|
The Ratcliff Highway murders (sometimes Ratcliffe Highway murders) were two vicious attacks on two separate families that resulted in seven fatalities. The two attacks occurred within twelve days in December 1811, in homes half a mile apart near Wapping in London. ==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 is the old name for a road in the East End of London, now called The Highway, then one of three main roads leaving London. It 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 aboard the ''Dover Castle'', and now kept a linen draper's and hosier's shop. He 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 there since April of that year. The Marrs were in their shop and residence preparing for the next day's business when an intruder entered their home. It was just before midnight on a Saturday, then pay day for many working people and the busiest day of the week for shopkeepers. Margaret Jewell 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 the birth of their only child. Margaret was then to go to a nearby bakery at John Hill and pay an outstanding bill. She thus escaped being among the victims. One report stated that as she opened the shop door she saw the figure of a man framed in the light.〔de Quincey, Thomas, "On Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts." No other contemporary accounts support this statement.〕 As the entire area was usually busy after normal business hours, she 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, she 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, she 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. She first 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, she became frightened and slammed the knocker against the door "with unintermitting violence", drawing attention to herself. George Olney, the 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, but 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 the Marrs', and saw a light on and the back door standing open. He 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".〔de Quincey〕 First he saw James 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 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 his face had been crushed and his throat had been slit so that his head was nearly severed from his body. By the time they found the infant more people from the neighbourhood had gathered outside and the River Thames 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 drawers 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 first 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. He 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 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.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Racliff Highway murders )〕 and, to notify area residents, a handbill was drafted and stuck on church doors. The bodies, their wounds not sutured and their eyes not closed, were laid out on beds in the house. The penny press ensured that the sensational news spread throughout Britain, and the public came in droves to go through the house and view the corpses. That was not unusual at the time. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ratcliff Highway murders」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|