The key had been returned; Hannah Brown had not come back. She had nevertheless informed her landlady that she would call again on the Monday, accompanied by her husband, to discharge what remained owing. On Tuesday, another lodger delivered up the key. On Wednesday, when the room was entered, nothing remained within save a birdcage. The furniture had been sold prior to the nuptials. Everything bore the semblance of the agreed-upon departure of a woman embarking upon another life.
The wedding was appointed to take place on Christmas Day, 1836. Hannah had requested Evan Davis to give her away at the altar; the daughter of the house was to serve as bridesmaid. They had planned to dine together. The betrothed was named James Greenacre. A few weeks later, London would know his name far better than that of the woman he had promised to wed.
The Sunday Set for the Wedding
Hannah Brown earned her bread by washing and mangling linen. She occupied a front kitchen in a house in Union Street, hard by the Middlesex Hospital. Her sister, her brother, her acquaintances, and those who had lodged her were soon to appear before a court to explain what, until then, had concerned none but themselves: her garments, her habits, the watch she possessed, and the arrangements made for quitting her lodgings.
She had reared a niece whom she called her daughter. She had also spoken of opening a shop for fruit and pastry. This design appears in the testimony of a friend, though we cannot tell how far she had carried its preparation. It suffices to recall that this woman had other affairs in mind than those of which justice was to make her sole history. She laboured, she planned, she sold her furniture, and she prepared for a wedding.
The banns had been published. On Saturday, the 24th of December, Hannah was to have passed the night at the house of Catharine Glass, who awaited her in vain. Greenacre, for his part, presented himself late at the Davises’. He announced that the match was broken off: the resources of his intended did not answer to what he had expected. A dispute over money had thus usurped the place of the wedding dinner. Those who might otherwise have taken alarm learned of the end of the betrothal from the very man to whom they had entrusted their friend.
The distinction between these two conditions was momentous. A woman might forgo her marriage, alter her intentions, and depart without warning all and sundry. A missing woman demanded that search be made. By recounting the rupture, Greenacre provided a reason for not yet raising that second question.
An Unknown Woman in London
On the 28th of December, a portion of the body of a woman was discovered near the Edgware Road. Other remains were brought to light separately, notably in the Regent’s Canal early in January. The investigators found themselves confronted with a victim whom the perpetrator had sought to render unrecognizable. The public sensation attending the discovery did not make her name any easier to establish.
The record preserves the searches, the examinations, and the articles gathered up. It also imposes a reserve that the broadsheets sold about the affair scarcely observed. To detail the outrages committed upon the body would not aid in comprehending Hannah. What they had accomplished for the slayer, however, is of moment: they had deferred the hour when someone might say who was missing and whither to turn.
That hour arrived in March. Kin recognized Hannah Brown. Her brother William Gay and her sister took part in this identification. The apparel and personal effects furnished further correspondences. The nameless subject of the printed accounts was restored to her circle; the inquiry was brought back to her betrothed.
William Gay was then able to recall a meeting that had occurred after Christmas. In a shop, he had been presented to Greenacre as Hannah’s brother. He described before the court the agitation he had remarked in the man. An impression was not proof of murder. It assumed, however, a new significance when joined to the disappearance, to the announcement of a rupture, and to the effects of the sought-for woman that were soon to be recovered.
Two Persons in the Same Room
Greenacre cohabited with Sarah Gale. She worked principally at shoemaking; a child was with her. Witnesses were to come forward to speak in her favour, to describe her industry and the services she had rendered. This life remains less visible in the chronicles of the affair than her proximity to the accused. The court, however, was required to decide what she had herself performed and known.
Serjeant Michael Carrow Brown assigned to Sunday, the 26th of March, about half-past eleven at night, the delivery of the two prisoners into his station-house. The published record gives elsewhere a different date for the police intervention; his testimony at least fixes this moment of their custody. In their dwelling, searches brought to light clothing, a watch concealed within the bedding, and duplicate pawn-tickets. Certain articles were identified as the possessions of Hannah by those who knew them.
During that night, Greenacre attempted his own life and was preserved. He subsequently spoke to the officers. His version admitted the concealment of the body whilst disputing the murder: Hannah, he maintained, had died in consequence of a fall. He explained what followed by the dread of being accused. To hear him tell it, the horror of the acts committed after death was meant precisely to turn aside scrutiny from the moment when it had occurred.
He likewise declared Gale a stranger to the crime. She, for her part, affirmed that she had not been present and offered explanations concerning the objects found in her possession. The prosecution set against certain of her statements the dates of her residence and the recollections of her landlords. These contradictions might carry weight; they did not suffice, by mere propinquity, to transform her into the author of the deed.
What the Evidence Could Tell
The trial opened in April. The Crown prosecuted Greenacre for murder, and Gale for felonious assistance rendered after the fact. This second charge required a determination as to whether she had aided the principal knowing what he had committed. Living under his roof was not enough to resolve the question.
The defence called for the depositions taken at the coroner’s inquest. It also denounced the condemnation already pronounced by the public prints. The populace was privy to a monstrous tale before the jurymen had heard the witnesses; it was necessary to bring them to examine facts to which everyone seemed already to have assigned a meaning.
Such was the case with a sack, likened to that which had enveloped a portion of the remains. A workman in the employ of a mangle-maker explained its marks and its provenance. The resemblance was material. Yet sacks had likewise served to carry shavings to Hannah’s lodgings. The judge observed that possession did not of itself demonstrate the premeditated acquisition of an instrument of concealment. In an affair saturated with public certitude, this caution deserved to remain audible.
The medical gentlemen were examined concerning the wounds and the possibility of an accidental fall. Their opinions told against the explanation offered by Greenacre; their answers, however, admitted of distinctions. Certain lesions might have been inflicted after death. One practitioner could not determine whether an injury had been caused by the fist or by some other blunt instrument. Touching the precise moment of a cut, the testimony left a margin between life and the instants that had immediately followed its extinction.
The medical testimony did not, therefore, present a complete scene for inspection. It supplied observations and opinions, to be weighed alongside the prisoner’s declarations, his actions, and the remaining testimonies. No witness came forward to recount a death at which he had been present. The verdict was to arise from this totality, without its lacunae being supplied by the imagination of the spectators.
Two Convictions
On the 11th of April, after the two days of the trial, the jury found the prisoners guilty of the charges respectively preferred against them. Sentence was pronounced on the following day: death for James Greenacre; for Sarah Gale, transportation for the term of her natural life. She was not convicted as a murderer. The distinction between the two judgments does not vanish because their names were printed upon the selfsame title-pages.
The relations of Greenacre’s final days added yet another confession to those the public believed it already possessed. A contemporary pamphlet reports that he admitted to the sheriffs having slain Hannah following an altercation. This narrative does not accord, in its particulars, with all subsequent versions. To borrow from it an unquestioned scene would be to resume the work of the hawkers of certainty. It remains a reported declaration, made subsequent to the judgment.
Greenacre was executed before Newgate on the 2nd of May, 1837. The multitude choked the neighbouring streets; the broadsheet describes even the spectators posted upon the rooftops. It indicates that his body was thereafter interred within the precincts of the gaol. As for Gale, the documents followed here establish her sentence of transportation for life; they do not warrant a narrative of her arrival beyond the seas nor of her subsequent years.
London now possessed a celebrated convict, a scaffold, and printed sheets to sell. Hannah Brown had possessed a trade, a niece, the notion of a shop, and friends who awaited her for her bridal. The key to her lodging had returned into the hands of her landlady. It was the only part of her promised return that was ever accomplished.