In Early Nineteenth-Century True Crime Murder Melodrama
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ABSTRACT Title of Document: MATERIAL MURDERS: “AUTHENTICITY” IN EARLY NINETEENTH-CENTURY TRUE CRIME MURDER MELODRAMA Erin Rebecca Bone Steele, Ph.D., 2012 Directed By: Professor Franklin J. Hildy, School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies In the early nineteenth century, London’s illegitimate playhouses featured melodramas based on murder accounts. The value of comparing a true-crime drama to its historical antecedent lies in asking how the theatre makes its claim, and what social or political issues jump to the fore. Spectatorship at public hangings is a regular feature of this period, but crowds sought to “see more” and “know more” by attending all sorts of spectacles. The courtroom, scaffold, publishing house, fair, and theatre all proclaimed their goal was to provide a moral lesson. The intent was education as well as profit; the effect for the audience was one of titillation. This study is rooted in archival print material including playscripts, pamphlets, newspapers, and broadsides, and employs theoretical concepts developed by theatre historians to illuminate the ways competing public narratives functioned in the minds of audiences. Four cases are examined in detail: the Ashford/Thornton case and a “trial by battle” courtroom confrontation, the Weare/Thurtell case featuring a sloppy murder amongst gamblers, the Marten/Corder case of murder in a red barn, and the Bradford case following a wrongly-accused innkeeper. The dramas they spawned appeared between 1818 and 1833. Broadly speaking, each play communicates a warning to the working classes beyond simple moral proscriptions. Doomed characters might have no opportunity for redemption but there is a sense that social and political structures could and should be changed, reflecting the lived experience of a period when the legal system was being reformed, cities were being rebuilt, workers’ associations were growing, and the police system was being established anew. Dramatizations invariably diverge from news reports, yet melodrama playhouses consistently claim they provide “authentic” experiences and present “true” stories. Material, tangible objects serve many functions, chiefly acting as a concrete link between circulating press accounts of a murder and theatrical representations. In the most extreme instance, the Surrey playhouse acquired property previously owned by accused murderers and used it on stage. More often, playhouses like the Coburg and Pavilion invoked or recreated specific material goods. MATERIAL MURDERS: “AUTHENTICITY” IN EARLY NINETEENTH- CENTURY TRUE CRIME MURDER MELODRAMA By Erin Rebecca Bone Steele Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2012 Advisory Committee: Professor Franklin J. Hildy, Chair Professor Faedra Carpenter Professor Gay Gibson Cima Professor Gay Gullickson Professor Heather Nathans © Copyright by Erin Rebecca Bone Steele 2012 Acknowledgements There are many people I need to thank, including my husband Colin Steele, without whom I could not have embarked on this project or seen it through. All the members of my committee provided advice and support over a number of years. My parents Tom and Chris Bone and brother Tom Bone IV served as patient sounding boards for most of the ideas here. I additionally owe many thanks to my colleagues and dear friends Ashley Duncan Derr and Natalie Tenner who joined me for weekly writing sessions, as well as Robert C. Thompson, Matthew Shifflett, and Tracey Elaine Chessum, who read drafts of chapters in progress. Their insights proved invaluable. I could not have accessed much of the archival material without the assistance of Dr. Meredith Shedd-Driskell in the Rare Books divisions of the Law Library, Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.), and the Rare Books librarians at the British Library (London, U.K.). Lastly, I would not be here were it not for Jim and Ann Lile who sparked my love of theatre in general and Dr. Bob Hansen who encouraged my love of theatre history in particular. ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements.........................................................................................................ii Table of Contents...........................................................................................................iii Introduction: Murder as Entertainment; or, A Warning to the Working Class ..................1 Chapter 1: London Theatres; or, Murder on the Popular Stage....................................... 26 Chapter 2: The Murder of Mary Ashford; or, Battles at the Coburg ............................... 62 Chapter 3: Battle of the Pamphlets; or, Lawyers and Corruption.................................. 110 Chapter 4: The Gamblers’ Case; or, The Fatal Gig on the Surrey Stage ....................... 150 Chapter 5: Murder in the Red Barn; or, Souvenirs and Tourism................................... 189 Chapter 6: Murder at the Roadside Inn; or, A Step Back in Time ................................ 239 Conclusion: Crime Melodrama Endures; or, The Power of the True Crime Tag........... 291 Bibliography ............................................................................................................... 297 iii “The theatre always says in the same breath – ‘I am a fiction’ and ‘You must believe in it.’” – Patrice Pavis1 “Murder trials, if held to the light at the proper angle, are an almost unexcelled mirror of an epoch’s mores.” – Richard Altick2 Introduction: Murder as Entertainment; or, A Warning to the Working Class In 1818, Mary Ashford’s body was pulled from a pond in Warwickshire. She had last been seen with Abraham Thornton, ne’er-do-well son of a local builder, who had offered to escort her home after a late-night dance. He was arrested upon suspicion of rape and murder but was found innocent when the witnesses’ clocks seemed to show that he could not have killed Ashford in a rural field and returned to his lodgings in the proposed time frame. When Ashford’s brother brought an additional suit, Thornton invoked a medieval statute still on the books that gave a defendant the right to a “trial by battle.” Thornton was prepared to face Ashford’s family and duel with clubs to settle affairs once and for all. Ashford’s young, weak brother was forced to drop the suit. The prevailing public opinion remained that Thornton had gotten away with murder. Pamphleteers picked up their pens and published play scripts designed to address the Ashford-Thornton case and corruption in the justice system, while the Coburg Theatre presented a drama with the au courant title Trial by Battle. In 1823, down-on-his-luck gambler John Thurtell invited fellow gambler William Weare to join him in the country for some gaming, but as they drove down a dark country 1 Patrice Pavis, Languages of the Stage: Essays in the Semiology of the Theatre (New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1982), 77. 2 Richard D. Altick, Victorian Studies in Scarlet: Murder and Manners in the Age of Victoria (New York: W. W. Norton, 1970), 12. 1 lane about eleven miles outside of London, Thurtell shot at Weare, knocked him from the carriage, chased him down the lane, cut his throat, and bashed his skull with the barrel of his pistol. The fatal gig in which the two men were riding, the horse, and some furniture from the home of Thurtell’s accomplice were all sold to the Surrey Theatre, where they were used in the staging of The Gamblers while Thurtell was still on trial. In 1828, Suffolk native William Corder was executed for killing his one-time lover, Maria Marten, and burying her body in the dirt floor of the red-roofed barn on his family’s property. Tourists flocked to the site; they attended outdoor sermons near the victim’s home, packed the courtroom during Corder’s trial, and ripped boards from the barn to claim as souvenirs. The executed man’s skin was even turned into a leather book- binding. Playhouses in London drew from journalists’ accounts to develop theatrical versions of the Red Barn story and sold London residents the experience of visiting the Red Barn vicariously through the theatre. In 1833, the manager of the Surrey theatre commissioned professional playwright Edward Fitzball to write a new play. Fitzball, a prolific playwright who specialized in nautical and gothic themes, surprised members of the company when he turned to a collection of true-crime accounts for his inspiration. He tried to carefully re-create the world of eighteenth-century England in his huge hit, Jonathan Bradford, or the Murder at the Roadside Inn. These are the cases and plays that form the core of this study. All of these dramas can be classified as melodramas, and all were created in the tumultuous period between 1818 and 1833. In such nineteenth-century true-crime dramas, the audience is invited to 2 witness a “true” story. Hidden inside the sugar-candy coating of sensational murder, however, these plays introduce important social issues. It is very seductive, and easy, to compare the historical true-crime event with its theatrical representation and tear down the theatre’s claims to authenticity because the dramatizations invariably diverge from news reports. However, as Catherine Belsey notes in her study of the Early Modern English true-crime drama Arden of Faversham, the goal here is not simply to compare a drama against some ultimately inaccessible “truth” about what “actually” happened in the moment of the crime. The value of exploring a true-