The prosecution maintained that William Lacey had confided his intentions to liquidate a large amount of capital and that she set out to relieve him of it in the most brutal and callous way. And then, when William Lacey turned up at the house without it, it was claimed that she shot him out of pique – a point the defence were quick to seize on.
Did Mrs Markham look like a woman who acted out of spite?
The apprehension of the newlyweds at different times and in different locations was also a source of interest and intrigue in the press. They loved the idea of John Markham being run to ground in an hotel in Brighton, then denying all knowledge of the crime. But suddenly switching his story and laying the blame squarely on his wife, once he discovered that she had been apprehended three days afterwards, about to board the boat to Boulogne.
Both prosecution and defence made much of this, as well. Especially since Mrs Markham openly admitted that she had agreed to meet her husband in Brighton, yet had no intentions of fulfilling that arrangement.
The Crown suggested this was a deliberate attempt on her part to make John the scapegoat for cold-blooded murder.
Her defence counsel quite naturally rejected the allegation, asking the jury whether John Markham struck them as the type who could be bullied into buying shovels, air pistols, quicklime, or indeed any other devices that would obviously lead to murder. He bought these items, they insisted, in order to eliminate the only other contender for his wife’s affections. For, while Markham did not imagine Elizabeth would violate her marriage vows, he was astute enough to realize that William Lacey was a rich and unrelenting suitor. The motive, they argued, was jealousy, not money. For if, as the Crown alleged, money was at the root of this crime, where was it? Every trunk, suitcase and piece of baggage on the ferry boat had been accounted for, and not one of them contained bulging wads of bank notes.
And of course, all these uncertainties were played out on the front pages of the papers.
What excuse did Elizabeth give William Lacey for leaving her post as a governess?
Was it insecurity on the part of John Albert Markham that eventually drove him to murder?
Was Elizabeth still so besotted with her new and “exciting” husband that she was prepared to cover up the killing of her friend, but not so foolish as to continue to tie herself to the man who had committed such a hideous crime?
Or was it Markham himself who had resolved to kill two birds with one stone, both depriving William Lacey of his money and at the same time securing his wife’s affections?
Only two people knew the truth, the editorials contended, and their stories were in conflict. Who was to be believed? The calm and lovely bride, or the arrogant, posturing husband? Perhaps the truth lay somewhere in between, they suggested, and this was nothing more than a classic case of thieves (or in this case, killers) falling out.
Either way, their reporting was utterly without bias, and yet somehow it seemed to reflect public empathy with the lonely spinster approaching her thirtieth birthday, torn between the coarse charisma of John Albert Markham and the steadfast courtship of a wealthy property owner. Strangely, they also reserved some sympathy for Markham, shrewd enough to see that his intelligence did not equal that of either his rival or his wife, that his prospects for work were growing slimmer by the day, and that his animal magnetism was not going to blind Elizabeth to him for ever.
Even William Lacey, for all that he had been shot and buried in an unmarked grave then left to rot, came over as more villain than victim. The press played up his unscrupulous business deals, reported in salacious detail his reputation for evicting widows and orphans, and listed every one of his past brushes with the law, in which only the intervention of smart, expensive lawyers appeared to have kept him out of gaol. The cashing of the securities seemed to simply be a case of bad timing. It wasn’t unknown for William Lacey to pay off any persons who had leverage on him, or else use cash to fund business enterprises that could not be traced back to him. Opium trafficking, extortion, vice, protection rackets? These were not unusual trades in Stretford.
Then suddenly everything changed –
CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT, 5 Oct.
Shortly before 10 o’clock, the jury were brought from the London Coffee house, where they had once again spent the night. The judges, Chief Baron Pettigrew and Mr Justice Cornwell, accompanied by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen Keach, Haines and Webster took their customary seats on the bench and the prisoners were duly placed at the bar.
However, before the first witness of the day could be summoned, an event occurred which caused an animation around the whole of the courtroom.
The Crown produced trial transcripts dating back nineteen years, which showed that the murder of William Lacey was identical in almost every respect to the murder of one Patrick O’Connor, a gauger in the Customs at the London Docks, who was in pos session of 4,000/. in foreign railway bonds at the time.
The Times. 6, Oct. 1868.
Indeed, the court could only be silenced with cries of “Order, Order!” from the stentorian voice of the usher, when it was shown how Mr O’Connor’s remains were discovered beneath the back-kitchen floor of a house belonging to Frederick and Maria Manning.
Born in Switzerland, they learned how Maria Manning emigrated to Britain, where she worked as a lady’s maid to the daughter of the Duchess of Sutherland – and apparently developed a taste for her employer’s lifestyle. Indeed, it was while working for Lady Blantyre that she encountered the 50-year-old Irishman, a somewhat unsavoury character by all accounts, who amassed much of his fortune through criminal activities. Maria was attracted to O’Connor, but at the time was also involved with Frederick Manning, a railway guard who almost certainly stole property while employed by the railway, which O’Connor was suspected of fencing. Convinced that Frederick was poised to inherit a large sum of money, Maria chose him as her husband, but when she realized this was nothing but a falsehood, she determined to leave him – taking O’Connor’s money with her.
Inviting Patrick O’Connor to dinner, the court heard how she drugged him with laudanum, only to find that he’d invited a friend along that night. Undaunted, she invited him round the following evening with promises of sexual favours, and, when he went to wash his hands, shot him twice in the head. When both bullets failed to kill him, Frederick finished him off with a crowbar, and it appears that Patrick O’Connor’s last words as he crossed the kitchen floor to wash his hands were, “Haven’t you finished digging this drain yet?”
Little realizing it was his own grave he was stepping over.
CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT, Cont’d.
The court then heard how Mrs Manning paid a visit to the deceased’s lodgings and calmly removed everything of value, including his scrip of foreign railway bonds.
She then took a train to Edinburgh, where she was later arrested trying to sell Mr O’Connor’s stolen stock.
Frederick was apprehended one week afterwards in Jersey, at first denying any involvement in the crime, but later admitting that he had never liked O’Connor, so he “battered his head in with a ripping-chisel”.
The Times. 6 Oct., 1868.
“This was a cold and calculated crime,” boomed the rich baritone of Mr Lockhearte, KC, for the Crown.
Tall, distinguished, and with a long pointed nose, his eau-de-cologne carried almost as far as his perfect pronunciation.
“One in which the principal player was equally cold and calculating, and I can offer no better example of Mrs Manning’s character than when the jury returned from their deliberations, which, I might add, was in under forty-five minutes.”
He paused, as all good actors do.
“While delivering their verdict of guilty, Maria Manning began screaming that they had hounded her worse than a wild animal in the forest, and then proceeded to rant at the judge, as he attempted to pass the death sentence.”
Mr Lockhearte turned slowly towards Elizabeth and made a flourish with his wrist.
“As she was led away to the cells, however, Mrs Manning straightened her sleeves and was heard, quite distinctly, to enquire of the turnkeys accompanying her how pleasing they had found her performance.”
Seated in her customary corner of the bar, hands folded as was her habit, Elizabeth could feel the hostility of the entire courtroom burning into her. But her face remained expressionless as Mr Lockhearte continued to address his astonished jury.
“There is no suggestion, gentlemen, that Mrs Markham was involved in any way in the murder of Patrick O’Connor, since she was merely a child when the incident took place. However!”
Another flourish, this time with papers.
“The Crown is able to furnish proof that she was a resident in the orphanage not one hundred yards from the gaol where the Mannings were hanged, and I submit this newspaper archive in evidence that she cannot possibly claim to have no knowledge of the event.”
THE BERMONDSEY MURDER EXECUTION OF THE MANNINGS.
For five days past, Horsemonger-lane and its immediate neighbourhood had presented the appearance of a great fair, so large were the crowds collected there, and so intense the state of excitement in which all present appeared to be. The surrounding beer-shops were crowded. Windows commanding a view of the scaffold rose to a Californian price.
Above all, there was a force of 500 police in position on the ground, and though it is not easy to estimate the number of persons who were present at the dreadful spectace, they probaby exceeded 30,000.
The Times. 14 Nov., 1849.
“Can it be coincidence,” demanded the faultless vowels of the prosecution, “that, nineteen years later, Elizabeth Mark-ham nee Clarke also conspires to befriend a wealthy, disreputable scoundrel? And that while dangling William Lacey on a string of affection, she sets out to marry a man less intelligent than herself, a drinker in the mould of Frederick Manning, whose greed she, too, can manipulate? Good heavens, how are we to tell one crime apart from the other? Even the escape Mrs Markham planned for herself is identical. Sending her husband to one destination, while she decamps to another, in exactly the same fashion that Maria Manning intended Frederick to carry the can for the murder of Patrick O’Connor.”
No sympathy in the courtroom. Not an ounce. Not even for John Albert Markham, the cocky young waster now portrayed as a gull. For, fool or not, he nevertheless conspired to commit cold-blooded murder – and murder was a capital crime.
“Can there be any doubt,” Mr Lockhearte demanded of his spellbound audience, “that Elizabeth Markham spent her intervening years as a governess contemplating the circumstances that surrounded that earlier trial, then set about replicating them to her own ends?”
He ran a finger down the length of his patrician nose, then tapped his lower lip.
“Unfortunately for her, the plan rebounded when Mr Lacey failed to turn up with the cash as expected. And whilst we will probably never know to what felonious purpose this money has been put, I suggest to you, gentlemen of the jury, that it was greed pure and simple that lay at the heart of this crime.”
You could have heard the proverbial pin drop.
“Mr Lacey’s character has not been portrayed in a good light during this trial. He was a ruthless landlord, who had no qualms about evicting any tenant who did not pay their rent, no matter how desperate or temporary their circumstances, and employed even less patience with those to whom he lent money. His rates of interest have proven to be extortionate, his methods of collection questionable in the extreme, but I must ask you to push these points from your mind.”
No need, they already had.
“Just like the Mannings twenty years earlier, Elizabeth and John Markham have both attempted to pin responsibility for the crime on the other, but it is the Crown’s belief, gentlemen, that although Mrs Markham was the brains behind this scheme, her husband was an all-too-willing partner. Neither, you notice, have uttered a single word of repentance, and it is the Crown’s contention that when Mr Lacey turned up at Lexington-place that fateful morning, he was already aware of Mrs Markham’s plan to rob him. Perhaps he went there to gloat how he had foiled her, perhaps to denounce her, having discovered the truth of her marriage, perhaps even to expose her to the police in a sudden upsurge of Christian spirit.”
Only Lockhearte himself smiled at the joke.
“But I put it to you, gentlemen of the jury, that whatever Mr Lacey may have said or done that fateful morning, it was compelling enough to motivate the Markhams to silence him once and for all.”
Looking towards the jury, Elizabeth saw the repugnance in their eyes.
And satisfaction in Inspector Haywood’s.
CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT, 4 Oct.
As Mr Lockhearte, KC, finished summing up the case for the Crown, Mrs Markham stood up, walked across to where her husband was sitting and whispered something in his ear.
Instantly, the constables rushed forward, but there appeared to be no need for intervention. By the time they arrived, the female prisoner was seated facing the bench with her usual composure, while Markham himself was staring at her with a shocked expression and his face white.
The Times. 5 Oct., 1868.
And now, twenty-four days after the jury delivered their guilty verdict, Elizabeth sat alone in the dark and the cold, straining for signs of the approaching dawn. Her thoughts fluttered back to when she was nine years old, squashed among the tatterdemalions of London, who had gathered outside Horsemonger-lane gaol – or rather, Surrey County Gaol, as it was called now. Not that the name changed anything. It remained the same bleak, dismal hole, where the ghosts of dead convicts howled on the stairs and the souls of the innocent wept silent tears. And the condemned cells as cold as the grave.
But nineteen years ago, as the night had progressed, the assemblage outside the prison grew denser and more raucous. Elizabeth was able to picture the scene as though it were yesterday. The gaunt outline of the gibbet, dark against even the darkness of the night. The ladder leading up to it. The smoke from the prison’s chimneys, even, from fires lit inside to keep the November damp at bay. Long before the sky brightened, she remembered, the windows overlooking the scaffold along Horsemonger-lane were crammed with the gentry. Charles John Huffam Dickens unquestionably among them.
With an imperceptible sigh, she reached for the book at her side and ran the flat of her hand across its open pages. Would Pip ever marry the hideous Estelle—? Softly, very softly, she closed the book and replaced it on the bench.
Great Expectations, indeed . . .
How curious that her path crossed with Mr Dickens’ all those years ago, neither, of course, having the slightest notion of the impact his influence would have in later years. Yet, as a result of his tireless efforts, only a small group of people would be on hand this morning to witness – to witness—
Elizabeth swallowed. At the time, of course, the spectacle of a husband and wife at the gallows was almost unprecedented, and she couldn’t help but wonder what was going through her husband’s mind at this dreadful moment. Fourteen years spent in an orphanage, eight as a governess, not to mention watching both parents drown in a boating accident, had left Elizabeth adept at hiding her feelings. No amount of trickery could persuade her to reveal more than she wanted to, but John? For him, too, the seconds would be lumbering past on shackled feet, and he would not be sitting quietly, hands clasped in his lap. Not John. Was he scared, she wondered? Was he down on his knees, praying to his God? Accepting of what the papers referred to the “awful change”?
She remembered when Frederick Manning went to the gallows. He wore his best suit, probably his only suit, but what chilled her the most, as she stood there that morning, was the way his shirt-collar had been turned over and loosened, that the rope might be more easily adjusted. She remembered, too, that he’d been shaking so badly that he was unable to mount the scaffold unaided. It had needed a man either side to support him – whereas Maria Manning caused a public sensation. Tying her own black silk handkerchief ove
r her eyes and dressed in a black satin gown, she approached the noose with a firm and unfaltering step. In fact, right up to the end, she remained the consummate performer, and such was the scandal she created, even appealing to Queen Victoria from the condemned cell, that black satin instantly fell out of fashion and had remained that way ever since.
Yet it was neither Frederick’s frailty nor Maria’s dramatics that inspired Mr Dickens’ campaign.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES
When I came upon the scene at midnight, the shrillness of the cries and howls that were raised made my blood run cold. As the night went on, screeching, and laughing, and parodies on Negro melodies, with substitutions of “Mrs Manning” for “Susannah” were added.
When the day dawned, thieves, low prostitutes, ruffians and vagabonds flocked to the ground, with every variety of offensive and foul behaviour.
Fightings, faintings, whistlings, imitations of Punch, brutal jokes, tumultuous demonstrations of indecent delight when swooning women were dragged out of the crowd by the police with their dresses disordered, gave a new zest to the general entertainment.
When the sun rose brightly – as it did – it gilded thousands upon thousands of upturned faces, so inexpressibly odious in their brutal mirth that a man had cause to feel ashamed of the shape he wore, and to shrink from himself, as fashioned in the image of the Devil.
When the two miserable creatures who attracted all this ghastly sight were turned quivering into the air, there was no more emotion, no more pity, no more thought that two immortal sous had gone to judgment, than if the name of Christ had never been heard in this world.
Charles Dickens.
Devonshire-Terrace.,
Tuesday, 13 Nov.
The prosecution was quite correct in its supposition. Elizabeth’s had indeed been one of those gilded upturned faces, and long after Frederick and Maria Manning were cut down and the crowd dispersed, she had remained transfixed beneath the prison gates.
After first denying any knowledge of Patrick O’Connor’s body beneath his kitchen floor, then blaming his wife for everything, Frederick finally made his confession to his brother. Even to admitting that he had dug the grave one month in advance of O’Connor’s death.
The Mammoth Book of Dickensian Whodunnits Page 31