Sunday morning following, Thomas Wood came to town from Greenford, near Harrow, having heard nothing further of the affair, or of the taking up of Mrs. Hayes, Billings, or Springate. The first place he went to was Mrs. Hayes's old lodging; there he was answered that she had moved to Mr. Jones's, a distiller, a little farther in the street. Thither he went, where the people suspected of the murder said Mrs. Hayes was gone to the Green Dragon in King Street, which is Mrs. Longmore's house; and a man who was there told him, moreover, that he was going thither and would show him the way; Wood being on horseback followed him, and he led him the way to Mr. Longmore's house. At this time Mr. Longmore's brother coming to the door, and seeing Wood, immediately seized him, and unhorseing him, dragged him indoors, sent for officers and charged them with him on suspicion of the murder. From thence he was carried before Mr. Justice Lambert, who asked him many questions in relation to the murder; but he would confess nothing, whereupon he was committed to Tothill Fields Bridewell. While he was there he heard the various reports of persons concerning the murder, and from those, judging it impossible to prevent a full discovery or evade the proofs that were against him, he resolved to name an ample confession of the whole affair. Mr. Lambert being acquainted with this, he with John Madun and Thomas Salt, Esqs., two other justices of the peace, went to Tothill Fields Bridewell, to take his examination, in which he seemed very ingenuous and ample declaring all the particulars before mentioned, with this addition that Catherine Hayes was the first promoter of, and a great assistance in several parts of this horrid affair; that he had been drawn into the commission thereof partly through poverty, and partly through her crafty insinuations, who by feeding them with liquors, had spirited them up to the commission of such a piece of barbarity. He farther acknowledged that ever since the commission of the fact he had had no peace, but a continual torment of mind; that the very day before he came from Greenford he was fully persuaded within himself that he should be seized for the murder when he came to town, and should never see Greenford more; notwithstanding which he could not refrain coming, though under an unexpected certainty of being taken, and dying for the fact. Having thus made a full and ample confession, and signed the same on the 27th March, his mittimus was made by Justice Lambert, and he was committed to Newgate, whither he was carried under a guard of a serjeant and eight soldiers with muskets and bayonets to keep off the mob, who were so exasperated against the actors of such a piece of barbarity that without that caution it would have been very difficult to have carried him thither alive.
On Monday, the 28th of March, after Mrs. Hayes was committed to Newgate, being the day after Wood's apprehension, Joseph Mercer going to see Mrs. Hayes, she told him that as he was Thomas Billings's friend as well as hers; she desired he would go to him and tell him 'twas in vain to deny any longer the murder of her husband, for they were equally guilty, and both must die for it. Billings hearing this and that Wood was apprehended and had fully confessed the whole affair, thought it needless to persist any longer in a denial, and therefore the next day, being the 29th of March, he made a full and plain discovery of the whole fact, agreeing with Wood in all the particulars; which confession was made and signed in the presence of Gideon Harvey and Oliver Lambert, Esqs., two of his Majesty's justices of peace, whereupon he was removed to Newgate the same day that Wood was.
Wood and Billings, by their several confessions, acquitting Springate of having any concern in the aforesaid murder, she was soon discharged from her confinement.
This discovery making a great noise in the town, divers of Mrs. Hayes's went to visit her in Newgate and examine her as to the and motives that induced her to commit the said fact. Her acknowledgment in general was: that Mr. Hayes had proved but an indifferent husband to her; that one night he came home drunk and struck her; that upon complaining to Billings and Wood they, or one of them, said such a fellow (meaning Mr. Hayes) ought not to live, and that they would murder him for a halfpenny. She took that opportunity to propose her bloody intentions to them, and her willingness that they should do so; she was acquainted with their design, heard the blow given to Mr. Hayes by Billings, and then went with Wood into the room; she held the candle while the head was cut off, and in excuse for this bloody fact, said the devil was got into them all that made them do it. When she was made sensible that her crime in law was not only murder, but petty treason, she began to show great concern indeed, making very strict enquiries into the nature of the proof which was necessary to convict, and having possessed herself with a notion that it appeared she murdered him with her own hands, she was very angry that either Billings or Wood should, by their confession, acknowledge her guilty of the murder, and thereby subject her to that punishment which of all others she most feared, often repeating that it was hard they would not suffer her to be hanged with them! When she was told of the common report that Billings was her son, she affected, at first, to make a great mystery of it; said he was her own flesh and blood, indeed, but that he did not know how nearly he was related to her himself; at other times she said she would never disown him while she lived, and showed a greater tenderness for him than for herself, and sent every day to the condemned hold where he lay, to enquire after his health. But two or three days before her death, she became as the ordinary tells us a little more sincere in this respect, affirming that he was not only her child, but Mr. Hayes's also, though put out to another person, with whom he was bred up in the country and called him father.
There are generally a set of people about most prisons, and especially about Newgate, who get their living by imposing on unhappy criminals, and persuading them that guilt may be covered, and Justice evaded by certain artful contrivances in which they profess themselves masters. Some of these had got access to this unhappy woman, and had instilled into her a notion that the confession of Wood and Billings could no way affect her life. This made her vainly imagine that there was no positive proof against her, and that circumstantials only would not convict her. For this reason she resolved to put herself upon her trial (contrary to her first intentions; for having been asked what she would do, she had replied she would hold up her hand at the bar and plead guilty, for the whole world could not save her). Accordingly, being arraigned, she pleaded not guilty, and put herself upon her trial. Wood and Billings both pleaded guilty, and desired to make atonement for the same by the loss of their blood, only praying the Court would be graciously pleased to favour them so much (as they had made an ingenuous confession) as to dispense with their being hanged in chains. Mrs. Hayes having thus put herself upon her trial, the King's Counsel opened the indictment, setting forth the heinousness of the fact, the premeditated intentions, and inhuman method of acting it; that his Majesty for the more effectual prosecution of such vile offenders, and out of a tender regard to the peace and welfare of all his subjects, and that the actors and perpetrators of such unheard of barbarities might be brought to condign punishment, had given them directions to prosecute the prisoners. Then Richard Bromage, Robert Wilkins, Leonard Myring, Joseph Mercer, John Blakesby, Mary Springate, and Richard Bows, were called into Court; the substance of whose evidence against the prisoner was that the prisoner being interrogated about the murder, when in Newgate, said, the devil put it into her head, but, however, John Hayes was none of the best of husbands, for she had been half starved ever since she was married to him; that she did not in the least repent of anything she had done, but only in drawing those two poor men into this misfortune; that she was six weeks importuning them to do it; that they denied it two or three times, but at last agreed; her husband was so drunk that he fell out of his chair, then Billings and Wood, carried him into the next room, and laid him upon the bed; that she was not in that room but in the fore room on the same floor when he was killed, but they told her that Billings struck him twice on the head with a pole-axe, and that then Wood cut his throat; that when he was quite dead she went in and held the candle whilst Wood cut his head quite off, and afterwards they chopped off his legs and arms; that they wanted to get him into an old chest, but were forced to cut off his thighs and arms, and then the chest would not hold them all; the body and limbs were put into blankets at several times the next night, and thrown into a pond, that the devil was in them all, and they were all drunk; that it would signify nothing to make a long preamble, she could hold up her hand and say she was guilty, for nothing could save her, nobody could forgive her; that the men who did the murder were taken and confessed it; that she was not with them when they did it; that she was sitting by the fire in the shop upon a stool; that she heard the blow given and somebody stamp; that she did not cry out, for fear they should kill her; that after the head was cut off, it was put into a pail, and Wood carried it out; that Billings sat down by her and cried, and would lie all the rest of the night in the room with the dead body; that the first occasion of this design to murder him was because he came home one night and beat her, upon which Billings said this fellow deserved to be killed, and Wood said he would be his butcher for a penny; that she told them they might do as they would do it that night it was done; that she did not tell her husband of the design to murder him, for fear he should beat her; that she sent to Billings to let him know it was in vain to deny the murder of her husband any longer, for they were both guilty, and must both die for it.
Many other circumstances equally strong with those before mentioned appeared, and a cloud of witnesses, many of whom (the thing appearing so plain) were sent away unexamined. She herself confessed at the bar her previous knowledge of their intent several days before the fact was committed; yet foolishly insisted on her innocence, because the fact was not committed by her own hands. The jury, without staying long to consider of it, found her guilty, and she was taken from the bar in a very weak and faint condition. On her return to Newgate, she was visited by several persons of her acquaintance, who yet were so far from doing her any good that they rather interrupted her in those preparations which it became a woman in her sad condition to make.
When they were brought up to receive sentence, Wood and Billings renewed their former requests to the Court, that they might not be hung in chains. Mrs. Hayes also made use of her former assertion, that she was not guilty of actually committing the fact, and therefore begged of the Court that she might at least have so much mercy shown her as not to be burnt alive. The judges then proceeded in the manner prescribed by Law, that is, they sentenced the two men, with the other malefactors, to be hanged, and Mrs. Hayes, as in all cases of petty treason, to die by fire at a stake; at which she screamed, and being carried back to Newgate, fell into violent agonies. When the other criminals were brought thither after sentence passed, the men were confined in the same place with the rest in their condition, but Mrs. Hayes was put into a place by herself, which was at that time the apartment allotted to women under condemnation.
Perhaps nobody ever kept their thoughts so long and so closely united to the world, as appeared by the frequent messages she sent to Wood and Billings in the place where they were confined, and that tenderness which she expressed for both of them seemed preferable to any concern she showed for her own misfortunes, lamenting in the softest terms of having involved those two poor men in the commission of a fact for which they were now to lose their lives. In which, indeed, they deserved pity, since, as I shall show hereafter, they were persons of unblemished characters, and of virtuous inclinations, until misled by her.
As to the sense she had of her own circumstances, there has been scarce any in her state known to behave with so much indifference. She said often that death was neither grievous nor terrible to her in itself, but was in some degree shocking from the manner in which she was to die. Her fondness for Billings hurried her into indecencies of a very extraordinary nature, such as sitting with her hand in his at chapel, leaning upon his shoulder, and refusing upon being reprimanded (for giving offence to the congregation) to make any amendment in respect of these shocking passages between her and the murderers of her husband, but on the contrary, she persisted in them to the very minute of her death. One of her last expressions was to enquire of the executioner whether he had hanged her dear child, and this, as she was going from the sledge to the stake, so strong and lasting were the passions of this woman.
