Auntie Weasel's Litterbox

All of us have done or said something in a moment of anger that we later regret. We can't help but wonder, "what if I'd had a gun in my hand at that moment?" Awareness of our own imperfection gives most of us a little sneaking sympathy for anyone who finds herself standing over a dead body trying to think up a really good story.

In truth, the object of our sympathies is hardly ever worthy of them. One doesn't mysteriously find onesself with a loaded gun in one's hand in a heated moment. One must load bullets into one's recently purchased snubnose .38 and put it into one's purse before deciding it might be interesting to meet one's old boyfriend's new girlfriend. Oopsie! does not adequately cover this.

Murderers, as a class, are assholes. Not counting the ones that are simply balls-out crazy. The typical murderer, on closer examination, turns out to be a person so selfish or stupid or mean or empty inside that wiping someone else off the planet strikes him as a sensible solution to any number of practical workaday problems.

We are often reminded that any of us could kill under the right conditions. True enough, but the right conditions for most of us are extreme and mostly hypothetical. They don't include, for example, "needing the insurance money to pay gambling debts."

Having said all that? I can so totally imagine myself wheeling a pram full of bodies around the streets of North London some dark night.

The family trade

Thomas Wheeler was the cowman at Heath Farm in St Albans, just North of London, in the 1860s. In addition to his cowmanly duties, he also took to housebreaking, poaching and suing his neighbors. His daughter Mary Eleanor was born there in 1866. In 1880, Mr Wheeler murdered a farmer named Edward Anstee on account of a grudge and was hanged for same. Mary was 14.

Contrary to its reputation, there was a whole lot of sex going on in Victorian times. During the 1890s, there were 40,000 full or part-time prostitutes operating in London, of which about 500 were found floating in the Thames every year. I don't remember where I read either of those statistics, or what my point was, but they're stuck in my head. And now they're stuck in yours. Enjoy!

Mary took the name Pearcey from an early lover and stuck with it. Her dad's name had a bit of that gallows smell clinging to it. If the effigy at Madame Tussaud's is accurate, she was kind of scary looking. But since all the effigies at Madame Tussaud's are kind of scary looking, it's probably not all that accurate. Plus, I assume she had skills. You know. Skills.

Mary never had to work the streets, but she had a regular stable of gentlemen who kept her in booze and a flat at 2 Priory Street in Kentish Town, a section of North London. But her heart belonged to Frank Hogg, furniture remover. He had a business card. A printed one. This equals respectability in anyone's social circle.

In 1888, Frank knocked up one Phoebe Hanslop, and was constrained to wed. Yes, it was still Victorian times, despite the abundant sex. Phoebe gave birth to a daughter, also named Phoebe. Frank continued to see Mary. In fact, they all got on well enough and socialized regularly, though it was unclear if everyone understood who was sleeping with whom. At any rate, it could not have been as congenial and unjealous as it seemed.

The deed

Here's the what of it. On the morning of October 24 of 1890, Mary Pearcey gave a boy a penny to deliver a message to Phoebe Hogg, inviting her to tea. At 4pm, Mary beat the sweet living bejesus out of Phoebe with a fireplace poker in the kitchen on Priory Street, reducing her skull to a wet pulpy thing, very nearly took her head right off with a kitchen knife, and wrapped the whole wet, disastrous business in one of John Pearcey's old cardigan sweaters. Then Mary stuffed Phoebe into her own pram, quite possibly right on top of infant Phoebe, who at any rate was suffocated somehow.

And our journey begins. Join me in the enjoyment of this street map:

Phoebe's body was found stuffed under a wall near the junction of Adamson Road and Eton Avenue five hours later. Baby Phoebe was found somewhere along Finchley Road next morning. Mary ditched the pram on Hamilton Terrace. Then she went home, made a half-hearted attempted to clean up, but soon gave it up and decided she could bluff her way through. After which, I suspect she got pissed as a rat. She drank in happy times, one can only imagine what she would've done after wheeling a buggyful of soggy meat around.

Nicked!

Frank Hogg was out of town that day (and apparently had nothing to do with any of this, beyond the obvious), but his sister Clara went round to Mary's flat when news of a body turned up and Phoebe didn't. Clara persuaded Mary to accompany her to the morgue, where Mary promptly became hysterical at the sight of her handiwork and tried to prevent Clara from identifying the body. She wasn't admitting to anything, though.

The police accompanied Mary back to Priory Street, where she sat herself down at the piano and began to sing merrily and whistle loudly while police searched the flat. There was ample evidence of murder. Two windows had beem broken in the kitchen, and blood spattered everywhere. A bloody knife and poker were found. Confronted, Mary said, "killing mice! Killing mice!" The fact that she was wearing Phoebe Hogg's wedding ring was also unhelpful.

She was, to no one's surprise, convicted and hanged. Alas, no more bizarre outbursts: she was completely impassive from her trial right through to her execution two months later, and was only visibly upset when Frank Hogg denied her one last visit.

Here's a funny thing, though: she twice insisted her solicitor put an ad in the newspaper in Madrid, which read, "MECP Last wish of MEW. Have not betrayed. MEW." We can assume "MEW" is "Mary Eleanor Wheeler," but she wouldn't explain the rest. And it just drives me nuts that somebody at the time didn't poke around and find out what the hell Mary had to do with Spain, of all places. This cryptic note is one of the reasons Mary is sometimes considered a Jack the Ripper suspect (one of the many Jill the Ripper theories), though quite what it was supposed to mean, I don't know. Damn it.

The crime caught public imagination, and the crowd outside Newgate Prison was said to be unusually bawdy and unsympathetic on the day of Mary's execution. She was hanged behind the walls, but a cheer went up when the bell at St Sepulchre's Church was rung and the flag rose over the prison. Madame Tussaud's had bought the contents of Mary's kitchen, plus the Dreadful Pram, and put them on display. On the day the exhibition opened, 30,000 people queued around the block for it.

Because once is never enough

Susan Newell had a famously hot temper. And, it must be admitted in her defense, she was having a really bad day. On June the 20th, 1923 her husband had just left her without a penny, and she was about to be evicted. Still, when the paperboy wouldn't give her a newspaper unless she paid for it, I think we can agree it was overreacting to strangle him to death.

Enter our old friend Dreadful Pram. Susan wrapped John Johnson's body in a rug and bundled it into a pram, swung out into the road and headed for Glasgow. At least she had company on her fearful trip: her eight year old daughter, perched on top of the corpse. A lorry driver offered them a ride into town and later, when the pram was unloaded from the truck, someone in an upstairs window saw a foot stick out one end of the rug and the top of a head out the other.

She tried to pin the murder on her ex, but failed. Susan Newell indulged herself one last fit of temper at her execution, when she tore the hood off her head just before the drop and snapped, "don't put that thing over me!" She died with her face bare, the first woman hanged in Scotland in fifty years, and the last ever.

	The Dreadful Pram (1890 & 1923) Saturday, August 13, 2005
	All of us have done or said something in a moment of anger that we later regret. We can't help but wonder, "what if I'd had a gun in my hand at that moment?" Awareness of our own imperfection gives most of us a little sneaking sympathy for anyone who finds herself standing over a dead body trying to think up a really good story. In truth, the object of our sympathies is hardly ever worthy of them. One doesn't mysteriously find onesself with a loaded gun in one's hand in a heated moment. One must load bullets into one's recently purchased snubnose .38 and put it into one's purse before deciding it might be interesting to meet one's old boyfriend's new girlfriend. Oopsie! does not adequately cover this. Murderers, as a class, are assholes. Not counting the ones that are simply balls-out crazy. The typical murderer, on closer examination, turns out to be a person so selfish or stupid or mean or empty inside that wiping someone else off the planet strikes him as a sensible solution to any number of practical workaday problems. We are often reminded that any of us could kill under the right conditions. True enough, but the right conditions for most of us are extreme and mostly hypothetical. They don't include, for example, "needing the insurance money to pay gambling debts." Having said all that? I can so totally imagine myself wheeling a pram full of bodies around the streets of North London some dark night. The family trade Thomas Wheeler was the cowman at Heath Farm in St Albans, just North of London, in the 1860s. In addition to his cowmanly duties, he also took to housebreaking, poaching and suing his neighbors. His daughter Mary Eleanor was born there in 1866. In 1880, Mr Wheeler murdered a farmer named Edward Anstee on account of a grudge and was hanged for same. Mary was 14. Contrary to its reputation, there was a whole lot of sex going on in Victorian times. During the 1890s, there were 40,000 full or part-time prostitutes operating in London, of which about 500 were found floating in the Thames every year. I don't remember where I read either of those statistics, or what my point was, but they're stuck in my head. And now they're stuck in yours. Enjoy! Mary took the name Pearcey from an early lover and stuck with it. Her dad's name had a bit of that gallows smell clinging to it. If the effigy at Madame Tussaud's is accurate, she was kind of scary looking. But since all the effigies at Madame Tussaud's are kind of scary looking, it's probably not all that accurate. Plus, I assume she had skills. You know. Skills. Mary never had to work the streets, but she had a regular stable of gentlemen who kept her in booze and a flat at 2 Priory Street in Kentish Town, a section of North London. But her heart belonged to Frank Hogg, furniture remover. He had a business card. A printed one. This equals respectability in anyone's social circle. In 1888, Frank knocked up one Phoebe Hanslop, and was constrained to wed. Yes, it was still Victorian times, despite the abundant sex. Phoebe gave birth to a daughter, also named Phoebe. Frank continued to see Mary. In fact, they all got on well enough and socialized regularly, though it was unclear if everyone understood who was sleeping with whom. At any rate, it could not have been as congenial and unjealous as it seemed. The deed Here's the what of it. On the morning of October 24 of 1890, Mary Pearcey gave a boy a penny to deliver a message to Phoebe Hogg, inviting her to tea. At 4pm, Mary beat the sweet living bejesus out of Phoebe with a fireplace poker in the kitchen on Priory Street, reducing her skull to a wet pulpy thing, very nearly took her head right off with a kitchen knife, and wrapped the whole wet, disastrous business in one of John Pearcey's old cardigan sweaters. Then Mary stuffed Phoebe into her own pram, quite possibly right on top of infant Phoebe, who at any rate was suffocated somehow. And our journey begins. Join me in the enjoyment of this street map: Phoebe's body was found stuffed under a wall near the junction of Adamson Road and Eton Avenue five hours later. Baby Phoebe was found somewhere along Finchley Road next morning. Mary ditched the pram on Hamilton Terrace. Then she went home, made a half-hearted attempted to clean up, but soon gave it up and decided she could bluff her way through. After which, I suspect she got pissed as a rat. She drank in happy times, one can only imagine what she would've done after wheeling a buggyful of soggy meat around. Nicked! Frank Hogg was out of town that day (and apparently had nothing to do with any of this, beyond the obvious), but his sister Clara went round to Mary's flat when news of a body turned up and Phoebe didn't. Clara persuaded Mary to accompany her to the morgue, where Mary promptly became hysterical at the sight of her handiwork and tried to prevent Clara from identifying the body. She wasn't admitting to anything, though. The police accompanied Mary back to Priory Street, where she sat herself down at the piano and began to sing merrily and whistle loudly while police searched the flat. There was ample evidence of murder. Two windows had beem broken in the kitchen, and blood spattered everywhere. A bloody knife and poker were found. Confronted, Mary said, "killing mice! Killing mice!" The fact that she was wearing Phoebe Hogg's wedding ring was also unhelpful. She was, to no one's surprise, convicted and hanged. Alas, no more bizarre outbursts: she was completely impassive from her trial right through to her execution two months later, and was only visibly upset when Frank Hogg denied her one last visit. Here's a funny thing, though: she twice insisted her solicitor put an ad in the newspaper in Madrid, which read, "MECP Last wish of MEW. Have not betrayed. MEW." We can assume "MEW" is "Mary Eleanor Wheeler," but she wouldn't explain the rest. And it just drives me nuts that somebody at the time didn't poke around and find out what the hell Mary had to do with Spain, of all places. This cryptic note is one of the reasons Mary is sometimes considered a Jack the Ripper suspect (one of the many Jill the Ripper theories), though quite what it was supposed to mean, I don't know. Damn it. The crime caught public imagination, and the crowd outside Newgate Prison was said to be unusually bawdy and unsympathetic on the day of Mary's execution. She was hanged behind the walls, but a cheer went up when the bell at St Sepulchre's Church was rung and the flag rose over the prison. Madame Tussaud's had bought the contents of Mary's kitchen, plus the Dreadful Pram, and put them on display. On the day the exhibition opened, 30,000 people queued around the block for it. Because once is never enough Susan Newell had a famously hot temper. And, it must be admitted in her defense, she was having a really bad day. On June the 20th, 1923 her husband had just left her without a penny, and she was about to be evicted. Still, when the paperboy wouldn't give her a newspaper unless she paid for it, I think we can agree it was overreacting to strangle him to death. Enter our old friend Dreadful Pram. Susan wrapped John Johnson's body in a rug and bundled it into a pram, swung out into the road and headed for Glasgow. At least she had company on her fearful trip: her eight year old daughter, perched on top of the corpse. A lorry driver offered them a ride into town and later, when the pram was unloaded from the truck, someone in an upstairs window saw a foot stick out one end of the rug and the top of a head out the other. She tried to pin the murder on her ex, but failed. Susan Newell indulged herself one last fit of temper at her execution, when she tore the hood off her head just before the drop and snapped, "don't put that thing over me!" She died with her face bare, the first woman hanged in Scotland in fifty years, and the last ever. Ghastly detail: Oh, the pram. Without the pram, two ordinary and pointless murders. Because one expects to find babies in prams, not bodies. And "pram" evokes an image of brisk English nannies in sensible hats, an uneasy pairing with mad Mary Pearcey whistling and singing and squishing mice. It's fever dream Julie Andrews humming a merry tune and pushing oozing gobbets of meat in a squeaky perambulator. Hello, children! It's Mary Poppins from Hell!