““Where’s Eliza?” Everybody, a few weeks ago, was asked this question. On
every dead wall in the metropolis these words were shrieked to the passer-by in
huge letters of black or blue. At all turns and corners the demand was again
made of you. The cry for the lost Eliza seemed shouted everywhere by voices
full of alarm. It was taken up and carried on by the ends of unfinished houses,
by wooden walls, and projecting beams of skeleton buildings. All London, and no
doubt all England, was roused by the hue and cry after this mysterious Eliza.
“Where’s Eliza, where’s Eliza?” Voices in the air seemed screaming it; viewless
creatures seemed posting over tower and steeple in the hot pursuit of the lost
one. Everybody’s Eliza seemed missing; every family disconsolate; every lover
broken-hearted. The cry was everywhere, and nowhere any answer but “Ask
Strange, of Paternoster-row.” It was a strange answer. What was everybody’s
Eliza doing in Paternoster-row? Our artist has at length answered the
ubiquitous query. The missing creature was in the Gin-Palace.” — William
Howitt, Howitt’s Journal, p. 18, 1
Jan 1848.
The melancholy question, appearing on billposters all over London, was
never answered, but the trope did enter the street culture as a metaphor for
all the lost Elizas’ who made the journey from country to city only to end up
in the gin-house or the brothel.
“Strange” was a reference to William Strange, a penny publisher and
bookseller situated in Paternoster-row. Strange was the publisher of Figaro in
London (1831-1839) and Moll Cutpurse, the Lady Pickpocket (1846). Perhaps the
advertisement was touting a proposed romance in penny numbers. In 1853 the
working-class writer Charles Manby Smith contributed an article titled “The
Billsticker,” to Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal, in which he recalled the popular
question; “Where’s Eliza?,” and proposed another solution:
“Some years ago, too, we beheld him struggling on a very windy day in the
flapping folds of a monster-sheet, upon which were printed the two words, in letters
a foot long each, ‘WHERE”S ELIZA?’ and nothing more. Who Eliza was he could not
inform us, and he shook his shaggy head in a way sufficiently ominous when we
asked him for the information. It was evidently a poser, as well for him as for
us; and it is a remarkable event in the annals of billsticking, that that
pertinent inquiry and public interrogation has remained unanswered to the
present moment. We should like to know who Eliza was, in order that we might
become more interested in her whereabouts; but after indulging in painful
speculations on the subject, we can come to no other conclusion than one which
may be nothing more than conjecture after all. It may be – we cannot vouch for
it – but it may be that Eliza is the Christian name of some modern Thisbe
unhappily lost in the wilderness of this great Babylon, for whose restoration
her love-lorn and bewildered Pyramus distractedly appeals to London Wall
through the medium of the billsticker.”
“Popular murders,” as they were called by the Catnatchian authors of the
Seven Dials broadsheets, frequently inspired popular phrases among the public
such as “Who murdered Begbie?” and “Who murdered Eliza Grimwood?”
On 10 May 1837 Eliza Davis, a young Welsh barmaid at the King’s Arm Wine
Vaults, Regent’s Park, was discovered lying on the floor with her throat cut,
by a thirsty mechanic named Hall, in search of a beer. Davis had opened the
public-house at six in the morning and no sounds of struggle were heard by the
inmates. Nothing was stolen and the crime was never solved, although one
suspect was described as a “foreigner residing in Bath.”
The curious thing about the murder of Eliza Davis was that almost a year to
the day, 26 May 1838, another Eliza, Eliza Grimwood, was murdered in her room
in similar circumstances, found with her throat cut, and the murderer never
brought to justice. No one ever made any connection between the two murders;
poor Davis was forgotten, a one day wonder, while the Grimwood murder caused a
sensation remembered to this day. One modern writer recently proposed that
Charles Dickens based villainous Bill Sykes murder of Nancy, in Oliver Twist,
on the Grimwood case.
Joseph Irving wrote of Eliza Grimwood in The Annals of Our Time:
“26 May 1838. – Eliza Grimwood found murdered in her bedroom,
Wellington-terrace, Waterloo-road. She was wounded in several places, but the immediate
cause of death was a wound in the neck, extending nearly from ear to ear, and
severing the windpipe. Her left thumb was cut, as if she had struggled with the
murderer. The unfortunate woman lived with a person named Hubbard, a
bricklayer, separated from his wife, and had been in the habit of taking
persons home with her from the theatres. On the Friday night she was said to
have met with a person in the Strand, who had the look of a foreigner, and
dressed like a gentleman. At the inquest, the person able to speak to Eliza
Grimwood’s latest movements was a companion named Catherine Edwin, who was with
her in the Strand when the foreigner came up. He was an Italian, but could
speak English fluently, and had been acquainted with the deceased for months.
He frequented the neighbourhood of the “Spread Eagle,” Regent-circus, and wore
a ring given him by deceased, bearing the words “Semper fidelis.” He also
carried a clasp-knife, with which the wounds might have been inflicted. With
this person she entered a cab, and drove home about midnight. He was not
afterwards seen, and how or when he left the house was never ascertained.
Hubbard slept in an apartment, alone, and discovered the body (he said) when
going out to work in the morning. He awoke a commercial traveler who slept in
the house with another woman, and then alarmed the police. The deceased was
about twenty-five years of age, of sober habits, and had saved a little money.
At the inquest a verdict of wilful murder against some person or persons unknown.
On the 11th June Hubbard was committed to Horsemonger-lane prison, in
consequence of an anonymous letter purporting to come from the person who
accompanied Eliza Grimwood home, but no evidence being forthcoming before the
magistrate he was discharged, and afterwards went to America. On the 13 June
the effects of the murdered woman were sold on the premises, and realized high
prices.”
Irving’s encapsulation of events is mostly true, except that Catherine
Edwin’s testimony was subsequently discovered to have been completely false. It
was the opinion of the coroner that a wound on the back of the neck “was
perpetrated after that in the throat for the purpose of severing the head from
the body.”
The murder of Eliza Grimwood inspired various catchpenny broadsheets from
Jemmy Catnatch and other Seven Dials publishers of dying confessions and
broadsheets. One was titled Murder of the Beautiful Eliza Grimwood in the
Waterloo-road. The Weekly Chronicle for 3 Jun 1838 contained full details of
the murder as well as a woodcut illustration representing the murdered woman’s
apartment with the body of Eliza Grimwood occupying the foreground.
The most curious production was an anonymous penny blood printed and
published in 40 weekly numbers by B. D. Cousins titled Eliza Grimwood, a
Domestic Legend of the Waterloo Road with biographical notices of her fair
companions; also sketches of Dukes, Lords, Hon. M. P.’s, Magistrates, and her
Murderer. The title-page carries no date. Arthur Edward Waite and Montague
Summers dated it 1844, while Louis James guessed it as being contemporary with
the crime in 1839. The only advertisement I could find for the title was from
1844, under a variant title, Eliza Grimwood, or; the Waterloo Road Murder.
The title-page featured two quotes:
“Out Damned Spot!” – Lady
Macbeth.
“Who Murdered Eliza Grimwood?” – Popular Question.
The first chapter described the scene of the crime, the Waterloo Road, on
the Surrey side of the Thames, which took its name from the Waterloo Bridge.
The anonymous author was very familiar with the city of London and described
the Waterloo Road as “chiefly inhabited by persons in the line of life which
the unfortunate subject of this history followed.” The adjoining streets were
tenanted mainly by prostitutes, pimps, and procurers. “The bridge having a
toll, and being wide and supplied with recesses on each side, is a place where
people whose love of life is worn out, can end the heartbreak. It is the place
of all others, in short, where Londoners or those who wander to, and become
weary of life in the great Babylon, seek relief by plunging in the Thames. It
leads to the Strand and the other streets in which are situated the gay haunts
of fashion and dissipation; hence it is in every way the best suited of all the
bridges for that purpose which many seek it for.”
The chapter ended with the disingenuous promise “that though threading our
way among scenes and persons of prodigal life, it will be our constant study to
omit everything that would in any way offend virtuous delicacy. – We shall
exhibit some of the fairest traits in human nature, and some of the most
hideous. – And we have little doubt that by the time the “Legend of the
Waterloo Road” is finished; we shall throw some light on the question of “WHO
MURDERED ELIZA GRIMWOOD?”
Benjamin Davey Cousins penny blood Eliza Grimwood has been discussed at
length in two excellent critical works; Louis James’ Fiction for the Working
Man 1830-1850 (1973) and Iain McCalman’s Radical Underworld: prophets,
revolutionaries, and pornographers (1988). James noted the anonymous author’s
familiarity with the Grub Street publishing underworld of penny-a-liners and
radical publishers and the use of real-life people as characters in the tale.
One of these characters is John Benjamin Brookes, who published pornographic
titles like The Lustful Turk from the Opera Colonnade and 9 Bond Street between
1820 and 1832. Another was J. Hucklebridge, another pornographic publisher.
James noted of the Eliza Grimwood author that “a description he gives of
the ‘Lushington’ club, held at the Harp tavern, Little Russell Street, Covent
Garden, where members seated themselves according to their financial condition,
and those in ‘suicide’ ward received charity, exactly tallies with a
description of it in The Town. This and the gratuitous details he gives of
various people suggest he was drawing a highly libelous picture of the London
he knew.”
McCalman placed Eliza Grimwood in the tradition of books by courtesans like
Mary Anne Clarke and Harriet Wilson which were published with explicit
blackmailing intent. The abrupt ending of Eliza Grimwood “hinting darkly at
forthcoming revelations” – “sounds as if the publisher was fishing for
suppression bribes.” This idea caught my imagination because one of the leading
radical blackmailers of the period was the publisher of the 7d. scandal sheet
The Satirist, Barnard Gregory, who was rumored to have also been editor of B.
D. Cousin’s Penny Satirist, and thus an ideal suspect for the identity of the
author of Eliza Grimwood, a Domestic Legend of the Waterloo Road. There is no
evidence for this assumption however; I recently discovered that the editor of
the Penny Satirist in 1838 was not Barnard Gregory at all, but
"Shepherd" Smith, the celebrated Universalist.
Still, on Jun 23 1843 Gregory was convicted of libeling Charles, the Duke
of Brunswick, insinuating in print that the Duke was the murderer of Eliza
Grimwood (McCalman, in an otherwise excellent chapter makes the mistake of
identifying the target of the libel as the Duke of Cumberland.) Moreover,
Gregory continuously repeated the accusations.
On May 6, 1846 Gregory was sentenced to 8 months imprisonment in the
Queen’s Bench for 4 libels (again involving Eliza Grimwood) on his nemesis, the
Duke of Brunswick. The Satirist came to an end on 15 December 1849, and on June
13, 1850 an unrepentant Gregory was again gaoled for 6 Months for libels
against Brunswick. Perhaps, after all, Gregory was the hidden author of the
penny blood Eliza Grimwood. If the real date of publication was 1844, rather
than 1839, this is a real possibility. It’s also possible that Gregory was
editing Cousins’ Penny Satirist at this late date.*
The Duke of Brunswick is not identified as the murderer in the penny blood,
however, the murderer is a man named Percy Davidson, a myrmidon of the
monstrous Lord Rakemore, who seduces the innocent Eliza, ruins her sisters,
then sets them up in a London brothel on the Waterloo Road. Rakemore also has
the assistance of several penny-a-liners who concoct anonymous letters to the
authorities to help cover up the identities of the real perpetrators. The book
ends at the fortieth number, page 318, with the following:
“On the resumption of the inquest a number of witnesses were examined
relative to the Italian; and other rumours, most of which rumours were set
afloat, and kept swimming by the reporters for their own benefit. The jury
returned a verdict of “willful murder against some persons unknown,” and the
confederated perpetrators of the crime commenced attacks in the columns of
their newspapers on the police for not having detected the murderer. These
complaints are reiterated to this day.”
So did the publishing of Eliza Grimwood have an ulterior motive: fishing
for bribes from the powerful Duke of Brunswick, under threat of unmasking him
as a craven murderer? It is true that various mysterious letters were written
to the authorities but the letters reproduced in Eliza Grimwood, when compared
to the letters reproduced in newspaper accounts prove to be a fiction. Indeed
the whole story is a romantic fiction, probably the use of some real people as
characters was meant as a joke, or to add to the impression that the concocted
fiction was a true story. The truth will probably never been known, doubts linger
still.
I have speculated that Barnard Gregory was the author of Eliza Grimwood,
but then why would he beat around the bush disguising Brunswick as Lord
Rakemore? Gregory was never one to mince words, fines and imprisonment meant
nothing compared to his blazing hatred of the Duke of Brunswick and the
“Oligarchy.” In 1832 Gregory was linked to another anonymous publication titled
The Authentic Records of the Court of England for the last seventy years. The
publisher, Josiah Phillips, sued for libel by the Duke of Cumberland, sold
copies “from the shop or office for sale of The Satirist newspaper.”
According to The Authentic Records the Duke of Cumberland, in 1814, was
surprised in an act of sodomy on his servant, Neale, by another servant,
Sellis, which led the Duke, fearful of exposure, to murder Sellis by cutting
his throat. In the Satirist (8 Jan 1832) Gregory pulled no punches. “Well now,
as to Sellis, it is not denied that the man had a pretty wife, or that the Duke
might have had some liking for her, or that the man was a little jealous, or
that he might have observed the Duke and her in an unequivocal situation, or
that some other struggle ensued between the former and Sellis, or that they
very foolishly wounded one another; but then, as to the Duke’s having anything
to do with Sellis’s throat that is quite ridiculous; for it was cut quite
secundem artem – exactly in the regular way – just, in short, as men always
cut their throats when they do it themselves; namely, through neckcloth and
all!”
In an article in The Satirist on 14 Jan 1840 Gregory (or one of his
writers) commented on the attempted assassination of Queen Victoria by Oxford,
laying the blame on Ernest, brother of Queen Victoria’s husband Albert. “Now it
is curious that among the few papers found upon him or at his lodgings, was one
in which a list of names was written, containing the nicknames of the
conspirators, and that one of these was nicknamed Ernest – We do not mean to
insinuate that Ernest bribed this fellow to fire off those pistols. On the
contrary we are quite sure that if the attempt had succeeded, and that King
Ernest had, by means of it, been placed upon the throne, that nothing would
have come to light to implicate him, and that his first act would have been to
hang Oxford – still, there is something very strange about it, and an ignorant
pot-boy may not have known what the policy of Kings is under such
circumstances.”
The writer went on to say that “no one would have been benefited but King
Ernest and the Tories,” and ended with a question echoing the question “WHO
MURDERED ELIZA GRIMWOOD?” from B. D. Cousins penny blood – “we inquire with
some interest, and we should very well like to know – WHO WERE THE
INSTIGATORS?” Barnard Gregory certainly had no fear of reprisals, or of calling
a spade a spade, or of naming names, which makes it unlikely (but not
improbable) that Eliza Grimwood, a Domestic Legend of the Waterloo Road, was
the work of his hands.
It’s hard to tell if Barnard Gregory was the originator of the rumour that
Brunswick was the murderer of Grimwood or not. The rumour may already have been
floating in the air based on descriptions of the perpetrator as a gentleman, even
worse, a foreign gentleman.
Charles, Duke of Brunswick was born in 1804, son of the Hanoverian Duke
Frederick William, who died at Waterloo. His father had a sister, Princess
Caroline, who married George IV and later made an unsuccessful claim on the
throne of England.
Young Charles had a brother, Duke William born in 1806. On
the death of their father the two boys were entrusted to the care of George IV.
Charles was educated in Vienna and placed on the throne of his Duchy in 1826.
His subjects found his conduct trying, he was “a strange compound of
misanthrope and dandy – As a dandy he was accustomed to lace himself up in
stays, and to use rouge, pearl-powder, and other feminine cosmetics. He turned
night into day in his way of life, and spent the afternoon in the curious and
unkingly way of making up his face and figure for nightly show at balls and
theatre.”
In 1830 the Brunswickers could endure him no longer and rose up in
revolt, burning his palace to the ground. Charles made no effort to flee, and
might have been murdered had not a popular actress, “one of his pets,” thrown a
shawl over his head and spirited him out of the city, through crowded streets
of disgruntled subjects, in her carriage. Charles then took refuge, first in
France, and finally London, where he lived in a “large house encompassed by a
high Brick wall, nearly fronting Marleybone Church, in what is now called the
Euston-road.” Duke William succeeded Charles to the Duchy.
William Augustus Fraser gave the following description of Duke Charles in
his Reminiscences:
“Of all the grotesque beings that I have seen off, and I think I may say,
on the stage, Charles Duke of Brunswick was the most remarkable. I have never
seen any human being who had any resemblance to him: his face painted a deep
red; his eyelashes and eyebrows dyed: a massive head of hair of an intense blue-black:
and a thick beard of the same tint, he hardly looked like a human being. I well
remember as a child looking at him with a mixed feeling of amusement and awe. I
believe that he liked to inspire this sentiment: certainly his ‘make up’ was
elaborate: and must have had some purpose.
He drove a C-spring cabriolet: his horse was a good one; with a redundancy
of plate on the harness. I do not remember ever to have seen him walking nor
riding: he attended Drury Lane Theatre every night; and occupied the proscenium
box on a level with the stage on the prompter’s side. He was accompanied
invariably by a lady, whose revolting ugliness did not redeem his character
from well-founded suspicion. Finding, I assume, that the nightly performance of
the Play or Pantomime, and probably the company of the same lady, monotonous,
his Highness armed himself with ‘The Times’ newspaper: which he perused during
the greater part of the evening.
As regards his diamonds, they were displayed in profusion on his evening
dress; his shirt-studs, his wrist-studs, and, bigger than all, his waistcoat
buttons were all of a size incredible to anyone who had not actually seen them:
they were the Crown jewels, which at his expulsion from his dominions he put
into his pockets.”
It was Charles’s profuse facial adornment (most native Britons frowned at
full beards) and nightly presence in the theatres of the Strand that led to the
rumours that he was the “foreign gentleman” who picked up Eliza Grimwood,
accompanied her home, and then slaughtered her in a jealous rage with a Spanish
switch-blade, in May 1838. Just for the record I don’t believe that Brunswick
had anything to do with the murder of Eliza Grimwood. My main reasoning is the
fact that Brunswick had numerous enemies and never would have been stupid
enough to prowl the streets alone in the early morning hours looking for women,
unaccompanied by his bodyguards, one of whom was the famous pugilist Jem Mace.
Eliza Grimwood’s cousin Hubbard was arrested after being fingered in a
letter signed by a supposed eye-witness signing himself as “John Waters
Cavendish,” and transported to Horsemonger-lane gaol. While awaiting
transportation he was assailed by the mob with cries of “there goes the
murderer!” before being rescued by police and taken away by coach. He was later
exonerated and set free; a few blood-stain drops were found on his clothing but
the coroner believed that the perpetrator would have been covered in blood, and
there were no signs of Hubbard having changed his clothing or washed up. A
search had been made for his missing razor, which was found, but again the
coroner stated that the wounds were made with a Spanish switchblade with a
blade about one half inch thick.
After Hubbard’s exoneration a “curious incident” occurred while police were
making arrangements to hustle Hubbard out the back entrance to avoid an ugly
crowd. Hubbard “retired to the further extremity of the office, and while
sitting there he was addressed by the Duke of Brunswick, who was present during
the proceedings that had previously taken place. The Duke, in imperfect
English, expressed his regret, if Hubbard were innocent, that he should have
been subjected to imprisonment and the other privations which he must
necessarily have suffered since the discovery of the murder. The Duke then,
possibly with a view of facilitating Hubbard’s exit from the office without
molestation from the crowd, said, “If I were you Hubbard, I would cut off those
whiskers and that would disguise you sufficiently to enable you to get away
without risk.” Hubbard has a well cultivated set of whiskers. He had no
conception at the time as to the rank of the individual by whom he was
addressed, and his reply was, seeing that the Duke wore large mustachios, “If I
were you I would cut off those black patches you wear upon your upper lip, and
I think it would improve your beauty.” The Duke said “But it is my fashion.”
Hubbard – “Well, if it is your fashion to wear so much hair over your mouth,
it is my fashion to wear the pair of whiskers you now see, and I will not cut
them off, for I have done nothing of a criminal nature that should make me
attempt to disguise myself.”
POSTSCRIPT
The identity of the “fiend in human form” who took the life of Eliza
Grimwood will forever be unknown. One possible answer to the enduring mystery
appeared in an obscure Victorian working-man’s newspaper called The Operative
on 7 April 1839:
THE MURDER OF ELIZA GRIMWOOD.
On Friday a letter of which the following is a copy, was received at
Union-hall police-office, on the subject of the above mentioned female, all the
circumstances attending which excited such an extraordinary degree of interest
at the time of its perpetration. The letter ran thus:-
“Thursday evening, March 28, 1839.
“Gentlemen – before you receive this hurried note the body of the murderer
of Eliza Grimwood will be in the Thames. Yes, I, and I alone, am the guilty
villain who perpetrated the hellish deed, and in a few hours will receive my
deserts. Stricken in conscience, and shunning all mankind, I add to my
character the name of a suicide, rather than meet with an ignominious death on
the scaffold. With my death will all particulars be in eternal oblivion, as no
human eye saw poignard pierce her. The assassin’s name, to shield a worthy
family from irreproachable disgrace, will be forever a secret. Do not imagine
the writer to be some brain struck man. I am wretched. I can go on no further.”
The above letter, which was addressed to the magistrates, was written in
good handwriting, and on examining the postmark it was found to have been
forwarded from the two-penny post office, City-road.
Soon after the receipt of the above epistle, information was given at the
office that the body of a respectably dressed man was found in the river,
within a short distance of Broken-wharf, Upper Thames Street, but that no
memorandum or document was found in his possession by which to ascertain his
name or the residence of his friends. On Saturday Inspector Field, of the L
division, attended at Union-Hall on other business, when Mr. Edwin, the chief
clerk, handed him the above letter. Inspector Field, having been made
acquainted with the finding of the body of a gentleman in the Thames on Friday
morning, proceeded to the station-house in Watling-street, and from subsequent
inquiries ascertained that the name of the deceased was George Green, that he
had formerly been captain of a ship, but had latterly led a very dissipated
life. The Inspector had no opportunity, however, of seeing a specimen of the
deceased’s handwriting, to compare with the letter. At all events, it is rather
a remarkable coincidence that the body of a well-dressed man was found in the
river on the morning the letter was received by the magistrates.
On Saturday night an inquest was held on the body, when it appeared that
about seven o’clock on Friday morning the deceased was found lying on his face
in the mud, about four feet from shore, between some barges, and that on
searching him a silver hunting watch, marked Marshall, 213, Oxford-street, and
nine shillings and a halfpenny were found upon his person. He had also a
half-pint bottle of sherry in one of his pockets. On stripping him, his shirt
was discovered to be quite dry. It had been subsequently ascertained that the
deceased had been captain’s steward on board of the Victory, east India trader,
but that for the last three years, being in bad health from a liver complaint,
he had been without an engagement, and had been living on what money he had
saved; that he had, nevertheless, led a dissipated life, and had had his
head-quarters at 151, High-street, Wapping.
On examining his lodgings, a large quantity of Indian copper money, as well
as a singularly extensive wardrobe of linen and general clothing were found.
There were not, however, any papers which could lead to further discoveries.
The deceased had quitted his lodgings on Thursday morning and had not since
been home. He frequently drank to excess; but it was stated by the waiter of
the Bengal Arms, Birchin-lane, where he had been in the habit of going for the
last twelve months, that he left that house quite sober Thursday. The inquiry
was adjourned to Wednesday.
*Update: Since I first posted this Marie Léger-St-Jean has discovered that
the author of Eliza Grimwood was Scottish-Canadian Alexander Somerville
(1811-1885) author of Autobiography of a Working Man. Somerville's story can be
read in a 1982 article HERE.
***See also Remarkable Lives - Splendidly Illustrated HERE.
***My thanks to Louis James and Mike Dash
