In May 1827, in Caroline Court, off Lambeth Street, an infant was discovered dead after his mother had quit the chamber for merely a few moments. Suspicion immediately fell upon the father, William Sheen, who vanished almost directly thereafter. The ensuing pursuit led an officer of the law as far as Wales; yet, when the accused finally stood before the court, it was by no means a deficiency of witnesses that arrested the course of justice. It was a name—that of the child—inscribed too briefly upon the initial indictment.
The account published by Camden Pelham affords few particulars regarding Sheen’s life. Born in Radnorshire, Wales, circa 1803, he earned his bread by hawking firewood through the streets of London. His wife and their infant resided in a lodging in Caroline Court, beneath the roof of a man named Pomeroy. The marriage had taken place in February 1827; the child was born prior to the nuptials. According to the chronicle, the parish overseers of St. Katharine had bestowed five pounds upon the father on the condition that he marry the mother.
Pelham relates that, from the infant’s very birth, Sheen displayed an unnatural aversion toward him. At times, while the babe lay upon the mother’s lap, he would strike him with his hand or with whatever object lay within reach. On the Sunday preceding the tragedy, he had reportedly struck the child upon the head with a piece of timber, leaving a considerable swelling. Yet the neighbours, affirms the chronicler, did not conclude from this that he harboured any design to murder the infant. Their disquiet prompted no separation: the little one continued to abide in the same chamber with his parents.
On a Thursday evening, at about half past seven, Sheen returned home. His wife was holding the slumbering child close to her. He handed her some money to procure supper and bade her lay the infant upon the bed, remarking that he was sound asleep. She went out to make the purchases. A quarter of an hour or so elapsed. When she returned and pushed open the door, she found her child butchered and decapitated. She fled down the stairs crying out for help. Mrs. Pomeroy and several neighbours ascended in their turn; the police were summoned.
Officers Dalton and Davis searched the room. The weapon could not be found. In a corner, Sheen’s heavy cloth coat and hat bore traces of blood. Witnesses had observed him departing in his shirt-sleeves toward his father’s abode in Rosemary Lane; the two men were said to have departed together. Sheen borrowed a coat and ten shillings from a man named Pugh, telling him that a fray with an Irishman compelled him to leave the quarter. The investigation subsequently disclosed that he had fled London solely to escape apprehension.
The magistrate charged Davis with tracking him down. The officer took the Birmingham road, where a traveller had reported a man answering the description. He pursued his enquiries past midnight, resumed them on the Sunday, and finally came upon the individual in question at an inn: it was not Sheen. Davis thereupon set out again, passed through Worcester, and reached Kington. There, confident that he had outstripped the fugitive, he watched for five hours upon the bridge at the entrance to the town. He then took lodgings at an out-of-the-way public house, hoping his arrival would cause less stir. Sheen possessed numerous kinsmen in the region; any one of them might afford him shelter, or indeed give the fugitive warning. Davis altered his appearance and went about the taverns in the guise of a countryman. In one of them, he overheard Welsh drovers reading aloud from a newspaper the account of the murder alongside the description of the wanted man. He feared then that the tidings had outrun his own steps.
At Kington, he sought the assistance of Edward Cheese, a magistrate and banker. An incident soon warned him that his identity might be known: his handcuffs had slipped from the pocket of the coat he had left in the kitchen. He found them resting upon a chair. They were stamped with his name; whoever had picked them up had thus deduced his trade. The man came to his room and offered information. What Davis had taken for a perilous blunder had opened a fresh scent. Davis noted the intelligence received and set off with Yates, a Kington constable, toward Pen-y-bont. At the Severn Arms inn, a man entered and asked for the London paper. He perused it attentively, glanced about him, and then abruptly left. The landlady recognized him as James, the husband of an aunt of Sheen’s. Davis shadowed him to Lane House, in Radnorshire, and then returned to the inn to fetch Yates.
The two officers returned to the front of the dwelling. Davis resolved not to enter at first, lest he give the alarm should Sheen not be within. Upon further reflection, he entered: several persons were present, but not the fugitive. Three hours later, having received fresh information, he returned a third time and found him seated near the hearth, taking his breakfast. Beneath his outer garments, Sheen still wore a shirt stained with blood at the collar and the right wrist. He surrendered without resistance. Davis stated that he had obtained no private confession, yet he had personally heard Sheen reply to a landlady who asked how he could have committed so barbarous a deed: “It was not God, but the devil.” This reported reply supplemented the officer's observations; Sheen made no detailed statement concerning the facts before him.
In the interim, the coroner's inquest had returned a verdict of wilful murder against the father. The trial opened at the Old Bailey on June 1. The indictment identified the infant simply as “William Sheen.” Yet the child had been christened William Charles Beadle Sheen. The defence maintained that this omission rendered the charge fatally defective. The court concurred, and the jury pronounced the prisoner not guilty upon the indictment as framed. The prosecution moved that he be detained in custody that a fresh indictment might be preferred, this time bearing the full name.
At the subsequent sessions, the new bill of indictment was laid before the grand jury, and Sheen appeared once more at the bar on July 13. He entered a plea of *autrefois acquit*—that he had already been tried and acquitted of this selfsame charge. The witnesses established that the child's true name was sufficiently notorious that the prosecutors ought to have recorded it correctly from the outset. Mr. Justice Burrough held that, following that first acquittal, the prisoner could not be put in jeopardy a second time. Sheen was discharged, dismissed with a stern admonition. Pelham further mentions, with some reserve, subsequent appearances for drunkenness and disorder. He provides no formal record of them.
Davis had pursued a false scent to Birmingham, kept vigil upon a bridge, traversed the countryside in disguise, and at last run down his quarry. The obstacle that remained was no longer a road to travel nor a house to ransack. The first indictment had omitted a portion of a name that was nevertheless known to all. That error, followed by the impossibility of trying the man anew after an acquittal, determined the judicial fate of the father. The little boy, for his part, bore four names: William Charles Beadle Sheen.