Ratcliff Highway Murders - First Murders

First Murders

The first attack took place on 7 December 1811, at 29 Ratcliffe Highway, in the home behind a linen draper's shop, on the south side of the street, between Cannon Street Road and Artichoke Hill. Ratcliffe Highway is the old name for the road now called The Highway, in the East End of London. One of the three central roads leaving London, it was a dangerous and run-down area, full of seedy businesses, dark alleys, and dilapidated tenements.

The victims of the first murders were the Marr family. Timothy Marr, whose age was reported as either 24 or 27, had previously served several years with the East India Company aboard the Dover Castle and now kept a linen draper and hosier's shop. He had a young wife, Celia; a 14-week old son, Timothy (who had been born on 29 August); an apprentice, James Gowan; and a servant girl, Margaret Jewell. All had been living there since April of that year.

The Marrs were in their shop and residence preparing for the next day's business when an intruder entered their home. It was just before midnight on a Saturday, the busiest day of the week for area shopkeepers. Margaret Jewell had just been sent to purchase oysters, a late night meal for Marr and a treat for his young wife, who was still slowly recovering from the birth of their only child. She was then to go to a nearby bakery at John Hill and pay an outstanding bill. Due to this errand, she escaped being among the victims. A lone report stated that as Jewell opened the shop door, she saw the figure of a man framed in the light. As the entire area was usually busy after normal business hours, Jewell took no notice and went on her errand. Finding the oyster shop closed, she walked back past the Marr home, where she saw her employer through the window, still at work, and went to pay the baker's bill. Finding the baker closed, Jewell decided to go to another shop in a final attempt to find some oysters but after finding that shop shuttered as well, she eventually returned, empty handed.

Arriving at the shop at twenty minutes past midnight, she found the house dark and the door locked. Thinking that the Marrs had forgotten that she was still out, she knocked but received no answer. She first heard no movement inside, then a noise that sounded like footsteps on the stairs. Assuming that someone was coming to let her in, she heard the baby upstairs cry out. However, no one came to the door.

Hearing footsteps on the pavement behind her, she became frightened and rang the doorbell and slammed the knocker against the wood "with unintermitting violence," drawing attention to herself. George Olney, the night watchman who called out the time every half hour, came to find out who she was. Olney, who knew Marr well, knocked at the door and called out, while noticing that the shutters, while in place, were not latched.

The noise awakened John Murray, a pawnbroker and Marr's next-door neighbor. Alarmed, he jumped over the wall that divided his yard from the Marrs' and saw a light on and the back door standing open. He entered and went up the back steps, calling to the Marrs that they had neglected to fasten their shutters. He heard nothing. Returning downstairs and entering the shop, Murray beheld "the carnage of the night stretched out on the floor." The "narrow premises ... so floated with gore that it was hardly possible to escape the pollution of blood in picking out a path to the front door."

First he saw James Gowan, the apprentice, lying on the floor approximately five feet from the stairs, just inside the shop door. The bones of the boy's face were smashed, with blood dripping onto the floor and his brains pulverized and cast about the walls and across the counters.

Murray went to the front door to let Olney in, but stumbled across yet another corpse, that of Celia Marr. She lay face-down, her head battered as well, her wounds still bleeding. Murray let in Olney; together they searched for Marr and found him behind the shop counter, battered to death. Murray and Olney rushed to the living quarters and found the infant dead in its crib, which was covered with blood. One side of his face was crushed and his throat was slit, with the head nearly severed from the body.

By this time, more people from the neighborhood had gathered outside; the River Thames Police were summoned. The first officer on the scene was Charles Horton. As nothing appeared to have been taken, money was in the till, and an additional amount of £152 was found in a drawers in bedroom, there seemed to be no motive. A thief might have been scared off before he finished his objective; the other possibility was some sort of revenge, which would indicate that the attacker knew Timothy Marr. Looking for clues, Horton first believed that the weapon used had been a ripping chisel. One was found in the shop, but it was clean. In the master bedroom he found a heavy long-handled iron shipwright's hammer, or maul, covered with blood, leaning against a chair. He assumed this was the weapon, abandoned when Jewell's knocking had scared the killer away. Human hairs were stuck in the drying blood on the flat, heavy end; the tapered end, used for driving nails into wood, was chipped.

Two sets of footprints were then discovered at the back of the shop; these tracks appeared to belong to the killers as they contained both blood and sawdust from carpentry work done inside earlier in the day. A group of citizens followed the tracks to Pennington Street, which ran behind the house, and found a possible witness who reported that he had seen a group of some ten men running away from an empty house in the direction of New Gravel Lane (now Glamis Road) shortly after the first alarm had been raised. Speculation now arose that the crime was the work of a gang.

Horton then brought the bloodstained maul back to his station, to find that three sailors, who had been seen in the area that night, were in custody. One appeared to have spots of blood on his clothing, but all had convincing alibis and were released. Based on witness reports, other men in the area were apprehended only to have those cases fell apart as well. A reward of 50 guineas was offered for the apprehension of the perpetrator. and, to notify area residents, a handbill was drafted and stuck on church doors.

The bodies, whose wounds were not sutured and eyes were not closed, were laid out on beds in the home. The penny press had ensured the sensational news had spread throughout London and the public came in droves to go through the house and view the corpses. This was not an unusual practice for the time.