This new and important feature in the case was immediately communicated to the magistrates, by whose directions Messrs. Hargreave and Richardson proceeded to examine the newly-discovered remains; and the result of their inquiry was an expression of the certainty of their being portions of the same frame with the body which had been found near Preston.
The police during the week used every possible exertion to procure fresh evidence, and many new and important disclosures were made; but, on the following Saturday, all doubts which might have been entertained of the guilt of Holloway were set at rest, by his confession of his having committed the murder. It had been already discovered that, a few days before the murder, he had taken a house, No. 11, North Steyne-row, or, as it was more familiarly called, Donkey-row, in which it was supposed the murder had been committed; and the statement which he now made of his guilt confirmed the suspicions which had been entertained. He informed the magistrates, in whose presence he detailed the circumstances of his crime, that he had long contemplated depriving his wife of life; but for three months had been unable to induce her to accompany him out at night. At last he persuaded her that he had taken lodgings, at which they were again to live together; and having first removed her box and bedding, conducted her to a little house in Donkey-row. Having arrived at the intended scene of slaughter, he shut the door, and knocked her down; she resisted with all her strength, but he threw himself upon her, and succeeded in strangling her. She screamed out, but he stifled her cries; and finding her cease to struggle, he took out his pocket-knife, and cut her throat in two places, so as to make his bloody scheme more secure. He then considered how he should dispose of the body, and determined upon removing it piecemeal. With this view he separated her head from her body, and afterwards divided her, limb from limb, at the joints. The head, arms, and legs he disposed of in the privy, where they were found; and the trunk and thighs he resolved to inter in Lover’s-walk, a retired place which he had before marked. For this purpose he emptied her clothes from her box, and in their room deposited the dreadful and, as it turned out, the first evidence of his enormous guilt. This box he conveyed in a barrow to the place already described, where he dug a hole, and, as he thought, effectually disguised every sign of his atrocious cruelty. Fortunately, he omitted completely to cover the whole of the gown in which the trunk was tied up; and thus his guilt was discovered. The box he broke to pieces, and scattered about. In conclusion, he expressed an anxious wish that Kennard should suffer no punishment for her supposed implication in a crime of which, he declared, she was wholly innocent.
A gentleman who was present at the confession, describes the scene in the following terms:—“I may truly say, that of all the awful and distressing scenes I ever witnessed (and it has been my lot to witness many), the confession of this wretched man far exceeded them. That he began his statement with an air of calmness it is true, but it was what no one who looked on him could mistake for that of indifference. Such, indeed, as it was, it continued only through the relation of his first acquaintance with the murdered woman, his subsequent marriage to her, and his quarrels with her friends. When his remarks approached the scene of the murder, his firmness altogether deserted him; long, long was it before he could pronounce the dreadful words which recorded his guilt; and, in the meantime, his cries, yea, almost his shrieks, for the mercy of God upon his soul, were most horrible, most appalling. One of the magistrates was so overcome as to be obliged to leave the room; and if the prisoner had not been supplied with a glass of water, he would, apparently, have fainted. We have read of the agonies of the rack, but who shall describe the agonies of remorse? I witnessed them then, and never, never shall I forget them—those agonies which, I may literally say, amidst weeping and wailing, and gnashing of teeth, drove the wretched culprit to sign his own death-warrant, by unburdening a conscience which would not let him rest day or night.”
On Monday, 22nd of August, Mrs. Kennard was again examined before the magistrates. The discovery of the head, &c. was then proved in evidence, and some witnesses were called with a view of showing the prisoner’s implication in the transaction of their concealment. These persons stated that, at about the time of the murder, they saw Holloway going to his house in Margaret-street, carrying a large bundle in a sack, and followed by the prisoner, who appeared to be anxiously watching the load; and that, at about the same time, but on another occasion, they had also seen them together, Holloway carrying a small tick bag, similar to that which had been found in the privy. Other persons proved that Holloway had rented the house in Donkey-row at 2s. 6d. per week, and that Mrs. Kennard had been seen there with him; while a witness, named Mary Marchant, who lived in the house next to that occupied by Holloway in that Row, gave very remarkable testimony. She proved that, on the night in which Holloway first went to the house, she heard some one, after she had been in bed for some time, cough and groan in an extraordinary manner. She remarked the circumstance to her husband, who also heard the noise, and observed, “That poor woman must be very ill.” They, however, heard no more. On the next day the shutters of the house were not taken down; but on Saturday she observed Holloway and the prisoner go away from the house with a wheel-barrow, containing a box made of wood, similar to the pieces which had been found near Rottingdean.
The prisoner betrayed much anxiety while this witness was being examined; and, notwithstanding the repeated advice of the magistrate to be silent, she persisted in making a statement which surprised every one who heard it. She declared, in the most solemn manner, that she was not with the prisoner on the Thursday night (the night when the deceased was inveigled from her lodgings) or on the Saturday night (the time when it was supposed Holloway and the prisoner removed the body to Preston from Donkey-row, in a box upon a wheel-barrow), for she was quite positive she never stirred from her lodgings at Mr. Leaver’s, in Margaret-street, on those nights. She remembered (she said) that Holloway went out with the barrow which he had borrowed, and he came home to her, before ten o’clock, and said he was going a smuggling. He asked her to let him have her gown, shawl, and bonnet, to disguise himself; and after endeavouring to prevail upon him not to do that which was so dangerous, she let him have the things. She then went to bed, as she had no others to wear. He was out till twelve o’clock that night, and at six o’clock the next morning she found the gown, shawl, and bonnet, in the room below.
Other witnesses were examined, whose testimony was not very material, except as corroboratory of that which had been already received; but a pawnbroker produced a shawl, which had been pledged with him for 1s. 6d. on the 15th of July, by the prisoner, who gave her own name and address, and which was identified as having been worn by the deceased on the day of her quitting Mrs. Symonds’s house.
This was all the evidence produced on this day; but on the following Thursday a new discovery was made, which also excited considerable observation. On the day in question a workman named Allen, who was employed in an unfinished house in Trafalgar-street, on proceeding to his work, found that a chemise, deeply stained with blood, had been thrown into the building since he had left work on the preceding night. The shift, on being examined, was found to bear clear and distinct marks of blood having flowed down its centre from the top nearly to the bottom, but there it appeared to have met with some obstruction, and, diverging to the right and left, it had stained a spot on each side nearly six inches wide, and had then again met below, but had then ceased to flow any further. The garment was exhibited to Mrs. Symonds, who had no hesitation in declaring her positive conviction that it had belonged to the deceased; and the impossibility of either of the prisoners having thrown it in the place where it was found, tended to a conclusion that other persons had been engaged with them in the murder.
In consequence of the suspicions raised by this circumstance, two men, named White, (alias Jenkins), and Thomas Carver, were taken into custody. They were proved to have occupied the house in Donkey-row after Holloway had left it, but no other circumstance could be elicited against them. They, however, with Mrs. Kennard, were remanded for farther examination.
At the next inquiry before the magistrates, only one new fact was produced in evidence against the female prisoner, which was highly important, as it traced her to the vicinity of Lover’s-walk on the night on which the body was buried, and she was committed for trial; but the other prisoners, White and Carver, were discharged.
In the course of the time which intervened between her committal and the trial, Holloway made a new confession, going more into detail upon the subject of the circumstances of the murder. As some of the facts stated by him affected his fellow-prisoner, it was deemed advisable that she should be present while he made his statement. The following comprises the main details contained in this declaration:—