I have specially instanced these foul murders as exhibiting circumstances of atrocity rarely equalled in the records of crime. Catherine Hayes and Sarah Malcolm were unsexed desperadoes, whose misdeeds throw into the shade those of the Mannings and Kate Websters of later times. But women had no monopoly of assassination, in those days when life was held so cheap. Male murderers were still more numerous, and also more pitiless and bloodthirsty. The calendars are replete with homicides, and to refer to them in anything like detail would both weary and disgust the reader. I shall do no more, therefore, than briefly indicate here a certain number of the more prominent cases remarkable either from the position of the criminals,
the ties by which they were bound to their victims, or the horrible character of the crime.
The hangman figures among the murderers of this epoch. John Price, who filled the office in 1718, and who rejoiced in the usual official soubriquet of "Jack Ketch," was a scoundrel rendered still more callous and cruel by his dreadful calling. He had begun life well, as an apprentice, but he absconded, and entering the navy, "served with credit on board different kings' ships for eighteen years." On his discharge, seeking employment, he obtained the situation of public executioner. He might have lived decently on the hangman's wages and perquisites, but he was a spendthrift, who soon became acquainted with the interiors of the debtors' prisons for Middlesex. Once he was arrested on his way back from Tyburn after a good day's work, having in his possession, besides fees, the complete suits of three men who had just been executed. He gave up all this to liquidate the debt, but the value being insufficient, he was lodged in the Marshalsea.
When released, in due course he returned to his old employment, but was soon arrested again, and on a serious charge—that of a murderous assault upon a poor woman who sold gingerbread through the streets. He had shamefully attacked her, and maddened by her resistance, had ill-used her terribly. "He beat her so cruelly," the account says, "that streams of blood issued from her eyes and
mouth; he broke one of her arms, knocked out some of her teeth, bruised her head in a most shameful manner, and forced one of her eyes from the socket."
One account says that he was taken red-handed close to the scene of his guilt; another, the more probable, that he was arrested on his way to Tyburn with a convict for the gallows. In any case his unfortunate victim had just life left in her to bear testimony against him. Price was committed to Newgate, and tried for his life. His defence was, that in crossing Moorfields he found something lying in his way, which he kicked and found to be the body of a woman. He lifted her up, but she could not stand on her legs. The evidence of others was too clear, and the jury did not hesitate to convict. After sentence he abandoned himself to drink, and obstinately refused to confess. But on the day before his execution he acknowledged that he had committed the crime while in a state of intoxication. He was hanged in Bunhill Fields, and his body afterwards exhibited in chains in Holloway near the scene of the murder.
Wife-murder was of common occurrence in these reckless times. The disgraceful state of the marriage laws, and the facility with which the matrimonial knot could be tied, often tempted unscrupulous people to commit bigamy.[286:1] Louis
Houssart was of French extraction, settled in England, who married Ann Rondeau at the French church in Spitalfields. After about three years "he left his wife with disgust," and going into the city, passed himself off as a single man. Becoming acquainted with a Mrs. Hern, he presently married her. He had not been long married before his new wife taxed him with having another wife. He swore it was false, and offered to take the sacrament upon it. She appeared satisfied, and begged him to clear his reputation. "Do not be uneasy," he said; "in a little time I will make you sensible I have no other wife." He now resolved to make away with the first Mrs. Louis Houssart, otherwise Ann Rondeau, and reopened communications with her. Finding her in ill-health, one day he brought her "a medicine which had the appearance of conserve of roses, which threw her into such severe convulsive fits that her life was despaired of for some hours; but at length she recovered." This attempt having failed, he tried a simpler plan. Dressed in a white coat, with sword and cane, he went one evening to the end of Swan Alley, where his wife lived with her mother, and finding a boy, gave him a penny to go and tell Mrs. Rondeau that a gentleman wanted to speak to her
in a neighbouring public-house. When she left the house, Houssart went in, found his wife alone, and cut her throat with a razor.
Thus murdered she was found by her mother on her return, after inquiring in vain for the gentleman who was said to be waiting for her. Suspicion fell on Houssart, who was arrested and tried, but for want of the boy's evidence acquitted of the murder. But he was detained in Newgate to take his trial for bigamy. While waiting sentence, the boy, a lad of thirteen, who knew of the murder and arrest, and who thought he would be hanged if he confessed that he had carried the message to Mrs. Rondeau, came forward to give evidence. He was taken to Newgate into a room, and identified Houssart at once among seven or eight others. The brother of the deceased, Solomon Rondeau, as heir, now lodged an appeal, in the names of John Doe and Richard Roe (an ancient form of legal procedure), against Houssart, who was eventually again brought to trial. Various pleas were put forward by the defence in bar of further proceedings, among others that there were no such persons as John Doe and Richard Roe, but this plea, with the rest, was overruled, the fact being sworn to that there was a John Doe in Middlesex, a weaver, also a Richard Roe, who was a soldier, and the trial went on. The boy's evidence was very plain. He remembered Houssart distinctly, had seen him by the light of a lantern