Volume V
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in 1811 escaped the Gallows by hanging himself in Prison so completely horror-struck at any private calamity as at the daring and inhuman murders perpetrated, in the very heart of the City of London, at the close of the year 1811. On a dark evening in the beginning of the month of December, about the time when tradesmen were shutting up their shops, Mr Marr, a respectable draper, sent his servant- maid to purchase some oysters for the family supper. Mr Marr was in the act of replacing goods which had been exposed to the view of customers on the counter upon their shelves. The girl left the shop door ajar, expecting to re- turn in a very few minutes ; but, unfortunately, the nearest place of sale for oysters had disposed of the whole, and she therefore went farther on her errand. Meantime two or more ruffians entered the shop, shut the door, knocked down Mr Marr, and cut his throat. Next they seized his shop-boy, and murdered him. Mrs Marr was in the kitchen, hushing her babe to sleep on her lap. Hearing an extraordinary noise and scuffling above, as was sup- posed, she hastily laid the child in the cradle and ran up- stairs, where she was met by the bloodthirsty monsters, and seized and instantly murdered in the same way that they had dispatched Mr Marr and the boy. The child, disturbed with being hastily laid down, cried aloud, and the villains, doubtless apprehensive that it would cause an alarm, descended and, more horrible still to relate, cut its innocent throat so as nearly to sever its tender head from its body. By this time the girl returned with the oysters, and finding the shop door shut rang the bell ; but no person answered. At this instant a watchman, passing on his round, asked what she did there; and, being answered, he pulled the bell with violence. This so much alarmed the villains that they made a precipitate retreat through a window in the back part of the house, across some mud, and along an intricate way, which no one that had not previously reconnoitred the situation could have readily found. The watchman, finding the bell still unanswered, went to the next-door neighbour, and gave an alarm. Some three or four men collecting together, it was determined to scale the wall which divided Mr Marr's back premises from those of the adjoining house. This was done without much loss of time, and there was presented the most woeful scene that, perhaps, ever disgraced human nature : the bodies of Mr Marr and his shop-boy, the latter of whom appeared from evident marks to have struggled for life with the assassins, near each other ; that of Mrs Marr in the passage; and the infant in its cradle -- all dead, but yet warm and weltering in their blood. The horrible scene for a moment petrified those who first entered ; and they naturally feared the murderers might still be in the house plundering the property therein. They opened the street door and called out an alarm of murder, which spread with such rapidity that the neighbourhood was very soon in an alarm. The nightly watch mustered, and the drum of the melancholy beat to arms -- in fine, though now near midnight, so great a crowd assembled that it was necessary to shut the doors while someone explained the cause of the alarm to those in the street. The coroner's jury, sitting upon the inquest of the deaths of this unfortunate family, brought in their verdict -- "Guilty of wilful murder against some person or persons unknown." The interment of Mr and Mrs Marr and their infant son took place on Sunday, the 15th of December, 1811, at St George's Church in the East. The procession entered the aisle of the church in the following order: -- the body of Mr Marr; the bodies of Mrs Marr and infant; the father and mother of Mr Marr; the mother of Mrs Marr; the four sisters of Mrs Marr; the only brother of Mr Marr; the next in relationship to the deceased; the friends of Mr and Mrs Marr. After the church ceremony the corpses were conveyed into the burial-ground, and deposited in one grave. An immense crowd attended, but the utmost decorum prevailed. Would that our sad tale of blood ended here ! It is our painful task to record another instance of human atrocity, and, in universal belief, committed by the same relentless monster -- another family doomed to the same horrid death; and they resided a very short distance from the spot where lived the late unfortunate Mr Marr. Scarcely had the horror excited by the mysterious and barbarous destruction of those unfortunate persons sub- sided than the neighbourhood in which they resided became again a scene of confusion, horror and dismay; and, by the spectacle which was presented on Thursday night, the 19th of December, 1811, a new and irresistible feeling of alarm pervaded all the inhabitants, lest some of their domestic circles should next become the object of midnight assassination. The circumstances of the horrid event to which we allude -- as far as we have been able to collect them, from the most minute inquiry and investigation -- are as follows. On Thursday night, the 19th of December, 1811, shortly after eleven o'clock, the neighbourhood of New Gravel Lane was alarmed by the most dreadful cries of " Murder ! " Opposite the King's Arms public-house, at No. 81 Gravel Lane, numbers soon collected, and immediately it was ascertained that the cries which had excited such general alarm came from a man who was seen descending, almost in a state of nudity, by a line formed by the junction of two sheets, from the two pair-of-stairs window of the house in question. On reaching the extremity of the sheets, which was nearly eight feet from the ground, he was assisted by the watchman, who caught him in his arms, when he cried out, in the greatest agitation : " They are murdering the people in the house! " These words were no sooner uttered than a short consultation was held by the people assembled and it was at once resolved that an entry should be forced into the house through the cellar flap. This was shortly accomplished, and a man named Ludgate, a butcher, living in Ashwell's Buildings, Gravel Lane, and Mr Hawse, and a constable, entered ; and almost at the same moment a gentleman, named Fox, obtained an entrance through some wooden bars at the side of the house, with a cutlass in his hand. On looking round the cellar, the first object that attracted their attention was the body of Mr Williamson, which lay at the foot of the stairs, with a violent contusion on the head, his throat dreadfully cut, and an iron crow by his side; they then proceeded upstairs into the parlour, where they found Mrs Williamson also dead, with her skull and her throat cut, and blood still issuing from the wounds, and near her lay the body of the servant-woman, whose head was also horribly bruised, and her throat cut in the most shocking manner. Of the many examinations which took place at the Shad- well police office, the investigations of Mr Graham of the Bow Street office, and many other active magistrates, we shall select such as fix these most dreadful crimes upon a man of the name of John Williams, said to have been an Irishman, who evaded justice by committing the additional sin of suicide. This man was apprehended as one of the murderers. When the jailer went to the room in the house of correction in Coldbath Fields where Williams was confined, in order to call him to his last examination before the Shadwell police magistrates, his body was found dead, hanging to a beam ; thus adding to his manifold crimes that of self- murder. On the last day of this fatal year the remains of this sanguinary assassin -- for from the circumstances which developed not a doubt could exist but that he was a principal in the late horrible massacres -- were privately re- moved, at eleven o'clock at night, from the cell in Coldbath Fields Prison, where he committed suicide, and conveyed to St George's watch-house, near the London Docks, pre- paratory to interment. Mr Capper, the magistrate, had an interview with the Secretary for the Home Department, for the purpose of considering with what propriety the usual practice of burying suicides at the nearest cross-roads might be departed from in the present instance, and it was then determined that a public exhibition should be made of the body through the neighbourhood which had been the scene of the monster's crimes. In conformity with this decision, the following procession moved from the watch-house, about half-past ten o'clock on Tuesday morning : -- several hundred constables, with their staves, clearing the way; the newly formed patrol, with drawn cutlasses; another body of constables ; parish officers of St George's, St Paul's and Shadwell, on horse- back; peace officers on horseback; constables; the High Constable of the County of Middlesex on horseback; the body of Williams, extended at full length on an inclined platform, erected on a cart about four feet high at the head, and gradually sloping towards the horse, giving a full view of the body, which was dressed in blue trousers and a white-and-blue-striped waistcoat, but without a coat, as when found in the cell. On the left side of the head the fatal mall and on the right the ripping chisel, with which the murders were perpetrated, were exposed to view. The countenance of Williams was ghastly in the extreme, and the whole had an appearance too horrible for description. A strong body of constables brought up the rear. The procession advanced slowly up Ratcliff Highway, accompanied by an immense concourse of persons, eager to get a sight of the murderer's remains. When the cart came opposite to the late Mr Marr's house a halt was made for nearly a quarter of an hour. The procession then moved down Old Gravel Lane, along Wapping, up New Crane Lane, and into New Gravel Lane. When the pro- cession arrived at Mr Williamson's house a second halt took place. It then proceeded up the hill, and again entered Ratcliff Highway, down which it moved into Cannon Street, and advanced to St George's Turnpike, where the new road is intersected by Cannon Street. There a grave, about six feet deep, had been prepared, immediately over which the main water-pipe runs. Between twelve and one o'clock the body was taken from the platform and lowered into the grave, immediately after which a stake was driven through it; and, the pit being covered, this solemn ceremony concluded. |