Sentimental Murder: Love and Madness in the Eighteenth Century

The trial opened with the prosecution, which called witnesses to prove the facts of the case. Macnamara’s was the chief testimony. He was followed by ‘Mary Anderson, a fruit girl’ who had also seen the killing, and by an apothecary, Mr Mahon, who had seized one of the pistols from Hackman and helped the constable Blandy make his arrest. The final witness was Mr O’Brien, one of the surgeons who had given evidence at Ray’s inquest. None of the facts were contested by the defence. Sir William Blackstone, who chaired the bench, invited Hackman to offer anything material in his defence. Reading from a prepared statement, the young man admitted the crime, professed himself ready to die, but explained his act as a brief moment of madness: ‘I protest, with that regard for truth which becomes my situation, that the will to destroy her who was ever dearer to me than life, was never mine, until a momentary phrenzy overcame me, and induced me to commit the deed I deplore.’ Hackman’s counsel, Davenport, one of the most famous lawyers of the day, argued the case for insanity, maintaining that Hackman’s suicide note, in which he had asked Booth to take care of Ray after his death, showed that he had not originally intended to kill her.

But the court was not persuaded of the defendant’s case. Blackstone argued that the presence of two pistols showed felonious intent. He added that ‘the prisoner has rested his defense upon a sudden phrenzy of mind; but the judge said, that it was not every fit, or start of tumultuous passion, that would justify the killing of another; but it must be the total loss of reason in every part of life’. The jury was instructed to convict the accused, and Hackman was condemned to death. Boswell hurried from the courtroom to tell Booth, who received the news with ‘mains serrees’42 (clenched fists).

Eighteenth-century justice was swift. Three days later Hackman woke a little after five in the morning, and spent two hours in private prayer, before taking communion in the chapel in Newgate prison. At nine ‘he came into the press-yard, where a great croud of persons assembled to satisfy their curiosity, at the expense of one shilling each. That all might have an equal share of the sight, a lane was formed by the multitude on each side, through which Mr Hackman passed, dressed in black, leaning on the arm of his friend the Rev. Mr Porter, whose hand he squeezed as he muttered the solemn invocation to Heaven, not to forsake a sinner of so enormous a degree, in the trying hour of death43.’ Haltered with the rope with which he would be hanged, Hackman was reported as exclaiming, ‘Oh! the sight of this shocks me more than the thought of its intended operation.’ Driven in his mourning coach to Tyburn, jeered and cheered by a group of building workers in Holborn, he spent his final minutes praying for Martha Ray, the Earl of Sandwich and their children, before being ‘launched into Eternity’ at about ten minutes past eleven. James Boswell, who witnessed the hanging, and asked the executioner if he had heard Hackman’s last words (‘No. I thought it a point of ill manners to listen on such occasions’), ended the day drunk: ‘Claret h. Very ill44.’

Hackman’s body, like that of all murderers, was then sent to Surgeon’s Hall for dissection. On the day after the execution the nineteen-year-old fencing master Henry Angelo went with a friend to Surgeon’s Hall to view the corpse. ‘Having been placed on a large table, an incision had been made on his stomach, and the flesh was spread over on each side45.’ Angelo’s next stop was Dolly’s Chop House, but the memory of Hackman’s flesh was too much. He was unable to eat his pork chops and never touched the dish again.

The press reckoned that Hackman’s execution attracted the largest crowd since the hanging of another clergyman, William Dodd, for forgery three years earlier. (Such was the press that two members of the crowd died, trampled after they fell.) But Dodd had been a public figure: the chaplain of the Magdalen Hospital for penitent prostitutes, author of a successful Shakespeare anthology, the friend of literati like Dr Johnson, and the client of a number of prominent aristocrats. Hackman was a nobody before he murdered Ray. Now he was an object of public fascination. When he had dropped his handkerchief to signal he was ready to die, the hangman got down from the cart and pocketed it; the souvenir was very valuable. On the day after his execution, a crowd pressed into the Surgeon’s Hall to see the body: ‘Soon after the doors46 were opened, so great a crowd was assembled that no genteel person attempted to gain admittance, as it was observed that caps, cardinals, gowns, wigs and hats, &c. were destroyed, without regard to age, sex or distinction.’ In death, as in life, Hackman was able to cause mayhem.

After the first few days of frenzied activity that followed the murder, Sandwich left the Admiralty office and retreated to a friend’s house in Richmond. From there he wrote an importunate note to Lord Bristol, asking him to postpone the opposition’s motion in the House of Lords for his removal as First Lord of the Admiralty:

It is understood47 that navy matters are to be discussed in the House of Lords on Thursday or Friday next. I am at present totally unfit for business of any kind and unable to collect any materials to support the side of the question that I must espouse. I perceive impropriety in putting off the business by a motion from anyone with whom I am politically connected; I have therefore recourse to your humanity, to request that you would contrive that this point is not brought on till after this day sevennight, by which time I hope to be fit for public business as I ever shall be.

Bristol promised to ask for a postponement, using the excuse that he was suffering from gout, and he ended his reply, ‘No-one can be more concerned than I am for any interruption to your domestic felicity48.’

Sandwich received many letters of advice and condolence. Aristocratic friends like Lord Hardwicke praised Martha Ray and reassured the Earl of their faith in her virtue: ‘From what I have heard49 of her Conduct I never doubted but it had been entirely irreproachable.’ Even the prudish George III, who had once argued that Sandwich should not hold political office because of his notorious private life, offered the Earl his sympathy, using a stilted formula that ensured that he did not have to mention Ray’s name: ‘I am sorry50 Lord Sandwich has met with any severe blow of a private nature. I flatter myself this world scarcely contains a man so void of feeling as not to compassionate your situation.’ One of his colleagues urged on Sandwich the stoicism he had shown in political adversity: ‘You have suffered much and the utmost exertion of your fortitude is now required. Show yourself in this my Lord, as you have done in most other things equal if not superior to the rest of mankind51.’ Others took a less sympathetic view. As George Duke Taylor remarked, ‘Enemies more inveterate than the rest make no scruple to affirm that they look upon these things are come down upon you as judgments, for your private and public conduct during these ten or twelve years past, which in their language have been both wicked and arbitrary.’ Over the next few years Sandwich’s opponents would occasionally refer to Martha Ray’s murder, but on the whole they respected his privacy.

It did not take long for Sandwich’s life to return to its old routines. He was back in the Admiralty office in the week after Hackman’s execution. He managed to survive the attempt to remove him from office, and was soon deeply involved in plans to thwart the French invasion and keep the government in power. He remained a key political figure until the British surrender at Yorktown effectively ended the American war and brought down Lord North’s government; even after he left the Admiralty, he had a small group of followers in the House of Commons and took an active interest in politics.

Ray’s death was clearly a great loss for Sandwich. His friend Joseph Cradock recalled the period after her murder in his Memoirs. He tells the story of his embarrassment when he first visited Sandwich after Ray’s death. Entering the Earl’s study ‘where the portrait52 of Miss Ray, a most exact resemblance, still remained over the chimney-piece’, Cradock rather clumsily ‘started on seeing it’. Sandwich ‘instantly endeavored to speak of some unconnected subject; but he looked so ill, and I felt so much embarrassed, that as soon as I possibly could, I most respectfully took my leave’. A similar incident occurred some time later when Sandwich was invited to dine with a few friends at the house of ‘our open-hearted friend Admiral Walsingham’. The evening went well, and Sandwich seemed to regain his spirits, until one of the guests put Sandwich in mind of Ray: ‘one of the company requested that Mrs Bates would favour them with “Shepherds, I have lost my Love”. This was unfortunately the very air that had been introduced by Miss Ray at Hinchingbrooke, and had been always called for by Lord Sandwich. Mr Bates immediately endeavored to prevent its being sung, and by his anxiety increased the distress; but it was too late to pause.’ Sandwich was mortified. He struggled to overcome his feelings, ‘but they were so apparent, that at last he went up to Mrs Walsingham, and in a very confused manner said, he hoped she would excuse him not staying longer at that time, but that he had just recollected some pressing business which required his return to the Admiralty; and bowing to all the company, rather hastily left the room53’.

Yet, within a year, Sandwich had a new mistress, Nelly Gordon, who was to remain his consort until his death in 1792, and who also bore him children. (In his will he arranged an annuity of £100 a year for life for her – in addition to another he had given her in her lifetime for the same sum – and a further £25 a year for life for her child.) Nor was he a recluse. The end of the American war and his active political career enabled him to indulge his passion for music, and he was the key figure behind the enormously popular concerts held to celebrate Handel’s Centenary in 1784.

Apart from Ray’s children – young Basil was soon in all kinds of trouble at school – Ray’s companion Caterina Galli suffered the consequences of her murder more than anyone else. Deprived of her position in Sandwich’s household, she was ostracized from polite society, and could no longer make a living by teaching rich young girls to sing. The Duchess of Bedford wrote to her that she was ‘sorry to inform Signor Galli that she made a determination, at the time the unfortunate affair happened in which she was concerned, never to take notice more of her in any way54’. The Duchess did so because she was sure that ‘whatever appearances being against her if she was blameless her good protector would never let her want a proper maintenance without applying to the public55’.

Galli wrote a succession of letters to Sandwich in her native Italian complaining of her plight. A month after the murder she told Sandwich, ‘I am ill and afflicted to see myself exposed in a book and in the papers so unjustly wronged as well as my character ruined that I don’t know how I can live in the world56.’ Nine months later her situation was even worse:

I cannot assist myself in my profession, being badly liked by everyone who believe me to be guilty; I have lost my reputation in the face of my protectors being sufficient to madden any person … Where can I look for assistance? They all tell me I should defend myself against the charges and that my silence makes me more culpable and that they will know that your excellency does not admit me and that you dislike me. Lord I believe I have given you sufficient proofs of my innocence at not having taken any part of deceit, I have taken in due time my oath. I have been by orders of your excellency to the court, did not hide myself or otherwise flee. I have always been prepared to go before any judge and prove my innocence. I have lost both my health and reputation as well as money through me not defending myself and punishing the culpables, and all this I did through the certainty that your excellency will be my protector as you sent me information both by word and letter that you would always help me57.

Impoverished, Galli was forced to return to the stage, though her voice had gone. She made a number of concert appearances in the 1790s, when she was deemed to cut a pathetic figure, and was given money by the Royal Society of Musicians. We know Sandwich donated twenty guineas to her and may have given her more. But she remained in sad circumstances, and when her husband died she had to borrow the money to bury him. As a result of Martha Ray’s murder she had lost her employment and could no longer work in the job she knew best and loved.

These, as far as I can tell, are the ‘facts’ of the murder by James Hackman of Martha Ray. They make up the story that almost all commentators, both at the time and subsequently, agree on. But they leave much unanswered. No one doubted that Hackman killed Ray, that he was the black figure who came out of the crowd and shot her to death before a shocked public. But what lay behind the murder? Why did he kill her? What was their relationship like? Was Hackman demented, or did he have understandable reasons to shoot her? Such a brutal killing, like any act that temporarily tears the social fabric apart, called out for explanation. But the facts alone could not provide an answer. Evidence about motive was hard to come by, not least because, as we shall see, there were interested parties concerned to keep the case under wraps. The vacuum created by a lack of information was, however, quickly filled by supposition, speculation and interpretation. For plenty of people, for many different reasons, wanted to publicize their own versions of the lives of Hackman, Ray and Sandwich.

The murder was, of course, a personal tragedy, but it was also a public event. Public, not only because it involved one of the most prominent households in the land and one of the nation’s most important political figures, but because it received so much publicity. In the 1770s London boasted a thriving press with five daily and eight or nine triweekly papers that were widely circulated in London and in many provincial towns. By the time of Ray’s death newspaper proprietors were paying the government an annual stamp duty for more than 12.5 million papers. The provinces also had their own papers – nearly forty by the 1770s – that shamelessly plundered news and information from the London press, adding vignettes of their own. Within days of Hackman’s crime accounts of the murder, commentary on its significance and speculation about why it had happened flowed out from the newspaper printers’ offices in the vicinity of St Paul’s Cathedral and spread across the nation, as news and stories were duplicated in local papers, then in magazines and periodicals. Readers of the Public Advertiser, the Gazetteer, the St James’s Chronicle, Lloyd’s Evening Post, the London Evening Post, the Norwich Mercury, and the Newcastle Chronicle – in fact of every London paper and most of those in the provinces – were regaled with the unfolding story of Hackman’s crime. The flow of information58 explains why in his Norfolk parish Parson Woodforde broke off his usual culinary catalogue – no diarist has devoted so much space to the joys of the table – to bewail the fate of Hackman, a fellow man of the cloth, while at Salisbury the gentleman musician and young lawyer John Marsh tut-tutted in his journal about the fate of a young man he had known at school.

The eighteenth-century press made Hackman’s crime into a ‘media event’ both because it was a sensational crime and because the events of 7 April were so obviously connected to stories that the print media in general had been telling the public for the last twenty years. These were tales of political corruption and moral depravity in high places, of male aristocratic debauchery, and of the growing power and influence of beautiful and intelligent women who used their charms for their own ends. This culture of scandal, propagated by the press, thrived on supposition, rumour, and speculation. It took ‘the facts’ and wove them into a variety of seamless narratives that opened up all sorts of possible interpretation. Such stories were designed to sell newspapers and magazines, attack the government, traduce and shame individuals, and settle personal scores.

The press of the 1770s is not therefore a place we should go in pursuit of ‘the truth’ about Hackman and Ray’s relationship, but it does show how the different versions of Hackman’s crime were shaped and fashioned. The aftermath of Ray’s death saw a struggle conducted in the press to form and even to determine how the public viewed the affair.

CHAPTER 2 The Press: A Case of Sentimental Murder

THOUGH THERE WAS plenty of pressing news for the papers to cover in the spring of 1779 – the failing war with the American colonists and the internecine political battles in parliament – the newspapers devoted a great deal of space to the killing of the Earl of Sandwich’s mistress and the subsequent conduct and execution of her murderer. Between the night of Martha Ray’s murder and Hackman’s execution on 19 April daily items about the case appeared in many London papers. At first these were dominated by detailed accounts of the events of 7 April, reconstructions that culminated in the evidence offered at Hackman’s trial on 16 April. But there was also an obsessive interest in Hackman himself. Papers reported on his moods and comments, trying to understand what had led this handsome, respectable young man to commit a crime of such enormity. They published many tantalizing vignettes of Hackman, Ray, and Sandwich both before and after the crime. And many speculated about the circumstances that had led to the crime and offered comments on its moral import.

To the untutored eye these items can seem to be little more than the fumblings of an unsophisticated news media trying to piece together a story. But, as we shall see, the coverage of the Hackman/ Ray affair was part of a more complex plot that involved attempts on the part of the Earl of Sandwich and the friends of James Hackman to shape and control public response to the sensational killing. This was possible only because of the peculiar state of the newspaper press at the time. Since the accession of George III in 1760 the rapid expansion of the press had produced a new kind of newspaper, more opinionated than ever before, fuller of comment and criticism, yet not governed by what today we would consider the professional protocols of impartial reporting and editorial control. As the press grew, so papers changed in size and content. A loophole in the 1757 duties on paper made it cheaper for printers to make their papers larger and increase the number of their pages. They needed more copy. Newspapers had always carried many advertisements (their key source of revenue) as well as official government information, commercial news, and items gathered from coffee-houses and interested readers. Though many had a political bias – like the notoriously anti-government London Evening Post – most were primarily advertisers and purveyors of information. Opinion – on matters political, commercial, social and cultural – was found in pamphlets or weekly papers, like The Test and The Contest, that were editorial rather than informational. But with the change in the law, newspapers began to publish political commentary and essays on subjects ranging from taste to science, theatrical, music and art reviews. And, in some cases, they printed lots of gossip and scandal.

Where did this news and commentary come from? Most papers were owned by consortia of businessmen – theatrical proprietors, booksellers, and auctioneers – who considered papers chiefly as advertising vehicles. They were put together by a printer, who may have had strong opinions but was not a journalist, and the few part-time news-gatherers whom the papers employed could hardly be described as reporters. What few experienced journalists there were, were employed to cover politics, reporting parliamentary debates or such sensational events as the court martial of Admiral Keppel, whose trial ended just a few months before Ray’s murder. Henry ‘Memory’ Woodfall, whose amazing recall was vital, as note taking was prohibited during parliamentary debates, was the most celebrated of this small group of reporters. Papers therefore relied on the public for their information and commentary. Most of what appeared in the press was either unsolicited information and commentary from interested parties or news sold by peddlers for a profit. Above all, the paper relied on its correspondents, publishing huge numbers of letters submitted by its readers. The Gazetteer, one of the first papers to speculate on the causes of Hackman’s crime, received no fewer than 861 letters in one four-month period, publishing 560 of them ‘at length’ and a further 262 in abbreviated form under the heading ‘Observations of our Correspondents’. Long articles, masquerading as correspondence and signed by such figures as ‘Honestus’, ‘A Friend to the Theatre’, ‘Cato’, ‘Old Slyboots’, and, most notoriously, ‘Junius’ fanned the flames of controversy, offering views on politics, religion, taste, novels, painting, the state of nation and the nature of crime. Anonymity and pseudonyms protected the authors, who included leading politicians, playwrights, artists, magistrates and doctors as well as opinionated readers.

James Boswell, who found his métier and his fame with his Life of Samuel Johnson published in 1791, was for much of his London life a typical newspaper correspondent. He wrote to the papers to puff his works, denigrate rivals, and comment on the issues of the day. On the afternoon of Hackman’s trial on 16 April, for instance, he strolled into the office of Henry Woodfall, the publisher of the Daily Advertiser, offering him an account of the trial, only to discover that ‘A blackguard being was writing a well-expressed account of the trial59’. Nothing daunted he went on to the managers of the St James’s Chronicle, who inserted his anonymous piece in the paper of the following day. This essay contained a long quotation and a puff for an essay in The Hypochondriack on the nature of love that Boswell himself had written and published earlier. Boswell then wrote a highly personal account, which Woodfall printed in the Public Advertiser for 19 April, of Frederick Booth’s reaction to his brother-in-law’s conviction – ‘“Well”, said Mr Booth, “I would rather have him found guilty with truth and honour than escape by a mean evasion”.’ ‘A sentiment’, Boswell commented, ‘truly noble, bursting from a heart rent with anguish!60’ When a false61 report appeared in Lloyd’s Evening Post that Boswell was in the coach that had taken Hackman to his death at Tyburn Tree, he rushed off to the offices of the St James’s Chronicle, and the Public Advertiser, as well as Lloyd’s Evening Post to get them to insert a paragraph to correct the story.

Boswell did not expect to be paid for his letters and paragraphs, but many who dealt with newspaper proprietors were in it for the money. A German visitor to London was surprised by the ‘prodigious multitude of persons’ engaged in collecting news. ‘Among these’, he wrote, ‘may be reckoned the paragraph writers, who go to coffee houses and public places to pick up anecdotes and the news of the day, which they reduce to short sentences, and are paid in proportion to their number and authenticity62.’ Some papers had receiving stations for contributions. The Gazetteer, for instance, used J. Marks, a bookseller in St Martin’s Lane, paying him sixpence ‘for every letter or article of intelligence transmitted to the paper’.

This informal process of news-gathering supposed a very different relationship between the press and its readers than the print media have today. Those who read the papers – a broadly based group that extended well beyond the aristocracy, even if it did not include a great many of the poor – were also those who wrote them. The newspaper was not an authoritative organ, written by professionals to offer objective information to the public, but a place where public rumour, news, and intelligence could circulate as if it were printed conversation. Freedom of the press in this period meant not only freedom from government control but freedom of access – not just to information, but to the pages of the press itself in order to transmute opinions into news. The producer of a paper was not so much an editor, shaping its opinions, as a technician, making available a new means of transmitting the disparate opinions of the public at large. The press was thus very open to manipulation.