The trial of Samuel Wild Mitchell opened at the Old Bailey on January 11, 1805. In Pelham’s chronicle, his haggard countenance and threadbare nightcap set the scene. He had slain his daughter Sarah, a child of some twelve years, and subsequently confessed to the deed. Yet the trial did not begin with his appearance in the dock. Behind it lay a recent separation, two children of different parentage, and a father’s resolve to deprive his wife of the daughter she had taken away with her.
Mitchell was a weaver in Spitalfields and had bred Sarah to the trade. Quarrels between himself and his wife were frequent, records Camden Pelham, who describes the man as subject to violent paroxysms of wrath. That judgment belongs to the retrospective chronicler. The narrative affords us neither the voices of the neighbours nor the particular circumstances of these altercations. It preserves, however, a precise date: husband and wife had parted on the preceding seventeenth of December. The mother had departed, taking Sarah with her. Elizabeth, the wife’s daughter, had likewise resided with Mitchell before being settled in her own lodgings. The household had dissolved into separate ties over which the man no longer held command.
In the confession read at the trial, Mitchell alleged that his wife favoured Elizabeth and reproached Sarah for visiting him as though she were a stranger. He protested that he loved his daughter “with the most ardent affection,” yet he related also his terrible resolution: neither his wife nor he should possess her. Such language betrays a contradiction that the narrative leaves unresolved. The attachment he professes renders no less apparent the intent to chastise the mother by striking down the child.
Pelham relates that, while the mother was abroad, Sarah was at work beside the fire, winding quills for the loom. Her father took a razor from a drawer. In his confession, he stated that he faltered, had well-nigh replaced the blade, and then resolved upon the act. He struck her across the throat; the text affirms that the child expired instantly, without cry or struggle. The scene is brief in the prisoner’s own words, yet it forms the pivot of all that ensued: the severed task, the deed recounted by the hand that wrought it, and the silence which no court of law could ever mend.
Mitchell fled the house. He went first to the dwelling of a man named Bell, where he had formerly lodged, and begged that his master’s work might be preserved from harm. Thence he proceeded to Dellafour’s and to certain acquaintances in Wapping. He was apprehended that same evening and made a full confession. Pelham does not relate how the officers traced his steps; neither does he furnish the name of the mother. These are omissions that must be preserved as they stand, rather than supplied with an imagined pursuit.
At the bar of the Old Bailey, the confession was read aloud. Called upon for his defence, Mitchell acknowledged the crime, imputing his deed to a mind disordered by perpetual strife with his wife. The record states that the jury returned a verdict of guilty. When the Recorder demanded whether he had aught to offer why sentence should not be passed, he replied that he had nothing to add. The court sentenced him to be hanged on the following Monday, and his body to be anatomised and dissected. The concourse of spectators was considerable. Pelham records that well-nigh the entire hall, even among the women and the jurymen, was melted into tears; he portrays Mitchell as calm, attentive to the proceedings, and at intervals murmuring a prayer.
On the morrow of the trial, Mitchell petitioned to see his wife, that they might exchange mutual forgiveness. She came on the Sunday, so enfeebled by sickness that two friends were obliged to lift her into the hackney-coach. After their interview, the man spent nearly the whole day in prayer. The source preserves not a word of their colloquy, nor does it record what the mother replied. This meeting wiped away neither the separation of the preceding month nor the slaughter of their daughter. It shows only that, in those final days, the two adults stood once more face to face over an act whereof the child was already the irrevocable victim.
Mitchell was likewise desirous that Dr. Ford should make it known to the public that he died in the communion of the Church of England. Pelham observes that some had reputed him a Methodist. At half-past six on Monday morning, the Ordinary attended him for prayer. After the service, he walked through the prison yard between two friends, entreating them to pray with him. The chronicler attributes to him a religious confidence and the conviction that his execution would make partial expiation for his crime. We cannot gauge what such a hope availed him; it alters not the truth that he had stripped his daughter of every power to speak or choose.
His last petition concerned his own earthly remains. He prayed the Sheriffs that his body might be delivered to his daughter for Christian burial after dissection. Pelham records that the authorities gave him their promise, without specifying which daughter was intended. The petition laid bare three distinct rites imposed upon the felon: public execution, judicial dissection, and family burial. As for Sarah, she could receive no further explanation from her father’s lips.
On January 14, Mitchell was hanged before Newgate. When the customary hour had elapsed, his body was conveyed to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital to be dissected. Pelham concludes his chapter with this passage from the gallows to the anatomist’s table. His eye is fixed upon the prayers, the expiation, and the public spectacle of justice; the record of Sarah is far briefer, leaving us scarcely anything of her life beyond her apprenticeship, her place between her parted parents, and the task her hands were pursuing when her father stepped into the room. The silence of the archive does not extenuate the crime. It obliges us rather to ensure that the repentance of the condemned man does not remain the sole memorial of a child whom the text preserves by name.
Documentary note: Narrative based upon the chapter “Samuel Wild Mitchell. Executed for Murder” in Camden Pelham, The Chronicles of Crime; or, The New Newgate Calendar, vol. I (London: T. Miles & Co., 1887), pp. 416–417; preface dated July 1, 1840. This retrospective chronicle reports a confession read at trial, but does not reproduce the full depositions or judicial proceedings. No contemporary court registers, gaol books, parish records, or hospital archives were consulted.