On the 28th of May 1832, at about six o’clock in the morning, flames burst forth from the shop and dwelling of Jonathan Smithers, a tobacconist at No. 398 Oxford Street, London. The police discovered him in the area below the street level, seeking an outlet through the kitchen. The iron railings prevented his escape to the pavement; passers-by who hastened to the spot likewise endeavoured to force them, but in vain. He then retraced his steps up the burning staircase, dashed through the shop, and emerged into the thoroughfare, his face and hands severely scorched, and his garments ignited in several places. He was forthwith conveyed to the Middlesex Hospital. The sudden rush of air through the opened shop door fanned the flames; before the inmates could be alarmed, almost the whole of the lower part of the house was in a blaze. Behind him, the lodgers, still asleep, awoke to find their retreat cut off by the fire.
At every window, men and women soon appeared, shrieking for assistance. The servant girl lodged upon the third floor. She made signs that she was about to leap, but the crowd below shouted to her to descend first to a lower storey. Having gained the second floor, she threw herself into the arms of the men gathered beneath the casement. The person who caught her was prostrated and injured by the shock, but the young woman escaped with scarcely any hurt.
Upon the same floor, another family was desperately seeking an egress. Mrs. Twamley, a gentlewoman of seventy years labouring under advanced chronic asthma, was incapable of leaving her bed. Her daughters, Eliza and Caroline, shared the apartment with their orphan nephew, Charles Richard Napoleon Farengo, aged about eleven years, and another relative. When the stairs became impassable, Eliza held the boy in her arms by the window, appearing far more solicitous for his preservation than for her own. The flames caught her garments; the boy grasped the window-sill and fell headlong into the street. At the same moment, his aunt, suffocated by the dense smoke, sank back beneath the casement.
Caroline turned to succour her parent. Raising her from the bed, she bore her through a window onto the leads at the rear of the house. Neighbours from the adjoining tenements warned her of a chasm separating the roofs and promised her deliverance, procuring a ladder for that purpose. Before they could reach her, terror overpowered her: Caroline fell with her mother onto the lower roof, a descent of nearly twelve feet. Both women were severely injured. Mrs. Twamley was carried to a place of safety and attended by medical men, but expired two hours later. Caroline survived her injuries.
The remaining inmates—Miss Thomasin, a Frenchman named Guissamere, the lodger Davis, and Mrs. Smithers, the tobacconist’s wife—escaped across the adjoining outbuildings. The engines arrived and subdued the flames before they could communicate to the neighbouring houses; nevertheless, Smithers’s house, furniture, and stock were entirely consumed. Search was then made for Eliza. Her remains were discovered where she had been seen to fall, buried beneath the fallen timbers; they were wrapped in blankets and conveyed to the workhouse bone-house. Young Farengo, having fallen upon his head, subsequently expired from his injuries. Three lives had been lost; Smithers lay at the hospital, under treatment for the burns sustained while escaping his dwelling.
On the very next day, the coroner’s inquest into the death of Eliza shifted the attention of the authorities from the rescue to the origin of the fire. The depositions brought to light the disharmony prevailing between Smithers and his wife: they had frequently quarrelled respecting certain property belonging to her, which her husband was desirous of securing to himself. On the preceding night, at about twelve o’clock, the lodger Davis had been admitted by Smithers. Passing down toward the water-closet by the kitchen stairs, he perceived a quantity of wood shavings, and observed his landlord busily arranging them, apparently anxious to avoid observation.
The servant girl had retired early. Contrary to her usual custom, she had been directed to sleep on the upper floor rather than in the kitchen; Smithers and his wife had made their bed in the back parlour. About ten days prior to the fire, Smithers had purchased two sacks of shavings and deposited them in a vaulted cellar behind the premises, alongside old hampers, boxes, and other combustible rubbish. These circumstances, laid before the inquest, lent sinister significance to the traces discovered in the ruins.
On the morning following the fire, Mr. Abrahams, a surveyor, inspected the premises. At the foot of the kitchen stairs, before the privy, he found the remains of burnt shavings. In the adjoining cellar, he discovered an artfully arranged train connecting further shavings to inflammable debris. The shavings upon a shelf had ignited, but the powder train had failed; a greased sheet of paper laid among the wood had arrested its progress. According to the record, the miscarriage of this contrivance left behind incontrovertible material proofs of deliberate incendiarism.
The coroner’s jury returned a verdict of wilful murder regarding the death of Eliza, and a warrant was issued against Smithers, who remained an inpatient. At the inquest upon Mrs. Twamley, the jury found that she had died of fright. When young Farengo died shortly thereafter, a second verdict of wilful murder was recorded against the tobacconist. On the 12th of June, Smithers was discharged from the Middlesex Hospital and committed to Newgate to await his trial.
The trial came on at the Old Bailey on Friday, the 6th of July. The prisoner stood indicted for the murders of Eliza Twamley and Charles Richard Napoleon Farengo; the evidence adduced before the coroner was rehearsed before the court. The proceedings continued until two o’clock the following morning. The jury returned a verdict of guilty, and the learned judge passed sentence of death, appointing the execution for the following Monday. Pelham’s narrative records neither a confession nor an outright denial: after the verdict, he was urged to acknowledge the justice of his sentence, but he evaded giving any direct reply. He made no admission of his guilt, yet he did not assert his innocence.
On Sunday, his wife was admitted to take her final leave of him. The chronicle states that the interview was deeply affecting, though neither gave way to extravagant grief. Smithers related to her that when a boy in a churchyard, the presentiment had seized him that he should end his days upon the gallows, an impression that had never departed from his mind. After her departure, he joined in prayer with the Ordinary. Before retiring, he penned a brief letter to his wife. He appeared profoundly affected upon concluding it, but subsequently composed himself and declared that he felt at ease.
Shortly before eight o’clock on Monday morning, the 9th of July, he was conducted to the Press Yard to be pinioned. At this moment, his fortitude deserted him: the chronicle records an agitation bordering on hysteria. Yet, as the fatal minute drew nigh, he prayed with greater composure. At eight o’clock, he was led to the scaffold. He left behind neither confession nor explanation for the survivors. Pelham remarks that the stock was insured for nearly seven hundred pounds, suggesting this circumstance as a key to the crime, though without representing it as an admission by Smithers. Caroline, long prostrated by illness after the catastrophe, was later attended by charitable souls; under that same roof, her heroic efforts to preserve her mother had been followed by the untimely loss of both her sister and her nephew.