Part 49

dressed or otherwise; the sack in which it was, was one belonging to a person named Jones, with whom his father worked; he had frequently seen it in their room, and he thought it was there on the night before. He went to school shortly afterwards, and never mentioned a word then or since about what had occurred, or his seeing the body in the cellar; on returning home at twelve o'clock in the day, he found his father beating his mother; he thought the cause to be, that the latter had been out drinking with a young woman, the grand-daughter of the old lady, who had called to inquire after her; his mother, he believed, while his father was beating her, called him a villanous murderer, but he had no recollection of her threatening to give any information of him. He (witness), after getting his dinner, went out to play, and did not come home until late; himself, his father, and mother supped together on the Saturday night, and at about ten o'clock his mother left the room; in about half-an-hour afterwards he was standing at the window, and saw her go past with the body in the sack on her shoulder; it was in the same state as he saw it on that morning, except that the mouth of the sack was tied; the body appeared to be partly bent.--[The female prisoner, in an audible voice, exclaimed, "Good God! how could I have borne a son to hang me!"]--The lad again burst into tears, and said he could not help it--that he was telling the truth. He then proceeded with his statement. He did not know at what time his mother had returned on Saturday night, as he and his father, who remained in the room, went to bed, and he was asleep when she came in; on the Sunday morning his mother told him that she had taken the body to the London Hospital. The boy here, as in many parts of his statement, said his father had nothing whatever to do in the business. The magistrates examined him very minutely as to what had taken place on the Friday night, and what conversations (if any) had taken place between his father, mother, and himself, previous to and after the horrid deed had been perpetrated. He said that no words or quarrel had taken place; the old woman and his father and mother were on good terms, and nothing particular had occurred during the evening, until his mother placed her hand, as he had before described, on the mouth of the old lady; nor did she say a word to him or his father while she so held her hand on her mouth. He recollected she had been saying something to him about taking the body to an hospital. He did not see his father lay a hand on the old woman.

The magistrates expressed some surprise that the prisoner should, for a whole day, leave the body in the cellar of the house, which was accessible to all the inmates; but this was satisfactorily explained by the landlady, who said, that in consequence of its being so dark, and so infested with rats, the lodgers very seldom indeed entered it.

This was the substance of the boy's statement, and in many particulars it was distinctly and amply corroborated by the concurrent testimony of other witnesses. In some points, however, he was contradicted. It will be observed, that he stated that the body was carried away by his mother alone; but a man named Barry, whose evidence appeared to refer to the same transaction, declared that he had seen the boy in company with her, and assisting to carry the sack; while another negatived the possibility of the truth of one of his declarations--that his mother had carried the body in her arms, and with great facility--by stating that the deceased was a very tall woman.

The prisoners, upon the proofs which had been adduced, however, were remanded, and subsequent inquiries terminated in the production of further evidence of the guilt of Mrs. Ross. This consisted of the declarations of several persons that she had sold articles of clothing to them in Rag-fair, which were identified as having belonged to the deceased; and, more especially, that she had actually disposed of the stock-in-trade of the poor old woman. All exertions to discover the body of the deceased, however, proved unavailing; and, after several examinations, the prisoners, Edward Cook and Elizabeth Ross, were, on the 24th of December, committed for trial upon the charge of murder.

The intermediate occurrence of the case of Bishop and Williams, the details of which we have already described, and the violent alarm created in the public mind by the frequent reports of mysterious disappearances, and "burking" murders, excited a great degree of prejudice against these unfortunate prisoners, and it was not until the 6th of January 1832, that their case came on for final investigation at the Old Bailey. Ross was then indicted for the wilful murder of the deceased, while the charge made against her paramour, Cook, was that of having aided and abetted his fellow-prisoner in the commission of the offence.

Mr. Adolphus conducted the case for the prosecution, and Mr. Barry and Mr. Churchill appeared on behalf of the prisoners. The defence set up was,--Perjury on the part of the boy, and the possibility that Mrs. Walsh was still living, arising upon the non-discovery of her body. The jury, however, returned a verdict of "Guilty" against Mrs. Ross, but acquitted Cook.

The convict was immediately sentenced to be executed on the following Monday: her body to be given over to the surgeons for dissection.

On Monday, the 8th of January, the wretched woman was hanged, in pursuance of her sentence. After her conviction, as well as before, she persisted in the strongest declarations of her innocence. Her statement was, that she had left the old woman with Cook on the night of her supposed murder, and that having then gone out, she did not return for several hours. On her going back she was told that the old woman had quitted the house. She maintained an extraordinary degree of firmness of nerve; and, up to the last moment of her existence, continued uttering protestations that she was not guilty, and ejaculations of her misery at quitting her own country (Ireland) to be hanged. She mounted the scaffold without assistance, and was turned-off at the customary signal.

HENRY MACNAMARA.

TRANSPORTED FOR FELONY.

The offences of which this person was guilty attracted considerable observation at the time of their discovery. He was taken into custody on the morning of Sunday, the 29th of April, 1832, at the New Hummums Hotel, Covent-garden, on a charge of robbery, committed under somewhat remarkable circumstances; and, on the following day, he underwent an examination at Bow-street, before the sitting magistrate.

From the statement which was then made, it appeared that the prisoner had gone to the New Hummums on the previous Saturday night, and had requested to be accommodated with a bed. His appearance was such as to lead to a supposition that he was a person of respectability, and there was no hesitation in complying with his desire. His luggage, which consisted only of a carpet-bag, was conveyed to the apartment assigned to his use, and, having partaken of a handsome supper, with its concomitants, he retired to rest. The New Hummums, like its brethren under the piazza, was a hotel much resorted to by single gentlemen, or casual visitors to the metropolis; and, on the night in question, its accommodations were as much in request as usual. Major Hampton Lewis occupied a sleeping apartment on the floor beneath that in which the prisoner's room was situated; and, on the same corridor, were four other bed-chambers, all of which were also in use. In the middle of the night, when the house was wrapt in quiet, Major Lewis was suddenly awoke by hearing some person in his apartment; and, on looking up, he saw a man, attired only in his shirt and trousers, as quietly as possible making his way towards the door, carrying off his gold watch, chain, and seals, and his purse in his hands. He jumped up and pursued the intruder, but did not succeed in catching him until he had reached the passage, when he seized him by the shirt and braces. The fellow struggled hard, and succeeded in extricating himself, and ran off up stairs; but the noise had by this time alarmed the other inmates of the house, and instant search was made for the thief. Every room was examined; and at last the constables, who by this time had been called in, arrived at that to which the prisoner had been conducted. They found him in bed; but, on their calling him up, they perceived that he still had his trousers on, and his braces and shirt were torn. The detached remnants of these articles were found, on examination, outside the door of Major Lewis's room, having evidently been torn off in the scuffle; and the watch and purse of that gentleman were also discovered on the stairs leading to the corridor in which the prisoner's apartment was situated. This was a chain of circumstances so conclusive, as denoting the guilt of the prisoner, that he was carried off in custody to the station-house. The uproar and confusion naturally created by a nocturnal event of so extraordinary a character, had, however, scarcely subsided, when four other gentlemen, who slept in the apartments adjoining that of Major Lewis, discovered that they too had been robbed. One gentleman missed a shirt-pin; another some English and French money, amounting to about 3_l._ 15_s._; a third a loaded pistol, which he carried for his protection, and his purse, containing a considerable sum in gold and notes; while the rings and purse of the fourth had been purloined from his dressing-table. In a room opposite to that in which the prisoner had been placed to sleep, and which had not been occupied for several nights, the whole of these articles were found strewed indiscriminately about the floor, under the bed; and with them was also discovered a key, which, on examination, proved to fit the lock of the prisoner's carpet-bag.

These were the circumstances which were proved in evidence on the day of the first examination of the prisoner; but the extraordinary nature of his proceedings in this case, struck the attention of the magistrate so forcibly, that he determined to remand him, in order that, if any other charges of a similar description existed against him, he might be made liable for them too. The prisoner was ordered, therefore, to be again brought up on the following Friday; and on that day a host of persons was in attendance, each more anxious than the rest to detail the circumstances of some robbery of which the prisoner had been guilty.

The evidence of the robberies at the New Hummums having been first gone into, and the prisoner having been ordered to be indicted upon three of them--at the prosecution of Major Lewis, Mr. Courthold, of Barking, in Essex, and a young gentleman named John C. Millenden, who had put up at the hotel on his way from Bordeaux, where his parents lived, to school--the other new cases were taken.

The first of these was preferred by a gentleman named Heath; and, from his evidence, and that of two other witnesses, it appeared, that at a late hour on the night of Friday, the 27th of April, the prisoner went to the Swan-with-Two-Necks, Lad-lane, and asked to be accommodated with a bed. His request was complied with, and he retired to his room, which was situated in a corridor built in the old-fashioned style, round the inn-yard, and which was near to that to which Mr. Heath had been previously shown. In the course of the night, Davy, the porter at the inn, was disturbed by the loud barking of the watch-dog; he went to him to quiet him, but the sagacious animal was aware that there was an intruder stirring upon the premises, and conducted Davy to a dark kitchen, or cellar, where he found the prisoner. He pretended to have come from his room for a necessary purpose, and was allowed to return to his apartment. Soon afterwards, however, he escaped over the balustrades of the corridor, and from the yard, leaving his boots behind him. On the following morning Mr. Heath discovered that his money had been stolen from his room in the course of the night. Both the porter, and a witness who had seen the prisoner quit the inn-yard, and had aided him in adjusting his cloak in the street, were able to speak positively to his identity; and he was committed for trial upon this charge also.

Many other cases were, at subsequent examinations, brought against him, which, however, were so similar in their character to those which have been already detailed that it would be useless to enter into their history or description. The prisoner was recognised as having been guilty of almost innumerable offences, within a very short period; and he was also identified by one of the keepers of Maidstone jail as having made his escape from that prison, where he had been sentenced to be confined for three months as a pickpocket.

On Monday, the 21st of May, the prisoner was tried at the Old Bailey upon the charges preferred against him, and verdicts of "Guilty" were returned. The crimes which he had committed rendered him liable to capital punishment; but the ends of justice, it was felt, would be amply satisfied by the permanent removal of this offender from the scenes of his former exploits, and from the opportunities of renewing his depredations.

Of a piece with the proceedings of this fellow, were those of a man who victimised nearly every hotel in every principal city or town in the kingdom, and who was universally known as "The man with the carpet-bag." A carpet-bag was an article of such a nature as that it was unlikely that the intentions of any persons would be suspected merely on account of his carrying such a means of transporting his luggage. In the case of the person to whom this epithet was applied, however, the carpet-bag was employed for purposes far different from those for which it was customarily used. His habit was to enter that house which presented the most seemly and comfortable aspect, and having partaken of a hearty supper, he would convey his "luggage," of which he always took the greatest care, to his apartment. In the morning it was invariably found that he had decamped, having generously left behind him the contents of his sack, which usually consisted of hay or straw, and a stray brickbat or two, and carried off in their place such portions of the bedclothes as he could conveniently stow away. The possession of a carpet-bag by a traveller was at one time looked upon by landlords and waiters as almost certain evidence of his being a swindler; and numerous are the occasions upon which such a supposition has created considerable inconvenience. The following letter, published in a newspaper of the period, happily hits off the miseries of a "man with a carpet-bag," searching for lodgings. It was addressed--

"_To the Editor of Bell's Life in London._