The carpetbag reached the house. So too did the double-barrelled gun. A backgammon board was even brought along, complete with all that was needful for a few games after the shooting. William Weare had selected his effects for a sojourn of several days; they made the journey without him. When John Thurtell presented himself at Gill’s Hill Cottage on the evening of the 24th of October 1823, he had his companion’s luggage in his keeping. He no longer had his companion.
This circumstance lingered in the depositions with singular obstinacy. One might easily lose one’s way amid the conflicting declarations of gamesters, the festering grudges over money, the denials, and the calculated pacts struck between confederates. Yet a man had set out from London with a fowling-piece and a green bag. Other men had reappeared in possession of those very articles. In the end, someone was bound to ask what they had done with their owner.
A Journey for a Few Days
Weare resided at Lyon’s Inn. On that Friday afternoon, he took a meal, packed fresh linen into his bag, and directed the laundress who looked after his rooms to call a hackney coach. On the previous evening, at Rexworthy’s billiard rooms, Thurtell had invited him down into Hertfordshire to shoot over the country adjoining a cottage rented by William Probert. They were to remain there two or three days. The gun was thus well suited to the occasion; gaming promised to beguile the remainder of their leisure. Weare was not carrying his entire existence with him. Only what he deemed necessary until his return.
The two men frequented the same gaming-houses. Thurtell accused Weare of having fleeced him of several hundred pounds by foul play. The grudge is well attested; the cheating imputed to the victim does not, for all that, become an established truth. In that milieu, every man possessed his own version of his losses, and the ruined player could at times explain with considerable eloquence why the money ought rightfully to have remained in his pocket.
The Newgate Calendar further credits Weare with the habit of carrying large sums of money in a garment worn beneath his waistcoat. This supposed hoard grew readily enough in tavern talk. It offered to cupidity an object far more enticing than an unsettled debt that must be laboriously dunned. Yet Weare was not merely this cache of sovereigns. At the billiard table, Rexworthy knew his face; at Lyon’s Inn, men were familiar with his habits. These ordinary human ties would serve to identify him when his companions had done their utmost to reduce him to a nameless corpse.
Thurtell was to take him up in his gig. Joseph Hunt, a professional singer and an acquaintance of the same sporting circles, was to travel with Probert. Two conveyances thus quitted London. The men who drove the second knew whither they were bound; Weare believed that he knew as well.
Dinner at the Cottage
The road was broken by several halts. Probert and Hunt drank at public-houses where the spirit-merchant was known to the landlords. They overtook Thurtell’s gig, then tarried behind. According to Probert’s deposition, Hunt was to wait near Phillimore Lodge. That missed rendezvous was to weigh heavily in their later explanations: each man would soon measure the distance separating him from the murder with far greater nicety than he had displayed in traversing the road.
Near Gill’s Hill Lane, the report of a pistol was heard, followed by voices and groans. No bystander came forward to testify to having witnessed the whole of the struggle. The most circumstantial particulars of the assault were recounted by Probert, who had them from Thurtell’s own lips: a pistol-shot, Weare striving to flee, a desperate and prolonged resistance, then savage blows dealt with the weapon and a blade. The narrative does not permit us to apportion an exact second to every blow. It suffices to establish that the man lured to a shooting excursion was compelled to fight for his life.
Probert claimed to have encountered Thurtell alone, near his own gate, and to have heard him announce that he had done for his companion. He turned back to fetch Hunt. The three men then repaired to the cottage, where Mrs Probert, her sister, some children, and the servants were gathered. Hunt was as yet unknown there: he was duly introduced. A murder had just been committed in the neighbouring lane; indoors, the evening opened with the customary amenities of polite society.
There was pork for supper, purchased upon the road. There was also an excursion which the visitors passed off as a neighbourly call. In his deposition, Probert described it in very different terms: they had gone out to find the body, search it, and prepare it for removal. His account implicated his own person. He sought, nevertheless, to fix the beginning of his responsibility after the fatal blows had been struck—a distinction upon which his own neck now depended.
In the course of the evening, Thurtell produced a gold watch and chain. The chain, he remarked, was more suitable for a lady. Mrs Probert demurred at first, then accepted the gift. Hunt sang. It was proposed to make up a bed for the visitors; they chose to remain below. The house was not wanting in conversation or diversions. It was precisely this domestic stir that would render its subsequent silence so difficult to maintain.
What the House Overheard
Mrs Probert went upstairs, but did not retire to bed at once. She listened from the landing. In her testimony, she distinguished words concerning clothes, the rustle of papers, then the sound of articles cast into the hearth. From her bedroom window, she saw a horse led out. Later, something heavy was dragged across the garden; she descried what bore the appearance of a sack. A sound reached her ear like that of stones cast down into a pit.
She did not pretend to have seen more. This restraint lent her observations their peculiar weight. Her husband related an operation in which he confessed to having borne a part; she brought forward sounds, movements, and words overheard from within the house. The two narratives met without ever being interchangeable.
On the following morning, labourers observed two men busily searching near the hedge. After their departure, blood was discovered, together with a blade and a pistol. The lane had preserved what the night-visitors had failed to retrieve. In London, Weare’s effects were soon to be unearthed at Hunt’s lodgings. At the cottage, the body had been plunged into the pond in the garden, weighted so as to disappear. But Probert learned that the neighbours had heard the pistol-shot. That which was meant to shield him now threatened him directly: the dead man lay upon his premises.
The corpse was accordingly moved a second time. The boy servant, who might have noted their comings and goings, had been sent off to London. Thurtell and Hunt returned to take up the body, conveying it in a gig toward another piece of water. To displace Weare was intended to remove suspicion. It served only to multiply journeys, material objects, and witnesses in an affair already encumbered with traces.
The arrests followed swiftly. Hunt at length pointed out the pond where the body lay, after exchanges with the magistrates upon which he would later base an application for mercy. The corpse, when drawn from the water, was duly identified. The luggage had preserved the tokens of an interrupted journey; Rexworthy and the other witnesses restored to that traveller his name.
Two Men Before Their Judges
The trial took place at Hertford on the 6th and 7th of January 1824. Probert was admitted as an evidence for the Crown. Thurtell and Hunt were not only called upon to answer for their deeds, but also to confront the testimony of a man who had every interest in shifting the burden onto them. The material exhibits and outside observations were thus of decisive moment: the case could not rest upon the solitary probity of Probert, which had suddenly become an uncommonly profitable commodity for its possessor.
Thurtell delivered a lengthy and elaborate defence. He denounced the public prints that had condemned him in advance, spoke of his respectable family, protested his innocence, and assailed the deductions drawn from circumstantial evidence. Hunt pleaded the promise he claimed to have received before directing the constables to the pond. The jury found them both guilty. Both received sentence of death; yet they did not share the same fate.
Thurtell was hanged at Hertford on the 9th of January 1824. Hunt obtained a reprieve, and his sentence was subsequently commuted to transportation for life. He did not, therefore, perish with Thurtell. The ancient account traces him as far as Australia; the chronicles of his later life require other documents and are unnecessary to distinguish this royal clemency from the acquittal he had failed to win.
Around Thurtell, the concourse of spectators had looked for a final bearing, hung upon a parting word, and judged the manner in which he mounted the scaffold. William Weare had been granted far less time to compose his end. He had set out with a change of linen. He had brought along a game. Amid so many speeches devoted to the fortitude of the condemned man, these modest precautions endure: the silent traces of a man who had fully purposed to return home.