Steinberg’s body was buried at night at the pauper’s cemetery in Ray Street, Clerkenwell. This is a drawing of Ray Street in around 1820. (Author)
Two days later, the bodies of Ellen Lefevre and her four children were buried before a large respectful crowd at St James’ Church in Clerkenwell. Agency reporters noted how ‘the tops of the houses and windows, and in fact, every situation from which the burial ground could be seen, were thronged with anxious spectators of all ages and sexes’. At noon, Ellen Lefevre’s mother and sister, supported by the parish beadle and a local opera singer, joined the procession of the coffins to a grave dug on the south side of the church. A public subscription paid not only for the funeral, but also for a headstone to remind everyone of the grim events at No. 17 Southampton Street. It can still be seen today at the side of the church, beside a set of stone steps leading to a doorway, although the inscription is now difficult to read.
The inscription on the gravestone begins:
Beneath this stone are deposited the remains of Ellen Lefevre, aged 25 years, and her four children - Henry, aged 5 years and 6 months. John, aged 4 years and 6 months, Ellen, aged 2 years and 6 months, Philip, aged 8 months - Who were murdered at their residence in Southampton-street, Pentonville, during the night of the 8th September 1834, by John Nicholas Steinberg, aged 45 years, a native of Germany, and father of the above children, who afterwards murdered himself, and was buried according to law.
The inscription concludes with a poem composed by a former member of Sadler’s Wells Theatre:
Poor babes could not your innocence prevail!
And when your father heard your plaintive wail
Did no compunction smite his guilty soul,
Dark thoughts of murder to control – None!
None heard your cries, in sleep the world was bound,
A gloomy death-like stillness reigned around,
While guilt with gliding footsteps noiseless trod,
You slept on earth, you woke and saw your God.
’Neath your Creator’s wings in peace you’re blest,
For angels wafted you to realms of rest.
At No. 17 Southampton Street, a far more gruesome memorial was being created. Less than three weeks after the murders, an unknown group of entrepreneurs rented out the house at £28 a year and turned it into a museum. The exhibition boasted a set of blood-spattered waxwork dummies laid out in the same positions in which the bodies were found, a bloody knife and visible stains on the floorboards. On the first day, the proprietors made nearly £50. So many people turned up to pay their entry fee that the ‘respectable’ residents of Southampton Street petitioned Hatton Garden police office to put a stop to the ‘gross and indecent’ spectacle. It was said that the next-door neighbours had already left the street and others were planning to do so because of the ‘great injury to persons holding house property in the neighbourhood’. The magistrate refused to get involved.
The gravestone. (Author)
There was clearly an appetite for this kind of entertainment. The following year Madame Tussaud, later famous for her ‘Chamber of Horrors’, established her own permanent exhibition of grisly artifacts in Baker Street.
Case Eight
Who Killed Mr Templeman?
1840
Suspect:
Richard Gould
Age:
23
Charge:
Burglary
Sentence:
Transportation for life
In 1840, the area of Islington known as Pocock’s Fields was occupied by nearly 500 people scraping an existence in small, two-roomed cottages that, to ‘respectable’ eyes, seemed little more than hovels. It was a poor, working-class community of bricklayers, butchers, stonemasons, drovers, rag men, dairymen, carpenters, cabinet makers and agricultural labourers. Children ran about the tiny picket-fenced gardens in bare feet, wives and mothers did the washing and cooking, or chatted to their neighbours on doorsteps, while husbands and fathers downed pitchers of ale delivered by the local public house. For residents like John Templeman, a seventy-two-year-old widower and retired damask weaver, it seemed like an ideal place to see out the last of his days; pottering about in his yard, smoking his pipe, reading religious tracts from the local church, and relaxing in his chair enjoying the view north to Holloway and the ‘Highgate Archway’ through his parlour window.
This peaceful scene was to be shattered on the morning of 17 March when Mr Templeman was found lying in a pool of blood on his bedroom floor, dressed only in a nightshirt. At some point during the night, burglars had broken into his cottage, prised open his chest of drawers and stolen whatever silver they could find. Then, apparently unsatisfied with their reward, they crept into his bedroom and delivered a crushing blow to the old man’s temple with a wooden club, fracturing his jaw and dislodging three teeth. Somehow, Mr Templeman managed to fight his way towards the door before being overpowered. His wrists were bound together with a piece of clothesline and a stocking was tied round his head. He was then left to die. Despite the proximity of his neighbours, nobody heard his cries, or the sounds of what must have been a violent struggle. It was not until eleven o’clock the next morning that the police were informed and a constable from the Islington N Division arrived to investigate.
The murder of John Templeman, as imagined in a drawing from 1889 in the Illustrated Police News, 23 March 1889.
Map of Pocock’s Fields in between Bridge Street and Park Street (now Offord Road). In 1840 the area to the west of Liverpool Road was still mostly open fields, despite the new terraces being built near Copenhagen Road and Cloudesley Square to the south, York Place to the west and Paradise Row to the north. Within twenty years, the area was cut through by the railway and the fields became part of Arundel Square. (Author, adapted from Cary’s New Plan of London, 1737)
The first thing PC William Kerr noted was that the front door was locked from the inside – whoever had murdered the old man got in via the front window by poking their finger through a hole in the glass and unfastening the button holding it shut. That crucial bit of ‘local knowledge’, plus the blindfolding of the victim and the manner of the killing, suggested that Mr Templeman probably knew his attackers. The motive was robbery; Mr Templeman often boasted about his wealth and had offered to buy another cottage on Pocock’s Fields for £25 seven months earlier. Many of the neighbours had seen him proudly flash what appeared to be a £50 note. But Mr Templeman was merely pretending to be rich – at the time of his death he possessed approximately £6, made up of £3 in rent from one of his tenants in Somerstown and another £3 borrowed from a friend to pay off a bill. The banknote, which was found untouched in a mahogany box in the parlour, was a fake barber’s voucher bearing the legend ‘Bank of Elegance’: ‘I promise to cut or arrange any Lady or Gentleman’s hair in the first style of fashion or forfeit on demand the sum of fifty pounds.’
All of which suggested that the person, or persons, responsible would be found close by. That same day the police arrested four people living within Pocock’s Fields: Francis Capriani, a forty-nine-year-old nightwatchman at Sadler’s Wells Theatre who did gardening work for the victim; John Jarvis and his wife Mary Ann Jarvis, close neighbours; and Richard Gould, a twenty-three-year-old former pot-boy at the nearby Barnsbury Castle pub, who had been known to take beer to the old man’s door. The first of these, Capriani, was released by the magistrate the following morning – the only evidence against him was the fact that he, his wife and his mother-in-law, who were the first to see Mr Templeman lying dead in his cottage, chose to send a message to the old man’s grandson in Fitzrovia rather than call the police. Capriani was, in fact, at work at the time of the murder.
Meanwhile, the gossip spread throughout Islington. On the Saturday, ‘numerous respectable females’ gathered in the area ‘anxious to obtain a view of the cottage which has been the scene of so barbarous a murder’; two police sergeants had to guard the entrance to stop them peering inside. Newspaper
s compared Pocock’s Fields to Nova Scotia Gardens in Bethnal Green, a location notorious as the scene of the ‘Italian Boy murder’ carried out by two bodysnatchers ten years earlier. Interest in the case only intensified when the three remaining suspects were hauled before the magistrate at Hatton Garden police office. As they climbed out of the police van ‘all eyes were riveted upon them’, reported The Times. ‘Mrs Jarvis had her child, a fine interesting looking baby in her arms, and they were followed to the back entrance of the office by the spectators who were held back by a body of officers … persons of great respectability flocked towards the court.’ The mob reserved most of their fury for Mrs Jarvis, apparently believing that she and Gould had formed some kind of sinful bond, whereas the appearance of a dejected Mr Jarvis was greeted with ‘evident sympathy’. By the end of the hearing Mr Jarvis, a hard-working painter with impeccable references, was released due to lack of evidence and given custody of the child.
The following week, Mrs Jarvis too was released after scientists discovered that the suspicious bloodstains on her apron were in fact red paint. It was not a popular decision. As Mrs Jarvis left the court with her mother she was yelled at, pelted with stones and chased up Saffron Hill into a pub on Coldbath Square. Even an escort of police officers failed to deter the crowd’s thirst for vengeance and by the time they arrived at the local station in Rosoman Street, they were all covered with mud and bruises. The near-riot only ended after Mrs Jarvis and her mother were driven off at speed to a secret location in a horse-drawn cab.
Only Richard Gould would stand trial for the murder at the Old Bailey. The case against him was circumstantial, but suggested that he not only had a motive but also the opportunity to commit the crime. It was said that he was from a respectable family but had turned down the chance to emigrate to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) with his parents at the age of eighteen. Instead, he sought to make a life for himself in Spitalfields as a pot-boy at a public house, only to be dismissed after twelve months. Gould then enlisted as a private in the 11th Light Dragoons in Canterbury under the name of Arthur Nicholson, but soon deserted from his regiment. In late 1839, he was working at the Barnsbury Castle public house ferrying beers to the people of Pocock’s Fields. It was not long before he lost this job too, and by all accounts he was virtually penniless by the time of the murder. On 12 March, he was overheard telling a friend that he knew of an old man who had been flashing a £50 note round – Gould was looking for someone to help him steal it. ‘Or I could do it myself,’ he added. The following night he visited John Jobson, a painter living in Dorset Street, Spitalfields, and asked for a ‘screw’, or a pick for a lock, and a ‘darkey’, or dark lantern. ‘He said he was going to serve an old gentleman in a lonely cottage,’ said Jobson. ‘I told him if he did he would be sure to get transported. He told me he might as well, for if he was taken as a deserter he was sure to be transported anyway.’
The evening before the murder, Gould drank and played skittles at the Rainbow pub in Liverpool Road. He was last seen walking in the direction of Mr Templeman’s cottage shortly before midnight, carrying a rushlight in his hand and a wooden stick in the pocket of his shooting jacket. But it was not until around two or three in the morning that he turned up at his bed in bootmaker Charles Allen’s cottage on Pocock’s Fields. The next day they were talking about the murder of Mr Templeman when Gould remarked that, ‘if the Ten Commandments were just he had broken them all, for adultery he had committed many times, and drunkenness’. According to Mrs Allen, Gould told her ‘many poor creatures like me would rather be hung than transported’. Gould also appeared to have come into some money, judging by the new shoes on his feet. Mr Allen waited for Gould to go to bed at nine o’clock in the evening before sending for Inspector James Miller of the local police.
When Gould was arrested for murder at eleven o’clock on the night of 17 March, he replied, ‘If I was as innocent of everything as I am of that, I should not have much to fear.’ He also dismissed the finding of bloodstains on his waistcoat, insisting this was a common occurrence given his tendency to get into fights. Further evidence emerged the next morning when a stocking containing 19 half crowns, 48s and seven sixpences was found hidden in the rafters above the privy. Coincidentally or not, this was close to the amount believed to have been in Mr Templeman’s possession at the time of his death.
Inspector Miller later filed a report setting out eight reasons why he was convinced of Gould’s involvement in the murder. They included his friendship with Mrs Jarvis, who lived just a few yards from the victim; the testimony of his former friends; his silence as to his movements between midnight and three in the morning; and the determined resistance of Mr Templeman which suggested there was only one robber. However, the barrister representing Gould, Mr Chambers, argued that the evidence was ‘the most vague and unsatisfactory ever brought forward in support of such a charge’. The whole case was an extraordinary mystery, from the failure of Mr Templeman’s neighbours to alert the police, to the suspicious testimony of Mr and Mrs Allen.
Giltspur Compter, where Richard Gould was held after his acquittal of murder in 1840. It was demolished in 1853 and replaced by a Royal Mail sorting office. The spot is now occupied by an investment bank. From Old and New London. (Author)
Having listened patiently from ten in the morning until half past eleven at night on Tuesday 14 April, the jury took only a few minutes to find Gould not guilty of murder. ‘The verdict appeared to excite considerable dissatisfaction in the minds of many persons … ,’ reported the Newgate Calendar:
… and so great was the anger exhibited by a great portion of the populace, that the prisoner deemed it prudent to accept an offer of protection which was made to him by the sheriffs, and to remain in the Compter prison until the popular clamour should have in some degree subsided.
But the story was not over yet. A few weeks later the police were tipped off that a suitably sized reward might induce Gould to reveal the truth about the murder. On 6 May 1840, the Home Secretary Lord Normanby announced that £100 and a pardon was available to ‘any person not the actual perpetrator of the crime who gives such information and evidence as will lead to the conviction of the murderer of Mr Templeman’ (a similar reward was on offer in relation to the murder of the retired MP Lord William Russell). A sergeant from the Whitehall A Division, Charles Otway, was dispatched to see Gould and obtain a confession.
Sergeant Otway arrived at the Compter to find that Gould had decided to take up the offer of free passage to Australia under the false name of Kelly. Determined to catch his man, Otway rushed to intercept the ship at Gravesend and presented Gould with an official letter detailing the terms of the reward, telling him that he could not be tried again for the murder under the law of double jeopardy. Swayed by the amount of money on offer, Gould made a statement implicating both Mr and Mrs Jarvis in the crime:
It was first proposed in consequence of him showing his notes, but it was not settled until Sunday morning, when I was at Jarvis’ and then it was arranged that we should go on Monday night; and I went away early on Sunday because Jarvis expected his brother. But before I went, Jarvis got a piece of wood out of the garden which he used as a dibber. He made a hole in it, through which he put a piece of string so as to hang it on his wrist. After that I went to the Flora Tavern, York Place and got drunk. I was to have seen Jarvis early next morning but in consequence of lying in bed so late, Mrs Jarvis came down to Allen’s and brought a message from Jarvis stating that I was not to go near their house till after the public houses were closed at night, but I did go with her, as she had got breakfast ready, and said there would be no fear of being noticed. I then went to the Rainbow and stopped till near 12 at night, and then went to Jarvis’ being a few minutes past 12. Me and Jarvis went out together. Mrs Jarvis stopped under the portico, to watch, in case any one came she might give the alarm. I went in first, by the window and broke a bit of paper out, and a little bit of glass as well; I got my finger in and undid the butto
n. I then got in and Jarvis got in after me. After I got in, the chisel Jarvis had brought I got from him and broke the door open. We could not find anything but the silver in a box – no sovereigns or gold there. Jarvis went into the bedroom. He said, as I could not find the notes, most likely he had them under his head. He then said ‘we must make him quiet and fast’. Jarvis then struck him with the stick. The old man jumped right out of bed. Jarvis then knocked him down, and held his hands while I tied them with the clothesline we brought with us. Jarvis then tied the stocking over his eyes. We then made another search for the notes, and I found them wrapped up in some other papers in the drawer where we had found the silver in the box; we had before overlooked them. I told Jarvis they were no account, only barbers’ notes, and we left them behind. The old man had then come round by this time and said ‘I know you’. I jumped out of the window. Jarvis said we should be sure to be found out; he then said ‘I would rather settle him than be found out’ and went back into the room. He then came out of the window the same way as we got in and we went to Jarvis’ house where Mrs Jarvis was outside of the door.
He claimed he had thrown the murder weapon in the New River and the dark lantern in a pond in Pocock’s Fields.
Arundel Fields in Arundel Square in 2012, built on Pocock’s Fields by the early 1860s. Not far to the west is Pentonville Prison, begun in 1840 and completed by 1842. (Author)
Gould’s reward was not the £100 he expected, but a trip to Coldbath Fields Prison and a new trial for burglary. Mr and Mrs Jarvis were arrested for a second time only to be released again due to lack of evidence. This time Gould would defend himself at the Old Bailey, arguing that he had been tricked into making the confession by Sergeant Otway. ‘Mark the time he comes, at eleven o’clock at night, when I am in bed and asleep, taking me by surprise,’ he told the jury.
Murder & Crime Page 4