borrow’s first book was faustus, and his second was romantic ballads, the one being published, as we have seen, in 1825, the other in 1826. this chronology has the appearance of ignoring the celebrated trials, but then it is scarcely possible to count celebrated trials [67a] as one of borrow’s books at all. it is largely a compilation, exactly as the newgate calendar and howell’s state trials are compilations. in his preface to the work borrow tells us that he has differentiated the book from the newgate calendar [67b] and the state trials [67c] by the fact that he had made considerable compression. this was so, and in fact in many cases he has used the blue pencil rather than the pen—at least in the earlier volumes. but borrow attempted something much more comprehensive than the newgate calendar and the state trials in his book. in the former work the trials range from 1700 to 1802; in the latter from the trial of becket in 1163 to the trial of thistlewood in 1820. both works are concerned solely with this country. borrow went all over europe, and the trials of joan of arc, count struensee, major andré, count cagliostro, queen marie antoinette, the duc d’enghien, and marshal ney, are included in his volumes. moreover, while what may be called state trials are numerous, including many of the cases in howell, the greater number are of a domestic nature, including nearly p. 68all that are given in the newgate calendar. in the first two volumes he has naturally mainly state trials to record; the later volumes record sordid everyday crimes, and here borrow is more at home. his style when he rewrites the trials is more vigorous, and his narrative more interesting. it is to be hoped that the exigent publisher, who he assures us made him buy the books for his compilation out of the £50 that he paid for it, was able to present him with a set of the state trials, if only in one of the earlier and cheaper issues of the work than the one that now has a place in every lawyer’s library.
the third volume of celebrated trials, although it opens with the trial of algernon sidney, is made up largely of crime of the more ordinary type, and this sordid note continues through the three final volumes. i have said that faustus is an allegory of “man’s inhumanity to man.” that is emphatically, in more realistic form, the distinguishing feature of celebrated trials. amid these records of savagery, it is a positive relief to come across such a trial as that of poor joseph baretti. baretti, it will be remembered, was brought to trial because, when some roughs set upon him in the street, he drew a dagger, which he usually carried “to carve fruit and sweetmeats,” and killed his assailant. in that age, when our law courts were a veritable shambles, how cheerful it is to find that the jury returned a verdict of “self-defence.” but then sir joshua reynolds, edmund burke, dr. johnson, and david garrick gave evidence to character, representing baretti as “a man of benevolence, sobriety, modesty, and learning.” this trial is an oasis of mercy in a desert of drastic punishment. borrow carries on his “trials” to the very year before the date of publication, and the last trial in the book is that of “henry fauntleroy, esquire,” for forgery. fauntleroy was a quite respectable banker of unimpeachable character, to whom had fallen at a very early age the charge of a banking business that was fundamentally unsound. it is clear that he had honestly endeavoured to put things on a better footing, that he lived simply, and had no gambling or other vices. at a crisis, however, he forged a document, in other words signed a transfer of stock which he had no right to do, the “subscribing witness” to his power of attorney being robert browning, a clerk in the bank of england, and father of p. 69the distinguished poet. well, fauntleroy was sentenced to be hanged—and he was duly hanged at newgate on 30th october, 1824, only thirteen years before queen victoria came to the throne!
borrow has affirmed that from a study of the newgate calendar and the compilation of his celebrated trials he first learned to write genuine english, and it is a fact that there are some remarkably dramatic effects in these volumes, although one here withholds from borrow the title of “author” because so much is “scissors and paste,” and the purple passages are only occasional. all the same i am astonished that no one has thought it worth while to make a volume of these dramatic episodes, which are clearly the work of borrow, and owe nothing to the innumerable pamphlets and chap-books that he brought into use. take such an episode as that of schening and harlin, two young german women, one of whom pretended to have murdered her infant in the presence of the other because she madly supposed that this would secure them bread—and they were starving. the trial, the scene at the execution, the confession on the scaffold of the misguided but innocent girl, the respite, and then the execution—these make up as thrilling a narrative as is contained in the pages of fiction. assuredly borrow did not spare himself in that race round the bookstalls of london to find the material which the grasping sir richard phillips required from him. he found, for example, sir herbert croft’s volume, love and madness, the supposed correspondence of parson hackman and martha reay, whom he murdered. that correspondence is now known to be an invention of croft’s. borrow accepted it as genuine, and incorporated the whole of it in his story of the hackman trial.
but after all, the trial which we read with greatest interest in these volumes is that of john thurtell, because borrow had known thurtell in his youth, and gives us more than one glimpse of him in lavengro and the romany rye.
rarely in our criminal jurisprudence has a murder trial excited more interest than that of john thurtell for the murder of weare—the gill’s hill murder, as it was called. certainly no murder of modern times has had so many indirect literary associations. borrow, carlyle, hazlitt, walter scott, and thackeray are among those who have given it p. 70lasting fame by comment of one kind or another; and the lines ascribed to theodore hook are perhaps as well known as any other memory of the tragedy:
they cut his throat from ear to ear,
his brain they battered in,
his name was mr. william weare,
he dwelt in lyon’s inn.
carlyle’s division of human beings of the upper classes into “noblemen, gentlemen, and gigmen,” which occurs in his essay on richter, and a later reference to gigmanhood which occurs in his essay on goethe’s works, had their inspiration in an episode in the trial of thurtell, when the question being asked, “what sort of a person was mr. weare?” brought the answer, “he was always a respectable person.” “what do you mean by respectable?” the witness was asked. “he kept a gig,” was the reply, which brought the word “gigmanity” into our language. [70]
i have said that john thurtell and two members of his family became subscribers for borrow’s romantic ballads, and it is certain that borrow must often have met thurtell, that is to say looked at him from a distance, in some of the scenes of prize-fighting which both affected, borrow merely as a youthful spectator, thurtell as a reckless backer of one or other combatant. thurtell’s father was an alderman of norwich living in a good house on the ipswich road when the son’s name rang through england as that of a murderer. the father was born in 1765 and died in 1846. four years after his son john was hanged he was elected mayor of norwich, in recognition of his violent ultra-whig or blue and white political opinions. he had been nominated as mayor both in 1818 and 1820, but it was perhaps the extraordinary “advertisement” of his son’s shameful death that gave the citizens of norwich the necessary enthusiasm to elect alderman thurtell as mayor in 1828. it was in those oligarchical days a not unnatural fashion to be against the government. the feast at the guildhall on this occasion was attended by four hundred and sixty guests. a year before john thurtell was hanged, in 1823, his father moved a violent political resolution in p. 71norwich, but was out-heroded by cobbett, who moved a much more extreme one over his head and carried it by an immense majority. it was a brutal time, and there cannot be a doubt that alderman thurtell, while busy setting the world straight, failed to bring up his family very well. john, as we shall see, was hanged; thomas, another brother, was associated with him in many disgraceful transactions; while a third brother, george, also a subscriber, by the way, to borrow’s romantic ballads, who was a landscape gardener at eaton, died in prison in 1848 under sentence for theft. apart from a rather riotous and bad bringing up, which may be pleaded in extenuation, it is not possible to waste much sympathy over john thurtell. he had thoroughly disgraced himself in norwich before he removed to london. there he got further and further into difficulties, and one of the many publications which arose out of his trial and execution was devoted to pointing the moral of the evils of gambling. it was bad luck at cards, and the loss of much money to william weare, who seems to have been an exceedingly vile person, that led to the murder. thurtell had a friend named probert who lived in a quiet cottage in a byway of hertfordshire—gill’s hill, near elstree. he suggested to weare in a friendly way that they should go for a day’s shooting at gill’s hill, and that probert would put them up for the night. weare went home, collected a few things in a bag, and took a hackney coach to a given spot, where thurtell met him with a gig. the two men drove out of london together. the date was 24th october, 1823. on the high-road they met and passed probert and a companion named joseph hunt, who had even been instructed by thurtell to bring a sack with him—this was actually used to carry away the body—and must therefore have been privy to the intended murder. by the time the second gig containing probert and hunt arrived near probert’s cottage, thurtell met it in the roadway, according to their accounts, and told the two men that he had done the deed; that he had killed weare first by ineffectively shooting him, then by dashing out his brains with his pistol, and finally by cutting his throat. thurtell further told his friends, if their evidence was to be trusted, that he had left the body behind a hedge. in the night the three men placed the body in a sack and carried it to a pond near p. 72probert’s house and threw it in. the next night they fished it out and threw it into another pond some distance away. thurtell meanwhile had divided the spoil—some £20, which he said was all that he had obtained from weare’s body—with his companions. hunt, it may be mentioned, afterwards declared his conviction that thurtell, when he first committed the murder, had removed his victim’s principal treasure, notes to the value of three or four hundred pounds. suspicion was aroused, and the hue and cry raised through the finding by a labourer of the pistol in the hedge, and the discovery of a pool of blood on the roadway. probert promptly turned informer; hunt also tried to save himself by a rambling confession, and it was he who revealed where the body was concealed, accompanying the officers to the pond and pointing out the exact spot where the corpse would be found. when recovered the body was taken to the artichoke inn at elstree, and here the coroner’s inquest was held. meanwhile thurtell had been arrested in london and taken down to elstree to be present at the inquest. a verdict of murder against all three miscreants was given by the coroner’s jury, and weare’s body was buried in elstree churchyard.
in january, 1824, john thurtell was brought to trial at hertford assizes, and hunt also. but first of all there were some interesting proceedings in the court of king’s bench, before the chief justice and two other judges, complaining that thurtell had not been allowed to see his counsel. and there were other points at issue. thurtell’s counsel moved for a criminal injunction against the proprietor of the surrey theatre in that a performance had been held there, and was being held, which assumed thurtell’s guilt, the identical horse and gig being exhibited in which weare was supposed to have ridden to the scene of his death. finally this was arranged, and a mandamus was granted “commanding the admission of legal advisers to the prisoner.” at last the trial came on at hertford before mr. justice park. it lasted two days, although the judge wished to go on all night in order to finish in one. but the protest of thurtell, supported by the jury, led to an adjournment. probert had been set free and appeared as a witness. the jury gave a verdict of guilty, and thurtell and hunt were sentenced to be hanged, but hunt escaped with transportation. p. 73thurtell made his own speech for the defence, which had a great effect upon the jury, until the judge swept most of its sophistries away. it was, however, a very able performance. thurtell’s line of defence was to declare that hunt and probert were the murderers, and that he was a victim of their perjuries. if hanged, he would be hanged on circumstantial evidence only, and he gave, with great elaboration, the details of a number of cases where men had been wrongfully hanged upon circumstantial evidence. his lawyers had apparently provided him with books containing these examples from the past, and his month in prison was devoted to this defence, which showed great ability. the trial took place on 6th january, 1824, and thurtell was hanged on the 9th, in front of hertford gaol: his body was given to the anatomical museum in london. a contemporary report says that thurtell, on the scaffold,
fixed his eyes on a young gentleman in the crowd, whom he had frequently seen as a spectator at the commencement of the proceedings against him. seeing that the individual was affected by the circumstances, he removed them to another quarter, and in so doing recognised an individual well known in the sporting circles, to whom he made a slight bow.
the reader of lavengro might speculate whether that “young gentleman” was borrow, but borrow was in norwich in january, 1824, his father dying in the following month. in his celebrated trials borrow tells the story of the execution with wonderful vividness, and supplies effective quotations from “an eyewitness.” borrow no doubt exaggerated his acquaintance with thurtell, as in his robinson crusoe romance he was fully entitled to do for effect. he was too young at the time to have been much noticed by a man so much his senior. the writer who accepts borrow’s own statement that he really gave him “some lessons in the noble art” is too credulous, and the statement that thurtell’s house “on the ipswich road was a favourite rendezvous for the fancy” is unsupported by evidence. old alderman thurtell owned the house in question, and we find no evidence that he encouraged his son’s predilection for prize-fighting.
