She Stands Accused Part 8

"I looked through, and saw Will Gibbs come in. Says he, 'Who is there to swear against you?' I told him my two masters would be the chief witnesses. 'And what can they charge you with?' says he. I told him the tankard was the only thing, for there was nothing else that I thought could hurt me. 'Never fear, then,' says he; 'we'll do well enough. We will get them that will rap the tankard was your grandmother's, and that you was in Sh.o.r.editch the night the act was committed; and we'll have two men that shall shoot your masters. But,' said he, 'one of the witnesses is a woman, and she won't swear under four guineas; but the men will swear for two guineas apiece,' and he brought a woman and three men. I gave them ten guineas, and they promised to wait for me at the Bull Head in Broad Street. But when I called for them, when I was going before Sir Richard Brocas, they were not there. Then I found I should be sent to Newgate, and I was full of anxious thoughts; but a young man told me I had better go to the Whit than to the Compter.

"When I came to Newgate I had but eighteenpence in silver, besides the money in my hair, and I gave eighteenpence for my garnish. I was ordered to a high place in the gaol. Buck, as I said before, having seen my hair loose, told Johnson of it, and Johnson asked me if I had got any cole planted there. He searched and found the bag, and there was in it thirty-six moidores, eighteen guineas, five crown pieces, two half-crowns, two broad pieces of twenty-five s.h.i.+llings, four of twenty-three s.h.i.+llings, and one half-broad piece. He told me I must be cunning, and not to be seen to be flush of money. Says I, 'What would you advise me to do with it?' 'Why,' says he, 'you might have thrown it down the sink, or have burnt it, but give it to me, and I'll take care of it.' And so I gave it to him. Mr Alstone then brought me to the condemned hold and examined me. I denied all till I found he had heard of the money, and then I knew my life was gone. And therefore I confessed all that I knew. I gave him the same account of the robbers as I have given you. I told him I heard my masters were to be shot, and I desired him to send them word. I described Tracey and the two Alexanders, and when they were first taken they denied that they knew Mr Oakes, whom they and I had agreed to rob.

"All that I have now declared is fact, and I have no occasion to murder three persons on a false accusation; for I know I am a condemned woman.

I know I must suffer an ignominious death which my crimes deserve, and I shall suffer willingly. I thank G.o.d He has given me time to repent, when I might have been s.n.a.t.c.hed off in the midst of my crimes, and without having an opportunity of preparing myself for another world." There is a glibness and an occasional turn of phrase in this confession which suggests some touching up from the pen of a pamphleteer, but one may take it that it is, in substance, a fairly accurate report. In spite of the pleading which threads it that she should be regarded as accessory only in the robbery, the jury took something less than a quarter of an hour to come back with their verdict of "Guilty of murder." Sarah Malcolm was sentenced to death in due form.

V

Having regard to the period in which this confession was made, and considering the not too savoury reputations of Mary Tracey and the brothers Alexander, we can believe that those three may well have thought themselves lucky to escape from the mesh of lies Sarah tried to weave about them.[24] It was not to be doubted on all the evidence that she alone committed that cruel triple murder, and that she alone stole the money which was found hidden in her hair. The bulk of the stolen clothing was found in her possession, bloodstained. A white-handled case-knife, presumably that used to cut Nanny Price's throat, was seen on a table by the three women who, with Sarah herself, were first on the scene of the murder. It disappeared later, and it is to be surmised that Sarah Malcolm managed to get it out of the room unseen. But to the last moment possible Sarah tried to get her three friends involved with her.

Say, which is not at all unlikely, that Tracey and the Alexanders may have first suggested the robbery to her, and her vindictive maneouvring may be understood.

It is said that when she heard that Tracey and the Alexanders had been taken she was highly pleased. She smiled, and said that she could now die happy, since the real murderers had been seized. Even when the three were brought face to face with her for identification she did not lack brazenness. "Ay," she said, "these are the persons who committed the murder." "You know this to be true," she said to Tracey. "See, Mary, what you have brought me to. It is through you and the two Alexanders that I am brought to this shame, and must die for it. You all promised me you would do no murder, but, to my great surprise, I found the contrary."

She was, you will perceive, a determined liar. Condemned, she behaved with no fort.i.tude. "I am a dead woman!" she cried, when brought back to Newgate. She wept and prayed, lied still more, pretended illness, and had fits of hysteria. They put her in the old condemned hold with a constant guard over her, for fear that she would attempt suicide.

The idlers of the town crowded to the prison to see her, for in the time of his Blessed Majesty King George II Newgate, with the condemned hold and its content, composed one of the fas.h.i.+onable spectacles. Young Mr Hogarth, the painter, was one of those who found occasion to visit Newgate to view the notorious murderess. He even painted her portrait.

It is said that Sarah dressed specially for him in a red dress, but that copy--one which belonged to Horace Walpole--which is now in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, shows her in a grey gown, with a white cap and ap.r.o.n. Seated to the left, she leans her folded hands on a table on which a rosary and a crucifix lie. Behind her is a dark grey wall, with a heavy grating over a dark door to the right. There are varied mezzotints of this picture by Hogarth himself still extant, and there is a pen-and-wash drawing of Sarah by Samuel Wale in the British Museum.

The stories regarding the last days in life of Sarah Malcolm would occupy more pages than this book can afford to spend on them. To the last she hoped for a reprieve. After the "dead warrant" had arrived, to account for a paroxysm of terror that seized her, she said that it was from shame at the idea that, instead of going to Tyburn, she was to be hanged in Fleet Street among all the people that knew her, she having just heard the news in chapel. This too was one of her lies. She had heard the news hours before. A turnkey, pointing out the lie to her, urged her to confess for the easing of her mind.

One account I have of the Tanfield Court murders speaks of the custom there was at this time of the bellman of St Sepulchre's appearing outside the gratings of the condemned hold just after midnight on the morning of executions.[25] This performance was provided for by bequest from one Robert Dove, or Dow, a merchant-tailor. Having rung his bell to draw the attention of the condemned (who, it may be gathered, were not supposed to be at all in want of sleep), the bellman recited these verses:

All you that in the condemned hold do lie, Prepare you, for to-morrow you shall die.

Watch all and pray; the hour is drawing near That you before th' Almighty must appear.

Examine well yourselves, in time repent, That you may not t'eternal flames be sent: And when St 'Pulchre's bell to-morrow tolls, The Lord above have mercy on your souls!

Past twelve o'clock![26]

A fellow-prisoner or a keeper bade Sarah Malcolm heed what the bellman said, urging her to take it to heart. Sarah said she did, and threw the bellman down a s.h.i.+lling with which to buy himself a pint of wine.

Sarah, as we have seen, was denied the honour of procession to Tyburn.

Her sentence was that she was to be hanged in Fleet Street, opposite the Mitre Court, on the 7th of March, 1733. And hanged she was accordingly.

She fainted in the tumbril, and took some time to recover. Her last words were exemplary in their piety, but in the face of her vindictive lying, unretracted to the last, it were hardly exemplary to repeat them.

She was buried in the churchyard of St Sepulchre's.

V: -- ALMOST A LADY[27]

Born (probably illegitimately) in a fisherman's cottage, reared in a workhouse, employed in a brothel, won at cards by a royal duke, mistress of that duke, married to a baron, received at Court by three kings (though not much in the way of kings), accused of cozenage and tacitly of murder, died full of piety, 'cutting up' for close on L150,000--there, as it were in a nutsh.e.l.l, you have the life of Sophie Dawes, Baronne de Feucheres.

In the introduction to her exhaustive and accomplished biography of Sophie Dawes,[28] from which a part of the matter for this resume is drawn, Mme Violette Montagu, speaking of the period in which Sophie lived, says that "Paris, with its fabulous wealth and luxury, seems to have been looked upon as a sort of Mecca by handsome Englishwomen with ambition and, what is absolutely necessary if they wish to be really successful, plenty of brains."

It is because Sophie had plenty of brains of a sort, besides the attributes of good looks, health, and by much a disproportionate share of determination, and because, with all that she attained to, she died quite ostracized by the people with whom it had been her life's ambition to mix, and was thus in a sense a failure--it is because of these things that it is worth while going into details of her career, expanding the precis with which this chapter begins.

Among the women selected as subjects for this book Sophie Dawes as a personality wins 'hands down.' Whether she was a criminal or not is a question even now in dispute. Unscrupulous she certainly was, and a good deal of a rogue. That modern American product the 'gold-digger' is what she herself would call a 'piker' compared with the subject of this chapter. The blonde bombsh.e.l.l, with her 'sugar daddy,' her alimony 'racket,' and the hundred hard-boiled dodges wherewith she chisels money and goods from her prey, is, again in her own crude phraseology, 'knocked for a row of ash-cans' by Sophie Dawes. As, I think, you will presently see.

Sophie was born at St Helens, Isle of Wight--according to herself in 1792. There is controversy on the matter. Mme Montagu in her book says that some of Sophie's biographers put the date at 1790, or even 1785.

But Mme Montagu herself reproduces the list of wearing apparel with which Sophie was furnished when she left the 'house of industry' (the workhouse). It is dated 1805. In those days children were not maintained in poor inst.i.tutions to the mature ages of fifteen or twenty. They were supposed to be armed against life's troubles at twelve or even younger.

Sophie, then, could hardly have been born before 1792, but is quite likely to have been born later.

The name of Sophie's father is given as "Daw." Like many another celebrity, as, for example, Walter Raleigh and Shakespeare, Sophie spelled her name variously, though ultimately she fixed on "Dawes."

Richard, or d.i.c.key, Daw was a fisherman for appearance sake and a smuggler for preference. The question of Sophie's legitimacy anses from the fact that her mother, Jane Callaway, was registered at death as "a spinster." Sophie was one of ten children. d.i.c.key Daw drank his family into the poorhouse, an inst.i.tution which sent Sophie to fend for herself in 1805, procuring her a place as servant at a farm on the island.

Service on a farm does not appear to have appealed to Sophie. She escaped to Portsmouth, where she found a job as hotel chambermaid.

Tiring of that, she went to London and became a milliner's a.s.sistant.

A little affair we hear, in which a mere water-carrier was an equal partic.i.p.ant, lost Sophie her place. We next have word of her imitating Nell Gwynn, both in selling oranges to playgoers and in becoming an actress--not, however, at Old Drury, but at the other patent theatre, Covent Garden. Save that as a comedian she never took London by storm, and that she lacked Nell's unfailing good humour, Sophie in her career matches Nell in more than superficial particulars. Between selling oranges and appearing on the stage Sophie seems to have touched bottom for a time in poverty. But her charms as an actress captivated an officer by and by, and she was established as his mistress in a house at Turnham Green. Tiring of her after a time--Sophie, it is probable, became exigeant with increased comfort--her protector left her with an annuity of L50.

The annuity does not appear to have done Sophie much good. We next hear of her as servant-maid in a Piccadilly brothel, a lupanar much patronized by wealthy emigres from France, among whom was Louis-Henri-Joseph, Duc de Bourbon and later Prince de Conde, a man at that time of about fifty-four.

The Duc's attention was directed to the good looks of Sophie by a manservant of his. Mme Montagu says of Sophie at this time that "her face had already lost the first bloom of youth and innocence." Now, one wonders if that really was so, or if Mme Montagu is making a shot at a hazard. She describes Sophie a little earlier than this as having developed into a fine young woman, not exactly pretty or handsome, but she held her head gracefully, and her regular features were illumined by a pair of remarkably bright and intelligent eyes. She was tall and squarely built, with legs and arms which might have served as models for a statue of Hercules. Her muscular force was extraordinary. Her lips were rather thin, and she had an ugly habit of contracting them when she was angry. Her intelligence was above the average, and she had a good share of wit.

At the time when the Duc de Bourbon came upon her in the Piccadilly stew the girl was probably no more than eighteen. If one may judge her character from the events of her subsequent career there was an outstanding resiliency and a resoluteness as main ingredients of her make-up, qualities which would go a long way to obviating any marks that might otherwise have been left on her by the ups and downs of a mere five years in the world. If, moreover, Mme Montagu's description of her is a true one it is clear that Sophie's good looks were not of the sort to make an all-round appeal. The ways in which attractiveness goes, both in men and in women, are infinite in their variety. The reader may recall, in this respect, what was said in the introductory chapter about Kate Webster and the instance of the bewhiskered 'Fina of the Spanish tavern. And since a look of innocence and the bloom of youth may, and very often do, appear on the faces of individuals who are far from being innocent or even young, it may well be that Sophie in 1810, servant-maid in a brothel though she was, still kept a look of country freshness and health, unjaded enough to whet the dulled appetence of a bagnio-haunting old rip. The odds are, at all events, that Sophie was much less artificial in her charms than the practised ladies of complacency upon whom she attended. With her odd good looks she very likely had just that subacid leaven for which, in the alchemy of attraction, the Duc was in search.

The Duc, however, was not the only one to whom Sophie looked desirable.

Two English peers had an eye on her--the Earl of Winchilsea and the Duke of Kent. This is where the card affair comes in. The Duc either played whist with the two n.o.blemen for sole rights in Sophie or, what is more likely, cut cards with them during a game. The Duc won. Whether his win may be regarded as lucky or not can be reckoned, according to the taste and fancy of the reader, from the sequelae of some twenty years.

II

With the placing of Sophie dans ses meubles by the Duc de Bourbon there began one of the most remarkable turns in her career. In 1811 he took a house for her in Gloucester Street, Queen's Square, with her mother as duenna, and arranged for the completion of her education.

As a light on her character hardly too much can be made of this stage in her development. It is more than likely that the teaching was begun at Sophie's own demand, and by the use she made of the opportunities given her you may measure the strength of her ambition. Here was no rich man's doxy lazily seeking a veneer of culture, enough to gloss the rough patches of speech and idea betraying humble origin. This fisherman's child, workhouse girl, ancilla of the bordels, with the thin smattering of the three R's she had acquired in the poor inst.i.tution, set herself, with a wholehearted concentration which a Newnham 'swot' might envy, to master modern languages, with Greek, Latin, and music. At the end of three years she was a good linguist, could play and sing well enough to entertain and not bore the most intelligent in the company the Duc kept, and to pa.s.s in that company--the French emigre set in London--as a person of equal education. If, as it is said, Sophie, while she could read and write French faultlessly, never could speak it without an English accent, it is to be remembered that the flexibility of tongue and mind needed for native-sounding speech in French (or any other language) is so exceptional as to be practically non-existent among her compatriots to this day. The fault scarcely belittles her achievement.

As well blame a one-legged man for hopping when trying to run.

Consider the life Sophie had led, the sort of people with whom she had a.s.sociated, and that temptation towards laissez-faire which conquers all but the rarest woman in the mode of life in which she was existing, and judge of the constancy of purpose that kept that little nose so steadfastly in Plutarch and Xenophon.

If in the year 1812 the Duc began to allow his little Sophie about L800 a year in francs as pin-money he was no more generous than Sophie deserved. The Duc was very rich, despite the fact that his father, the old Prince de Conde, was still alive, and so, of course, was enjoying the income from the family estates.

There is no room here to follow more than the barest outline of the Duc de Bourbon's history. Fully stated, it would be the history of France.

He was a son of the Prince de Conde who collected that futile army beyond the borders of France in the royalist cause in the Revolution.

Louis-Henri was wounded in the left arm while serving there, so badly wounded that the hand was practically useless. He came to England, where he lived until 1814, when he went back to France to make his unsuccessful attempt to raise the Vendee. Then he went to Spain.

At this time he intended breaking with Sophie, but when he got back to Paris in 1815 he found the lady waiting for him. It took Sophie some eighteen months to bring his Highness up to scratch again. During this time the Duc had another English fancy, a Miss Harris, whose reign in favour, however, did not withstand the manoeuvring of Sophie.

Sophie as a mistress in England was one thing, but Sophie unattached as a mistress in France was another. One wonders why the Duc should have been squeamish on this point. Perhaps it was that he thought it would look vulgar to take up a former mistress after so long. At all events, he was ready enough to resume the old relations.h.i.+p with Sophie, provided she could change her name by marriage. Sophie was nothing loth. The idea fell in with her plans. She let it get about that she was the natural daughter of the Duc, and soon had in tow one Adrien-Victor de Feucheres.

He was an officer of the Royal Guard. Without enlarging on the all-round tawdriness of this contract it will suffice here to say that Sophie and Adrien were married in London in August of 1818, the Duc presenting the bride with a dowry of about L5600 in francs. Next year de Feucheres became a baron, and was made aide-de-camp to the Duc.