Mr Briggs' Hat: The True Story of a Victorian Railway Murder (37 page)

The authors of the sensation novels of the early 1860s understood this lurking distaste for public death. Their murderous villains rarely paid the ultimate public price for their crimes but were consigned instead to the ‘natural’ justice of fires, street stabbings or drawn-out decline in foreign mental institutions. In Ellen Wood’s
East Lynne
, Sir Francis Levison’s capital sentence was reduced to penal servitude on the basis that his act was not premeditated, but her readers were left in little doubt that with his fine white hands and his terror of hardship, Levison would not last long. Only the impoverished hunchback ‘Softy’ in Mrs Braddon’s
Aurora Floyd
was made to climb the steps to the gallows – which was ironic, since he was a man so mentally impaired that a plea of irresponsibility should probably have held sway.

Following Dickens’ belief that public executions created
a city of devils
, a House of Lords Select Committee of 1856 had recommended the introduction of private executions, believing that scandalous scenes at hangings threatened to undermine the principle of the law. It was ignored. In May 1864 the government had been pressured into establishing a Royal Commission to report
further on the issue: its members were appointed by Queen Victoria on Friday 8 July, one day before the murder of Thomas Briggs.

In early August, as the police waited for the arrival of Müller in New York, the
Manchester Guardian
had written of a growing squeamishness towards public hangings, reporting that
a
great change has come over the public opinion
in regard to the matter. There is much less faith among us now than there was a few years ago in the power of moral means to repress the more brutal forms of crime.
The newspaper believed that by allowing the process of execution to remain a frightful mystery and by removing the supporting presence of friends in the crowd, terror would spawn in the murdering mind. It suggested that the prison bell should toll, a black flag should be raised and a limited number of spectators – jurors, judges, witnesses, press and the like – should be admitted in order to remove any public doubt that the execution had taken place. Private executions, it concluded – like those in America – would provide
a system more in harmony with the civilisation of the day.

These contemporary arguments made Franz Müller’s impending execution the subject of intense concern. On Monday 14 November the apparently imperturbable young man – believed by a growing number to be innocent of murder – was scheduled for his own very public death.

CHAPTER 33

St Sepulchre’s Bell

In the prison chapel on the morning of Sunday 13 November, sitting in the condemned pew positioned under the scanty pulpit and in full view of the other prisoners, Franz Müller heard a part of the burial service and prayers for his soul. Throughout the day the visits of sheriffs and aldermen were interleaved with those of the religious ministers who had befriended him. The country steeled itself for the execution and hundreds of applications were made to the governor of Newgate for access to the gaol on the following morning. Only a small group of pressmen were to be admitted.

At Windsor Castle the Queen received a telegraphic message from Wilhelm I, King of Prussia, pressing for the execution to be delayed. His representation to Victoria was regal but also personal: the two royal families were related by the marriage of Victoria’s eldest daughter Princess Victoria to Wilhelm’s son Friedrich. Nevertheless, Queen Victoria asked for it to be forwarded to the Home Office with a note expressing her
amazement at the appeals
. She is sure no such appeal is necessary to induce you and the judges who tried the man to do whatever is right
. A
letter was also sent to Sir George Grey by
Richard Stevens
, a tailor in the City who had worked with Müller from November 1863 to 7 May 1864 and who never
during the whole time … and my opportunities of seeing his hat saw it with a peculiar lining by which Mrs Repsch and Mrs Matthews declared that they identify it. But on the contrary I solemnly and sincerely declare that such a lining did not in any way correspond with the lining
of Müller’s hat. Stevens, also, begged for a stay of execution.

The GLPS had only one place left to go: 5 Clapton Square. At half past ten on Sunday night, three representatives of the society arrived there and asked for an interview with Thomas Briggs’ widow, Mary. They were refused entry but, labouring under the misconception that the Briggs family were dissatisfied with the verdict, the three men remained on the doorstep for the best part of an hour as they recapitulated arguments in Müller’s defence. They had new evidence, they said, that the dimensions of the crumpled hat did not fit the marks made by the hat that had been stored in the box Müller left behind in his room at the Blyths’. They implored Briggs’ sons to come with them to Sir George Grey to plead for respite. Indelicate and immoderate, their request caused outrage.

Müller’s desperate countrymen withdrew defeated as the still-grieving, usually tight-lipped
Briggs family gave vent
to their restrained scorn in a letter sent for publication to the editor of
The Times
.
From motives which I believe will be understood by … nearly all your readers
, they wrote,
the family of the late Mr Briggs have refrained from addressing to you any remarks on the recent proceedings of the committee of the German Legal Protection Society, and had a right to respect in return for their forbearance that their privacy would be respected. But one of the last acts of some members of the above society appear to me to have been so foolish, unwarrantable and cruel that I consider it my duty to make it known … You cannot doubt, Sir that the widow and children of the murdered man would be the last to
wish that an innocent man should be punished for the crime
[but]
… I put it to you and the public whether they should not have been spared so indelicate and ill-timed an appeal.
It was the last public statement about events that the family would make.

*

Late on the afternoon of Sunday the 13th, heavy rain scattered the growing crowd from the muddy streets around the prison. By eight o’clock, though, the Old Bailey was impassable, the small ‘pens’ filling up while itinerant preachers on the margins sermonised about evil. By the time the public houses and tap rooms closed at eleven o’clock, between four and five thousand people had formed a dark ridge before the prison and a
strong force of police
, drafted from six of the Metropolitan divisions, battled to keep passage open for the scaffold. The white barriers showed up in the wet darkness like
a network of bones
above the mud and, unseen in the clouded sky,
the full moon
passed through the shadow of the earth. In the early hours of Monday morning, almost exactly thirteen weeks since Briggs had died, a blackened deal frame was brought out from the yard in the Old Bailey, drawn by two carthorses. Over the next few hours the dull thuds and rasps of the workmen’s tools echoed from the walls of the gaol as the scaffold was erected outside the old, low Debtor’s Door.

At five o’clock on Monday morning Müller woke to the sound of driving rain, hammers and the stamping feet and swelling murmurs of the crowd outside. He dressed with scrupulous care in the clothes he had worn in court, took breakfast and was joined by the Reverend Davis with whom he prayed. The countdown to his execution had begun, a well-rehearsed progression of precisely timed events designed to ensure that nothing occurred to disturb his equilibrium. In the hope that he would confess, every visitor impressed upon him the finality of his position.

An hour later, the rain stopped. The German minister Dr
Cappel arrived to administer the Sacrament and the multitude outside began to swell fast, fed by streams of people arriving from all directions. William Calcraft, London’s shabby executioner, unhurriedly began to check the rope, the bolts supporting the trap door on which the prisoner would stand and the lever that would send his body down at the appointed hour. At ten minutes to seven the governor of the gaol, Mr Jones, made a short visit to Müller’s cell. He would return in less than an hour. As Jones left, the convicted man momentarily collapsed, clinging to Dr Cappel and begging him to stay by his side.

At twenty past seven, in the cold grey of pre-dawn, carriages carrying
the aldermen and sheriffs
from the London Coffee House in Ludgate Hill appeared at the end of the Old Bailey. Once at the Sessions House they would send up the order for Müller to be released to them. Twenty minutes later, as the first cold flicker of sunlight rose over the rooftops of the East End, they moved through the passage between the courthouse and the gaol, making for the chapel yard. Simultaneously, Governor Jones returned to the condemned cell and commended Müller and his conscience to God. Shaking his hand, Müller thanked him for his kindness. Then, pale and trembling, he followed the governor with a swift step, emerging into the courtyard to meet the sheriffs.
Crossing the yard
, they all entered the long, sombre press room.

By a quarter to eight the waiting mob in the streets had risen to fifty thousand, more than twice the number that had gathered for James Mullins’ execution in 1860, more than had waited for the notorious hangings of Courvoisier or the Mannings in the 1840s, and far outnumbering the police lines. Surging and lulling between the barriers like a swarm of bees, the mass of people obliterated the ground from view. Those who could afford it leaned from surrounding windows, dressed in their best holiday costume, smoking or playing cards to pass the time. People perched on roofs. The sellers of sandwiches, pies, fried fish and
ginger beer called their wares. Around them, pickpockets, drunks and brawlers, the depraved and the innocent were crushed shoulder to shoulder, pushing, quarrelling and joking. The judicially sanctioned killing of a murderer was providing an
entertainment
that unleashed and legitimised the mob so feared by politicians and the middle classes.
Populus
, as Thackeray had feared when he watched the hanging of Courvoisier in 1840, had
been growing and coming of age.

At ten minutes to eight the bell of St Sepulchre’s Church began to toll, its knell heard only momentarily within the gaol before it was drowned out by the thunderous yells that rose from the crowd into the rain-sodden air. When Calcraft’s white head briefly appeared again on the scaffold at nine minutes to eight, the crowd went wild, shrieking with delight before he dipped back out of sight.

At six minutes to eight the prison bell began to ring. Down in the press room, the Reverend Ordinary Dr Davis began to intone the words from the burial service as Calcraft removed Müller’s shirt collar and neckerchief then pinioned his arms with a leather strap of his own invention. Passing around the prisoner’s waist, it held his elbows firmly by his sides and secured his wrists behind his back.

The prison bell tolled with increasing rapidity as, at four minutes to the hour, Calcraft said,
follow me
, and the group of chaplains, the convict and the executioner moved towards the stairs on one side of the room, led by the chief warder and with the governor and sheriffs bringing up the rear. It reached the scaffold as the sun broke through the clouds for the first time that day. To eager cries from the crowd of
Hats off!
and
Down at the front!
, Müller mounted the steps accompanied only by Dr Cappel. Standing on the platform, he looked up at the chain hanging from the beam and moved to position himself more directly under it. The condemned on the scaffold were not allowed to make a public speech. Müller’s lips quivered as
Calcraft strapped his ankles and placed the rope around his neck. Ignoring the animal force of the crowd and the savage yells that lashed the air around them, Cappel took one of his hands, touched
the stripling
tenderly on the breast and broke from his prayers to engage in urgent conversation with the young German. Calcraft pulled a hood from his pocket and fitted it tightly over Müller’s face. Seconds later the hangman shuffled off to pull the lever as the booming bell of St Paul’s Cathedral began to toll the hour. Standing behind the sawdust line, Dr Cappel was leaning forward with his arms outstretched as Müller’s body fell.

The bells were still. The multitude momentarily fell silent, before erupting into a deafening roar.

*

Even before
the slight, slow vibrations of the body
had ended
, wrote
The Times
,
there was robbery and violence, loud laughing and oaths, and fighting around the gallows far and near
. The roiling mass of people soon began to disperse down wide streets and through narrow courts, swarming south in a noisy surge down Ludgate Hill, north-east to Bow and east along Cheapside and into the City. They pulled out west towards the shops and theatres or pressed along Lombard Street, passing Thomas Briggs’ bank and the clerks of the Royal Exchange with their black bags and silk toppers, heading towards the Fenchurch Street terminus and the pulsing docks beyond.

Müller was dead before the majority of the country even read the news of the Home Secretary’s refusal to commute his sentence in their Monday morning papers. His body was left to hang for an hour before Calcraft cut it down. Then it was pronounced dead by Mr Gibson the prison surgeon and its clothes were removed and burnt. A cast or death mask was made of Müller’s head and face before his body was put in a rough deal box and scattered with wood shavings and quicklime. During the afternoon it would swiftly be interred in the presence of the governor
and undersheriffs
beneath the flagstones
of the corridor joining Newgate to the Sessions House – the passage through which he had walked at the start and end of each day of his trial.