innocence and good character that the court warned him to stop. The twists and turns of this hearing, though, could not stop the irrevocable progress towards the trial proper. It was set for January 6, 1824, at Hertford.


Through November, December and Christmas the three remained as prisoners, while the rest of the country went wild. A play was put on in London, featuring, it claimed, ‘the actual buggy driven by Thurtell’. The play itself became the subject of legal action.


Newspapers and ‘broadsheets’ fuelled the public’s craving for more and more grisly details of this sensational case. No report failed to mention Thurtell’s fall from grace as the ‘son of Alderman Thurtell of Norwich’.


Yet, as it would until the very end, there existed a strange sympathy for Thurtell. He was well known to, and liked by, journalists and the sporting fraternity. He seemed somehow a likeable rogue who, despite his failings, was gaining a gallantry in his final chaos.


Final, it certainly was. With either foresight or fervour, the authorities had begun the construction of the gallows before the trial had even commenced.


In an even grimmer spectacle, Weare’s already buried body was exhumed to give another witness to seeing him with Thurtell in London the chance to identify him. Needless to say, the state of the corpse rendered this impossible.


The trial and execution


So we come to January 6, 1824. A considerable array of legal talent was brought to bear. It was a complex affair, and much evidence was discussed in lengthy cross-examinations. Money, obviously one of the motives, along with Jack’s revenge, had been taken from Weare, but the amount varied in the testimonies. A surgeon’s evidence was presented. Characters that it’s not possible to describe in this brief version of a very complicated story were brought before the judge and jury. These included Probert’s wife and some fifty-four witnesses to various stages of the tale. Jack Thurtell was initially confident and became quite theatrical.


Theatre was an appropriate metaphor for what was going on. The town was full of visitors. Probert’s cottage had become a tourist attraction, with the landlord, who was owed rent, charging to see it.


Behind the scenes an extraordinary legal trick had been performed. Probert had been granted immunity on the condition that he appeared as a witness against Thurtell. He accepted, and he did Jack no favours. Neither did Hunt, who was the most unsettled of the three, presumably because it was known that he had led the authorities to the body.


The fact was, though, with Probert safe, it was only Hunt and Thurtell’s necks that were in danger of the drop.


Eventually, because it was still the protocol in 1824, Thurtell was allowed to speak in his own defence. Speak he did. He began well, questioning circumstantial evidence and briefly making headway. However, he spoke too long and said too much. By the time he’d finished he’d thrown


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up so many contradictions that he’d done himself more harm than good.


The judge’s summing up was almost as long a speech as Jack’s. It was 3:25pm when he finished. The jury retired.


Thurtell was now free from legally imposed silence, and he spoke openly with many in the court. They liked him. They told him that his speech had been good. Thurtell seemed to enjoy the flattery and spoke of how he’d compiled the speech.


At 4:05pm the jury returned. Hunt and Thurtell were guilty. The jury foreman was in tears, and it was, as one eyewitness recorded, as if the foreman was saying ‘we tried to find him innocent but the evidence was too strong’.


After a brief legal argument over a finer point of procedure, the judge sentenced the two men to hang.


That night Thurtell only woke once. He said: ‘William, are you there?’ His guard answered: ‘That’s right’, and Jack fell back into a deep sleep.


The gallows were already complete. Jack Thurtell was to be the first to die on this new design of ‘humane’ execution. Crowds began to gather.


In his cell, Jack veered between desperation and a seeming bravado. Interested until the end, he was anxious to read the report of Tom Spring’s bruising defeat of Jack Langan in a hugely anticipated boxing match.


He was well treated in prison and fulsome in his gratitude. He loved oranges and devoured those brought in by the Chaplain.


He spent his last night sharing his cell with Joe Hunt. Hunt had been scared of how Thurtell might greet him as it was his revelations of the body that had done most harm. But Jack was forgiving. They were both asleep when the cell door opened on Jack’s last morning.


It was a short walk from the cell to the gallows. Wearing a dark brown coat and white breeches, Jack approached the steps. His legs were in chains which were, in a final dash of elegance, tied to his waist by the very symbol of the ‘Fancy’, a Belcher handkerchief.


A company of soldiers armed with staves surrounded the gallows but were not required to control the 15,000 strong crowd who acted peacefully, many of them removing their hats in silence as Jack appeared.


Several reports claim he bowed briefly to somebody in the crowd, and close to the gallows. It was Pierce Egan, a last literary link.


Jack stood silent as the noose was put in place and held out his neck to help the hangman.


From under the white hood placed over his face, he then spoke to ask the executioner to ‘give him fall enough’. He was assured that the gallows would work perfectly.


In a second he was gone. Dropped into eternity. He had raced from Norwich to notoriety.


Epilogue


Some in the crowd fainted. Some saw four ‘horse expresses’, or ‘fast riders’, leave on the moment of death, galloping toward London. It was believed that they were headed for


the mysterious Mr Lemming, to assure the gangs that Jack had uttered no betrayal of them at the last.


Hunt had his sentence commuted to transportation on the night before his execution. He was a wreck of a man, and despite escaping death, he was seen to tremble at the sight of the ship to take him away.


Probert, of course, was alive and free. Nonetheless, it was not to last. He died on the gallows, for horse theft, in June 1825.


Quite why this vicious murder, undoubtedly committed by Thurtell, worked its way into the national imagination is difficult to say. There is a seedy glamour in the Regency sporting fraternity and its links with the London underworld. Jack was well known, and for all his faults well liked. The fact that he came from wealthy, law abiding Norwich stock and fell so far added extra zest. For some or all of these reasons, the story found its way into books, poems, ballads and plays. The gallows on which Thurtell died became a Madame Tussauds exhibit.


If you look, he still lives on in the writings of several eminent authors, at least three of whom had met him.


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