1732.
1. Sarah Malcolm,[1] executed March 7, 1732, for murdering Mrs. Lydia Duncombe her mistress, Elizabeth Harrison, and Anne Price; drawn in Newgate. W. Hogarth (ad vivum) pinxit & sculpsit.[2] Some copies are dated 1733, and have only Hogarth pinx. She was about twenty-five years of age.[3] "This woman put on red to sit to him for her picture two days before her execution."[4] Mr. Walpole paid Hogarth five guineas for the original. Professor Martyn dissected this notorious murderess, and afterwards presented her skeleton, in a glass case, to the Botanic Garden at Cambridge, where it still remains.
[1] On Sunday morning, the 4th of February, Mrs. Lydia Duncombe, aged 80, Elizabeth Harrison, her companion, aged 60, were found strangled, and Ann Price, her maid, aged 17, with her throat cut, in their beds, at the said Mrs. Duncombe's apartments in Tanfield-Court in The Temple. Sarah Malcolm, a chare-woman, was apprehended the same evening on the information of Mr. Kerrol, who had chambers on the same stair-case, and had found some bloody linen under his bed, and a silver tankard in his close-stool, which she had hid there. She made a pretended confession, and gave information against Thomas Alexander, James Alexander, and Mary Tracey, that they committed the murder and robbery, and she only stood on the stairs as a watch; that they took away three hundred pounds and some valuable goods, of which she had not more than her share; but the coroner's inquest gave their verdict Wilful Murder against Malcolm only.—On the 23d her trial came on at The Old Bailey: when it appeared that Mrs. Duncombe had but 54 l. in her box, and 53 l. 11 s. 6 d. of it were found upon Malcolm betwixt her cap and hair. She owned her being concerned in the robbery, but denied she knew any thing of the murder till she went in with other company to see the deceased. The jury found her guilty of both. She was strongly suspected to have been concerned in the murder of Mr. Nesbit in 1729, near Drury-lane, for which one Kelly, alias Owen, was hanged; the grounds for his conviction being only a bloody razor found under the murdered man's head that was known to be his. But he denied to the last his being concerned in the murder; and said, in his defence, he lent the razor to a woman he did not know.—On Wednesday, March 7, she was executed on a gibbet opposite Mitre-court, Fleet-street, where the crowd was so great, that a Mrs. Strangways, who lived in Fleet-street, near Serjeant's-Inn, crossed the street, from her own house to Mrs. Coulthurst's on the opposite side of the way, over the heads and shoulders of the mob. She went to execution neatly dressed in a crape mourning gown, holding up her head in the cart with an air, and looking as if she was painted, which some did not scruple to affirm. Her corpse was carried to an undertaker's upon Snow-hill, where multitudes of people resorted, and gave money to see it: among the rest a gentleman in deep mourning, who kissed her, and gave the people half a crown. She was attended by the Rev. Mr. Pedington, lecturer of St. Bartholomew the Great, seemed penitent, and desired to see her master Kerrol; but, as she did not, protested all accusations against him were false. During her imprisonment she received a letter from her father at Dublin, who was in too bad circumstances to send her such a sum as 17 l. which she pretended he did. The night before her execution, she delivered a paper to Mr. Pedington (the copy of which he sold for 20 l.), of which the substance is printed in The Gentleman's Magazine, 1733, p. 137. She had given much the same account before, at her trial, in a long and fluent speech.
[2] The words "& sculpsit" are wanting in the copies. In the three last of them the figure also is reversed.
[3] "This woman," said Hogarth, after he had drawn Sarah Malcolm, "by her features, is capable of any wickedness."
[4] "Monday Sarah Malcolm sat for her picture in Newgate, which was taken by the ingenious Mr. Hogarth: Sir James Thornhill was likewise present." Craftsman, Saturday, March 10, 1732-3.
2. An engraved copy of ditto.
3. Ditto, mezzotinto.
4. Ditto, part graven, part mezzotinto.
The knife with which she committed the murder is lying by her.
5. Another copy of this portrait[1] (of which only the first was engraved by Hogarth), with the addition of a clergyman holding a ring in his hand, and a motto, "No recompence but Love."[2]
In The Grub-street Journal of Thursday, March 8, 1732, appeared the following epigram:
"To Malcolm Guthrie[3] cries, confess the murther;
The truth disclose, and trouble me no further.
Think on both worlds; the pain that thou must bear
In that, and what a load of scandal here.
Confess, confess, and you'll avoid it all:
Your body shan't be hack'd at Surgeons Hall:
No Grub-street hack shall dare to use your ghost ill,
Henly shall read upon your post a postile;
Hogarth your charms transmit to future times,
And Curll record your life in prose and rhimes.
"Sarah replies, these arguments might do
From Hogarth, Curll, and Henly, drawn by you,
Were I condemn'd at Padington to ride:
But now from Fleet-street Pedington's my guide."
The office of this Pedington[4] may be known from the following advertisement in The Weekly Miscellany, N° 37. August 25, 1733. "This day is published, Price Six-pence, (on occasion of the Re-commitment of the two Alexanders; with a very neat effigies of Sarah Malcolm and her Reverend Confessor, both taken from the Life) The Friendly Apparition: Being an account of the most surprising appearance of Sarah Malcolm's Ghost to a great assembly of her acquaintance at a noted Gin-shop; together with the remarkable speech she then made to the whole company."
[1] A copy of it in wood was inserted in The Gentleman's Magazine, 1733, p. 153.
[2] This print was designed as a frontispiece to the pamphlet advertised in The Weekly Miscellany. (See text, above.)
[3] The Ordinary of Newgate.
[4] Mr. Pedington died September 18, 1734. He is supposed to have made some amorous overtures to Sarah.
6. The Man of Taste. The Gate of Burlington-house. Pope white-washing it, and bespattering the Duke of Chandos's coach. "A satire on Pope's Epistle on Taste. No name." It has been already observed that the plate was suppressed; and if this be true, the suppression may be accounted for from the following inscription, lately met with at the back of one of the copies.
"Bot this book of Mr. Wayte, at The Fountain Tavern, in The Strand, in the presence of Mr. Draper, who told me he had it of the Printer, Mr. W. Rayner.[1]
"J. Cosins."
On this attested memorandum a prosecution seems meant to have been founded. Cosins was an attorney, and Pope was desirous on all occasions to make the law the engine of his revenge.
[1] Rayner was at that time already under prosecution for publishing a pamphlet called, "Robin's Game, or Seven's the Main." Neglecting to surrender himself, he was taken by a writ of execution from the crown, and confined to the King's Bench; where he became connected with Lady Dinely, whole character was of equal infamy with his own.
7. The same, in a smaller size; prefixed to a pamphlet, intituled, "A Miscellany of Taste, by Mr. Pope," &c. containing his Epistles, with Notes and other poems. In the former of these Mr. Pope has a tie-wig on, in the latter a cap.
8. The same, in a size still smaller; very coarsely engraved. Only one of them is noted by Mr. Walpole.
A reader of these Anecdotes observes, "That the total silence of Pope concerning so great an artist, encourages a suspicion that his attacks were felt though not resented. The thunders of the poet were usually pointed at inglorious adversaries; but he might be conscious of a more equal match in our formidable caricaturist. All ranks of people have eyes for pencil'd ridicule, but of written satire we have fewer judges. It may be suspected, that the 'pictured shape' would never have been complained of, had it been produced only by a bungler in his art. But from the powers of Hogarth, Pope seems to have apprehended more lasting inconvenience; and the event has justified his fear. The frontispiece to Smedley's Gulliveriana has been long forgotten; but the Gate of Burlington house is an object coveted by all who assemble prints of humour.—It may be added, that our painter's reputation was at the height ten years before the death of Pope, who could not therefore have overlooked his merit, though, for some reason or other, he has forborne to introduce the slightest allusion to him or his performances. Yet these, or copies from them, were to be met with in almost every public and private house throughout the kingdom; nor was it easy for the bard of Twickenham to have mixed in the conversation of the times, without being obliged to hear repeated praises of the author of The Harlot's Progress."
The sheet containing this page having been shewn to a friend, produced from him the following remark: "That Pope was silent on the merits of Hogarth (as one of your readers has observed) should excite little astonishment, as our artist's print on the South Sea exhibits the translator of Homer in no very flattering point of view. He is represented with one of his hands in the pocket of a fat personage, who wears a hornbook at his girdle. For whom this figure was designed, is doubtful. Perhaps it was meant for Gay, who was a fat man, and a loser in the same scheme."—"Gay," says Dr. Johnson, "in that disastrous year had a present from young Craggs of some South-sea stock, and once supposed himself to be master of twenty-thousand pounds. His friends persuaded him to sell his share; but he dreamed of dignity and splendour, and could not bear to obstruct his own fortune. He was then importuned to sell as much as would purchase an hundred a year for life, which, says Fenton, will make you sure of a clean shirt and a shoulder of mutton every day. This counsel was rejected; the profit and principal were lost, and Gay sunk under the calamity so low that his life became in danger.—The Hornbook appended to his girdle, perhaps, refers to the Fables he wrote for the Duke of Cumberland. Some of your ingenious correspondents, or Mr. Walpole, who is instar omnium, may be able to give a further illustration. The conclusion to the inscription under this plate—Guess at the rest, you'll find out more—seems also to imply a consciousness of such personal satire as it was not prudent to explain. I may add, that the print before us exhibits more than one figure copied from Callot. Among the people going along the gallery to raffle for husbands, the curious observer will recognize the Old Maid with lappets flying, &c. afterwards introduced into the scene of Morning. Dr. Johnson, however, bears witness to the propriety of our great poet's introduction into a satire on the 'disastrous year of national infatuation, when more riches than Peru can boast were expected from the South Sea; when the contagion of avarice tainted every mind; and Pope, being seized with the universal passion, ventured some of his money. The stock rose in its price; and he for a while thought himself The Lord of Thousands. But this dream of happiness did not last long: and he seems to have waked soon enough to get clear with the loss only of what he once thought himself to have won, and perhaps not wholly that.'"
It appears from Pope's correspondence with Atterbury, that the stock he had was at one time valued at between twenty and thirty thousand pounds; and that he was one of the lucky few who had "the good fortune to remain with half of what they imagined they had."—"Had you got all you have lost beyond what you ventured," said the good Bishop in reply, "consider that your superfluous gains would have sprung from the ruin of several families that now want necessaries."[1]
[1] Letters to and from Bishop Atterbury, 1782, vol. I. p. 71.