Crossing Holborn after quitting the house, Matthew Henderson heard the watchman call past one o’clock. He would presently conceal the jewels in a lodging, return to the bolted door, and await the maidservant. At six o’clock they entered; she discovered Lady Dalrymple dead. This reckoning of the hour comes down to us through the confession recorded by Camden Pelham.
Pelham published the history in The Chronicles of Crime in 1887. He presents Henderson as a young Scottish servant who, at the age of fourteen, entered the service of Sir Hugh Dalrymple, a Member of Parliament whom he had accompanied to London. His mistress, Lady Dalrymple, was slain within the house whilst her husband was absent. The compilation reproduces neither the minutes of the Old Bailey nor the depositions of the trial. It records, however, that Henderson pleaded guilty, and that, on the eve of his execution, he confessed to the murder and recounted his actions. One must distinguish this narrative, attributed to the condemned man, from the commentary Pelham weaves about it.
Pelham’s introduction offers a summary motive: Henderson had accidentally trodden upon his mistress’s foot; she had rebuked him, and the youth had conceived a profound desire for revenge. Yet the chapter presently cites the confession in a form that lends no support to this explanation. Therein, Henderson declares he had ever been well treated by his master and mistress, whom he sincerely respected. The chronicle leaves this contradiction unresolved. It places the incident of the foot in the compiler’s preamble, and thereafter an entirely different explanation—or rather the absence of any enduring explanation—in the utterances attributed to Henderson.
The confession fixes the murder on the evening of 25 March 1746. All the other domestics had left the house. Henderson had retired to the room appointed for him; he had pulled off his shoes and tied up his hair with a garter. It was at this juncture, according to his account, that the thought of killing his mistress suddenly seized his mind. He went down to the kitchen to fetch a small iron cleaver, returned to his bedchamber, and sat there for some twenty minutes, debating whether he should do the deed or no.
What followed took the shape of broken, irresolute movements. He ascended to the first landing, paused, and came down again. He took to the stairs once more, and once more turned back. Pelham records that he attributed this hesitation to the kindness his mistress had ever shown him, and subsequently to what he termed the “devil” working within him. These words are those of the confession transmitted by the compiler. We know nothing of what Henderson thought beyond what he is said to have related, nor what provoked the initial impulse he described. The text renders the staircase a frontier that he crossed and recrossed repeatedly: he returns to his chamber, sets forth upwards anew, at last reaches the door, and then withdraws yet again. This repetition belongs to the sequence he is said to have delivered, not to any observation made that night by an independent witness.
The most unequivocal detail is material: the chamber door was unbolted. Henderson entered, heard Lady Dalrymple’s breathing, and softly parted the bed-curtains. He is said to have hesitated once more, making thirteen or fourteen motions in the air before striking. He asserted likewise that had he possessed a light, he would have been incapable of the slaughter. The victim endeavoured to flee; he struck her repeatedly until she sank down and expired. Pelham relates the words Henderson claimed to have heard—“Oh Lord! what is this?”—and his observation that the lady’s throat began to rattle. This scene derives from the retrospective confession as printed in the volume, not from any identified witness. It casts a light into the chamber that was physically absent, yet the text does not permit us to make of it a motive: it is an explanation Henderson reportedly added to his recital after entering his plea of guilty.
The murder done, Henderson went downstairs and cast the cleaver into the privy. He returned to his room, and only then conceived the design of robbing the house. Striking a light, he went back into his mistress’s apartment and took several jewels from the drawers. Whilst searching for articles of value, he fancied he still heard the death-rattle. Pelham notes that Henderson then wished he could undo what he had done. Yet the sequence of the narrative is plain: the theft was a resolution formed after the murder, wholly distinct from the motive which the introduction ascribes to the affront of the trodden foot.
He quitted the house and crossed Holborn. The watchman called “Past one o’clock”; Henderson calculated that upwards of an hour had elapsed since the thought of murder had first come upon him. He concealed the jewels in the lodging of a woman of his acquaintance, whom Pelham does not name. He then retraced his steps to the house. The door was shut fast, and he waited until six o’clock, when the maidservant arrived. Upon their entering, certain appearances led her to believe that strangers had been within. Ascending the stairs, she discovered Lady Dalrymple dead and gave the alarm to the officers of justice.
Henderson was immediately suspected, apprehended, and, according to Pelham, confessed. The preamble states that he was arraigned at the Old Bailey on 22 April 1746, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to be hanged on the following Monday, the 25th. The source furnishes no account of the proceedings beyond the plea; the history of that night is derived entirely from the confession Pelham assigns to the eve of the execution. It cannot, therefore, serve to present the condemned man’s version as testimony tested by an adversarial hearing.
The sentence was duly carried out. Pelham adds that Henderson’s body was subsequently hung in chains upon the Edgware Road. The chapter closes upon this punishment, without recounting the burial of Lady Dalrymple, the ultimate fate of the jewels, or the conduct of Sir Hugh Dalrymple. It preserves instead two discordant manners of explaining the deed: a sharp rebuke, in the compiler’s summary, and, in the confession ascribed to the convict, a succession of wanderings toward a door he had only to push open. The threshold did not stay his hand. The verdict itself rests in the printed volume upon a plea of guilty; all else concerning that night comes down to us through the words Pelham reports as his own.