One of Severin Bastendorff’s employees in the furniture workshop at the back of the house was called. William Hanwell, who had been working for Bastendorff since the start of the decade, remembered Hannah Dobbs leaving Euston Square to take a trip to Bideford; and he also recalled how she took little Peter, one of the Bastendorff children. He had repaired a gold chain for her (a chain that was identified in the court as also belonging to Matilda Hacker) and had also noticed the watch. Hannah Dobbs had told him these items had been left to her by her uncle. There were other pieces of jewellery in her possession too, including ‘one or two rings’ which again she said had been a bequest.
And now the pawnbroker was summoned. ‘Mr William Partington, assistant to Mr Thompson, Drummond Street, Euston Square, identified one of the watches produced as having been pledged in the name of Rosina Bastendorff,’ ran the court report. Mr Partington told the court that ‘it was never redeemed’ so in the spring of 1879, the watch was put up for sale. ‘But not being sold, it was taken back into stock’ and held until being given up to the police. Added to this, the gold chain and another watch were brought into the shop, and again pledged under the name ‘Rosina Bastendorff’ of ‘4, Euston Square’.3 For these items, Hannah Dobbs received £2 and 10 shillings.
Next to testify was a St Pancras laundress: Hannah Earls of 68 Stonehurst Street. She regularly cleaned the clothes, linen and bed-linen of all the lodgers in 4, Euston Square. She recalled that in the autumn of 1877, she noticed that Hannah Dobbs had started wearing a gold chain. She told the maid that ‘it did not look very well of a servant wearing this chain in her work and that she might lose it’.
To this, Hannah Dobbs had apparently made no reply, but then told the laundress about her late uncle’s bequest. She then gave Mrs Earls ‘eight to ten handkerchiefs to wash’. But they ‘were not dirty’. There was a handkerchief belonging to Matilda Hacker produced in court; and the laundress confirmed that it corresponded to the ‘character’ of the other items.
Rather more haunting evidence was given by another former servant to the Bastendorffs, Louisa Barker, who worked there for a couple of months, following Hannah Dobbs. During that time, she said, she was ‘in and out of the cellar’. There was, she said, ‘straw, rubbish and coal … and in one of the corners, there was a larger heap of something’.
It was clear she did not care for the cellar (although it might now be wondered how much of this was hindsight). She said that whenever she had to go in there for coal, she always fetched the lumps that were ‘nearest the door’. She also recalled seeing ‘two or three white towels in the cellar’ and that ‘they were rotten’. But no, she told the court: she had ‘no idea there was a body in the cellar’.4
The court reports did not relate whether the next witness – Peter Bastendorff – had composed himself into a more sombre attitude than his previous public appearance.
In the autumn of 1877, he told the court, he ‘lived in the Hampstead-Rd’ (which ran a little north of Euston Square) and ‘worked for a cabinet maker’. He was, he said, ‘in the habit of visiting his brother’ at 4, Euston Square; and he saw Hannah Dobbs there. ‘For some time,’ he said, he ‘kept company with her.’ Did he recall Dobbs taking time off to go to Bideford with one of Mary and Severin’s children? He did. Did he recall the lodger Matilda Hacker or ‘Miss Uish’? He did not.
But now once again the electric crackle of scandal was in the air. Was it the case that Peter complained to his older brother about Severin’s relationship with Hannah Dobbs? He did not, he said, ‘complain of his brother’s too great familiarity … but he heard something in a public house and spoke to her (Hannah) about it several times’.
So Peter did have suspicions concerning his then lady-friend? The young man now contradicted himself. He said that he ‘thought himself that there was something between (Hannah) and his brother and he complained of it to both’.
At this pregnant moment, he was allowed to step down.
The court now addressed the question of Hannah Dobbs’ late uncle, from whom she claimed to have inherited her jewellery. Called to testify was ‘Mr James Hamelin, of Newton Tracey, near Bideford’; he declared that he was the uncle of the prisoner. But, he pointed out, there was another uncle, called Clarke, who had died almost two years beforehand in 1877. He too ‘lived at Newton Tracey’, he said. ‘It was after harvest time when he died. He left a widow and five children.’ What Hamelin did not say was whether he had left much money or indeed a bequest for his niece.
There was a break as Justice Hawkins adjourned for lunch. Hannah Dobbs was removed to her cell; then she was brought back up as the court rose for the afternoon session. There seemed little prospect of fresh clarity: new witnesses were set to make the mystery even murkier.
Dr Pepper, one of the experts who had initially examined the remains of Matilda Hacker, was recalled for more questioning. This time the defence counsel Mr Mead asked him if he could really be quite certain as to the cause of death; given the old lady’s age, might there not have been the possibility of natural causes? Dr Pepper stated that if ‘a person had a large varicose vein which burst suddenly, death might ensue’. He ‘had known of such cases. The bursting would produce a great flow of blood and would account, had it occurred with the deceased, for the blood upon the carpet’.
Such cases are indeed very rare; had the vein burst in this fashion, the bleeding might have been akin to a pierced artery. But, it would have produced much more blood than the carpet stain suggested.
The prosecutor might well have been justified in demanding that Dr Pepper furnish the court with more exact details. But the Attorney General objected: and on closer questioning, Dr Pepper reluctantly conceded that actually ‘there was nothing to show that the deceased suffered from varicose veins’. So did he perhaps have any other possible theories that might have involved violence? Dr Pepper, now clearly irked, was reluctant to be pulled down this path. He suggested that ‘pressure applied to the throat might rupture a small vein, though it would not effect a great flow of blood.’ And, he added, ‘the stain on the carpet was probably caused by about four ounces of blood’.
The jury and the judge were now left with the confusing sense that neither natural causes nor murderous assault could explain the matter. If there was no sign of a blow to the head, then what caused the bleeding? Similarly, if Matilda Hacker had been strangled, then why was there blood? But even more pressingly, if she had died of natural causes, then quite why had her body been dragged all the way down four flights of stairs and hidden at the back of the coal cellar? The more witnesses were called, the cloudier the case became.
This confusion – plus the seeds of more danger for Severin Bastendorff – were carried by the next witness Robert Barnley, ‘warder at Westminster prison’, who had accompanied Hannah Dobbs in a cab on her way to the hearing at Bow Street. In the course of that journey, he said, Dobbs ‘had told him there had been a lodger called Findlay living in the house and that he was in the habit of carrying a seven-chambered revolver. She believed,’ Barnley continued, ‘it was he who had committed the murder and stated that (Findlay) wanted to commit a secret to her keeping, and offered her £50 to go to America with him.’
Dobbs, according to Barnley, also had an explanation for the goods belonging to Matilda Hacker that she had pawned: it was ‘to clear off what she called Mr Bastendorff’s bastard debt’. There was another prison warder present in that cab; Francis Hawkins confirmed that this is what Hannah Dobbs had said.
It is easy to imagine the frustration of Inspector Hagen throughout all this; to see his case being torn this way and that in cross-currents of hearsay and scandalous speculation. Now he had the chance to stand up before a court to press his case.
After swearing the oath, Inspector Hagen took the court through the sequence of his movements. ‘On May 12th, 1879, I went to see the prisoner, against whom there was then no suspicion,’ he said. This was just after news of the discovery of the corpse had been featu
red prominently in newspapers all over the country; though there was no indication of whether the prisoner Hannah Dobbs had any access to newspapers. ‘I went in company with Inspector Gatlin,’ Inspector Hagen told the court. ‘I made a memorandum of what she said.’
And now he proceeded to take the court through that first interview in the prison cell: questions about Hannah Dobbs’ memories of lodgers, about any recollections she might have had of an elderly lady. Hannah Dobbs did remember what she termed a ‘shabbily’ dressed and rather mean old lady. She did not see her depart the house, she told the inspector, because ‘I had to go out sometimes with the children. I went once with them to Hampstead Heath, and I rather think it was then that the old lady went away.’
In that cell, Inspector Hagen had asked Hannah Dobbs about the old lady’s habits; what she ate and drank; and how her rents were collected. Then Hagen asked Hannah if she ever went to the coal cellar. She answered him: ‘Every day.’ Had she noticed anything ‘wrong’ about the cellar? ‘No.’ The inspector had then asked her: ‘There has been a dead body found there; do you know anything about it? Hannah had replied: ‘A body? A body in the coal cellar!’ She said she knew nothing about it.’
Intriguingly, Inspector Hagen now told the court that after a few more questions about the lodger, Hannah said that ‘the lady’s name was Hacker – Miss Hacker’.
This was the first time that Inspector Hagen had heard the name. He told the court: ‘I asked her if (the name) was not Uish. She said, “no, it was Hacker”. She told me the lady had come up to collect her rents.’ [This, it may be presumed, was a reference to Matilda Hacker’s rental incomes.] I asked, “had she plenty of money?” She said she did not know; she had a gold watch and chain and that she only wore it on Sunday.
‘She said, “I am sure now I was with the children at Hampstead when she went away and when I returned I was told she had gone and left a shilling for me.” I asked her, “who told you that?” and she said, “Mrs Bastendorff”. She said, “after she had gone, I found a dream book in her drawer, and I gave it to Mrs Bastendorff. She used to be always reading this dream book.”’
The defence counsel Mr Mead asked Hagen how he had drawn the conclusions that he had. ‘It was in great part through the prisoner that I was enabled to trace the case to Miss Hacker.’5
The Attorney General informed Mr Justice Hawkins that concluded the case for the prosecution. And it was at this point that Mr Mead, with some force and flair, submitted that there was no case to go to the jury.
‘There was no evidence,’ Mead added, ‘that the deceased person, whoever she was, had been murdered, except for the mere fact of a rope having been found around her neck, and which might have been put there after her death. Besides, all the other appearances of the body were inconsistent with the theory of strangulation.’ He returned to the possibility of a burst varicose vein, ‘from which complaint Miss Hacker, whose body it was supposed to be, was suffering. There was,’ Mead added, ‘no evidence of any murder having been committed’ and therefore he wished it to be submitted that ‘the prisoner had nothing to answer.’
It was an intriguing gambit; but the judge was not convinced. He said he ‘could not withdraw the case from the jury’.
Mr Mead now turned, in his legal passion, to the jury. He told them that he thought they would ‘hesitate some time’ before they came to their conclusion, ‘especially when the life of a fellow creature [is] in danger, that a murder had been committed’. The defence counsel mused a little on the rope found around the neck of the remains. This was the only evidence of ‘a violent death’. He averred that some may think the cord ‘might have been drawn with considerable force’ but after such a long time, ‘there would have been considerable decomposition’. He did not elaborate on quite what he meant by that; was this the opinion of any of the doctors called as witnesses? Mead told the jury that there were ‘two theories that might be put forward as the cause of death – that it was by strangulation or hanging’. He suggested that a ‘portion of the evidence’ about the ‘position of the rope’ was that it was consistent with a person being ‘suspended’ rather than strangled. Mead did not go so far as to use the word ‘suicide’ at this point; he simply left the suggestion in the air. Whatever happened, he said, there was no evidence of strangulation.
But now Mead pressed home what he saw as a more persuasive theory: that it might have been ‘that someone had discovered that Miss Hacker had died. There was, perhaps, nobody in the house at the time’. He added that ‘an avaricious person would at once conclude that the best thing to do would be to hide the body and take possession of any property she left after her. That,’ he said, was ‘a more likely theory than that a murder was committed by strangulation.’
Was it? One or two of the jury might have asked themselves if it was actually more likely that an avaricious person happening across a dead body might first swiftly appropriate and hide any valuables, rather than hiding the corpse itself: and then with the valuables safely stashed, then alert the household to the death. It would be some time – in a household of strangers – before anyone would establish beyond doubt that valuables were missing. Surely all that would be rather less effort than finding the body, fetching a cord to wind around its neck, dragging the corpse down the stairs and stuffing it into an alcove that was used daily, and where it was certain to be discovered in time.
Mead also addressed the blood stain on the carpet, and the difficulty of getting this part of the evidence to fit with strangulation. In all, he said, in a case like this, where there was ‘mystery’, he was satisfied that the jury would not overlook these alternative theories as to the cause of death. ‘Before long,’ he said, they would give their verdict, which would ‘affect the life of a fellow being’; and so he redoubled his plea for them to consider all possibilities.
The defence counsel summed up with bravura the genuinely puzzling elements of this story: he told the jury that in order to find Hannah Dobbs guilty, it would have to be proven that Hannah Dobbs was alone in 4, Euston Square with the old lady on 14 October 1877.
‘Mr and Mrs Bastendorff were away,’ he said, and yet ‘it was shown’ that Mrs Bastendorff was not away. (Mead did not say who had ‘shown’ this – the vital fact appeared not to have been mentioned in court.) Mead added that indeed, Hannah Dobbs had the Bastendorff children with her in the house that day; were the jury really to believe that ‘such a murder could be committed without making a noise and that the children would not have heard that noise?’
He was quite right to focus on the curious timings of the prosecution case: at what point of the day was this murder committed, given that ‘Mr Bastendorff and some of the lodgers’ had latchkeys and when Hannah Dobbs knew ‘that at any time any of these persons might return and come in?’ And had Hannah Dobbs herself not gone out that day? And ‘supposing’ she had been ‘alone in the house’; ‘was it to be believed that without concert or assistance she would have committed the deed? What weapon had she? And how was the body to be carried downstairs into the cellar?’ More, ‘was it conceivable’ that ‘the girl had the nerve’ to ‘go through all that proceeding unaided?’ There was also the matter of ‘washing up the blood and various other things’ that she would have had to do. Where was the time?
Mead conceded that the gold watch subsequently seen in the possession of Hannah Dobbs was Matilda Hacker’s; but he said that he was less certain about the chain which might simply have ‘resembled’ one of hers. The handkerchief: no proof that it was the property of Matilda Hacker. The Book of Dreams: it ‘might be conceded that that had belonged to the deceased lady’. But not, he said, the eyeglass. So all in all, the only item that could really be traced to Hannah Dobbs was the gold watch.
At this, Mr Mead once more deftly swerved the focus of the case away from Hannah Dobbs and more firmly on to the master of the house, Severin Bastendorff. Hannah Dobbs, he said, had declared that ‘Mr Severin Bastendorff had given the watch to her and,’ added Mea
d, ‘looking at the relations which had existed between the two, was there anything unreasonable in that account of it?’ In other words, he was saying that there was no doubt whatsoever that there had been a sexual relationship between Bastendorff and his maid. ‘Mr Severin Bastendorff’s brother,’ continued Mead, ‘had shown that intimate relations existed between the master and his servant.
‘As to Mr S. Bastendorff’s account of the matter,’ Mead added, ‘he had denied what his brother had sworn, that there were those relations; and if he could deny the one thing, might he not also deny the other?’
Mead was relentless in his theme. ‘There was the cabinet,’ he said, which Hannah Dobbs’ master had admitted ‘he had given her as a present. Was there anything unreasonable in supposing that other things had been given as presents in a similar way?’
Mead also tackled the issue of class rather neatly, suggesting that part of the reason that there seemed to be such suspicion attached to Hannah Dobbs sporting fine watches was the idea of her ‘being possessed of property unsuited to her condition’. In conclusion, he told the jury that even if the possessions told against her, the jury would have to suppose that Hannah Dobbs ‘acted like a mad woman’ if they thought her guilty. Given that anyone might have come calling for Matilda Hacker after her death, was it likely or rational that Hannah Dobbs would have been answering the door flaunting the jewellery of a dead woman?
He also pleaded with the jury to consider whether – if she had committed murder – she would have ‘stopped in the same house … displaying no fear of being found out, and not exciting the suspicion of those about her’.
Now, in his efforts to turn the charge away from his client, Mr Mead once more fixed his attentions upon the house’s other occupants. How was it, he asked, that nobody in the house, after all those months, ever noticed the body of the dead woman? Hannah Dobbs, he said, had behaved with the utmost candour ever since Inspector Hagen went to see her at the House of Correction. And nothing happened to arouse any suspicions when Dobbs was taken to the mortuary to see the remains. Now, it was the case that she had told her wardens of the lodger Findlay, and his revolver; but Mr Mead wanted the jury to be sure that that was just ‘gossip’.
The Lady in the Cellar Page 15