Episode 195: Straight to the Heart

This is the story of the one.

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In southeastern Switzerland, right at the little corner where France and Italy butt up against it, there's a city on Lake Geneva called Lausanne.

And for a very long time, they've been maintaining a rare, ancient tradition.

Yes, the Olympic Committee headquarters are there, but that's not the tradition I'm talking about.

No, this one happens more regularly, daily, in fact.

You see, every night, beginning at 10 p.m., a lone figure wearing a wide black hat climbs the 153 stone steps that lead up to the top of the cathedral, looks out on the city that surrounds it, and then calls out the hour.

And they've been doing it every night for 616 years.

It's a relic of another era, an artifact that has somehow held on, a bit of the Middle Ages, alive and well in our modern world.

Once, communities all over Europe used to have a night watchman, but there are only about 60 left today across nine countries.

Still, places like Lausanne have kept at it.

In fact, in August of 2020, the torch was passed to a new generation, 27-year-old Cassandra Berdoz.

And yes, she is the first woman to hold the role in over six centuries.

As I said before, it's an ancient tradition.

The night watchman was originally tasked with protecting their city by watching out for fires, crime, bad weather, or other unexpected dangers.

Today, though, they mostly announce the time.

All their other roles have been usurped by modern technology.

And because it's still here, we can see how much our world has changed, how the relative safety we enjoy today would have seemed impossible just a few centuries before, how a lack of systems and technology left people feeling adrift in a sea of fear and danger, and how folklore could often make the situation so much worse.

I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is lore.

Context is everything.

The setting and players and rules of a story are what give it momentum so that the action can drive home.

So to understand the journey I want to take you on, we need to first understand the road.

And I mean that literally.

Obviously most of us have a rough understanding that the city of London is an ancient one, but for today's purposes we just need to go back about two centuries to the early parts of the 1800s.

And there we would find an ancient street heading east from London.

It was once, many centuries ago, known as the road that passed by the red cliffs of the Thames, but over time that red cliff highway became the Ratcliffe Highway, and now on most maps and tongues it's just the highway.

But in 1811 it was also something else.

It was a major artery through the poorest part of the city and a hotbed of theft, assault and general danger for those passing along it.

But of course it was also home to thousands as well as a business center.

Many of those shops had living quarters attached to them allowing people to work at the street level and then go eat and sleep out back or upstairs.

People worked insanely long hours too, so many businesses stayed open late into the night, and all of that gave the area around the highway the feel of a buzzing hive.

But all of that fell apart on the night of December 7th of 1811.

That evening, around 11.50 p.m., local business owner Timothy Marr sent his servant girl Margaret Jewell out for some bread and oysters.

While she was gone, Timothy and his apprentice James Gowen closed up the shop, while his wife Celia took care of their three-month-old son, Timothy Jr.

When Margaret returned half an hour later, the door was locked and no one would answer her knocks and shouts.

She thought she heard movement inside though, so she just sat on the front steps and waited for someone to let her in.

About 30 minutes later, one of the parish night watchmen walked by, saw her, and asked what the problem was.

After listening, this man, George Olney, did his own knocking, which caught the attention of one of the neighbors.

And this neighbor man was glad to see the watchman because because less than an hour before, he swore he heard some strange noises from inside the Marr's shop.

After confirming with the night watchman, the neighbor agreed to try entering the house from the back, and because that door was mysteriously unlocked, he slipped inside.

What he found was a charnel house beyond comprehension.

The body of Apprentice James Gowen lay in a pool of blood, his head beaten so severely that there was no shape to it anymore.

Celia Marr's body was in a similar state, and even the baby had been killed.

And downstairs in the shop, Timothy was found in a heap, also brutally murdered.

Urgency swept over everyone there.

The watchman called for the authorities and an officer from the Thames Division took control of the scene.

But a search of the shop only turned up more questions.

Nothing had been stolen as far as anyone could tell.

Even Timothy Marr's pockets had been ignored, still containing money.

But what they did find were the murder weapons, a bloody chisel on the floor of the shop, and a shipwright's maul, a sort of small sledgehammer that was discovered in the kitchen, propped up and covered in fragments of bloody hair and fractured bone.

Now, enough of us have seen an episode or two of CSI to know what should happen next, but in 1811, that just wasn't the way things worked.

The bodies and evidence were simply left where they were found until an inquest could be held, usually in the area at a local pub.

And as you might imagine, it took time to gather a jury and staff that inquest.

By the 11th of December, a full three days after the murder, the bodies and blood were all still there.

And if you think people are obsessed with true crime stories today, you haven't experienced Georgian England.

People were printing booklets and flyers, and word was spreading fast, often publishing the stories in pieces spanning multiple episodes.

Each day those corpses were left uncollected, locals and curious outsiders were parading past the house to catch catch a glimpse, sometimes even walking inside for a better look.

Where were the police?

Well, the simple answer is that they didn't really exist.

Yes, there were a handful of paid officers in each district, but most of the safeguarding was performed by unpaid voluntary patrols.

People policed themselves, mostly out of a fear of what a paid armed police force might mean for their freedom.

But as crime grew, so too did their desperation.

Which is why no killer had been caught by the time the Mars were buried on December 15th, eight whole days after their death.

It was a funeral that drew an enormous crowd, and all of them wanted answers.

But they were going to have to wait for that, because something even more pressing was about to occupy the authorities' time:

another murder.

People learned of the second murder from the naked man who climbed out of the upstairs window of a pub down a rope made of bedsheets.

And while that sounds like the beginning of a racy drama about a love affair, nothing could be further from the truth.

The naked man was John Turner, a carpenter who was staying in the lodging room at the pub, a place called the King's Arms.

And as he climbed down that makeshift ladder, he was shouting at the top of his lungs, They are murdering the the people in the house.

The people, of course, were the Williamsons.

John Williamson was an elderly man, although described as large and powerful even in his old age.

Both he and his wife Elizabeth were well loved, and their pub, the King's Arms, was described as a respectable establishment.

It was where the Williamsons lived, along with their 14-year-old granddaughter and another employee named Bridget Anna Harrington.

What John Turner witnessed was horrific.

He had been out late that night and returned to his room at the pub around 11 p.m.

But just as he was getting into bed, naked, I suppose, he heard Bridget shout from the tap room, We shall all be murdered, and so he crept downstairs to have a look.

What he found was an enormous man stooped over the body of Mrs.

Williamson, slicing her throat with a knife.

Turner claimed that he bolted back upstairs and immediately crafted that bed sheet rope, shouting as he climbed out the window.

By the time help arrived, the deed had been done.

Everyone in the house was dead.

As you can imagine, the authorities were frustrated.

Two sets of murders in two weeks was just too much to deal with.

They had enough leads to arrest some suspects, but almost all of them were brought in on nothing more than suspicion.

No solid evidence to actually tie them to the crime.

Now, if you've heard of this case before, you're probably aware that I'm giving only the broad strokes.

Honestly, if I were to go deep into this story, it would take all day.

But the important path forward is the one that began three days later, on December 22nd, because that's the day the authorities believed that they had captured their man.

His name was John Williams, and he had a lot working against him.

He was a sailor, so theoretically familiar with a shipwright's mall.

He was known to have a temper, something that often got him into fights with people.

and he was seen drinking at the king's arms the night of the murder.

That said, he also did not fit the description of the large man seen inside the king's arms.

In fact, he was a lot smaller, and his initials didn't match the ones carved into the mall that had killed the Mars.

But after dozens of suspects that all managed to walk free thanks to solid alibis, John Williams found himself as a sort of last man standing, which wasn't a good position to be in.

And of course, Williams was questioned and denied everything.

Yes, he drank at the king's arms, but so did a lot of sailors.

The pubs along the highway were all incredibly close to the docks, and there were probably just as many foreign and domestic sailors on those side streets as there were local residents.

But while the inquest gathered evidence and discussed their options, he was placed in the prison at Cold Bath Fields in central London.

There was more debates about the mall used in the Marr murder.

There was more discussion about witness testimony, such as Williams' laundrywoman who claimed that she had recently washed a shirt of his with blood on the collar.

But above all, they needed a suspect, someone to to blame, and someone whose conviction would deliver hope and peace to a very frightened neighborhood.

So Williams was held, and everyone waited.

Perhaps with more testimony, the truth would come to light, and things would get better.

But instead, they got so much worse.

They said he was in good spirits.

John Williams had a lot to be afraid of, considering he was sitting in a prison cell on suspicion of being the killer of two families, some of the most gruesome murders in recent memory.

It's fair to say that the people of the East End wouldn't see anything like it again for another 70 years, when a guy named Jack would rip apart their sense of peace.

What John Williams did not know was that the more testimony the inquest heard, the less certain they felt about his connection to the killings.

And he was scheduled to make another appearance in court on December 27th, where there was a good chance he'd toss off those final chains of suspicion and walk free.

Except he never made it.

On the morning of that appearance, a police officer went to fetch Williams and escort him to the courthouse.

But when he got there, Williams was dead.

All signs pointed to suicide, at least as far as the physical evidence went.

But just about everyone there, prisoners and guards alike, made it clear that Williams was a hopeful man, and it seemed odd that he would do something that many viewed as an act of desperation.

Now, people have been studying this case for two centuries, so I won't claim to be an expert.

But like I said earlier, this is a complex story that I've boiled down to a dark reduction and cut straight to the heart of it.

And one of the elements you might want to read more about are the two men that Williams was known to hang out with, one of whom had a grudge with Timothy Marr, and the other who was a very large man.

Because of that, some people believe these two men were the true killers, and John Williams was their final loose end.

It's easy to imagine them staging the suicide to cut that final tie between themselves and the murders.

And what happened next only confirms that the investigators took the bait.

John Williams' apparent death by suicide was interpreted by the court as an admission of guilt.

No, he had had never been formally charged with the crime, but they saw this as an easy answer to a frustrating situation.

So they declared him guilty, stating that he had worked alone.

And with that, their nightmare and John Williams' life were both over.

Well, almost.

Because in the early 19th century, the folks in England still followed an ancient practice when it came to those who took their own lives.

You see, they believed that people who did that had committed a crime against themselves and God, and therefore deserved a very very public humiliation and a troublesome burial.

There's a lot of folklore out there about crossroads, often centering on things like summoning the devil for some sort of a deal, or that crossroads were the location where one might see fairies or trolls or some other supernatural creature.

But running beneath all of that was an older undercurrent, the notion that crossroads, by their very nature, confused spirits.

It was rooted in this idea that spirits could easily get lost due to all the options that were available at a crossroads.

Imagine standing at an intersection of two or three roads, but having no signs to tell you where to go.

Apparently, that disorienting situation was even worse for the spirits of the dead, and they risked never reaching the afterlife.

So on New Year's Eve of 1811, the magistrates involved in the Marr and Williamson murders had the corpse of John Williams strapped to the surface of a wide board and propped it up in the back of a horse-drawn cart so that it was clearly visible.

Beside his body, they tied down the shipwright's maul and the bloody chisel.

Think of it as a grotesque version of that science project display we all had to build when we were kids.

The cart was then driven down Ratcliffe Highway, first to the Mars linen shop, then to the King's Arms pub, making stops at each for roughly 10 minutes.

It's recorded that when the horse stumbled up to the Mars place, Williams' head rolled to the side facing away from the shop, as if the corpse didn't want to look.

One of the officials who were present had to reach over and turn the head to face it.

After all of those pit stops amidst hundreds of onlookers, the cart headed north to the intersection of what is now today Cable Street and Cannon Street Road.

Williams' body was untied, a shallow grave was dug, and once he was tossed in, a stake was driven straight through his heart to keep his spirit trapped and confused.

Right or wrong, the community felt like justice had been served.

They believed that the threat that had clouded over them had finally been chased away.

And they were convinced that even in death, the killer could no longer haunt them.

All thanks to a heaping dose of folklore.

Criminal investigation is a complex puzzle.

Today, that puzzle is a bit easier, thanks to modern forensic tools and better methods for processing a crime scene.

But two centuries ago, that puzzle must have felt like a steep challenge.

Certainly, in the case of the murders that shook the area around the Ratcliffe Highway, that was true.

And because the full case was a tangled web of witness testimony, tips from locals, and shadowy figures seen from a distance, it's easy to see how confused and frustrated everyone could have become, both the authorities and the larger community.

The most obvious outcome was a tragedy, no matter how you interpret it.

If innocent, John Williams represents the hopelessness of wrongful conviction and the damage that can be done when someone gets caught up in the wheels of the justice system.

And if truly guilty, he dodged responsibility for his actions.

No matter where you come down in this story, there's no question it delivers a lot of pain and a lot of loss.

But there were some good things to come out of the events of 1811.

Those two mass murders tested the limits of their current police methods, and the thin patches and gaps were put on full display.

People after that started to call for reform in law enforcement.

They warmed up to the idea of a full-time armed police force, someone to keep them safe the next time a killer prowled their streets.

For a while, they'd have to rely on that weird mixture of volunteer parish watchmen, a handful handful of paid officers, and private police for hire companies like the Bow Street Runners, a crew, incidentally, that dressed in blue pants, blue jacket, black boots, and black hats, possibly giving inspiration for the police uniforms of later generations.

Clearly, the way people handled crime was, if you'll pardon the pun, at a crossroad.

But by 1839, the people of London had the Metropolitan Police.

Not perfect for sure, if history is any indication, but better.

And John Williams?

Well, his body remained staked and hidden underneath the dirt at the corner of that old crossroad for a very long time.

In 1886, though, the same year Coca-Cola was first sold to thirsty customers and the Statue of Liberty was completed in New York Harbor, a gas company dug up the intersection to lay some new pipe.

What they uncovered was a skeleton, buried face down, with a wooden stake driven through its chest.

John Williams had returned.

But this being the late 1800s, there were fewer rules for handling a discovery like that, so the man who owned the pub right there at the corner, a place called the Crown and Dolphin, took the skull and set it up at his bar, where it greeted customers for years.

Today, no one knows for sure where it's gone, which feels like it was part of the script all along.

After all, the people of the East End had wanted to make sure he was lost.

And in a lot of ways, it seems they got their wish.

Crimes like the Ratcliffe Highway murders were handled in a much different way than modern killings.

Clearly, time has had quite an impact on the way we investigate and put suspects on trial.

But one case from just a few years before gives us an example of the opposite in action, where a criminal case and not time itself brought about a significant change to the system.

And it doesn't help that it was filled with ghosts and murder and a whole lot of folklore.

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In November of 1803, a ghost began to haunt the neighborhood.

There were multiple sightings, and in a number of instances, the ghost even attacked people.

People were upset and they started telling stories.

And stories, of course, can often fan the flames, rather than put them out.

As usual, there was an origin story connected to the ghost.

Locals said that it was the wandering spirit of a man who had taken his own life a year before.

But contrary to typical burial practices in that situation, This man was interred on church grounds, which, according to the legend, made the spirit restless, and thus the local hauntings.

Honestly, all this stuff makes a lot more sense if you just suspend your disbelief.

But hey, that's folklore for you, right?

The reports were frightening too.

Multiple people claimed that the ghost had appeared to them and tried to choke them to death.

In two cases, those who were attacked lived long enough to go home and tell others what they'd seen, only to die later from fright, as one might say.

When a couple of local brewery employees stumbled home one evening, they made the not-so-wise not-so-wise choice to take a shortcut through the churchyard.

It was dark out, of course, and according to their later report, when they passed one of the gravestones, a hand reached out and grabbed one of them by the neck.

The friend tried to intervene, but claimed that he was confused by the powers of the ghost.

The last thing he felt was something soft, like a great coat, he told the police.

So, that was life for a while in this western London neighborhood.

Folks would lock their doors, stay off the streets at night, and generally just walk around as if they were waiting for the bad guy from a Scooby-Doo cartoon to jump out of the shadows.

And that's what seemed to happen on the night of December 29th.

William Gerdler was a night watchman, patrolling the neighborhood on his usual route.

But of course, he was walking the streets that night with a bit of adrenaline in his blood, thanks to all the terrifying stories.

So when he saw the ghostly form of a figure in white appear down the lane, he shouted and chased after it.

And the ghost?

Well, it ran.

Gerdler lost sight of his quarry a few minutes later, but came upon a young man named Francis Smith, who was also out hunting for the ghost himself, with a shotgun in his hand.

They chatted briefly, discussed the ghost, and then parted company, which is why it was Smith and not Gerdler who made the next sighting around 11 p.m.

Smith spotted the pale figure and brought his shotgun up to take aim.

After shouting, who are you and what are you at the ghost, Smith pulled the trigger.

Instantly, the ghost spun on its feet, toppled to the ground, and lay still.

Oh, and there was blood.

The ghost, it seems, was a man named Thomas Millwood.

His occupation?

A bricklayer, which meant that his normal uniform was a pair of pale trousers, white waistcoat, and an apron, also white.

Which made sense.

The man worked with white dust all day long, so why wear anything else, right?

But it seems Francis Smith didn't understand that, or at least didn't look close enough to figure it out before firing his weapon.

As a result, Thomas Millwood was dead.

He wasn't a ghost before, but now,

well, you get the idea.

Smith, of course, went to court over the banner.

He was charged with willful murder, but it was naturally a tricky situation.

Smith had believed that he was defending the safety of his neighborhood, but he was also fully aware and responsible for his surroundings.

In the end, the the court found him guilty.

After being sentenced to death by hanging, the king stepped in and changed the punishment to just a year of hard labor.

Oh, and as a result of that very public trial, the actual ghost announced himself to one and all.

He too was a living, breathing person.

He was just an old shoemaker, out for a bit of fun.

This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research by Sam Alberty and music by Chad Lawson.

Lore is much more than just a podcast.

There is a book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video.

Check them both out if you want more lore in your life.

I also make an executive produce a whole bunch of other podcasts, all of which I think you'd enjoy.

My production company, Grim and Mild, specializes in shows that sit at the intersection of the dark and the historical.

You can learn more about all of those shows and everything else going on over in one central place: grimandmild.com.

And you can also follow this show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Just search for lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button.

When you do, say hi.

I like it when people say hi.

And as always,

thanks for listening.

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