When the officers knocked at Catherine Hayes’s lodgings, she demanded who was there. Justice Lambert commanded her to open, threatening to burst the door. She answered that she must first attire herself. Thomas Billings was in the bedchamber, seated upon the bedside with his legs bare. The men forced an entrance and apprehended Catherine, Billings, and Elizabeth Springate, an inmate of the same house. On the preceding day, several of John Hayes’s acquaintance had examined a head exposed to public view at Westminster and recognised it as that of their friend. Wood was not to be found. The warrants bore four names; one man was yet wanting.
Camden Pelham relates the affair in The Chronicles of Crime, published more than a century after the event. His narrative frequently casts accusations and confessions into assured prose, without affording us sight of the original sworn depositions. One must therefore distinguish the scenes as related from the proofs truly within our reach. This chronicle pursues Pelham’s thread: the vanished husband, the wife’s shifting tales, and the words and condemnations attributed to Wood, Billings, and Hayes.
Catherine was born in Birmingham, the daughter of a poor man named Hall. At fifteen years of age, following a dispute with her parents, she took the road for London. Pelham relates that certain officers persuaded her to accompany them to their quarters, and that she ultimately entered the service of a Warwickshire farmer, Mr. Hayes. An attachment grew between her and the master’s son. Their marriage was initially solemnised in secret at Worcester; when the recruiting parties sought to press the young man, the father perforce learned of the match and ultimately established his son in the carpenter’s trade. Catherine presently persuaded him to enlist in the army. His regiment was ordered to the Isle of Wight, whither she followed him. His father at length purchased his discharge and settled upon him certain tenements yielding, according to Pelham, about twenty-six pounds a year.
After six years of marriage, the pair removed to London. John opened a coal and chandlery shop, let lodgings, and lent petty sums upon pledges. Their trade prospered. But their domestic life, Pelham writes, was consumed by brawls. Catherine would speak of her husband with fondness, only to describe him as a wretch to other women. Upon one occasion, she is said to have declared that she should make no more conscience of killing him than a dog. This utterance is set down in the book without naming the woman said to have heard it; viewed after the fact, it bears the weight of a menace, yet it scarce suffices to explain what ensued.
The couple shifted their residence several times, from Tottenham Court Road to Tyburn Road, which is now Oxford Street. John had laid by enough to retire from business, and the household lived henceforth in hired rooms. Thomas Billings, reputed to be Catherine’s son by a former connection, shared their roof. When John was absent from London, the neighbours warned the husband that Catherine lived extravagantly. Upon his return, he reproached her. The altercation degenerated into violence. At this juncture, Pelham places the inception of the murderous design, though he admits the supposition to be retrospective.
Thomas Wood presently arrived from Worcestershire and sought lodging from John, stating his fear of the press-gang. Catherine imparted to him a design against her husband’s life. Wood at first refused, regarding Hayes as his benefactor. To bend his will, she reportedly asserted that her husband was an atheist who had murdered two of his own children, burying them beneath an apple tree and a pear tree. She added that upon John’s decease, she would inherit fifteen hundred pounds, which money would fall to his confederates. The volume furnishes no corroboration of these charges against John; it records them merely as the artifices employed by Catherine. Wood at last consented.
Returning from a brief absence, Wood found Catherine, her husband, and Billings drinking together. John boasted that he remained sober despite all the wine he had drunk. Billings proposed a wager: six bottles of Mountain wine, the cost whereof he would defray if Hayes could dispatch them without losing his senses. The other three went forth to buy the liquor. Pelham relates that, whilst on the road, they agreed the occasion was come. Catherine gave half a guinea. The men drank beer while John emptied the bottles. When he had finished, he was still dancing; Catherine caused yet another bottle to be brought. He then fell prostrate upon the floor, but presently contrived to crawl to a bed in an adjoining room.
When he had fallen into a deep sleep, Catherine is said to have given the signal. Billings entered bearing a hatchet and struck John upon the skull. The victim, according to the narrative, beat his feet repeatedly against the boards. Wood heard the noise, came into the chamber, seized the weapon, and struck in his turn. Springate, who lodged on the floor above, came down to inquire whether a quarrel had disturbed herself, her husband, and their child. Catherine answered that some company had made merry and were about to depart. The neighbour went back upstairs.
The three remaining then debated how they might dispose of the body. Catherine proposed severing the head to hinder identification. Wood severed it with his pocket-knife whilst Billings held it, Catherine having placed a pail to receive the blood. They emptied the pail into a sink and poured down water. Catherine subsequently suggested that the head be boiled; the men preferred casting it into the Thames. At Whitehall, the gates were shut. They made their way to a wharf near the Horse Ferry at Westminster. Wood hurled the head into the dock; the ebb of the tide, however, prevented its being carried away by the current. A waterman heard the splash, yet could not discern what had been thrown.
Returning to the lodgings, they turned their attention to the trunk. A box purchased to convey it away proved too small. They severed the limbs and forced the members in, but the chest proved cumbersome to transport; they drew them forth again. Billings and Wood wrapped the remains in a blanket, carried them to a pond in Marylebone fields, and threw them into the water. But the head had been taken from the river and exposed upon a pole in the churchyard of St Margaret’s, Westminster. For four days, thousands of the curious flocked to view it. Several persons debated whether it were not the face of John Hayes. Billings denied that the man was dead, alleging he had set forth upon a journey.
John’s friends at last identified the head. When they had examined the features and weighed them against Catherine’s varying pretences, they went before Justice Lambert. To Mr. Ashby, the woman had spoken of another matter: that her husband had killed a man and fled into Portugal to escape the victim’s widow. To Mr. Longmore, she told a tale differing in its particulars. Following her arrest, she desired to see the head. Pelham relates that she first embraced the vessel wherein it was preserved. The surgeon drew the head forth; Catherine kissed it repeatedly and begged a lock of the hair. She, who had banished John to Portugal in her falsehoods, no longer disputed his identity. The man whose flight she had invented stood before her.
The trunk was recovered that very morning. Catherine was committed to Newgate for trial; Wood, apprehended at a later date, made full confession before Lambert. Billings then delivered an account which Pelham represents as agreeing in every detail. Springate was discharged, her innocence having been established. At the sessions, Wood and Billings pleaded guilty. Catherine chose to put herself upon the country, and the jury found her guilty. At the bar for judgment, she pleaded that she had not dealt the fatal blow and prayed she might not be burned; the court answered that the sentence appointed by law could not be altered.
Wood fell sick in prison and died before his execution. Billings, according to Pelham, acknowledged the justice of his sentence. Catherine attempted to procure poison, but another woman prisoner tasted it and revealed the design. On the 9th of May 1726, at Tyburn, Billings was hanged, and his body subsequently suspended in chains near the pond where the corpse had been discovered. Catherine was chained to a stake and burned for the murder of her husband. Pelham asserts that the executioner let go the strangling cord too early, before the flames reached her. The chronicle concludes upon this public torment. To prevent John’s recognition, his murderers had severed the head from the trunk. It was that very head, exposed to the eyes of all, which his acquaintance had known again.