One afternoon not too long ago, I was perusing the discount book shelves that line the center isle of the Oracle of Knowledge (also known as Barnes and Nobel Bookseller). I stumbled across a small paperback of true crime for $5.99, thumbed through it and found a brief article written about one Mrs. Pearcey.
Mary Eleanor Wheeler Pearcey, called Mrs. Pearcey by those who came to know her, was born in 1866. She led an ordinary lower middle-class life until the age of 10, when her father, Thomas Wheeler, murdered a man by shooting him in the face and then robbing his farm house. His wife was locked in the bedroom closet and latter identified Mr. Wheeler who then confessed to the murder.
Mr.Wheeler was sentenced to die by the gallows at St. Albans prison. Although her father had long since abandoned his family, Mary was so struck by the news of his execution, that she tried to hang herself in the family garden.
She was unsuccessful in her suicide attempt and the family moved south to London, perhaps to get away from the stigma of the murder, but also because there was likely more work in the city.
We know virtually nothing of Mary's early life, but we do know she grew into an attractive young woman who was said to have lovely russet hair and a beautiful long neck. She became the attraction of many men and was, apparently, quite salacious for her age, not unlike many modern teenagers.
Indeed, her first paramour was a Mr. John Charles Pearcey, whom she met when she was 16. She took his last name, though there are no records I can find of their marriage. John Charles was a carpenter and apparently loved Mary very much, but she was unfaithful with a Mr. Charles Creighton, a self-made businessman who eventually "kept" Mary as his mistress, sending her money on which to live. John Charles Pearcey moved out when he found that Mary was unfaithful.
This, of course, is research I have amassed since my reading about Mary Pearcey in the true crime book. It seems I have fallen in love with Mary too, but not because of her beauty. I love Mary's story and it's bittersweet ending.
At 19, while the kept woman of Mr. Creighton Mary met and fell in love with Mr. Frank Hogg (sometimes also spelled with an 's' as in Hoggs). He worked at his family's grocery store, which was close to Mary's flat and they became good friends. She even befriended his sister, Clara, and visited with his Mother, who was an invalid.
For four years, the relationship between Mary and Frank was platonic. There is no evidence there was talk of marriage, or that either of them wanted marriage. But, it is obvious from Mary's letters that she was very much in love with Frank and that the love was reciprocated.
Frank attended the Polytechnic Institute for a brief time. Mary kept a business card he'd had printed while studying there in a hat box beneath her bed along side his letters to her and cigarette case.
Eventually their relationship blossomed into a sexual relationship, but not before Mr. Hogg felt compelled to marry a Ms. Phoebe Styles. We know very little about Phoebe Styles, her life, her family, or how she met Frank.
But we do know Frank was conflicted about marrying her. He confided in Mary and Mary advised him to make an honest woman of her, an interesting choice of words given that Mary made her living by loving men. Privately, Mary was devastated by the news of Phoebe's pregnancy, but she later told Frank when he threatened to move that it would be easier for her to see him marry fifty times over than for her to see him move.
Frank did marry Phoebe in a small ceremony to which Mary was not invited. We can only speculate as to why Mary decided to befriend Phoebe. Perhaps she felt it would allow she and Frank to spend more time together. Perhaps she felt it was the surest way to keep their affair private. Whatever the reason, Phoebe and Mary were friendly, but never truly friends.
There is evidence that Phoebe suspected Mary meant to harm her early in their friendship. About eight months after Frank married Phoebe, Mary sent her a note asking her to go to the seaside with her; she was thinking of moving. Phoebe wrote her sister that she did not wish to go with Mary because no one would think to look for her in a big, empty house.
Phoebe's transition to wife was a difficult one. Perhaps it's because she hardly knew Frank, but it's more likely because she was close to her family who lived in Chorley Wood and Frank disapproved of her privately writing letters to her niece and sister. He was terrified she was complaining to her family.
Frank's family lost their grocery store. Some reports say it was because the lease ran out; others say it's because the lease became too expensive to afford. Either way, Frank had to rely on the kindness of his older brother, who owned a furniture moving company, for a job. He seemed to be a man preoccupied by appearances, though he wasn't at all concerned about his physical appearance. James Berry, the executioner, described Mr. Hogg's appearance as thus:
...Frank Hogg was an unprepossessing man with a large ragged bears, a woebegone apperance and ill-fitting clothing.
At some point in the first few months of their marriage, the relationship between Frank and Mary became sexual.
According to police reports, Mary would leave a gas lantern lit in her bedroom letting Frank know she was away. (There are conflicting reports on this detail. Some reports claim that Mary would leave the light on to indicate she was home and available, others claim the light was lit to say she was away and wouldn't be returning for some time.)
How Mary explained her relationship with Mr. Charles Creighton isn't well understood. Frank knew about him, because Mary was always unavailable on Monday nights. We don't know if he was bothered by her relationship with Charles. Charles certainly wasn't bothered by it. He had a wife and lived on the other side of town, and was very quick to go to the police with details of their relationships when the news of the coming tragedy spread.
The first Christmas after baby Tiggie was born, Phoebe become gravely ill and Clara Hogg called Mary to care for her. Some reports say she lived in the Hogg house as she played nursemaid to Phoebe and cared for the baby Tiggie.
Other reports claim that Phoebe and Frank were cared for at Mary's small flat on Prince of Wales Road. Either way, it was a strange summoning and Phoebe's family was outraged that a near stranger was caring for their sick daughter.
None the less, Mary did care for Phoebe and in fact spent money on luxuries for her like fresh milk and eggs and chocolate. Eventually, Phoebe's pain was bad enough that a doctor was summoned. The Styles family suspected miscarriage and undernourishment, but under oath Frank testified she never miscarried.
The doctor administered and then prescribed laudanum. Upon autopsy it was discovered Phoebe had a large abscess on an internal organ (it doesn't state which one) and this was likely the source of the pain. It also was also likely to have made Phoebe very frail and weak, despite being of slightly above average height.
Mary too was sickly, often succumbing to nose bleeds, which is indicative of her suspected epilepsy. Mary is thought to have suffered from frontal lobe epilepsy which went untreated for the entirety of her life. Her solicitor, Mr. Freke Palmer tried to bring the evidence of her "spells" or seizures up as a defense during the trial, but to no avail. Mary also drank quite heavily, though there's no indication she was an alcoholic. More likely is the fact that she self-medicated out of desperate boredom. This is evidenced by the tone of her letters to Frank all but begging him to visit her, if even for five minutes.
The relationship between the Phoebe and Mary became strained shortly after Phoebe's. It could have been strained over suspicions that Mary and Frank were having an affair, though Frank denied that Phoebe ever knew about his love for Mary.
Whatever it was, the break in their friendship, coupled with disintegrating relations at home caused Phoebe to leave Frank for a time. She returned to Prince of Whales Road when her brother-in-law convinced her she didn't really want to leave Frank because divorce was costly and her reputation would be ruined.
After their brief seperation, Frank and Phoebe are said to have gotten along well, though the family - Clara and Mrs. Hogg - never really embraced Phoebe.
Despite affection from his wife, he continued to see Mary. For her part, Mary became ever more obsessed with Frank, sending him letters daily, letters that tell the story of love blackened into obsession.
On Thursday, October 23, 1890 Mary hired a boy to deliver a message to Phoebe to come round to tea and bring the baby. Phoebe got the message but did not visit. The following day, Mary paid another boy a penny to deliver a second letter to Phoebe inviting her to tea again.
This time, Phoebe accepted. She left a note for her husband Frank that said, "Shall not be gone long." Neighbors said they saw her leaving and that she walked briskly and with a sense of purpose. Perhaps she was going to end their friendship once and for all?
Earlier in the day, Mr. John Charles Pearcey happened to see Mary pacing in her front garden. He testified later she seemed preoccupied. He asked her why her blinds were drawn and Mary told him it was because her younger brother had died. To my knowledge, Mary did not have a brother. The conversation was short and terse and John Charles walked on.
Court testimony verifies that Phoebe arrived at Mary's flat around 4 p.m. Friday afternoon, wheeling baby Tiggie in a black perambulator she'd rented from a near by station. She took the baby out of the perambulator and left the pram collapsed and leaning against the wall in the stairwell.
Mary was probably reading when she heard Phoebe knock, as there were books on the kitchen table found later with blood spatters on them.
We do not know exactly what happened next. But we do know a confrontation led to Phoebe Hoggs' violent death and the death of her 18 month-old child.
Police and medical examiner reports show that Phoebe was struck from behind with a sharp object, most likely a fire-place poker. Such a poker was later found at Mary's house during a police search, and though it had blood and hair on it, it turns out the hair was not human hair. Mary is nearly infamous for telling police during questioning that there was blood in the kitchen because she was killing mice. Perhaps this was true.
Mary's next door neighbor, Mrs. Priddington, testified to hearing glass break. She said she rushed out to see what was the matter, but couldn't see into Mary's kitchen because the blinds were drawn. She called out to Mary but no one answered and so she left the matter alone.
The upstairs neighbors, a file cutter and his wife, told Inspector Banister, the lead Inspector, they heard a baby scream and latter in the night what sounded like several people walking back and forth and moving things.
Mary was next seen wheeling a black perambulator through the street. It was cold and foggy and the streets were busy, but she was identified by no less than four witnesses, all of whom commented that she was nearly doubled from the weight of the pram as she pushed it up
the street.
Late that night, (we know it was past ten because Frank Hogg went to Mary's house looking for Phoebe and left a note scratched on the back of an envelope that read, "A few minutes past 10, can't stay longer) the body of Phoebe Hogg was found by a man named Smith who later confessed to stealing her wedding ring and hawking it for food before finding a constable and telling them about the dead body.
The police constable called the medical examiner who found that Phoebe's throat was cut from left to right and the cut was so deep, her head was nearly severed from her body. In the following day's paper, the reports would automatically assume the assailant was a man because the force with which the cuts were made seemed too severe to be made by a woman.
The following day, Saturday, October 26, 1890, baby Phoebe was found in an abandoned lot. She had only a scratch on her forehead likely caused by being dumped onto rough ground. The pram was found some miles away, blood soaked and missing a bolt. The china handle was cracked. The medical examiner could not determine if the baby suffocated under the weight of its dead mother, or if it died from exposure.
The consequent investigation, trial, and execution of Mary Pearcey took less than three months to complete. She was hanged by Mr. James Berry, the understudy of William Marwood, who executed Mary's father at St. Albans some fourteen years earlier.
Berry too was smitten with Mary. In his memoirs he says of her, "She was the most beautiful woman I ever hanged."
He described her in detail as having: ..."big blue eyes with a languishing look in them, masses of wavy hair and lips like Cupid's bow."
Mary was hanged two days before Christmas on December 23, 1890 for the murder of Phoebe Hogg and her daughter.
So enthralled by this black crime was the London population, that Madame Tuassade bought the contents of her flat, the pram and a piece of candy found in the pram and put it on display alongside a wax likeness of Mary at the Chamber of Horrors. Tuassade's representatives even tried to buy Mr. Hogg's beard.
It is reported that the Black Museum at Scotland Yard has or had photographs of Phoebe and her baby. I don't know where to begin to try and find these photographs, but so far as I know it is the only photograph of them that remains. Phoebe is said to have had long, curly black hair and blue eyes, but that is all we know of her.
Ironically, it was not the lower class that attended Mary Pearcey's trial, but middle class women, many of whom reportedly felt a sense of connection with Mary on many levels. After her execution, she was referenced in the London Times in an article written about the abolishment of the death penalty. The article argues that had she been sentenced to a life of hard labor, the public would have ceased to fantasize about her. She would have faded into history.
I disagree.
Mary's story was interesting then for the same reasons it is interesting now. Hers is the story of a lonely woman who sought affection and friendship in a hard and humorless environment. When someone threatened to end that friendship away, she revolted in the only way she knew how - through violence.
Mary is buried under the goal at Newgate Prison in an unmarked grave. She never confessed to the murders, and in fact said that while the sentence was just the evidence against her false. She also left a cryptic note with her solicitor that read, "MEWP. Did not betray. MEW". No one knows what it means, though it has been suggested it was a note meant for a husband from a secret marriage. Mary asked her solicitor to place this ad in a Spanish newspaper. I have no proof that he did.
This is but a minor overview. I have been researching and studying court documents, newspaper clippings, interviews, books, and other material in an effort to fully understand the life and death of Mary Pearcey. My hope is to turn this material into an historically accurate but ultimately fictional version of her life I have entitled,
Three Clear Sundays.
I am blogging in an attempt to exhaust the wealth of knowledge that lies scattered about the globe on Mary Pearcey. I am looking for help from amateur sleuths, researchers, and writers of crime dramas. I am hoping that others can help bare witness to the facts of her life, her loves, and her death.
In the upcoming weeks, I plan to post my research and it's interpretations and implications. I will likely post working chapters to try and get a sense of pace and authenticity.
Writing the historical novel can be challenging. Before I undertook this task, I knew little about Victorian England. I am always searching for new material to devour that will help me with place, voice, and setting.
I am also looking for photos and visual data that will help me pay homage to the truth and bring Mary and her story back to life.
Much of what I know once existed is no longer in files. Letters, transcripts, and history has been lost. I'm hoping the power of the Internet and interested readers can help Mary tell the story she could not tell herself.
sb hopton
9-27-07
angst of hours sifting through
