The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime. Judith Flanders

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СКАЧАТЬ was a popular pastime, and many went ‘from curiosity to examine the premises’, where they entered ‘and saw the dead bodies’. Inquests were held as quickly as possible after the event, usually at a public house or tavern near the scene of the crime. The bodies were left in situ for the jury to view. Until they had been, visitors traipsed through the gore-spattered rooms, peering not only at the blood splashes and other grisly reminders of the atrocity, but also at the bodies themselves.

      For those who wanted a tangible souvenir, there were always broadsides, which were swiftly on sale on street corners. Broadsides had been around since the sixteenth century, but modern technology made their production easier, cheaper and quicker, and their distribution more widespread. A typical broadside was a single sheet, printed on one side, which was sold on the street for ½d. or 1d. Broadsides had their heyday before the 1850s, when newspapers were expensive. Most commonly, sheets were produced sequentially for each crime that caught the public’s imagination: the first report of the crime, with further details as they were revealed; the magistrates’ court hearing after an arrest; then the trial; and finally, and most profitably, a ‘sorrowful lamentation’ and ‘last confession’, usually combined with a description of the execution. These ‘lamentations’ and execution details were almost always entirely fabricated for commercial reasons: they found their readiest sale at the gallows, while the body was still swaying. For those who could not find a penny, pubs and coffee houses pinned up broadsides of popular crimes, to be read by customers as they drank. Other broadsides appeared in shop windows, frequently attracting crowds of bloodthirsty children.

      One broadside, published before the Marrs’ inquest, which opened three days after the murders, reported that ‘the perpetrators are foreigners’, which could have done little to reassure readers in this dockyard area of town, filled with sailors from across the world. Another spent less time on the possible murderer, and more on the gory details and the rumours that were prevalent: that Mrs Marr had, several months before, discharged a servant for theft. ‘Words arose, when the accused girl is said to have held out a threat of murder. Mrs. Marr … gently rebuked her for using such language’; later Mrs Marr ‘remonstrated with her on her loose character and hasty temper’. Anyone with a penny to spare would get a fair idea of the crime and the latest news of the search for the murderer.

      Those with a few more pennies could buy a pamphlet on the subject. These were available nearly as swiftly as the broadsides. One covered all the details of the inquest, so it was probably on sale within five days of the deaths. While the pamphlets looked more substantial at eight pages, much of their information was identical to that in the broadsides. In some, such similar wording is used that either they must have shared an author, or one was copied from the other. Mrs Marr again sacks her servant, who ‘is said to have held out a threat of murder. Mrs. Marr … gently rebuked her for using such language’; later she again ‘remonstrated with her on her loose character and hasty temper’. Now, however, we get the additional detail that the servant was leading a ‘prostituted life’. This is reinforced by a description of her clothes: ‘a white gown, black velvet spencer [jacket], cottage bonnet with a small feather, and shoes with Grecian ties’. No servant could afford such fashionable items: they were signs that her money was earned immorally.

      Another way to savour the thrill of murder was to attend the funerals of the victims. Many people did so out of respect, as friends or as members of the same community. But far more did so out of curiosity. Still more read about them afterwards. Even four hundred miles away the Caledonian Mercury gave a detailed account of the funeral of the murdered apprentice: its readers were able to follow the precise path of the cortège as it travelled ‘from Ratcliffe-highway, through Well-close-square, up Well-street, to Mill-yard’. In Hull too newspaper readers followed the crowds that turned out for the Marrs’ triple funeral: ‘The people formed a complete phalanx from the [Marrs’] house to the doors of St. George’s church.’ The church itself was so crowded that the funeral procession could only enter ‘with some difficulty’. Then the paper gave the order of the procession, as was normally done for royal weddings and funerals, or the Lord Mayor’s parade:

      The body of Mr. Marr;

      The bodies of Mrs. Marr and infant;

      The father and mother of Mr. Marr;

      The mother of Mrs. Marr;

      The four sisters of Mrs. Marr;

      The only brother of Mr. Marr …

      The friends of Mr. and Mrs. Marr.

      Newspapers churned out stories, handbills circulated, witnesses were questioned. But none of this got any closer to finding the murderer or murderers. Then, like a recurring nightmare, twelve days after the Marrs’ deaths it all happened again. On 19 December a watchman found John Turner, half-dressed and gibbering with fear, scrambling down New Gravel Lane, a few hundred yards from the Ratcliffe Highway. He had gone to bed early at his lodgings above a public house. After closing time he heard screaming and he went part-way down the stairs, where he saw a stranger bending over a body on the floor. After a panicky attempt to leave via the skylight (he was so frightened he couldn’t find it), Turner tied his bedsheets together and slid out of the window into the yard, shouting, ‘They are murdering the people in the house!’ The watchman was quickly joined by neighbours, and they broke in through the cellar door to find, yet again, bodies lying with their heads beaten in and their throats cut. The body of John Williamson, the publican, was in the cellar; his wife Elizabeth had been in the kitchen with their servant Bridget. Only the Williamsons’ granddaughter, asleep upstairs, had escaped. Once more, money was scattered about, but little of value had been taken; once more, the escape was via the back door and over the yard fence.

      The newspapers covered the story widely, but the information they gave was not terribly helpful. The Edinburgh Annual Register described John Turner as being ‘about six feet in height’, while The Times said he was ‘a short man’ with ‘a lame leg’. The Morning Chronicle described his ‘large red whiskers’, but thought he was ‘about five feet nine inches’ and ‘not lame’. Turner, therefore, was either tall, short, or in-between; he was lame, or possibly not; and he had large red whiskers, unless he didn’t. This was the description of a man who had stood in front of journalists at an inquest. Imagine how reliably the papers described the man briefly seen by Turner, or those who had been glimpsed running away from the Marrs’ house.

The police had no more idea where to look for the perpetrators of this new outrage than they had had after the deaths of the Marrs. They arrested plenty of people: people who were violent; people who looked in some way suspicious; people against whom a grudge was held. But one by one they were questioned and released.* In small communities criminals were usually revealed fairly swiftly; in areas with larger populations, handbills with descriptions of the wanted person and offers of rewards generally brought in information, frequently from fellow criminals who found this a convenient way of earning a bit of cash and removing a competitor at the same time. With no response to the initial reward offered after the murder of the Marrs, the only thing the magistrates could think to do was increase the sum. To the initial £50 reward, another £100 was added by the Treasury, and that was increased two days later to an astonishing £700 – a very comfortable middle-class annual income, the sign of increasing government anxiety, verging on panic. After the Williamsons were murdered, another 120 guineas was offered: twenty guineas to anyone who could identify the owner of the weapons, and 100 guineas more if that person were to be convicted of the murders.

      One man, arrested on suspicion, attempted to turn king’s evidence, identifying eight men as his fellow murderers. Unable to come up with a motive, the newspapers attributed a love of wholesale slaughter to this mysterious gang. The gang theory was widely popular. A magistrate from the Thames Police Office wrote to his colleague at the Lambeth Street Office that the crime ‘gives an appearance of a gang acting on a system’, СКАЧАТЬ