Sweet Hampstead and Its Associations

by Caroline A. White

When peace was proclaimed, these were deposited in the church, where they remained, a trophy of the patriotic spirit that had animated the men of Hampstead. In later times, when the wisdom of being always prepared for such defence made itself felt throughout the length and breadth of the land, the Episcopal Chapel in Well Walk was converted into a drill-room for the volunteers who fell into rank in the place of their forefathers. The old colours were now borne from the church, and escorted with full military honours to the drill-room,[35] where they remained till the building was taken down, when with similar ceremony they were deposited in the new drill-hall, Heath Street.

One of the most pathetic incidents in connection with Hampstead Heath is the remembrance of Charles Lamb and his sister which Talfourd has left us, ‘mournfully crossing it hand-in-hand, and going on sadly through the quiet fields to the retreat at Finchley, where the poor sufferer sought shelter from herself ... whence, after a time, she would return in her right mind ... a gentle, amiable woman, beloved by all who knew her,’ but most of all by her brother, whose young manhood was in a measure blighted by the tragedy of which she who enacted it was wholly unconscious. He might be said to have devoted himself to her, and in life they were never parted.

Few even of their contemporaries knew the particulars of that household tragedy; the reporters of the inquest, with a respectful pity rare in their craft, withheld the names; and compassion was universally felt for the naturally inoffensive and all-unconscious perpetrator of it, and for him, the dutiful son and loving brother, whose affectionate and sensitive nature suffered in silence the double horror and the double grief. This is how the ‘Annual Register’ tells the melancholy tale (September 23, 1796):

‘On the afternoon of this day a coroner’s jury sat on the body of a lady in the neighbourhood of Holborn, who died in consequence of a wound from her daughter the preceding day.... While they were preparing for dinner, the young lady, in a fit of insanity, seized a case-knife from the table, and in a menacing way pursued a little girl round the room. On the eager cry of her infirm mother to forbear, she renounced her object, and turned with loud shrieks upon her parent. The little girl by her cries brought up the landlady, but too late—the mother was lifeless in her chair, stabbed to the heart, her daughter still wildly standing over her with the knife, and the venerable old man, her father, weeping by her side, himself bleeding from a blow on the forehead from one of the forks she was throwing distractedly about.’

A few days previously she had exhibited signs of lunacy, from which she had previously suffered, and her brother—in this lay the self-wounding sting for such a nature as Elia’s—had endeavoured on the morning of the occurrence to see Dr. Pitcairn, and had failed. ‘Had that gentleman,’ it is suggested, ‘seen her, the catastrophe might have been averted.’

What a scene for the young clerk at the India House! He was then only twenty-one, and, like his unhappy sister, working against the tide to help the straitened means of their parents. It was elicited at the inquest that no one could be more affectionate to both father and mother than the unconscious matricide, and that to the increased attentiveness which the growing infirmities of the latter required, added to the pressure of business, was to be ascribed the loss of the daughter’s reason.

Poor Lamb had himself once suffered from the same sad malady. He has been censured for sometimes yielding to drinking habits, but the memory of that one day in his life—the very threshold, rather, as it may be called—might well plead in merciful extenuation.

At times throughout her life Mary Lamb was subject to fits of mental aberration, the approach of which she was conscious of, and on these occasions would request to be taken to the abode at Finchley, where she found safety and remedial treatment.

One other event in modern times has caused widespread and painful commotion in association with Hampstead Heath, the suicide of John Sadleir, Esq., M.P. for Tipperary. I well remember the excitement on the occasion, and the rapidity with which the story was bruited about. Early in the morning of Sunday, February 17, 1856, a man was looking for a strayed donkey amongst the furze-bushes on the south side of the old watercourse (now obliterated), when he came upon the dead body of a well-dressed man. A silver cream-ewer and a small bottle lay beside him, his head resting near an old furze-clump, and his feet almost touching the water. His hat had fallen off, and his lips gave out the scent of prussic acid.

There was one extraordinary fact in connection with the case: the soles of the dress-boots on the feet of the corpse were unsoiled, though the night had been stormy and the neighbourhood of the watercourse damp at all times of the year. It was evident he must have alighted from a vehicle very near the spot, which was some distance down the bank, at the back of Jack Straw’s Castle. I have not the report of the inquest to refer to, but the details of the event made a deep impression on me, and the more so for the mystery surrounding it. I think no cabman came forward or could be found to give an account of a midnight fare to Hampstead Heath, and it was midnight or after when his butler heard him leave the house. The dress and general appearance were identical with those of Mr. Sadleir, director of the Tipperary Bank (which he had founded) and chairman of several railways and banking and mining companies; and if any doubt had existed, there was found on the corpse a slip of paper, on which, in a hand as bold as his proceedings had been, and infinitely clearer, was written, ‘John Sadleir, Gloucester Square, Hyde Park.’ Many knew the handwriting, and though some of the witnesses observed the great alteration death had made in the countenance, Mr. Wakeley, the coroner, lifted the eyelids of the dead man, and, having known him personally, pronounced them the eyes of John Sadleir. At first it was surmised that insanity from a brain overworked had led to the fatal act, but it soon became apparent that, to avoid the public scandal and degradation consequent on his own bad acts, he had voluntarily rushed out of life.