The note promised an opportunity, not a snare. A man seeking mercantile employment had recently advertised in the public papers that he would advance eight hundred or a thousand pounds by way of a loan to anyone capable of procuring him a place. On the 6th of February 1828, an answer assigned an address: Mr. Howard, of No. 36 Red Lion Square, Holborn, would receive “J. L.” on the morrow or the day following, between noon and four o’clock. Several days elapsed before the applicant, Mr. Mullay, brought himself to attend. In the narrative of Camden Pelham, as consulted in the edition of 1891, the author confesses his inability to trace the antecedent history of the accused and conjectures that the name Howard was assumed; nor does he name the correspondent who transmitted the note to Mullay.
The house was then occupied for the meetings of a London co-operative society. When Mullay stated the purpose of his errand, Howard declared himself ready to treat upon the matter. He represented himself as a relative of a gentleman whose influence was capable of securing lucrative posts. Mullay corrected the purport of his advertisement: he did not seek to purchase an appointment, but to advance a sum upon adequate security without interest, in return for the nomination. Howard thereupon proposed that they retire upstairs. They repaired to a back garret of the house, where the conference regarding the loan was resumed.
This initial meeting settled the terms of the next. Mullay was to return on the following day at one o’clock, provided with the money; a Mr. Owen, described as the gentleman whose interest was to command the place, was also to be in attendance. On the morrow, Howard and Mullay met at the appointed hour, but Owen did not appear. For two hours the two men waited. Pelham affirms that Howard then learned his visitor had brought five hundred pounds to meet the anticipated demand.
This prolonged delay did not allay Mullay’s misgivings. Howard, Pelham writes, watched him as if measuring their respective strength. In the room lay a large clasp-knife and a heavy trap-bat, of which the tenant gave, according to the chronicler, no satisfactory explanation. Mullay nevertheless departed the house, promising to return on Monday in the lingering hope of meeting Owen. The latter failed to keep this appointment as well. Howard appointed another for the Tuesday at noon, cautioning him not to forget the money.
Upon that day, Howard appeared, according to the account, extraordinarily agitated. The conversation proceeded irregularly. He requested Mullay to write to Owen, transcribing a draft which he placed before him. Mullay divested himself of his coat, which he hung in the room; he had scarcely begun to write when he perceived Howard thrust the fire-poker violently into the coals. The gesture troubled him. He withdrew the iron, then resumed his seat. Thereupon Howard abruptly locked the door, seized the bat and the knife previously noticed, and threw himself upon him.
Mullay perceived that he must struggle for his life. The blows from the bat fell heavily upon his head. Howard held the knife in his left hand; Mullay succeeded in breaking the blade in two during the fray, but his own hands were severely lacerated. Blood streamed from his wounds and his sight began to fail. He repeatedly cried, “Murder!” His assailant, according to Pelham, retorted that his cries were useless, as he had assistants close at hand who would aid him in “doing for” him.
Mullay redoubled his cries and rushed to the windows, thrusting his hands through the panes that the neighbours might hear. He then seized the poker and made a last effort at defence. The grapple brought both men to the ground; Mullay, proving the stronger, succeeded in placing his knee upon Howard’s breast. Footsteps were now heard approaching the outer side of the door. Mullay at first feared that fresh adversaries were arriving to succour his assailant, and prepared to sell his life dearly. Howard then begged for mercy, protesting that he meant him no harm. Mullay did not release him until this petition was repeated.
The door was opened almost immediately. The inmates of the house entered, and the street-keeper of Red Lion Square was fetched, who secured Howard. The apartment, as well as the garments of both prisoner and complainant, was covered with blood. A surgeon examined the latter and pronounced his wounds dangerous. Howard was conducted to the police office in Hatton Garden. He vehemently denied any intention of murdering the prosecutor, and declared that he suffered from so severe an affliction that he must die unless immediately supplied with an ounce of opium. He was committed to Newgate to take his trial. An inquiry into his circumstances, Pelham relates, disclosed that he was in an extremity of destitution.
The trial took place at the Old Bailey on the 26th of February. After Mullay had given his testimony regarding the occurrences, Howard read his own defence. He stated that he had resided in Red Lion Square for about three weeks and was himself in very embarrassed circumstances. A man known to him by the name of Owen shared this distress. Both, he explained, had formed a design upon Mullay’s advertisement: they sought to induce him to lodge his money in a bank under the joint names of Mullay and Owen. This deposit was intended to give them the appearance of solvent men and enable them to obtain credit.
In this version, Howard had spoken of a vacant post in the public service, valued at three hundred and fifty pounds per annum. Owen, he asserted, could command it if Mullay would consent to pass for his kinsman; the consideration required was the lodging with a banker of a sum equal to three years’ salary, to be paid over as a premium at the expiration of three months. The statement, as recorded by Pelham, does not specify who was to receive this premium. Howard asserted that Mullay appeared to consent, and that several meetings were held to conclude the business.
The two accounts of the transaction do not agree. In Pelham’s preliminary recital, Mullay tenders a loan without interest, upon security, in exchange for an office. In the paper read by Howard at the trial, the transaction is described as a banking deposit in the names of Mullay and Owen, intended to procure them credit; the sum intended as a premium was to be paid over after three months, though the passage leaves its recipient unnamed. Owen remains a figure in an arrangement alleged by Howard, and makes no appearance in this stage of the narrative.
In the statement read at his trial, Howard accounted for the violence of the Tuesday by an insult. Mullay, grown weary of Owen’s absence, was said to have burst into reproaches against them. Howard pleaded that he was sick and of an irritable habit; stung by an opprobrious epithet, he struck Mullay in the face. He admitted that a violent struggle ensued, and that he did all in his power to defend himself, but maintained that his adversary was a larger and more powerful man than himself. Pelham’s earlier narrative had represented the successive appointments as the contrivances of an ambush; Howard, in his defense, described a quarrel that degenerated into a fray.
The jury did not accept this explanation. They found Howard guilty of assault with intent to rob; the conviction was consequently not one of felonious wounding with intent to murder. The sentence was transportation for life. Pelham considers it probable that the name under which the prisoner was tried was assumed, while acknowledging his inability to furnish any authentic particulars of his history. The printed record thus leaves the true name in darkness. It preserves, however, the stark material sequence of the encounters: the five hundred pounds announced, the bolted door, the bat and the knife, and the cries heard through the shattered window-panes.