mothers with babies in arms – was, likewise, all elbows and tiptoes.

  They were all gathered around a new-fangled gallows, which stood on a scaffold draped in black baize and dressed with black cushions.

  In the centre of the stage was a box upon which the condemned man was to stand, the noose around his neck; upon his giving the signal, a lever would be pulled and the box would open. The victim would then drop into the void, and make his way to eternity.

  Ferrers was to enjoy the dubious distinction of becoming the first man to try out this contraption. It was some advance on the old method of hanging – you stood in a cart which was then driven away from underneath you – but a far cry from later methods, where the ‘drop’ was greater and the convict died quickly, from a broken neck, as opposed to slowly, from strang
ulation.

  Waiting at the side of the stage was the hangman, Thomas Turlis – a determined man of sharp features and strong hands, then in the eighth of a 19-year career as the London executioner.

  Ferrers climbed down from the landau to a deafening roar, and climbed up onto the platform. He was calmness itself: as Walpole – who watched the execution – later wrote, ‘his courage rose when it was most likely to fail.’

  The coach was immediately driven away by its weeping driver – the Earl seems to have been popular with at least one of his servants, though it might have been the imminent loss of his job that the man was lamenting – and abandoned in a pub yard in Acton. There it stood, untouched, for the next 100 years until it fell apart with age.

  It was customary, and sensible, for the condemned to pay the hangman a tip, to ensure that he ‘turned them off’ with as little pain as possible. Taking a purse containing five guineas from his pocket, the Earl mistakenly handed it to Turlis’s assistant, and there followed an unseemly tussle between the two men until Sheriff Vaillant intervened and ordered the assistant to pass the fee on to his master. Lord Ferrers than gave his gold watch to the sheriff.

  Cornelius Humphries, the Chaplain of the Tower, had followed him from the coach. Now he said to the Earl, ‘Do you choose to pray?’

  ‘I do not,’ said Ferrers.

  ‘Do you not choose to join with me in the Lord’s Prayer?’

  ‘I do,’ said Ferrers, obviously having second thoughts. ‘I have always thought it a very fine prayer.’

  The two men then knelt together on the black cushions, and prayed to the heavenly entity before whom Ferrers expected, within a few minutes, to be prostrating himself.

  After they had finished, Ferrers stood and said, loudly and clearly, ‘Oh, God, forgive me all my errors – pardon all my sins!’