by Jan Bondeson
On 20 June, the third and final day of the trial, Charlotte Piolaine was the first witness. When Courvoisier saw her in court, he went deathly pale and trembled like a leaf. Although Mr Phillips tried to confound Madame Piolaine as best he could, implying that the Hotel du Port de Dieppe was a gambling-den and a hideout for thieves, she confidently described how ‘Jean’ had asked her to keep a parcel for him, and she identified the prisoner in the dock as that very man. Joseph Vincent and the solicitor Richard Cumming, who had opened the parcel, gave corroborative evidence. Two witnesses identified the ear-trumpet as that of Lord William, and the spoons and forks had the Russell crest. The jacket matched one worn by Courvoisier while in the service of Mr Fector, and a washerwoman identified the stockings as belonging to the prisoner. The print-seller Mr Molteno identified the paper the parcel was wrapped up with as that he himself had used to pack up a print that Lord William had purchased.
The appearance of the last-minute witness Madame Piolaine was a hard blow to Charles Phillips, but although he must have realised that all was lost for his client, he made an eloquent three-hour speech, pointing out the docile and law-abiding nature of the Swiss, and describing Courvoisier as a friendless young man in a hostile foreign country, surrounded by crooked policemen who wanted to ‘frame’ him for the murder and divide the reward money over his coffin. If Madame Piolaine’s evidence was at all true, it was conclusive of robbery rather than of murder. Chief Justice Tindale summed up the case in an even-handed manner, warning the jury not to be misled by the exhortations of the legal counsel on either side: he left it to them to decide whether the murder and the robbery had been perpetrated by different men, and whether there had been a burglary at all. After the recovery of the ear-trumpet and the spoons and forks, there was nothing to suggest that thieves had removed any property from the murder house, however. The jury was out for an hour and twenty-five minutes before returning a verdict of guilty, and Chief Justice Tindale sentenced Courvoisier to death.
As Courvoisier languished in the condemned cell in Newgate, he tried a final roll of the dice to save himself from the gallows. On 22 June, he wrote a full confession, saying that he had read a very wicked book about a profligate young man of good family, who made a jolly life for himself by thieving and living off his wits. Courvoisier had decided to follow in the footsteps of the hero of this book, but as he was stealing Lord William’s property, the elderly nobleman caught him in the act and threatened to dismiss him without a character. The Swiss valet thought the only way to save himself was to murder Lord William. But although Courvoisier later ‘improved on’ his confession by stating that he had been led astray after pilfering some wine and drinking it, he was not believed. The murder had been premeditated, and had been committed with impressive coolness and cunning; the story of Lord William going back to bed after confronting a thief in his own house did not appear particularly credible.16 The motive for the Swiss valet to be telling sob-stories about being led astray by a wicked book, and being drunk from drinking wine when he committed the murder, was of course that he was hoping for a late reprieve.
On 24 June, The Times newspaper had quite an extraordinary story to tell, one that was spread to the other London newspapers the following day. It deserves to be given in full:
A circumstance has just been communicated to us which, were it not for the confidence we have every reason to place in our informant, we should consider wholly incredible. He assures us, upon authority in such a case is unquestionable, that the miscreant who is now in Newgate under sentence of death for the murder of Lord William Russell has confessed that he is also guilty of the murder of Eliza Grimwood, an unfortunate woman, who, as it will be remembered, was found about two years since in a house in the Waterloo-road under circumstances which left no doubt that a murder had been committed, although the utmost ingenuity of the police could never discover a clue by which the criminal could be traced.
It appeared at the time, from what meagre evidence could be procured, that the crime had probably been committed by a foreigner; but the absence of any apparent motive, or of any article of property by which the murderer could be identified, rendered it, as in the late melancholy occasion, impossible until now to connect any person with the crime.
We give this information as we have heard it, but we are further informed that means have been taken to prevent this confession from being made known to the public, and that the most strict injunctions have been laid on all persons admitted to the prisoner to preserve reserved the most scrupulous silence upon the subject.17
The Times journalist deplored the excessive secrecy with regard to Courvoisier’s confession to the murder of Eliza Grimwood: surely, more action should have been taken, and his statements should have been compared with the evidence given at the coroner’s inquest on Eliza Grimwood. With regard to the motive for the authorities in trying to suppress Courvoisier’s confession, the newspaper speculated that they wanted to avoid public excitement ahead of the execution. Then as well as now, The Times was considered a very reliable newspaper, and the story of Courvoisier confessing to the murder of Eliza Grimwood was widely reported in the press, from the London papers to the provincial ones, not excluding even the Dublin Freeman’s Journal. A writer in the Globe declared himself wholly unconvinced, however, accusing the venerable Times of publishing ‘a mischievous string of monstrous falsehoods, for which there is not, and never was, the slightest ground’. Nor did a Standard journalist believe in the story of Courvoisier’s confession, claiming:
There is no foundation whatever for the story of Courvoisier’s having confessed himself the murderer of Eliza Grimwood, given in a respected morning contemporary. So far our authority, which is the best. For ourselves we may add, that the murderer of Eliza Grimwood is, we believe, perfectly well known to be a detestable miscreant who, in this country, moved in a much higher rank than Courvoisier, and is now supposed to be somewhere in Italy, of which he is a native.18
On 25 June, The Times unexpectedly retracted its report of Courvoisier confessing to the murder of Eliza Grimwood. The rumour had been circulated through town on Monday and Tuesday (22 and 23 June), and The Times had ‘our information from a source on which we were disposed to place full reliance’, but nevertheless the story had proved not to be true.19 The other London newspapers crowed at this lapse of judgement, and subsequent eating of humble pie, from the normally so reliable Times.20 To rub salt into the wounds, the Era published what was supposed to be a conversation between Sheriff Evans and Courvoisier in Newgate. The Sheriff said: ‘I am most anxious to know whether there is any foundation in the report which has got abroad that you had something to do with the death of Eliza Grimwood, who was murdered in the Waterloo-road. Have you anything to say upon that subject?’ In response Courvoisier assured him that ‘he knew nothing in the world about that or any other murder, except the murder of Lord William Russell. He knew that he must die, and if he had committed any other dreadful offence, he would not have hesitated to mention the fact to the Sheriff.’21 Thus, after a few days of exultation that one of London’s modern murder mysteries had been solved after more than two years had gone by, the enthusiasm about the newspaper story of Courvoisier’s confession to the murder of Eliza Grimwood quickly petered out.
In spite of the retraction from The Times, there is reason not to dismiss the story of Courvoisier adding other murders to his confession, but changing his mind when facing Sheriff Evans. In 2006, I purchased a copy of an old crime book, Guilty or Not Guilty by Guy Logan. The book had pasted in a dedication from Logan to a certain Peter Farrin, with a signature that matches that on a photograph of Logan in his book Dramas of the Dock. Interestingly, the book also turned out to contain a typewritten note on yellowing paper.22 This ‘Logan Memorandum’ is reproduced in full in this book, along with the photograph and dedication; the two first sections are those of interest:
The house in Wellington Terrace where Eliza Grimwood was murdered in -38, is the twelfth hou
se from the bridge. The late George R. Sims told me, that when Courvoisier was in Newgate, he wanted to confess to two murders of unfortunate young women, but his uncle persuaded him to remain silent.
This statement would seem to confirm the Times report of Courvoisier’s confession to the murder of Eliza Grimwood. Importantly, London only had two unsolved murders of young women in the relevant period of time: those of Eliza Davis in 1837 and Eliza Grimwood in 1838. The reader should note that when questioned by Sheriff Evans, Courvoisier spoke of more than one murder, without being prompted to do so by the sheriff’s question.
A signed photograph of Guy Logan, from his book Dramas of the Dock, the dedication to Peter Farrin, and the entire ‘Logan Memorandum’.
Guy Logan was a distinguished historian of crime, who took particular interest in London houses where celebrated murders had taken place. He was the author of seven valuable true crime books, published between 1928 and 1935.23 There is no doubt that he took an interest in the murder of Eliza Grimwood, and he several times mentioned it in his writings. In 1903, when he was active as a journalist at the old magazine Famous Crimes Past & Present, he provided an answer to a correspondent: ‘Eliza Grimwood was murdered at 11, Wellington Terrace, Waterloo Road. These houses were only built in 1818. We shall give an account of this crime.’24 This account of ‘The Shocking Murder of Eliza Grimwood’ was published five months later. Guy Logan found it curious that several people had been sleeping upstairs when the murder was committed: ‘Our readers will remember that never a sound was heard as Jack the Ripper despatched his victims. It was from the same cause. The sudden slash of the knife and – silence.’25 Logan gave an account of the murder, the Cavendish letter, the time-waster M’Millan, and the hatred and prejudice against Hubbard; he wrongly claimed that the latter had sought refuge in America. In 1905, Guy Logan again referred to the murder house at No. 12 Wellington Terrace, assuring his readers that in spite of the renumbering of the houses in Waterloo Road, it was still standing.26 In his 1929 book Guilty or Not Guilty, Logan returns to the Grimwood mystery in a chapter about unsolved London murders of women:
[Eliza] was well known in that always doubtful neighbourhood, and the driver of a hackney coach was found who was able to identify her as a ‘fare’ he had picked up in the Strand on the night of the crime. She was accompanied by a man, and he drove them to the end of Waterloo Bridge on the Surrey side. The next morning the girl was found dead in her bedroom, with a fearful gash in her throat. The man had coolly stayed to wash his hands, had thrown the bed-clothes over the body, and calmly walked out of the place. Not a sound had been heard in the night, and no clue of any kind was left behind.27
This short account of the crime is likely to be the reason the ‘Logan Memorandum’ was put inside this very book.
George R. Sims was a well-known author, playwright and poet, remembered for ‘Christmas Day in the Workhouse’ and other overblown ballads.28 Sims also took a serious interest in the criminal history of the metropolis; he expired in 1922, implying that the memorandum was written between that year and 1939, when the Grimwood murder house was pulled down. Most probably, it was written in the late 1920s, when Logan was active researching his books. It may be objected that there is no direct evidence as to his authorship of the memorandum, and that it could have been written by Farrin or by some other person. Guy Logan did eventually write about Courvoisier in his 1935 book Wilful Murder, but infuriatingly, he mentions nothing about the crucial information from Sims.29 Still, there is good reason to presume that Logan did write the memorandum. The third section has the text, ‘A saddler and harness maker set up in business where the Darbys had been butchered’. This refers to the murder of the Darby family (husband, wife and baby) by Edgar Edwards in the shop at No. 22 Wyndham Road, Camberwell. Guy Logan wrote about this case in one of his other books, stating that the shop ‘had a very desolate look when I passed it some months afterwards, but, on going that way again two or three years later, I found that a saddler and harness maker had set up in business there’.30 This similarity would seem to prove that the memorandum was indeed written by Guy Logan.
A postcard showing George R. Sims.
George R. Sims was exceedingly popular in his own lifetime, and people likened him to Charles Dickens for his social conscience, and his obvious sympathy for London’s poor. When Sims joined the Referee newspaper in 1877, he assumed the pen name ‘Dagonet’ and wrote a weekly ‘Mustard and Cress’ column, which would continue for forty-five years until Sims died in harness. His punning and laborious wit, and frequent ‘lapses into poetry’, appealed to the literary taste of his contemporaries, and the ‘Dagonet’ column became enormously popular and did much to keep his name in the public eye. Sims also became known for his overblown and ultra-sentimental ballads like ‘Christmas Eve in the Workhouse’ and ‘Billy’s Rose’, which were fashionable recital pieces in Victorian times. His plays, The Lights of London in particular, were equally popular, and provided Sims with a generous income, most of which he spent on gambling and high living. When liver trouble forced the hard-drinking Sims to take to the lemonade bottle, the ballads ceased completely, and the remainder of his output also became less sprightly.
George R. Sims was something of a snob, who liked to hobnob with those of high rank in society. He took a strong interest in London crimes and criminals, and built up his own criminal museum, containing objects like the knocker from Thurtell and Probert’s murder cottage in Elstree, a kitchen chair from Mrs Pearcey’s murder house, the hanging beam of old Newgate, a ‘Jack the Ripper’ letter, and various relics of the murderers Percy Lefroy Mapleton, Henry Wainwright, Herbert Bennett and James Canham Read. He belonged to the select Crimes Club, to which Guy Logan, who was a penny-a-line journalist connected with lowly publications like the Illustrated Police News and Famous Crimes Past & Present, could not aspire to obtain membership. Nevertheless, there are indications that the two men, who were united by their strong interest in London’s criminal history, met more than once. In the ‘Jack the Ripper’ chapter in his 1928 book Masters of Crime, Guy Logan wrote that ‘the late George R. Sims was fond of declaring that, in the end, the murderer’s identity was known to the police’.31 It would have been perfectly in character for the two men to have met and discussed famous Victorian criminal cases, like the murders of Eliza Grimwood and Lord William Russell. Where Sims had obtained the information about Courvoisier confessing to the murders of Eliza Davies and Eliza Grimwood cannot be ascertained. I have read quite a few of his ‘Dagonet’ columns in the Referee, but although Sims frequently discussed contemporary and historical London crimes, I found no evidence that he ever mentioned Courvoisier or Eliza Grimwood. The Courvoisier police file makes it clear that both before and after his conviction for murder, Courvoisier kept in touch with his uncle Mr L. Courvoisier, butler to Sir George Beaumont. Letters in the police file indicate that while languishing in the death cell in Newgate, Courvoisier was visited both by his uncle and by the clergyman Baup.32 In a sudden fit of despondency, did the Ripper of Waterloo Road for once lose his cool, and make a reference to the full extent of his crimes, only for his horrified uncle, who did not want a serial killer in the family, to persuade him to keep quiet and deny everything when he was questioned by Sheriff Evans?
Apart from the newspaper report of his confession, and the ‘Logan Memorandum’, what evidence is there in favour of François Benjamin Courvoisier being the murderer of Eliza Grimwood, or even a serial killer with at least three or four victims?
Firstly, it is notable that he perfectly fits the description of the Foreigner who accompanied Eliza back to Waterloo Road, with regard to stature, build, and general appearance. Four witnesses stated that the Foreigner was between 5ft 7in and 5ft 8in tall; Courvoisier was stated to have been 5ft 7in in height. The seven witnesses who saw the Foreigner with Eliza described him as young, dark-haired and dapperly dressed; he spoke good English, with the French accent still clearly audible. Courvoisier came from Mo
nt-la-Ville in the Canton du Vaud near Lausanne, a French-speaking part of Switzerland; two newspaper accounts agree that he also knew Italian, which had been his second language back in Switzerland.33 One witness who saw him with Eliza, namely the waitress Charlotte Parker, thought he looked like a respectable gentleman’s servant.34 It is true that the old crime writer Yseult Bridges, who published a lengthy essay on the murder of Lord William Russell, described Courvoisier as having abundant straw-coloured hair, but here she was certainly mistaken: the contemporary press descriptions of him, the multiple likenesses of him, and his death mask at Madame Tussauds, all depict him with very dark brown hair.35 Courvoisier’s appearance and clothing is fully consistent with the witness observations of the Foreigner, on every point. He also fits the description of the young Frenchman who was the ‘boyfriend’ seen with Eliza Davies, and we may also speculate that he was one of the two murderers of Mr Westwood, seen fleetingly while making his escape with his countryman Carron. As we know, there were contemporary rumours that Eliza Grimwood and Mr Westwood had been murdered by the same man. The modus operandi was the same in all four cases of murder: Eliza Davies, Eliza Grimwood, Mr Westwood and Lord William Russell had all had their throats cut with great force.