Chapter 4. New Sanguinary Atrocities
If any of my readers would care to join me for a socially-distanced guided walk through the history of Spitalfields on Boxing Day at noon please drop a line to spitalfieldslife@gmail.com
Late on the night of 19th December 1811, events were to take an even more remarkable turn. Mr Anderson, the Parish Constable, who lived in New Gravel Lane opposite the King’s Arms in Shadwell, decided to cross the road after closing time to get a top-up for his pint-pot from his good friend Mr Williamson, the landlord. As he opened his front door, he saw a nearly-naked man suspended in mid-air by sheets knotted together from a garret window of the pub opposite screaming, “Murder! Murder!” Mr Anderson grabbed his sword and staff from his house and emerged again just as John Turner, the lodger, dropped the last eight feet into the arms of the watchman Shadrick Newhall.
Mr Anderson prised open the pavement flap that led to the cellar of the King’s Arms. Inside, on the cellar steps, the landlord’s dead body was visible in the darkness, lying upside down with its legs splayed in the direction of the bar room above. An iron bar smothered in blood lay alongside the corpse, Mr Williamson’s throat was cut to the bone, his head was beaten in and his right leg fractured. He had put up a courageous fight, revealed by the hand dreadfully hacked up as if in his last moments he had clutched at the knife that finished him off. One thumb dangled loosely in the blood trickling down the staircase.
As Mr Andersen stood transfixed at his discovery, a cry came from the crowd gathering in the street, “Where’s the old man?” Startled from his reverie, Andersen made his way up the stairs, stepping carefully over the body. On the ground floor, he found the corpses of Mrs Williamson and the servant girl, Bridget Harrington, both slaughtered with equal cruelty. In the darkness of the first floor bedroom, he came upon the Williamson’s grandchild, Kitty Stillwell, lying in her bed asleep and unharmed. Overcome with powerful mixed emotions, he carried the sleepy little girl from the house into the street.
As John Turner recovered himself, he explained that he had seen a tall man in a long Flushing coat standing over the body of Mrs Williamson, corresponding to a description of a man seen outside the King’s Arms that night. A window at the back which had been used for escape was left open with bloodstains on the sill. It was discovered that Mr Williamson’s watch was missing.
That night, the wardens of St Paul’s Shadwell gathered in the vestry in incredulous horror, realising that they were caught up in events so chillingly macabre as to be entirely beyond control of any mortal. No-one could say how many more murders were yet to come or predict where these disquieting events might lead. They did all they could, which was to issue a reward of one hundred guineas.
Earlier that day, a critical discovery had been made concerning the maul which had been used in the slaying of Timothy Marr and his family. Although a handbill had been published requesting information as to the origin of the maul, it was only now that the blood and hair were removed from the maul to reveal the owner’s intials I.P.
As the feast of Christmas came closer and innocent children lay sleepless in their beds listening for the tinkle of St Nicholas’ sleigh bells, all across London their parents lay awake in terror craning for any sound that might presage the imminent invasion of unknown intruders with violent murderous intent.
Below you can see the site of the King’s Arms today. The building was swept away with the expansion of the London docks in the nineteenth century, now these walls that weave through Wapping are mere remnants of the docks that survived the bombing of World War II to be closed down in the late twentieth century, and behind this wall is a housing estate of recent date.
Reports will be posted as there is further news of these escalating occurrences.
Click on Paul Bommer’s map of the Ratcliffe Highway Murders to explore further
I am indebted to PD James’ ‘The Maul & The Peartree’ which stands as the authoritative account of these events. Thanks are also due to the Bishopsgate Institute and Tower Hamlets Local History Archive.
You may like to read the earlier instalments of this serial which runs throughout December
1. The Death Of A Linen Draper
Spitalfields Parties of Yesteryear
The van drivers of the Spitalfields Market certainly knew how to throw a party, as illustrated by this magnificent collection of photographs in the possession of George Bardwell who worked in the market from 1946 until the late seventies. George explained to me how the drivers saved up all year in a Christmas Club and hired Poplar Town Hall to stage shindigs for their families at this season. Everyone got togged up and tables overflowed with sponge cakes and jam tarts, there were presents for all and entertainments galore. Then, once the tables were cleared and the children safely despatched to their beds, it was time for some adult entertainment in the form of drinks and dancing until the early hours.
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The Dinners Of Old London
Dinner at the Mercers’ Hall, c.1910
Is that your stomach rumbling or is it the sound of distant thunder I hear? To assuage your hunger, let us pass the time until we eat by studying these old glass slides once used for magic lantern shows by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society at the Bishopsgate Insititute. Observe the architecture of gastronomy as expressed in the number and variety of ancient halls – the dining halls, the banquet halls and the luncheon rooms – where grand people once met for lengthy meals. Let us consider the dinners of old London.
The choicest meat from Smithfield, the finest fish from Billingsgate, and the freshest vegetables from Covent Garden and Spitalfields, they all found their way onto these long tables – such as the one in Middle Temple Hall which is twenty-seven feet long and made of single oak tree donated by Elizabeth I. The trunk was floated down the river from Windsor Great Park and the table was constructed in the hall almost half millennium ago. It has never been moved and through all the intervening centuries – through the Plague and the Fire and the Blitz – it has groaned beneath the weight of the dinners of old London.
Dinners and politics have always been inextricable in London but, whether these meals were a premise to do business, make connections and forge allegiances, or whether these frequent civic gatherings were, in fact, merely the excuse for an endless catalogue of slap-up feasts and beanos, remains open to question. John Keohane, former Chief Yeoman Warder at the Tower of London told me that his troupe acquired their colloquial name of “beefeaters” because – as royal bodyguards – Henry VII granted them the privilege of dining at his table and eating the red meat which was denied to commonfolk. In the medieval world, your place at dinner corresponded literally to your place in society, whether at top table or among the lower orders.
Contemplating all these empty halls where the table has not been laid yet and where rays of sunlight illuminate the particles of dust floating in the silence, I think we may have to wait a while longer before dinner is served in old London.
Christ’s Hospital Hall, c.1910
Buckingham Palace, State Dining Room, c.1910
Grocers’ Hall, c.1910
Ironmongers’ Hall, Court Luncheon Room, c.1910
Mercers’ Livery Hall, 1932
Merchant Taylors’ Hall, c.1910
Painters’ Hall, c.1910
Salters’ Livery Hall, c.1910
Skinners’ Hall, c.1910
Skinners’ Hall, c.1910
Stationers’ Hall, Stock Room, c.1910
Drapers’ Hall, c.1920
The Admiralty Board Room, c.1910
King’s Robing Room, Palace of Westminster, c.1910
Buckingham Palace, Throne Room, c.1910
Houses of Parliament, Robing Room, c.1910
Lincoln’s Inn, Great Hall, c.1910
Lincoln’s Inn Old Hall, c.1928
Drapers’ Hall, c.1920
Middle Temple Hall, c.1910
Mansion House Dining Room, c.1910
Ironmongers’ Hall, Banqueting Room, c.1910
Apothecaries’ Hall, Banquet in the Great Hall, c.1920
Boys preparing to cook, c.1910
Boar’s Head Dinner at Cutler’s Hall, c.1910
Lord Mayor’s Banquet at the Guildhall, 1933
Baddeley Cake & Wine, Drury Lane, c.1930
Glass slides courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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Chapter 3. The Burial Of The Victims
On 15th December 1811, one week after their violent deaths, the Marr family were buried in the churchyard of St George’s-in-the-East in the shadow of the pepperpot tower designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor. In spite of the frost, crowds of mourners lined the Highway from early morning and at one o’clock the coffins were carried out from the draper’s shop at 29 Ratcliffe Highway, where the deceased met their end, and into the church where two months earlier the family had attended the christening of Timothy Marr junior.
The following verse was inscribed upon the stone –
- Stop mortal, as you pass by
- And view the grave werein doth lie
- A Father, Mother and a Son
- Whose Earthly course was shortly run.
- For lo all in one fatal hour
- O’er came were they with ruthless power
- And murdered in a cruel state
- Yea, far too horrid to relate!
- They spared no-one to tell the tale
- One for the other could not wail
- The other’s fate in anguish sighed
- Loving they lived, together died
- Reflect, O Reader, o’er their fate
- And turn from sin before too late
- Life is uncertain in this world
- Oft in a moment we are hurled
- To endless bliss or endless pain
- So let not sin within your reign.
Meanwhile, no progress had yet been made in the detection of the perpetrators of the crime. Three Greek sailors loitering with blood on their trousers on the Ratcliffe Highway were arrested on the night of the murders but released again once an alibi was established, proving they had just come up from Gravesend.
More pertinently, Mr Pugh the carpenter who had undertaken the improvements to the Mr Marr’s shop was questioned. He had employed a subcontractor to make the shop window, who requested the iron chisel (discovered on the shop counter after the killings) which Mr Pugh had borrowed from a neighbour. Once the work was complete the chisel could not be found, though the contractor claimed he had left it in the shop for Mr Pugh. However, Mr Pugh was found to be of good character and had a reliable alibi too. Either Mr Marr succeeded in finding the chisel after Margaret Jewell, the servant girl, had gone out at ten to midnight to buy oysters – or he had kept it secretly all along and brought it out in vain self-defence against persons unknown – or one of the murderers had brought it into the house as a weapon and not used it.
Without any significant leads in the case, the neighbourhood was left with only speculation and the deadly brooding fear that – although the Marr family were now buried – the train of events unleashed by their savage murder on the night of 11th December was far from over.
Click on Paul Bommer’s map of the Ratcliffe Highway Murders to explore further
I am indebted to PD James’ ‘The Peartree & The Maul’ which stands as the authoritative account of these events. Thanks are also due to the Bishopsgate Institute and Tower Hamlets Local History Archive.
You may like to read the earlier instalments of this serial which runs throughout December
Robson Cezar’s Whitechapel Houses For Sale
ALL ROBSON CEZAR’S HOUSES ARE SOLD!
Spitalfields artist Robson Cezar has put twenty-five of the wooden houses he has made from fruit crates from Whitechapel Market for sale at £30 each, plus £4 postage & packing. Every house is different and each comes with an LED light and battery.
We are selling them on a first-come-first-served basis, so if you would like one please email spitalfieldslife@gmail.com giving your first, second and third choice, and we will supply payment details. We can only post these within the United Kingdom.
These houses are sculptures not toys and we do not recommend them for children under the age of twelve.
Click here to read the story of the creation of these houses
Photographs © Sarah Ainslie
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Readings At Midwinter
Sarah Winman
On Midwinter’s Night, 21st December at 6:30pm, I shall be giving a reading with my friend, novelist Sarah Winman, at BURLEY FISHER BOOKS in Haggerston. Sarah will be reading from her celebrated new novel STILL LIFE and I shall be reading my Christmas stories.
Click here to book your ticket
Still Life is a richly tapestried story of characters brought together by love, war, art, flood, and the ghost of E.M. Forster. It is 1944 and in the ruined wine cellar of a Tuscan villa, as the Allied troops advance and bombs fall around them, two strangers meet and share an extraordinary evening together.
Burley Fisher Books, 400 Kingsland Rd, E8 4AA
Schrodinger will be otherwise engaged on Midwinter’s Night
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The Lives Of George Lansbury & Will Crooks
In this second feature from his recently-published book, Out of Sight, Out of Mind – Abuse, Neglect and Fire in a London Children’s Workhouse, John Walker considers how Will Crooks and George Lansbury continued the nineteenth century welfare reforms which Henrietta Barnett began.
This Wednesday 15th December at 7:30pm, John Walker will be giving an online lecture about the work of Henrietta Barnett to improve conditions for children in the Whitechapel workhouse.
‘He lived and died a servant of the People’
I wrote recently of the significant role played by Henrietta Barnett in ending the workhouse system in which children were taken away from their parents as young as two years old and became prey to abuse. After a twenty-year campaign to humanise conditions, she obtained government agreement to close down the barrack schools in 1896 – just as her quarter of a century as governor of the Forest Gate District School came to an end.
When she left, two men who were to complete her mission arrived, setting the standard for children in care in the twentieth century. Future Labour members of parliament Will Crooks and George Lansbury were both guardians of the Poplar Union, one of the other unions controlling the Forest Gate School. Each cut his public service teeth as governors there, closing the school and replacing it with better, more suitable accommodation.
Will Crooks was a former workhouse boy, born into poverty in Poplar in 1852. His father was disabled by an industrial accident and he was put into the workhouse at eight years old. The guardians sent him and his brother to the South Metropolitan District School in Sutton, Surrey, which made a lasting impression on him and shaped his stewardship of the Forest Gate institution.
According to Crooks’ biographer, George Haw, he was separated from his younger brother on entering the school and ‘in the great hall of the school he would strain his eyes hoping to get a glimpse of the lone little fellow among the other lads, but never set his eyes upon him until the day they went home together.’
Crooks told Haw ‘Every day I spent in that school is burned on my soul.’ From that day, he was determined to change the system for Poor Law children.
Crooks first came to public prominence during the great London Dock Strike of 1889 and, three years later, was elected to the recently established London County Council under the Progressive banner. One of his early achievements was to change the eligibility criteria for elections to local boards of guardians – which were responsible for running workhouses – to enable working-class people to stand for election.
Taking advantage of the change he had engineered, he was elected to the Poplar Board in 1893 and, within four years, had himself appointed as a governor of the Forest Gate School. He was reminded of his own childhood as soon as he entered, observing that the youngsters ‘got no schooling and no training, save for the training that fitted them for pauperism.’
He became Chairman of the Poplar Board in 1899 and was elected Chair of the Forest Gate School governors, setting himself the task of removing the stigma of the Poor Law. According to biographer Haws his mission was to make the children ‘feel like ordinary working-class children … to grow up like them, becoming ordinary working-men and working-women themselves, so the Poor Law knew them no longer.’
Crooks furthered this ambition through public speaking, petitioning government, forcing school managers to improve conditions and encouraging children to grow in confident in the world outside the school. He took particular pride in entering Forest Gate’s pupils in sporting competitions and encouraging young musicians to perform in public, increasing the children’s social confidence.
By 1906, Poor Law schools’ inspector, Dugard, declared ‘There is very little, if anything of the institutional mark about the children … They compare very favourably with the best elementary schools.’
George Lansbury was born in Suffolk, the son of a railway worker, in 1859. He came to London as a young man, married, and after a brief spell in Australia, moved to Bow where he became involved with politics, working as agent for the local Liberal MP. Frustrated by the party’s lack of radicalism, he joined the Social Democratic Federation. Within a year, Lansbury was one of its Poor Law guardian candidates for the Poplar Union and his manifesto included a commitment to improving the Forest Gate School, writing ‘All children left to the care of the Board shall not be made to feel their dependence is criminal or disgraceful, and shall not be marked out by dress or treatment from their fellows.’
He wanted the children to be educated in local schools alongside non-workhouse pupils. In his election address the following year, he called for the abolition of workhouse school uniforms and that ‘the food given shall be sufficient of good quality and properly prepared.’
In 1895, after serving on Poplar’s Board of Guardians for two years, he was appointed a governor of the Forest Gate School, along with Crooks. They spent the next ten years improving conditions for the children while trying to replace the school with much more suitable accommodation, deeper in the Essex countryside. They identified Charles Duncan, the school’s superintendent, as the major obstacle and pensioned him off, along with other unsympathetic staff. They introduced camping holidays for boys in Essex and London excursions for girls.
But their reforms did not go unopposed. Poplar ratepayers complained at the cost and there were arguments in parliament decrying the fact the children were now being cared for rather than simply disciplined. The national press condemned the ‘extravagancies’ in treating the children humanely. Yet when a parliamentary committee was established to examine this apparent scandal, Lansbury & Crooks were exonerated.
From 1898, they were planning to move the children to purpose-built accommodation in Brentwood at a cost of £100,000, spending a great deal of time raising the money and looking for a buyer for the Forest Gate site while seeking loans to bridge the difference.
The scheme they devised was Hutton Poplars, opening in 1908. It was a series of houses, each catering for around thirty children under the care of a house-mother rather than an ex-army sergeant. Swimming baths, a gymnasium and recreation rooms were provided, and children attended local schools, without having to wear pauper uniforms.
Outrage at Lansbury & Crooks’ reforms were ultimately silenced when Hutton Poplars received a national seal of approval, ordained by a royal visit.
George Lansbury & Will Crooks’ lives afterwards
Both became Labour MPs – Will Crooks for Woolwich and George Lansbury for Bromley & Bow – although they had very different political careers.
Will Crooks was an MP between 1902 and 1921. A century later, we condemn his record and the causes he championed as reprehensible. He was anti-immigrant, particularly during the First World War when he became a flag-waver in favour of conflict. He was also a eugenicist with shameful views towards those with disabilities.
George Lansbury’s activity as a Labour MP was of a different timbre. He was a champion of women’s suffrage and an ally of Sylvia Pankhurst, resigning his seat to fight a by-election on the issue of suffrage which he lost. He was the founding editor of the Daily Herald during his period out of office. On his return to Westminster he became one of the minority of pacifist MPs, opposed to the First World War. As leader of Poplar Council, he led a successful, campaign of civil disobedience that saw him and his fellow councillors imprisoned to get the funding of local government reformed so it no longer disadvantaged poor communities.
He became leader of the Labour MPs in the thirties after Ramsey Macdonald deserted the party, taking most of it with him to lead a ‘national’ government. Lansbury’s pacifism cost him the leadership in 1935 and he spent the last five years of his life valiantly persuading leaders around Europe to disarm and avoid a Second World War.
He failed, dying within months of the outbreak of war, but in 1950 A.J.P Taylor described George Lansbury as ‘the most lovable figure in modern British politics.’
George Lansbury’s memorial in Bow Rd – ‘A great servant of the people’
George Lansbury
George Lansbury’s 1893 election handbill to become a member of the Poplar Boards of Guardians
Will Crooks
Forest Gate District School
Pupils at Forest Gate School photographed by Henrietta Barnett in he eighteen-eighties
Pupils at Forest Gate School photographed by Henrietta Barnett in the eighteen-eighties
Hutton Poplars which replaced Forest Gate School
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