A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

members of the sporting fraternity, John Thurtell and Joseph Hunt. Thurtell, a man of strong
character and imposing physical presence, was familiar on the race courses and at barefist boxing
matches. Weare had won from him a considerable sum of money at billiards, and Thurtell was
convinced he had cheated. So Weare was invited for the weekend to a cottage belonging to a man
called William Probert, near Elstree. The four set out from London in two horse-drawn gigs - twowheeled
carriages - and as they arrived, Thurtell shot Weare in the face; the bullet bounced off his
cheekbone and Weare begged for his life. Thurtell threw him down, cut his throat with a penknife,
then jammed the pistol against his head so hard that it went into the brain, filling the barrel with
blood and tissue. The body was then dumped in a pond, and the three men went into the cottage and
had supper with Probert’s wife and sister-in-law. The next morning, Thurtell and Hunt went to look
for the pistol and penknife, without success; but as they left, two labourers found the weapons on
top of a hedge. They reported the find to the Bow Street Runners, who soon discovered Weare’s
body in another pond, into which it had been moved. Probert quickly turned king’s evidence, and
so escaped. Thurtell was hanged, while Hunt was transported for life.
This commonplace murder aroused such widespread interest that it was quickly turned into a play
that was performed before crowded houses. A popular ballad of the time - which was sold at the
execution - had the well-known stanza:
They cut his throat from ear to ear
His head they battered in.
His name was Mr William Weare
He lived in Lyons Inn.
But why did it arouse such horrified fascination? It may have been partly because Thurtell was such
a well-known character in the sporting world. But it was more probably the violence of the murder
- the cut throat, the pistol filled with brains. Again, the crime touched a sense of nightmare: the
ruthless criminal who ignores the laws of God and man. Yet the sensation it caused is also evidence
that society was changing fast. In Defoe’s time, the murder of Weare would have been merely one
more case to add to the Newgate Calendar. But things were different in 1823. Luke Owen Pike
says:
England in the beginning of the year 1820, when George III
died, was already the wealthiest and, in many respects, the
most civilised country in Europe... Stage coaches now
traversed all the main roads, which were at length
beginning to deserve comparison with the great engineering
works given to us by the Romans... Canals intersected the
country... All these changes were, in the main, opposed to
crime.
History of Crime in England, Vol. 2, p. 407.
In fact, crime was rising steadily - Major Arthur Griffiths estimates in Mysteries of the Police and
Crime (Vol. 1, p. 84) that there was a ratio of one criminal to every 822 members of the population
in 1828. But most of these crimes were the result of misery and poverty, of half-starved factory
workers and out-of-work farm labourers. What shocked people about the crimes of John Williams
and John Thurtell was that they were not the outcome of desperation. They were deliberately
committed for personal gain, for self-satisfaction; in other words, they were acts of ego-assertion,