The second wife of John Williamson received still more terribly inhuman treatment at his hands. This ruffian within three weeks after his marriage drenched his wife with cold water, and having otherwise ill-used her, inflicted the following diabolical torture. Having fastened her hands behind with handcuffs, he lifted her off the ground, with her toes barely touching it, by a rope run through a staple. She was locked up in a closet, and close by was placed a small piece of bread and butter, which she could just touch with her lips. She was allowed a small portion of water daily. Sometimes a girl who was in the house gave the poor creature a stool to rest her feet on, but Williamson discovered it, and was so furious that he nearly beat the girl to death. The wretched woman was kept in this awful plight for more than a month at a time, and at length succumbed. She died raving mad. Williamson when arrested made a frivolous defence, declaring his wife provoked him by treading on a kitten and killing it. He was found guilty and executed in 1760.
The victim of Theodore Gardelle was a woman although not his wife. This murder much exercised the public mind at the time. The perpetrator was a foreigner, a hitherto inoffensive miniature painter, who was goaded into such a frenzy by the intolerable irritation of a woman’s tongue, that he first struck and then despatched her. He lodged with a Mrs. King in Leicester Fields, whose miniature he had painted, but not very successfully. She had desired to have the portrait particularly good, and in her disappointment gave the unfortunate painter no peace. One morning she came into the parlour which he used, and which was en suite with her bed-room, and immediately attacked him about the miniature. Provoked by her insults, Gardelle told her she was a very impertinent woman; at which she struck him a violent blow on the chest. He pushed her from him, “rather in contempt than anger,” as he afterwards declared, “and with no desire to hurt her;” her foot caught in the floor-cloth, she fell backward, and her head came with great force against a sharp corner of the bedstead, for Gardelle apparently had followed her into her bed-room. The blood immediately gushed from her mouth, and he at once ran up to assist her and express his concern; but she pushed him away, threatening him with the consequences of his act. He was greatly terrified at the thought of being charged with a criminal assault; but the more he strove to pacify the more she reviled and threatened, till at last he seized a sharp-pointed ivory comb which lay upon her toilette-table and drove it into her throat. The blood poured out in still greater volume, and her voice gradually grew fainter and fainter, and she presently expired. Gardelle said afterwards he drew the bed-clothes over her, then, horrified and overcome, fell by her side in a swoon. When he came to himself he examined the body to see if Mrs. King were quite dead, and in his confusion staggered against the wainscot and hit his head so as to raise a great bump over his eye.
Gardelle now seems to have considered with himself how best he might conceal his crime. There was only one other resident in the house, a maid-servant, who was out on a message for him at the time of his fatal quarrel with Mrs. King. When she returned she found the bed-room locked, and Gardelle told her her mistress had gone into the country for the day. Later on he paid her wages on behalf of Mrs. King and discharged her, with the, explanation that her mistress intended to bring home a new maid with her. Having now the house to himself, he entered the chamber of death, and stripped the body, which he laid in the bed. He next disposed of the blood-stained bed-clothes by putting them to soak in a wash-tub in the back wash-house. A servant of an absent fellow-lodger came in late and asked for Mrs. King, but Gardelle said she had not returned, and that he meant to sit up for her and let her into the house. Next morning he explained Mrs. King’s absence by saying she had come late and gone off again for the day.
This went on from Wednesday to Saturday; but no suspicion of anything wrong had as yet been conceived, and the body still lay in the same place in the back-room. On Sunday Gardelle began to put into execution a project for destroying the body in parts, which he disposed of by throwing them down the sinks, or spreading in the cock-loft. On Monday and Tuesday inquiries began to be made for Mrs. King, and Gardelle continued to say that he expected her daily, but on Thursday the stained bed-clothes were found in the wash-tub. Gardelle was seen coming from the wash-house, and heard to ask what had become of the linen. This roused suspicion for the first time. The discharged maid-servant was hunted up, and as she declared she knew nothing of the wash-tub or its contents, and as Mrs. King was still missing, the neighbours began to move in the matter. Mr. Barron, an apothecary, came and questioned Gardelle, who was so much confused in his answers that a warrant was obtained for his arrest. Then Mrs. King’s bed-room was examined, and that of Gardelle, now a prisoner. In both were found conclusive evidence of foul play. By-and-by in the cock-loft and elsewhere portions of the missing woman were discovered, and some jewellery known to be hers was traced to Gardelle, who did not long deny his guilt. When he was in the new prison at Clerkenwell he tried to commit suicide by taking forty drops of opium; but it failed even to procure him sleep. After this he swallowed halfpence to the number of twelve, hoping that the verdigrese would kill him, but he survived after suffering great tortures. He was removed then to Newgate for greater security, and was closely watched till the end. After a fair trial he was convicted and cast for death. His execution took place in the Haymarket near Panton Street, to which he was led past Mrs. King’s house, and at which he cast one glance as he passed. His body was hanged in chains on Hounslow Heath.
Women were as capable of fiendish cruelty as men, and displayed greater and more diabolical ingenuity in devising torments for their victims. Two murders typical of this class of crime may be quoted here. One was that committed by the Meteyards, mother and daughter, upon an apprentice girl; the other that of Elizabeth Brownrigg, also on an apprentice. The Meteyards kept a millinery shop in Bruton Street, Berkeley Square, and had five parish apprentices bound to them. One was a sickly girl, Anne Taylor by name. Being unable to do as much work as her employers desired, they continually vented their spite upon her. After enduring great cruelty Anne Taylor absconded; she was caught, brought back to Bruton Street, and imprisoned in a garret on bread and water; she again escaped, and was again recaptured and cruelly beaten with a broom-handle. Then they tied her with a rope to the door of a room so that she could neither sit nor lie down, and she was so kept for three successive days, but suffered to go to bed at night time. On the third night she was so weak she could hardly creep up-stairs. On the fourth day her fellow apprentices were brought to witness her torments as an incentive to exertion, but were forbidden to afford her any kind of relief. On this the last day of her torture she faltered in speech and presently expired. The Meteyards now tried to bring their victim to with hartshorn, but finding life was extinct, they carried the body up to the garret and locked it in. Then four days later they enclosed it in a box, left the garret door ajar, and spread a report through their house that “Nanny” had once more absconded. The deceased had a sister, a fellow apprentice, who declared she was persuaded “Nanny” was dead; whereupon the Meteyards also murdered the sister and secreted the body. Anne’s body remained in the garret for a couple of months, when the stench of decomposition was so great that the murderesses feared detection, and after chopping the corpse in pieces, they burnt parts and disposed of others in drains and gully holes. Four years elapsed without suspicion having been aroused, but there had been constant and violent quarrels between mother and daughter, the former frequently beating and ill-using the latter, who in return reviled her mother as a murderess. During this time the daughter left her home to live with a Mr. Rooker as servant at Ealing. Her mother followed her, and still behaved so outrageously that the daughter, in Mr. Rooker’s presence, upbraided her with what they had done. He became uneasy, and cross-questioned them till they confessed the crime. Both women were arrested and tried at the Old Bailey, where they were convicted and sentenced to death. The mother on the morning of her execution was taken with a fit from which she never recovered, and she was in a state of insensibility when hanged.
Elizabeth Brownrigg was the wife of a plumber who carried on business in Flower de Luce Court, Fleet St. She practised midwifery, and received parish apprentices, whom she took to save the expense of keeping servants. Two girls, victims of her cruel ill-usage, ran away, but a third, Mary Clifford, bound to her by the parish of Whitefriars, remained to endure still worse. Her inhuman mistress repeatedly beat her, now with a hearth-broom, now with a horse-whip or a cane. The girl was forced to lie at nights in a coal-hole, with no bed but a sack and some straw. She was often nearly perished with cold. Once after a long diet of bread and water, when nearly starved to death, she rashly broke into a cupboard in search of food and was caught in the act. Mrs. Brownrigg, to punish her, made her strip, and while she was naked repeatedly beat her with the butt end of a whip. Then fastening a jack-chain around her neck she drew it as tight as possible without strangling, and sent her back to the coal-hole with her hands tied behind her back. Mrs. Brownrigg’s son vied with his mother in ill-treating the apprentices, and when the mistress was tired of horsewhipping the lad continued the savage punishment. When Mary Clifford complained to a French lodger of the barbarity she experienced, Mrs. Brownrigg flew at her and cut her tongue in two places with a pair of scissors. Other apprentices were equally ill-used, and they were all covered with wounds and bruises from the cruel flagellations they received.
At length one of the neighbours, alarmed by the constant moaning and groanings which issued from Brownrigg’s house, began to suspect that “the apprentices were treated with unwarrantable severity.” It was impossible to gain admission, but a maid looked through a skylight into a covered yard, and saw one of the apprentices, in a shocking state of filth and wretchedness, kept there with a pig. One of the overseers now went and demanded Mary Clifford. Mrs. Brownrigg produced another, Mary Mitchell, who was taken to the workhouse, but in such a pitiable state that in removing her clothes her boddice stuck to her wounds. Mary Mitchell having been promised that she should not be sent back to Brownrigg’s, gave a full account of the horrid treatment she and Mary Clifford had received. A further search was made in the Brownrigg’s house, but without effect. At length, under threat of removal to prison, Mrs. Brownrigg produced Clifford “from a cupboard under a beaufet in the dining-room.” “It is impossible,” says the account, “to describe the miserable appearance of this poor girl; nearly her whole body was ulcerated.” Her life was evidently in imminent danger. Having been removed to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, she died there within a few days. The man Brownrigg was arrested, but the woman and son made their escape. Shifting their abode from place to place, buying new disguises from time to time at rag-fairs, eventually they took refuge in lodgings at Wandsworth, where they were recognized by their landlord as answering the description of the murderers of Mary Clifford, and arrested. Mrs. Brownrigg was tried and executed; the men, acquitted of the graver charge, were only sentenced to six months’ imprisonment. The story goes that Hogarth, who prided himself on his skill as a physiognomist, wished to see Mrs. Brownrigg in Newgate. The governor, Mr. Akerman, admitted him, but at the instance of a mutual friend played a trick upon the painter by bringing Mrs. Brownrigg before him casually, as some other woman. Hogarth on looking at her took Akerman aside and said, “You must have two great female miscreants in your custody, for this woman as well as Mrs. Brownrigg is from her features capable of any cruelty and any crime.”
CHAPTER IX.
THE GAOL CALENDAR (continued).
Less atrocious murders—Consequences of ungovernable passion—Mr. Plunkett—Mr. Bird—A sensitive Guardsman—The Reverend James Hackman, in passionate despair, murders Miss Reay—Governor Wall—His severe and unaccommodating temper—Trial of Sergeant Armstrong—punished by drum-head court-martial and flogged to death—Wall’s arrest and escape to the Continent—Persons of note charged with murder—Quin the actor kills Williams in self-defence—Charles Macklin kills Hallam, a fellow actor at Drury Lane—Joseph Baretti, author of the ‘Italian Dictionary,’ mobbed in the Haymarket, defends himself with a pocket-knife, and stabs one of his assailants—Chronic dangers and riots in the London streets—Trade terrorism—Turbulent serving-men—Footmen’s riot at Drury Lane—Footmen frequently turned highwaymen—Hawkins attempts an alibi—Other alibis—James Maclane, a notorious knight of the road, once a butler and respectable grocer, has a lodging in St. James’ Street—Stops Horace Walpole—His capture and fame in Newgate before execution—William Page, another footman, turned highway robber—His clever stratagems and disguises—A confederate betrays him—Arrested in London—Hanged at Maidstone—John Rann, alias Sixteen-String Jack—His extravagant costumes—Short career ends in the gallows—- Well-born but dissolute reprobates to the road—A Baronet and a Lieutenant convicted—William Parsons, a baronet’s son, related to a Duchess and a naval officer, becomes an ensign in the 34th—His extravagance—Sells out of the army—Turns swindler, and is transported to Virginia—Returns and takes to the road—Is caught and hanged—Paul Lewis, another highwayman, who had been a King’s officer—Captured by a police officer—William Norton, who sometimes took a thief, captures William Belchier—Jonathan Wild, the sham thief-taker and notorious criminal—His conviction and his career summarized—Once anxious to become a freeman of the city of London—Pirates and sea-robbers—Captain Kidd—English Peers accused of complicity—Kidd’s arrest, trial, and sentence—John Gow and his career in the ‘Revenge’—His death at Execution Dock—Captain Massey, an involuntary pirate, through whom others are captured, is himself hung.
I PASS now to murders of less atrocity, the result of temporary and more or less ungovernable passion, rather than of malice deliberate and aforethought. In this class must be included the case of Mr. Plunkett, a young gentleman of Irish extraction, who murdered a peruke-maker, who asked him an exorbitant price for a wig. Brown had made it to order for Mr. Plunkett, and wanted seven pounds for it. After haggling he reduced it to six. Plunkett offered four, and on this being refused, seized a razor lying handy and cut Brown’s throat.