Murders during 1811 in London, England
The Ratcliff Highway murders (sometimes Ratcliffe Highway murders) were two attacks on two separate families – the Marr and Williamson families – that resulted in seven fatalities. The two attacks occurred twelve days apart in December 1811, in homes located half a mile apart near the London Docklands district of Wapping, London, England, United Kingdom. The main suspect in the slayings, John Williams, killed himself before he could be put on trial.
First attack.
The first attack took place on 7 December 1811 in the living quarters behind a linen draper's shop at 29 Ratcliffe Highway, on the south side of the street between Cannon Street Road and Artichoke Hill. Ratcliffe Highway was the old name for a road in the East End of London, now simply called "The Highway", then one of three main roads leaving the city. The road was in a dangerous and run-down area of seedy businesses, dark alleys and dilapidated tenements.
The victims of the first murders were the Marr family. Timothy Marr, whose age was reported as either 24 or 27, had previously served several years with the East India Company (EIC) aboard the trading ship "Dover Castle", and now kept a linen draper's and hosier's shop. Marr had a young wife, Celia; a 14-week-old son, Timothy (who had been born on 29 August); an apprentice, James Gowan; and a servant girl, Margaret Jewell. All had been living at 29 Ratcliffe Highway since April of that year.
Just before midnight on 7 December 1811, the Marrs were in their shop and residence when an intruder entered their home. 7 December fell on a Saturday, then pay day for many British working people and the busiest day of the week for shopkeepers.
Jewell was not present at 29 Ratcliffe Highway because she had just been sent to purchase oysters as a late-night meal for Marr and a treat for his young wife, who was still recovering from childbirth. Jewell was then to go to a nearby bakery at John Hill and pay an outstanding bill. One report stated that as she opened the shop door she saw the figure of a man framed in the light. As the entire area was usually busy after normal business hours, Jewell took no notice and went on with her errand. Finding the oyster shop closed, she walked back past the Marrs' home, where she saw her employer through the window, still at work, and went to pay the baker's bill. Finding the baker's closed, Jewell decided to go to another shop in a final attempt to find some oysters, but, after finding that shop shuttered as well, she returned empty-handed.
Arriving at the shop at twenty minutes past midnight, Jewell found the building dark and the door locked. Thinking that the Marrs had forgotten that she was still out, she knocked, but received no answer. Jewell initially heard no movement inside, then a noise that sounded like footsteps on the stairs, so she assumed that someone was coming to let her in. She heard the baby upstairs cry out. However, no one came to the door. Hearing footsteps on the pavement behind her, Jewell became frightened and slammed the knocker against the door "with unintermitting violence", drawing attention to herself. George Olney, a night watchman who called out the time every half-hour, came to find out who she was. Olney, who knew the Marrs well, knocked at the door and called out, but noticed that the shutters were in place yet were not latched. The noise awakened John Murray, a pawnbroker and Marr's next-door neighbour. Alarmed, he jumped over the wall that divided his yard from 29 Ratcliffe Highway, and saw a light on and the back door standing open. Murray entered and went up the back steps, calling to the Marrs that they had neglected to fasten their shutters. He heard nothing.
Returning downstairs and entering the shop, Murray beheld "the carnage of the night stretched out on the floor". The "narrow premises ... so floated with gore that it was hardly possible to escape the pollution of blood in picking out a path to the front door." He first saw Gowan, the apprentice, lying on the floor about five feet from the stairs, just inside the shop door. The bones of the boy's face were smashed, his blood was dripping onto the floor, and his brains had been pulverised and cast about the walls and across the counters.
Murray went to the front door to let Olney in, but stumbled across another corpse, that of Celia Marr. She lay face down, her head battered, her wounds still emitting blood. Murray let in Olney and together they searched for Timothy Marr. They found him behind the shop counter, battered to death. Murray and Olney rushed to the living quarters, and found the infant dead in his crib, which was covered with blood. One side of the infant's face had been crushed and his throat had been slit so that his head was nearly severed from his body.
By the time Murray and Olney discovered the infant, more people from the neighbourhood had gathered outside and the Thames River Police were summoned. The first officer on the scene was Charles Horton. As nothing appeared to have been taken – money was in the till and £152 was found in a drawer in the bedroom – there seemed to be no motive. A thief might have been scared off before he finished, but the other possibility was some sort of revenge attack by someone who knew Timothy Marr.
Horton initially believed that the weapon used had been a ripping chisel. One was found in the shop, but it was clean. In the bedroom he found a heavy, long-handled shipwright's hammer, or maul, covered with blood, leaning against a chair. Horton assumed this was the murder weapon, abandoned when Jewell's knocking scared the killer away. Human hairs were stuck in the drying blood on the flat, heavy end, and the tapered end, used for driving nails into wood, was chipped.
Two sets of footprints were then discovered at the back of the shop. These appeared to belong to the killers, as they contained both blood and sawdust from carpentry work done inside earlier in the day. A group of citizens followed the tracks to Pennington Street, which ran behind the house, and found a possible witness who reported that he had seen a group of some ten men running away from an empty house in the direction of New Gravel Lane (now Glamis Road) shortly after the alarm had been raised. Speculation now arose that the crime was the work of a criminal gang. Horton took the bloodstained maul back to his station to find that three sailors, who had been seen in the area that night, were in custody. One appeared to have spots of blood on his clothing, but all three had convincing alibis and were released. Other men were apprehended in the area on the basis of witnesses' reports, but the cases against them also fell apart. A reward of 50 guineas was offered for the apprehension of the perpetrator, and, to notify area residents, a handbill was drafted and stuck on church doors.
Investigation.
On 10 December a coroner's jury heard that someone must have been watching the shop and residence for an opportunity. The crime had been committed between 11:55 p.m., when Jewell left, and 12:20 a.m., when she returned. Murray stated that he had heard bumping noises around 12:10 a.m., so it was decided that the killers had still been in the home when Jewell returned and had fled out the back door.
An attempt was made to trace the maul by the chip in its blade. There was no blood on the chisel, but since Jewell stated that Marr had been looking for one earlier that evening, it was thought that it was brought to be used as a weapon, since if it had been in plain sight, he would have found it. Cornelius Hart, one of the carpenters who had worked in the shop that day, was detained, but no case could be made against him and he was released. Marr's brother also came under scrutiny, since he was rumoured to have had a disagreement with him, but after being interrogated for forty-eight hours, he was exonerated because he had a firm alibi. A servant girl who had previously been let go was also questioned, but she lacked motive as well as criminal companions, and was too small to have performed the murders by herself.
The four victims were given a memorial service, then buried beneath a monument in the parish church of St. George in the East, where the infant had been baptised three months earlier. When the maul was cleaned on Thursday 19 December it appeared that some initials were carved into the handle, perhaps with a seaman's coppering punch: "I.P." or "J.P." Those who were working on the case now had a way to try to trace the owner.
Second attack.
The same night the initials were discovered on the maul, and twelve days after the first killings, the second set of murders occurred at The King's Arms, a tavern at 81 New Gravel Lane (now Garnet Street). The victims were John Williamson, the 56-year-old publican, who had run the tavern for fifteen years; Elizabeth, his 60-year-old wife; and their servant, Bridget Anna Harrington, who was in her late 50s. The King's Arms was a tall two-storey building, but despite its proximity to the Highway it was not a rowdy establishment, as the Williamsons liked to retire early.
Earlier that night Williamson had told one of the parish constables that he had seen a man wearing a brown jacket lurking around the place and listening at his door. He asked the officer to keep an eye out for the stranger and arrest him. Not long afterwards the same constable heard a cry of "Murder!" As a crowd gathered outside The King's Arms a nearly naked man descended from the upper floor using a rope of knotted sheets. As he dropped to the street, he was crying incoherently. He was John Turner, a lodger and journeyman who had been at the tavern for some eight months.
The crowd forced the tavern doors open and saw the body of John Williamson lying face up on the steps leading into the taproom. His head had been beaten and his throat had been cut, and there was an iron crowbar lying at his side. While the crowbar appeared to be the weapon used to beat him, a sharper implement had been used to slit his throat and nearly hack off his hand. Elizabeth Williamson and the maid were found in the parlour, their skulls smashed and their throats cut. The maid's feet were beneath the grate, as if she had been struck down while preparing the fire for the next morning. Her mistress's neck had been severed to the bone.
The crowd armed themselves and stormed through the inn in search of possible perpetrators. They then discovered the Williamsons' 14-year-old granddaughter, Catherine Stillwell, in her bed, alive and untouched. Given what had happened to the Marr family twelve days earlier, it seemed miraculous that she had slept through the entire attack and had no idea what had just occurred downstairs. The bodies were placed on their beds and the girl was taken to a safer home. Fire bells were rung to call out volunteers, while London Bridge was sealed off. Acting on eyewitness accounts that a tall man had been loitering outside the tavern that night, wearing a flushing coat (a loose-fitting, hooded garment), several Bow Street Runners were assigned to hunt down the murderer. According to one report, Turner claimed that he had shouted for help, scaring the killer away. He also reportedly stated that he had seen the tall man near Mrs Williamson's corpse, but he was also viewed as a suspect and his report was not given its full weight.
Entry to the premises was found to have been gained by forcing open the cellar flap. An open window was discovered, with bloodstains on the sill indicating the murderer's escape route, and a footprint in the mud outside seemed to confirm this. The unknown assailant apparently escaped by running along a clay-covered slope, so it was assumed