The Damnation of John Donellan (30 page)

Buller claimed that ‘all these are very strong facts to show what was passing in the prisoner's own mind.' But without any letter, note or journal written by them, or without a written confession, it is impossible to know what a person is thinking. However, Buller was asking the jury to consider whether Donellan's actions were contrary to what he was actually thinking or intending: ‘It is for you,' he instructed, ‘to say that you are satisfied that what he said in one or two of his letters and what he said to the surgeon was his real intention; or whether those expressions were only used to throw a blind upon the case.'

He concluded: ‘You must take all the circumstances of the case into consideration, and remember that it is for you to form your own opinions, and decide upon the fate of the prisoner; in the doing of which I am sure you will act according to the best of your judgement and your conscience to find out the truth of the case; and as you find that truth, so you will pronounce your verdict.'

It was twenty-five minutes past six in the evening.

After sitting in court for eleven hours, the jury withdrew.

It took them only nine minutes to ‘find out the truth of the case'.

They found John Donellan guilty of murder.

James Boswell, writing in the
Scots Magazine
of 1781, wrote that, after the jury had given their verdict, the Clerk of the Arraigns asked Donellan what he had to say and why sentence of death should not be pronounced upon him.

Donellan answered, ‘I am not guilty, My Lord.'

Edward Boughton, writing to his brother on 17 April, said that he was astonished at Donellan's calmness, not only then but during the whole course of the trial. ‘Not withstanding his constant denial of the fact to the last,' he wrote, ‘never surely did Villain act his part so much like an Ideal.' Donellan's fortitude was not lost on the crowd of spectators, either: one American bystander, Benjamin
Pickman, despite being convinced of Donellan's guilt, wrote to his family back home in Massachusetts that ‘his behaviour during his whole trial was such as would have done honour to a man falling in the best of causes'.
²

Buller began his sentencing.

Rising to his feet, according to Boswell, Buller declaimed:

The offence of which you now stand convicted … is of the blackest dye that man can commit. For of all felonies murder is the most horrible, and of all murders, poisoning is the most detestable. Poisoning is a secret act, against which there are no means of … defending a man's life; and as so far as there can be different degrees in crimes of the same nature, yours surpasses all that have ever gone before it … It was committed in a place where suspicion must have slept; where you had access as a bosom friend and a brother; where you saw the rising representative of an ancient family reside in affluence; but where your ambition led you proudly, but vainly, to imagine that you might live in splendour … if he whom you thought your only obstacle were removed. Probably the greatness of his fortune caused the greatness of your offence; and I am fully satisfied, upon the evidence given against you, that avarice was your motive and hypocrisy afforded you the means … the deed … has been fully proved to the satisfaction of myself and the jury …

In most cases of murder it has pleased Heaven, by some marks or other, to point out the guilty person; … in your case, the false accounts given by yourself, the misrepresentations given out to Sir William Wheler, the endeavours you have used to prevent a full enquiry and discovery of the truth of the case, the strange conversations which you have held at different times, and, above all, the circumstance of rinsing out the bottle, leave your guilt without the smallest doubt.

You can receive … nothing but the strictest justice. But you will soon appear before an Almighty Judge whose unfathomable wisdom is able … to reconcile justice with mercy … You will do well to remember that such beneficence is only gained
by deep contrition, by sound, unfeigned and substantial repentance. May it please that great and awful Being, during the short time that is allotted for your existence in this world, to work that repentance and that contrition in your mind which may befit you for His everlasting mercy. But the punishment which the public has a right to demand, and which I must inflict upon you, is speedy and ignominious death.

And the sentence I now pronounce upon you is that you be taken from hence to the place from whence you came; that from thence, on Monday next, you be carried to the place of execution, there to be hanged by the neck until you are dead; and that your body be afterwards delivered to the surgeons to be dissected and anatomised; and may God Almighty be merciful to your soul.

According to the
Nottinghamshire Gazette
of 3 April, Donellan heard his sentence with ‘extraordinary fortitude and did not display either temerity or cowardice … [he] excited universal sympathy'.

He said only one thing.

Looking at Buller, Donellan replied: ‘It is perfectly indifferent to me what becomes of my body.'

‘Falsehoods of the most flagrant kind have induced a jury to take
my life … ruined by those who ought to have been my friends.'

John Donellan, the day before his execution, 1 April 1781

AFTER THE SENTENCING
, John Donellan was taken back to Warwick Gaol, just a few yards' walk from the court house. It was the law that those convicted of a capital offence had to be executed within two days of sentencing, and his hanging was fixed for early on Monday morning.

The
Hibernian
of May 1781 reported that ‘whatever he might have committed before his condemnation, he afterwards behaved with the most exemplary propriety'. As Donellan was returned to his cell, he asked the gaoler for a glass of wine and, raising it to his lips, was heard to murmur, ‘The Lord forgive them.'

He then sat down and was silent for some minutes, staring pensively ahead of him; and then ‘talked a great deal about Mrs Donellan and the children'.

Over the weekend, he was asked if he would like to see his wife. Two different newspapers reported his reply in two different ways. The
Nottinghamshire Gazette
of 4 April, keeping up its hitherto fine tradition of baiting Donellan at every turn, wrote that, although
he had been ‘tender and affectionate' to Theodosia in previous months, he now would not hear her name mentioned. The
Nottingham Mercury
, however, on 9 April, had a kinder slant, reporting him to have said, ‘I do beseech you, let me not hear of this. If she does not come, I shall die more composed.'

However, in Captain Murphy's
Life of Captain Donellan
, published on 1 May 1781, a very bleak and contrasting picture is painted of their relationship through the publication of a letter which was supposed to have been sent by Donellan to Theodosia the day before his execution. Murphy's account is the only source that we have for this letter.

It read:

My Once Esteemed Wife,

Do not think that I am about to reproach you for declining your visits to me in my present ignominious situation. I am better satisfied that you did not even attempt it … It would be a mockery of feeling to affect a concern for our separation …

To argue with you on the score of those dark arts which have undone me would be fruitless, because I know your conjugal has ever been subservient to your filial affection.

As to your – mother – ; but I will suppress my indignation, if however you should know my dying sentiments of her, ask our friend W—son, the mournful bearer of this, and he will not hesitate to impart them to you …

Were I to advise your immediate separation from her, it would have no weight, for my little influence over you has long been at an end!

Mrs H— you well know, has for a series of years treated me with a tender and disinterested regard, let it not surprise you then to learn that I have bequeathed her my gold watch and miniature picture, as the last and strongest token I can give her of my gratitude.

As to our two poor children, if you deem them pledges of our love, cherish them as such, but try to conceal from them their father's unhappy fate. I have been long cogitating unnumbered
wishes that pressed me to clasp them in my fond arms, and bid them a last adieu! Thank God, however, I have at length subdued them – the whole world, except my offspring, are welcome to become the spectators of my ignominious though unmerited exit!

If I have omitted any thing that I should have said to you – your own heart, I trust, will urge it for me, when I shall be no more.

Farewell, John.

This is a dreadful letter, a terrible goodbye.

Donellan thinks Theodosia has sided with her mother, the woman of ‘dark arts' on which he thinks Theodosia is still to be convinced; he insults her by sending ‘the last and strongest token' he can give to his former mistress; and he suggests that any visit of hers would have simply been ‘affecting a concern'.

But there are flashes of real feeling, of wounded rejection. Ask the friend who delivers this letter what the truth is, he urges, while then going on to talk of his children with genuine grief.

This is a vengeful letter in more ways then one. Donellan's fury with Anna Maria leaps off the page. How could Theodosia let her ‘filial' regard outweigh her respect and love for her husband? he demands. He talks as if Theodosia had not separated from her mother, as Caldecott claimed. Did Donellan realise that Theodosia was living in Northampton? Someone surely must have told him so. And yet perhaps he is talking here of Theodosia's lingering regard for her mother which all his accusations could not really wash away. Or perhaps Theodosia had indeed returned to Lawford for a while, at least until the execution was over.

The sentence about Mrs H—'s ‘tender and disinterested regard' comes directly afterwards. ‘Here is a woman,' he seems to be saying, ‘whose opinion of me could not be coloured by anyone else.' This makes one wonder if John Donellan had maintained his physical relationship with Mrs H all the time he was married to Theodosia; he certainly appears to have kept her as a close friend.

And the gift certainly reached her. Captain Murphy's pamphlet
is ‘embellished with the head of the unfortunate sufferer engraved from his miniature picture now in the possession of Mrs H'.

How Theodosia received this letter, or who the mysterious ‘W—son' was who delivered it, is not recorded.

On the Saturday before his execution, according to Murphy's
Life
and the Coventry newspapers, Donellan had received a visit from ‘a Divine' (whether it was the Reverend Newsam or not is unknown) and a similarly unnamed ‘particular friend'. They told him that any further denials of his guilt would be looked on by the world as a ‘mean prevarication' and would induce people to add insult to his memory.

Donellan surprised them both by answering: ‘I cannot help any man's conclusions; I know my own heart; and with my last breath I will assert my innocence. Falsehoods of the most flagrant kind have induced a jury to take my life; but time will do me justice, and prove me an injured man, ruined by those who ought to have been my friends.'

On the Sunday, Donellan spent all day writing his
Defence
, having asked his solicitors, Inge and Webb, to publish his account as soon after his death as they could, also using the notes he had prepared for them before the trial.

Donellan now added various details to that account such as the fact that he paid Wilmer, Powell and Rattray five guineas each on the night of the abortive autopsy, forced to do so because Lady Boughton claimed she had no money. He also said that, on the day of the funeral, the plumber and carpenter had complained that every time they soldered and unsoldered the coffin, the lead became so hot that they could not touch it without burning themselves, and that this was one of the reasons why Bernard Snow had decided not to open it again. Snow was also paid six guineas by Donellan. One wonders what went through Donellan's mind as he recalled the fees (£1,400 in today's money) that he had paid to the men who later helped to incriminate him.

Then he went through the events of the afternoon of 29 August almost minute by minute, accounting for all his time in an effort to prove that he never went to Theodosius's room. He wrote that
Sarah Blundell, Susannah Sparrow and Catharine Amos had all been busy with a household wash in the kitchen when he came in at about five o'clock asking for a ladder to pick fruit on the higher branches of the trees. He records, somewhat poignantly, that Sarah Blundell could have verified his account that Dand and Matthews called to see him, as it was she who announced their visit.

He wrote about the Reverend Newsam, saying that Newsam had agreed with him about the state of Theodosius's health on the Saturday prior to his death, remarking that the boy was ‘much altered' and that he had ‘ruined his constitution'. To corroborate this, Donellan added that the large amount of mercury that Theodosius had used made him drool uncontrollably, so much so that ‘a quantity of water was always running from his mouth and he was obliged to keep a handkerchief continually at his mouth'.

One of Donellan's solicitors, Thomas Webb, published his own account of Donellan's last words in addition to the version he published with his business partner Inge. This one was prefaced with a statement by Donellan which read:

Sunday April 1st, 1781.

This Case has been read over to me this day, being the last day of my life: and it contains nothing but real facts, as far as my knowledge goes, and I solemnly request, and firmly desire, that it may be published as a firm vindication of my honour and character to the world. I also desire that Mr
Webb
[original italics] one of my solicitors, may be the whole and sole publisher of it, as a clear testimony of my being perfectly satisfied with his conduct.