MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON ciOMETIMES, when the setting sun sinks into the scarlet haze of Bayswater, when the evening star shines solitary in a moonless, cloudless sky, the dark wings of fear throw a sudden shade across my heart, as when in childhood the lamps of bedtime were lit along the passages. How vivid to me is the memory of December afternoons when, as I dragged my toboggan home along the avenue, my laughter
would cease suddenly when I saw that the trees were throwing long shadows across the snow, and knew that within an hour or so the terrors of darkness would creak and whisper round my bed. The anxiety which comes upon me when the sirens wail, and I wait restlessly for the barrage to bruise the sky, is not comparable with my old night fears. Our alarms in London are but transitory, their beginning and their end being marked for us by a iiren's song ; but the alarms of frightened children arc permanent and dark, and, being causeless, afford no recognition of their cause. Often when I have walked back alone along the empty streets of London, marvelling at the gentleness with which the moon can touch to beauty even the most ungainly building, I have sought as an experiment to revive my childhood's terrors, and to invite panic to hop beside me gibbering along the streets. For there, at the familiar turning between the cigarette shop and the haberdasher, Mrs. Malcolm was hanged for murder ; and there, as I cross from Fetter Lane, Mrs. Brownrigg beat her young apprentice to -death. I have gone so far even as to consult the Newgate Calendar and the pamphlets and broadsheets of the time, seeking thereby to revive these eighteenth-century fears. But, however delicately I tune myself to receptiveness, only the slightest tingle of these hates and agonies comes down to me across the years.
* * * * Of the' two I find Sarah Malcolm the more interesting. The drawing which Hogarth made of her while she was awaiting execution in Newgate is not perhaps very illuminating. "I see by this woman's features," he remarked to Sir James Thornhill, "that she is capable of any wickedness." Yet in fact the engravings which one finds in Ireland or Dobson do not convey such an impression ; the nostrils are coarse and the mouth petulant, but it is not the face of a murderess ; and for some reason Hogarth has stressed the shapeli- ness of her arms and the beauty of her hands and mobite fingers. The murders which Sarah Malcolm- committed were in themselves crude. On the top floor of Tanfield Court there lived an old lady of eighty of the name of Mrs. Duncombe. She kept two servants, an elderly maid of the name of Elizabeth Harrison, and a girl called Ann Price. Mrs. Malcolm acted as charwoman or "laundress," to the Tanfield Court chambers, and possessed a key to each of the flats.- On the night of Saturday, February 3,rd, r733, she entered Mrs. Duncombe's chambers, cut the throat of Ann Price, strangled Elizabeth Harrison and smothered Mrs. Duncombe in her bed-clothes. From a box in one of the rooms she stole eighteen guineas, twenty moidores, five broad pieces, four crown pieces and a few shillings ; she concealed this money in her hair. The next day a Mrs. Love, who had been invited to luncheon by Mrs. Duncombe, came to the chambers, but was unable to obtain any answer to her repeated knockings. Eventually, with the help of Mrs. Rhymer, she forced an entrance, discovered the three bodies, and gave the alarm.
The interesting fact about Sarah Malcolm as a murderess is that she was unable to leave the scene of the crime, but hung about the staircase of Tanfield CoUrt and the immediate purlieus of the Temple until she was eventually arrested. It was she who, when Mrs. Love was seeking to gain admittance, offered to fetch a locksmith. Mr. Kerril„ who lived in the chambers below Mrs. Duncombe's, was surprised to find Mrs. Malcolm ostensibly laying the fire in his sitting-room when he returned the next morning at I a.m. Mr. Kerril's suspicions were aroused, and on searching his own room he found that Mrs. Malcolm had secreted in a cup-
board her blood-stained clothing and a silver tankard, the handle of which was crusted with dried blood. He called the watch, who took Sarah Malcolm in charge, but thereafter released her "on her promising to surrender at to o'clock the next morning." It is probable that Sarah Malcolm had bribed the watch to let her go, but she failed to profit by the respite gained. Such was the bond that tied her to the scene of her murders that she was unable to leave the precincts of the Temple, but was found next day in animated conversation with the porters at the gate. She was conducted tä Newgate, the money she had hidden in her hair was discovered, and she was condemned to death. The gibbet was erected at the entrance to Mitre Court. On the day of her execution she appeared dressed in "a crêpe mourning gown, white apron, sarcenet hood and black gloves. She was heavily rouged and carried her head with an air of affectation.'" Her body was dissected by Professor Martin, who presented the skeleton to the Botanic Gardens at Cambridge. For all I know it may still be there ; but I have been unable, in spite of repeated experiments, to find that the ghost of Sarah Malcolm haunts the Mitre Court.
* * * * My other local murderess, Mrs. Brownrigg, figures as the heroine of a rather feeble poem in the Anti-Jacobin, composed as a parody on Southey's verses in honour of the regicide Marten. A Genuine and Authentic Account of her trial and execution was published by R. Richards in 1767. It contains an alarming portrait of Mrs. Brownrigg in her cell at Newgate. There she sits on the stone bench, her coat around her shoulders and on her head a large and elegant hat ; her hands are clasped together in agonised prayer ; under the brim of her hat the thin and wizened features are carefully rendered, and her little mouth is shown as tautened by fear. Mrs. Brownrigg certainly deserved to be hanged at Tyburn Tree. She lived with her son and husband in a house in Fleur de Luce Court, off Fetter Lane, and was employed as midwife to the poor of St. Dunstan's parish. In this capacity she had acquired three young apprentices who had been loaned to her by the parish alms houses. Upon these unhappy girls she was wont, with her sofi's assistance, to practise the most dreadful Cruelties. The neighbours, who had heard groans and cries proceeding from the house, became suspicious and succeeded in getting a view of one of the apprentices through the skylight. They reported what they saw to Mr. Grundy, the over- seer of St. Dtmstan's, who forced an entry into the house. One of -the girls, Mary Clifford, was in such a condition that she was taken immediately to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, where she died in three days. Meanwhile Mrs. Brownrigg and her son, having bought clothes in the Rag Market to disguise themselves, escaped to Wands- worth, where they were eventually discovered. From the evidence. at the trial it transpired that Mrs. Brownrigg used to strip her apprentices naked, tie them to a hook in the kitchen ceiling, and beat them until they became unconscious. For some unapparent reason Mr. Brownrigg and his son were acquitted. But Mrs. Brown- rigg was hanged on Tyburn Tree, and her skeleton exposed as a warning in Surgeon's Hall. .
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As I walk down Fetter Lane at midnight I strain my ears to catch some echo of the groans which used to proceed from the Brownrigg basement ; and when I cross the empty street to Mitre Court I try to visualise the picture of Mrs. Malcolm sitting rouged and affected in the hangman's cart, with a noose around her neck. Such dark histories, such hidden courts, would, when I was young, have filled me with apprehension. Have my nerves and my imagina- tion become atrophied by middle age? Or is it that today the real is so disconcerting that the unreal has lost its old effects? My eyes gaze up with interest rather than with apprehension at the cone of searchlights ; I give no thought to the tortures of Fetter Lane Of to the blood-stains on the staircase of Tanfield Court.
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