How it happened that the inn kept its customers after the dreadful murders traditionally said to have been committed here by wholesale in the reign of Henry the First, certainly not fifty years after the hospice was given to Abingdon Abbey, there is no explaining. The ancient pamphlets that narrate the Sweeny Todd-like particulars do not enlighten us on that head.
The undiluted horror of the whole thing is exceedingly revolting, and one would rather not give a further lease of life to it, but that in an account of Old Inns their unpleasing story must needs be set forth, in company with their lighter legends. Moreover, the late sixteenth-century romance of Thomas of Reading, in which the story occurs, is by way of being a classic. It was written, probably in 1598, by one Thomas Delaney, and is a lengthy narrative of a wealthy clothier of that name, otherwise Thomas Cole. Characterised variously as “a fabulous and childish history,” and as “a mixture of historical fact and fictitious narrative,” it was, at any rate, a highly successful publication, for by 1632 it had reached its sixth edition, and eventually was circulated, broadcast, as a penny chap-book.
According to this “pleasant and famous historie,” there was once upon a time, in the days of Henry the First, one Thomas Cole, a wealthy clothier of Reading, who was used frequently to travel on his business between that town and London. Commonly he journeyed in company with two intimate clothier friends, Gray of Gloucester and William of Worcester. He himself was a worshipful man, of honesty and great wealth, and was usually known as Thomas of Reading. The three would usually dine at the “Ostrich” on the way to London, and on the return sleep there. We are asked to believe that this business man, Thomas Cole, on such occasions gave the money he carried into the care of the landlady overnight, and that by this misplaced confidence he was marked down for destruction.
Jarman, the innkeeper, and his wife had long been engaged in what is rather delicately styled the “systematic removal” of wealthy guests, and had devised an ingenious murder-trap in the principal bedroom, by which the bed, firmly secured to a trap-door, was in the dead of night, when the house resounded to the intended victim’s snoring, plunged suddenly into a huge copper filled with boiling water, placed in the room below. He was then “polished off,” as Sweeny Todd himself would say, and should it happen that other guests of the night before asked after the missing one, they would be told that he had taken horse early and gone away.
The victim’s horse would be taken to a distance and disguised, his clothes destroyed, his body thrown into the Colne, or into the Thames at Wraysbury, and his money added to the fortune mine host and his wife were thus rapidly acquiring.
As Thomas Cole had business in London more frequently than his friends, it naturally followed that he sometimes went alone. On the first such occasion he was, according to the author of this “pleasant historie,” “appointed to be the fat pig that should be killed: For it is to be understood that when they plotted the murder of any man, this was alwaies their terme, the man to his wife, and the woman to her husband: ‘Wife, there is now a fat pig to be had if you want one.’ Whereupon she would answer thus: ‘I pray you put him in the hogstie till to-morrow.’”
He was accordingly given the room—the condemned cell, so to speak—above the copper, and by next morning would doubtless have been floating inanimate down the Thames, had not his friend Gray unexpectedly joined him in the evening. On another occasion his hour was nearly come, when Colnbrook was aroused at night by people riding post-haste from London with news that all Chepe was ablaze; and he must needs be up and away without sleeping, for he had interests there.
The innkeeper was wrathy at these mischances; “but,” said he, in a phrase even yet heard, “the third time will pay for all.”
Yet again the threatened clothier came riding alone, but in the night he was roused by the innkeeper himself to help quiet a riotous dispute that had arisen in the house over dice.
On another occasion he fell ill while staying at the “Ostrich,” or the “Crane,” as some accounts name the house, and had to be nursed; but the fifth time was fatal. Omens pursued him on that occasion, and many another would have turned back. His horse stumbled and broke a leg, and he had to find another, and when he had done so and had resumed his journey, he was so sleepy he could scarce sit in the saddle. Then, as he drew near Colnbrook, his nose began to bleed.