He sent forth his angel with a great trumpet; Marthe Josephine Besson (1852-1908), Highgate East Cemetery

Up a steep and neglected muddy side path in Highgate East Cemetery, hidden amongst the undergrowth and surrounded by toppled and leaning gravestones, you will find this striking monument to a Victorian businesswoman. The inscription reads:  

In loving memory of
Marthe Josephine Besson,
daughter of Gustave Besson
of Paris and London
and beloved wife of Adolphe Fontaine.
Died 15th Sept 1908, aged 56 years.
Her great talents and untiring energy gained the praise of the foremost masters in the musical world.

It looks like a touching tribute from a grieving husband and one could lazily assume that Adolphe and Marthe were mutually devoted and lived long and contentedly in conjugal bliss. But one would be wrong. 12 years earlier Adolphe was trailing through Europe after Marthe and her Spanish lover accusing her of stealing his fortune, trying to have her arrested by Scotland Yard and generating a scandal that he must still have been trying to live down when he instructed A. MacDonald & Co. Ltd of Euston Road to produce his wife’s funeral monument.

Marthe’s father, Gustave was the son of an army colonel who was apprenticed at the age of ten to a maker of military brass instruments. Gustave was a talented instrument maker and an astute business man. He established his own firm and thrived but was incensed in 1845 when the French War Ministry adopted the brass instruments of his arch rival Adolphe Sax. He became embroiled in anti-Sax litigation which did not go well and in 1854 Besson instruments allegedly produced in contravention of sax patents were seized by the authorities. Gustave transferred his assets into his wife’s name to avoid having them seized as compensation and fled to London. In London he set up a new factory while his wife nominally continued to manage the French business. By 1873 the two highly successful businesses had been joined and there were factories in both London and Paris.

Marthe was trained as an instrument maker by her father and she seems to have inherited his business acumen as well as his talent for producing brass. Gustave died in 1874 and her mother in 1877 and from this point the 25 year old Marthe ran the business herself. She continued to run it even when she married Adolphe Honore Fontaine in Marylebone in 1879. Her husband was  an attaché at the French Consulate a man of uncertain temper who was no doubt very charming and affable in the days of their courtship but who proved not so easy going once the ink on the marriage certificate had dried. Marthe changed the name of the firm to Besson-Fontaine and allowed her husband to dabble in the business. Things did not go well. Adolphe quarrelled with the employees and eventually caused a strike and six week lock out amongst the 95 workers at the Paris factory. There were also hints of domestic violence, Marthe later said that Adolphe had tried to kill her. Despite their differences the couple had a daughter, Martha Juliette Gabrielle Fontaine born a year into their marriage, but this did not stop Marthe from leaving her husband in France in the early 1890’s returning to London with her daughter, trying to obtain a divorce in the French Courts and, in the words of a contemporary newspaper “contracting an improper intimacy with a Spaniard employed by her as a traveller.” When she failed to get her marriage dissolved without consulting Adolphe she liquidated most of her business assets selling off bonds and share certificates and then packed her bags and set off to Europe with her Spaniard, Señor Alcaraz. The furious Adolpe set off in hot pursuit, following her to Belgium, Holland, and Portugal, denouncing her as a thief and an adulteress to the French consul in every town she stopped at and trying to get the civil authorities to arrest her. The European press followed the case with avid interest and Marthe showed no hesitation in retaliating against her husbands accusations to any journalist who cared to listen.

Marthe portrayed in the French press at the time of the strike in Paris

Events came to a climax in Seville where Marthe and her daughter put up at the Hotel Europa. Her husband was only a few days behind and the correspondent of El Liberal, the Spanish newspaper was waiting for him at the station when he arrived. The reporter watched him go straight to the Post Office where he tricked his wife’s address and post restante correspondence out of the clerk and then followed him to the French Consul where he immediately denounced his wife and demanded action. From the Consulate he went to his wife’s hotel where his young daughter happened to be in the foyer.

“Follow me!,” he yelled at the startled child, “and if you refuse to recognise paternal authority I shall have you locked up!” His daughter ran away crying before he could grab her and ran back to her mother’s room. Adolphe booked himself into the neighbouring guesthouse, the Fonda Cataluna, from where he could watch his wife’s comings and goings.

The following day he met Señor Alcaraz in the street and cried “Voila le voleur!” (“here is the thief!” Voleur a’coeur – thief of hearts). There was a scuffle between the two men and Adolphe yelled obscenities and insults in French at his former employee. The police were called and arrested both men, eventually letting Adolphe go but keeping Señor Alcaraz in custody. A few days later the correspondent of El Liberal was reporting further details of l'affaire Besson. Marthe’s daughter left the hotel with an employe to do some shopping only to meet her father in the street. Adolphe immediately started shouting that her mother was a thief and unfaithful to which the daughter responded by bursting into tears and running back into the hotel shouting “Ma mére est bonne!” The following day, at dusk, Marthe let her daughter venture out again accompanied by a hotel employee. Adolphe was lurking by the cab rank and once again tried to seize his daughter. This time though Marthe was watching from the hotel lobby and on seeing her husband she ran out into the street screeching “Voleur miserable!” holding her hands out as though she mean to rake her husband’s face with her nails. El Liberal’s correspondent commented “As Monsieur Fontaine is well acquainted with the power of Madame Besson’s nails, having had them dug into him onto the day he arrived in Seville on the patio of the Hotel Europa, he hid himself in great consternation between the hackney carriages.” There were loud cheers and laughter from the cab men and passers by which immediately ceased when Juez Señor Anaya sternly appeared accompanied by the lawyers acting for the warring couple and the French vice-consul. Adolphe was left in the hotel lobby while the legal contingent followed Marthe up to her rooms. There the judge broke the bad news that she would have to return her daughter to her husband as he had accused her of abducting a minor. There followed a scene of such hysteria with wailing Marthe and her sobbing daughter both prostrating themselves before the judge that he changed his mind and ordered her to removed to a convent school instead, the Colegio del Valle.

While Adolphe was dealing with his wife in Spain his representatives were also trying to deal with her through the British Courts. Their first line of attack had been to seek an injunction against Parr’s banking Group to try and stop them honouring his wife’s drafts against a letter of credit she had obtained by selling bonds and shares. The Judge refused to grant an injunction against the bank on a technicality, saying that only Madame Besson could be restrained from drawing on the account in which case the bank would have to dishonour the drafts. The next move was to have counsel apply to the Clerkenwell Police Court for a warrant for Madame Besson’s arrest on charges of stealing £11,150.00. The Judge granted the warrant and a few days later Scotland Yard dispatched Inspector Brookwell to Spain to arrest and accompany Madame Besson back to London to answer the charges made against her. Marthe had started proceedings against her husband in the Spanish Court for assault, slander and appropriation of private correspondence but this counted for nothing when Inspector Brookwell arrived with his warrant from Clerkenwell. Marthe was taken into custody, and within a few days the authorities had decided to allow her extradition to the UK via Gibraltar.

On November 29 Madame Besson made her first appearance at Clerkenwell Police Court, charged with stealing £35,000 in bonds and share certificates and appropriating plate and furniture belonging to her husband. Mr Avory, the prosecutor (acting for Adolpe, this was, despite the involvement of Scotland Yard, a private prosecution) outlined the case against her and objected to her been given bail, “If bail were granted perhaps the expense of the extradition would be thrown away. This lady left the country with her paramour and travelled to Spain, intending to go to America…”
“You say she ran away with someone else?” asked the Judge, suddenly perking up.
“She ran away with a Spaniard and has been living with him adultery ever since!” thundered Mr Avory. Despite the objections the Judge bailed her on her own recognisance.
 

Marthe was back in court the following week where, for the benefit of the Judge, Mr Avory went into more details about the background of the case. Adolphe was, he explained, totally mystified by his wife’s aberrant behaviour and had no idea why she wanted a divorce. They had not quarrelled prior to their separation and he was heartbroken by her decision to leave him. He read out a letter from Adolphe to Marthe in May 1894 to show how things stood between them: “My darling a million kisses. It is with much joy that I would meet you at the hotel. I am anxious, not receiving news of you. I am devoured by grief. You ought  to understand it how much I love you. I only live for you and my children. How can you make me suffer as you do? We are making each other miserable by our separation. Is it possible that the existence you are carrying on is what you desire? It is altogether a false one for you. I pray you to come back and let us take our life as honest people and throw over this Bohemian life of yours.” Adolphe took the witness stand under Mr Avory’s gentle examination explained how his wife not only betrayed him with another man, a Spaniard and an employee, but went on to steal almost everything he owned, leaving him penniless. It was an affecting performance but the story did not stand up when subjected to the fierce cross examination of Mr Gill, Marthe’s counsel. He went straight to the nub of the matter, when Marthe married Adolphe what were his wages at the French Consulate?

“That is nothing to do with the case!” Adolphe objected.
“Answer the question sir and do not waste the public time,” the Judge intervened.
“I had no wages,” Adolphe responded, “I was not a cook or a clerk.”
“Don’t aggravate the witness with questions,” Mr Avory stepped in, “ask him what his salary was.” Adolphe admitted to earning a mere 1,800 francs a year.
“This is a blackmailing prosecution…” Mr Gill shouted, “I will show that the prosecutor has been living upon my client!” He went on to accuse Adolphe, through a series of detailed questions, of having no means when he married, of occupying a room at 213 Euston Road at 6 shillings a week at the time, and of being supported by a Mademoiselle Saiseau a dressmaker at the same address. He eventually admitted the dressmaker was his sweetheart and confirmed that he had met Marthe at the French consulate when she went to conduct some business there and had taken an interest in her when a French confectioner told him what her business was and that she was in love with him and ready to marry him. Did he lie to his wife and say that as a clerk in the consulate he was not allowed to engage in business? There were humiliating questions about how much cash he had at the time of his marriage and how much he contributed towards the furniture at the couples first married home. “I cannot say, it was 20 years ago,” Adolphe replied. Well how much was he supposed to contribute and where was the money to come from? How much of it was in cash?
“I cannot say. How can I say to a sixpence how much it was?” Adolphe said in exasperation.
“Nonsense sir!” the Judge thundered, “You can surely say about how much you had when you were married. You seem to be trifling with the court. What are we take the amount at – tuppence?” When the questioning moved on to the particulars of the charges things went from bad to worse for Adolphe. Briefed by his counsel about the differences between English and French law in relation to the property of married women Adolphe kept continually referring to them until the Judge shut him up “I beg to tell you, once and for all, that I object to your making speeches about Englishmen and Frenchmen and the practice in England and France. Answer the question like other people.” There then followed a confusing exchange about a bank pass book belonging to Besson &  Co which drove the Judge to complete exasperation, “I cannot understand this witness! His evidence is quite unintelligible!”
"It must be a matter of surprise that you have listened to this case as long as you have,” Mr Gill, acting for Marthe, sympathised.
“If he had been an Englishman I think I should have had to commit him for contempt of court,” the Judge observed.  

When the verdict was finally delivered it could have come as a surprise to no one. The prosecution’s case rested on the fact that under French law the property sold or taken by Marthe belonged to her husband as there was community of property between them under their marriage contract and that in no case could a wife dispose of property belonging to the community. They argued that Madame Besson could only dispose of her personal property to a value of £1000. The defence argued that under the Married Women’s Property Act the couple’s business assets all belonged to Marthe who had the right to dispose of her property as she saw fit. Their portrayal of Adolphe as a penniless adventurer who lived on his wife’s charity probably did as much damage as the legal arguments. Marthe was acquitted of all charges against her.    

What happens next is a mystery. Marthe apparently didn’t divorce Adolphe but whether the couple were reconciled we simply do not know. Does the elaborate funeral monument apparently commissioned by Adolphe suggest the couple arrived at some form of rapprochement? Or was he giving in to a guilty conscience? His jealousy and his undignified pursuit of Marthe across Europe and the humiliations he undoubtedly suffered as a result indicate strong feelings on his part towards his wife. Or was all he ever cared about the money? There are some clues; Martha fails to show up in the 1891 and 1901 census which might mean that she was living abroad. If she had gone abroad she returned to England in 1904 when she appears in the electoral register and the phone books (telephone number Gerrard 5242) living at 5 Russell Mansions in Southampton Row. She seems to have been living alone. When she died on September 15 1908 her death was registered twice and she appears in the death index as Marthe Josephine Besson and Marthe Josephine Fontaine. She left a fortune of £46,610 2 shillings and 11 pence, her will administered by Albert Durrand, Juge au Tribunal Civil de Reims and the Public Trustee. Her daughter would have been 18 and therefore technically a minor and not legally competent to administer her own affairs. Under French law Adolphe, as her lawful husband, would have been entitled to half of her estate. As after their very public falling out of 1895-96 the couple kept their private life very private with no further scandals played out in the blaze of publicity we will never know how matters between were finally resolved.

Update

What happens next is a mystery? All my research on Marthe Besson failed to pick up a rather blatant clue which is actually on the memorial itself: “Also in Loving Memory of Frank Besson Fl. Lieuy. RN who was killed in the Dardanelles 20th Dec. 1915 aged 20 years.”  Marthe had a son in 1895, the court battle with her husband had to be adjourned for four weeks whilst she had the baby. This post completes the story of Marthe Besson and her son Frank.  

Secret Portuguese Jews, floating coffins, Edgar Allan Poe, a Victorian masterpiece and a pair of Australopithecines - Old St Mary's Churchyard,Stoke Newington

It was the unexpected pairing of a Portuguese surname on a 19th century chest tomb in a north London churchyard that ignited my obsession with graveyards and cemeteries.  The tomb belonged to John Furtado, the son of Isaac Mendes Furtado according to the rather worn inscription. Idle curiosity started me researching and a digital copy of The Gentleman’s Magazine of 1803 revealed the startling fact that buried in “May; At Stoke Newington Mr. Isaac Furtado, a Jew merchant, who was buried in the Church-yard, in a grave dug North and South, instead of East and West, according to the usual custom. His son and two daughters were baptised and confirmed in the Church of England in March 1799, and their conversion was announced to the public in a printed letter addressed to them by the late Rev. Wm, Jones.” Further research uncovered that Isaac Furtado was a Portuguese Marrano, a secret follower of Judaism 300 years after all Jews in Portugal faced the blunt choice of converting to Christianity or accepting exile. Once in England Isaac openly practiced Judaism and apparently never converted even though his children did.  Quite how Isaac managed to get himself buried in an Anglican churchyard is a mystery I have not been able to solve.

Stoke Newington was a small village 3 miles North East of London before the burgeoning metropolis swallowed it in the 19th century. There were only a hundred communicants when William Patten 'new builded' the church of St Mary in 1563, replacing the stone, flint and pebbles of the medieval building with brick. The church has been repaired and ‘beautified’ several times but by 1791 the growing popularity of Stoke Newington as a rural retreat for rich Londoners meant that the church was already cramped for the five hundred or so parishioners who turned up for Sunday morning services. A survey in 1827 revealed a rotten roof and drainage so bad that coffins were floating in the vaults beneath the church floor. It was restored by Sir Charles Barry (architect of the Houses of Parliament) in 1829 but even though space was made for more seating the church was still too small and in 1853 a decision was taken to build a much newer bigger church across the road.

In another improbability Old St Mary’s makes an appearance in a minor classic of American literature. Edgar Allan Poe plundered his memories of attending church services there in his doppelganger story ‘William Wilson’. He attended Manor House boarding school in Stoke Newington for 8 years from 1815 until 1823 and drew on his recollections of the school, the church and the village as background for his story. He describes how twice a day on Sundays, the boarders “were paraded in the same formal manner to the morning and evening service in the one church of the village. Of this church the principal of our school was pastor. With how deep a spirit of wonder and perplexity was I wont to regard him from our remote pew in the gallery, as, with step solemn and slow, he ascended the pulpit! This reverend man, with countenance so demurely benign, with robes so glossy and so clerically flowing, with wig so minutely powdered, so rigid and so vast, -- -could this be he who, of late, with sour visage, and in snuffy habiliments, administered, ferule in hand, the Draconian laws of the academy?”

I have been reading Thomas W. Laqueur’s book “The Work Of The Dead” with great pleasure. One of the many things I have learnt from it is that the churchyard in the well known Victorian painting ‘The Doubt: Can These Dry Bones Live?’ by Henry Alexander Bowler was Old St Mary’s.  Laqueur merely mentions the fact in passing but I was curious about the circumstances which led Bowler to Stoke Newington and this particular churchyard and tried to find out more.  I have drawn a complete blank and not even able to verify from any other source even the bare fact of the churchyard in the painting being  St Mary’s. Lacqueur’s extensive end notes give no clue to his source for this information. I have started to  have doubts even though I desperately want it to be true. The church in the background of the painting is clearly built of brick. Old St Mary’s is also built of brick but in the 1820’s virtually the whole of the exterior was rendered in 4 inch thick cement to make it look like stone; Bowler didn’t paint his picture until the 1850’s, he wasn’t born until 1824 by which time the brickwork had already disappeared. Whether it is true or not what Laqueur has to say about the picture is interesting:

When an important nineteenth-century painter takes on the subject of mortality and immortality, the scene is set in a churchyard, not a cemetery. There were no bodies evident in the latter. Henry Alexander Bowler’s The Doubt: ‘Can These Dry Bones Live?’ was painted in 1855 as a meditation on Tennyson’s In Memoriam. A young woman is standing amidst the genteel disrepair of what appears to be a substantial country churchyard (but actually is the churchyard of the London suburb of Stoke Newington). The box tomb on her right has lost its siding, exposing the brick vault beneath; this is the sort of shelter that sparked late eighteenth-century litigation, an effort that went against the nature of the place, that somehow tried to bring order to an individual grave by claiming for it a permanence that some opposed. The stone behind her has sunk almost out of sight; further back, an old-fashioned and short-lived grave board with elaborately carved posts running laterally along the body beneath is visible among a picturesque array of variously angled slabs. She rests her arms on the gravestone of John Faithful and looks onto the disturbed earth of the grave—there is no hint why it is in this condition, but it is almost a trope of churchyard representation. More specifically, she contemplates the skull that is lying there and the femur and bits of ribs that are poking out of the ground. This would have been unthinkable in the new regime of the cemetery. The red brick buttresses and a few windows of the church building itself stand out as if to make the point of a historical continuity of the Christian community of the living and the dead, represented by the field of markers in various stages of decay—its past, by the church that serves the living, and by the visit itself. John Faithful died in 1791, and the woman’s costume makes clear that the scene we are witnessing occurred sixty years later, in the 1850s.

The stark fact of death is counterpoised with the promise of everlasting life: I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE, it says on Faithful’s stone, which we, but not the young woman, see; RESURGAM (I shall rise again) is written on the slab nestled in the ground at the foot of a large, very much alive and growing chestnut tree. Although topologically specific, the painting’s landscape, like that in Nicolas Poussin’s Et in Arcadia ego or the imagined landscape where Ezekiel confronted “dry bones,” is prototypical: the universal country churchyard.

The churchyard’s best grave is this late 18th century one with double skulls. The inscription is so worn as to be almost completely illegible; the last three letters of the surname appear to be WEB so I would guess the owner was a Webster. The skulls have also been ravaged by inclement weather and acid rain and now look more like a pair of bleached fossil Australopithecine craniums than anything human. 

Presenting the Flemish Hercules; Peter Ducrow (1765-1815), St Mary-at-Lambeth

THE BENEFIT OF MR Ducrow & FAMILY ON THURSDAY Evening, Oct. 23^rd 1806. MR DUCROW begs leave to inform friends and the public, that he has, at considerable expense  prepared an entire CHANGE OF PERFORMANCES ; in particular, Mr Ducrow will, for that night only go through the same Performance as exhibited before his MAJESTY AND THE ROYAL FAMILY at the Fete that was given at Frogmore, near Windsor in the year 1801.—SLACK WIRE DANCING, in full swing, by Mr Ducrow, who will carry several surprising Balances of plates, swords, drinking glasses, &c. and will display several astonishing feats with oranges and forks, assisted by the INFANT of HOPE—POLANDER’S EQUILIBRIUM, with the extraordinary performance of the Serpentine Ladder, by Master Ducrow.  A NEW DANCE, composed by Mr D’Egville, in which Master Ducrow will make his first appearance—THE KINGS POST; or, The Ruins of TROY. Master Ducrow will perform on the TIGHT ROPE, several surprising NEW FEATS, without the balance pole, and likewise on the Horse —The FLEMISH HERCULES will, for this night only, Carry a Stage with TWELVE PERSONS on his Hands and Feet.  The whole to conclude with a Grand New HARLEQUIN PANTOMIME.

N. B. In consequence of the great variety of entertainment' that will performed on that night, the doors will open at half-past five, and the performance begin at half-past six. Tickets to be had of Mr Ducrow, No. 6, Minshul  Street; Sir Sidney Smith, Port street; Mr Cowdroy’s Printing Office; and at the Circus.

Manchester Mercury - Tuesday 21 October 1806

The Flemish Hercules was a versatile performer.  The mainstay of his act, as you would expect of someone named after the son of Jupiter and Alcmene, was circus strong man.  To the astonishment of audiences up and down the country, he lifted and balanced an extraordinary array of heavy props on his hands and feet;  coach wheels, ladders, chairs, children and adults.  He was also a celebrated equilibrist on the slack wire, “in which performance he stands unrivalled in this or any other Kingdom,” according to the Manchester Mercury in 1799. Here his props were a less hefty selection of glasses, swords, plates and other objects either sharp or breakable. The act also included “remarkable feats with oranges and forks.” He could also perform no less remarkable feats on the trampoline, as the Manchester Mercury promised in 1799 when for “that night only, he will go through those wonderful Leaps from the trampoline, in particular, one over Eighteen Grenadiers, with shouldered firelocks and fixed bayonets; also through a Real Fire, and will fly over a grand Pyramid of Light.” When required he passed muster in small parts in ‘dramatic spectacles’ such as “Blackbeard or The Pirate” in which he played the slave Abdallah in London and Manchester.  Later in his career he became noted as a circus equestrian, a role in which his eldest son Andrew Ducrow would eventually eclipse him.

The Royal Circus, Southwark

Peter Ducrow was born in Bruges in 1765. He must have begun to acquire his impressive range of circus skills in Belgium but we know nothing of his early career on the continent. We don’t know exactly when he came to England but in 1788 he married Margaret Ross in St Mary’s Walworth. His first recorded performance dates from 1792 in Thomas Franklin’s show at the Royal Circus in Southwark but in all likelihood he was pursuing his career in less well publicised venues long before then. The first of his seven children (2 boys, 5 girls), Andrew was born in 1793 at the Nags Head, a stone’s throw away from the Royal Circus. In the 1790’s he performed in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, Dublin as well as The Royal Circus and Astley’s Amphitheatre in London. In October 1797 he appeared to great acclaim at the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in Lisbon accompanied by the Infant Hercules, the barely four year old Andrew. Thereafter playbills and advertisements often referred to him as ‘Ducrow from Portugal’ or ‘from the Theatre Royal, Lisbon.’ In the summer of 1800 his career received an even bigger boost when he was chosen to perform at a ‘rustic fete’ held by the Royal Family at Frogmore. One newspaper account described Princess Augusta Sophia’s tour of the fete with her retinue:

The Princess then conduced her company to a space of ground near the Hermit's cell, where was erected a stage, on which Mr. Ducrow, the Flemish Hercules, exhibited his inimitable performances on the slack wire; and afterwards on the stage his extraordinary feats of strength, such as balancing three large coach wheels, also a ladder to which were affixed two chairs with two children on them, and bearing on his hands and feet a table in the form of a pyramid, with eight persons on different parts of its surface and other like exploits finished this part of the entertainment.

Chester Courant - Tuesday 22 July 1800

He was also favoured with the personal attentions of King George III who quizzed him about the size of his muscles and was told that they were one fifth larger than those of men who were heavier and taller than him. Disaster almost struck when the stage collapsed under the weight of Ducrow’s apparatus and stage company. The story is told in Andrew Ducrow’s biography; “...at the fete of Frogmore where (he) his father and brother were engaged: a stage was erected for the exhibition, and in consequence of the weight upon it by some of Mr. D.’s fetes (feats) part of the stage broke in and our hero’s little brother fell through. His Majesty instantly rose and came in person to see if the little fellow was hurt. On being answered with the utmost simplicity by the child . . . the King asked him several questions....” To Peter’s embarrassment the young Andrew addressed the King as Mister but when he tried to intervene the King told him the title of Mister was good enough for him until the stage was mended. 

Andrew Ducrow

Even in the early 1800’s when the brutal treatment of children was both common and generally accepted, Peter Ducrow’s parenting aroused controversy. Andrew as the oldest and the most talented bore the brunt of his father’s harsh training regime, being made to work up to 16 hours a day from a very early age. To teach his son the slack wire Peter’s method was to balance him on the rope and then warn to stay there or “be ‘leathered”.  When the youngster was appearing in Bath he fell from the horse. Peter dashed into the ring and to the delight of the crowd tenderly collected his son and took him backstage where his broken leg apparently caused to shout out in pain. In reality his furious father was laying about him with a horsewhip for being so careless as to put himself out of action. At another occasion Joseph Grimaldi the clown had to intervene when Peter was thrashing his son. “It’s best to make an impression when the wax is soft,” Peter told Grimaldi. “Yes, but the whacks were not soft,” rejoined Grimaldi.  As Andrew grew older Peter performed less often and gradually assumed the role of his sons manager.  As his son’s extraordinary talents developed Peter grew more ambitious and more determined to reap as much benefit from him as he could. He hired the Surrey theatre to showcase his son’s equestrian act and ended up overreaching himself and becoming bankrupt. He died in the long cold winter of 1814/15, on 6 January and was buried in the churchyard of St Mary-at-Lambeth.

Sacred to the memory of / Mr Peter Ducrow / late of Astley's Amphitheatre / who departed this life / January 6th 1815 aged 49 years / Also Mrs Hannah Cox / daughter of the above / who departed this life / April 9th 1834 aged 31 years / Also / Mr John Ducrow / son of the above and brother of Andrew Ducrow Esq / proprietor of Astley's Amphitheatre / who departed this life / May 23rd 1834 aged 38 years

Extract of Sunbeam and Beetle Wing, the Medical Miracles of Lionel Lockyer (1599?-1672), Southwark Cathedral

“In the north transept of Southwark Cathedral, close to the Harvard Chapel, are the monument and grave of Lionel Lockyer, a seventeenth century quack. The monument is perhaps the most prominent object in the transept, and includes as its principal feature a large semi-recumbent figure of the doctor. The face wears an expression of unctuous self-satisfaction, quite in keeping with what we know of Lockyer himself.”   

Hector A. Colwell M.B. Lond.

What little we can learn of the life of Lionel Lockyer we have to learn from his detractors, in particular to his principal rival in the field of patent medicine, the American alchemist George Starkey (or Eireneaus Philalethes as he was known in alchemistical circles). In 1664, goaded by Lockyers overwrought claims for his famous pills, Starkey wrote “A smart Scourge for a silly, sawcy Fool, an answer to letter at the end of a pamphlet of Lionell Lockyer.” Starkey clearly hoped his tract would demolish Lockyer’s reputation and fatally undermine his business but he was to be disappointed.  Not even death managed to do that; in 1824, 150 years after his death, James Granger reports that Lockyer’s Pills were still being sold by Newbury the bookseller in St Paul’s Churchyard.

 

A contemporary portrait

From Starkey we learn that before he took up medicine Lionel Lockyer had been a tailor and a butcher and that he had learned his medicine from a certain Molton of Hogg Lane. The first version of his pills, “a very common and churlish medicine” had been simply produced by dyeing some pills produced from a solution of the salt of antimony bright red with cochineal and vending them as ‘mercurialis vitae’. A more refined product, Pilulae Radiis Solis Extractae, one of the key ingredients of which was supposedly sun beams, made Lockyer a fortune. The vulgar had trouble with the Latin name so Lockyer, citing a biblical precedence simply named them after himself;  "Absolom because he had no son to succeed him, he erected a Pillar and called it after his own name (2 Sam. xviii, 18). And I have had sons, but They are not, and so I shall call the pill after my own name, Lockier's Pill."' The unsympathetic Starkey never mentions Lockyer’s loss of his children; at the time it was not perhaps a noteworthy event.

Lockyer had a genius for marketing. He supposedly printed upwards of 200,000 copies of his famous handbill advertising the miraculous qualities of his pilulae which were a medicine “of a solar nature, dispelling of those causes in our Bodies, which continued, would not only darken the Lustre, but extinguish the Light of Our Microcosmical Sun.” The price of this sovereign remedy was 4 shillings a box, the box stamped with the makers coat of arms and only available from some forty authorised dealers in town and country and which included “Mrs. Harfords at the Bible in Heart in Little Britain, Mr. Russel’s in Mugwel Street near Cripple Gate, Mr. Randal’s at the Three Pigeons, beyond St. Clements Church, in the Strand, Thomas Virgoes, cutler, upper end of New Fish Street and Mr. Brugis, printer, next door to Red Lyon Inn, in Newstreet near Fetter Lane.” As was generally the case this was another pill to cure all ills and even to be taken by those in full heath as a “preservative against all accidents as contagious aires, for which it stands Centinel in the body and not permitting any enemy of nature to enter.” Lockyer’s broadsheet also included case studies demonstrating the efficacy of his remedy "Mrs. Dixon suffered for two years at least with a griping, gnawing pain in the belly, and by the use of my Pills, and God's blessing upon it, was cured; For before she had taken of my Pills six times she had a live worm come from her by Siege, four yards long; the woman lives in Dead-man's Place in Southwark, near unto the Colledge Gate. Her age is about thirty-two years, the worm came from her the latter end of May, 1662. If any desire to see the worm I have it by me." He also relates the heart warming story of a young man who “told a friend of mine, that he had the POX, who gave him two boxes of pills, and in three weeks time he was perfectly cured, although he scarce went to bed sober all that time, and within three weeks time he married a wife, and both of them very well to this day."

Lockyer later added an appendix to his advertisement, a letter supposedly from a “Person of Quality” which discloses that on June 13, 1664 Lockyer calcined the powder for his pill before King Charles and the Court at Southampton House. It was this letter that drew the ire of George Starkey and drove him to compose the “smart Scourge” in which he poured scorn on Lockyer’s, or his correspondent’s, Latin “I will take notice first of your false Latine....for which I should take you to task as a rigid Paedogogue, and nake you untruss for the first fault, your Breech would be bloudy and too sore to sit on, if for all the lapses committed in that very short epistle you had (as you deserve) a several lash.”

Locker died in 1672 leaving a small fortune of £1900 in ready, the leases on four houses and a quarter share in a ship. As well as a lavish funeral and his ostentatious monument he left a sizeable amount towards charity. Even in death he could not resist one last chance to sell his pilulae and his epitaph is little more than an advertising opportunity;

     

Here Lockyer: lies interr'd enough: his name

Speakes one hath few competitors in fame:

A name soe Great, soe Generall't may scorne

Inscriptions whch doe vulgar tombs adorne.

A diminution 'tis to write in verse

His eulogies whch most mens mouths rehearse.

His virtues & his PILLS are soe well known

That envy can't confine them vnder stone.

But they'll surviue his dust and not expire

Till all things else at th'universall fire.

This verse is lost, his PILL Embalmes him safe

To future times without an Epitaph

Felo de se Part 2, suicide by arsenic: William George Williams (1829-1866), West Norwood Cemetery

Guy's Hospital

In December 1866 Sarjeant Payne, the City of London and Southwark Coroner assembled a jury At Guys Hospital to deliberate on the cause of death of a 37 year old Welshman who had been picked up by a policeman in the Blackfriars Road in Southwark ‘reeling’ and pleading to be taken some where to lie down. Mr Donne, the house surgeon, told the inquest that the deceased had been admitted to the hospital at around 5am on Tuesday 4 December suffering from the effects of arsenic poisoning. He vomited copiously before he finally died at 8am, his stomach contents confirmed the presence of arsenic as did the post mortem. The deceased had told one of the nurses, Mary Ann Shore that he had been drinking for a week, had taken half an ounce of the poison and had spent £500 of someone else’s money.  The Ward Sister, Mary Jane Reeves produced a pocket book which had been found on the deceased. If it were his, which seemed beyond doubt, it named him as W.G. Williams and gave his address as Clifton Road, Newport, Monmouthshire. Inside was a suicide note which pleaded his wife’s innocence of the crime of stealing the money and begged for her to be taken care of. Sarjeant Payne was told that the Stewards Office of the hospital had written to Newport asking for someone to officially identify the body but had as yet received no response. The inquest was adjourned until the following Friday.  A full account of the proceedings on the Friday was given in The Brecon Reporter and South Wales General Advertiser of Saturday 15 December;

“An inquest was held at Guy’s Hospital, Friday evening, respecting the death of a man, named William George Williams, aged 37 years. The evidence showed that on Tuesday morning last a policeman was on duty near the Surrey Chapel, in Blackfriars-road, when the deceased reeled towards him, and asked that he might be taken to some place where he could lie down. He said that he had swallowed half an ounce of white arsenic, and did not feel well. He then gave the policeman a paper labelled “white arsenic,’’ and said that he had bought the poison at Newport, in Monmouthshire, four years ago. At that time he intended to poison rats, not himself. The constable led him to the hospital, and on the way the deceased told him how he had been guilty of spending a large sum of money which was not his own. If the poison had not a fatal effect he knew that a serious charge would be preferred against him, and against others who were more to blame than himself. He described himself as a clerk to a commercial house in Newport, Monmouthshire, and said that if he “got over” the poison the policeman would find out all about the money which he had wrongly taken. The amount was £5OO. At times he seemed exceedingly anxious that his life might be saved, and said that scarcely knew what was doing when he took the poison. He was admitted to the hospital, and died there in about three hours. Before his death he repeated much of what had said to the constable, and added that he had been drinking for a week before attempting suicide. He had about him a pocket-book, in which he had written as follows: “This pocket-book belongs to W. G. Williams, clerk, Clifton-road, Newport, Monmouthshire. My wife is quite innocent. I mean to die Monday. My wife had none of the money. Please take care of her. I die the day of the Reform Bill demonstration.” Whilst he was lying in the hospital it was ascertained that he had a sister residing in Chelsea, and she was sent for. At the inquest she stated that she had not seen her brother for 10 years previously, and for that time his family had entirely lost sight of him. A letter from his wife was read, in which she described herself as being utterly destitute, and ignorant of any place where she might obtain bread. She was sure her husband could not have spent all the money he had taken away with him. Alter deliberating for some time the jury returned verdict of felo de se. The coroner issued his warrant for the burial the body of the deceased by torchlight, and between the hours of nine and twelve at night. The hospital authorities stated that they intended that the interment should take place at Norwood. It appears that the metropolitan police have received intimation that the deceased was “wanted’’ for having embezzled large sums of money.”

The Surrey Chapel in Blackfriars Road, Southwark where the dying Williams approached a policeman for help  

The authorities wasted no time in carrying out the burial. The inquest took place on the Friday evening according to all the newspapers, and William G Williams was buried the same night. A market cart was used to transport the coffin to West Norwood, leaving Guy’s at 9.00pm. The Daily News of Saturday 8 December carried a full account of midnight interment:  

“For the first time within a quarter of a century, Norwood Cemetery was, on Friday, at midnight, the scene of the burial without Christian rites of the corpse of a felo-de se. The coroner's jury, which, last evening at 6 o'clock, found that the commercial clerk, William George Williams, had committed the crime of self-murder, imposed upon Mr Serjeant Payne the necessity of issuing his warrant for the burial of the body by torchlight between that time and midnight. The last verdict of felo de-se returned at Guy's Hospital was in the case a person who died there twenty years ago, and on that occasion the horrible form of driving a stake into the body was gone through. The ghastly ceremony was performed in the burial-ground adjacent to the hospital, and it is said to have been almost the last instance in which that obsolete barbarism was witnessed in London. Lest the tradition should be, by any misconception, carried out in the present case, the coroner expressly ordered that no stake should be used. About nine o'clock last night a common market cart, drawn by an old horse, emerged from the hospital gates. The end of a deal coffin hung over the tailboard, and the name Williams, written on it with a bit of chalk, showed that it contained the body of the suicide. In the course of an hour the cart, with its burden, was drawn up on the highway, alongside a hedge at Norwood. The night watchman at the cemetery was called, and informed of the business on hand. The functionaries at the cemetery were just going to bed, and were completely taken by surprise by the production of the warrant for an immediate burial so late at night. Mr Gardiner, the superintendent, sent messengers to the neighbouring public house, and was fortunate enough to find two gravediggers there. These men were promptly set to work to dig a grave at the south-east corner of the cemetery, beneath some lime trees. When the grave was deep enough, the cart, which had been left out on the high road, was driven into the grounds. Three men unceremoniously lifted the coffin from the cart, and, guided by the flickering light of lanterns, carried it to the roughly-made grave. The excavation was longer than the coffin, and, at either end, near the bottom, a candle was stuck into the earth, where, screened from the wind, which blew strongly and whistled through the trees, they cast a sickly light upon the yellow clay. The coffin was launched into its place by means of ropes. The earth was instantly shovelled down and stamped in, the lights were put out, and all was over.”

As with the William Vellens case, Dr Forbes Winslow DCL, FRCP Edin., MRCP, MRCS, MD, the ‘suicide’s friend’, availed himself of the pages of the Pall Mall Gazette to express his disgust. “Permit me again through your influential journal to enter my earnest protest against such barbarities. Can the act of suicide be considered as a crime in the legal definition of the term? Is it an offence that can be properly deemed cognizable by the civil magistrate? The attempt to cast obloquy and disgrace on the body of a suicide is a most indefensible and unphilosophical proceeding. The wretched man by his own act has placed himself beyond the vengeance of the law. He has anticipated its operation and made himself amenable to the highest tribunal, viz., that of his Creator. No human penal enactments, however stringent they may be, can affect him. By verdicts of felo de se the innocent relations of the suicide are disgraced and branded with infamy, and that too often on evidence of an ex pare nature. It is monstrously unjust, inhuman, and unnatural that the law should so punish the innocent family of a man who in a moment of frenzy terminates his miserable existence. It was clearly established before the alteration of the law respecting suicide that the fear of being buried in a cross road and having a stake driven through the body had no obvious effect in decreasing the number of suicides. When a man in a sound state of mind contemplates an outrage of the law, the fear of punishment has in a majority of cases a deterrent effect. But the unhappy person who is driven by feelings of despair or mental anguish to lay violent hands upon his own life is not amenable to such influences.”

Forbes Benignus Winslow, author of "The Anatomy of Suicide" 

You in tyme shalbe even duste as we are now; Percival and Agnes Smalpace (died 1568/1588), St Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield

“On the south wall opposite Sir Robert Chamberlayne's is a curious monument of brown marble coloured black. It was erected by their children to Percival Smalpace and his wife in the year 1588. Their heads, in the style of Queen Elizabeth's reign, project from square compartments in the upper part.

During the reign of Queen Mary the Priory buildings had for a short time been occupied by the Dominicans, and Percival Smalpace had perhaps heard the exhortations of monks in black cloaks and white tunics from a seat just below the place whence he has for three hundred years seemed to stretch forward his head in impartial attention to every kind of sermon; to loyalty, as in the year just past, of Her Majesty's happy Jubilee; to treason sometimes, as on February 5th, 1645, when £1 12s. 4d. was collected for the army of the Parliament; to charity of all kinds, often; to forcible exposition; to dullness and obscurity; to brevity; to prolixity; to words which, had no effect; and to words which sent men away better than they came, and which may have continued to bear the plentiful harvest of good seed through several generations.

The inscription, after a quotation from the Latin Bible (Ecclesiasticu's xiv, 12) and some other texts, states that Percival Smalpace, Esquire, died September 2, 1568, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and is buried hard by, and that Agnes his wife, and daughter of John Tewbold, Esquire, died September 3, 1588.  They had two children, Michael and Thomas, by whom this monument was erected. Two English lines are curiously mixed with the Latin........

Behowlde youreselves by us, suche once were we as you
And you in tyme shalbe even duste as we are now.”

Norman Moore MD, Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Warden of the College of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital and Assistant Physician to the Hospital,

“The Church of St Bartholomew the Great, West Smithfield.” 1888

 

Percival Smalpace was a minor courtier, one of the clerks to the Board of Green Cloth, a board of officials named after the green baize cloth at which they worked. Their function was to audit the accounts of the Royal Household, made arrangements for Royal travel and to sit as a court judging offences committed within the precincts of the Royal palaces. The monument was originally on the south wall of the presbytery but was moved to a more prominent position in the quire in 1867. It was restored by a descendent Mr. Gilbert J. Smallpiece in 1897.  The image of the couple lying naked and dead etched onto the slate panel is unique.  

Un Suicide à la Guillotine - Frenchman kills himself in New Cross 1876

I assumed that William Vellens, the unemployed carpenter who killed himself in his Whitefriars lodgings in 1866 with a homemade guillotine, would be a unique case in the annals of London suicides. But I was wrong – a decade later an unemployed Frenchman, Francois Chere, built a more elaborate and more efficient guillotine than Vellen’s, one truly deserving of the name with grooved planks as runners for the weighted blade. Unlike Vellen’s, Chere apparently succeeded in decapitating himself. The story made the sensationalist front page of The Illustrated Police News with one of the melodramatic line drawings the paper was famous for. In contrast to Vellens’ case, where the inquest jury’s verdict was felo de se on the basis that his ingenuity in constructing the machine that killed him proved that he was fundamentally compos mentis, Chere was found to be of unsound mind:  

SUICIDE BY A GUILLOTINE. An inquest has been held on the body of Francois Auguste Chere, aged thirty-eight, a French artisan, of New Cross Road, London, who committed suicide under the following circumstances —Mr John Wilson stated that the deceased had lodged with him twelve months, and was apparently independent when he took the apartments. He was very quiet and respectable, and spent the greater part of his time over some engineering models, in which he intended carrying out improvements.  Latterly he seemed to be pressed for money, and a fortnight ago told witness that he was artisan who had saved money for the purpose of going into business, that his wife was killed during the bombardment of Paris five years ago, that his money was nearly gone, and that when he was penniless he should quit the world. A few days ago he brought home two large planks of wood and a large double-handled knife, such as is used by tanners for scraping the hair off skins, but no notice was taken of it, witness thinking they were for cutting up into models. Nothing was seen of him next day, and on the following morning his door was burst open, when it was discovered that he had committed suicide by cutting off his head with a guillotine. The two planks had been used as uprights, at the top of which the knife bad been placed. Grooves had been cut in the inner sides of the planks for the knife to run down easily, and two heavy stones were bound to the upper part of the knife to give it weight, and by means of the pulley he had drawn up the knife and let It fall on his throat, the head being cut clean off. Confirmatory evidence having been given, the jury returned a verdict of suicide whilst of unsound mind.

A trawl through Google revealed a number of other suicides conducted with homemade guillotines; the phenomenon is more common than I realised. This form of suicide, which appears to be confined mainly to Northern Europe (England, France and Germany) and the United States, seems to have started in the mid 19th century and has continued up until today. The most recent English suicide by DIY guillotine was of 36 year builder Boyd Taylor of Northumberland who spent three months building a guillotine in his bedroom before he killed himself with it. The 19th century French instances seem to have frequently made the front page of the Gallic equivalents of the Illustrated Police News, with depictions far more lurid than anything a British publisher have dared to put out. It is tempting to show you an example but this is The London Dead and not Les Morts de Paris and I have to draw the line somewhere.      

Felo-de-se Part One: the man who guillotined himself, William Vellens (1814-1866) City of London Cemetery

The burial of William Vellens as depicted in "The Wilds of London" by James Greenwood

The Coroner for Southwark and the City of London, Sarjeant  William Payne, was an unexpectedly youthful man, just 34, who wore a gold ring on his right hand inscribed with the Latin tag ‘Reverentia Legum’, revere the law. In 1866, he presided over the inquiry into two unusual suicides both of which led to the by then controversial verdict of felo-de-se, self murder. Until 1823 this verdict routinely resulted in the punishment of the offender by driving a stake through his heart and the burial of his corpse at a crossroads. It also meant the forfeiture of the suicide’s property to the crown leaving any dependents destitute. In practice most suicides were judged to be ‘temporarily insane’ a ruling which left their property and their rights to a Christian burial intact and only the worst cases, usually involving the suicide of a murderer or other criminal, were deemed to merit the punishment meted out to John Williams, the supposed Ratcliffe Highway murderer who killed himself in Coldbath Fields prison whilst awaiting trial. His corpse was paraded around the scenes of his crimes in East London accompanied by a silent crowd of 10,000. After being whipped and dropped onto his knees into an open grave at the crossroads of Canon and Cable Street, a stake was hammered through his back with the maul he had used to kill his victims. “As the blood stained maul thudded on the stake,” one commentator noted “the silence of the crowd was at last broken and the air became hideous with shouts and execrations.” These quaint practices ended when the 1823 Burial of Suicide Act allowed felo-de-se’s to be buried in the unconsecrated parts of churchyards and cemeteries, albeit without any form of religious service and only between the hours of 9pm and midnight.

On Thursday 29 March 1866 Sarjeant Payne opened an inquest at the Sussex Hotel, Bouverie Street, EC4. The hotel also owned the premises next door in which the body of one William Vellens, had been found two days earlier clutching a razor and with his head ‘nearly severed.’  Vellens, sometimes also known as Vollance or Voliance, was according to some accounts a German and by others an Englishman from Newcastle but all accounts agree that he was by trade a carpenter. He had lately fallen on hard times and was virtually living in penury. He was generally regarded as man of ‘sullen and eccentric habits’.   It emerged at the inquest that he was married but he had been living alone in an annexe to the hotel for about two years prior to his death.  Witnesses told the coroner that Vellens was generally sober and had always paid his rent when in work. He suffered from asthma and became so short winded that he couldn’t work for more than 15 minutes at a time. Unable to work he pawned his tools and when he had no tools left he took to begging off friends and acquaintances. He fell behind in his rent for the tiny garret room he occupied which was barely big enough for a narrow bed, a small cupboard and a bench.  The arrears coupled with the deceased’s habit of going around the house firing a large horse pistol led to the landlady serving him notice to quit the premises. The other boarders became concerned about his state of mind; a month previous to his suicide they were already so suspicious that he might try to do away with himself that when they hadn’t seen or heard from him for a few hours they broke down his door. Vellens reacted by calling the constable and getting them arrested. This incident coupled with his possession of the horse pistol made the occupants of the house reluctant to intervene further when he again disappeared a few weeks later. Eventually a brave soul was dispatched upstairs to knock on Vellens’ door.  He found a note in the deceased’s handwriting saying "Saturday. Gone, and will not be in until the afternoon. Leave your address in the bar, please."  As this was Tuesday the constable was sent for and when he was unable to rouse Vellens by knocking he tried to kick the door open, which proved difficult to do as someone had nailed it shut from the inside. When they did finally get the door open this was the sight that greeted them:

The lifeless body of the man was lying on a form, face upwards, with one leg hanging down, the head being nearly severed, and the right hand clenching a razor.— The floor was covered with dry, clotted blood, from which it is supposed that the act was committed nearly a week since. The arrangements for effecting his own death must have taken the deceased some time accomplish. A modern bedstead and a form were the chief articles of furniture in the room, in which was a small cupboard. The door of the cupboard was found open, with the bedstead placed near it, the former being fixed alongside. Vellens had employed a hatchet used in his trade, in which he bored a hole, but finding the leverage not suited to his purpose, he made another higher up the handle. This he fixed to the bedpost by a screw, and a piece of strong rope was then procured, to which was attached a heavy stone. The rope was then thrown over the cupboard door, the end being fastened on the one side and the stone hanging over the other. He must then have placed himself on his back on the form, raised the hatchet, and put his head so as to meet it when it fell. In this position he cut the rope with the razor, and the stone falling on the hatchet, his death must have been instantaneous.  

Belfast Morning News - Friday 30 March 1866

Sarjeant Payne summed up for the jury by telling them that this was one of the most determined cases of suicide which had come under his notice. He remarked that “the deceased had followed the French idea, and made a guillotine on a small scale.” As it was obvious that he had committed suicide the only question for the jury was the state of the deceased’s mind at the time. According to the newspaper accounts the jury deliberated for only a short time before delivering their verdict that the act had been committed whilst the deceased was in a sound state of mind. Sarjeant Payne had no choice but to enter a verdict of felo-de-se and order a night burial of the body without a religious service. He also ordered the dismantling and destruction of the homemade guillotine. 

The verdict did not go pass without critical comment. A week later Dr Forbes Winslow, the eminent psychiatrist and author of the groundbreaking 1840 treatise “Anatomy of Suicide” wrote to the Pall Mall Gazette to express his repugnance at the finding of the Coroners court. He objected to the finding that the deceased was of sound mind simply because he had “exhibited great mechanical skill, self-possession, and ingenuity in the mode by which he destroyed himself” He went on to point out that “design, method, great cleverness of a mechanical kind, self-possession, and cunning are constantly observed among the insane afflicted with suicidal monomania.”  The Dublin Medical Press concurred with Dr Winslow and commented that the “verdict of felo-de-se, under any circumstances, is a poor and pitiful mode of wreaking vengeance upon the remains of a human being who has passed beyond the reach of the law, and the only result can to inflict pain upon the feelings of survivors, who perhaps are sorrowful enough at the loss of a relative, or, it may be, are already humiliated by the sins or the misfortunes which led to the melancholy event.”

James Greenwood, the pioneering investigative journalist

who accompanied Vellens to the City of London Cemetery

Forbes Winslow’s letter to the press had been published in the Pall Mall Gazette edited by Frederick Greenwood. In a shameless display of nepotism Frank had employed his younger brother James on the paper and the young investigative reporter had scored a big hit the previous year when Frederick commissioned him to spend the night in the Lambeth workhouse and write up the experience. Frederick published Winslow’s letter because the brothers were already interested in Vellens’ case. James had hastily arranged to accompany the suicide to his burial, which happened with almost unseemly haste on the day on the inquest. James noted that the razor Vellens had used to cut the rope which dropped the weighted axe onto his throat was still in his right hand when the undertaker put him into the plain box coffin. Vellens final resting place was the City of London Cemetery in Manor Park where the jury had determined that “he should be flung into a hole at night-time, with no more ceremony than attends the throwing a dead dog into a ditch.”  James was invited to ride down to the cemetery on the hearse;

This however, I declined. It is unpleasant enough in all conscience to make a business jaunt to a graveyard, but to ride thither on a hearse at night - seated on the black, shiny roof; and holding on by the stumps that on ordinary occasions support the funereal plumes, was not to be thought of; especially as the journey was to Ilford, a dismal country road in part and ten miles from London. So I elected to go in a vehicle of my own choosing. They took "it" up punctually at the time appointed - Mr. Beadle and two men of the staff of the contracting undertaker who undertook the job. The box they put "it" in was composed of half a dozen unplaned boards scantily smeared with a blackish pigment and roughly nailed together. It was scarcely of the ordinary coffin shape even, and being without plate or inscription might have been carted to a railway with other luggage without exciting particular attention.. ... A pair of stout horses were attached to the hearse, and whirled it over the stones at a spanking rate, so that my coachman had some trouble at times in keeping it in sight - especially as it was so very black-horses, carriage, and men-and the moonlight but fitful, skulking behind cloud-banks sometimes for as long as two minutes together. I don't know how Mr. Beadle (being, as before hinted, a somewhat nervous man) found it on the hearse roof; with the felon's body within two planks' breadth of him, hurrying along the dark road, with the wind whistling across the bleak flat country. I know that I found it anything but satisfactory, and was not at all sorry to hear my man say, "I can see the Rabbits, sir; the Rabbits is the house where all these black jobs puts up for a freshener, sir."

The famous gates to the City of London Cemetery and Crematorium on Aldersbrook Road, Manor Park

The funeral party put up at the Rabbits, the closest pub to the cemetery gates and apparently patronised by visitors to the cemetery as well as gravediggers and other employees of the cemetery company. The coffin containing Vellens was left unceremoniously outside in the rain while the coach driver, beadle and Greenwood stood at the bar and engaged in banter with a gravedigger in clay stained corduroy trousers. The gravedigger knew nothing about the night burial and took some persuading to return to work and get the Lodge Keeper to open the gates and allow the burial party to pass. Once inside the cemetery;

....at a distance of more than a half mile from the entry, in the unconsecrated part, a hole was found. It was fortunate that at this time the moon struggled out of the clouds, otherwise there might have been some bungling, for, being but an amateur at felo-de-se burying, Mr. Beadle had forgotten all about the torches. Had it been pitch dark, with torrents of rain falling, the job would have to have been got through somehow. As it was, it was got through with neatness and despatch. The grave-digger was an old hand, and had his ropes about the box in a twinkling, and held one while the undertaker's men held the other. "Lower," said the grave-digger, and they lowered, and the box rested on the clay. Then the grave-digger threw a few shovelsful of earth on the box - enough to cover it - and replaced the planks over the hole, and we went away.

"Why didn't they cover him in entirely ?" I asked.

"What for? We couldn't spare a regular interment a grave all to himself; let alone one such as him," replied the grave- digger.

"But surely you won't put another body over his?"

"Surely we shall," answered the grave-digger. "Not a Christian, you know," he hastened to explain -"one of them sects what don't care about being buried in consecrated ground. Why, what's the odds? He's as good as they are now anyhow, if he wasn'efore."

And discussing kindred matters, the hearse bowled out of the cemetery, and once more we put up at the Rabbits, where the party invited the grave-digger to the social glass and the friendly pipe, and, the undertaker's men as well as the grave-digger being well versed in sepulchral lore, quite a jolly hour ensued, when, hey for London! with our noble work accomplished, and the law's majesty and dignity vindicated.

James Greenwood’s story “At the earthing of a felo-de-se” was later published in his book “The Wilds of London” (1874).