(originally posted 15 January 2018)
Not everyone’s lives are a rollercoaster of
excitement or celebrity. Such was that
of William Mellish Esq., a respected ship and commercial property owner who
made his fortune providing the British navy and other vessels with fresh meat,
suet and other supplies.
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| 'Entrance to the London Docks' engraved by Charles Heath, drawn by Peter DeWint, (1829), image from https://www.bl.uk |
On a freezing February afternoon in 1833, Mellish
stopped in at Spread Eagle Court to do a spot of banking. Unbeknownst to him, a shadowy figure lurked in
the entrance of the court directly opposite. As Mellish exited the bank and entered Spread
Eagle Alley, the man walked up behind him and shot him twice in back of the
neck, in full view of witnesses.
The
assailant then calmly cast the weapon aside as Mellish, bleeding profusely,
cried out, “What does this mean? I don’t
understand it - what does this mean?!”
The man coolly replied, “Mr Mellish, you tried to
kill me and I tried to kill you if I could”.
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| The approximate scene of the crime where Spread Eagle Alley once was (image courtesy of Google Maps) |
What had Mellish done to deserve this? Was the motive robbery? Or a business deal gone sour? Witnesses commented on the gunman's lucidity
immediately after the shooting. Making
no attempt to escape, he sat on the pavement and waited for the police to turn
up, confessing, "I have done it - I have followed him for a month, and I
know I shall be hanged for it; I won't hurt any of you - take me where you
like, I won't offer to go". Mellish
was rushed to Mr Miles, a surgeon on nearby Throgmorton Street. The first musket ball exited an inch in front
of Mellish’s ear and was discovered on the floor of a nearby tailor’s shop. A
week later, the second was extracted from Mellish’s neck.
A rich heritage and 'madness'
Two years earlier Captain Noah Pease Folger was the
master and commander of Mellish’s whaling ship, Partridge, but had been
dismissed on charges of misconduct. A
dispute erupted: Folger claimed he was owed between £1200 - £1300 but was only
awarded £848, which Mellish paid immediately. Crucially, Capt. Folger was denied an
all-important character testimonial by Mellish and it was this straw that broke
the camel’s back.
Folger descended from a proud and distinguished
line of whalers said to be related to Benjamin Franklin who were also
name-checked in Herman Melville's Moby Dick (1851). Soon Folger was convinced Mellish had
intentionally besmirched his reputation and ruined future opportunities,
depriving him of a living, and from that day forward Folger became a man
obsessed. A witness later recalled, “I
have heard him speak very violently of Mr Mellish indeed! As soon as Mr Mellish’s name was mentioned,
he was like a madman”.
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| The Folger family as mentioned in Herman Melville's Moby Dick, 1922 edition and image from https://archive.org |
What are fascinating are the varying degrees of
Captain Folger’s alleged insanity: he erupted with fury at the mere mention of
Mellish’s name before the attempted murder, yet his behaviour after the
shooting was calm and resigned. Folger followed Mellish for weeks leading up to
the shooting and had purchased a horse whip specially to beat him with,
indicating premeditation, however testimony from Folger’s fellow mariners
aboard the Partridge in 1826 painted him as a dangerously unstable man capable
of harming himself and others without a thought.
While sailing the South Seas route, Folger
reportedly hurled iron bars at passing whales and then attempted to jump from
the ship onto their backs. Half-naked,
he waltzed with chairs in the cabin and smashed panes of glass with his bare
fists, dancing on the broken shards. As soon as he’d been patched up, he
repeated the bloody ritual all over again.
He was known to scramble out of bed in the dead of night, convinced that
Satan himself had entered the cabin, and steadfastly refused to sleep below
deck for fear of ghost of the ship’s cook who’d been dead for two months. Convinced the crew planned to rob him, he
locked up his possessions and slept with loaded horse pistols next to his head
nightly.
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| Image from https://archive.org |
The Verdict
Unsurprisingly, 37-year old Captain Folger entered
a plea of insanity and the jury took just 20 minutes to acquit him of murder,
although he was found guilty of breaking the peace and wounding with intent to
kill. He was sentenced to imprisonment
by Sir Peter Laurie, the then Lord Mayor who, like Mellish, is buried in
Highgate Cemetery West. Interestingly, despite the successful insanity plea,
Folger was moved from Newgate to the County Lunatic Asylum but was then moved
back to Newgate after the Superintendent of the Asylum noted the “establishment
was not intended for the care of sane persons”.
Redressing the balance
William Mellish passed away the following year, his
ultimate demise no doubt sped up by his earlier brush with death. It was then that Folger’s lawyers, the
Sheriff and even the Governor of Newgate campaigned for his release on the
basis that Folger posed no threat to the public as Mellish was now dead. The appeal was successful and a full pardon
was granted to Captain Folger but on one condition: he was to leave Britain
permanently within 30 days, in addition to “entering into his own recognizances
to keep the peace during the remainder of his life”. After three years and nine months as a
prisoner, Noah Pease Folger was a free man and returned to Nantucket where he
died three years later on 7th December 1837.
William Mellish was survived by two daughters (both married into minor aristocracy) to whom he left properties estimated at
the eye-watering sum of over £1 million (the inheritance later resulted in a
particularly ugly court battle between the sisters and their husbands, but
that's a different story!). Mellish and seven other family members were then
moved from the original family plot in St John’s, Wapping, to the plot in
Highgate Cemetery West by his daughter in 1859, some 25 years after his
original interment.
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