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PC Lew Tassell in 1969

My pal Lew Tassell and I decided to take advantage of the October sunlight to enjoy a gentle perambulation around Lew’s old stomping ground from the days when he was an officer in the City of London Police, and he told me stories of his time in the constabulary.

“Until recently Liverpool Street Arcade was a busy cut-through between Old Broad St and Liverpool St but now it is closed for redevelopment. The Arcade sits directly over the Metropolitan line which was originally a steam railway. Once the line switched to electric trains, they built over the station and the Arcade was opened on 11th March 1912. In the eighties, the Arcade was due to be demolished but, due to a petition of over 6,000 people, it was saved.

When I joined the City of London Police in 1969, and throughout my uniform years, one of my duties when working a night duty shift at Bishopsgate Police Station was to inspect the Arcade and it’s glazed roof.

The Arcade was locked from early evening until early morning. At about 2.00am every morning, a pair of officers collected a set of keys at Bishopsgate to open the Liverpool Street entrance, then we unlocked a door halfway down the Arcade with stairs that led to the roof. Next, we searched the whole of the roof above the shops to see if there was anything untoward, not that there ever was.”

“The church hall for St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate is a nineteenth century school room and former livery hall of the Worshipful Company of Fan Makers. At the front, there are two niches containing painted figures of charity children made of Coade stone.

When I was a detective at Bishopsgate Police Station in the early seventies, I was called to the church hall. The two figures had been stolen. They had been removed from the niches but were fortunately recovered nearby. As the figures had some value, I completed a crime report and the niches remained empty whilst the recovered figures were stripped of paint, cleaned and placed inside the hall. Replicas now stand in the niches at the front.

My other association with St Botolph’s is that my marriage banns were read here since I was living in Bishopsgate Police Station at the time.”

“Quite often when working a night shift at Bishopsgate in the seventies I would be assigned to place ‘cotton marks’ inside the entrance to a courtyard or alleyway that led to a dead end.

I stretched the cotton across the entrance about a couple of feet off the ground and checked later to see if it had been broken during the early hours, before any deliveries were made.

Many burglaries during this period were committed by ‘climbers’ who clamberd up drainpipes to enter buildings at night. They gaind access to all buildings from the roofs in the block by jumping across the narrow gaps between the buildings.

The picture here is of Brabant Court where I remember laying cotton marks. This courtyard houses an old building at no.4 which was built in 1710.”

“Walking the beat alone at night can be quite lonely especially in the early hours. I found you make quite a bit of noise in the stillness as you stroll through the empty streets. So I would often find an out of the way spot on my beat to sit and listen.

My favourite spot was the churchyard of St Olave’s where the gateway was usually left unlocked.

The church has a fascinating history. It’s most famous worshipper being Samuel Pepys whose tomb is inside the church. The Great Plague of 1665 is said to have broken out close by and 300 victims were buried in the churchyard, including Mary Ramsay who was widely blamed for bringing the disease to London.

I cannot help thinking that the reason the churchyard is raised, to the degree that you have to walk down steps to enter the church, is due to what lies beneath. Yet I never found it spooky, just peaceful and beautiful.

The church was hit by an incendiary bomb in 1941 and the heat from the fire melted the bells. In the early fifties, this metal was recast into new bells by the same foundry that created the originals, the Whitechapel Bell Foundry.”

“Charles Dickens in ‘The Uncommercial Traveller’ refers to the gateway and churchyard of St Olave’s as ‘one of my best beloved churchyards, I call the churchyard of Saint Ghastly Grim.’

He recalls visiting the churchyard after midnight during a thunderstorm and seeing the skulls on the gateway ‘having the air of a public execution.'”

“Close to Tower Hill station stands quite a large section of Roman Wall, although the higher parts were added during medieval times.

In the seventies, the wall was not as appreciated as it is today. Whilst patrolling I often walked through or past it and it was surrounded with what I recall was nothing more than wasteland.

Today it is well preserved with raised walkways and has become a feature of the City of London. But the downside is that it is now surrounded by large buildings, some built within inches of the wall itself.”

“The Still & Star is boarded up and remains one of the last undeveloped plots in Aldgate. Its future is uncertain. Tucked away from the hustle and bustle, Little Somerset St leads from Aldgate to Mansell St which is the boundary of the City of London. This was where I used to patrol when walking to Tower Bridge or Shorter Street, a traffic control point at the end of the Minories.

I always felt I was in the proper East End when taking this route past the pub and just around the corner was a seedy snooker hall that always seemed to be busy. Both gone now.”

Another tale of burglary in the City, this time at the Aquascutum shop on the corner of Gracechurch St and Leadenhall Market. In the seventies I was called to the shop when there was a break-in.

Whilst examining the crime scene, I noticed a pile of brick foundations in the basement which was being used as a storeroom. Piles of boxes were scattered all around the brickwork.

‘Oh that’s part of the Roman Wall’ I was informed. At the time, I did not know the Wall existed here and it was fascinating to see it. Today the shop is a hair salon.”

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On the Beat with PC Lew Tassell

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Any readers from out of town who are preparing a visit to the capital this summer might like to read these excerpts from The Stranger’s Guide, exposing all the frauds of London, that I found in the archive at the Bishopsgate Institute.

The Countryman arrived in London.

Beaten by bullies & robbed.

Escaped & chased by watchmen.

Returned home gives a queer account of London.

BAWDS – Beware, young women, of those who, without any knowledge, pretend to be acquainted with you, your families and friends. This is an old bait to entice young women to their den to be devoured by the ravenous wolves to whom the bawd is a provider. Beware, ye unthinking young men, of receiving letters of assignation to meet at her house, for such letters are calculated to ensnare you and bring you to misery and destroy your health, fame and fortune. Avoid, ye countrymen and women, the pretended friendships of strangers that welcome you to town upon the arrival of the coach and that accost you at the inns, as they generally attend there for that purpose. If you once permit them to converse with you, they will by their artful  speeches, so far ingratiate themselves into your good graces as the engage your belief, get the better of your resolutions  and at length bring  you, by listening to their stories, to ruin and destruction.

BULLIES – Are dependent upon bawds & whores, sometimes the bully pretends to be the husband of the whore, whose bread he eats, whose quarrel he fights, and at whose call he is ready to do as commanded. It is very common for these women to bring home a gentleman and on entering the house ask the maid in a whisper if her master is at home. The maid according to former instructions replies, “No, he is gone out of town and will not return until tomorrow.” Upon which the gentleman is invited in and entertained with a story of the bully’s jealousy and the whore’s constancy. When the gentleman expresses a desire to leave and the bill being called for, he finds fault with the change, then the maid enters and says her master is below and immediately the bully appears and demands to know the gentleman’s business there – if means to debauch his wife? He then blusters and talks about bringing an action but at length is pacified by the bill being discharged.

DUFFERS –  These are a set of men that play upon the credulity of both sexes, by plying at the corner of streets, courts and alleys, their contraband wares, which generally consist of silk handkerchiefs made in Spitalfields, remnants of silk purchased at the piece brokers, which they tell you are true India, and stockings from Rag Fair or Field Lane, sometimes stolen, sometimes bought at very low prices, which they declare are just smuggled in from France, and therefore can afford to give you a bargain, if you will become the purchaser. On the other hand, should you not purchase, you will get abused and your pocket picked, at which they are very dexterous. Or, should you give them money to change, they tell you they will step to the public house to get it changed and come again in an instant. Then you see them enter the house and discover later, upon enquiry, they have escaped by the back door, to your great loss and mortification.

FORTUNE TELLERS & CONJURERS –  Almost all countries abound with these vermin. In London, we have several very famous in the Astrological Science, who pretend to a knowledge of future events by observations of the celestial signs of the zodiac. The better to carry on their delusions, they can tell you whether your life will be happy or miserable, rich or poor, fruitful or barren, and thousand incidents to please your fancy and raise your curiosity, insinuating at the same time (if they think you have money about you) that much good awaits you, therefore they must have a greater price for their intelligence. Who would not give or guinea, nay two – say they for the completion of their wishes, be it wisdom or wealth,  rather than a half a crown to learn that they might live in folly and poverty the rest of their lives?

FOOTPADS –  Are so numerous and so often described in the public papers that little new light can be thrown upon them and their practices. Daring insolence and known-down arguments are generally their first salute, after which they rifle your pockets and, if you have but little of value about you, they often maim or violently bruise you for want of that you are not in possession of. These shocking acts of these rapacious sons of plunder call for the interference of the magistracy to put a stop to their daring and consummate impudence as they exhibit, in and about the metropolis, skulking in bye-lanes, desolate places, hedges and commons, in order to waylay the unsuspecting stranger or countryman.

GAMBLERS – There are so many methods of gambling as there are trades and they move in so many spheres, from the most noble dukes and duchesses to the most abandoned chimney-sweeper, pretenders to honour and honesty, versed in various tricks and arts, by which many among the nobility and the gentry have squandered away their fortunes for the occupation of a Complete Gambler or in the true sense of the word, an Expert Gambler. The better to put you on guard against this villainy, I will mention several of the most fashionable and alluring passtimes at which various methods of deluding and cheating are practiced with some success, viz. gaming houses and horse races, cock-fighting, bowling, billiards, tennis, pharo, rouge et noir, hazard &c. together with routs, assemblies, masquerades and concerts, of a particular or private nature. In the latter of these, you will find notorious gamblers of the female sex, who deal in art and deception, as well as some more notorious male cheats who barter one commodity for another without a reference of credit or making it a debt of honour.

HANGERS-ON – These are a set of men of an indolent life, who rather than labour to gain a livelihood, will submit to any meanness that they may eat the bread of idleness. There are many kinds, some pretending to understand the sciences, others the arts, some set up for authors, others wits and the like. Hangers-on will eat or drink with you wherever you stay but will never offer to pay a farthing, however in lieu thereof, they will tell you an indecent story or sing you the latest lewd song. These you will easily find out and may easily get rid of by not treating or encouraging them upon your arrival.

HIGHWAYMEN – Are desperate and resolute persons who having spent their patrimony or lavished their substance upon whores and gamesters, take to the road, in order to retrieve their broken fortunes and either recoup them by meeting with good booty or end their lives in Newgate. The best means to avoid highwaymen is not to travel by night and in be cautious in displaying money, banknotes or other valuables at the inns you put up at, and be careful what company you join for fear they learn of whither you are going and for what purpose – if to pay or receive money, they will almost certainly waylay and rob, if not murder you.

JILTS – Are ladies of easy virtue, who, through an hypocritical sanctity of manners, and pretensions to virtue and religion, draw the countryman and inexperienced cit into their clutches. Of all whores, the jilt is the most to be avoided – for knowing more than others, she is capable of doing more mischief.

KIDNAPPERS or CRIMPS –  A set of men of abandoned principles, who having lavished away their fortunes enter into the pay of the East India Company, in order to recruit their army – and, in time of war, when a guinea or two is advertised to be given to any person that brings a proper man, of five feet eight or nine inches high, these kidnappers lie in wait in different places of rendezvous, in order to entrap men for money.

RING-DROPPERS – These are a set of cheats, who frequently cheat simple people, both from the country and in London, out of their money, but most commonly practice their villainous arts upon young women. Their method is to drop a ring just before such persons come up, when they accost them thus, “Young woman, I have found a ring and I believe it is gold for it has a stamp upon it.” Immediately, an accomplice joins in, who being asked the question replies, “It is gold.” “Well” says the formers, “As this young woman saw me pick it up, she has the right to half of it.” As it often happens that the young person has but a few shillings in her pocket,  the dropper says, “If you have a mind for the ring, you shall have it for what you have got in your pocket and whatever else you can give me,” which sometimes turns out to be a good handkerchief, cloak or other article. The deluded creature then shows the ring to another person in the street who informs her she is cheated by sharpers and the ring is not worth tuppence, being only brass gilt with a false stamp put on the deceive the unwary.

PICK-POCKETS – There are more pick-pockets in and about London than in all Europe besides, that make a trade and what they call a good living by their employment. The opera, playhouses, capital auctions, public gardens &c swarm with them. And, of late years, they have introduced themselves into our very churches and more particularly Methodist meetings. Therefore it would be prudent, when in a crowd, to keep one hand on your money and the other on your watch, when you find anyone push against you. Pocket books are only secure in the inside pocket with the coat buttoned and watch chains should be run through a small loop contrived for the purpose of securing the watch in the fob.

QUACKS – These  are a set of vile wretches who pretend to be versed in physic and surgery, without education, or even knowledge of a common recipe. If they think the patient is able to pay handsomely, they make them believe their case is desperate and generally turn them out worse than they find them.

SETTERS – These are a dangerous set of wretches who are capable of committing any villainy, as well by trapping a rich heir into matrimony with a cast-off mistress as by coupling a young heiress to a notorious sharper, down to the lowest scene of setting debtors for the bailiff and his followers. Smitten at the first glance of a lady, you resign your heart and hand at discretion, which she immediately accepts, on a presumption that delays are dangerous. The conjugal knot being tied, you find the promised and wished-for land, houses and furniture, the property of another and not of yourself.

SMUGGLERS – These are a numerous race of people that have no other way of living than following the illegal practice of smuggling. Two different gangs are concerted in carrying on this wicked business, the first to import the goods from abroad and the other to dispose of them when landed, but if the first were taken and punished as they deserve, the latter would fall of course.

WAGON HUNTERS – These are errant thieves, that ply in the dusk of the evening to rob the wagons upon their arrival. They are equally skillful in cutting away portmanteaus, trunks and boxes from behind chaises &c, if not thoroughly watched, which is the duty of every driver to take care of, by attending to the vehicle under his charge and giving a good look-out.

Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute

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On the morning of 4th September 1724, an inconsequential thief named Jack Sheppard was to be hung at Tyburn for stealing three rolls of cloth, two silver spoons and a silk handkerchief. But instead of the routine execution of another worthless felon, London awoke to the astonishing news that he had escaped from the death cell at Newgate.

With the revelation that this was the third prison break in months by the handsome boyish twenty-two year old Jack Sheppard, he flamed like a comet into the stratosphere of criminality – embodying the role of the charismatic desperado to such superlative effect that his colourful reputation for youthful defiance gleams in the popular imagination two centuries later.

In the spring, he broke out through the roof of St Giles Roundhouse, tossing tiles at his guards. In the summer, with his attractive companion Elizabeth Lyon, he climbed through a barred window twenty-five feet above the ground to escape from New Bridewell Prison, Clerkenwell. And now he had absconded from Newgate too, using a metal file smuggled in by Elizabeth and fleeing in one of her dresses as disguise. Sheppard was a popular sensation, and everyone was fascinated by the inexplicable mystery of his unique talent for escapology.

Spitalfields’ most notorious son, Jack Sheppard, was born in Whites Row on 4th March 1702 and christened the very next day at St Dunstan’s in Stepney, just in case his infant soul fled this earth as quickly as it arrived. Unexceptionally for his circumstances and his time, death surrounded him – named for an elder brother that died before his birth, he lost his father and his sister in infancy. When his mother could not feed him, she gave him to the workhouse in Bishopsgate at the age of six, from where he was indentured to a cane chair maker, until he died too. Eventually at fifteen years old, he was apprenticed to a carpenter in Covent Garden, following his father’s trade, but at age twenty he met Elizabeth Lyon, his partner in crime, at the Black Lion in Drury Lane, a public house frequented by criminals and the infamous Jonathan Wild, known as the “Thief-taker General.”

On 10th September 1724, Sheppard was rearrested after his break-out from Newgate and returned there to a high security cell in the Stone Castle, where he was handcuffed and fettered, then padlocked in shackles and chained down in a chamber that was barred and locked. Yet with apparent superhuman ability – inspiring the notion that the devil himself came to Sheppard’s assistance – he escaped again a month later and enjoyed a very public fortnight of liberty In London, eluding the authorities in disguise as a dandy and carousing flamboyantly with Elizabeth Lyon, until arrested by Jonathan Wild,  buying everyone drinks at midnight at a tavern in Clare Market, Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Back in Newgate – now the most celebrated criminal in history – hundreds daily paid four shillings to visit Sheppard in his cell, where he enjoyed a drinking match with Figg the prizefighter and Sir Henry Thornhill painted his execution portrait.

Two hundred thousand people turned out for Jack Sheppard’s hanging on 16th November, just two months since he came to prominence, and copies of his autobiography ghostwritten by Daniel Defoe were sold. Four years later, John Gay’s “The Beggar’s Opera,” with the character of Macheath modelled upon Sheppard and Peachum based upon his nemesis Jonathan Wild, premiered with spectacular success. Biographical pamphlets and dramas proliferated, with Henry Ainsworth’s bestseller of 1839 “Jack Sheppard” – for which George Cruikshank drew these pictures – outselling “Oliver Twist.” Taking my cue from William Makepeace Thackeray, who wrote that, “George Cruikshank really created the tale and Mr Ainsworth, as it were, merely put words to it,” I have published these masterly  illustrations here as the quintessential visual account of the life of Spitalfields’ greatest rogue.

And what was the secret of his multiple prison breaks?

There was no supernatural intervention. Sheppard had outstanding talent as a carpenter and builder, inherited from his father and grandfather who were both carpenters before him and developed during the six years of his apprenticeship. With great physical strength and a natural mastery of building materials, he possessed an intimate understanding of the means of construction of every type of lock, bar, window, floor, ceiling and wall – and, in addition to this, twenty-two year old Jack Sheppard had a burning appetite to wrestle whatever joy he could from his time of splendour in the Summer of 1724.

Mrs Sheppard refuses the adoption of her little son Jack

Jack Sheppard exhibits a vindinctive character.

Jack Sheppard committing the robbery in Willesden church.

Jack Sheppard gets drunk and orders his mother off.

Jack Sheppard’s escape from the cage at Willesden.

Mrs Sheppard expostulates with her son.

Jack Sheppard and Blueskin in Mr Wood’s bedroom.

Jack Sheppard in company with Elizabeth Lyon escapes from Clerkenwell Prison.

The audacity of Jack Sheppard.

Jack Sheppard visits his mother in Bedlam.

Jack Sheppard escaping from the condemned cell in Newgate.

The first escape.

Jack Sheppard tricking Shortbolt, the gaoler.

The second escape.

Jonathan Wild seizing Jack Sheppard at his mother’s grave in Willesden.

Jack Sheppard sits for his execution portrait in oils by Sir James Thornhill  – accompanied by  Figg the prizefighter (to Jack’s right), John Gay, the playwright (to Jacks’s left), while William Hogarth sketches him on the right.

Jack Sheppard’s irons knocked off in the stone hall in Newgate.

Jack Sheppard  of Spitalfields (Mezzotint after the Newgate portrait by Sir James Thornhill, 1724) – “Yes sir, I am The Sheppard, and all the gaolers in the town are my flocks, and I cannot stir into the country but they are at my heels baaing after me…”

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Lenny Hamilton, Jewel Thief

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Click to enlarge this print, reproduced courtesy of V&A Museum

Biographer Julian Woodford, author of ‘The Boss of Bethnal Green’, will be telling the breathtakingly appalling story of Joseph Merceron on Tuesday 2nd May 6pm at the Hanbury Hall in Hanbury St where Merceron was baptised in 1764.

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Merceron was the East End’s first corrupt politician and also the East End’s first gangster, ruling Spitalfields and Bethnal Green for fifty years through the end of the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century.

Today Julian Woodford outlines the tale of James Hadfield, mysterious would-be assassin of George III, revealing how his pistol found its way into the hands of Merceron and where it is today.

When I talk about how Joseph Merceron ruled the East End for half a century, I am often asked ‘How did he get away with it?’ It is a question I could not answer until I discovered that he owned a gun which almost changed English history.

In 1795, Merceron used his position of influence in Bethnal Green to become a magistrate. Just weeks afterwards, King George III’s carriage windows were shattered by an angry mob as he travelled to open Parliament and Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger launched a ‘reign of terror’ with laws forbidding public assembly or publication of ‘seditious writings.’ Secretly, the Home Office also set up an extensive spy network in the East End administered by the local magistrates and their clerks.

During the early seventeen-nineties, in the wake of the French Revolution, radical societies sprang up across London – especially in the East End. Their members agitated for universal suffrage or, in more extreme, cases a revolution of their own. Over the next few years, Pitt’s ‘Gagging Acts’ were applied with increasing severity and the Home Office spies busied themselves in infiltrating radical societies. Democratic activists and mutineering sailors were rounded up and incarcerated without trial at Coldbath Fields Prison in Clerkenwell.

The ritual abuse they suffered at the hands of the Prison Governor, Thomas Aris, was ignored or even encouraged by Merceron and his fellow magistrates. But when the prisoners’ plight was raised in Parliament by the radical MP Sir Francis Burdett, it became the subject of a national scandal that rocked the Pitt government and damaged the credibility of the Middlesex magistrates.

Then, in the spring of 1800, came an act of terror that appeared to justify Pitt’s harsh conservatism. James Hadfield was a British soldier who had suffered horrendous head wounds in the Napoleonic Wars, and been captured and tortured by the French. Released in a prisoner exchange but traumatised to the point of insanity and unfit for further service, Hadfield was simply turned onto the London streets. Here he encountered an itinerant preacher named Bannister Truelock, who persuaded Hadfield he could trigger the Second Coming of Christ – he just needed to shoot the King and die in the attempt.

On 15th May 1800, Hadfield bought an old flintlock pistol from a pawnbroker and made his way to Drury Lane Theatre, where George III was due to attend a Royal Command Performance. As the King took a bow from the Royal Box, Hadfield pulled out his pistol and fired, narrowly missing his Majesty. Despite a lengthy investigation and an apparemt attempt by the government to rig the jury, Hadfield was acquitted of murder on the grounds of insanity, setting an important legal precedent. Instead of being executed, he was committed to the Bethlehem hospital in Moorfields where he spent the next forty-one years writing poems to his pet squirrels.

You might wonder what the connection is to The Boss of Bethnal Green? In 2006, when I started researching my book, I traced Joseph Merceron’s descendants and met his great-great-great grandson Daniel, who showed me an ancient tin box full of Merceron’s papers. This was enough to make my journey worthwhile, but I was dumbstruck when Daniel walked back into the room brandishing an old flintlock pistol and casually announced that – according to family lore – it had once belonged to The Boss and was used in an assassination attempt on George III at Drury Lane in 1800.

That was all Daniel knew and, although I remembered James Hadfield’s story, I could not think how Joseph Merceron could possibly have been involved. Just an hour’s research on the internet uncovered the answer. The transcript of Hadfield’s trial revealed the key prosecution witness was Major Wright, a solicitor of Wellclose Sq and clerk to the Tower Hamlets magistrates. He was a significant figure in Merceron’s circle and closely linked to the Home Office spy network. At Drury Lane, the Major had been sitting within arm’s reach of Hadfield and collared him with his weapon after the event. Among the trial papers are letters from Home Office spies claiming that Hadfield and Truelock were members of the London Corresponding Society which had infiltrated army regiments, including Hadfield’s 15th Light Dragoons.

Remarkably, Major Wright was allowed to keep the pistol as a souvenir. Yet his will lists a print of the assassination attempt among his effects not the gun, which had given to his master – Joseph Merceron. Based on the evidence, I believe Major Wright was secretly tailing James Hadfield on behalf of the Home Office, but it did not suit the government to blow his cover at Hadfield’s trial.

This anecdote offers the explanation for the astonishing longevity of Joseph Merceron’s career as the Godfather of Regency London. Despite being responsible for appalling corruption on a vast scale, he was the devil-the-government-knew, manning the front line in the East End for William Pitt’s ‘war on sedition.’ Merceron owned and licensed many of the pubs where the radical societies met. Merceron’s clerks were actively involved in running spies and, despite repeated attempts to prosecute him during his first three decades in power, the government repeatedly refused to do so and it was only in 1818 – well after the end of the Napoleonic Wars – that he was finally brought to trial and jailed briefly.

James Hadfield’s pistol – the gun that nearly changed history

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The Boss of Bethnal Green

In Search of The Boss of Bethnal Green

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Joseph Merceron was the East End’s first corrupt politician and also the East End’s first gangster, ruling Spitalfields and Bethnal Green for fifty years through the end of the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century. Yet he was also an exploitative developer who built swathes of substandard housing, which ultimately led to cholera outbreaks and contributed to the human catastrophe of poverty and overcrowding in the nineteenth century East End.

Birthplace of Joseph Merceron “On Sunday 29th January 1764, Joseph Merceron was born on Brick Lane, which formed the boundary between the parishes of Spitalfields and its eastward neighbour Bethnal Green. His parents were James Merceron, a Huguenot pawnbroker and former silk weaver, and his second wife Ann. The Mercerons had three other children: Annie, Joseph’s two-year-old sister, John, almost thirteen, and Catherine, eight, the latter two being the surviving offspring from James’s first marriage.”

“Joseph was christened at the local Huguenot church known as La Patente, in Brown’s Lane (the building and lane are now known as Hanbury Hall and Hanbury Street) just a short walk from his parents’ house. The Mercerons, like other Huguenot families in the area, clung tightly to their nationality. Joseph’s details in the register of baptisms – the first recorded at La Patente for 1764 – were entered in French, which many families still insisted on speaking out of respect for their ancestors.”

“On the corner of Fournier Street stands the Jamme Masjid, since 1976 one of London’s largest mosques. For much of the twentieth century it was a synagogue, and before that it spent a decade as a Methodist chapel. Originally, before a brief occupation by the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews, it was a Huguenot church. High on a wall is the date of its completion, 1743, and a sundial with its motto: Umbra Sumus (‘we are shadows’).”

“The Merceron pawnshop at 77 Brick Lane was at the epicentre of this district, among a row of ramshackle buildings directly opposite Sir Benjamin Truman’s imposing and famous Black Eagle brewery. The Black Eagle was one of the largest breweries in the world. To those living opposite, the mingled odours of yeast, malt and spilt beer – not to mention the steaming output of the many dray horses – must have been overpowering, even by the pungent standards of the times. The noise, too, was tremendous, as the shouts of draymen punctuated the rumble of horse-drawn carriages and carts up and down the lane.”

“The judge had ordered the execution to take place several miles away at Tyburn, the usual site of such events in London, but the master weavers – keen to dispose of Valline and Doyle in front of their own community to discourage further loom cutting – lobbied successfully to change the location to ‘the most convenient place near Bethnal Green church’. Several thousand people assembled outside The Salmon & Ball to see Valline and Doyle hang. Bricks and stones were thrown during the assembly of the gallows. They protested their innocence to the end, but to no effect. Doyle’s last words were enough to ignite an already explosive situation. As soon as the hanging was over, the crowd tore down the gallows and surged back to Spitalfields…”

“On 26th October 1795, Joseph Merceron donned his magistrate’s wig and robes and climbed the steps of the imposing Sessions House on Clerkenwell Green for his first Middlesex Sessions meeting. This was a world away from Brick Lane. The Sessions House, built in the aftermath of the Gordon Riots, was awe-inspiring and was said to rival any courthouse in England.”

“St John on Bethnal Green was built by the eminent architect Sir John Soane but budgetary constraints led to his grand design for a steeple being aborted, replaced with a stunted tower of particularly phallic design that rapidly became a source of bawdy amusement throughout the neighbourhood. Merceron was outraged. Announcing that the design had ‘mortified and disappointed the expectations of almost every individual’, he ordered Brutton to write to complain. The task put Brutton in an acutely awkward position: how to explain the exact nature of the problem? The vestry clerk’s literary skills were tested to the limit as he described the tower’s ‘abrupt termination in point of altitude’ that made it ‘an object of low wit and vulgar abuse’.”

“All the great and good of London’s East End were there. Twenty thousand people, packed six deep in places along the Bethnal Green Road, had turned out to see the cortège on its way to St Matthew’s church. Just before one o’clock the procession arrived, at a sedate walking pace. The jet-black horses, with their sable plumes, were blinkered to prevent anything from distracting the stately progress of the hearse. Merceron was the original ‘Boss’ of Bethnal Green, the Godfather of Regency London, controlling its East End underworld long before celebrity mobsters such as the infamous Kray twins made it their territory. His funeral at the church of St Matthew, Bethnal Green – the very same church where the Krays’ funerals would be held more than 150 years later – reflected his importance: it was by far the biggest event to take place at the church since it was established in the 1740s.”

Tomb of Peter Renvoize “His closest ally and childhood friend, Peter Renvoize, was repeatedly elected as churchwarden for much of this period, from which position he helped Merceron pull off his most audacious financial coup yet. Bethnal Green’s share of the government relief grant was £12,200, equivalent to almost three times the annual poor’s rates raised by the parish. Having obtained the money, Merceron appointed himself chairman of a committee, with four of his closest associates, including Renvoize, to manage its distribution. What happened next is difficult to determine. But it is clear that, five months after the government had advanced the funds, there were several thousand pounds sitting in Merceron’s own account.”

“As for Joseph Merceron, lying buried in the shadow of the vestry room he dominated for half a century, there is one last strange episode to recount. In the afternoon sunshine of Saturday 7th September, 1940, as millions of Londoners sat down to their tea, the ‘Blitz’ began. Bethnal Green suffered terribly, and in the carnage St Matthew’s church took a direct hit from an incendiary bomb. Next morning it was a roofless, burnt out shell, but two gravestones survived the bombing intact. The first, outside the main entrance to the church, is that of Merceron’s old friend Peter Renvoize. About twenty paces away, a large pink granite slab, surrounded by a low iron rail in the shelter of the south wall of the church, is the grave of Joseph Merceron and his family. He spent a lifetime cheating the law, somehow it is fitting that he should have cheated the Luftwaffe too.”

“Merceron Houses, erected in 1901 by the East End Dwellings Company on land formerly part of Joseph Merceron’s garden in Bethnal Green.”

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Roy looking sharp in the fifties – “I class myself as an Hoxtonite”

The great goodsyard in Bishopsgate is an empty place these days, home to a pop-up shopping mall of sea containers and temporary football pitches, but Roy Wild knew it in its heyday as a busy rail depot teeming with life and he still keeps a model of the Scammell Scarab that he once drove there as a talisman of those lost times.

A vast nineteenth century construction of brick and stone, the old goodsyard housed railway lines on multiple levels and was a major staging point for freight, with deliveries of fresh agricultural produce coming in from East Anglia to be sold in the London wholesale markets and sent out again across the country. Today only the fragmentary Braithwaite arches of 1839 and the exterior wall of the former Bishopsgate Station remain as the hint of the wonders that once were there.

Roy knew it not as the Bishopsgate Goodsyard but in the familiar parlance of railway workers as ‘B Gate,’ and B Gate remains a fabled place for him. By their very nature, railways are places of transition and, for Roy Wild, B Gate won a permanent place in his affections as the location of formative experiences which became his rite of passage into adulthood.

“At first, after I left school at fifteen, I went to work for City Electrical in Hoxton and I was put as mate with a fitter named Sid Greenhill. One of the jobs they took on was helping to build the Crawley new town. We had to get the bus to London Bridge, take the train to East Croydon and change to another near Gatwick Airport – which didn’t really exist yet. It was a schlep at seven o’clock in the morning all through the winter, but I stuck it for eighteen months.

My dad, Andy, was a capstan operator for the London & North Eastern Railway at the Spitalfields Empty Yard in Pedley St off Vallance Rd, so I said to him, ‘Can’t you get a job for me where you work?’ He said, ‘There’s nothing going at the moment but I can get you a place at B Gate.’

In 1953, at sixteen and a half, I started as van boy for Dick Wiley in the cartage department at B Gate. The old drivers had worked with horses, they were known as ‘pair-horse carmen’ or ‘single-horse carmen’ and, in the late forties when the horses were done away with and the depot became mechanised, the men were all called in and given three-wheeled Scammell Scarabs and licences, no driving tests in those days. There was a fleet of two hundred of them at B Gate and although strictly, as van boys, we weren’t allowed to drive, we flew around the depot in them.

Our round was Stoke Newington and we’d be given a ticket which was the number of your container and a delivery note of anything up to twenty-five destinations. Then we’d have lunch at a small goods yard at Manor Rd, Stoke Newington, and in the afternoon we’d do collections, picking up parcels and taking them back to B Gate, from where they’d be delivered by rail around the country.

I decided I wanted to work with George Holman, a driver who was known as ‘Cisco’ on account of his swarthy features which made him look Mexican. He was an East Ender like me, rough and ready, and always larking about. His round was Rotherhithe which meant driving through the tunnel and he was a bit of a lunatic behind the wheel. Each morning after the round, he would drop me off at my mum’s in Northport St for lunch and pick me up again at 2pm. One day, we had to go back through ‘the pipe’ as they called the tunnel in Mile End and he said to me, ‘You take it through the tunnel, you know how it works.’ I was only seventeen but I drove that great big truck through the tunnel without any harm whatsoever.

Next I went to work with Bill Scola, a driver from Bethnal Green – the deep East End. He used to do Billingsgate, Spitalfields, Borough, Covent Garden, Brentford and Nine Elms Markets. Bill was a rascal and I was nineteen by then. We were doing a bit of skullduggery and I was told that the British Transport Police were watching me, so I said to Bill, ‘Things are getting too hot,” and I left it alone completely.

Then, one day we were having breakfast with at least a dozen others at the table, including Sid Green who was  in charge of Bishopsgate football team, in the new canteen at B Gate when the British Transport Police came in, pinned my arms against my side and lifted me out of the chair. I was taken across to Commercial St Police Station and charged with larceny. They told me I had been seen lifting goods into the van that weren’t on the parcels sheet, with the intention of taking and selling them. I said I didn’t know what they were talking about. What were they were alleging was a complete fabrication and I had witnesses. What they were accusing me of was impossible because I had just clocked in – my clocking in number was 1917 – and there was a least a dozen witnesses on my side, but nevertheless I was convicted. I look back on it with great regret even now.

I was taken to Newington Butts Quarter Sessions which was the nearest Crown Court and I received six months sentence, even though I had first class character witnesses. I was taken straight to Wormwood Scrubs but kept apart from the inmates as a Young Prisoner. I couldn’t believe it, this was a for a first offence. I was sent to East Church open prison on the Isle of Sheppey and given a third remission off my sentence for good behaviour. It was like a Butlins Holiday Camp and I came home after four months. After that I did a couple of odd jobs, but I was full of regret – because I loved the railway so much and I made so many friends there, and particularly because I had disappointed my dad. That was the end of me and the LNER.

Then I met this guy, Billy Davis, he and Patsy (Patrick) Murphy held up Luton Post Office, but the postmaster grabbed hold of the gun and they shot and killed him, and they both got twenty-five years. He told me he worked for the railway and I asked, ‘Which depot?’ He said, ‘London, Midlands & Scottish Railway in Camden, why don’t you apply?’ So I did, I went along to Camden Town and was interviewed and told them I’d never worked on the railway before. When I started there as a driver, they gave me a brand new Bantam Carrier with a trailer and my round was Spitalfields Market, and I was paid by tonnage. The more weight you pulled onto the weighbridge at the Camden Town LMS depot, the more you earned.

I did it for some time and I always had plenty of fruit to take home to my mum. I got together with the Goods Agent’s secretary, he was the top man in the depot and I was on good terms with him too. I got very friendly, taking her out for more than a year, until one day she told me her boss wanted to see me in his office. He said to me, ‘I’ve got bad news – you never declared you were dismissed by LNER. Our security have run a check and they found it out. It’s gone above my head and I have to let you go. It’s all out of my hands.’ He told me he was sorry to see me go because of the amount of tonnage I brought in which was  more than other driver.

I was only there eighteen months. It was the finest time of my life because of the camaraderie with all the other drivers. It was a lovely, lovely job and I made friends that I still have to this day.”

Roy Wild with a model of his beloved Scammell Scarab

Roy with a Scammell Scarab in British Rail livery

Colin O’Brien’s photograph of a Scammell Scarab tipped over on the Clerkenwell Rd, 1953

Roy gets into the cabin of a Scamell Scarab of the kind he used to drive at Bishopsgate Goodsyard

Roy’s father Andy worked as a Capstan Operator at Spitalfields Empty Yard at Pedley St off Vallance Rd

Roy Wild & lifelong pal Derrick Porter, the poet – “I came from Hoxton but he came from Old St”

Bishopsgate Station c. 1900

In its heyday the area of tracks at the goodsyard was known as ‘the field’

Looking west, the abandoned goodsyard after the fire of 1964

Looking east, the abandoned goodsyard after the fire

The kitchens of the canteen at the goodsyard

The space of the former canteen where Roy was arrested  by the British Transport Police

Abandoned hydraulic lift for lifting vehicles at Bishopsgate goodsyard

The remains of the records at the Bishopsgate goodsyard

When Roy saw this photograph of the demolished goodsyard, he said, “I wish I could have gone and taken one of those bricks as a souvenir.”

The arch beneath the white tarpaulin was where Roy once drove in and out as a van boy

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Coinciding with the new exhibition EXECUTIONS at Museum of London Docklands, I present this fine election of execution broadsides. In the days before internet, television or cinema, public executions were a popular source of entertainment. I am grateful to Ed Maggs, fourth generation proprietor of Maggs Bros booksellers, who drew my attention to these gruesome wonders.

(Click on the image to enlarge and read the text)

Execution Broadside of Henry Horler for the murder of his wife Ann Horler on 17th November 1852, at Sun St, Bishopsgate.

Ann Horler’s mother, Ann Rogers, came to take her daughter away from her husband Henry Horler on the night before the murder was discovered. She had been told that her daughter had been abused by her husband. Henry Horler insisted his wife would not go with her mother that night, but Mrs Rogers should return in the morning for her. The next morning Ann Horler was found dead.

(Click on the image to enlarge and read the text)

Execution broadside of John Wiggins at Newgate, 15th October 1867, for the murder of Agnes Oakes on the morning of Wednesday 24th July at Limehouse. Printed with the trial and execution of Louis Bordier, a Frenchman charged with the murder of Mary Ann Snow on the 3rd September 1867 on Old Kent Rd.

Agnes Oakes lived with John Wiggins as his wife for about six months prior to the murder. Neighbours said they witnessed John beating Agnes and she had said she would leave him if he did not stop.

(Click on the image to enlarge and read the text)

Execution broadside of Michael Barrett, the Fenian, and last man to be hanged in public, on the 26th May 1868, Newgate. Barrett was arrested for the “Clerkenwell Explosion” on 13th December 1867 which killed twelve people and injured many others. Barrett was the only Irish Republican to be convicted of the crime, five others were acquitted.

This tragic event occurred during an attempt to release Richard O’Sullivan Burke from prison. The explosion was misjudged and not only did it blast a sixty foot hole in the prison wall, (O’Sullivan Burke is thought to have been killed in the blast), a number of tenements on Corporation Lane were also destroyed.

The conviction appeared largely to be based on the fact Michael Barrett was a Fenian and that several witnesses claimed he may have been in London at the time. Barrett stated he was in Glasgow on the day of the explosion and if ‘there were 10,000 armed Fenians in London, it was ridiculous to suppose they would send to Glasgow for a person of no higher abilities than himself.’

(Click on the image to enlarge and read the text)

Execution broadside of John Devine for the murder of Joseph Duck in the early morning of 11th March 1863, Little Chesterfield St, Marylebone.

The condemned pleaded not guilty to the crime which appeared to result from a robbery that went wrong. The jury was sympathetic to Devine and, although the verdict returned was guilty, there was a strong recommendation to mercy, as they were of the ‘opinion that the prisoner inflicted the injuries on the deceased while in the act of robbing him; but, at the same time they thought he did not intend to murder him.’ The scene of the execution was described thus: ’There was not a large concourse assembled to witness the sad spectacle, nor was there exhibited by those present any of that unseemly demonstrativeness which they are wont to indulge in.’

(Click on the image to enlarge and read the text)

Execution broadside of the nurse Catherine Wilson for the murder by poisoning with colchicine of her patient Maria Soames in Albert St, Bloomsbury, on the 18th October 1856. The last woman to be publicly hanged in London.

This was Catherine Wilson’s second indictment for poisoning a patient, having been acquitted the first time round to the astonishment of many. When the first trial took place, on 16th June 1862, in the documents the accused appeared as Constance Wilson and was also occasionally found under the alias Catherine Taylor/Turner. Immediately, she was taken back in to custody and charged with the murder of Maria Soames. During the initial trial, the police had been busy putting together evidence of further victims and even exhumed several bodies, including that of Ann Atkinson, Peter Mawer and James Dixon, who was one of Ms. Wilson’s former lovers. In seven of these exhumed bodies a variety of poisons were found.

The Judge presiding said he had ’never heard of a case in which it was more clearly proved that murder had been committed, and where the excruciating pain and agony of the victim were watched with so much deliberation by the murderer.”

(Click on the image to enlarge and read the text)

Execution broadside of Dr William Palmer, for the poisoning of John Parsons Cook at Stafford. Dr Palmer was described by Charles Dickens as ‘The greatest villain that ever stood at the Old Bailey’ in his article on ’The Demeanor of Murderers’. He is also referenced in several novels and an Alfred Hitchcock film.

He was also suspected, although never indicted, of the murder of his four children, all of whom died in infancy, his wife Ann Palmer, Brother Walter Palmer, a house guest Leonard Bladen, and his mother-in-law, Ann Mary Thornton. The doctor benefited financially from all of these deaths.

Dr Palmer was executed at Stafford Prison Saturday 14th June 1856. Although not mentioned in this broadside, the prisoner was said to have had an interesting exchange with the prison governor moments before his death. When Dr Palmer was asked to confess his crimes, the exchange went thus:

Dr Palmer – ’Cook did not die from strychnine.’

Prison Governor  -’There is not time for quibbling – Did you or did you not kill Cook?’

Dr Palmer – ’The Lord Chief Justice summed up for poisoning by strychnine.’

In the trial text, it is stated Dr Palmer reiterated he was: ‘innocent of poisoning Cook by strychnia.’

The Judge stated in his summation: ‘Whether it is the first and only offence of this sort which you have committed is certainly known only to God and your own conscience.’

Dr Palmer became notorious for his supposed crimes. It was said 20,000 people attended his execution and a wax figure of him was displayed at Madame Tussauds in the Chamber of Horrors from 1857 – 1979.

(Click on the image to enlarge and read the text)

Trial broadside of Thomas Cooper,‘would-be’ highwayman, for the murder of Timothy Daly, policeman, and also for shooting at and maiming, with intent to murder, Charles Mott (a baker), and Charles Moss (another police officer) on 5th May at Highbury.

The defence, Mr Hory, addressed the jury, saying ‘for the first time during the seven years that he had been at the bar, he was called upon to address a jury upon a charge, conviction upon which was certain death. He almost felt that his anxiety would defeat itself. He could not help referring to different published statements, most of them monstrous perversions of established fact, and all calculated to excite the prejudices of a jury. When he saw these he could hardly fancy they lived in an enlightened age’.

Mr Hory made the case that the prisoner was not of sound mind, citing attempts of suicide, and claims of being Dick Turpin and Richard III. But this defence was unsuccessful with the jury reached a verdict of guilty, and Thomas Cooper was sentenced to death and executed July 7th 1842.

(Click on the image to enlarge and read the text)

Execution broadside of Charles Peace the notorious Blackheath burglar, for the murder of Arthur Dyson at Banner Cross, on the 29th November 1876.

Charles Peace murdered Arthur Dyson after become obsessed with Mr Dyson’s wife. Then Peace went on the run for two years with a £100 reward on his head, until he was betrayed by his mistress, Mrs Sue Thompson, who revealed his whereabouts to the police. She never received her expected reward as the police claimed her information did not lead directly to Peace’s arrest. He was caught on 10th October 1878, by Constable Robinson, who Peace shot at five times.

Subsequently, a waxwork figure of Charles Peace featured at Madame Tussaud’s, and two films and several books were produced about his life and crimes.

Images courtesy of Maggs Bros

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Dick Turpin upon Black Bess

There is a story that Dick Turpin was apprenticed as a butcher in Whitechapel, and – whatever the truth of it – he returned consistently to this area of East London. There are further stories connecting him to the Red Lion in Whitechapel and the Nag’s Head in the Hackney Rd. Yet, as one who led an elusive transitory criminal existence and who achieved fame only after his death, the actuality of Dick Turpin’s life remains uncertain, overshadowed by the vivid fictions that were contrived later.

Richard Bayes, landlord of the Green Man in Leytonstone, was author of one of the earliest accounts, published in 1739 shortly after Turpin’s execution in York.“He was placed apprentice to a Butcher in White-chaple, where he served his Time, he was frequently guilty of Misdemeanours, and behaved in a loose disorderly Manner…” wrote Bayes, emphasising the authenticity of his narrative by taking a role in it himself. After a horse theft near Waltham Forest in 1736, Bayes tracked the stolen animal to the Red Lion Inn in Whitechapel and was attempting to retrieve it from Turpin’s accomplice Tom King when Turpin himself appeared in Red Lion St, a thoroughfare later subsumed into Commercial St.

“Turpin, who was waiting not far off on horseback, hearing a skirmish came up, when King cried out, ‘Dick, shoot him, or we are taken by God,’ at which instant Turpin fired his pistol, and it missed Mr. Bayes, and shot King in two places, who cried out, ‘Dick, you have killed me,’ which Turpin hearing, he rode away as hard as he could. King fell at the shot, though he lived a Week after, and gave Turpin the character of a coward…”

Yet it was primarily due to Harrison Ainsworth and his illustrator George Cruikshank in the novel “Rookwood” of 1834 that the story of the butcher-turned-brutal-petty-thief from Essex was transformed into the myth of Dick Turpin – the swashbuckling highwayman who stole from the rich and gave to the poor while charming the ladies with his valour and flamboyant style.

A century after Turpin’s death, highway robbery ceased to be a threat, permitting the possibility of a romantic fiction upon the subject. In constructing the myth we recognise today, Ainsworth invented the notion of the death-defying ride to York upon Black Bess to establish an alibi. He ignored the banal fact that Turpin had been operating in Yorkshire for over a year before he was arrested under the name of John Palmer for shooting a “tame fowl,” and his true identity discovered after his arrest only when a letter he signed was recognised in the mail.

Born in Essex in 1705, Richard Turpin set up his own butchery business in Waltham and when trade was slow, he took to poaching venison in Epping Forest and became drawn into robbery as a member of the Gregory Brothers’ Essex Gang – one of many criminal gangs that existed on the margins of large cities when times were hard and law enforcement ineffectual.

Far from being the “gentleman” as Ainsworth characterised him, Turpin was capable of savage violence to achieve his desired ends, which this account from Read’s Weekly Journal of February 1735 reveals – “On Saturday night last, about seven o’clock, five rogues entered the house of the Widow Shelley at Loughton in Essex, having pistols &c. and threatened to murder the old lady, if she would not tell them where her money lay, which she obstinately refusing for some time. They threatened to lay her across the fire, if she did not instantly tell them, which she would not do. But her son being in the room, and threatened to be murdered, cried out, he would tell them, if they would not murder his mother, and did. Whereupon they went upstairs, and took near £100, a silver tankard, and other plate, and all manner of household goods.”

After the killing of Tom King, Turpin took refuge in Epping Forest where he shot one of the Forest-Keepers who tried to capture him, and the offer of a reward for his arrest for murder published in the Gentleman’s Magazine  in June 1737 gives the only contemporary description – “Turpin was born at Thackſted in Eſſex, is about Thirty, by Trade a Butcher, about five Feet nine Inches high, brown Complexion, very much mark’d with the Small Pox, his Cheek-bones broad, his Face thinner towards the Bottom, his Viſage ſhort, pretty upright, and broad about the Shoulders.”

This account of the pock-marked broad-shoulder butcher does not quite match the devilishly handsome highwayman of popular lore, yet Turpin is recorded as meeting his death with remarkable courage. Sir George Cooke, Sheriff of Yorkshire, recalled that, “he behav’d himself with amazing assurance” at the execution and “bow’d to the spectators as he passed.” When it came to the moment and his head was in the noose,“he threw himself off the ladder and expired directly.” As the life of Dick Turpin ended, the legend of Dick Turpin was born.

Dick Turpin’s accomplice Tom King – shot in Commercial St.

Rescue of Lady Rookwood by Dick Turpin.

Dick Turpin & Tom King in the Arbour at Kiburn.

Dick Turpin’s flight through Edmonton.

Dick Turpin leaps the Hornsey Gate.

“I’ll let ’em see what I think of ’em!”

The death of Black Bess at the end of the ride to York.

Cover of a pamphlet published in York after Turpin’s execution.

Plates from “The Life of Richard Turpin” by Richard Bayes.

Title page of the life of Dick Turpin written by Richard Bayes, landlord of the Green Man in Leytonstone.

The opening page of Richard Bayes’account, placing Turpin as an apprentice butcher in Whitechapel.

Richard Bayes’ account of his skirmish with Dick Turpin at the Red Lion in Whitechapel.

The former Nag’s Head opposite Hackney City Farm in the Hackney Rd. Dick Turpin was reputed  to frequent an earlier coaching inn known as The Nag’s Head upon this site.

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William Smith & Charles Eaton – better known as Billy & Charley – were a couple of Thames mudlarks who sold artefacts they claimed to have found in the Thames in Shadwell and elsewhere. Yet this threadbare veil of fiction conceals the astonishing resourcefulness and creativity that these two illiterate East Enders demonstrated in designing and casting tens of thousands of cod-medieval trinkets – eventually referred to as “Shadwell Shams” – which had the nineteenth century archaeological establishment running around in circles of confusion and misdirection for decades.

“They were intelligent but without knowledge,” explained collector Philip Mernick, outlining the central mystery of Billy & Charley, “someone told them ‘If you can make these, you can get money for them.’ Yet someone must also have given them the designs, because I find it hard to believe they had the imagination to invent all these – but maybe they did?”

Working in Rosemary Lane, significantly placed close to the Royal Mint, Billy & Charley operated in an area where small workshops casting maritime fixtures and fittings for the docks were common. Between 1856 until 1870, they used lead alloy and cut into plaster of paris with nails and knives to create moulds, finishing their counterfeit antiquities with acid to simulate the effects of age. Formerly, they made money as mudlarks selling their Thames discoveries to a dealer, William Edwards, whom Billy first met in 1845. Edwards described Billy & Charley as “his boys” and became their fence, passing on their fakes to George Eastwood, a more established antiques dealer based in the City Rd.

Badges, such as these from Philip Mernick’s collection, were their commonest productions – costing less than tuppence to make, yet selling for half a crown. These items were eagerly acquired in a new market for antiquities among the middle class who had spare cash but not sufficient education to understand what they were buying. Yet many eminent figures were also duped, including the archaeologist, Charles Roach Smith, who was convinced the artefacts were from the sixteenth century, suggesting that they could not be forgeries if there was no original from which they were copied. Similarly, Rev Thomas Hugo, Vicar of St Botolph’s, Bishopsgate, took an interest, believing them to be medieval pilgrims’ badges.

The question became a matter for the courts in August 1858 when the dealer George Eastwood sued The Athenaeum for accusing him of selling fakes. Eastwood testified he paid £296 to William Edwards for over a thousand objects that Edwards had originally bought for £200. Speaking both for himself and Charley, Billy Smith – described in the record as a “rough looking man” – assured the court that they had found the items in the Thames and earned £400 from the sale. Without further evidence, the judge returned a verdict of not guilty upon the publisher since Eastwood had not been named explicitly in print.

The publicity generated by the trial proved ideal for the opening of Eastwood’s new shop, moving his business from City Rd to Haymarket in 1859 and enjoying a boost in sales of Billy & Charley’s creations. Yet, two years later, the bottom fell out of the market when a sceptical member of the Society of Antiquaries visited Shadwell Dock and uncovered the truth from a sewer hunter who confirmed Billy & Charley’s covert means of production.

As they were losing credibility, Billy & Charley were becoming more accomplished and ambitious in their works, branching out into more elaborate designs and casting in brass. It led them to travel beyond the capital, in hope of escaping their reputation and selling their wares. They were arrested in Windsor in 1867 but, without sufficient ground for prosecution, they were released. By 1869, their designs could be bought for a penny each.

A year later, Charley died of consumption in a tenement in Wellclose Sq at thirty-five years old. The same year, Billy was forced to admit that he copied the design of a badge from a butter mould – and thus he vanishes from the historical record.

It is a wonder that the archaeological establishment were fooled for so long by Billy & Charley, when their pseudo-medieval designs include Arabic dates that were not used in Europe before the fifteenth century. Maybe the conviction and fluency of their work persuaded the original purchasers of its authenticity? Far from crude or cynical productions, Billy & Charley’s creations possess character, humour and even panache, suggesting they are the outcome of an ingenious delight – one which could even find inspiration for a pilgrim’s badge in a butter mould. Studying these works, it becomes apparent that there is a creative intelligence at work which, in another time, might be celebrated as the talent of an artist or designer, even if in Billy & Charley’s world it found its only outlet in semi-criminal activity.

Yet the final irony lies with Billy & Charley  – today their Shadwell Shams are commonly worth more than the genuine antiquities they forged.

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In the months after the burial of John Williams at the crossroads in Shadwell on 31st December 1811, some further evidence came to light. A search of The Pear Tree revealed a jacket with a bloodied pocket, blood stained trousers abandoned in the privy and a bloody French knife hidden in a mouse-hole – the knife that could have been used to slit the victims’ throats. However none of these items could be incontrovertibly connected to John Williams.

Most interesting was the testimony of the Captain of the Roxburgh Castle upon which Williams and William Ablass had sailed together out of Rio de Janeiro. They were a very bad crew, with Ablass – a violent character among the very worst of them, imprisoned in Surinam for leading a mutiny. Ablass was held in chains on suspicion of being Williams’ accomplice to the Shadwell murders but released without sufficient evidence to charge him. The two men escaping up New Gravel Lane after the murder of the Williamsons were described as one short and one tall, but both Williams and Ablass were tall, which means if Williams was guilty then Ablass must be innocent, it was concluded. The converse deduction was not addressed.

In writing these episodes over the last month retelling the story of the Ratcliffe Highway Murders, I am primarily indebted to the conscientious work of P.D.James and T.A. Critchley in their shrewdly written book The Maul and the Pear Tree published by Faber & Faber, which stands as the definitive account, and I strongly recommend it to all who wish to learn the fuller story. In 1811, the systematic approach to crime solving that we recognise today – of suspects, clues, motive and alibi – was simply not in existence. Yet P.D.James and T.A. Critchley succeed in organising the arbitrary random scraps of evidence that survive into a coherent picture on the lines of our modern approach, and creating an exciting narrative in the process. They suggest that John Williams himself could have been an eighth victim – despatched by the killers in a staged suicide to shut him up and prevent their detection. Though to my ears this sounds overly contrived, after studying this story, I understand that it is irresistible to speculate upon a mystery that remains one of the greatest unsolved crimes in our history. You must read the book and draw your own conclusion.

Both multiple murders were on commercial premises within a quarter mile of each other and there is sufficient evidence to confirm more than one culprit. Immediately, this excludes the notion of a random diabolic psycho-killer on the loose and instead suggests organised crime, a protection racket of intimidation – which is entirely credible in such a bad neighbourhood with a high proportion of transients and little policing.

It is likely that Mr Marr knew that the oyster shop and bakers would be shut when he sent Margaret Jewell, the servant girl, out on 7th December, because he needed privacy for whatever negotiation was to take place with his expected guests at midnight. And in doing so, Mr Marr saved the girl’s life. It is possible that Mr Marr took the chisel himself – when it went missing – to keep it as self-defence from persons unknown. This would explain its re-appearance on the night of the murder and why it was clean and untouched with blood. It is established that Mr Marr was in debt and sailed on the Dover Castle with Cornelius Hart, the carpenter who used the chisel to construct the new shop window and who was connected to the Pear Tree through John Williams. To me, there is the hint of a hidden narrative here weaving these characters together, and maybe of the resurgence of some old grievance from Mr Marr’s seafaring days.

Intimidation alone cannot account for the extremity of the violence, but it could if  the negotiation had turned bad and led to the killing of Mr Marr and his shop assistant, and then Mrs Marr too as witness. If there happened to be an unhinged individual with a violent murderous tendency among the group  – someone like William Ablass – that alone can explain the murder of the baby. In this context, the Williamsons’ subsequent murder may be comprehended as damage limitation, if somehow they had learnt the truth of the earlier killings.

It appears that a principal witness, Mrs Vermilloe, the landlady of the Pear Tree, had been intimidated or threatened and also that she was convinced of the innocence of John Williams. To me, John Williams’ suicide speaks of his expectation of the outcome of any trial, irrespective of whether he was guilty or innocent. He took his own life rather than live through the ordeal that he knew lay ahead.

This fascinating tale – of which we shall never know the truth – speaks of a Britain not so long ago when the metropolis grew rapidly and the first national media had come into existence but there was no police force yet. Nowadays, Mr Marr’s financial dealings and phone records could be scrutinised, and the maul analysed for fingerprints and DNA, and the Ratcliffe Highway (now known simply the Highway) has CCTV cameras installed.

It was the widespread public unease generated by this case, driven by the universal terror of killers in the night and encouraged by the press reports that turned the Ratcliffe Highway Murders into the first national crime sensation, which contributed directly to the establishment of the Metropolitan Police in 1829. Such was the association with violence that the name of “Ratcliffe” was dropped from maps over time.

John Williams’ body was exhumed a hundred years later when a water main was installed in Cable St and his skull was kept for many years as a curiosity behind the bar in the public house at the crossroads. In recent years, The Crown & Dolphin has been converted to flats but I have not been able to discover what became of  the skull. Does anyone know?

Click on Paul Bommer’s map of the Ratcliffe Highway Murders to explore further

I am indebted to PD James’ ‘The Maul & The Peartree’ which stands as the authoritative account of these events. Thanks are also due to the Bishopsgate Institute and Tower Hamlets Local History Archive.

You may like to read the earlier instalments of this serial which runs throughout December

1. The Death Of A Linen Draper

2. Horrid Murder

3. The Burial Of The Victims

4. New Sanguinary Atrocities

5. Indescribable Panic

6. The Prime Suspect

7. Three Wise Magistrates

8. A Verdict

9. A Shallow Grave