In November, Probert’s wife, sister-in-law and brother were all arrested. Mrs Probert’s brother Thomas Noyes had played cards with the men after the murder, and she herself had received what was now identified as Weare’s watch-chain. Noyes and his sister were soon released, but Mrs Probert remained under arrest, while the authorities approached Probert to turn king’s evidence. Hunt had proved an unreliable witness, clearly terrified, happy to agree with anything anyone suggested. The main reason to use Probert, however, was that if he were indicted, Mrs Probert’s evidence of what had passed at the cottage could not be heard – a wife could not testify against her husband.
In the run-up to the trial the newspapers whipped themselves into a frenzy. At the end of the French wars, a 4d. tax had been added to the price of a newspaper, ensuring a hefty cover price – at the time of Thurtell’s trial, the Morning Chronicle, The Times, the Morning Herald and the Observer each cost 7d. Yet their prosperous, middle-class readers were avid for crime stories.On a random day in the month of Weare’s murder, the four pages of The Times consisted of two pages of advertisements, two columns of news, a few letters, some birth and death announcements; and the rest of the paper was entirely given over to police, trial and magistrates’ court reports. The Morning Chronicle similarly gave the majority of its editorial space to crime on a regular basis, continuing a long tradition of prurient upper-middle-class love of crime: the Gentleman’s Magazine had, between 1731 and 1818, reported on 1,172 murders – over one a month for nearly a century.
Pierce Egan, one of the most famous journalists of the day, claimed to have interviewed Thurtell as he awaited trial. Egan had started as a sporting journalist, writing Boxiana, or, Sketches of ancient and modern pugilism in 1812. In 1821 his Life in London, or, The day and night scenes of Jerry Hawthorn, esq., and his elegant friend, Corinthian Tom, illustrated by the Cruikshank brothers, a comic story of two young swells on the razzle, was wildly popular. Imitations and even outright plagiarisms quickly appeared, as well as several stage versions. As a member – albeit a more respectable one – of the fancy, Egan dealt with Thurtell’s story as sympathetically as possible, while still maintaining an appropriately shocked tone.* His piece was very much for slightly raffish men about town, presenting Thurtell as a ‘foolish young [man] from the country’ whom the professional gamblers had ‘picked up as a good flat [an easy dupe]; and the rolls of country flim-seys [banknotes] which he brought with him to town, were soon reduced … The Swell Yokel as he was first termed … was hailed as a rare customer; and numbers were on the look out to have a slice of his blunt [piece of his money]…Mr. Weare was one of this number: (he was what is termed in the sporting world a dead nail [a crook]), a complete sharper [swindler].’
Thurtell in this version is not only naíve, but even cowardly. Egan gives a history of incidents where Thurtell had issued challenges, or pretended to, but was not actually willing to fight. This is all done very delicately, by imputation rather than outright statement. After telling the history of the fire and the arson trial, Egan concludes, ‘It is decidedly the opinion of Thurtell’s most intimate friends, that his conduct for the last two years, had been more like that of a madman than of a rational being.’
This seems kind when compared to the newspapers. Long before the trial began, The Times printed a stream of vitriolic – and completely unsubstantiated – stories. On 6 November it told its readers that ‘Thurtell is reported to have been with Wellington’s troops at the siege of San Sebastián, where he lurked behind the lines to murder and rob a fallen officer,’ and he was reported as saying of this victim, ‘I thought by the look of him that he was a nob, and must have some blunt about him; so I just tucked my sword in his ribs, and settled him; and I found a hundred and forty doubloons in his pocket!’ This was one of the few stories that was denied in print, as commentators noted that 140 doubloons would be so heavy the possessor would not have been able to walk. Nothing daunted, that same day there was another story about Thurtell, saying that in his lodgings the police had found an air-gun in the shape of a walking stick, cunningly painted to look like wood, although nothing more was ever heard of it. Four days later, a story appeared about one James Wood, Thurtell’s supposed rival for the supposed charms of Miss Caroline Noyes, Mrs Probert’s sister. Wood was said to have been decoyed into an ambush in a tenement, where he was attacked by Thurtell with a pair of dumbbells. The Times added, as proof of this remarkable story, that a search of the building had produced a set of dumbbells. And on the same day the paper reported that Probert had testified that Thurtell had ‘picked out 17 persons of substance that he intended to rob and murder, and that [Weare] was one of them’. The journalist had no doubt that the remaining sixteen had had lucky ‘escapes from the late horrid conspiracy’, and added a story of a man named Sparks, who declined to go into business with Thurtell, thus escaping a ‘horrible doom, which otherwise, in all probability, awaited him’. A week later the daily update, otherwise relatively low-key, referred to Thurtell, Hunt and Probert – still awaiting trial – as ‘the guilty culprits’.
The Morning Chronicle, too, referred to the three as ‘the murderers’. The Hampshire Telegraph claimed that Probert had ‘debauched’ both the unnamed wife and daughter of his unnamed landlord, and ‘Indeed … no woman, whom he wished to possess, could escape him; for if he could not get her by fair means, he would not scruple to assail her by foul.’ The Derby Mercury reported that an unnamed ‘person who was known to be acquainted with the Thurtells. [had] suddenly disappeared, and has not since been heard of’. The Caledonian Mercury liked the death-by-dumbbells story, and threw in an additional report of ‘an offensive smell’ emanating from Probert’s cottage, similar to ‘that which proceeds from a corpse in a state of decomposition’. The Examiner reported that yet another unnamed man had been murdered, this time ‘cast into the Thames from Battersea Bridge’. For good measure it added that Thurtell and his gang had also attempted to murder Mr Barber Beaumont, the director of the County Fire Office, and had only been foiled because, contrary to habit, on the night of the attempt Mr Beaumont had failed to take his usual seat by a window. Many of the papers featured this story, apparently never pausing to ask themselves why such a dastardly gang had not summoned the energy to make a second attempt on Mr Beaumont’s life. The Bristol Mercury reported yet another ‘mysterious disappearance’, this time an unnamed pregnant woman, said to be a clergyman’s daughter, who had been ravished by one of the gang. ‘The worst is surmised,’ it added hopefully.
The hysteria infected everyone. A thirteen-year-old schoolboy wrote to his mother that Thurtell had ‘positively’ plotted to murder ‘a long catalogue of rich persons’: his schoolmaster had assured him that ‘the bodies of 6 persons have been found in the Thames, 2 of them are women. Two clergymen are engaged in this scandalous affair. Two clergymen of the Established Church!’
In this febrile atmosphere, a fortnight before the trial was scheduled to begin, plays were advertised at two London theatres, the Surrey and the Coburg.* Since 1737, a Licensing Act had severely restricted the number of theatres that were permitted to stage spoken drama or comedy; these were referred to as ‘legitimate’ theatres. The Act had not, however, included musical theatre, which could legally be performed in theatres licensed by local magistrates and known in London as ‘the minors’.*
Throughout the century working-class theatre audiences were an increasingly powerful economic force, particularly in industrial areas. In the East End of London the rapid development of the docks along the Thames created a vast, and almost entirely working-class, community: from 125,000 people in 1780, the population