One of my most exciting moments whilst researching detective history for my PhD at the National Archives was holding the list of the first Scotland Yard detectives in my hand. Although it is a rather unprepossessing handwritten document, seeing the names of some of the most iconic detective police officers, such as Inspector Pearce and Sergeant Whicher, sent a shiver down my spine! I was also interested to read the memo, dated 14 June 1842, to Whitehall from the police commissioners proposing the deployment of ‘a certain number of men specially applicable to the duty of following up cases’, which would later become Scotland Yard. Their motivation for this request was the frantic search for Daniel Good who had murdered Jane Good, and ‘having escaped beyond the limits of the Police District, the Police had no means of getting immediate cognizance of him’. This gruesome crime had shocked the nation and led to a groundbreaking development in the history of British policing.
On Wednesday 6 April 1842, PC William Gardiner had been walking his regular beat on Wandsworth High Street, when a pawnbroker reported the theft of a pair of black trousers. The thief was Daniel Good, who worked as a coachman for Queely (also written as ‘Quelaz’) Shiell, a wealthy plantation owner from Montserrat, who lived nearby. At around 8.30 p.m., Good had bought one pair of black knee breeches and helped himself to another on the way out. The pawnbroker’s two young assistants led PC Gardiner to Shiell’s large house in Roehampton to confront Good, who had a reputation for violence. By the time the three men had walked the two miles to Putney Park Lane, it was about 9.30 p.m. and the estate buildings were closed up for the night. After making enquiries at the house about Daniel Good’s whereabouts, the police officer crossed the yard to the stable where he slept. He knocked on the door and, when it opened, found himself face-to-face with his prime suspect.
Forty-four-year-old Daniel Good was originally from Ireland and had been working for Mr Shiell for just over two years – he looked after the ponies that pulled the four-wheeled chaise. Good was five feet six inches tall, with a very dark complexion and long features. He had black hair and was balding at the crown of his head. That night he was wearing a dark frock coat, drab breeches and gaiters, and a black hat. On being confronted by PC Gardiner, the coachman admitted to the theft and offered to return to the pawnbroker’s to pay for the trousers. ‘Let us go to Wandsworth and have it settled’, he said as he stood in the dark door frame of the stable. But PC Gardiner insisted on searching the premises to look for the evidence. As he entered the building, he noted the presence of an 11-year-old boy running around the stable yard, whom he presumed to be Good’s son.
Once inside, holding his lamp aloft, the police officer cast his flickering light over the shadowy stalls of the harness room and stables. Good became increasingly agitated and suggested once again that they depart for Wandsworth, but PC Gardiner refused, determined to search every corner for the stolen trousers. He soon noticed, however, a ‘very bad, fulsome, sickly smell…like a rind of bacon’ pervading the outbuilding. As Gardiner moved methodically through the stalls he saw Good shift a truss of hay from one side of the fourth stall to the other. The police officer went over to investigate and, pulling back the hay, he spotted what looked like a dead goose. On closer inspection, the weak light from his lantern revealed a woman’s mutilated torso.
As the horrified constable struggled to comprehend the scene, Good fled into the night, locking the stable door behind him. PC Gardiner responded quickly and, after prising the stable door open with a pitchfork, he dispatched one of the pawnbroker’s lads to Wandsworth police station to inform his colleagues. The first officers to arrive at the scene were constables Samuel Palmer and Josiah Tye, and Inspector John Busain. Together they made a more meticulous search of the stable, finding a mattress and two urine-stained blankets tied up with cord. Pieces of charred bone were discovered under the ashes in the fireplace, as well as torn female apparel and a silk handkerchief spotted with blood. More bones were turned up in the cinders, a bloodstained knife in a drawer and an axe. A tiny chunk of flesh, about the size of half a pea, was found on the outside of the carriage.
PC Gardiner and his colleagues removed the evidence from the scene, including pieces of bone, the axe, knife and hand saw, an action which was not unusual for the time as, in the early decades of the nineteenth century, there were no guidelines for investigation or management of a crime scene nor any concept of cross-contamination – it would be almost a century before these practices became commonplace. Furthermore, the Good case was the first high profile murder experienced by V Division, and the Wandsworth police officers were used to dealing mostly with theft and assault, therefore they had no real idea of how to respond to a murder.
A rent book found at the scene identified the victim as Jane Jones, a laundress living in Manchester Square, Marylebone. A mole on what remained of her neck was conclusive evidence of her identity, confirmed by her neighbour. The young boy in the stable yard told the police that the victim was his mother, Good’s estranged wife. She had been in a relationship with Good for about three years and may have been pregnant when she died. Although the couple did not live together nor were they married, Jane began using Good’s name about six months after they had met. Jane Good was of medium build and quite plump, with fair skin and dark hair. She was in her early thirties and her ‘son’ may have been her deceased sister’s child, whom she had adopted. Jane was last seen alive on Sunday 3 April by a police officer on his beat. She had been wearing a blue bonnet, a cotton dress and a black shawl with a pattern of coloured flowers. Following an argument with Daniel Good, she had left the boy in the care of a friend, but Good had taken him away the following day. According to Jane’s neighbours, 30-year-old Lydia Susannah Butcher, a single woman living with her parents in Woolwich, had recently attracted Good’s attention, and this had caused friction between the couple. Lydia had visited Good several times at the stable, even staying the night. On Wednesday 6 April, Good had brought her gifts, including a fur tippet and gown, a pair of boots, a handkerchief and a blue bonnet, which he said had belonged to his ‘deceased’ wife.
Jane’s remains were left in the stables for a further two days, whilst they were examined by a number of medical experts called by the coroner. Putney surgeon Benjamin Ridge complained later in court that he had been prevented from making his examination for 24 hours by the police, until they had washed the corpse, ‘on account of the body being so dirty’. Ridge concluded that the woman had been healthy, and that her head and limbs had been severed after death. When he had completed his examination, the coroner took the unusual measure of instructing PC Tye to transport the victim to his own house in Roehampton, as the spectacle was attracting crowds of onlookers. Tye later returned the body to the stall for examination. Ridge had also examined the knife found in the stables and discovered a piece of blood-soaked flannel in the handle, which he produced in court asserting, in the absence of any kind of scientific test, that the blood was unmistakably human, due to its ‘strong animal smell, very much like our dissecting knives’.
Within a week, the news of the ‘Roehampton Murder’ had hit the headlines across the country, terrifying the Victorian public, who were becoming increasingly anxious about their safety and the inability of the police to protect them. The idea of evil infiltrating a respectable, secure home through the actions of a servant exacerbated their fears. As days passed with no news of an arrest, the public followed the unfolding events in the press with morbid fascination and mounting anxiety. At first, the newspapers were confident of a swift resolution: ‘The police, it is almost needless to state, are exerting themselves to the utmost to catch the monster’ (The Times, 8 April 1842). But Daniel Good was proving difficult to track down. Despite the officers at Wandsworth police station having circulated a route paper – a written report passed by officers meeting on foot or by horse – with details of the crime and description of Good, to neighbouring divisions, it took almost 24 hours before the information was fully disseminated to the police stations throughout the capital, leaving Good with a head start. His first port of call, after his escape, was apparently Jane Jones’s lodgings, but as the route paper had not reached the Marylebone police by this time, they were not on the alert for him and Good passed by the address unnoticed. A cabman later confirmed his presence there and told the police that he had taken the fugitive to Whitcomb Street, near Trafalgar Square, and then to the Spotted Dog public house in the Strand, before dropping him in the East End.
Handbills and placards, with notices of Good’s particulars and the charge levied against him, as well as a £100 reward for information leading to his arrest were issued and, over the following days, there were sightings of Good all over the capital, even by a constable on his beat whom Good had asked about a local livery stable. The police questioned several individuals known to Good, including Lydia Susannah Butcher’s mother and Good’s estranged first wife, Molly – Good had been using Molly’s address in Spitalfields, even though they were no longer living together. Molly had last seen her former husband the week before the crime, when he had left her waiting in a coffee shop in Whitechapel, saying he was going to buy her an egg. He never returned. As the officers continued their search they kept missing Good, who even had enough time to pawn some of Jane’s belongings. Always on his tail but never quite close enough, by the time the items were discovered in the local pawnbroker’s, Good had escaped the net once again and left London for Kent.
Daniel Good was finally arrested after ten days on the run. Former Wandsworth police officer, Thomas Rose, had been working as a labourer on the new railway line at Tonbridge, in Kent, when he recognised Good from a notice in a copy of Hue and Cry – an early version of the Police Gazette – which he had seen in his lodgings. A woman’s apron spotted with blood was found in the prisoner’s possession. Good was taken into custody at Maidenhead Gaol and appeared before the magistrates at Bow Street police court shortly after. On 13 May 1842, he was tried at the Old Bailey. The court was packed with spectators who watched as he ‘leaned upon the bar in a most unconcerned manner’ (London Standard, 13 May 1842). Good pleaded not guilty to all charges. The police officers produced the evidence they had removed from the crime scene, including bones which had been tied with string, and the bloodstained knife and axe.
The jury took just 35 minutes to return a guilty verdict. Following the passing of the death sentence, Good made a lengthy speech declaring his innocence and placing the blame on Lydia Susannah Butcher whose behaviour, he claimed, had led to Jane Good committing suicide: ‘I declare to God that woman would have been alive but for Susan Butcher, who has been the source of all my misfortunes’. Good further alleged that he was attempting to dispose of the body when PC Gardiner knocked at the stable door. The spectators outside cheered as he was removed from court. On 23 May 1842, Daniel Good was executed in Newgate gaol in front of a large crowd. He climbed the steps of the scaffold with a firm step and, still protesting his innocence, called upon the Almighty to save his soul. The mob yelled insults as the executioner went to place the hood over his head and the prisoner shouted, ‘Stop, stop’. Denied one final opportunity to address the crowd, William Calcraft pulled the bolt and Good dropped to his death.
This was the latest of 22 murder cases in the capital during the previous 13 years, of which 14 had led to convictions, with seven remaining unsolved ‘either from (the suspects) having left the Kingdom, or from a want of sufficient legal evidence to obtain a conviction’. The case of Daniel Good was the most serious and it was time for the Metropolitan Police to form a detective department, which would ‘be available for all parts of the Police District, and employed whenever circumstances rendered desirable.’ The creation of the iconic detective department at Scotland Yard was announced in the press:
It was stated a few weeks since that it was the intention of the Commissioners of Police to form, out of the present police force a new company, to be called the “Detective Force.” The arrangements for carrying out the same are now completed, and will come into operation this day.
Morning Post, 8 August 1842
The history of Scotland Yard and this iconic case features in my new book, The Bermondsey Murder, which is now available to preorder.
