These extracts are taken from the diary of Mr. John Cree of New Cross Villas, South London, now preserved in the Manuscript Department of the British Museum, with the call mark Add. Ms. 1624/566.
SEPTEMBER 6, 1880: It was a fine bright morning, and I could feel a murder coming on. I had to put out that fire, so I took a cab to Aldgate and then walked down Whitechapel way. I may say that I was eager to begin, because I had in mind a novelty for the first time: to suck out the breath of a dying child, and see if all its youthful spirit mingled with mine. Oh, in that case, I might go on forever! But why do I say child, when I mean any life? Look, I am trembling again.
I had thought to see more people around Gammon Square, but in these poor lodging houses they are glad to sleep all day and take off the hunger. In earlier years they would have been put out in the streets at dawn, but these days standards are crumbling altogether—what have we come to, when the laboring poor no longer need to labor? I turned down into Hanbury Street, and a pretty stench they all made. There was the filthy aroma of a pie stall, where no doubt cat meat and dog meat were as plentiful as ever, and all manner of Jew merchants with their “Why hurry past?” and “How are you on a fine day such as this?” I can bear the smell of the Jew but the smell of the Irish, as thick and heavy as old cheese, is not to be endured. There were two of them lying dead drunk outside a free-and-easy, and I crossed the street to get them out of my nostrils. I entered a crumbling confectionery shop on that side, and purchased a pennyworth of licorice to make my tongue black. Who knows where I would have to place it that night?
Then another fine thought occurred to me. I had an hour or two before the night came on and I knew well enough that, a little way down towards the river, stood the house which had witnessed the immortal Ratcliffe Highway murders of 1812. On a spot as sacred to the memory as Tyburn or Golgotha, an entire family had been mysteriously and silently dispatched into eternity by an artist whose exploits will be preserved forever in the pages of Thomas De Quincey. John Williams had come upon the household of the Marrs and wiped them from the world as you would wipe a dish. So what more pleasant excursion than a stroll down the Highway itself?
In truth it was a mean dwelling for such a glorious crime—no more than a narrow shopfront with some rooms above it. The man Marr, whose blood had been shed for the sake of greatness, had been a hosier by trade. Now, in his place, was a secondhand clothes seller. Thus, as the Bible tells us, are the sacred temples defiled. I walked in at once, and asked him how he did. “Pretty poor, sir,” he said. “Pretty poor.” I looked upon the place, just behind the counter, where Williams had split open the skull of one child.
“This is a good spot for trade, is it not?”
“It is said to be, sir. But all times are hard times along the Highway.” He watched me, as I stooped over and touched the ground with my forefinger. “A gentleman like yourself has no call for custom here, sir. Am I right?”
“My wife has a maid, who needs no finery. Do you have something like an old-fashioned dress?”
“Oh, there are many dresses and gowns, sir. Feel the quality in these ones.” He brushed his hand against a row of fusty objects, and I hovered close so that I might smell them. What dirty flesh had been pressed against this cloth? In this same room—perhaps upon these very boards—the artist had craved for more blood and hunted out the mistress of the house.
“Do you have a wife and daughter?”
He looked at me for a moment, and then laughed. “Oh, I know what you mean, sir. No. They never wear the articles. We are not of the poorest sort.”
John Williams had climbed those stairs, and clubbed her down even as she bent over the grate. “And do you wonder, then, that these are not for me or my maid? Good day to you. I have a little business waiting for me elsewhere.” I walked out into Ratcliffe Highway, but I could not resist looking up at the rooms above the shop. What wonders had been performed in that narrow confined space? And what if they might come again? That would be a consummation never before seen in this city.
But I had other fish to fry—some little sprat to catch and cook. It was growing dark now, and the gas was being lit by the time I came into Limehouse. It was the hour to show my hand but, as yet, I was a mere tyro, a beginner, an understudy who could not appear on the great stage without rehearsal. I had first to perfect my work in a secret hour, stolen from the tumult of the city: if only I could find some secluded grove and, like some pastoral being, shed London blood within a green shade. But that was not to be. I was still in my own particular private theater, this garish spot beneath the gas lamps, and here I must perform. But, at first, let it be behind the curtain …
There was a pert little thing lingering outside the alley by the Laburnum Playhouse; she could have been no more than eighteen or nineteen, but in the ways of the street she was already old. She knew the bible of the world, for she had learned it by heart. And what a heart it might prove to be, if it were removed with love and care. I shadowed her as she walked towards the lodging house for seamen at the corner of Globe Lane. You see how I had studied the streets? I had purchased Murray’s New Plan of London, and had plotted all my exits and entrances. There she stood and a few moments later some laboring man, still with the brick dust upon his clothes, came up and whispered to her. She said something in return, and it was all quick motion after that: she led him down Globe Lane towards a ruined house. She had his dust on her when they came out into the light again.
I waited until he had left her, and then made my approach. “Why, little chicken, you must have performed a nice bit of business to become so dusty.”
She laughed, and I could smell the gin upon her breath. Even now her organs were being pickled, as if they were in a surgeon’s jar. “It’s all one to me,” she said. “Have you any money?”
“Look.” I brought out a shining coin. “But consider me. Am I a gentleman? Can you expect me to lie upon the street? I need a good bed and four walls.”
She laughed again. “Well then, gentleman, you must stop at the Bladebone.”
“Where is your bladebone?”
“We need gin, sir. More gin, if you want to be pleased with me.”
It was a public saloon off Wick Street, and looked to be a den of the vilest sort filled with the refuse of London. I would have enjoyed the reek of it, as a plain man—I would have raised my arms, and joined the general uproar against heaven—but, as an artist, I demurred. I could not be seen before my first great work. She noticed that I hesitated, and seemed to smile. “I can tell you are a gentleman, and there is no need to accompany me. I was born here. I know my way well enough.” She took some coins from me and returned a few minutes later with a chamber pot filled with gin. “It is clean,” she said, “quite clean. We never use it for that. We have the streets, don’t we?” She led me into a nearby court, no bigger than a pocket handkerchief; she staggered as she began to climb the worm-eaten stairs, and some of the gin spilled over the side of the pot. Someone was singing in one of the rooms which we passed, and I knew the words of the old music-hall ditty as well as if I had written them myself:
When nobody was looking,
I took my virgin mild,
It must have been her cooking,
Because I got rather wild.
Then all was silence as we climbed up to the topmost story, and entered a room which seemed to be no more than a den or hut. There was a soiled mattress upon the floor, while on the walls she had pasted photographs of Walter Butt, George Byron and other idols of the stage. Everything smelled of stale drink, and a torn sheet had been carelessly draped across a tiny window. So this was to be my green room or, rather, my red room. This was to mark my entrance upon the stage of the world. She had taken a dirty cup and dipped it into the chamber pot, swallowing the gin all at once. I was concerned that she might miss the fun but I knew well enough that she wished to be free of this sad world, in one way or another. Who was I to forestall her, or persuade her otherwise? I made no move but watched her take another cup of gin. Then, as she lay down upon the bed, I leaned over her and began to brush the dirt and brick dust from her dress. She had almost passed out with the drink, but she managed to clutch my arm as I touched her. “What do you intend to do with me now, sir?” She still lay upon the bed quite dazed, and it occurred to me that she suspected my game and offered herself willingly to my knife. There are those poor souls who, on hearing of an outbreak of cholera, have hastened to the district in the hope of being infected with the disease. Was that her way? Then it would be a crime to leave her in suspense, would it not?
I did not want a drop of her blood upon my clothes and so I took off my ulster, jacket, waistcoat and trousers; hanging upon the back of her door was a faded coat, bordered with thin fur, and I wrapped it around myself before taking out my knife. That knife is a lovely object with a carved ivory handle; I purchased it at Gibbon’s in the Haymarket for fifteen shillings and the pity of it was that, after I had entered her, its shine would be lost forever. I remember in my schooldays how I mourned when my first line of ink spotted the purity of a new book of exercises—now I was about to write my name again, but with a different instrument. She only began to stir after I had taken out a piece of intestine and blown softly upon it; there was a moan or sigh coming from her although, on looking back and surveying the scene in my mind’s eye, I believe that it might have been her spirit leaving the earth. Her eyes had opened, and I had to take them out with my knife for fear that my image had been seared upon them. I dipped my hands into the chamber pot and washed off her blood with her gin; then, out of sheer delight, I shat into it. It was over. She had been evacuated from the world, and I had evacuated. We were both now empty vessels, waiting for the presence of God.
SEPTEMBER 7, 1880: May I quote Thomas De Quincey? In the pages of his essay “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts” I first learned of the Ratcliffe Highway deaths, and ever since that time his work has been a source of perpetual delight and astonishment to me. Who could fail to be moved by his description of the murderer, John Williams, who committed his acts out of “pure voluptuousness, entirely disinterested” and who provoked an exterminating tragedy worthy of Middleton or Tourneur? The destroyer of the Marr family was “a solitary artist, who rested in the center of London, self-supported by his own conscious grandeur,” an artist who used London as the “studio” to display his works. And what a marvelous touch by De Quincey, to suggest that Williams’s bright yellow hair, “something between an orange and a lemon color,” had been dyed to create a deliberate contrast to the “bloodless ghostly pallor” of his face. I hugged myself in delight when I first read how he had dressed for each murder as if he were going upon the stage: “when he went out for a grand compound massacre he always assumed black silk stockings and pumps; nor would he on any account have degraded his position as an artist by wearing a morning gown. In his second great performance, it was particularly noticed and recorded by the one sole trembling man, who under killing agonies of fear was compelled (as the reader will find) from a secret stand to become the solitary spectator of his atrocities, that Mr. Williams wore a long blue frock, of the very finest cloth, and richly lined with silk.” But no more now: I can heartily recommend this work. Is that not what they say?
SEPTEMBER 8, 1880: Rain all day. Read some Tennyson to my dear wife, Elizabeth, before we retired.