Eliza Ross, was on Monday the 9th, executed for the wilful murder of Catherine, alias Caroline Walsh, in front of Newgate. The unhappy woman, though convicted on the evidence of her own son, persisted in asserting that she was innocent of the diabolical act for which she was about to suffer.
All necessary preparations had been made the night before, and a considerable number of constables sworn in to preserve the peace and prevent any accidents. The persons assembled, however, did not exceed the number on ordinary occasions. Shortly after six, the sheriffs and under-sheriffs arrived, for the purpose of visiting the criminal, who had declined all religious consolation from her priest, and begged the attendance of the Rev. Mr. Cotton, the ordinary.
On Sunday, she expressed her wish that Cook and her son should be allowed to visit her, which, however, from motives of prudence, was refused. She retired to rest at an early hour on Sunday night, two females having been placed in the cell with her, but her slumber was frequently broken by half-uttered ejaculations; one of which was—'Oh! Cook, you could have cleared me if you had liked;' another was, 'Oh my child, my deluded child, thus to hang her who suffered for you!'
Upon her being led into the bread-room on the morning of her execution, by Slarks, accompanied by the reverend Ordinary, to be pinioned, she in a firm tone of voice exclaimed, 'Oh, my God! am I going to be hanged for what I am innocent of!' She then walked firmly to the yeomen to be pinioned; and while they were engaged in their sad office, she said, 'Oh, my God! why did I leave my country to be thus treated! Oh, Mr. Wontner, I thought you were more of a Christian than to suffer a poor innocent woman to be hanged. I left my husband and boy sitting with the old woman, and I never saw her after. You have now in your custody one who can prove me innocent, and quite clear me of the charge. Oh, my poor, my deluded child!' Mr. Cotton, at the request of Mr. Sheriff Pirie, again addressed her with a view to elicit an admission of the justice of her sentence, but the only answer returned was, 'I am innocent: I never touched the old woman. Oh, my God, why did I leave my native country, thus to die in a foreign land for what I am guil—innocent, I mean! Oh dear, oh dear!'
On arriving at the foot of the scaffold, she said to Mr. Cotton, 'Pray, Sir, am I going out in the street?' Mr. Cotton answered in the affirmative, and again conjured her, in the name of God, to make her peace with the Father of all mercies; 'All hope of mercy on this earth is past, and a few moments will place you in the presence of him who knows the secrets of all hearts.' She replied, 'I'm innocent;' which she persisted in declaring until the fatal drop fell. She died without a struggle.
A short account of the extraordinary life of this woman, who may with the strictest propriety be stigmatized as a human fiend, may not be without its attendant uses. Her ultimate fate may operate as a serious lesson to those who addict themselves to an indiscriminate use of spirits, for to that revolting and disgusting habit may, in a great degree, be traced all the crimes which the wretch committed, for rather than not satisfy her inordinate passion for drink she would commit the pettiest theft, and she has even been known when her husband has brought her home an ounce of tea, to hurry off to some neighbour and dispose of half of it, in order that she might have the immediate means of purchasing a glass of gin.
She appears to have been early instructed in the crime of murder, for about twenty-six years ago we find her living in a brothel in East Smithfield, at which time a respectable tradesman, a master tailor was missing, and for some time no tidings could be obtained of him. Through the medium of one of the girls who frequented the house, some clue was obtained respecting the fate of the unfortunate man, and in searching the house, he was found dead in one of the cupboards. The master and mistress of the house, with Cook, the servant, were immediately taken into custody, and committed for trial for the wilful murder of the tailor. The trial came on at the Old Bailey, and the evidence, although entirely circumstantial, was so conclusive against the keepers of the brothel, that they were both condemned and executed. Cook was, however, acquitted, although at the time it was the general opinion that she assisted in the murder, and the circumstance of her being known to be in possession of some money immediately after the murder, was in some degree corroborative of her having partaken of the booty which was obtained from the murdered man, to obtain which, it was supposed that his life was sacrificed.
It did not appear on the trial, nor from any of the circumstances that transpired at the time, that this murder was committed with any view to the disposal of the body for the purpose of dissection, and yet little doubt exists that the anatomical schools have been supplied with subjects, the life of which has been forcibly taken away, long before the detection of Burke and his associates. It is not to be supposed that the act of strangling the unfortunate old woman, which led to the conviction and execution of the malefactor Burke, was the only murderous act which he had committed, tempted by the facility with which he could dispose of the bodies of his victims, and the great gain which flowed in upon him from such horrid practices. He himself admits in his confession to the murder of several individuals, all of which were disposed of to the anatomical schools, although the professional men, in an inquiry which was substituted in Edinburgh touching these occurrences, were exculpated from any criminal knowledge of the atrocities committed by Burke and Hare, and, consequently, of the manner in which the subjects which were offered them came by their death. This, however, is not saying much for the value of post mortem examinations, nor for the accuracy of those conclusions to which professional men arrive respecting the cause of the death of an individual, and in which opinion, particularly in our courts of justice, the life of the prisoner is frequently made to depend. To say that the very freshness of the bodies supplied by the Burkers, is not in itself sufficient to excite suspicion, would be at direct variance with the most common experience; for it is at once a distinctive proof that the subject did not die of any mortal disease, nor that it had ever been interred. The idea of the subjects being bodies of suicides, cannot also be rationally entertained, as in that case some preliminary proceedings and an interment must have taken place, before such bodies could have found their way to the dissecting-rooms.
No one will, we presume, pretend to deny, that a burked subject is not more preferable for dissection, than one that has been for some time interred. The former die in the full vigour of the organic functions of life, which being in healthy play to the moment of expiration, leave the arteries, veins, lymphatic vessels and nervous economy so fully distended, that the demonstration of them must be greatly facilitated and more clearly traced than when injections are necessary, or the subject become flabby and on the verge of decomposition; not to mention other personal conveniences, of the absence of any unpleasant olfactory sensation, or the hazard of a scratch from the dissecting-knife, causing an incipient and sometimes fatal mortification, which has happened, we believe, in more than one instance. These circumstances considered, it is not surprising that the Edinburgh murders by Burking, and those which were committed in London previously to the detection of the murder of Carlo Ferrari, were undetected by the demonstrators' sagacity, who might have hoodwinked any suspicion by reflecting on the advantage afforded to the interests of science, as it is termed, but which does not remove from our mind the belief, that there must have been a most disgraceful culpability in anatomists in not having detected the villainous proceedings of the Burkers, by which those wretches furnished bodies for dissection; at the same time that it tends materially to call into doubt the pretensions of the medical profession being able to elucidate the cause of death from post mortem examinations; for if it cannot be perceived that a person had died from strangulation, or suffocation, what hypocrisy must it be to profess they afford the means of ascertaining the remedies of diseases, when it appears that the cause of death cannot be really known. Had Cook, at the time of the murder of the tailor, been acquainted with the ready channel by which she could have disposed of the body, at the same time that it was attended with considerable emolument to herself, it is not probable that the body would have been allowed to remain in the cupboard, to have afforded the immediate instrument of detection, and thereby expose the perpetrators of the deed to an ignominious death.
It is not to be supposed that the particulars of the life of such an obscure individual as Cook can be easily traced out; it appears, however, that wherever she fixed her abode, she soon became the terror of the neighbourhood. Generally in a state of intoxication, any personal offence offered to her, whether real or supposed, was sure to draw upon the head of the offender the whole weight of her indignation. She would vent her anger in the most abusive language—threatening to scalp the object of her rage, and brandishing a knife in her hand, swear to skin him like a sheep—or to pull his skin over his ears—or to open him like an oyster—or to take his heart and lights out. In one instance, when she lived in St. Catherine's, the landlord of the Sampson and Lion offered her some offence, and she was determined to be revenged upon him: she waited for the opportunity when she could catch his cat, in which she no sooner succeeded, than she skinned the poor animal alive, and going into the public-house, when the landlord was standing behind the bar, threw it violently into his face. In whatever quarter she domiciliated herself, the cats gradually disappeared; and the manner in which she was detected in this cruel and barbarous practice is rather singular: she never lodged in a house in which there was not a dark cellar, and which, being seldom or never frequented by the other inmates of the house, was the theatre of her operations on the cats, which were so unlucky as to be entrapped by her. For some time it was observed, by her fellow-lodgers, that she frequently left the house early in the morning, carrying a bag with her, which appeared to contain some articles of weight, as it was sometimes with difficulty that she could carry her load. One of the female lodgers, prompted by curiosity, once followed her in one of these expeditions, and traced her to a scavenger's dust-yard, where she immediately repaired to one of the heaps, and began to grope amongst the rubbish, as if in search of some particular object. The person who was watching her, judging that bones or rags were the object of her search, as she was frequently known to roam about collecting these articles, with the produce of which she immediately hastened to the gin-shop, desisted from any further attention to her motions; and the cause of her visits would, perhaps, have remained a secret, had not her frequent appearance in the yard excited the attention of the proprietor, who perceiving, contrary to the custom of the collectors of bones and rags, that she always came with her bag full, and left there with it empty, determined to watch her motions narrowly; but having some acquaintanceship with her character, he wisely forbore to enter into any personal rencontre with her, especially as she always took the opportunity of paying her visits to the yard, when the people who worked in it were absent at their meals. One day she was observed exceedingly busy, digging as it were a hole in the heap of rubbish, and having finished her task, very deliberately walked away. She was no sooner out of sight, than the proprietor repaired to the spot, and removing the rubbish, found, to his great astonishment, the bodies of six cats, which had evidently been skinned alive, there being no marks of violence about them indicative of a violent death. This circumstance no sooner transpired, than the whole neighbourhood rose up in arms against her, every missing cat was laid to her charge, and she was ultimately taken up, and carried before a magistrate, on the charge of stealing the animals. Here, however, as in many other instances, she again slipped through the meshes of the law; for although several individuals came forward to prove that they had lost their cats, still, in their skinned state, the identity of the animal could not be proved, and consequently the charge fell to the ground.