96 Before the Bobbies
on 27 December he was found hanging in his cell, an apparent suicide. On
New Year's Day, Williams's body and the alleged murder weapons were
paraded along the Ratcliffe Highway with Bow Street Runners, police offi-
cers, police magistrates, and detachments of the military in attendance. The
body was buried at a crossroads, the traditional fate of suicides. Here indeed
was the pageantry and theatre of the law.^76
Whether Williams really was the murderer was never established conclus-
ively. Circumstantial evidence pointed to him and the authorities were glad
to have a presumed culprit to blame. National and local authorities were
anxious to calm public fear which at times bordered on hysteria. This
stemmed in. part from the apparent inability of the police to find the
murderer and especially because they failed to find him in time to prevent
the second set of murders.
The reaction to these murders was strong, in part, because fears about
crime had been rising even before they occurred. An upward swing in
committals for trial began in 1811 that would peak in the post-war years.^77
'frade was disrupted by the war and increasing friction with the United
States, causing a severe depression in export trades. Also a succession of
bad harvests had afflicted England from 1809-1812?^8 In Mile End, Old
Town, in December 1811, some inhabitants met to form 'an Association for
the more effectually preserving the persons and property of this Hamlet'.
They agreed to patrol the town at night from nine until five the next
morning.^79 In St Paul, Hammersmith, the parish association for the prosecu-
tion of felons noted in December 1811 that 'depredations' had been increas-
ing and had 'arrived at an alarming rate'. The association resolved:
... that the most advisable way to put a stop effectually to such frequent
Robberies would be by respectable Inhabitants being sworn in as special
constables and patroling the Streets and Bye Lanes at different times in
the Night or early in the Mornings as they may think proper.By the first week of January, 35 men had been recruited as special con-
stables.80
The response of parish authorities in London to the Ratcliffe Highway
murders varied. St Paul, Shadwell, fired all its 13 night watchmen and hired
two shifts of 18 armed patrols and four inspectors and called for more active
government involvement in policing. Writing to the Shadwell police magis-
trates in late December 1811, two watch trustees explained that the steps
taken to improve the watch increased the annual cost of the watch from £450
to £1320. They also observed:
... the London and West India docks in our immediate neighbourhood,
has greatly increased the number of Labourers, who, with their families are
resident, and consequently chargeable. 1b these are added a host of foreign