The Trial of Elizabeth Cree

by Peter Ackroyd

  “In nomine patris, et filii, et spiritus sancti …”

  She put her forefinger upon his head; he stopped his prayer and, appalled, looked up at her. “You see, Father, my late husband was a dramatic writer. But he was never a success, I’m afraid. That is why he tried to steal my plot. He wanted to change the denouement, and expose my little adventures to the world. So then I managed the funniest bit of business. Do you remember how Harlequin always blames Pantaloon? Well, I made up a diary and laid the guilt upon him. I had finished a play for him once, you see, so I knew all the lingo. I kept a diary in his name, which will one day damn him before the world. Why should I bear any blame, when I know that I am pure still? Is it true, Father, that the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away?”

  “It is.”

  “Well, I saved him half the job. I took away. Wasn’t it a neat piece of business, too? When his diary is found, I will be exonerated even for his death. The world will believe I destroyed a monster.

  “What are you confessing, Mrs. Cree?”

  “He threatened me. He wanted to prevent me.”

  “But these others you mentioned. Who are they?”

  “He suspected me. He watched me. He followed me.” Now she took off the stole and draped it around the priest’s shoulders. “Surely you have heard of the famous Limehouse Golem?”

  FIFTY

  After the body of Elizabeth Cree had been taken from the yard of Camberwell Prison, it was transported to the police mortuary in Limehouse where her brain was removed for surgical analysis. Charles Babbage himself had first proposed that this organ might act like an analytic engine, and that in aberrant types of personality certain observable and detachable parts might be the clue to unsocial behavior. Since Elizabeth Cree was a female murderer of vicious disposition, it was naturally believed that her cerebellum would be worthy of further study; but no abnormality was discovered. No doubt a longer examination would have been performed if the authorities had known that she had savagely killed women and children. Her head had been removed from her body, but the rest of the corpse was consigned to the mortuary yard in Limehouse and covered with quicklime to encourage speedy decomposition—her final home was just twenty yards from the spot where the first of the Ratcliffe Highway murderers, Marr, had been buried in 1813. These are the words with which Thomas De Quincey ended his study of that ferocious killer: “… in obedience to the law as it then stood, he was buried in the center of a quadrivium, or conflux of four roads (in this case four streets), with a stake driven through his heart.” And so it was that Elizabeth Cree now entered her own house of lime.

  FIFTY-ONE

  The authoritative version of Misery Junction was to be performed at last; the murder of John Cree by his obviously deranged wife had provided too good an opportunity for the playhouses to miss. Gertrude Latimer still had the script which Elizabeth Cree had sent to her at the Bell in Limehouse; she had read the reports of the trial with mounting excitement and, when it became clear that Lizzie was to be hanged (and therefore could claim no rights of ownership after her condemned body was lifted from the gallows), she took out the play and asked her husband, Arthur, to enliven the plot with some topical references. The name of the actress, Catherine Dove, was changed to Elizabeth Cree—and she was not to be saved. She was to destroy her husband with poison, and then be condemned to death for her crime. A week before Elizabeth Cree’s execution, the management of the Bell announced the newest and most up-to-the-minute shocker, The Crees of Misery Junction. It was billed as the true story of their lives, and was to be performed on the evening after Elizabeth Cree’s execution. The advertisements declared that it had largely been written by the Crees themselves, and Gertie Latimer even decided to add some passages allegedly written by Lizzie in the condemned cell.

  “ELIZABETH CREE: I understand that I have committed a great sin, which cries to the very heavens for vengeance. But have I not suffered more than any woman? He beat me mercilessly, even when I begged for mercy, and when I was too weak to cry out he laughed at my misery. I was a frail and defenseless woman and, when I saw nothing ahead of me but suffering and an early grave, I grew desperate as only a desperately wronged woman can.”

  There was much more to this effect, composed by Gertie and Arthur Latimer, which purportedly recorded the true history of the Crees. An additional touch of authenticity was afforded by the players themselves: the part of Elizabeth Cree was taken by Aveline Mortimer, who was headlined on the bills as “The Woman Who Was There.” In fact Aveline found the role to be a particularly pleasing one; she took great satisfaction in playing her hard mistress and knocked around Eleanor Marx, who had taken the part of the maid, with something like abandon.

  Of course the announcement of the play had created much public comment and controversy—with The Times leading the way, suggesting that a “sensation” should not be made out of a “tragedy”—and the audience of the first night was more distinguished and varied than for most Limehouse “blood tub” extravaganzas. Karl Marx was in the pit, despite his failing health; his daughter, against his wishes, had decided to begin a career on the popular stage after the failure of Oscar Wilde’s Vera. How could he miss her first professional performance as the maid of Elizabeth Cree? He had brought with him for company Richard Garnett, the Superintendent of the Reading Room in the British Museum. Two rows behind them sat George Gissing, who was in the process of composing another essay for the Pall Mall Review, entitled “Real Drama and Real Life.” Nell had insisted on accompanying him, since she had conceived a strange fascination for the case of Elizabeth Cree, but now she sat beside him with an expression of startled preoccupation that Gissing had never noticed before. The truth was that she had caught sight of Inspector Kildare, whom she had last seen leaving their lodgings in Hanway Street just before her husband was taken away; the memory of that extraordinary and terrifying episode had never left her, despite her immersion in strong drink, and for some unaccountable reason she connected it with the horror about to be performed upon the stage. Kildare had not noticed her; he had come to the theater with George Flood, and they looked exactly like two professional gentlemen who had left their wives at home. In fact Kildare was here out of professional curiosity—Inspector Curry, a colleague from “C” Division, had investigated the case against Elizabeth Cree. But of course he also wished to relax after his unsuccessful search for the Limehouse Golem. Other, more professional, critics were also present; the theater reviewers for the Post and the Morning Advertiser had entered the Bell for the first time in their careers, and were already scribbling down sentences of amused scorn and patronizing dismissal. But there was one critic who had a more keen comprehension of the melodrama: Oscar Wilde had been asked by the editor of the Chronicle to furnish an essay on the character of first-night audiences, and he had decided to begin with the theatrical sensation of the hour.

  The real sensation, however, was to be seen when the curtain finally rose in front of the loud and excited audience. Gertie Latimer had hit upon a masterstroke of theatrical spectacle: she had decided to begin with the execution of Elizabeth Cree in the yard of Camberwell Prison and, after a most realistic hanging, to dramatize her strange history. The audience gasped at the sight of a scaffold and a noose, as Gertie had anticipated, and at once she pushed the procession onto the stage: the governor of the prison, the sheriff and the chaplain were all played by seasoned professionals of the “school of gore,” while Aveline Mortimer in her role as Elizabeth Cree brought up the rear. Her hands were tied behind her back with leathern thongs (last used by Gertie for the black-face drama, The Revolt of the Caribee Slaves) and she wore a simple convict dress; her face was one of inexhaustible suffering, but when she looked mournfully towards the audience she was able to suggest sad patience and resignation also. She moved towards the scaffold, and the murmuring of the audience ceased; she mounted the first step, and the chaplain began to sob quietly. She mounted the second step, and the sheriff turned his face away just for a mom
ent. She mounted the third step, and became very still. All was silence in the Bell Theater.

  It was at this point that Gertie Latimer introduced one of her more daring innovations. She had read the accounts of the hanging in the evening newspapers and, at the last moment, had decided to include the very details of the real execution. So Aveline Mortimer refused with a proud gesture the offer of a hood, and lifted her pale neck for the noose. It was now that she gazed down at the audience and uttered her immortal words, “Here we are again!” This was the cue for Gertie Latimer’s other masterstroke. She had always admired the use of the elevating platform and trapdoor, which she had seen employed very effectively in The Last Testament at Drury Lane; at great expense she had installed one of these engines for The Crees of Misery Junction, and now began to superintend that moment when the condemned woman’s body would land upon the trapdoor before being quickly lowered beneath the stage by the descending platform. It would indeed look as if she had been hanged by the neck until she was dead.

  All this time Dan Leno had been watching from the wings.

  He had agreed with Gertie Latimer that he would perform a spoof afterpiece, when The Crees of Misery Junction was finally over; he was to play the role of Madame Gruyère, the famous French murderess, and to sing a ditty extolling the virtues of Gallic poison. He had already dressed for the part (sometimes he could hardly wait to remove his conventional clothes) and had begun to mince and to wiggle in the approved French fashion; he was preparing himself, he would insist, but those who surreptitiously watched “the funniest man on earth” noticed that he was whispering words to himself as if he were addressing someone else. “You silly old bitch,” he was saying. “What do you mean by making fun of Lizzie? You dirty old bitch.”

  Aveline Mortimer waited patiently as the hangman tightened the noose around her throat, and at this moment Karl Marx turned and whispered fiercely to Richard Garnett. This play was a disgrace, since it had converted matters of social purpose into a cheap melodrama! Truly the playhouse was the opium of the people! And yet he could no longer keep his eyes from the stage as Elizabeth Cree began to fall. He remembered that, many years before, he had written to a friend about his own death, and had said: “When it is all over, we shall hold hands and begin again from the beginning.” The critics from the Post and Morning Advertiser were also transfixed but, even as they marveled at the scene, they knew that they would eventually dismiss it as “pantomimic” and “unreal.” George Gissing glanced across at the face of the man from the Post, whom he knew slightly, and was to write later in “Real Drama and Real Life”: “It is not that human beings cannot bear too much reality, it is that human beings cannot bear too much artifice.” But then, as he watched the pale neck of Aveline Mortimer, he remembered his sensation of wonder and horror when he had scrutinized the corpse of Alice Stanton in the morgue of Limehouse Police Station. “Fate,” he had told his wife the next day, “is always too strong for us.” Inspector Kildare noticed with some displeasure that the details of the execution were not entirely accurate, but even he could not shake off the sense of terror and enchantment which filled the whole theater. It was a scene which Oscar Wilde remembered when, in “The Truth of Masks,” he wrote that “Truth is independent of facts always, inventing or selecting them at pleasure. The true dramatist shows us life under the conditions of art, not art in the form of life.”

  But what was this? The condemned woman was really falling through the trapdoor and Dan Leno, with his instinctive knowledge of stage techniques, knew that something had gone terribly wrong. He realized at once that the rope had not loosened, that the elevated platform had fallen without a brake being placed upon it, and that the neck of Aveline Mortimer must surely be broken as she dangled beneath the stage. Some of the audience had gasped, while others had screamed—not because they had any notion of the catastrophe played out before them, but because the whole scene had been mounted so impressively and so realistically. Dan Leno rushed beneath the stage, where the callboy and the prompter were already cutting down Aveline Mortimer’s body in an effort to revive her. Gertie Latimer, optimistic to the end, had brought a bottle of brandy to administer to her; but Dan Leno brushed her aside, and knelt over the dead woman. Nothing could be done for her now, however, and at this moment the stage chaplain clambered down the rope which hung from the scaffold; he was already gone with drink, but he attempted to give absolution to the dead actress while the others stood around in an attitude of simple worship.

  Leno allowed them to remain in position for a minute, but then he took Gertie’s arm and held it very tightly. “Put the priest into a heavy swell costume,” he said, “and help me up onto the stage.” She was too dazed to do anything but comply, and within a few moments she had hoisted Dan Leno in the dress of Madame Gruyère back through the trapdoor and into the gaslight. He held on to the fatal rope as he clambered up and, in mock homage to that great melodrama The Hunchback of Notre Dame, he pulled on it three times when he was within sight of the audience. They understood the allusion at once, and laughed in relief after the scene of terror before—here was the hanged woman revived, and ready to start the fun. Here was Elizabeth Cree in another guise, just as she had been before when she played the “Older Brother” or “Little Victor’s Daughter,” and it was a source of joy and exhilaration that the great Dan Leno should impersonate her.

  The audience filed out into the dark night after the performance was over, the young and the old, the rich and the poor, the famous and the infamous, the charitable and the mean, all back into the cold mist and smoke of the teeming streets. They left the theater in Limehouse and went their separate ways, to Lambeth or to Brixton, to Bayswater or to Whitechapel, to Hoxton or to Clerkenwell, all of them returning to the uproar of the eternal city. And even as they traveled homeward, many of them remembered that wonderful moment when Dan Leno had risen from the trapdoor and appeared in front of them. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he had announced in his best mammoth comique manner, “here we are again!”