When Sarah Hart was murdered on New Year’s Day, the pursuit of the prime suspect became the first ever case in which the electric telegraph was used to capture a killer.
On 1 January 1845, Mary Ann Ashley of Bath Place, Salt Hill, a suburb of Slough, spotted a man visiting her next door neighbour, Sarah Hart. Two hours later, she was sitting by the fire in her home when she heard a scream. Grabbing a candle, she made her way into the garden, and saw the man was leaving. Mary Ann spoke to him as he struggled to open the gate, but he left without saying anything. Thinking she could hear moans, she then entered her neighbour’s property and found Sarah Hart lying on the floor. Her clothes were dishevelled and she was foaming at the mouth. Despite Mary Ann’s efforts to revive her, Sarah died.
The man visiting Sarah that afternoon was her former employer and lover, John Tawell. Aged 61, he was a respectable merchant. A married man, John was a member of the Society of Friends. Sarah had been nursemaid to his children, after the death of his first wife, and she had had two children with him. When he married again, Sarah was dismissed, but Tawell continued to pay for his illegitimate family. The two young children, Frederick, aged 5 and Sarah, 4, were both in the house when their mother died. The post mortem revealed that she had been poisoned with prussic acid.
When John Tawell left the house on the evening of 1 January, he was spotted by several witnesses, as well as the neighbour. These included the post boy, who recognised the frequent visitor, and the local vicar. Tawell was particularly conspicuous as he was dressed in the typical garb of a Quaker, wearing a broad-brimmed hat, a white cravat and a loose brown great-coat. The vicar went straight to Slough railway station and informed the superintendent of his suspicions. However, John Tawell had already left on the 7.42 pm train to Paddington.
The line from London Paddington, which had been extended to Slough two years previously, carried an electric telegraph system. Developed in the 1830s, the telegraph was first used on the railway between Euston and Camden in 1837. The following year, inventor William Fothergill Cooke and scientist Charles Wheatstone established the world’s first telegraph network, on the Great Western Railway. Superintendent Howell used this groundbreaking innovation to his advantage.
Howell sent a message to his colleagues at Paddington station, who were waiting for the prime suspect when he alighted the train. Two constables tailed him into the city and John Tawell was arrested the following day in one of his favourite haunts, the Jerusalem Coffee House near London Bridge.
John Tawell stood trial for the murder of Sarah Hart on 12 March 1845 in Aylesbury (Slough was then in Buckinghamshire). On the opening day, the Reading Mercury reported that ‘the scene…at the entrance to the court, was one of the most animated and eminently disorderly that could possibly be imagined.’ When the prisoner entered the dock, he ‘looked very pale’.
The trial lasted for three days, during which time the various witnesses testified to having seen the accused leaving Sarah Hart’s house on the day of her murder. The surgeon who performed the post mortem concluded that she had been poisoned by prussic acid. This was confirmed by a London chemist who had analysed the deceased’s stomach contents. Under cross-examination, both men admitted that it was the first time they’d investigated this type of case. And in fact, Tawell claimed that Sarah had taken the poison on purpose. He had recounted to police how she continually pestered him for money and had even threatened to take her own life. On New Year’s Day, he had visited her to tell her that she would not receive any more cash. She had taken a slug of porter and then fallen to the floor in convulsions.
The defence counsel claimed that the presence of prussic acid could have been accounted for by her consuming apples (for which he was ribbed for ever after) and in his summary, he said, ‘the real cause of death…might ever perhaps remain a mystery’. Despite the circumstantial nature of the evidence, John Tawell, whom it was revealed had been previously transported to Australia for forgery, was convicted of his former lover’s murder and executed a fortnight later. The telegraphic system that facilitated his swift capture became known as ‘the electric constable’.
This case features in my new book, The Bermondsey Murder, (2024) as the telegraph was also used to catch the killer.
