The Maul and the Pear Tree Page 13

  Such vulgar panic left Whitehall unmoved. The Home Office disdained to acknowledge its existence. A murder or two, more or less, in the turbulent East End raised no eyebrows. As for the current stories in the newspapers of multiple massacres, they were so wild as to be almost certainly exaggerated, or even totally false. The word went round the Department that the whole thing was an elaborate hoax, made up by journalists starved for copy. Crimes on such a scale were inherently implausible; and the Home Office, at least, was not going to be taken in. This, at all events, is what was being rumoured about Ryder’s apathetic Department. ‘It is said,’ The Times complained on Boxing Day, ‘that at the Secretary of State’s Office an affectation prevails of discrediting the published accounts, and treating them as insertions to amuse or terrify the public.’

  However that may be, the Department opened as usual on Christmas Day and Ryder found a job for his eighteen clerks. Whatever his staff may have been saying, he at least was beginning to take his responsibilities more seriously. For two weeks he had been badgered by correspondents from all over the country to do something effective about the reform of the police, and feeling was running high in London. For an ambitious politician action of some sort was imperative. Ryder talked to Beckett, the Under-Secretary, and was persuaded, as ministers have been before and since, that anything precipitate would be a mistake. First it would be prudent to find out the facts: how many watchmen were actually employed in the various parishes in the Metropolis, how many additional parish patrols had been recruited, and how much were they all paid? So the order went out – the Home Secretary wanted a fact-finding circular to be sent immediately to the seven Public Offices.

  Then, somewhere down the line, the purpose of the inquiry was lost. Perhaps it arrived during the office Christmas party; no one saw, or cared to find out, the point of the inquiry. But one of the older clerks remembered that the information had already been obtained – in 1804 wasn’t it? A quick check of the letter book confirmed the date. The returns must be somewhere in the office. But Christmas Day was no time to hunt in the registry for papers seven years old. It was surely more sensible to spread the work and ask the magistrates’ clerks to send in a duplicate. So a circular duly went out to the seven Public Offices, dated 25 December 1811, referring to a letter of 19 November 1804 and requesting, ‘for Mr Ryder’s information, with the least possible delay, a Duplicate of the returns made by the Office to the letter above-mentioned’. The magistrates’ clerks, accepting that requests from Government departments were necessarily arbitrary and incomprehensible, and taking the sensible view that it was less exhausting to comply than to argue, searched their files and wrote out in their careful copperplate the names and addresses of watchmen long since forgotten and some, no doubt, dead. It was not until the replies began to come in on Boxing Day that a second circular had to be hurried out, requesting information about the numbers currently employed. Both requests were signed by Beckett, but the second circular did not withdraw the first; so the magistrates obediently forwarded two sets of returns, one of them seven years out of date. As far as the investigation of the murders was concerned, the up-to-date information was as useless as the old.

  The London Chronicle, sensitive to the public mood, devoted the whole of its leader on Christmas Day to the subject, Police of the Metropolis. The recent murders ‘called loudly for some serious revision’ of the system. The watchmen and constables were not to be blamed as individuals. They were victims of a system ludicrously inadequate for a great metropolis ‘where characters of every cast and degree of human depravity, and where villainy, in every form and shape is to be found…. Where the very improvements and advantages of civilised society serve to add fuel to the passions; where beings are to be found whose moral feelings have never been brought into action, and who know not God, and who fear not eternity, who have been brought up in the principles of the first murderer, Cain, their hands against everyone.’ The writer recalled fears canvassed when the Public Offices had been set up in 1792, each with its tiny quota of police officers, that the police were ‘already sufficiently inquisitorial and intermeddling, and that there could be no extension of its powers without some compromise of the liberty of the subject’. The risk must now be taken, and taken urgently. ‘Is a man to retire with his family in tranquillity to their repose, or are their beds to be haunted at night with images of midnight murderers, and their hours of rest contaminated by dreams of blood?’

  Many Londoners were asking such questions, and they were coming up with immediate, practical answers. If neither Government nor magistracy would protect them they would protect themselves. Ever since the week-end, when the full shock of the Williamsons’ murders had sunk in, men had been arming themselves with swords, pistols, cutlasses, any weapon on which they could lay their hands. It was a spontaneous reaction, in line with a long tradition in un-policed England, where self-help was often the only help in times of trouble. Already some 500 voluntary associations existed for the mutual protection of their members, and an association formed in Barnet in 1784 was held out as something of a model; it employed several ‘police officers’ to patrol the district in order to drive thieves off elsewhere. The following notice was typical of many which were being nailed to the doors of churches and public houses in London:

  TO THE INHABITANTS OF LONG-ALLEY, AND PLACES ADJACENT

  In these Times, so alarming to every peaceable Inhabitant of the Metropolis. – When MURDER stalks abroad with Fury, equal to the Banditties of the Forests of Germany. – When the late ferocious and horrid Massicrees, plainly indicate that among us are Monsters, not to be surpassed even by the most barbarous Nations. – When the list of Robberies, daily announced from our Police-Offices, are so numerous, that they bid defiance to our Laws; and when we find a Coroner declaring ‘Our houses are no longer to be deemed our Castles!!’ we are imperiously called upon to be personally the Guardians of our Families and Properties.

  A Meeting, for the above Purposes, will be held at MR BULL’s the CASTLE, Long-Alley, on Friday next, at Seven o’Clock in the Evening, precisely, to adopt some Measures, for carrying the same into effect, when it is earnestly requested the Inhabitants will attend.

  Dec. 24, 1811.

  On the morning of Christmas Day the inhabitants of Shadwell assembled to form their own association. They passed a resolution thanking the vestry for their promptness in offering a reward following ‘the late horrid Murders in New Gravel Lane’, declaring the watchmen to be ‘entirely inadequate’, and establishing a patrol of ‘thirty-six able-bodied men of good character’ to be divided into two companies of eighteen men each. They were to be armed with pistols and cutlasses, and were to be paid twelve shillings a week; absentees were to be summoned before the magistrates. Both companies were to be on duty every night, relieving one another at midnight. One of the trustees appointed to supervise the arming of the patrol was George Fox, who lived opposite the King’s Arms, and had helped Anderson to break in after the alarm was given. Fox was a local stalwart, much respected in the community. He was a steward of the Universal Medical Institution in New Gravel Lane, a charity which gave advice and medicines to the poor at a dispensary or in their own home ‘with the benefit of cold, warm and vapour baths’, and which did much to alleviate the wretchedness of the sick poor. It was natural that he should now play a leading part in the community’s defence.

  The Shadwell magistrates, however, were not idle on Christmas Day either. In the morning a City Alderman named Wood called on Capper, and according to the London Chronicle he ‘stated information which was of great importance’. The same afternoon the two of them carried a grisly parcel to Newgate Prison, containing the maul and the ripping chisel found at the Williamsons; and for the second time they interrogated Vermilloe about them. Mrs Vermilloe was there already, consoling her husband for his Christmas in prison. Now both of them, reported the next day’s Times,

  … underwent a very minute examination: the result of which has afford
ed a clue towards tracing the murders home to the offenders. Mrs Vermilloe, who was so much affected by the sight of the maul on Tuesday night that her evidence was very inconclusive, gave to the worthy Alderman, in an unembarrassed manner, the decisive information as to the identity of that blood-stained instrument. It turns out that the prisoner in custody has gone by another name besides Williams; and that, instead of being a Scotchman, as he represented himself to be to the Magistrates of Shadwell Office, he is a native of Ireland. Other matters came out, which prudence requires to be withheld from publicity, until the further examination of the prisoner shall take place before the Magistrates of Shadwell Police Office. Mr Alderman Wood and Mr Alderman Atkins called yesterday at the Office in Shadwell and remained in conference with the Magistrates there for two or three hours upon this subject.

  Mrs Vermilloe’s change of attitude at this meeting is interesting. She had spent the morning with her husband, and they must have spoken of little else but the murders. He probably convinced her where the interest of both of them lay. The initials punched on the maul, together with William Rice’s evidence, proved conclusively that the weapon had come from Peterson’s chest of tools. To persist in equivocation might only expose them to suspicion. Besides, there was a substantial reward at stake, and Vermilloe saw no reason why at least part of it should not come his way. There was no need to volunteer information, but to deny facts which were plain to everyone could only antagonise the magistrates and jeopardise their chance of reward. Under the influence of her husband, Mrs Vermilloe conquered the repugnance which the maul aroused in her and confirmed the identification.

  The Times reporter was interested in the maul; the London Chronicle man, meanwhile, had ferreted out something about the ripping chisel:

  The conference was private and continued until four o’clock in the evening, Mr Vermilloe gave testimony to the instrument called a ripping hook, being found among the chest of tools deposited in his house. We here must remind our readers that this said ripping hook, about two feet in length, was found by the side of Mrs Williamson [sic], and it is the same which Mr V. has deposed that he knew perfectly well the instrument. Mr Vermilloe has likewise given information of another man whom he conceives must be concerned in the late inhuman murders.

  The Magistrates immediately forwarded directions to the different officers to go in pursuit, and late last night every exertion was used to find out the man alluded to; and we have the pleasure to state, no doubts are entertained of his detection.

  As far as can be officially learned, there were only two men concerned in both of the atrocious murders. The fact of Williams having been seen running up the alley by the side of Williamson’s house, after the alarm was given, it is said, is likely to be proved by a person of the name of Johnson, at the next examination of Williams.

  Here was progress, Mr Vermilloe had given a tip-off about another man besides Williams. Presumably he also lodged at the Pear Tree, or at all events had access to Peterson’s tools. Vermilloe would have no difficulty in identifying him, and the prospects of his detection were said to be first class. Already bands of police officers were scouring London for him. There were believed to be two men concerned in the murder of the Williamsons. Assuming John Williams to have been one of them, the other must be the tall man Turner had seen bending over Mrs Williamson’s body – the same man who, according to Johnson, had been running up New Gravel Lane towards Ratcliffe Highway soon after the alarm was given, and who had called out to his shorter companion (Williams?): ‘Come along Mahoney (or Hughey) come along.’

  It was a little too easy. The mysterious man Vermilloe spoke of had yet to be found, and how reliable, anyway was the prisoner’s word? Further, if as expected Johnson identified one of the men who had been seen running up New Gravel Lane as Williams, then he must have been the shorter of the two; and on Johnson’s own account this shorter man was addressed by his companion as Mahoney or Hughey. Neither of these names could have been mistaken for John or Williams. Perhaps there was a simple explanation: Williams was now said to have been born in Ireland, and not Scotland, as he claimed; so his real name might be one of those which Johnson had heard. Yet even if this were true it would still leave another fact unexplained. Given that there were two men concerned in the Williamsons’ murder, and that they were the same two who were seen running up towards Ratcliffe Highway, what became of the footprint discovered on the clay bank behind the King’s Arms? What of the open window, and the blood on the sill? Whoever escaped at the back of the house would surely never have been so stupid as to double round to the front, where the crowd was gathering to watch Turner’s dramatic descent. So perhaps there were three murderers? Or could it be that the two men Johnson saw had had nothing to do with the matter after all?

  Aaron Graham, meanwhile, had been spending part of his Christmas Day on the case, investigating the activities of yet another Irishman, this time with the suspicious name of Maloney. Could this be one of the men Johnson had seen? Early in the morning he received a letter from Captain Taylor, of the frigate Sparrow, lying off Deptford. Taylor reported that Maloney had joined the ship a few days earlier, and that he answered the description of one of the murderers – he did not say which. Graham sent Police Officer Bacon to arrest the man and fetch him to London. They returned in the evening. Being Christmas Day the court was closed, so Graham interrogated the prisoner in his own house next door. He was not satisfied with Maloney’s story, and had him locked up for the night in a watch-box.

  The weather that Christmas was fine but cold. The temperature barely rose above freezing point all day, and at eleven o’clock at night there were four degrees of frost. A raw chill from the river settled over Wapping, matching the mood of countless terrified families huddling for warmth and security in the dismal jungle beneath the shadow of the great dock wall, only one thought in their minds – was Williams the only murderer? How soon would he swing? Would he hang alone or with others? What a spectacle that would be, the greatest hanging since Patch was turned off, the greatest ever.

  The magistrates, though, in their superior, guarded houses, could begin to relax. With John Williams safely locked up in the Coldbath Fields Prison, Maloney confined in a tiny watch-box, Driscoll still behind bars as a precaution, and Vermilloe ready to talk his way out of Newgate, they might surely settle down that night to a well-earned Christmas dinner and banish, for an hour or two, the dark horror of the past fortnight. Perhaps some relaxed; but one, at all events, could not get the case out of his mind. All day, whenever he had ventured out into the streets, he had been accosted by angry, anxious people demanding to know why nothing was happening; and even now, at eleven o’clock, armed men muffled in great-coats patrolled the frozen streets. The pressure on a magistrate was becoming unbearable, particularly a magistrate who happened also to be an artist, a poet, a novelist and a dramatist.

  Joseph Moser, of Worship Street Public Office, was all these. At sixty-three he had long turned from painting to the composition of ‘many political pamphlets, dramas and works offiction, which,’ a scrupulous contributor to the Dictionary of National Biography had to admit, ‘enjoyed but a temporary popularity’. However, his duties as a magistrate he performed with ‘zeal and ability’. This zeal Moser now displayed in a letter to the Home Office ostentatiously headed:

  Spital Square, 25th Decr. 1811

  11 o’clock P.M.

  Dear Sir,

  I received your circular letter this evening and, as you will see, have not lost any time in sending to you, for the information of Mr Secretary Ryder, the ‘Duplicate of the returns made by the Office of Worship Street of the number of Watchmen and Parish Patrole employed in this district, agreeable to a letter of J. King Esq dated 19th of November, 1804’, which is, I believe, the paper required, and which I am very glad to transmit as the minds of the people here are in a state of very considerable apprehension inasmuch as I cannot go out of doors but I am assailed with enquiries whether the Murderers are taken? I ha
ve had several suspicious persons brought before me but have, upon examination, discharged them. I have written to the Mayor of Norwich respecting a man named Bonnett, 2 whom I sent our officers to Chesunt to bring to town, but when they arrived there they found he had just hung himself in the Cage. This man I strongly suspect had some concern in the late Murders. Though the alarms in this district are, as I have observed, great, yet everything is perfectly quiet. Our officers patrole the streets and examine the public houses every night, and of course, report to me, but at the same time I could hope that, in order to repress anxiety, we were able to make more effectual exertions: yet even these will require some caution in their operation, or they may increase the alarm that they are intended to repress.

  I have with honour to be

  With great respect,

  Dear Sir, your very obedient

  Humble Servant

  JOSEPH MOSER

  Next day – Boxing Day – the cold weather continued, and it began to sleet. The Shadwell magistrates ordered the fires in the Public Office to be well stacked up for another long day’s hearing – the last, surely, before the committal of Williams on charges of multiple murder. Five witnesses had been summoned to attend, and a sixth, almost certainly a key witness, was eagerly awaited from Marlborough. In addition a woman named Orr, who lived next door to the Pear Tree, was volunteering an extraordinary story that purported to connect Williams with yet a third ripping chisel. Partly as a result of Vermilloe’s help, it seemed, the clues to the whole mystery were now fast falling into place. That morning The Times reported: