Shortly
before midnight on Saturday the 7th December 1811 Timothy Marr, a draper of 29
Ratcliffe Highway (a “public thoroughfare in the most chaotic quarter of
eastern, or nautical, London,” according to Thomas de Quincy) sent his serving
girl Margaret Jewell out to buy him some oysters and to pay a bakers bill
whilst he and his apprentice James Gowan were shutting up the shop. Margaret’s
errands were a waste of time – she couldn’t find any oysters for sale at that
time of night and the bakers too were closed. When she returned back to the
drapers the door of the shop was closed and the shutters down. Margaret heard
the Marr’s three month old baby crying as she rapped on the door but it
quietened, presumably when Celia Marr picked up her son and comforted or fed
him. No one answered Margaret’s increasingly frantic knocking. A passing drunk
began to harass her and she had to quieten down until the parish night watch
passed by at 1am. Even he couldn’t rouse the Marrs, even though his shouting
and banging on the door woke all the neighbours, including John Murray a
pawnbroker who lived and worked next door. He went to the rear of his property
and climbed over the wall into the Marr’s back yard. From here he was able to
get into the shop where he almost tripped over the body of James Gowan, who was
lying on the floor with his head smashed to a bloody pulp and his throat gashed
open. By the light of his candle the shocked Murray could also see the body of
Celia Marr, her head similarly staved in and still leaking blood into a large
pool on the floorboards. Murray ran to the front door and pulled it open
yelling "Murder, murder. Come and see what murder is here!" The small
crowd of neighbours and passersby, led by the night watchman poured into the
shop where they soon located the body of Timothy Marr. Someone yelled
"What about the baby?" and the crowd pushed into the Marr’s bedroom
where they found the baby still in its crib, its throat cut so deeply that the
head was almost severed and the left hand side of the head battered with a
blunt instrument.
The
murder of the Marrs caused national outrage. A mass killing of this sort,
taking place in the victims own home was unusual and terrified everyone. A
hundred guinea reward was posted for information leading to the identification
of the killer or killers. The only tangible clue the police had to go on was a
maul, a heavy shipwright’s hammer that had been found at the scene of the crime
clotted with blood and human hair and obviously one of the murder weapons. Then
on the 19th December the murderer struck again, at the King’s Arms Tavern in
New Gravel lane (now Glamis Road). A night watchman had been passing the public
house in the small hours when he found a half naked man trying to climb down a
rope of knotted sheets from the top storey of the building. The man turned out
to be a lodger in the pub by the name of John Turner and he started yelling
that there was murder being committed inside. The door of the cellar was
quickly broken open and inside the bodies of the landlord, John Williamson, his
wife Elizabeth and a barmaid Bridget Harrington were all discovered with their
heads battered in and their throats cut, in the same manner as the Marrs. The
Williamson’s 14 year old granddaughter survived – she slept through the attack
and the murderer or murderers probably did not realise she was in the house.
 |
| Postmortem sketch of John Williams |
On
the 21st December a seaman by the name of John Williams was arrested at the
Pear Tree Inn after information was received from an anonymous source naming
him as the murderer. He had been seen drinking at the Kings Arms on the night
of the murder and there were other circumstantial details too which linked him
to the crimes. He was remanded at Cold Bath Fields Prison to appear before the
Shadwell magistrates to answer questions on his possible involvement in the shocking
crimes. On the day of the hearing the magistrates were sat waiting in their
packed court room when a messenger appeared from the prison – Williams had
committed suicide, hanging himself in his cell. The magistrates went ahead and
heard the testimony of the other witnesses in what now appeared to be an open
and shut case. Their verdict, hotly disputed to this day, was that John
Williams was solely responsible for the Ratcliffe Highway Murders.
To
appease public opinion and In lieu of a public execution the Home Secretary Sir
Richard Ryder, accepting the conclusions of the Shadwell Magistrates that John
Williams was solely responsible for the Ratcliffe Highway Murders, ordered that
his body be publically paraded around the streets at the scenes of his crimes.
Once the local residents were satisfied that the monster was indeed dead he was
to be interred at a crossroads with a stake through his heart. The crossroads
chosen were at the junction of Cable Street and Cannon Street Road, close by the
Crown and Dolphin public house. The photograph above looks from the railway
bridge on Cannon Street Road to the cross roads where Williams was buried with
the Crown and Dolphin still standing on the corner and the tower of St
Georges’-in-the-East showing above the roof tops of the houses.
On
New Years Eve 1811 accompanied by the Thames Police and the Bow Street Mounted
Patrol as well as local constables and watchman John Williams’ body was
arranged on an open cart along with the maul, a chisel and a crowbar that he
had used in committing his crimes and driven slowly through the streets of
Wapping and Shadwell, stopping outside the Marr’s shop at 29 Ratcliffe Highway
and the Kings Arms Tavern. 10,000 spectators lined the route and the normally
unruly east end crowd was unusually subdued. When the procession reached the
crossroads the grave had already been dug. The driver of the cart whipped
Williams’ body three times in an unscripted act of revenge and then it was
removed from the cart and placed on its knees in the open grave. A stake was
placed at the point of his back judged to be above the heart and then driven
through it with a mallet before the earth was piled over the corpse.
In
1902 gas mains were being laid in Cannon Street North and Cable Street. The labourers
digging the trenches uncovered a skeleton with a wooden stake driven through
the ribcage and adjourned to the Crown and Dolphin while their
bosses debated what to do. They probably left carrying John Williams’
skull which rumour has it was then exchanged for a few pints when the
landlord took an interest in it. Certainly by the time the authorities arrived
to take Williams’ remains away the skeleton was headless and once the mains had
been laid, the road repaved and official interest in the site had waned a skull
purportedly belonging to John Williams’ went on prominent display in the saloon
bar.
The
Marrs, the first victims of the Ratcliffe Highway Murderer, were buried in the
churchyard of Hawksmoor's St Georges'-in-the-East. A large headstone was set up
which disappeared when all the headstones were cleared and lined up against the
churchyard wall to allow the graveyard to be converted into a park. It was
assumed the headstone was gone forever but the historian Sarah Wise (author of
a trio of excellent books on London, including one on grave robbing in
Bloomsbury) was rooting around some broken fragments of stone in the park when
she came across pieces of the lost memorial.
 |
| The funeral of the Marr family, held at St George's in the East |
There
has been a flurry of activity centred around the Ratcliffe Highway Murders
because of the 200th anniversary. On the 28th December there is a Highway
Murder Walk starting at 3.00pm at St George's (just as it is getting dark -
obviously for the atmosphere) and taking in all the key sites in an hour and a
half stroll. There isn't that much to see - the Marrs' shop is now a SAAB
dealership for example - but that is the nature of these East End walks. As
there are few physical traces of the places the events happened you have to
attune yourself to picking up on the non physical force fields that are still
in place, the lines of energy that tell you that you are standing on the spot
where the ghastly deeds happened. A £10 fee is payable and booking in advance recommended.
Call me a philistine but I don't understand why anyone would pay a tenner to be
shown a SAAB dealership that is perfectly easy to locate all by yourself. And
if you want to hear the story or know more, PD James book 'The Maul & the
Pear Tree' will give you a lot more for your ten quid then you will get out of
a tour guide.
Work
started on Hawksmoor’s St George’s in the East in 1714 (on land acquired for
£400) and was completed in 1729 (unexpected delays were caused by bad bricks,
incompetent workmen and the theft of building materials ‘especially on Sundays’
according to one of the contractors). It is a large church, designed to seat
1230, and cost £18,557 3s 3d. At the time the church was built Shadwell was a
rather prosperous suburb of maritime London – it was only much later that it
became an East End slum district. In 1795 Daniel Lyson his ‘Environs of London’
described the area as built up ‘apart from a few grass fields’ in the north of
the parish and the residents were “employed, for the most part, in rope-making,
and the manufacture of other articles for the rigging of ships.” His list of
burials in the church yard includes 14 ships captains, 2 Royal Navy
Lieutenants, a pair of surgeons, a merchant, a sprinkling of Esquires and ‘John
Abbott, Gent (1787). In the late 1850’s
the church became the scene of serious disturbances when the Low Church Bishop
of London appointed a militant protestant clergyman as a Sunday afternoon preacher in what was a church and
congregation dominated by High Churchmen. According to a parliamentary report
the congregation retaliated to the appointment by “hounds let loose in the
aisles; hassocks thrown at the altar; boys and clergy kicked and tripped; boys
supplied with peashooters and fireworks; a pew used as a privy; and a
Protestant League which met every week to plan the next weeks assault.”
The
church suffered a direct hit from an incendiary bomb in 1941 and was completely
gutted. The shell stood empty for 20 years until it was restored in the early
1960’s. By then the parish had no requirement for such a large church so, in a
very unusual arrangement, a new, smaller church was built inside the walls of
the old. Hawksmoor’s design is as
idiosyncratic and eclectic as ever – the tower is topped by six copies of a
Roman sacrificial altar.
From
Shadwell you can walk down the Commercial Road to Limehouse or you can take a
slightly longer route which takes you down to and along the Thames. Canary
Wharf, 1 Canada Square which can can be seen intermittently along your route
from Bloomsbury to Shadwell is always in view once you reach the river side.
Iain Sinclair would have made much of the Pyramid that tops the building if it
had been built in 1975 when he was writing 'Lud Heat'. As it wasn't, other fevered
imaginations have had to extract every last ounce of symbolic meaning from what
is London's most prominent building......
“London still
sees more than its share of buildings which seem to owe more to the occult than
to strict practicality. Number One Canada Square, better known as Canary Wharf,
is topped with a conspicuous pyramid with a flashing light at its apex. It
could hardly be a more graphic embodiment of the familiar image of a pyramid
topped by an eye, a symbol familiar from the back of the US dollar bill.
The architect of
One Canada Square was Cesar Pelli, who is quoted as saying that the tower was
intended to be a simple geometric form. “Of the four different roof shapes
available from the World Financial Center, he chose the pyramid because he
found it to be common in most cultures,” according to one source.
Pyramids are not
exactly common in our culture – although Hawksmoor certainly added a few. The
height of the Canary Wharf pyramid happens to be 130ft (40m), which some have
suggested makes it an embodiment of the 13 steps of the Masonic pyramid.
“This is the
clearest symbol yet. Screw the Washington Monument, I think I’ve found the
biggest Obelisk and Eye of Horus yet. This has got to be down to the Masons,”
writes one excited blogger as he demonstrates how the Canary Wharf complex can
be mapped on to Masonic symbols. Of course, conspiracy theories do not need
much of a launch pad, and others skilled in the art have managed to link Pelli
to the Freemasons, the Skull & Bones Society, the Order of Death and much,
much more…”
David
Hambling in the Fortean Times
The
foundations of Hawksmoor’s St Anne’s were laid in 1712 and the church was
completed in 1724. For some reason however the building wasn’t consecrated
until 1730. There is a Pyramid in the church yard which was originally meant to
be placed at the top of the tower (see the photograph below).
 |
| The Limehouse pyramid by Guy Vaes |
Daniel
Lyson’s, in his ‘Environs of London’ (1795) said that the parish “contains
about 150 acres of land not covered by buildings: of these about 10 are
market-gardens; the remainder pasture, occupied by cowkeepers, whose stock of
cattle amounts to about 180…. The principal manufactures in the place are Mrs.
Turner's of sailclothes, and Mr. Hall's of pot-ashes. The late Charles Dingley,
Esq. erected a saw-mill of his own invention, which still exists, but has not
been employed for many years. There are three dock-yards in the parish used
principally for repairs. A navigable canal communicating with the river Lee at
Bromley joins the Thames in this parish. It was made about the year 1769,
pursuant to an act of parliament, and is called the Limehouse-cut.” He notes
the birth of triplets as a curiosity from the Parish Registry; "John,
Thomas, and Eleanor, sons and daughter (at the same birth) of Thomas Carnell,
fisherman, and Susanna his wife, baptized Nov. 21, 1739,” but then goes on to
mention almost as an afterthought “they were all buried on the 7th of
December.”
This piece was
originally written and published on Flickr in November/December 2011.
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