It is possible that Jane’s attacker was not saturated with her blood—possible, ironically, that the very viciousness of the attack might have lessened the amount of bloodshed. Both Henry Letheby and Michael Harris testified that a fully-severed artery will bleed less than a partially-severed one, because the muscle wall of a fully-severed artery contracts and partially cuts off the flow of blood. More than this, if Edmund had been facing Jane when he attacked her, and struck her with side swings, as her injuries suggested, the direction of force would have been away from him, and little impact spatter would have fallen upon him. If, on the other hand, Edmund struck at Jane’s head while she lay upon the ground—as her assailant surely did—the majority of spatter would be found exactly where it was found upon Edmund—on his lower left leg and the end of his right arm. Attacking Jane would surely have left Edmund bloody—but not necessarily so bloody as to stop him from ducking into Mrs. Plane’s shop to collect himself before going home the night of the attack.
Nonetheless, the fact that all the blood found on Edmund was found at the periphery of his body—hat, lower legs, shirt-cuff—and none found elsewhere is simply explained: the rest of the blood—what there was of it—was spattered upon Edmund’s coat, a coat that disappeared before the police came to search for it. Edmund himself claimed that he was wearing a coat on the night of the attack, and the witnesses on Kidbrooke Lane agreed that the man they saw was wearing one. Edmund might have gotten a great deal of blood on his coat; he might have gotten very little on it. But that he got no blood whatsoever on that coat is unthinkable. And yet, of all the articles of clothing Edmund handed over as having worn on the night of the attack, there was only one upon which Henry Letheby found not a single spot of blood: the coat. More than this, when Inspector Mulvany and Superintendent Griffin first came to the Pooks’ house, they asked Ebenezer Pook to see all of Edmund’s coats and Ebenezer Pook had shown them all: Griffin testified that “every facility” had been given him and Mulvany in their search. That eagle-eyed John Mulvany could have detected the tiny spots on Edmund’s hat and trousers and have somehow missed spots on his coat is inconceivable. A bloodied coat—bloodied from the attack or even from an epileptic fit—should have been in the house; that it was not strongly suggests that Edmund, who never saw the stains on his hat, his shirt, or his trousers, did see the stains on his coat, and, in the week he had between the attack and his arrest, hid or more likely disposed of that incriminating evidence.
Both that missing evidence, and the remaining, existing blood evidence all point to the attack on Kidbrooke Lane: blood spattered upon Edmund Pook as, in a frenzy but the same time with intent, he chopped and battered Jane Clouson into something no longer recognizably human. Jane, Edmund had surely determined, had left him no choice. He was the young master; he was a gentleman with prospects. She was his servant, and she had served him as innumerable young female servants had served innumerable young masters in the past; what they had done was more a social transaction than a relationship. But then Jane had become pregnant, and with that Jane, never more than a convenience, became distinctly inconvenient; she suddenly threatened Edmund’s prospects of marriage, either with Alice Durnford or with his cousin Louisa, and threatened his reputation among the important people of Greenwich. Jane had made clear she would not go away; she had, therefore, to be disposed of. And so he arranged to meet her. He explored Kidbrooke Lane to choose the best spot for the attack. He hurried to Deptford—a short walk or even shorter train ride away—to buy the hammer at a shop where he surmised he would not be recognized. Then he met Jane and coaxed her to Kidbrooke and surprised her with the hammer, the axe, perhaps eliciting from her the shocked scream that William Norton and Louisa Putman interpreted as ecstatic. And then, he destroyed her.
He ran home and dined with his family and then went to bed. No one at his home was alarmed. When the police came, six days later, he was polite and cooperative. He protested when they arrested them, but after that he slipped into the imperturbable demeanor that he maintained throughout the turbulent days that followed: calmly reading his Pickwick, patiently enduring imprisonment at Maidstone and then Newgate, coolly observing the proceedings at Greenwich Police Court and at the Old Bailey. He refused to conform to anyone’s notion of a guilty murderer. And his calmness served him well, complementing the passionate and effective case made for him first by Henry Pook and then by John Huddleston. Calmly, Edmund Pook contended with the Victorian system of law and order—if not in all its majesty, then in all its variety. And he triumphed, triumphed so absolutely that upon his acquittal it seemed as if Edmund Pook and not Jane Clouson had been the innocent victim at the heart of R v. Pook.
Edmund’s placid demeanor, then, was a tactic. But it was not a ruse. Edmund Pook knew he was guilty of the girl’s murder. But there is little evidence he felt guilt at her murder. She had once been useful to him, but when he killed her she had outlived her usefulness. She was a thing of no value to him; she mattered to him as much as did the mud of Kidbrooke Lane in which he left her dying. Inspector Mulvany and Superintendent Griffin realized how little she had meant to him on the day they arrested him—at the moment, perhaps, that the two first knew that he was involved with her murder. When Mulvany informed Edmund that Jane had been murdered, Edmund did not even pretend to have sympathy or at least empathy for the girl. “She was a dirty girl,” he told them. That is why she left them. Edmund had a reason to dismiss her so churlishly: he wished to convey that he had had no motive to kill her because he had no connection to her. But that he could so characterize the young woman who had lived with him for nearly two years, and had suffered unimaginably, suggests that beneath the pretense was an absolute sincerity: Jane Clouson meant nothing to him.
In Greenwich and Deptford, however, and in Blackheath and Lewisham, those who knew Jane, those who knew of her, and those who learned of her and immediately felt for her, refused to dismiss her as something without value. Even before they knew the identity of the woman battered in the lane, they traveled to the place where she had been battered, and they traveled there not to glorify in bloodshed, but to contemplate the horrible end of one of their own. In the pouring rain they lined the streets from Deptford to Brockley to pay their respects to her as she passed. They responded angrily, inside and outside the courtroom, to the Pooks’ claim that she was dirty. They gathered outside the police court and coroner’s court to demonstrate their sympathy with her and to vent their anger at the one they couldn’t help but conclude had killed her. And when Edmund Pook was acquitted, they refused to let the case rest; for five days they howled their disappointment. Even after that, they refused to go away: they gathered in a mass on Blackheath and crowded the Greenwich Lecture Hall both to support the men—Edmund Pook’s supposed libelers—who kept her case alive. And at those meetings they supported enthusiastically a monument for the girl. The newspapers ridiculed them for that plan. But to them, there was nothing ridiculous about memorializing a seventeen-year-old working girl. She had been, they believed, affectionate and amiable. In her short life, she had worked hard as a maid-of-all-work, as the prop of respectability to a middle-class family that in turn denied her the respect she was due. She had lived dutifully in this hard world and had died seeking in vain for something better. She was one of them.
Edmund Pook, shocked out of his imperturbability by their anger on his journeys back and forth from Maidstone to Greenwich, and beleaguered by their rough music in the days after his acquittal, could not have escaped learning the lesson they taught him. And while during the forty-nine years left to him, years he had taken away from Jane, he never did, never could, share that lesson with another soul, it was a lesson he surely could not forget.
Jane Maria Clouson meant something.
Jane Clouson mattered.
*1 The charwoman Jane Prosser, with her stunning revelation of Jane’s awareness of her pregnancy, was on the other hand not set to testify, likely because the police now discounted her story.
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br /> *2 At Edmund’s trial Thomas Pook, ever willing to provide his brother with alibis, both supported and contradicted this story: Edmund, he said, indeed had had a seizure in April—on April 6, Thomas claimed—but had suffered it in the printer’s shop, not the family’s sitting room. [OB testimony of Thomas Birch (sic) Pook.]
*3 One other possibility is worth considering: that Edmund, sitting up after his seizure, expirated blood upon his trousers. But the multitude of droplets on his left leg, and the entire absence of droplets on his right, argues against this.
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Plate Section
Acknowledgements
Notes
Works Cited
Index
About Paul Thomas Murphy
Also by Paul Thomas Murphy
An invitation from the Publisher
Plate Section
A sketch of Kidbrooke Lane at the time of the murder. ‘It is impossible,’ noted the Greenwich and Deptford Chronicle, ‘to conceive a more retired, more secluded place in which in the gloom and darkness of the night to perpetrate a black and horrible crime.’
Imaginative depictions of the crime from the Illustrated Police News. The attack. To the left is an image of the murder weapon, a J Sorby #2 plasterer’s hammer.
Imaginative depictions of the crime from the Illustrated Police News. PC Donald Gunn stumbles upon the body of Jane Clouson.
The 1871 English Census—taken just three weeks before the attack on Kidbrooke Lane—showing the inhabitants at 3 London Street, residence of Ebenezer Pook and his family, listing Jane Clouson as a domestic general servant. A week after this Jane would abruptly quit the Pooks’ employ.
Jane Maria Clouson. This studio photograph was almost certainly the one used to identify her body, and the clothes she is wearing—the walking-out clothes of a servant—are almost certainly the clothes she was wearing when she was attacked. Courtesy Greenwich Heritage Centre.
Edmund Walter Pook and his mother, Mary. Photographed at a studio at Herne Bay, Kent, Edmund Pook’s place of exile in the months after his trial for murder. Courtesy of the McLeod family.
‘Eltham Pilgrims: Whit Monday in Kidbrooke Lane.’ A satirical depiction from the Graphic of the floods of visitors to the murder site. Commentators presented the pilgrimage as a vulgar carnival, ignoring altogether the popular sympathy and reverence shown for Jane Clouson.
A portrait of Edmund Pook and principal participants at his police court examination, from the May 27, 1871, issue of the Illustrated Police News. Clockwise from upper left: Henry Letheby, expert medical witness; Harry Poland, prosecuting on behalf of the Treasury Department; Alice Durnford, Edmund Pook’s acknowledged lady friend; and Henry Pook, Edmund’s fiery solicitor—and no relation to him.
An earlier and far less accurate portrait of Edmund from the Illustrated Police News; this portrait had been spotted by a key eyewitness, William Sparshott, in a shop window, leading to charges that Sparshott’s identification had been hopelessly tainted.
The principals in the trial of R v. Pook: John Huddleston for the defense.
The principals in the trial of R v. Pook: John Duke Coleridge for the prosecution.
The principals in the trial of R v. Pook: Chief Justice William Bovill on the bench.
Newton Crosland. Crosland’s published claims that R v. Pook was a travesty prompted a barrage of litigation on behalf of Edmund Pook.
Pretty Jane: or, the Viper of Kidbrooke Lane. The penny dreadful hastily got up to capitalize upon Jane Clouson’s murder. Courtesy The British Library.
Jane Clouson’s Monument, at Brockley and Ladywell Cemeteries.
Acknowledgments
Many, many thanks to:
—Charlie Olsen at Inkwell Management;
—Claiborne Hancock, Richard Milbank, and the folks both at Pegasus and at Head of Zeus;
—the always helpful staffs at the British Library, the London Metropolitan Archives, the Greenwich Heritage Centre, the Local History and Archives Centre at Lewisham, the National Archives at Kew, and the University of Colorado’s Norlin Library, as well as the now-dispersed staff at the British Newspaper Library at Colindale;
—Peter Burgess, talented mapmaker and creator of the well-known Tubular Fells map of the Lake District, for the map at the front of this book;
—Michael Guilfoyle, whose words to me four years ago led to all of this;
—my good and supportive friends in London: Linda Gough, Steve, Nina, and Jean Button, Tracey Ward, Steve Terrey, John Watts, Geoff Youldon, and Lawrence Goldman;
—my good and supportive friends and family in the USA: my children, Daniel and Miranda; my mother, Olive Murphy; my siblings, Regina Collins, John, Jim, and Bill Murphy, and Cathy Murray and all their families; Din, Amelia, and Hazel Tuttle, John Jostad, Scott Woods, Chris Morrison, Don Eron, Suzanne Hudson, Paul Levitt, and Elissa Guralnick;
—and my wife, Tory Tuttle, whose never-ending editorial and moral support for this project has left me with a debt I can never, never repay. But, at least—I can try.
Notes
Abbreviations used in the notes:
NEWSPAPERS AND JOURNALS:
A: The Age (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia).
AMG: Aldershot Military Gazette (Aldershot, Hampshire).
AS: Auckland Star (New Zealand).
BA: Bendigo Advertiser (New South Wales, Australia).
BC: Berkshire Chronicle (Reading).
BDP: Birmingham Daily Post.
BM: Bristol Mercury.
BMJ: British Medical Journal.
BN: Belfast News-Letter.
BO: Bradford Observer.
CC: Chelmsford Chronicle.
DC: Dundee Courier.
DN: Daily News (London).
E: Era (London).
EN: Essex Newsman (Chelmsford).
FJ: Freeman’s Journal (Dublin).
G: Graphic (London).
GDC: Greenwich and Deptford Chronicle (Deptford).
GH: Glasgow Herald.
HA: Hampshire Advertiser (Southampton).
HC: Huddersfield Chronicle.
IPN: Illustrated Police News.
KM: Kentish Mercury (Greenwich).
L: Lloyd’s Newspaper (London).
LA: Lancet.
LC: Leicester Chronicle.
LG: Lancaster Gazette.
LM: Leeds Mercury.
LTA: Luton Times and Advertiser.
MC: Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser.
MEN: Manchester Evening News.
MP: Morning Post (London).
MT: Manchester Times.
NC: Newcastle Courant.
NE: Northern Echo (Darlington).
NG: Newcastle Guardian and Tyne Mercury.
NYT: The New York Times.
PIP: Penny Illustrated Paper (London).
QT: Queensland Times (Ipswich, Queensland, Australia).
RN: Reynolds’s Weekly (London).
S: Standard (London).
SI: Sheffield Independent.
SLC: South London Chronicle.
SM: Samford Mercury (Samford, Suffolk).
SP: Spectator (London).
T: The Times (London).
TE: Telegraph (London).
WD: Weekly Dispatch (London).
WDP: Western Daily Press (Bristol).
WG: Wrexham Advertiser (Wrexham, Wales).
WM: Western Mail (Cardiff).
WT: Whitstable Times and Herne Bay Herald (Whitstable, Kent).
WW: Wagga Wagga Advertiser (New South Wales, Australia).
YP: Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer (Leeds).
TRIAL TRANSCRIPTS:
OB: Tim Hitchcock, Robert Shoemaker, Clive Emsley, Sharon Howard and Jamie McLaughlin, et al., The Old
Bailey Proceedings Online, 1674–1913 (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.2). Unless otherwise noted, references to this site are to the trial of Edmund Pook for murder, July 12–15, 1871.
CHAPTER ONE: LET ME DIE
1: half an hour before the sun rose: World-timedate.com lists sunrise in London on April 25, 1871, as occurring at 4:41:31 a.m.: “Sunrise Sunset Calendar of London, England: (April, 1871).”
1: his beat... smaller town of Eltham: KM May 6, 1871, 5.
1: few carriages or wagons traveled that way: “The lane is so little frequented that it is completely overgrown with grass”: DN May 1, 1871, 3; July 13, 1871, 6 (solicitor general’s summing up at trial).
2: the place where he had grown up: distant Caithness: Census Returns of England and Wales, 1871, for Donald Gunn.
2: Gunn had made his first circuit of Kidbrooke Lane two and a half hours before: OB, testimony of Donald Gunn.
2: The moon had set long before this: at 12:59 a.m. on April 26, 1871. “London, United Kingdom—Moonrise, moonset and moon phases, April 1871.”
2: it was standard issue for all metropolitan police officers: Dell 19–20.
2: he did not use it: OB, testimony of Donald Gunn; MP May 5, 1871, 8.
2: he could see her head... as she moaned softly, “piteously.”: OB, testimony of Donald Gunn; T July 13, 1871, 11.
2: He immediately concluded that she was drunk: SI May 6, 1871, 9.
Pretty Jane and the Viper of Kidbrooke Lane Page 24