At nine of the clock on the morning of Tuesday, 11 April 1727, Widdington Darby was discovered dead in the chambers he occupied at the Temple. The inquiry opened upon an absence: that of his servant, who had returned to his own lodgings on the preceding evening, and soon upon that of a man whom the earliest searches were not yet able to name.
Darby was young and, according to the surviving chronicle, made a figure of some distinction in the world. He was accustomed to wear rings, carry a richly ornamented snuffbox, and bear a notable gold watch. These articles, conspicuous by their lustre, may have excited the cupidity of some person known to him; the narrative advances the conjecture without furnishing proof of it. The chambers pertained to the office of Sir George Cook. Darby’s servant lodged elsewhere and left his master every night, a circumstance which necessarily abandoned the rooms to solitude after the departure of company.
On the eve of the discovery—or rather during the night which preceded it—Darby had entertained a considerable gathering. The guests supped late and did not retire until eleven o’clock, whereupon the servant took his departure in turn. The following morning, his master was found in the office, shot through the head with a pistol. His ear and hand bore marks of cutting. The rings, the watch, and other precious effects had disappeared; the scrutoire had been forced, and the money and linen it contained carried away. Violence and rapine presented themselves hand in hand, but the circumstances did not yet disclose which of the two had impelled the other.
On the morrow, the coroner impanelled his jury upon the premises. Finding no trace that might point to the perpetrator, he adjourned the inquest without appointing a further day, and ordered the body to be interred in a vault of St Andrew’s Church, Holborn. Some time elapsed before any intelligence directed the course of suspicion. This delay did not cause the stolen goods to vanish, nor the debts of those who had known Darby; it required only that one of these hitherto severed threads should join the rest.
Mr Moody, who had served upon the coroner’s inquest, learned that one Henry Fisher, hitherto in very narrow circumstances, had suddenly become master of ready money. Darby had known him and relieved his necessities on several occasions. Since the murder, Fisher had discharged certain pressing debts and displayed valuable effects which he had never been seen to possess before. This sudden alteration proved nothing of itself; it was, however, of a nature to be compared with the robbery committed in the Temple chambers. Moody spoke of the matter to Mr York, who was labouring with great zeal to discover the author of the assassination. They resolved to apply to Willoughby, Fisher’s landlord, a man of reputed honesty and better situated than themselves to examine the effects left in his lodger’s room.
Finding him at a tavern in Southampton Street, they laid before him the suspicions that rested upon his inmate. Upon his return home, Willoughby availed himself of Fisher’s absence to force open a box. Therein he discovered the top and bottom of a snuffbox, a vizard mask, and a pair of ruffled lace cuffs. York recognised the fragments of the snuffbox as having belonged to Darby; he suspected also that the ruffles were the property of the deceased. The discovery did not resolve the question of the homicide, but it brought the stolen goods into immediate proximity with a man already pointed out by his pecuniary circumstances.
Judicial authority was now required. The three men repaired before Sir William Thompson to procure a warrant, deposing under oath to the facts attending their discovery. A woman added a singular piece of testimony: before ever seeing the cuff, she produced a piece of lace and declared that, if the linen were indeed Darby’s, the two fragments would match together. Upon comparison, they answered to each other with exactness. Willoughby likewise swore that on the very day of the murder Fisher had borrowed half-a-crown of him to satisfy his washerwoman, so entirely destitute of money was he at that time. Upon these grounds, Thompson granted his warrant.
A woman declared that she had perceived, near Darby’s chambers, someone strongly resembling Fisher during the night of the murder. Another witness affirmed upon oath that Fisher did not return to his lodgings until about two in the morning on the Tuesday when Darby was found. Towards eight o’clock, a porter brought him word of the death; the relation states that he manifested little emotion and shut himself up for several hours. This conduct was noted among the suspicious circumstances; yet a man’s demeanor cannot of itself constitute proof of a crime. The investigators now possessed objects, intervals of time, and depositions which they could submit to the examination of the magistrate.
Fisher was apprehended upon his return, about two in the morning, by Willoughby, York, and Moody, assisted by a constable. At noon on the Sunday, he was brought before Sir William Thompson to be examined. He declared that towards the end of the week of the murder, as he was crossing Lincoln’s Inn Fields about four in the afternoon, he picked up a parcel of white paper under the wall of Lincoln’s Inn Gardens. This parcel, he said, contained several valuable articles belonging to the deceased. He admitted having sold some diamonds to a jeweller in Paternoster Row for ten guineas, pawned the watch for nine guineas to a brass-founder in Bond Street, and disposed of the chain and swivels to a person in Lombard Street.
He utterly denied all knowledge of the murder, maintaining that at the time it was committed he was playing at billiards in Duke Street, near St James’s. Upon his arrest, two of Darby’s rings were found upon his person; the stones had been taken out and the hoops wrapped in paper. He carried likewise a seal from which the coat of arms had been erased. These objects were admitted among the circumstances of the case, and Fisher was committed to Newgate. His account of the parcel found in the gardens remained in stark contradiction with the evidence gathered in his lodgings and upon his body.
The inquiry did not rest solely upon the recovered effects. Shortly afterwards, the coroner issued his warrant, and an order from the House of Commons permitted Darby’s body to be taken up. In the presence of several persons, an eminent surgeon opened the cranium. He observed a large, ragged contusion near the left ear, finding the temporal bone on that side greatly fractured, with splinters beaten into the brain. The opposite temporal bone was broken in a corresponding part. When the surgeon lifted out the brain, a bullet fell down upon the pillow placed upon the ground beneath the head.
This ball was compared with others found in the possession of Fisher, who then lay in Newgate upon suspicion of the murder. The extracted bullet appeared to have been cast in the same mould as the rest; it weighed scarcely less than one of them and fitted the bore of one of the pistols found in Fisher’s keeping. Certain marks afforded reason to believe that this weapon had been discharged, though it had subsequently been recharged. The chronicle thus records a chain of material resemblances; it furnishes no formal technical depositions, nor does it allow the word “appeared” to be converted into absolute certainty.
Fisher’s condition in life rendered his fall the more remarkable in the eyes of the chronicler. He was the son of a clothier of great repute in the west of England, who had sent him to London and placed him as clerk to an attorney. His father, the narrative adds, had done for him whatever was proper and reasonable. Fisher, however, lived beyond his allowances, and had often applied to Darby for assistance when pressed by necessity. While in prison, he affected a levity and unconcern which the chronicle accounted unreasonable; the circumstances appeared to many so pregnant that his conviction was deemed probable. Yet this common opinion must be distinguished from any legal verdict: no trial of Fisher is recorded.
The chronicle records no judgment passed upon Fisher. Whilst workmen were engaged upon the cells then building, Fisher and Roger Johnson discovered a place secured only with lath and plaster, broke a hole through it, and descended by means of one of the workmen’s ladders. In this manner they made their escape from Newgate. Johnson was subsequently retaken and tried for breaking prison; he pleaded that Fisher had effected the escape, and was acquitted. As for Henry Fisher, whom the account continues to designate as the suspected murderer of Darby, he was never heard of more.
The parcel observed beneath the garden wall, the dispersed effects, and the two vanished men left the proceedings without a legal conclusion. The chronicle recorded the grounds of suspicion, the post-mortem examination, and a prison-break; it reported neither a conviction nor any subsequent refutation of Fisher’s denial. He remains, therefore, a man under heavy suspicion, not a convicted felon whose ultimate fate is known. The final silence of the record is that of an interrupted cause, not the proof of a judgment that no man ever set down.