Addendum to review of The Maul and the Pear Tree (P. D. James & T. A. Critchley)
[original review, along with The London Monster (Bondeson) and The Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper (Jakubowski & Braund, eds.)]
[Goodreads (review & addendum)]
Having reread The Maul & the Pear Tree for what I think is at least the third time, I can offer a better explanation of why I don't believe James & Critchley. When you read carefully and attentively, it becomes painfully clear how much of their theory about the murders is based on pure, airy speculation. Their argument is full of scaffolding: "probably," "there is little doubt," "there is no reason to suppose," "may well have been," "it is virtually certain." They present many of their hypotheses as rhetorical questions, which--by assuming the reader's answer--make it easier for the hypothesis to pass as fact. And they treat a number of their speculations as if they are, in fact, proved rather than merely proffered.
When you clear away all the rhetoric, their theory (William Ablass and a confederate who was possibly Cornelius Hart) isn't really any more plausible than the theory that Williams was the sole killer. (Saying that your chosen murderer is a "psychopath" only pushes the problem of motive one tier back: if he's a "psychopath," by which you mean a person who kills indiscriminately and without motive, why are these the only two brutal butchering murders he's committed?)
Crime solving, like criminological historiography (i.e., true crime writing), and like both prosecution and defense in the American judicial system, is trying to find a story--a narrative linked together by cause and effect and strong enough to hold up when inspected by both common sense and fault-finding scrutiny--that will fit the facts. The more facts you can incorporate, the stronger your story will be. The Ratcliffe Highway murders resist narrative--the only way to make a story out of them is to follow De Quincey and assume that Williams was a sort of Iago-like villain, doing evil simply because he could. (Or follow James & Critchley and assume Ablass as our Iago.) And even that isn't really satisfactory.
Stripped down, the problems of the Ratcliffe Highway murders go like this:
1. The evidence available at this remove is spotty at best, so any theory you present is going to be tentative and full of hypotheticals:
(a.) Our forensic evidence is based on the observations made and recorded by untrained observers (not necessarily even doctors) in December 1811. QED.
(b.) The rest of the evidence is eyewitness testimony and hearsay. James & Critchley were writing before the UTTER USELESSNESS of eyewitness testimony had been demonstrated, but as a reader in 2016, I have to admit that most of what we've got is either inadmissible or would be torn to shreds by any defense attorney whose law degree was worth the paper it was written on.
2. The murderer or murderers butchered the entire Marr household (Timothy Marr, his wife Celia, his apprentice James Gowan, and the 3 month old Timothy, Jr.--sparing the servant Margaret Jewell because she had been sent to buy oysters) on the night of December 7 and John Williamson (yes, the alleged murderer is John Williams, and one of his victims is John Williamson--real life gets to be confusing like that), his wife Elizabeth, and their servant Bridget Harrington (sparing the Willliamsons' granddaughter Kitty Stillwell and their lodger John Turner, who were lucky enough to be in their bedrooms abovestairs) on the night of December 19. Nobody before and nobody after. Why the Marrs? why the Williamsons? There is evidence that strongly suggests both households were reconnoitered before the attack (in the Marrs' case, if Hart was in on the job, possibly for as much as a week), so they're not just random crimes of opportunity. James & Critchley try to show why Ablass might have had a grudge against Williams, and they try a little sub rosa substitutive rhetoric to make it look like the grudge against Williams could be translated to a grudge against Marr, but they can't suggest a motive for murdering the Williamsons. So if the murderer was "sane," what motive did he have, not just for the murders, but for the overkill involved--literally in the case of the Marrs' baby? And if he was ".insane," a "psychopath," why are these the only two killing sprees he went on?
3. Some of the evidence against Williams was clearly manufactured by the grudge-holding John Harrison (the entire story of the French knife is as full of holes as a chain-link fence), but that only means that some of our evidence is beyond untrustworthy into outright falsity--but we don't know which evidence. Some of Harrison's testimony? All of Harrison's testimony? How about the other lodgers? What about the terrified and equivocating landlady, Mrs. Vermilloe? At what remove from Harrison can we start trusting that our witnesses are doing their best to tell the truth?
4. Real life murders can never be made into a clean narrative. There are always inconsistencies, gaps in the timeline, demonstrable facts that make no sense. I find that I can't judge, in this case, which facts have to be incorporated into the narrative and which facts can be dismissed as bogeys, sundogs, and (to quote my favorite X-Files episode) the planet Venus. Because all of the facts look crazy.
To my knowledge, nobody has written about the Ratcliffe Highway murders since James & Critchley. If I were a true crime writer, I would take that challenge.
[Goodreads (review & addendum)]
Having reread The Maul & the Pear Tree for what I think is at least the third time, I can offer a better explanation of why I don't believe James & Critchley. When you read carefully and attentively, it becomes painfully clear how much of their theory about the murders is based on pure, airy speculation. Their argument is full of scaffolding: "probably," "there is little doubt," "there is no reason to suppose," "may well have been," "it is virtually certain." They present many of their hypotheses as rhetorical questions, which--by assuming the reader's answer--make it easier for the hypothesis to pass as fact. And they treat a number of their speculations as if they are, in fact, proved rather than merely proffered.
When you clear away all the rhetoric, their theory (William Ablass and a confederate who was possibly Cornelius Hart) isn't really any more plausible than the theory that Williams was the sole killer. (Saying that your chosen murderer is a "psychopath" only pushes the problem of motive one tier back: if he's a "psychopath," by which you mean a person who kills indiscriminately and without motive, why are these the only two brutal butchering murders he's committed?)
Crime solving, like criminological historiography (i.e., true crime writing), and like both prosecution and defense in the American judicial system, is trying to find a story--a narrative linked together by cause and effect and strong enough to hold up when inspected by both common sense and fault-finding scrutiny--that will fit the facts. The more facts you can incorporate, the stronger your story will be. The Ratcliffe Highway murders resist narrative--the only way to make a story out of them is to follow De Quincey and assume that Williams was a sort of Iago-like villain, doing evil simply because he could. (Or follow James & Critchley and assume Ablass as our Iago.) And even that isn't really satisfactory.
Stripped down, the problems of the Ratcliffe Highway murders go like this:
1. The evidence available at this remove is spotty at best, so any theory you present is going to be tentative and full of hypotheticals:
(a.) Our forensic evidence is based on the observations made and recorded by untrained observers (not necessarily even doctors) in December 1811. QED.
(b.) The rest of the evidence is eyewitness testimony and hearsay. James & Critchley were writing before the UTTER USELESSNESS of eyewitness testimony had been demonstrated, but as a reader in 2016, I have to admit that most of what we've got is either inadmissible or would be torn to shreds by any defense attorney whose law degree was worth the paper it was written on.
2. The murderer or murderers butchered the entire Marr household (Timothy Marr, his wife Celia, his apprentice James Gowan, and the 3 month old Timothy, Jr.--sparing the servant Margaret Jewell because she had been sent to buy oysters) on the night of December 7 and John Williamson (yes, the alleged murderer is John Williams, and one of his victims is John Williamson--real life gets to be confusing like that), his wife Elizabeth, and their servant Bridget Harrington (sparing the Willliamsons' granddaughter Kitty Stillwell and their lodger John Turner, who were lucky enough to be in their bedrooms abovestairs) on the night of December 19. Nobody before and nobody after. Why the Marrs? why the Williamsons? There is evidence that strongly suggests both households were reconnoitered before the attack (in the Marrs' case, if Hart was in on the job, possibly for as much as a week), so they're not just random crimes of opportunity. James & Critchley try to show why Ablass might have had a grudge against Williams, and they try a little sub rosa substitutive rhetoric to make it look like the grudge against Williams could be translated to a grudge against Marr, but they can't suggest a motive for murdering the Williamsons. So if the murderer was "sane," what motive did he have, not just for the murders, but for the overkill involved--literally in the case of the Marrs' baby? And if he was ".insane," a "psychopath," why are these the only two killing sprees he went on?
3. Some of the evidence against Williams was clearly manufactured by the grudge-holding John Harrison (the entire story of the French knife is as full of holes as a chain-link fence), but that only means that some of our evidence is beyond untrustworthy into outright falsity--but we don't know which evidence. Some of Harrison's testimony? All of Harrison's testimony? How about the other lodgers? What about the terrified and equivocating landlady, Mrs. Vermilloe? At what remove from Harrison can we start trusting that our witnesses are doing their best to tell the truth?
4. Real life murders can never be made into a clean narrative. There are always inconsistencies, gaps in the timeline, demonstrable facts that make no sense. I find that I can't judge, in this case, which facts have to be incorporated into the narrative and which facts can be dismissed as bogeys, sundogs, and (to quote my favorite X-Files episode) the planet Venus. Because all of the facts look crazy.
To my knowledge, nobody has written about the Ratcliffe Highway murders since James & Critchley. If I were a true crime writer, I would take that challenge.
No comments have been added yet.
