On the evening of Wednesday, May 30, 1832, a vivid glare rose above a stable in Leicester. It came from the workshop of James Cook, a twenty-one-year-old bookbinder, where intense heat was often required. The neighbors at first saw in it nothing more than the fire of an honest trade. A few hours earlier, Mr. Paas, a London manufacturer of brass instruments for bookbinders, had called to demand what was due to him. He never returned to his inn. The light continued to burn behind the covered panes; when the door was at last forced open, that which was consuming in the grate was not wood.
Camden Pelham’s retrospective chronicle opens the affair with a commercial debt. Paas, established in High Holborn, had furnished tools to Cook, who had recently taken over the workshop of his former master on his own account. An invoice of approximately twenty-five pounds had fallen due; Paas wrote that he would shortly visit Leicester to collect the sum. On May 30, he alighted at the Stag and Pheasant and called upon his customers, Cook among them. Another tradesman reported that Paas had inquired after his debtor’s solvency and intended to return that evening. This was the last testimony to place him alive.
Charles Wilkinson, Cook’s fourteen-year-old apprentice, stated that he saw a man answering Paas’s description at the shop. Cook presently sent the lad home until further orders, though there was no lack of work. Pelham presents this dismissal as unusual, yet provides no transcript by which the deposition might be tested.
Towards eight o’clock, Cook entered the Flying Horse, called for liquor, and played at skittles with an air that Pelham describes as composed. He requested the landlord, Nokes, to give him change for a sovereign. In drawing out the coin, he displayed a silk purse containing, according to the witness, gold, silver, and several banknotes. The amount surprised Nokes, though it did not prompt him to question his customer. Cook returned to his workshop, subsequently warning Mrs. Sawbridge, who lived below, that he would be working through the night and that she must not take alarm on seeing a fire.
At half-past ten, Sawbridge let him in. The light still burned. At half-past four in the morning, Sawbridge found Cook in his working clothes, seemingly busied with his binding. The young man complained of feeling faint after his sleepless night, asked to walk out into the fields with the milkman and another companion, and then returned alone to the workshop.
On Thursday, toward ten o’clock at night, the neighbors perceived an extraordinary light behind the blinds. Fearing a conflagration, they resolved to enter. Timson, a broker living two doors away, ascended the stairs and burst through the door. The fire exceeded any ordinary purpose; a piece of flesh was burning upon the embers. It was drawn forth, and the flames were quenched. Several bystanders supposed it to be horseflesh. Cook, summoned from his father’s house, inquired upon the road whether the piece had been utterly consumed. Pelham relates that he appeared troubled on learning it was not, yet grew calmer when told it was taken for horseflesh.
Interrogated, Cook insisted that he had bought the meat for a dog he intended to purchase, and had flung it onto the grate because it was turning foul. He declared he had bought it of a stranger in Humberstone-gate. Yet the casements were covered with thick paper, the fire had been prodigious, and the substance remained to be explained. Measures, the constable, took him into custody. The mayor being nowhere to be found, the officer acted initially upon his own authority; knowing Cook and deeming the suspicions slender, he consented that the father should stand bail for the young man’s appearance. Cook was enlarged. On the morrow, when summoned by the mayor, he was gone.
Following his flight, Mr. Denton and other medical practitioners determined the flesh to be human. Paas having failed to return to his inn, the workshop was searched anew. Remains were found in the chimney, others amid the ashes; two thighs and a leg were discovered hanging in the flue. There were also found a black trouser leg stained with blood, a pencil-case stamped with the initial P, and a gaiter of the fashion worn by Paas.
The floor had been scraped, yet dark stains remained visible; the fireplace had been enlarged and furnished with two iron bars. The head and trunk were wanting; their ultimate fate was never established. Upon a bill for twelve shillings made out in Paas’s name, the word “settled” and the initials J. P. were legible. Cook later asserted that Paas had written the word upon the bill. Pelham notes that the merchant was accustomed to sign his full name, and interprets the ink stroke trailing through the J as the sign of an interrupted motion; no graphological examination is recorded. The binder’s hammer was designated as the weapon of the assault, though Cook’s subsequent relations spoke also of an iron press-pin.
The identification took a firmer turn at the coroner’s inquest, held on June 3 at the Dog and Gun. George Cooke, a coachman of Loughborough, deposed that on the preceding Friday he had observed a dirty, travel-worn stranger in the yard of an inn. The man produced a small brooch, which he said he had found, and sold it to him for two shillings; he also displayed a watch, a chain, and a purse. Friends of Paas identified the brooch, which he wore in remembrance of a deceased acquaintance. The inquest jury concluded that the remains were those of Paas, and that he had been willfully murdered by Cook. Such was the coroner’s finding, not the judgment of the criminal court.
Cummins, an officer, had tracked Cook to Liverpool, where the fugitive was endeavoring to take ship for America. On Tuesday, June 5, a boat put out with several men. Cummins gave chase from the opposite bank. Near the shore, Cook leaped into the shallows. Pelham relates that he sought to drown himself; a phial which he then drew from his pocket, the contents of which remain unknown, was shattered as Cummins seized his hand.
Brought back to Leicester, Cook did not deny Paas’s death at his hands, but contested any murderous intent. According to him, an altercation had arisen over the demand for money; Paas, he claimed, had struck him, and he had retaliated. Burbidge, the town clerk, cautioned him that he was not bound to criminate himself. Pelham notes that the words are given “in substance and nearly verbatim,” not as an exact transcription. Cook referred to two bills, one of twelve shillings which he said had been settled, and another of larger amount.
To the constables, Cook is said to have stated that Paas hurled a hammer which struck him upon the shoulder, whereupon he felled him with a press-pin. Examined by Burbidge on the Friday, he admitted having burned the body in fragments during the night, scattering straw across the floor. These explanations did not entirely square with the portions already brought to light; the narrative leaves the physical difficulties unresolved.
Cook was committed to the assizes on June 9; the remains of Paas were interred in London on the 11th. In prison, Cook repeated his tale without disclosing what had become of the head and torso. He estimated the money taken at fifty or sixty pounds, thirty of which were in notes. These sums rest upon his own declarations, and do not perfectly agree with the other amounts mentioned in the text.
At the Leicester assizes, on August 7, the indictment charged willful murder. The chronicler states that the bill contained several counts specifying different manners of death, but does not enter into the proceedings. He records only that Cook, upon being called to plead, confessed his guilt, declared that he understood the consequence of his plea, and refused to retract it. The judge pronounced sentence of death, ordering the body to be hung in chains. This termination—a guilty plea recorded by the chronicler—must be distinguished from the verdict rendered by the coroner in June.
Prior to his execution, Cook made, according to Pelham, a more circumstantial confession. He declared that he had conceived the murder a week beforehand, and described Paas examining the binding of a book before being struck down with a bookbinder’s tool. He explained that his object was to obtain the means of fleeing to America, and cited pride as his motive. This declaration contradicted his earlier tale of a sudden brawl. It remains, however, the late utterance of a condemned man preserved by a subsequent chronicler; no eyewitness was present to confirm the scene. Cook added that his character had been corrupted by attending meetings of young deists. Pelham lends this reflection a moral weight; it proves neither the murder nor its true motive.
Cook was executed before the county gaol of Leicester on Friday, August 10. After the hanging, the corpse was conveyed back into the prison; the head was shaved and covered with pitch, and the limbs were secured in irons before being gibbeted in Saffron Lane, near the Aylestone toll-gate. The post, thirty-three feet in height, drew thousands of spectators; the inhabitants petitioned against the spectacle. On the following Tuesday, the Home Office ordered its removal, remitting that portion of the sentence. Pelham constructs his narrative around an interrupted receipt, a glare behind curtained casements, and an identified brooch. His chronicle provides neither the verbatim trial nor the original exhibits: it transmits an accusation converted into a confession, without answering every question raised by the missing remains and Cook’s shifting accounts.