Nor was the cruel tyrant only to be found in the merchantman, or was Edward Hamilton a solitary exception. Captain Oakham of the British navy is more than a creature of fiction, as is shown by the trials of Edward Harvey in August 1742, and of William Henry Turton in August 1780, which cast a lurid light upon the conditions of life in our ships of war. Midshipman Turton was a butcherly young gentleman, who turned his sword against a disobedient sailor in a sort of Captain-Sutherland-and-negro-cabin-boy fashion, but, owing to a Maidstone grand-jury petition and the absence of ‘Téméraire’ mutineers, there was no hempen collar for him.
The story of Joseph Wall has no exact parallel in our history, for the Mackenzie incident differs in two essential particulars—the dour Kenneth meant murder from the first, and did not pay the penalty of his crime. Lowry, Turton, and Sutherland were guilty, like ‘Fighting Fitzgerald,’ of common homicide, and the malice prepense, as law-givers understand the phrase, was clear and unmistakable. Even the lax morality of Doctor Henry’s days was compelled to take cognisance of giant Wall’s offence, just as it punished very properly—or tried to do—the sins of Picton and Hamilton; and a verdict of manslaughter, though delivered by a tradesman jury, would not have been an illogical conclusion. However, it remains a judicial murder—one of the most disgraceful that stains the pages of our history during the reign of George III.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WALL CASE
I. Contemporary Tracts
1. An Authentic Narrative of Joseph Wall Esqr. By a Military Gentleman. J. Roach, Britannia Printing Office. Russell Court, Drury Lane (1802). Brit. Mus.
Except in the tract published by A. Young—a transparent plagiarism—there is no corroboration of the statement that Wall flogged to death a man named Paterson on the voyage out to Goree. As no reference is made in any contemporary newspapers, it seems probable that the ‘Military Gentleman’ has confused his materials. George Paterson, a soldier, received eight hundred lashes the day after the punishment of Armstrong, and died soon afterwards, which may have caused the mistake. If Wall had done another such deed in 1780, it is probable that it would have obtained greater publicity.
2. The Life, Trial and Execution of Joseph Wall Esqre. By a Gentleman. A. Young, Vera Street, Clare Market (1802). Brit. Mus.
3. The Trial at Large of Joseph Wall Esqre. Also an Account of his escape in 1784. John Fairburn, 146 Minories.
4. The Trial of Lieut. Col. Joseph Wall. Taken in shorthand by Messrs Blanchard and Ramsey. London (1802). Brit. Mus.
5. Life, Trial and Execution of Joseph Wall Esqre. (with a full length portrait). E. Lawrence, C. Chapple, and H. D. Symonds.