In 1759 London was busy with merchants, businesspeople and trades, along with those going to work, visiting loved ones and attending church. As they all retreated into their homes on a late February evening they would have passed taverns lit with the flickering amber glow of candles and muffled laughter trickling from within. They would not have known, as they walked past Mrs Walker's house in Rotherhithe, South London, that there was anything wrong. But inside, she lay dead, killed by a single cut to her throat.
The Annual Register, a volume published each year in the mid-eighteenth century and also into the nineteenth, contained a summary of the main news events from each year. It highlighted military action, reports from overseas and the movements of the royal family. But it also told the tale of Mrs Walker, a Southwark resident who was allegedly murdered by her niece.
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| unknown artist, A View of the Thames from Rotherhithe Stairs, 1789, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1977.14.15308. Public Domain. |
Mrs Walker was the widow of a timber merchant, Leonard Walker, who lived in Rotherhithe near the Thames, in the Southwark area of London. Finding herself lonely after the death of her husband, and remembering that she had a young niece in Yorkshire, she suggested the girl come and stay in London with her. It's likely that in return for her companionship, Walker could offer the girl - a twenty-year old named Mary Edmonson - opportunities within the community for work or social elevation. Later evidence suggests that she came to London to gain experience of running a house before she was to be married, as she would soon have to oversee one of her own. However shortly after Mary's arrival Mrs Walker and Edmonson were reported to have encountered difficulties. The Register states that they clashed, with Mary 'not answering her aunt's expectation', probably an eighteenth century way of saying that her behaviour was not as she had expected and she perhaps engaged in crime or regularly argued with her aunt. Frustrated, the account records that Walker told Mary she should 'go to some service as soon as the spring came on'. This would have involved living in another family, perhaps as a servant. What happened next is a 300 year old mystery.
In early February 1759, the Register stated that Mary, one evening, 'went into the yard, and made a noise by throwing down the washing tubs, and then ran in and told her aunt that four men broke into the yard'. Walker and Mary made enquiries among their neighbours whether anyone saw the scuffle, but , perplexed, they told them they saw nothing. Two weeks later, on or shortly before 23 February between 7pm and 8pm, Mary was alleged to have once again gone into the yard of the house, making the same noises as before. Thinking the band of 'men' had returned and now unable to find her niece, Walker crept out into the darkness of the yard to make sure Mary was safe. As she did so, Mary allegedly lunged at her with a knife and cut her throat. She then dragged her aunt's body back into the house and into the parlour, where she took Walker's watch and some silver spoons. She hid them, with the murder weapon and her bloody clothes, under the water tub inside the wash house and in the yard.
Soon afterwards, Walker's neighbours found Mary with a cut on her hand, stumbling into the street and asking for help as her 'aunt was murdered by four men, who gagged her, and in endeavouring to save her aunt, they cut her across their wrist'. The neighbours however suspected not only that Mary had cut her own hand to back up her false story but that the murder was also committed by her. Detaining Mary, they questioned her and she was reported to have confessed to the whole crime. Promptly taken to a gaol in Southwark, she awaited her trial.
Next, however, the facts take a swing in the opposite direction. At the trial, Mary's brother-in-law testified that Mary 'had never behaved amiss, that she was soon to have been married to one Mr King, a clergyman, at Calverley, [in West Yorkshire], and that she was sent to London with her aunt to learn a little experience before she became his wife'. It emerged that Mary had never confessed to Walker's murder, as her neighbours had reported, but strongly denied any involvement in it. The cuts on her fingers, she argued, were made when she tried to open the door to her aunt's attackers and they forced it shut against her, jamming her fingers in the opening. The court however, made up their mind. Mary Edmonson was taken from the Stockhouse prison in Kingston to a place outside The Peacock in Kennington Lane, just before 10am on 2 April 1759. Carried to Kennington Common in a cart with the hangman's halter around her neck, she was said to have fiercely 'denied the murder, and died very unconcerned, never shedding a tear'.
The writer and preacher Silas Told was present at Mary's execution and described the scene that she would have witnessed. He was shocked to see a 'turbulent mob... throwing out the most vile, terrible and blasphemous curses and oaths' at the young woman as he made his way to Mary, who was waiting in a nearby room. He urged her to confess to the crime before her death so that she would be 'clear before God', but Mary told him that she had already spoken the truth and would 'persevere in the same spirit to her last moment'.
After spending some time in prayer she told the crowd 'it is now too late with God and you to trifle, and I assure you, I am innocent of the crime laid to my charge. I am very easy in my mind, and suffer with as much pleasure as if I was going to sleep.' She forgave her prosecutors and asked them to pray for her soul, mounting the steps to the gallows where Thomas Tollis, the executioner, was ready. He placed a handkerchief over her eyes, but she pushed it away. She was pronounced dead 12 minutes before 10am.
The justices of Georgian London certainly believed Mary was guilty of her aunt's murder, but looking at the case from a modern point of view there seem to be real and considerable doubt of her guilt. First, Mary's motive is not clear. She may have believed in the chance of some financial gain after the death of her aunt, but she was soon to be married in Yorkshire to a clergyman anyway, to begin a new life as a newlywed housewife. Silas Told noted that Mary would have inherited £200, a considerable sum in 1759, on her aunt's death. However, Mary's future was already secure. The alleged fight over their differences and Walker's statement that she should seek experience elsewhere was also a minor challenge and setback. And finally, just because the four men Mary said had attacked the home were never found, does not mean they never existed. In addition, Mary's calm demeanour at the time of her death, where she denied involvement in the murder as she stood at the gallows also casts doubt on her guilt. With death coming anyway, she had no reason to lie. In fact, it would have been the perfect opportunity to clap back at her accusers if she had carried out the crime.
Mary's supporter Silas Told, who pointed out in his An Account of the Life, and Dealings with God in 1785 that Judge Dennison, who ruled over her case, had previously made an error in judgement and that 'no positive evidence against her could be produced'. Dennison, said Told, questioned Mary intensely during the proceedings, calling her a 'wretch' and telling her that her soul would be damned if she did not admit to the crime. Despite this, she still refused to confess, which angered Dennison further. Told wrote that the only evidence against her was that her bloodied apron and cap was found in the home, where she was alleged to have hidden it. The writer was also with Mary at her execution, and later insisted that based on his interactions with her, he had 'every reason to believe she was condemned innocent of the charge', especially as he argues that her cousin, who lived in Charing Cross, later admitted to murdering their aunt after he inherited £100 following her death. Afterwards, the cousin denied the confession, became a highway robber and was eventually deported.
Was Mary a calculating and premeditated murderer? Or the scapegoat of a horrific crime which ended in the death of a widow of the Rotherhithe community? Without further evidence it is almost impossible to say for sure.
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