On Monday, May 8, 1854, the neighbours along the Breitengang observed that the widow Jacob and her daughter had not opened their door at the accustomed hour. They earned their bread as washerwomen; their absence broke a rhythm familiar to the alleyway. Knocking brought no answer. It became necessary to force the courtyard door of that ancient tenement, with its steep staircases and narrow passages. Within, both women lay dead, and their chests had been ransacked. Robbery appeared evident, yet no man could yet name the thief.
The Neue Pitaval of 1858 records the proceedings and the confession attributed to Timm, yet it is not the complete judicial minute. Its German OCR scan is riddled with errors; the particulars of the confession are therefore presented here solely as the account given by that compilation.
The mother was discovered near the entrance, her cranium crushed by a hammer and her throat gashed with a knife. The daughter lay near the cellar stairs; she too had been struck, then wounded in the neck. Blood upon the steps suggested a struggle or flight through the house, though this alone did not suffice to reconstruct each movement. A knife belonging to the victim lay beside the corpses. Another knife, likewise stained, together with a soiled and blood-spattered work shirt, were soon to become the first exhibits of a discreet inquiry.
On the morrow, the police summoned the inhabitants of the neighbourhood to the Stadthaus. Among them was Bernimb, a master woodturner and employer of several journeymen. He recognized the shirt as that of one of his workmen. A few weeks later, when the second knife was recovered, he identified it likewise as an implement from his workshop. The name of the man in his employ thus entered the notes of the magistrates, though the officers did not yet possess, according to the chronicle, sufficient proof to apprehend him.
The man was named Johann Arnold Wilhelm Timm, styled at times in the chapter Wilhelm Timm. The Pitaval depicts him as a nineteen-year-old journeyman turner. The year of his birth is unreadable in the OCR transcript. He was familiar with the house and its occupants, yet such acquaintance did not alone suffice to point him out: other neighbours were equally known to the family.
The police chose not to make a spectacle of the clue. Men close to the inquiry observed Timm’s habits, gathered intelligence, and waited for further signs to emerge. The chapter emphasizes the quiet vigilance of the magistrates: the shirt, the knife, and subsequently the expenditures and explanations of the young workman were weighed in concert.
A shoemaker had received certain Prussian coins from Timm in settlement of a debt. He observed that earth clung to the metal. The circumstance was modest, almost domestic: coin in hand, a trace of soil lodged within its grooves. The detail proved nothing of itself, yet it cast doubt upon their provenance, compounding the suspicions already awakened by the implements from the workshop.
After roughly a month, Timm was taken into custody. The narrative states that he resisted interrogation at first, but confessed after several days, assigning his admission to June 10. According to this text, Timm explained that he had taken a hammer, a pair of pincers, a knife, and a soiled shirt under the pretext of having them laundered. He had purportedly drunk two measures of spirits before repairing to the Jacobs’ dwelling on a Sunday evening, towards nine o’clock.
He is said to have knocked and asked the widow Jacob to admit him. The chronicle then attributes to his confession the sequence of the double murder: he struck the mother upon the head with the hammer, then wounded her neck; the daughter came down, was in turn struck and cut, and tumbled toward the cellar. The book further relates that he ransacked the chests and carried off money, estimated at roughly one hundred Hamburg marks, or forty to fifty Prussian thalers. His reported confession also recounts the narrowest interruption: while he was washing his hands upstairs, an errand boy bearing linen knocked upon the street door. Receiving no reply after several knocks, the lad departed, intending to return on the morrow. Timm left a lamp burning, took another knife belonging to the victims, and laid it beside the bodies. He reportedly hoped this substitution would divert pursuit. On the following day, neighbours recalled the light seen within the house; an unheeded visit had thus become a belated clue. In the version recorded in the chapter, he did not linger to search for portable valuables: he forced the bureau in the upper chamber and seized the ready cash found therein. He then repaired to the Pfannkuchenkeller, an eating house, and passed the remainder of the night in the establishment of a brothel-keeper in the Ehebrechergang. The contrast is stark between the pettiness of the plunder and the severity of the impending penalty. Yet it is the Pitaval that recounts these wanderings from the confession; no independent register has been consulted here.
The money, according to the chapter, was swiftly squandered. Timm discharged his debts, bought clothing, and frequented places of public diversion. The text reports that he declared he had merely sought money, pressed by his immediate needs; broader strictures upon his character belong solely to the compiler.
The trial opened in public session on August 28, 1854. The narrative records that Timm did not retract his statements and answered without outward emotion. In September, his advocate, Gallois, pleaded that capital punishment be commuted to hard labour; the compiler deemed his defense eloquent, though it altered not the outcome. On January 19, 1855, the Lower Court of Hamburg sentenced Timm to death. His mother subsequently petitioned the Senate for clemency, while Gallois challenged the procedure before the higher court in Lübeck. Two guards were posted outside his cell each night, and two pastors attended him as appointed spiritual counsellors. The chapter notes that neither the guards nor the pastors perceived any marked alteration in his demeanour. The author thereafter transforms this apparent composure into a portrait of cold indifference; we may retain only the visits and surveillance he describes. The dates of appeal furnished by the Pitaval are contradictory: a higher ruling appears in one passage under October 1856, yet elsewhere a rejection is assigned to March of that same year and coupled with another decision from October 1855. Lacking an independent register, I shall not reconstruct these stages, abiding strictly by the precisely dated judgment of the first instance.
The Pitaval, the Meeder chronology, and an 1889 Hamburg chronicle place the execution by guillotine on April 10, 1856; a press notice of 1926 gives April 9. The compilation relates that an initial date had been fixed for April 5. During the preceding night, Timm locked in his warder and attempted to escape through a window. He broke a leg in his fall and was recaptured. The execution was deferred; the text records that he was conveyed to the scaffold upon a chair. It recounts as well the farewells of his mother and brother, and the black cloths stretched across the courtyard to screen the spectacle from surrounding windows. The discrepancy of dates remains, though April 10 is sustained by three authorities.
The Pitaval attributes to Timm, following his failed flight, these words: had he escaped, he would have had to kill again to pay his passage to America. This utterance is known here solely through the compilation and proves no prior design. The inquiry itself advanced by far more modest steps: a master recognizes a workman’s shirt, a knife is traced to a shop, a cobbler puzzles over coins encrusted with dirt. Their convergence led to the arrest, then to the scaffold. It is this chain of observations, preserved in a retrospective chronicle and traversed by conflicting dates, that remains the firmest foundation of the affair.