A second purpose of this paper is, to
make the reader acquainted circumstantially with three memorable cases of
murder, which long ago the voice of amateurs has crowned with laurel, but
especially with the two earliest of the three, viz., the immortal
Williams' murders of 1812. The act and the actor are each separately in
the highest degree interesting; and, as forty-two years have elapsed since
1812, it cannot be supposed that either is known circumstantially to the
men of the current generation.
Never, throughout the annals of universal Christendom, has there indeed
been any act of one solitary insulated individual, armed with power so
appalling over the hearts of men, as that exterminating murder, by which,
during the winter of 1812, John Williams in one hour, smote two houses
with emptiness, exterminated all but two entire households, and asserted
his own supremacy above all the children of Cain. It would be absolutely
impossible adequately to describe the frenzy of feelings which, throughout
the next fortnight, mastered the popular heart; the mere delirium of
indignant horror in some, the mere delirium of panic in others. For twelve
succeeding days, under some groundless notion that the unknown murderer
had quitted London, the panic which had convulsed the mighty metropolis
diffused itself all over the island. I was myself at that time nearly
three hundred miles from London; but there, and everywhere, the panic was
indescribable.
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