Back in July 2004, when I was a total blog neophyte, with my second-ever post I asked about a pamphlet that I'd stumbled across in the British Library:
The Confessions, Prayers, discourses and last dying sayings of Mr Edward Harrison, who was try'd and convicted and deservedly sentenced the Sixth and Ninth of this Instand April 1692, for the late unheard of Murder of Dr Clench, and accordingly Executed in Holbourn, on Friday the Fifteenth following ... this Day about the Hour of Eleven, carried from Newgate to Holbourn, against Furnivals-Inn, where a Gibbet was Erected."
I wrote then: "The execution site is about 50m from where I live, so I couldn't help being interested, although the pamphlet reads like it was written entirely by the Ordinary of Newgate, being full of pious injunctions to friends and other young males not to follow in his footsteps. Frustrating it contains no information about him and his crimes. Does it ring any bells out there?"
This was typical of my early posts - my blog was initially going to be about snippets of historical research only - and now look at the monster ....
But anyway, would you believe it - on the Head Heeb, Jonathan has just posted the whole story, and it was indeed no ordinary London murder. The victim was a distinguished member of the Royal Society, and he was lured out one night with a tale of a patient urgently needing his services ...
As the coach proceeded through the city streets, the passengers twice ordered coachman John Sikes to stop and run errands, ostensibly for things that would help in the patient's cure. When the coachman returned from the second errand, he found the mysterious gentlemen gone and Dr. Clenche motionless in his seat. In an attempt to revive him, Sikes "pull'd him, and cried, Master, Master, for I thought he had been in Drink," but it soon became clear that the doctor was dead. ...
His murderers had placed the coal against his windpipe and then fiendishly garrotted him with the handkerchief. The killers were, of course, no longer around to be questioned; both men had fled into the night, leaving passers-by with but a fleeting glimpse of their faces.
But, just like in bad novels, that handkerchief was to prove the murderer's undoing .... (Follow the link above to find out how.)
For such developments, I invented the term blogography (no, I didn't spend hours dreaming it up), after an earlier similar cross-fertilising research project, about Mary Lady Broughton, widow and Keeper of the Gatehouse Prison. I have had accepted for publication my first-ever academic article about this phenomenon. The (online) journal was due out in the middle of last year, so I'm hoping it will be published soon ...
Article comments
1 - Deano
Great stuff! I fear however, if I delve too much into the Old Bailey records, I might never emerge...
I'm currently doing some research on the Elizabethan era (of which there is some good online depths from which to cull, not having access to the British Library)- anything from the blogography that you can recommend?
2 - alpha
I need time to deal with your links and story, but, whew, it is transporting (that is a pun, something so well-regarded by the British).
It is a fascinating story and new look at the web and all the wonderful niches and nooks and crannies to be found and wandered through. Thanks.