Ratcliffe Highway Murders

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Poster promising a 50 reward for information about the December 7th murders. James Gowan, Marr's apprentice, is incorrectly referred to as "Biggs".
The procession with the corpse of John Williams

The Ratcliffe Highway murders were a criminal case that occurred in December 1811 on the eastern outskirts of London. The spectacular case in which seven people were murdered on two separate nights in their homes off or in the immediate vicinity of the Ratcliffe Highway attracted a great deal of attention in Great Britain. The murders were attributed to the seaman John Williams, who committed suicide shortly after his arrest on December 28, 1811died and, according to today's view, was most likely innocent of this act. Contemporaries already expressed doubts about his guilt. The killings undermined the population's trust in local administrative units and their ability to maintain law and order. In London they had the result that a central police unit was created.

The brutal Ratcliffe Highway murders preoccupied the British public for more than three quarters of a century. It wasn't until the Jack the Ripper murders of prostitutes in London's East End in 1888 that the murders were somewhat forgotten. Today they are of particular interest because they provide insights into police investigative work at the beginning of the 19th century.

Course of events

crime scene

All of the murders occurred on the Ratcliffe Highway, a Roman road leading east from central London and now called The Highway . The two crime scenes are located in places not far from the port facilities. The street led through a lively working-class district and was accordingly very busy.

The December 7th murders

Drawing of the house of the Marrs with the hosiery shop

The cloth merchant Timothy Marr kept his shop open until midnight on Saturday, December 7th, 1811. This was common practice in the working-class neighborhood at a time when many customers could only shop on their way home from their long workday. Just before he closed his shop, he sent his maid Margaret Jewell out with a pound note to settle an outstanding bill at the bakery and buy oysters for the family dinner. Jewell found the bakery already closed and looked in vain for an oyster shop that was still open. Looking for an open shop, she passed the Marrs house again around midnight and saw her employer through the open window as he was folding fabrics. She returned to the Marrs house at around 12:20 a.m. without finding a shop that was still open. When she rang the doorbell, there was no reaction at first. After another ring, she heard faint footsteps on the stairs, then a faint scream from the Marr couple's baby. Again nobody opened the door, so that the now frightened Jewell stayed at the door for more than 30 minutes. Just before one o'clock, the night watchman George Olney stopped by on his regular tour of the neighborhood.

Olney had also seen Timothy Marr alive just before midnight, who was closing the shutters at the time. When he passed the house again shortly after midnight, he noticed that one of the shutters was not properly fastened. When he called, a man's voice from the house answered that they knew this. The conversation between the night watchman and Jewell caught the attention of a pawnbroker who lived in the neighboring house. He called to them that he could see from one of his windows that the back door was open. Encouraged by the night watchman and new neighbors, the pawnbroker climbed over the fence and entered the house from the back door. He found the 24-year-old Timothy Marr, his 14-year-old apprentice James Gowan and Celia Marr slain. A little later Margaret Jewell also found the only three-month-old son of the Marrs with his throat cut dead in his cradle. Money was scattered around, but no significant amount of money appeared to have been stolen. Footprints indicated that the killer (s) had fled through the back door. The instrument of the crime was evidently a hammer of the type used by ship carpenters , which was found smeared with blood in one of the upper rooms. However, a razor or the like, which was apparently used for the murder of the infant, was not found.

One of the more puzzling items in the house was an iron chisel. As Margaret Jewell reported, and as neighbors confirmed over the next few days, Timothy Marr had searched the whole house for a chisel. A craftsman who had carried out renovations and repairs in the Marr shop had borrowed it from a neighbor. When it was due to be returned to the neighbor, the craftsman had claimed to have left it at the Marrs house. A few days before the murder incident on the night of December 7th, Timothy Marr had informed his neighbor that he had looked around the house in vain for this tool. This chisel was now on the side of Marr's body, but there was no trace of it to suggest that it was one of the tools of the crime.

The December 19th murders

John Turner's Escape from the King's Arms . Contemporary representation.

On December 19, a night watchman encountered the half-dressed and shivering John Turner on New Gravel Lane, a few hundred yards from the Ratcliffe Highway. John Turner had gone to bed early in his furnished room above the King's Arms. When the restaurant was closed he heard screams and when he half climbed the stairs he saw a person bending over a body lying on the floor. In his panic, Turner tried unsuccessfully to escape through the skylight, but then climbed out of the window of his room with the help of his sheet.

Together with neighbors, the night watchman broke into the house through the cellar door and found John Williamson, his wife Elizabeth and their maid Bridget, dead and with their throats cut. Only the granddaughter of the Williamsons, who slept in an upstairs room, was safe. Money was scattered around the rooms, but again nothing essential seemed to have been stolen. Here, too, the murderer had escaped through the rear door.

The investigations

On the night of December 7th, a member of the Thames Division Police Office came to the scene. The next morning, an examining magistrate from this police unit took over the investigation of the case. The bodies were left at the scene as usual and remained there until the judicial investigation was completed. This should give the members of the court the opportunity to get an idea of ​​what happened. However, access to the crime scene was not restricted to persons from the court or the police. Even the curious could gain access to the crime scene. They could even see the corpses.

The police arrested a number of people in the aftermath of the murders if they gave any indication of suspicion. But she had to release everyone again. The reward offered did not bring any evidence even when it was tripled from an initial 50 pounds to 150 pounds. A little later the reward was increased to 700 pounds through the commitment of funds by the British Treasury. £ 700 was the annual income of an upper-middle class family. The size of the reward reflects the government's helplessness and concern at the lack of progress in the investigation. After the Williamsons and their maid were murdered, the reward was increased by 120 guineas . 20 guineas would be given to those who could name the owner of the weapons and an additional 100 guineas would be paid if that person was convicted of the murders.

Contemporary depiction of the carpenter's hammer with the initials IP or JP

It took 12 days to find the initials JP on the hammer that had been found in the Marrs house and which, due to the traces, was clearly one of the tools of the crime. This led to the first clues. A Mrs. Vermilloe answered who owned the Pear Tree Tavern together with her husband . She reported that a Danish seaman by the name of John Petersen had left his tools in her care the last time he went ashore. He was on the high seas at the time of the murder, but his roommate, John Williams, had shaved off his whiskers and washed his stockings on the water pump in the courtyard on December 8, the day after the murders in the draper's house. These few, vague suspicions were enough to convince the police to make an arrest. On December 28, it was revealed that John Williams had committed suicide in his cell.

Williams' suicide was considered an admission of guilt. Any contradictions were ignored, although there were plenty of them. The Marrs murderers must have been two people, as two men's footprints had been found and eyewitnesses had seen at least two men walking down the street at the moment the crime was discovered. The Vermiloe family had regularly used the hammer and other tools that John Peterson had left in their care. For example, wood had been chopped with a hammer in the courtyard and the children of the Vermilloe family had played with both it and a chisel in the inn courtyard so that anyone who happened to pass by would have access to the tools. A number of other suspicions arose: A witness swore that he saw Williams with a long ivory-handled French knife three weeks before the murder at the Williamsons' home. Another guest at the Pear Tree Tavern found a blue jacket that he claimed belonged to Williams. It was alleged that there was a stain on the inside pocket of this jacket, as if someone had stuck a bloodied hand in it. The forensic methods available at the time, however, did not allow any determination that the stain was blood. Such evidence could only be made in the 20th century. Nor were there any other witnesses that this jacket actually belonged to Williams. When Mrs. Vermilloe handed the jacket over to the police, they had the Pear Tree Tavern examined one more time and this time found a jackknife hidden behind a wall that was also stained. Here, too, it was suspected that the stains were blood.

The procession of the body of Williams

Drawing of the corpse of John Williams as he was laid out on the cart. The drawing was not made until four years after the incident and is therefore not accurate

On December 31, 1811, the body of John Williams was taken through the streets. He was placed on a sloping wooden platform, which was in turn on a cart. He was dressed in a clean white lace shirt, blue trousers, and brown stockings. That was an appearance typical of a worker. However, he wore neither a scarf around his neck nor a hat, which at the time were signs of decency and respectability. His right leg was tied to the cart.

The procession started its way at 10 a.m. The chief policeman led them, followed by several hundred other policemen, behind them a patrol with drawn swords, followed by other policemen and the representatives of the parishes of St. George, St. Paul and Shadwell on horseback, the chief policeman of Middlesex county also on horseback accompanied by other mounted protective forces. Only then did the cart with the body of Williams follow. Another group of guardians formed the end of the procession.

A crowd lined the path the procession took. Shops were closed out of respect for the murdered. The procession led at a measured pace along Ratcliffe Highway to the Marrs house. The cart stayed there for a quarter of an hour. An angry bystander climbed onto the car and forcibly turned Williams' head towards the house. Then the path of the procession led to New Gravel Lane, where the cart again stood still for some time. The procession continued along Cannon Street to what was then the outskirts. At this point a stake was driven through Williams' heart. According to some contemporary reports, the hammer, which had been one of the tools of the crime, was used for this purpose. Then the body was thrown into a pit.

Public reaction

The number of murders in Great Britain is not recorded for the early 19th century. In 1810, however, only 15 people out of a population of 10 million had been convicted of murder. If the number of convictions gives a realistic picture of the number of murders, this corresponds to 0.15 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. In comparison, there are an average of 1.8 murders for every 100,000 people in the EU each year. Accordingly, the murder of the Marr family and their apprentice attracted a great deal of public attention, which increased again after the murders on December 19. Thomas De Quincey , who lived in Grasmere in north-west England in 1811 , described the panic and fear that reigned among the British people as indescribable. One of his neighbors and her few servants would barricade themselves in their house regularly at night. Also in the archives of the UK Home Office are letters from all over the UK confirming the concern among the population. Many of them called for a reform of the police system, the handling of which was felt to be inadequate.

Pamphlets and brochures

Immediately after the first murders, pamphlets were sold on the streets that quickly spread news of the murders to other regions of Great Britain. Such pamphlets were typical of the period before 1850 because newspapers were too expensive for most of the population. Even buying these pamphlets was beyond the financial resources of a large part of the British population. Pubs and coffeehouses therefore usually posted such pamphlets in their rooms for their customers to read. It was typical that these pamphlets came into circulation sequentially. A first described the crime, a possible further disclosed further details of the course of events, if any. A second or third dealt with the hearing of the justice of the peace after an arrest, followed by one on the trial, and a final one, which usually sold best, described the execution of the perpetrator. They were best sold directly at the public place of execution and mostly followed a pattern in their content: the condemned's cry of complaint, his last confession and then details of the execution, which were mostly prefabricated because of the direct sale at the place of execution and by no means a journalistically precise description of the execution Were executions. Brochures served the public's curiosity in a similar way. As a rule, they consisted of eight pages, the content of which hardly differed from the pamphlets, but which were just as quickly on the market. A pamphlet that has been preserved gives all the details of the judicial investigation into the crime and was therefore probably on the market five days after the first murders.

Shortly after the December 7th murders, pamphlets were circulated accusing foreigners of the crime. Others noted that Celia Marr had fired a maid for stealing a few months ago and was threatened with murder as a result. A pamphlet also gave a description of the maid's clothes: it was clear to the reader that the maid's wages could not afford the maid's wages for the velvet jacket, feather-adorned bonnet, and strap-laced shoes that the maid supposedly wore. She must have led an immoral lifestyle.

Attending the funerals

The funeral procession of the Marrs on December 15, 1811

In addition to friends and family members, numerous curious people also attended the funerals of the murder victims. The path taken by the Marrs funeral procession was so lined with curious people that the path into the church was almost blocked. The funerals were also the subject of extensive reports. Even the Scottish Caledonian Mercury informed his readers in detail about these and even gave the order of the coffins and the most important mourners.

Recovery of Williams' body

By 1886, London had expanded to such an extent that both the crime scene and the area where the body of John Williams had been buried had become the densely populated inner district of London. When workers were digging for gas pipes, a skeleton was found at the grave site, pierced by a stake. Rumor has it that the skull came into the possession of an innkeeper who ran a pub at the intersection of Cable Street and Cannon Street Road.

That same year, the Pall Mall Gazette reported that Madame Tussaud's estate contained a portrait of John Williams that was drawn by the English painter Thomas Lawrence while Williams was still alive .

aftermath

The character of Captain Cuttle from Dickens' novel Dombey and Son , which contains a reference to the Ratcliffe Highway murders

The spectacular murder case on the Ratcliffe Highway continued to preoccupy the British media decades later, with not only the rumors circulating immediately after the crime being printed again and again, but new ones being invented again and again. Charles Dickens printed the following statement in his All the Year Round magazine :

"Williams was so well known as a notorious man that the captain of his ship, the Roxburgh Castle , always predicted that one day he would go up the gallows because of his oily and devious nature."

In Dickens' novel Dombey and Son , which was published as a serialized novel in 1847/1848, there is also an allusion to the Ratcliffe Highway murders. When Captain Cuttle, who lives near the port facilities, one day leaves his shutters closed, his neighbors speculate that he was probably lying on the stairs, killed by a hammer. At the time this novel was published, a large number of contemporaries should have understood the allusion to the murders that occurred more than three decades ago.

literature

Web links

Commons : Ratcliffe Highway Murders  - Collection of Pictures, Videos, and Audio Files

Single receipts

  1. a b c d e f Flanders: The Invention of Murder . P. 11.
  2. Flanders: The Invention of Murder . P. 16.
  3. ^ PD James, TA Critchley: The Maul and the Pear Tree . Preface
  4. a b c d Flanders: The Invention of Murder . P. 1.
  5. ^ PD James, TA Critchley: The Maul and the Pear Tree . P. 8.
  6. ^ PD James, TA Critchley: The Maul and the Pear Tree . P. 11.
  7. ^ PD James, TA Critchley: The Maul and the Pear Tree . P. 14.
  8. a b Flanders: The Invention of Murder . P. 3.
  9. ^ PD James, TA Critchley: The Maul and the Pear Tree . P. 55. and P. 56.
  10. Flanders: The Invention of Murder . P. 6.
  11. Flanders: The Invention of Murder . P. 7.
  12. a b c Flanders: The Invention of Murder . P. 8.
  13. a b c Flanders: The Invention of Murder . P. 9.
  14. a b P. D. James, TA Critchley: The Maul and the Pear Tree . P. 122.
  15. a b c Flanders: The Invention of Murder . P. 4.
  16. a b c Flanders: The Invention of Murder . P. 5.
  17. Flanders: The Invention of Murder . P. 10. The original quote is: Williams was so notorious an infamous man, for all his oily and snaky duplicity, that the captain of his vessel, the Roxburgh Castle, had always predicted that he would mount the gibbet.
  18. Flanders: The Invention of Murder . P. 10.