by James Moore
Corder’s trial began on 7 August and lasted two days. Corder protested his innocence and there was some confusion about just how Maria had died – she had been strangled, shot and possibly stabbed with a sharp instrument. Corder’s defence was that, although he had met Maria at the Red Barn, he had then left, heard a gunshot and returned to find one of his own pistols lying by the body.
None of this could save Corder, who was quickly found guilty. Finally, on the night before he met his fate, Corder confessed to shooting Maria in the eye, but claimed it had been an accident. Up to 20,000 spectators turned out to see his execution by hanging, conducted in the pouring rain on 11 August. Another 5,000 queued up to see his slit-open body in the Shire Hall.
Even after death, Corder’s ignominy didn’t end. His body was dissected and his skin used to bind a book about the trial which is still held at the Moyses Hall Museum in Bury St Edmunds along with his scalp, death mask and his pistols. Maria wasn’t able to rest in peace either – her own gravestone was destroyed by ghoulish souvenir hunters who chipped pieces off as keepsakes. Even the scene of the murder, the Red Barn, was chopped up and turned into souvenir snuffboxes and toothpicks.
In the years that followed, the Red Barn Murder inspired ballads and a popular play that was still being performed right up until the 1890s. Elements of the real-life case remained puzzling, however. Much suspicion fell upon Maria’s stepmother’s ‘dreams’. It seemed highly fortuitous that they had led her to the very spot where Maria’s body lay. There were rumours that she herself had been conducting an affair with Corder and had been somehow involved in her own stepdaughter’s untimely death.
LOCATIONS: The Cock Inn, The Green, Polstead, Suffolk, CO6 5AL, 01206 263150; The George Inn, Colchester, No. 116 High Street, Colchester, Essex, CO1 1TD, 01206 578494, www.bespokehotels.com
WHERE BODYSNATCHERS BURKE AND HARE FOUND THEIR VICTIMS, 1827–28
The White Hart Inn, The Last Drop and Maggie Dickson’s, Grassmarket, Edinburgh
The city of Edinburgh likes to celebrate the more macabre aspects of its history with a drink. And so visitors to Scotland’s capital will find The Last Drop, a pub which derives its name from the fact that the Grassmarket, where it is located, was once the venue for public executions. The last man hanged here was a robber called James Andrew, in 1784. Another pub nearby, Maggie Dickson’s, commemorates a woman who cheated the hangman at the same spot. She was a fish hawker who became pregnant by an innkeeper’s son. She tried to conceal her pregnancy and was then suspected of infanticide. Hanged at the Grassmarket in 1724, her body was taken down and put in a coffin, then sent to her home town of Musselburgh where she was due to be buried. But the noose had not done its job properly. On the way, those transporting the coffin were astonished to hear knocking from inside. Maggie was still alive and had come round after her ordeal. Under law she could not be hanged twice. So she was set free and went on to live another forty years.
Chief among the hostelries that are able to boast a link to the darker side of Edinburgh’s past is The White Hart, also on the Grassmarket. The pub dates back to 1516 and was already an institution – frequented by the likes of poet Robert Burns – by the time that it started serving two shady customers, William Burke and William Hare. The pair would become infamous for the murderous plots they hatched and carried out in Edinburgh’s taverns and inns.
Both Irish immigrants, Burke and Hare had initially come to Scotland to work on the canals, but both settled in Edinburgh’s West Port. Soon Burke and his mistress, Helen McDougal, were living at the lodging house run by Hare’s wife, Margaret. Money was tight. Then, in November 1827, an old pensioner called Donald, who was staying at the house, died of natural causes, owing Hare £4 in rent. He and his friend came up with a wheeze to make up the loss. They filled his coffin with bark and then sold the body for a tidy profit of £7 10s to an assistant of Dr Robert Knox, a well-known anatomy lecturer at Edinburgh University, dragging it to his house in a tea chest.
In the early part of the nineteenth century, medical science was developing fast, but there were not enough cadavers for the necessary dissections at medical schools. Until 1832 only the bodies of executed criminals were fair game. With surgeons keen to get their hands on fresh bodies, few questions were asked about the sources of many of those that ended up in their lecture theatres. Grave robbing for corpses became widespread.
Having made such easy ready cash (the sum equates to several hundred pounds in today’s money), Burke and Hare soon realised they were on to a good money-spinner if only they could get their hands on some more bodies. Grave robbing was hard work and dangerous, with no guarantee as to the quality of the body that was recovered. It was now that they settled on the idea of murdering people and selling on their freshly killed corpses.
First, the drink-addled duo did away with another elderly and ailing lodger called Joseph, plying him with whisky until he passed out. They then covered his nose and mouth until he expired.
Smothering their victims whilst holding them down and compressing their chests would become Burke and Hare’s preferred method of killing, a modus operandi that left few marks on the corpse, just the way the surgeons liked their bodies. Plus, it left no obvious evidence of murder.
Becoming bolder, Burke and Hare now began trawling the drinking dens of Edinburgh, like The White Hart, looking for likely victims. The ideal candidates would be old, homeless or immigrants, people who would not be missed if they suddenly disappeared. On 11 February 1828, they befriended elderly salt pedlar Abigail Simpson at a pub, got her drunk and then lured her back to the lodging house where they again smothered her. This time they got £10 for their trouble. Burke and Hare soon got cocky – more victims swiftly followed, including a prostitute called Mary Paterson. When her body turned up for dissection at the university, some of the students recognised her. But Knox dismissed their concerns.
William Burke, who was eventually hanged for his part in a string of murders. (Courtesy of Wellcome Library, London)
William Hare managed to avoid the noose, despite his role in the killings. (Courtesy of Wellcome Library, London)
Burke and Hare – with their partners very much in on the act – continued to supply bodies, often brazenly dragging them in tea chests or barrels through the streets of the capital.
Victims included a beggar called Effie as well as another old woman and her 12-year-old grandson. A washerwoman called Mrs Ostler suddenly went missing, as did Margaret’s own cousin, Ann McDougal. Another local prostitute, Mary Haldane, and her daughter Peggy also succumbed, along with others.
As the year wore on, Burke and Hare were becoming rich on the proceeds of their crimes, which raised suspicions, but they were also becoming rather careless in their choice of victims. That October they lured an 18-year-old man called James Wilson back to their lair, then overpowered and killed him. He was a well-known local character nicknamed Daft Jamie, and when his body arrived on Dr Knox’s dissection table he was immediately recognised. The surgeon denied his identity.
Halloween was a fitting date for the last of Burke and Hare’s crimes and the one that would lead to their downfall. That morning, Burke was drinking whisky in his local tavern when an Irish woman called Mary Docherty walked in. Burke bought her a drink, claiming to be a relative, and persuaded her to accompany him home for more carousing. After she had been murdered, her body was stuffed under a bed until it could be transported to Dr Knox. However, two lodgers at the house, Ann and James Gray, became suspicious when they were warned away from a bed by Burke. Then, when he was out of sight, they examined the bed after all and, to their horror, discovered Docherty’s corpse. The couple went to the police, refusing a bribe from Helen McDougal to keep quiet. Although Burke and Hare had managed to get rid of the body by the time police arrived it was later found at Dr Knox’s office in a tea chest. James Gray identified the body as the one he had seen at the lodging house, and Burke and Hare were finally arrested.
In total,
during their killing spree Burke and Hare had done away with sixteen people both at Hare’s lodging house and at another property of Burke’s. However, prosecutors were hampered by the fact that there was a lack of evidence as to the exact cause of death in the case of Docherty and the possibility that Burke and Hare might both get off scot free if they simply blamed each other in court.
The execution of William Burke in 1829 at Edinburgh’s Lawnmarket from a contemporary print. (Courtesy of Wellcome Library, London)
Eventually William Hare was persuaded to rat on his partner and was given immunity from prosecution. While Burke went to the gallows for murder on 28 January 1829, Hare was soon released and was last spotted in Carlisle that year before disappearing without a trace. McDougal had gone on trial for murder alongside Burke, but the case against her was found not proven. Dr Knox escaped prosecution entirely, even though he must have had strong suspicions about the source of such a ready supply of unmutilated bodies. However, his reputation was left in tatters and he moved to London. In the two centuries since the Burke and Hare murders, the White Hart’s reputation, however, has gone from strength to strength. In a city of a thousand ghost stories it is also considered Edinburgh’s most haunted bar. One particular ghoul said to frequent The White Hart is the ghost of a woman wearing a red dress. Legend has it that she was a prostitute who once frequented the pub – though there is no mention as to whether she may have been one of Burke and Hare’s unfortunate victims.
LOCATIONS: The Last Drop, Nos 74–78 Grassmarket, Edinburgh, Midlothian, EH1 2JR, 0131 225 4851, www.nicholsonspubs.co.uk; Maggie Dickson’s, No. 92 Grassmarket, Old Town, Edinburgh, EH1 2JR, 0131 225 6601; The White Hart, No. 34 Grassmarket, Edinburgh, Midlothian, EH1 2JU, 0131 226 2806, www.whitehart-edinburgh.co.uk
A DECAPITATED LANDLADY AND A CONFESSION AT THE BAR, 1833
The Bull, Streatley, Berkshire; The Bear and The Blue Boar, Wantage, Oxfordshire
At around 6 a.m. on 31 August 1833, 12-year-old James Pullen woke up and came downstairs at the White Hart in Wantage, looking for his 40-year-old stepmother, Ann, who ran the alehouse. As he went into the parlour, the boy made a gruesome discovery – the decapitated body of Ann, whose severed head was resting by her feet, next to the fireplace. Shortly afterwards a boy delivering milk arrived and ran to find the local constable, Thomas Jackson. On entering the pub in Newbury Street, Jackson found the room ‘deluged with blood’, some of it spattered up the walls. The pocket of the widow’s clothes had been tampered with and her purse was missing. A doctor, Henry Ormond, who was called to examine the body, concluded that Ann, whose head still had its cap tied about her chin, appeared to have been decapitated with a single blow to her neck.
A suspect was quickly identified. He was 19-year-old agricultural labourer George King from the village of Cumnor. He had been seen at the White Hart early on the Friday evening in question and subsequently behaving ‘excitably’ at the Blue Boar inn, situated opposite the White Hart.
That Saturday morning, after Ann’s body was found, a search was made for King. He was found at work cutting beans in a field outside town. He was using his bean hook, a scythe like tool. In King’s pocket Constable Jackson found 12s 6d and, crucially, a crooked sixpence. His coat, which was covered in bloodstains, was also found in the field.
An inquest was hurriedly held that afternoon at The Bear which was ‘crowded to suffocation’ with townsfolk wanting to see what would happen next. King was brought before the coroner and admitted to being a witness to the murder of Ann Pullen but accused another individual, called Edward Grant, of actually carrying out the crime. There was a search, but no one of that name could be found in the town, yet King was able to describe in accurate detail the bloody scene at the White Hart, which only helped to point the finger.
King then suddenly changed his story, switching the target for blame to another man, Charles Merriott, known as ‘the French lad’, a man with whom he’d been drinking at the Blue Boar late on the Friday night and had afterwards slept next to in a hay loft behind it. The coroner’s jury didn’t believe him. A verdict of wilful murder was recorded and King was sent to Reading gaol to await a full trial. It wasn’t until 28 February 1834 that he was brought up before the assizes in Reading where he pleaded not guilty. In the dock he was described as a ‘very heavy looking, clumsy young man’ who showed no trace of emotion throughout the proceedings.
The Bull, Streatley, where George King confessed to murder. (© James Moore)
Witnesses were brought forward to show that Ann had owned a ‘lucky’ crooked sixpence just like the one found on King’s person. The landlord of the Blue Boar, William Betteridge, told how King had arrived at the pub just before 10 p.m. with his coat over his arm, despite the fact that it was pouring with rain outside. He had asked for a bed but appeared confused when told he was more likely to get one at the White Hart, where of course the defence alleged he had just come from, leaving Ann’s mutilated body.
Key to the prosecution’s case, however, was a confession that King had apparently made, in front of witnesses, during the journey from Wantage to Reading in the days immediately after the murder. On the way the two men charged with transporting him, Constable Thomas Jackson and James Jones, had decided to stop at the Bull Inn at Streatley – situated halfway to their destination – for refreshment and to feed their horses.
By the early nineteenth century the Bull was already an ancient place, dating back to the 1400s. It had its own gruesome legend about a monk and a nun who had been executed in 1440 for having an illicit relationship and been buried in the pub’s garden.
Taken inside this cosy hostelry, King spotted a picture of a woman on the wall. Jackson told the court:
When we got as far as Streatley we stopped to bait our horses at the Bull. The prisoner went to a picture there and he smiled. He said: ‘She turned her eyes like that picture when her head was off’. Then he turned his own eyes like it.
King’s story was that on the evening of 30 August he had come from the Squirrel pub in Wantage to the White Hart, and Pullen had cooked him a rasher of bacon. Afterwards he had asked if there was a bed for the night (a witness to this claimed he had propositioned Ann and that she told him that she would hit him with a poker if he tried anything on).
Ann’s two children had been sent to bed at around 9 p.m. and at the time the murder was committed there appears to have been no one else in the bar room. No one knows exactly what occurred between the pair but King’s version was that he had been sitting at a table with his cup and the tool of his trade, the bean hook, resting on it when he had suddenly felt the urge to lash out.
The constable claimed to have only intended to hit Ann with the back of the bean hook, but to his surprise its sharp blade had sliced the head clean off her body in a manner, later described by one newspaper reporter as an act as ‘adroit as a person with a scimitar’.
As the judge summed up the gruesome details of the case the court room descended into chaos as one woman fainted. It took some time to restore order, but only minutes for the jury to find King guilty. Then, a black cap having been placed upon his head, Justice Patteson ordered King to be hanged.
On the following Monday, 3 March, King faced the noose at Reading Gaol. As was tradition, his body was then buried within the prison walls. Ann Pullen was buried in Wantage graveyard, the basic, sorry facts of her demise recorded for posterity in the church’s burial register. The White Hart, where she was murdered, later became The Packhorse, but is no longer a pub. However, The Bull in Streatley where King made his confession can still be found, as can the Bear Inn, now the Bear Hotel, where the inquest into the desperate deed was conducted.
LOCATIONS: The Blue Boar, No. 4 Newbury St, Wantage, OX12 8BS, 01235 763209; The Bear Hotel, www.thebearwantage.co.uk; The Bull, Reading Road, Streatley, West Berkshire, RG8 9JJ, 01491 872392, www.marstonspubs.co.uk
THE MURDER OF JONATHAN MAY, 1835
The White Hart Hotel, Moretonhampstead, Devon
Finding an old map on the wall of a pub or hotel is nothing remarkable. However, there is one hanging in the lounge of the White Hart Hotel in Moretonhampstead that is more interesting than most. For this detailed, early nineteenth-century plan of the town was drawn especially to help the jury in a murder trial. In the summer of 1836, two men stood accused of brutally robbing and killing a man called Jonathan May just outside the town. The fact that the map has since been preserved at the White Hart is fitting, since it was here that May had taken his last refreshment before being attacked.
Back in the July of 1836, Moretonhampstead, set on the edge of eerie Dartmoor, was abuzz with the sounds of the annual summer fair. Along with the usual livestock market, the streets were lined with stalls and there was plenty of carousing. During the three-day event the small rural community also attracted a clutch of strangers and one or two criminals too, who would mingle with the crowds hoping to find easy pickings. On the map at the White Hart there are some ten pubs marked in the town and during the fair these would have been full of raucous revellers and visitors taking lodgings.
On Thursday 16 July, Jonathan May rode into town, stabling his horse at The White Hart. May was a 48-year-old bachelor farmer from Dunsford a few miles away. He had a good day – selling his animals for a tidy £80. That evening he went to see a local tanner who owed him some money. Then, between 7 and 8 p.m. he visited a shoemaker’s shop to pay a bill. It was time for some refreshment and a contented May headed for the best place in town, The White Hart, which still looks as grand today as it did in the 1830s. The inn, built in 1639, had a proud history and had once been used as a local courthouse. Perhaps May showed too much of the money he had made at the fair, but having enjoyed a good dinner, washed down with a little ale, he was soon on his way. The landlord, Samuel Cann, recalled, ‘He left about 10 p.m. at night on horseback. He was then perfectly sober.’ Shortly afterwards a tollhouse keeper spoke to May as he left the town.