Southey: Robert Southey (1774–1843), historian, biographer, essayist, and poet laureate, was for many years De Quincey’s neighbour in the Lake District.
‘Edinburgh Annual Register’ … the whole: Southey edited the Edinburgh Annual Register from 1809 to 1813. A summary of the events surrounding Williams’s two attacks appeared in the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1811 (Edinburgh, 1813), 206–11, 219–31.
Bow Street: De Quincey also mentions the Bow Street police in his first essay ‘On Murder’ (see above, p. 168).
Lascars, Chinese, Moors, Negroes: cf. the coroner in his charge to the jury in the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1811, 223: ‘in the eastern part of the metropolis … the number of strangers and seamen discharged from time to time at the East and West India and London docks, and the influx of foreign sailors from all parts of the globe, imperiously call for the solemn attention of those … intrusted with the administration of government’.
middle stature … superfluous flesh: reports of Williams differed widely. In the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1811, 220, John Turner, the key witness in the Williamson murders, reported that the man he saw rifling through Mrs Williamson’s pockets was ‘about six feet in height, dressed in a genteel style, with a long dark loose coat on’. The Times, 8481, 24 December 1811, described Williams as ‘a short man’ with ‘a lame leg’. But the Morning Chronicle, 13302, 26 December 1811, declared that ‘Williams … had large red whiskers … he is about five feet nine inches in height, of an insinuating manner and pleasing countenance, and is not lame, as stated in some of the papers’.
upon the Indus: the River Indus rises in Tibet and empties into the Arabian Sea.
Scinde and Lahore: more commonly, ‘Sindh’, is a province in what is now south-eastern Pakistan. Lahore is the capital of Punjab province in eastern Pakistan.
young women … favourable reception: not all women gave Williams a favourable reception. Cf. The Times, 8485, 28 December 1811: the father of a Miss Laurence owned a public house and ‘Williams used to come … and sit in the bar with the utmost familiarity. She never approved of his conduct. She gave him notice last Saturday week not to shew his face any more’.
‘Now, Miss R … be tranquil’: De Quincey seems to conflate the testimony of at least two different witnesses. ‘Miss R.’ is probably ‘Margaret Reilly, a girl of the town’, whose testimony appeared in the Morning Chronicle, 13304, 28 December 1811: ‘She saw two men run out of Gravel-lane, one of them … with large whiskers, the other lame’. De Quincey’s anecdote concerning the ‘gentle-mannered girl … Williams had undoubtedly designed to murder’, however, is much closer to the story told by a Mrs Hoare that appeared in the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1811, 230: on the Saturday night a week before the Marr family was killed, she heard ‘a knocking at the wall’ and asked, ‘“Who is there?” “It is I, – I am coming to rob your house”, answered Williams. She immediately knew his voice…. “Robber or no robber, I’ll let you in, and I am glad you are come”’.
coup d’essai: trial effort.
‘all that mighty heart’: Wordsworth, ‘Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802’, 14.
surtout: ‘a man’s great-coat or overcoat’ (OED).
Titian … Rubens … Vandyke … full dress: Titian (c. 1488–1576), Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), and Sir Anthony Van Dyck (1599–1641), all eminent painters.
going out as Grand Compounder: at Oxford, those ‘who paid higher fees for their degrees in consideration of being possessed of an independent income’ (OED). The practice was abolished in 1853.
long blue frock … silk: Edinburgh Annual Register for 1811, 230: According to William Hassel, ‘clerk to the prison’, Williams was ‘dressed in a brown great-coat lined with silk, a blue under-coat with yellow buttons, blue and white waistcoat, stripped blue pantaloons, brown worsted stockings, and shoes’.
Marr: De Quincey first mentions Timothy Marr in ‘On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth’ (see above, p. 166).
Mrs Marr … enmity towards each other: cf. Morning Chronicle, 13304, 28 December 1811: ‘It appears that Williams was a shipmate of Mr Marr’s, and came home with him about a year and a half ago, in the Dover Castle East Indiaman…. Williams … had often mentioned being in company with Marr.’
causa teterrima: foulest cause.
Jewish superstition … limits of Sunday: the Jewish calendar is a lunar– solar one determined by complex calculations. There are differences of religious and legal opinion concerning the definition of sunset (the latest beginning point for the Sabbath) and the appearance of the stars (the earliest end point). De Quincey is probably thinking in particular of Jewish merchants, some of whom were allowed to open on Sunday, which would technically have begun at sundown on Saturday.
young man of twenty-seven: De Quincey’s recollection of the ages of the victims is inaccurate. Timothy Marr was 24 years old, as was his wife. Their son Timothy Marr, junior, was 3 months old (see Margo Ann Sullivan, Murder and Art: Thomas De Quincey and the Ratcliffe Highway Murders (New York, 1987), 23).
hell-kite: cf. Shakespeare, Macbeth, iv. iii. 216–17: ‘All my pretty ones? | Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?’
fifty minutes: most reports indicate that the servant girl Margaret (De Quincey calls her ‘Mary’) Jewell was gone a much shorter period of time. Cf. Fairburn’s Account, 4, 6: ‘She returned in about half an hour…. it is conjectured … [she] alarmed the wretches, who therefore had not an opportunity to rob the premises’.
Help there is none: cf. Psalm 22: 11: ‘for trouble is near; for there is none to help’.
oyster shop … remoter district: cf. ‘John Williams’ in Newgate Calendar, v. 119: ‘The girl left the shop door ajar, expecting to return 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.’
Mr Winsor: Frederick Winsor (1763–1830), inventor and entrepreneur, formed the first coal-gas lighting company in 1806. A year later he erected gas streetlights in Pall Mall, London.
past one o’clock: cf. Margaret Jewell’s testimony in Fairburn’s Account, 14: ‘I thought I would wait till the watchman came, which he shortly did, and called the hour of one.’
very gently knocked: cf. Margaret Jewell’s testimony in Fairburn’s Account, 14: ‘I certainly heard some one coming down stairs, which I thought was my master coming to let me in…. I rang again, and knocked at the door with my foot repeatedly.’
reflections this way or that: cf. Wordsworth, The Borderers, 1539–41: ‘a step, a blow, | The motion of a muscle – this way or that –|’Tis done’.
pawnbroker: cf. Fairburn’s Account, 15: John Murray was ‘a pawnbroker, residing at No. 30, Ratcliffe-highway, next to the house of the deceased Mr Marr’.
octave: De Quincey adapts the ecclesiastical meaning of the term: ‘The eighth day after a festival (both days being counted, and so always falling on the same day of the week as the festival itself)’ (OED).
The earthquake is not satisfied at once: Wordsworth, The Prelude (1805), x. 74.
second atrocity took place: Williams carried out the Williamson murders on 19 December 1811 (see above, p. 180).
Mr Williamson: De Quincey discusses John Williamson in his first essay on murder (see above, p. 30).
following five persons: John Williamson was 56; his wife Elizabeth was 60; their housemaid Anna Bridget Harrington was in her fifties; and their granddaughter Kitty Stillwell was 14. The lodger was John Turner, a journeyman.
Banquo … regal banquet: Shakespeare, Macbeth, iii. iv. 9–31.
‘Lord Jesus … murdered!’: De Quincey in his account habitually expands the passage of time, in this instance between when the door banged and when the housemaid cried out. Cf. Turner in the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1811, 221: ‘I heard the front door bang to very hard. Immediately afterwards I heard the servant exclaim, – “We are all murdered”’.
Medusa’s head: in Greek m
ythology, Medusa was a winged female creature whose head of hair consisted of snakes.
scrutoire: more commonly ‘escritoire’, a ‘writing desk constructed to contain stationery and documents’ (OED).
bed-tester: the canopy over the bed.
first thought … share his chances: De Quincey appears to have invented John Turner’s concern for the sleeping Kitty Stillwell. Cf. Turner’s own account in the Morning Chronicle, 13298, 21 December 1811: ‘I went down stairs, and saw one of the villains…. I immediately ran up stairs; took off the sheets from my bed, fastened them together, and lashed them to the bed-posts; I called to the watchman to give the alarm.’
half-carious: ‘carious’ is ‘decayed; rotten with dry rot’ (OED).
Sovereigns as yet were not: the sovereign was introduced in 1816, five years after the Williams murders.
strophe and antistrophe: these terms describe metrically corresponding groups of lines in Greek choral and lyric poetry.
Pull baker, pull devil!: E. Cobham Brewer, The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (London, 1963), 732: ‘Pull Devil, Pull Baker’ is to ‘let each one do the best for himself in his own line of business, but let not one man interfere in that of another’.
creaking shoes: cf. Morning Chronicle, 13301, 25 December 1811: ‘John Turner … described to the Magistrates’ how he was ‘sure he heard a man slowly walking in the sitting room, and that his shoes cracked, and that he was confident the man could not have nails in his shoes’.
odour of sanctity: the odour of sanctity is a beautiful scent that is said to exude from a number of holy persons and certain European saints.
Three or four people ran up: cf. Turner’s own account in Morning Chronicle, 13298, 21 December 1811: ‘I was hanging out of the front window by the sheets; the watchman received me in his arms … a great mob had then assembled opposite the door.’
seven bishops at Westminster in 1688: William Sancroft (1617–93), archbishop of Canterbury, was the leader of a group of seven bishops who were imprisoned for opposing the policies of the Roman Catholic king James II. The acquittal of the group in June 1688 was greeted with widespread popular rejoicing.
‘Revolt of Islam,’ canto xii: Shelley, The Revolt of Islam, xii. i. 1–9. De Quincey’s transcription is accurate, except that in line 3 Shelley writes ‘winds’, not ‘wings’.
sword … shirt into the street: De Quincey seems to modify and heighten the experience of George Fox, whose deposition appeared in the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1811, 222: ‘I reside … opposite the house of the deceased…. While they were breaking open the door, I ran across to my own house for a hanger.’ A ‘hanger’ is ‘a kind of short sword, originally hung from the belt’ (OED). Cf. Newgate Calendar, v. 122: Fox ‘obtained an entrance … with a cutlass in his hand’.
only one man had been concerned in the affair: cf. Morning Chronicle, 13302, 26 December 1811: ‘As far as can officially be learned, there were only two men concerned in both of the atrocious murders.’ The same opinion was iterated in the Morning Chronicle, 13304, 28 December 1811: ‘The witness felt certain that more than one man had been concerned in the murders.’
‘J. P.’: as De Quincey discusses in the first essay ‘On Murder’, the mallet used to kill the Marr family belonged to John Petersen (see above, p. 30).
men of various nations, at a public-house: Williams lodged at the Pear Tree, Pear Tree Alley, Wapping. The members of the household were Robert Vermilloe, the publican; his wife Sarah Vermilloe; their washerwoman (and sister-in-law to Sarah Vermilloe), Mary Rice; and Mary Rice’s son William Rice. There were five lodgers: John (or Michael) Cuthperson, John Harrison, John Petersen, John Fredrick Richter, and John Williams. Petersen was from Hamburg (see above, p. 180). In The Times, 8484, 27 December 1811, Richter was described as ‘a young foreign seaman’.
Courvoisier (the murderer of Lord William Russell): in May 1840, François Benjamin Courvoisier, a valet, murdered his master Lord William Russell (1767–1840).
One iron bar … by his braces: cf. The Times, 8485, 28 December 1811: The turnkey found Williams ‘suspended by the neck, from an iron bar … on which the prisoners hang their clothes. He was quite cold and lifeless.’
wild natural justice: De Quincey alludes to the famous first sentence of Lord Bacon, ‘Of Revenge’: ‘Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.’
Manchester Infirmary … statuesque interest: cf. R. Bulfield, The Trial of Alexander & Michael McKean (Manchester, 1826), 64: ‘After they had hung about an hour their bodies were taken down. – The body of Alexander was left for dissection at Lancaster, and that of Michael was sent to the Manchester Infirmary for the same purpose.’
hocussing … drugging … with laudanum: cf. Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, ed. James Kingsley (Oxford, 1986), 151: ‘“What do you mean by ‘hocussing’ brandy-and-water?” inquired Mr Pickwick … “Puttin’ laud’num in it”, replied Sam.’
cabarets: drinking houses.
law as it then stood … quadrivium: cf. Leon Radzinowicz, A History of English Criminal Law, 5 vols. (London, 1948–86), i. 198: ‘The Magistrate had an interview with the Secretary for the Home Department in order to consider whether the usual practice of burying the body at the crossroads might be departed from in this instance…. It was decided that the body should be exhibited to public view in the same neighbourhood in which Williams had committed his crimes…. The procession stopped twice, each time for a quarter of an hour, at the two houses formerly inhabited by Williams’s victims…. Finally the body was taken from the platform, lowered into the grave, a stake was driven through it and the pit was then covered.’
driven through his heart: cf. the Morning Chronicle, 13306, 31 December 1811: Williams’s body ‘will be conveyed to Ratcliffe Highway, and thrown into a hole six feet deep; after which a stake will be driven through it’. See also G. M. H. Playfair, ‘De Quincey: The Murderer Williams’, Notes and Queries, 11th series, 5 (January 1912), 6: in 1886, during excavation of a trench for a gas company, workmen ‘discovered the skeleton of a man with a stake driven through it…. It is believed that the skeleton is that of a man who murdered a Mr and Mrs Marr, their infant child, and a young apprentice.’
APPENDIX A. Peter Anthony Fonk
Cologne: Cologne is located below Bonn on the west bank of the River Rhine in western Germany.
Enfeld: ‘Enfeld’ is properly Ehrenfeld, a small town near Cologne.
Neuss: Neuss is in western Germany, on the west bank of the River Rhine.
cooper’s knife: a cooper is ‘a craftsman who makes and repairs wooden vessels formed of staves and hoops, as casks, buckets, tubs’ (OED).
Mühlheim: Mühlheim is south-east of Cologne, near Frankfurt, in western Germany.
Triers: properly, ‘Trier’, a city in south-western Germany, on the right bank of the River Mosel.
hurly burly: cf. Shakespeare, Macbeth, i. i. 3–4: ‘When the hurly-burly’s done, | When the battle’s lost and won’.
APPENDIX B. To the Editor of Blackwood’s Magazine
Lactantius: see above, p. 168.
Christopher North: see above, pp. 168, 185.
‘Forewarned, fore-armed’: Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, trans. Tobias Smollett, ed. Martin Battestin and O. M. Brack (Athens, Ga., 2003), 450: ‘Sir, forewarned and forearmed is half the day’.
virtu: see above, p. 171.
Newgate Calendar, God’s Revenge Against Murder: see above, p. 186.
nip the thing in the bud: cf. Ovid, Remedia Amoris, l. 91: ‘Principiis obsta’ (see above, p. 186).
Aristotle: see above, pp. 170, 185.
the Scholiasts: a scholiast is ‘one who writes explanatory notes upon an author’ (OED). De Quincey’s ignorant author probably intends the ‘Scholastics’, the medieval university teachers of theology and logic.
On Murder (Oxford World's Classics) Page 30