The pit was not discovered during the initial examination of the premises. On 14 August 1849, police officers entered No. 3, Miniver Place, in Bermondsey; on the 17th, having prised up two heavy flagstones in a back kitchen, they found the body of Patrick O’Connor beneath the earth and quicklime. Frederick and Maria Manning were subsequently put upon their trial for murder. The proceedings record their capital convictions, but establish neither the precise hour of death nor, from the text alone, the full sequence of what transpired within the house.
Before hearing a single witness, the court was obliged to determine a preliminary question of status. Maria’s counsel prayed that she be tried by a jury de medietate linguae, partly composed of foreigners, submitting that she was an alien. The prosecution replied that her marriage to a natural-born British subject had altered her condition. The Lord Chief Baron accepted this reasoning: Maria’s status, according to the statute he cited, was henceforth that of a naturalised subject. The application for a mixed jury was refused. The matter then before the bench concerned her civil status, not her guilt.
Patrick O’Connor was employed as an officer of the Customs—a gauger—and had lodged for nearly five years with the sisters Harmes in Greenwood Street. On 8 August, Pierce Walsh accompanied him to the Mannings’ house. Maria asked why he had failed to come to dinner; O’Connor replied that he did not recognise her hand. After some discourse of business and the smoking of a pipe, he fell unwell. The Mannings offered him brandy and water; he did not drink it. Having recovered his senses, he quitted the house with Walsh at about a quarter past eleven, to all appearance in good health.
On the following day, several witnesses placed him in the vicinity of London Bridge, proceeding toward Bermondsey. Two Customs officers caught sight of him at about a quarter to five; another observed him a few minutes later, near Miniver Place, at roughly ten minutes past five. These observations placed O’Connor upon the road to the house, without proving that he ever passed through the door. James Younghusband, however, stated that he saw him at about a quarter past five on the bridge, walking very slowly toward the City and coming to a halt; he had watched him for only half a minute from the top of an omnibus. This deposition complicates the route suggested by the other witnesses, and the judicial record leaves the movement unresolved. He never returned to his lodgings. When colleagues made inquiry after him, Maria offered shifting answers regarding the last time she had seen him and the hour of her visits to his rooms. Anna Harmes, for her part, recounted having received her on Thursday and Friday evening, alone in O’Connor’s chamber, on each occasion for more than an hour.
The record presents no eyewitness to the death. The first search of the dwelling proved fruitless. When the constables returned, Inspector Barnes observed a damp mark along the joints of two flagstones. Aided by Burton, he lifted them. Beneath the mortar lay loose earth; at a depth of about a foot, a man’s foot came into view. The body lay buried face downwards, stripped naked, the legs tied up to the thighs, and covered with slaked lime. The officers drew it from the trench and laid it upon the floor of the front kitchen.
Mr Lockwood, the surgeon, removed from the mouth a set of artificial teeth, which a dentist identified as those he had supplied to O’Connor. He likewise observed a leaden bullet lodged beneath the skin above the right eye, an aperture in the skull, and extensive fractures. The injuries were sufficiently severe to cause death; the bullet wound would likewise, in time, have proved fatal. The medical witness could not say when they had been inflicted. He estimated that the body had lain beneath the ground for at least a week, making allowance for the lime which accelerated its decomposition. The post-mortem report permitted the identification of the deceased and the description of the wounds, but neither dated the death with precision nor reconstituted the order of the blows.
The pit was merely one element of the material investigation. A bricklayer who had worked at the Mannings’ house testified that in July Frederick had purchased a bushel of lime, professing that it was intended to destroy slugs in the garden. A labourer carried it into the back kitchen at his direction. A few days after this delivery, Frederick also ordered a heavy iron crowbar. The shopman who delivered it explained that Manning, displeased that the tool was carried openly, caused it to be wrapped in brown paper. The implement was not found on the premises; a surgeon deposed that an instrument of that description might have produced certain of the fractures, whilst acknowledging that he could not assign them to it exclusively. William Massey, a medical student who had formerly lodged with the Mannings, related that Frederick had questioned him as to what drug might sufficiently stupefy a person to compel him to sign a paper. Immediately before or after, according to his recollection, Manning had spoken of having O’Connor sign a promissory note for £500. Massey believed Maria to have been present when the inquiry concerning drugs was made; he also recounted questions regarding the most vulnerable part of the human skull and the report made by an air-gun. These depositions establish what Massey swore in court, not that such a design was ever put into execution.
Maria purchased a small dustpan on 8 August. Two days later, a young girl of twelve, Hannah Firman, came in to clean the house. Near the coal-cellar, she observed a basket that appeared to have held lime. She likewise stated that she was directed to wash the basket, but could not say what else she had seen. The officers found no dustpan in the house on the day the body was unearthed. These objects cast light upon the inquiry without, of themselves, proving the exact use to which they were put.
Another chain of circumstantial evidence concerned O’Connor’s financial affairs. He held foreign railway scrip transferable by delivery of the certificates. In July and the early days of August, he had purchased such shares through brokers; the serial numbers of several certificates found in Maria’s luggage corresponded to those registered in O’Connor’s name. Yet she had previously inquired of a sharebroker what foreign scrip she might dispose of in Paris without her husband’s intervention; he had recommended certain French securities. Maria subsequently maintained that some of the shares belonged to her and that others had been bought on her behalf by O’Connor. The certificates proved financial dealings between the parties, but could not alone establish the lawful ownership of every individual title.
On 11 August, Frederick went to the office of a stockbroker in company with one John Bassett. Bassett prepared a transfer note bearing O’Connor’s name, and the man presented the shares as though the name were his own. The clerk, Hammond, saw Bassett hand over to him a hundred-pound note, a five-pound note, and five sovereigns. A broker present in the office saw the transfer executed by the stranger, but was afterwards unable to identify Manning. The transfer clerk deposed that no further transfer of these shares appeared upon the books. John Blatchford, O’Connor’s solicitor, swore that the signature was not in the handwriting of the deceased. Webb Shillibeer, an attorney unacquainted with O’Connor’s hand, considered that the signature closely resembled the writing in the body of the document. Hammond, however, positively identified Manning as the individual who had received the cash. The proof thus combined documentation, a transaction, and witness testimonies of varying weight.
Following O’Connor’s disappearance, the Mannings sold their household furniture to Charles Bainbridge. Frederick informed the broker that he was sending his wife into the country, slept two nights at his house, and then departed in a cab with his luggage. Maria had already quitted Miniver Place on 13 August. A cabman conveyed her to a railway station with two boxes and some baskets; upon the luggage labels she had written the name of Mrs Smith, with an address indicating a passenger bound for Paris. Witnesses subsequently traced her to Edinburgh. There, the police discovered among her effects the foreign railway certificates, banknotes, and sovereigns.
Frederick was apprehended in Jersey. While being conveyed into custody, he asserted that Maria had shot O’Connor and subsequently buried him. He repeated this accusation to a second officer, adding a detailed narrative of a dinner, an altercation, and a pistol-shot. These words were the statements of a man in custody, reported by police officers; they were supported by no eyewitness to the deed. They likewise stood at variance with the condition of the remains: the medical men had described extensive fractures to the skull, as well as a gunshot wound, but had not determined an indisputable sequence. The court could not treat the husband’s recrimination as an admission of guilt on the part of Maria.
Maria’s own declarations were equally contradictory. Following her arrest, she denied the murder, asserting that O’Connor had been “the best friend” she possessed in London, and had acted toward her as a father. She maintained that she had lost sight of him after the Wednesday preceding his disappearance, subsequently explaining that she had gone to seek him when he failed to appear for dinner. Yet the sisters Harmes placed her in his lodgings on both Thursday and Friday, and the share certificates found among her luggage directly connected her to his affairs. Such contradictions might well deepen suspicion; they did not constitute direct perception of the homicide.
The jury found Frederick and Maria Manning guilty as charged. The record does not disclose the detailed deliberations of the jury, nor does it allow the respective acts of each prisoner to be distinctly apportioned. It establishes, however, an unbroken chain of circumstantial evidence: O’Connor is seen walking toward the house and vanishes; his body is concealed beneath the hearth; the couple purchase lime and an iron bar; certificates linked to his investments and a disputed transfer appear in a financial transaction wherein Frederick receives the funds; both abandon London before their arrest. The sentence of death was pronounced against them both. There the printed report concludes. It records a joint verdict, but offers neither a complete picture of the murder nor the judicial history that followed the condemnation.