In February 1818, the regular congregation of Greenwich parish church observed the absence of two familiar faces: George Bird and his housekeeper, Mary Simmons, who were accustomed to being seated in their pew well before the service commenced. When morning prayer concluded and their residence remained shuttered, the parish beadle made his way round to the rear and effected an entrance. The silence of two churchgoers had brought to light a crime that none yet knew how to name.
Bird was eighty-four years of age. Formerly a tallow-chandler, he had acquired an ample competency through his industry and had retired to Greenwich following the death of his wife. Mary Simmons, aged forty-four, maintained his domestic establishment.
The beadle knocked without receiving an answer, then forced an entry through the back. The chronicle describes Simmons lying in the passage and Bird in the parlour, each having been struck down by heavy blows to the head with a blunt weapon. Their pockets had been rifled for keys; upstairs, drawers and strongboxes bore stains of blood. Plate and silver spoons had been carried off, though three sovereigns secreted in a hidden compartment eluded the plunderer. The account notes that Bird was fully attired, an open book beside him, with his spectacles still grasped firmly in his hand.
The portals of the house also bore mute, if incomplete, testimony. The front door, invariably secured by a chain, remained so fastened; the chronicler inferred that the murderer gained access by the rear. The two inmates were accustomed to retire near ten o'clock, yet their dress led the observer to conclude that the blows fell before that hour. This deduction is presented strictly as an inference, not as an established hour attested by any witness.
The intelligence threw Greenwich into consternation. A local solicitor dispatched express messengers to Bow Street; officers hastened down from London, and a coroner's inquest was convened. The chronicle affirms that no material clue was then elicited. The two victims were committed to the earth in the churchyard the following week, in the presence of a vast concourse of people. For three weeks, several individuals were apprehended upon suspicion, only to be discharged for want of conclusive evidence. The crime seemed destined to remain shrouded among locked doors and missing chattel, until the sister of Charles Hussey grew uneasy regarding the contents of a box he had deposited beneath her roof.
Hussey had arrived at the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Godwin, in Peckham, approximately a week following the murders. He represented that he was obliged to visit a brother in Basingstoke. He withdrew something from a box placed beneath a bed; his sister presumed it to be money. He had announced an absence of a single week, yet nearly a fortnight elapsed before his reappearance. His evident agitation, according to her deposition, awakened her suspicions. She confided in her husband, and presently opened the box with one of her own keys. Within lay two watches. Surmising that they might have belonged to Bird, the couple apprised the magistrates at Greenwich.
The alarm raised by the Godwins was not the sole thread of the inquiry. Another chest had been left in the keeping of a Mrs. Goddard, at Deptford. This relative of Hussey, alarmed by inquiries circulating concerning him, opened the box and discovered articles that appeared to have come from the Bird residence. The constables recovered a silver wine-strainer, a soup ladle, bed-linen, shirts, a light-coloured coat marked with blood near the right pocket, gaiters similarly stained, a piece of bloody canvas, and a hat. Further articles of plate, identified as Bird's, were likewise brought to light. The box was unlocked; Hussey never returned to claim it.
At Peckham, the officers secured the two watches and several bank notes marked with Bird’s initials. They also came upon Hussey's discharge certificate from the East India Company, which furnished a precise physical description of his person.
Pursuit was instituted in several quarters, and rewards were proclaimed. An innkeeper at Deddington, in Oxfordshire, finally recognized him from the published hue and cry. Supported by a neighbour, he accosted the stranger and required him to surrender. Hussey at length confessed his name. Upon his person were found a watch and a pocketbook containing a ring, likewise identified as part of the spoils from the Bird household. He denied all knowledge of the murders or the burglary, though admitting the articles to be in his keeping.
Brought before the magistrate, he tendered an extraordinary account of their origin. He asserted that on the Sunday afternoon following the deed, he observed a man vaulting over a wall into a garden at Greenwich, where he concealed a bundle against a tree. Impelled by curiosity, Hussey examined it, perceived two watches and a silver ladle, and departed without taking anything. He alleged that on the following Saturday, passing the same spot, he found the bundle still there and carried it off. The inventory he enumerated embraced watches, silver plate, linen, rings, ancient coins, and bank notes. He had fled, he declared, out of shame and terror at being found in possession of such property.
The trial took place at the Maidstone assizes on the 31st of July, 1818. The prosecution connected the recovered goods to the house, the stains upon the garments to the night of the tragedy, and Hussey’s movements to the vicinity. The hammer believed to have been the fatal instrument had been stolen from a cooper a few days prior and subsequently dredged from a pond. Hussey was acquainted with the artisan and had frequented his premises; indeed, his box had rested there before being transferred to Mrs. Goddard’s. Witnesses further deposed that he was an Odd Fellow, yet he did not join their lodge meeting on the night of the crime until near ten o'clock. The landlord of the public house where they met conceded, however, that the prisoner's habitual demeanour would never have prompted him to suspect such an atrocity.
Such character evidence could not outweigh the circumstantial chain; it serves only to recall how an individual’s exterior reputation may baffle his acquaintances. Hussey, formerly a seaman in the East India service, had subsequently served as a domestic at Greenwich, not far from the Bird residence, before losing his employment. The jury returned a verdict of guilty.
Hussey was executed on the 3rd of August, 1818, upon Pennenden Heath, near Maidstone. The record preserves no confession of the murder. It relates merely that when a clergyman asked whether he knew who had committed the deed, Hussey replied with eager emphasis: "I do, I do." This utterance designated no accomplice and fell short of an admission of his own guilt. The chronicle dwells at length upon his outward habit, describing him as tall, pale, with remarkably large hands and feet, yet possessing a mild and prepossessing countenance—as if the physical frame might yield some final clue to the darker recesses of the soul.
At Greenwich, the alarm had arisen from two vacant places in a church pew. Three weeks later, the unlocking of a brother's chest by his own sister shifted the course of the inquiry. She had discovered two watches; the officers subsequently uncovered the initialed notes of George Bird. Between the shuttered house of the victims and the opened box in Peckham, the shadow of the crime had crossed two hearths. In the first, none remained to speak; in the second, a woman resolved not to remain silent.