One fine afternoon in August, O’Connor was met walking in the direction of Bermondsey. He was dressed with particular care, as he was to dine at the Mannings and meet friends, one a young lady. He was seen afterwards smoking and talking with his hosts in their back parlour, and never seen again alive. It came out in the husband’s confession that Mrs. Manning induced O’Connor to go down to the kitchen to wash his hands, that she followed him to the basement, that she stood behind him as he stood near the open grave she herself had dug for him, and which he mistook for a drain, and that while he was speaking to her she put the muzzle of a pistol close to the back of his head and shot him down. She ran upstairs, told her husband, made him go down to look at her handiwork, and as O’Connor was not quite dead, Manning gave the coup de grâce with a crowbar. After this Mrs. Manning changed her dress and went off in a cab to O’Connor’s lodgings, which, having possessed herself of the murdered man’s keys, she rifled from end to end. Returning to her own home, where Manning meantime had been calmly smoking and talking to the neighbours over the basement wall, the corpse lying just inside the kitchen all the while, the two set to work to strip the body and hide it under the stones of the floor. This job was not completed till the following day, as the hole had to be enlarged, and the only tool they had was a dust-shovel. A quantity of quicklime was thrown in with the body to destroy all identification. This was on a Thursday evening. For the remainder of that week and part of the next the murderers stayed in the house, and occupied the kitchen, close to the remains of their victim. On the Sunday Mrs. Manning roasted a goose at this same kitchen fire, and ate it with relish in the afternoon. This cold-blooded indifference after the event was only outdone by the premeditation of this horrible murder. The hole must have been excavated and the quicklime purchased quite three weeks before O’Connor met his death, and during that time he must frequently have stood or sat over his own grave.
Discovery of the murder came in this wise. O’Connor, a punctual and well-conducted official, was at once missed at the London Docks. On the third day his friends began to inquire for him, and at their request two police officers were sent to Bermondsey to inquire for him at the Mannings, with whom it was well known that he was very intimate. The Mannings had seen or heard nothing of him, of course. As O’Connor still did not turn up, the police after a couple of days returned to Minver Place. The house was empty, bare and stripped of all its furniture, and its former occupants had decamped. The circumstance was suspicious, and a search was at once made of the whole premises. In the back kitchen one of the detectives remarked that the cement between certain stones looked lighter than the rest, and on trying it with a knife, he found that it was soft and new, while elsewhere it was set and hard. The stones were at once taken up; beneath them was a layer of fresh mortar, beneath that a lot of loose earth, amongst which a stocking was turned up, and presently a human toe. Six inches lower the body of O’Connor was uncovered. He was lying on his face, his legs tied up to his hips so as to allow of the body fitting into the hole. The lime had done its work so rapidly that the features would have been indistinguishable but for the prominent chin and a set of false teeth.
The corpse settled all doubts, and the next point was to lay hands upon the Mannings. It was soon ascertained that the wife had gone off in a cab with a quantity of luggage. Part of this she had deposited to be left till called for at one station, while she had gone herself to another, that at Euston Square. At the first the boxes were impounded, opened, and found to contain many of O’Connor’s effects. At the second exact information was obtained of Mrs. Manning’s movements. She had gone to Edinburgh. A telegraphic message, then newly adapted to the purposes of criminal detection, advised the Edinburgh police of the whole affair, and within an hour an answer was telegraphed, stating that Mrs. Manning was in custody. She had been to brokers to negotiate the sale of certain foreign railway stock, with which they had been warned from London not to deal, and they had given information to the police. Her arrest was planned, and, when the telegram arrived from London, completed. An examination of her boxes disclosed a quantity of O’Connor’s property. Mrs. Manning was transferred to London and lodged in the Horsemonger Lane Gaol, where her husband soon afterwards joined her. He had fled to Jersey, where he was recognized and arrested. Each tried to throw the blame on the other; Manning declared his wife had committed the murder, Mrs. Manning indignantly denied the charge.
The prisoners were in due course transferred to Newgate, to be put upon their trial at the Central Criminal Court. A great number of distinguished people assembled as usual at the Old Bailey on the day of trial. The Mannings were arraigned together; the husband standing at one of the front corners of the dock, his wife at the other end. Manning, who was dressed in black, appeared to be a heavy, bull-necked, repulsive-looking man, with a very fair complexion and light hair. Mrs. Manning was not without personal charms; her face was comely, she had dark hair and good eyes, and was above the middle height, yet inclined to be stout. She was smartly dressed in a plaid shawl, a white lace cap; her hair was dressed in long crêpe bands. She had lace ruffles at her wrist, and wore primrose-coloured kid gloves. The case rested upon the facts which have been already set forth, and was proved to the satisfaction of the jury, who brought in a verdict of guilty. Manning, when sentence of death was passed on him, said nothing; but Mrs. Manning, speaking in a foreign accent, addressed the court with great fluency and vehemence. She complained that she had no justice; there was no law for her, she had found no protection either from judges, the prosecutor, or her husband. She had not been treated like a Christian, but like a wild beast of the forest. She declared that the money found in her possession had been sent her from abroad; that O’Connor had been more to her than her husband, that she ought to have married him. It was against common sense to charge her with murdering the only friend she had in the world; the culprit was really her husband, who killed O’Connor out of jealousy and revengeful feelings. When the judge assumed the black cap Mrs. Manning became still more violent, shouting, “No, no, I will not stand it! You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!” and would have left the dock had not Mr. Cope, the governor of Newgate, restrained her. After judgment was passed she repeatedly cried out Shame! and stretching out her hand, she gathered up a quantity of the rue which, following ancient custom dating from the days of the gaol fever, was strewn in front of the dock, and sprinkled it towards the bench with a contemptuous gesture.
On being removed to Newgate from the court Mrs. Manning became perfectly furious. She uttered loud imprecations, cursing judge, jury, barristers, witnesses, and all who stood around. Her favourite and most often-repeated expression was, “D—n seize you all.” They had to handcuff her by force against the most violent resistance, and still she raged and stormed, shaking her clenched and manacled hands in the officers’ faces. From Newgate the Mannings were taken in separate cabs to Horsemonger Lane Gaol. On this journey her manner changed completely. She became flippant, joked with the officers, asked how they liked her “resolution” in the dock, and expressed the utmost contempt for her husband, whom she never intended to acknowledge or speak to again. Later her mood changed to abject despair. On reaching the condemned cell she threw herself upon the floor and shrieked in an hysterical agony of tears. After this, until the day of execution, she recovered her spirits, and displayed reckless effrontery, mocking at the chaplain, and turning a deaf ear to the counsels of a benevolent lady who came to visit. Now she abused the jury, now called Manning a vagabond, and through all ate heartily at every meal, slept soundly at nights, and talked with cheerfulness on almost any subject. Nevertheless, she attempted to commit suicide by driving her nails, purposely left long, into her throat. She was discovered just as she was getting black in the face. Manning’s demeanour was more in harmony with his situation, and the full confession he made elucidated all dark and uncertain points in connection with the crime. The actual execution, which took place at another prison than Newgate, is rather beyond the scope of this work. But it may be mentioned that the concourse was so enormous that it drew down the well-merited and trenchant disapproval of Charles Dickens, who wrote to the ‘Times,’ saying that he believed “a sight so inconceivably awful as the wickedness and levity of the immense crowd collected at the execution this morning could be imagined by no man, and presented by no heathen land under the sun. The horrors of the gibbet, and of the crime which brought the wretched murderers to it, faded in my mind before the atrocious bearing, looks, and language of the assembled spectators. When I came upon the scene at midnight, the shrillness of the cries and howls that were raised from time to time, denoting that they came from a concourse of boys and girls already assembled in the best places, made my blood run cold.” It will be in the memory of many that Mrs. Manning appeared on the scaffold in a black satin dress, which was bound tightly round her waist. This preference brought the costly stuff into disrepute, and its unpopularity lasted for nearly thirty years.
I will briefly describe one or two of the more remarkable murders in the years immediately following, then pass on to another branch of crime.
Robert Marley at the time of his arrest called himself a surgical instrument maker. It was understood also that he had served in the army as a private, and had, moreover, undergone a sentence of transportation. But it was supposed that he had been once in a good position, well born, and well educated. When lying under sentence of death in Newgate, he was visited by a lady, a gentlewoman in every sense of the word, who was said to be his sister. His determined addiction to evil courses had led to his being cast off by his family, and he must have been at the end of his resources when he committed the crime for which he suffered. His offence was the murder of Richard Cope, a working jeweller, shopman to a Mr. Berry of Parliament Street. It was Cope’s duty to stay in the shop till the last, close the shutters, secure the stock of watches and jewellery, then lock up the place and take on the keys to Mr. Berry’s private house in Pimlico. Cope, a small man, crippled, and of weakly constitution, was alone in the shop about 9.30; the shutters were up, and he was preparing to close, when Marley entered and fell upon him with a life-preserver, meaning to kill him and rifle the shop. The noise of the struggle was heard outside in the street, and bystanders peeped in through the shutters, but no one entered or sought to interfere in what seemed only a domestic quarrel. A milliner’s porter, Lerigo, was also attracted by the noise of the row, but after walking a few paces he felt dissatisfied, and returned to the spot. Pushing the shop-door open, he saw Marley finishing his murderous assault. Lerigo turned for assistance to take the man into custody. Marley, disturbed, picked up a cigar and parcel from the counter, then ran out, pursued by Lerigo only. Marley ran along the street, down into Cannon Row, then into Palace Yard, where the waterman of the cab-tank, in obedience to Lerigo’s shouts, collared the fugitive. Escorted by his two captors, Marley was taken back into Parliament Street to the jeweller’s shop. The policemen were now in possession; two of them supported Cope, who was still alive, although insensible, and Marley was apprehended. The evidence against him was completed by his identification by Cope in Westminster Hospital, who survived long enough to make a formal deposition before Mr. Jardine, the police magistrate, that Marley was the man who had beaten him to death.
Marley at his trial was undefended, and the sheriffs offered him counsel; but he declined. The witnesses against him all spoke the truth, he said; there was no case to make out; why waste money on lawyers for the defence? His demeanour was cool and collected throughout; he seemed while in Newgate to realize thoroughly that there was no hope for him, and was determined to face his fate bravely. After sentence, the Newgate officers who had special charge of him noticed that he slept well and ate well, enjoying all his meals. One of them went into his cell just at dinner-time; the great clock of St. Sepulchre’s close by was striking the hour, and Marley, who had his elbows on the table, with his head resting on his hands, looked up and observed calmly, “Go along, clock; come along, gallows.” On the dread morning he came out to execution quite gaily, and tripped up the stairs to the scaffold. His captors, it may be added (Lerigo and Allen), were warmly commended by the judge for their courage and activity. The former was given a reward of twenty and the latter of ten pounds.
A murderous assault on a police constable, which so nearly ended fatally that the culprit was sentenced to death, although not executed, was perpetrated in 1852. The case was accompanied with the most shocking brutality. Cannon, by trade a chimney-sweep, had long been characterized by the bitterest hatred of the police force, and had been repeatedly sentenced to imprisonment for most desperate and ferocious attacks upon various constables. His last victim was Dwyer, a fine young officer who had been summoned to take Cannon into custody when the latter was drunk and riotous in front of a public-house. Dwyer found Cannon bleeding profusely from a wound in the head, and persuaded him to go to a doctor’s. They walked together quietly for some little distance, then Cannon, without the slightest warning, threw the constable on his back, and violently assaulted him by jumping on his chest and stomach, and by getting his hand inside Dwyer’s stock, with the idea of strangling him. Dwyer managed to overpower his assailant, and got to his feet; but Cannon butted at him with his head, and again threw him to the ground, after which he kicked his prostrate foe in the most brutal and cowardly manner, and until he was almost senseless, and bruised from head to foot. Once more Dwyer got to his feet, and managed, by drawing his staff, to keep Cannon at bay until a second constable came to his aid. All this time not one of a numerous body of bystanders offered to assist the policeman in his extremity. On the contrary, many of them encouraged the brutal assailant in his savage attack. To Cannon’s infinite surprise, he was indicted for attempt to murder, and not for a simple assault, and found guilty. The judge, in passing sentence of death, told him he richly deserved the punishment. As Dwyer survived, Cannon escaped the death sentence, which was commuted to penal servitude for life. A handsome sum was subscribed for the injured constable, who was disabled for life.
Only a few have vied with Cannon in fiendish cruelty and brutality. One of these was Mobbs, who lived in the Minories, generally known by the soubriquet of “General Haynau,” a name execrated in England about this time. Mobbs systematically ill-used his wife for a long space of time, and at last cut her throat. For this he was executed in front of Newgate in 1833. Emmanuel Barthelemy again, the French refugee, was a murderer of the same description, who despatched his victim with a loaded cane, after which, to secure his escape, he shot an old soldier who had attempted to detain him. He was convicted and executed. He died impenitent, declaring that he had no belief, and that it was idle to ask forgiveness of God. “I want forgiveness of man; I want those doors (of the prison) opened.” Barthelemy was generally supposed to have been a secret agent of the French police.