The Maul and the Pear Tree: The Ratcliffe Highway Murders 1811

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Worsley is Joint Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces but is best known as a presenter of BBC Television series on historical topics, including Elegance and Decadence: The Age of the Regency (2011), Harlots, Housewives and Heroines: A 17th Century History for Girls (2012), The First Georgians: The German Kings Who Made Britain (2014), A Very British Romance (2015), Lucy Worsley: Mozart’s London Odyssey (2016), and Six Wives with Lucy Worsley (2016). When Margaret Jewell walked down the Highway she found Taylor’s oyster shop shut. Retracing her steps along the Ratcliffe Highway towards John’s Hill to pay the baker’s bill, she passed the draper’s shop again at around midnight where, although Mr Marr now had put up the shutters with the help of James Gowen, the shop boy, she could see Mr Marr at work behind the counter. The crime has been tentatively linked to a series of similar murders known as ‘The Thames Torso Murders’ lasting from 1887 to 1889 and which saw body parts discovered from Battersea in the west to Essex in the east. Can I visit the crime scene?

liners, who ask no questions, but man their vessels with refuse of all kinds,- the scurf of the earth, growls an old Part Three, "The Golden Age," was equally well thought out, and Worsley's analysis gave me some welcome new insights about the "dead end" of the interwar detective novel before British genre authors followed their U.S. counterparts into the hard-boiled, noir style of storytelling. On a personal note, Worsley's balanced and insightful analysis helped me finally to articulate why I can read Wilkie Collins or Arthur Conan Doyle all day long, over and over again with relish, while the works of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers leave me cold.

In December 1811, a series of brutal murders took place in the Ratcliffe Highway area. Like everyone in the East End, William James and his family would have been caught up in the drama, which caused panic amongst the local population and made the news across the country.

A little before midnight on the 7 December 1811, Timothy Marr, a Drapers shop owner, sent his maid Margaret Jewell out for some oysters (regarded as a much more modest meal than by today’s standards) and to run a small errand to pay a bakers bill. And even a month later, Bell’s Weekly Messengeron 19 January 1812 reports how‘The public mind continues naturally alive to every farther search and discovery respecting the late horrible murders.’ Their concerns were soon realised. On 19th December, John Williamson, a publican at The Kings Arm on New Gravel Lane, a little further east along Ratcliff Highway, his wife Elizabeth and a servant named Bridget Anna Harrington were murdered during the night.

In the midst of life I woke to find myself living in an old house beside Brick Lane in the East End of London

Just before midnight on 7 December 1811, the Marrs were in their shop and residence preparing for the next day's business 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. The murders and the murderer are analyzed by Thomas De Quincey in his famous essay On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts (1827). The murders and Charles Horton are featured in Lloyd Shepherd’s historical novel, The English Monster (2012). The murders are featured in Lona Manning’s historical novel, A Marriage of Attachment (2018). It would be absolutely impossible to adequately describe the frenzy of feelings which, throughout the next fortnight, mastered the popular heart; the mere indignant horror in some, the mere delirium of panic in others. 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. He first discovered James Gowan, the young apprentice, who was lying on the floor about five or six feet from the stairs, just inside the shop door. The young boy’s skull was completely smashed, his blood was dripping through the floorboards, and his brains had appeared to have been pulverised and thrown about the walls and across the counters of the shop.