The terrifying London garrotters of the 1860s

1862 saw a new crime trend hit the streets of London.  The city was terrified of alleged garrotters – strangling and stealing from victims. One thief grabbed a victim from behind, garrotting them, while the other relieved the breathless person of their belongings. This outbreak of “garrotting” horrified the great and the powerful – especially when a member of parliament fell victim. In 1863, an indignant Lord Norton demanded that the garroters should be flogged in prison and the measure was passed with ease.

One newspaper, The Standard, in December 1862 reported on a court hearing for an alleged garrotter described – in rather un-woke terms – as “a swarthy-looking, middle-aged man” with an unkempt beard and moustache who was “ferocious looking”. He had assaulted Emma Munroe, a milliner, as she made her home down Snow Hill at midnight. But Emma was made of stern stuff and he was acting alone. Using her fists and an umbrella, then shouting for help, she not only fending him off but got the criminal arrested.

The garroter’s name was George Nash, a tailor, who was drunk at the time and when the police were asked in court whether he had been armed, they responded, only with a thimble and scissors – eliciting laughter from the public gallery. Alderman Besley, presiding, decided not to commit Nash for trial as he had not committed a full-on garrotting, but instead got twenty-one days in the House of Correction with hard labour.

A police detective then addressed the court claiming that the wave of garrottings reported throughout 1862 had turned out to be mostly false, and the result of a wave of hysteria. Hospitals had also confirmed an absence of garrotted victims turning up on their wards. The alderman agreed and blamed the cheap newspapers for spreading scurrilous stories to increase circulation. However, I include some newspaper clippings below from 1862 including a letter from a hospital surgeon stating that cases of garrotting had not only turned up at his hospital, but resulted in fatalities.

It seems the garrotting gangs were both male and female. One case heard at the Woolwich Police Court at the start of December 1862 involved a garrotter named James Collins ably assisted by two women: Elizabeth Ross and Catherine Watson. They had assaulted John Forbes taking six shillings and a watch.

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Garrotting punishments made more severe

In the eighteenth century, thieves and robbers might still be tied to a cart and whipped in public. But it was decided that these garroters should be flogged in private, behind closed doors, at Newgate prison. Well, not entirely in private. Because wealthy folks could gain access to the room with the “whipping press” to watch the brutal action unfold. They just had to get a ticket from the sheriff and demand was high!

A journalist who attended one flogging described it:

We entered a long, low room, ignorant of furniture, except a sort of press, waist-high against one wall and a long deal table by the other. What I liken unto the press was the whipping apparatus with stocks for the prisoner’s feet and holdfasts for his hands. He stepped into this appartus and his feet were forthwith imprisoned. Extending his arms, he placed them in the crescent hollow of a plank before him, another plank was let down and his wrists were pinioned in rings.

Then a jailer picked up a whip with nine cords and knots at the end of each – the infamous cat o’nine tails! The first garroter led in to be punished was, according to the journalist, a “sullen, lumpish thick-skinned brute, with an evil forehead”. I’ll spare you the full description in the book before me (the Victorians loved to describe a good beating!) though it says the jailer “plied the scourge airily, as a fly-fisher would his line”. A nice angling motif!

Supporters of corporal punishment in prisons – which did continue well into the 20th century – claimed it stopped the garrotting epidemic in its tracks. But even at the end of the 19th century, looking back at this very odd crime, the Liberal Home Secretary Lord Asquith (1892-95) said the crime had already subsided before Norton brought his flogging measure to the House. This view was supported by another Home Secretary, Lord Ridley (1895-1900).

Still – the throttlers had given the rich a big scare – and they’d retaliated with the whip!