The coachman John Giles took up two men at the end of Fetter Lane. They inquired whether he knew Dr. Andrew Clenche, then bade him drive their carriage to Brownlow Street. One of them alighted and sent word to the physician that two gentlemen desired to bring him to a sick person. Clenche came out in his nightgown and slippers. One of the travellers yielded his place and bade him sit at the back of the coach.
The journey led to no bedside. The passengers ordered Giles to drive toward Leadenhall Market, and thence to an alehouse near Aldgate. They inquired for a surgeon named Hunt, whom none could find, and subsequently sent the coachman to fetch two fowls. Upon his return, Giles saw the doctor slumped motionless against the cushions. He called to him and shook him, but received no answer. A handkerchief was bound fast about his neck; a piece of coal, wrapped within the linen, bore down upon the windpipe. The two men were gone.
Giles immediately raised the watch. Clenche was carried into a neighbouring tavern and an attempt was made to bleed him, but he never regained his senses. Witnesses came to view the body and set aside the effects found upon his person. Death was formally established before the inquest could furnish the name of the second traveller. The prosecution would fix upon Harrison as one of the pair, suffering the other to remain in the indictment under the designation of a “person unknown.”
In the account published in 1825, this nocturnal circuit forms the very spine of the accusation against Henry Harrison. The trial took place at the Old Bailey on April 6, 1692. Harrison was arraigned together with a confederate who remained nameless. The judicial record does not allow every minute to be reconstituted, but it brings forth the physician, his two passengers, the coachman who drove them from street to street, and the question that divided the witnesses thereafter: was Harrison indeed one of those travellers?
The motive tendered by the Crown sprang from a dispute over money. Dr. Clenche held a mortgage upon a house connected with Mrs. Vanwicke and her children. A legacy of six hundred pounds had been entrusted to Rowe, who managed their affairs; when the latter proved unable to pay, Clenche commenced proceedings upon the mortgaged estate. Johnson, the physician’s attorney, deposed that he had offered to abate the debt by twenty pounds if Mrs. Vanwicke would discharge the remainder, but she could not raise the sum. Harrison, who lived on intimate terms with Mrs. Vanwicke, set himself against the doctor. One witness related that he clapped his hand upon his sword and accused the physician of defrauding the widow. Others reported that he called him a rogue and declared he deserved to have his throat cut. When Mrs. Vanwicke petitioned for an advance of money, Clenche refused her, rebuking her for squandering her funds in Harrison’s company.
This quarrel offered a motive, though not yet proof of murder. The depositions multiplied different accounts of threats. A lodger heard Harrison declare that Clenche “should never die in his bed.” An officer of the Compter testified that he spoke of taking his revenge and having the doctor’s blood. Another witness recalled that he had promised to “manage him as never man was managed.” These words were reported by various persons at distinct moments; several testimonies rested solely upon recollections of bitter insults uttered in the heat of disputes over debt and rent.
On the night of the murder, Harrison was seen in sundry quarters. He had lodged with the Caraways until his departure on January 3; on the morrow, he wrote that he was leaving town for a week or ten days. That evening, a porter attended him to another lodging. Towards nine o’clock, he borrowed a gown from a gentleman who invited him to supper. Harrison declined, alleging that he had urgent business and that a gentleman awaited him in the street. His host observed him wearing a cloak. Earlier that evening, another coachman had heard two men inquiring after Dr. Clenche and had driven them to his door.
Ann Ashholt deposed that she had seen a coach standing in Brownlow Street. She saw a man send the coachman to fetch Clenche and discerned his face by the light of the lanterns. The physician took his seat; one of the travellers moved aside to give him room. At Newgate, during a visit to Harrison, Ashholt claimed to have recognised his voice before laying eyes upon him, and subsequently identified his countenance as well. She confirmed this recognition at the bar. She had not reported the encounter sooner, she explained, because her mother was unwilling that she should meddle in the affair. A second woman merely recounted what Ashholt was said to have told her after the murder, and thus stood not as an independent witness to the scene.
Material traces and personal effects likewise seemed to connect Harrison with the vehicle. The handkerchief found about the doctor’s neck was compared to a piece of a servant-maid’s apron, which Harrison was said to have held near the fire when he lodged at the Caraways’. The maid testified that they were of a likeness. A young lad who was said to have recognized the coach near the market was absent from the proceedings: the chronicle asserts that he left his service after being accosted by soldiers. The substance of his examination was read before the court, yet the recorded text remains hesitant as to the identity he ascribed to one of the men.
Harrison denied having had any quarrel with Clenche. He cast the blame for the dispute upon Rowe and presented an entirely different chronology. He asserted that he had been at Maccaffee’s house in Chancery Lane, playing at cards between nine and eleven o’clock. Mr. and Mrs. Maccaffee confirmed this account. Baker, another player, deposed that he had left towards ten; his credit was shaken, however, when the prosecution produced a former conviction against him for fraud. Harrison maintained furthermore that he had left London to recover a debt at Basingstoke, yet he could produce no witness to attest to that journey.
Another circumstance cast doubt upon his alibi. Two men related that they had encountered Harrison near the King’s Head towards eleven o’clock, proceeding towards Fleet Bridge. Their recollections did not readily accord with the card-party at Maccaffee’s, though the hours were cited merely from memory. The judge examined them closely touching the doors of the tavern, the liquors they drank, and the company present. The prosecution also brought forward hearsay evidence: on the day following, Harrison was said to have remarked that he had been in Kent, and that the doctor’s death was a righteous judgment. The same source reported that he grew alarmed when someone spoke of the murder as the work of a man connected with the woman from the Compter.
At the close of the hearing, the jury brought in a verdict of guilty against Harrison. The chronicle breaks off with the sentence of death, leaving his ultimate fate unrecorded; the indictment left his accomplice entirely unknown. The verdict took shape around a pecuniary strife, reported menaces, a belated identification, a handkerchief resembling an apron, and disputed hours. Clenche did not perish in the midst of an open brawl; someone drew him apart into the seclusion of a carriage, throttled him with a cloth weighted with coal, and abandoned him under cover of night. The jury affixed a name to the condemned man, yet the second passenger remains nameless in the annals of the court.