Causes Ce/d&res. ing the half-hour at the time. The Germans were sitting up in bed' with a lighted candle reading; but they put it out because Wil liams said roughly, " For God's sake, put out that light, or something will happen! " In the morning a fellow lodger, named Harris, told him of the murder before he got up. He replied surlily, " I know it." Since then he had been restless at nights, and had been heard to say in his sleep, " Five shillings in my pocket? — my pockets are full of silver." Alarmed at the Marrs', the murderer had taken nothing there, although there was a sum of one hundred and fifty-two pounds in the house, besides several guineas in Marr's pocket. The mallet left, with another maul and an iron ripping-chisel, at Marr's, was iden tified as belonging to Peterson, a Norwegian ship-carpenter, who had left it in a tool-chest in Mrs. Vermillot's garret at the Pear-Tree, from which it was now missing. Mrs. Ver millot's children remembered the mallet, from having often played with it. The prisoner's washerwoman also proved that a shirt which he had recently worn came to her bloody and torn, and he had told her he had had a fight. It was proved that he knew Marr and Wil liamson, and several publicans certified that they had resolved to refuse him their houses because he was always meddling with their tills. It was also proved that he had re cently cut off his whiskers, and that muddy stockings he had worn had been found hid den behind a chest. This was on the Friday; on the Saturday he was committed for trial. On his way to prison, but for a powerful escort, he would have been torn in pieces by a fierce mob. At five o'clock he was left in his cell at Coldbath-fields, and his candle removed. In the morning he was found dead, hanging by his braces to an iron bar. A few weeks later the guilt of this horri ble wretch was finally and completely proved. iS
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In a closet at the Pear-Tree public-house, some men searching behind a heap of dirty clothes found plugged into a mouse-hole a large ivory-handled French clasp-knife, the handle and blade both smeared with blood. Williams had been seen using the knife about three weeks before the Williamsons' murder. They also found a blue jacket of Williams's, the outside pocket of which was stiff with coagulated blood, as if the murderer had thrust the money into this pocket with his hand still wet. A lady who saw Williams at the policecourt examination, described him toDe Quincey as a middle-sized man, rather thin and muscular, and with reddish hair; his features mean and ghastly pale. It did not seem real blood that circulated in his veins, but a green sap welling from no human heart. He was known for an almost refined person with a smooth, insinuating manner; he is even said to have once asked a girl he knew, if she would be frightened if she saw him ap pear about midnight at her bedside armed with a knife. To which the girl replied, — "Oh, Mr. Williams, if it was anybody else I should be frightened; but as soon as I heard your voice I should be tranquil!" It is useless to discuss the motives of Wil liams's crimes. Mr. De Quincey hints that Marr and Williams had sailed to Calcutta in the same Indiaman, and that on their re turn they had both courted the young woman whom Marr afterwards married. The second murder may have been the result of a wish for money with which to find means for es cape : a thirst for money and an unquench able lust for blood are apparent in both. This good, at least, arose from the horrible trage dies : they showed to the excited and terri fied city the utter incompetence of the old watchmen, and prepared men's minds for the necessity of a larger, younger, and more disciplined body of police.
