Sentimental Murder: Love and Madness in the Eighteenth Century

(#litres_trial_promo)’ – and it stood to prevent Sandwich being ridiculed as an old roué cuckolded by a younger man.

With the help of Sandwich and Hackman’s friends, the papers gradually sketched in a story about the three protagonists, with both plot and characters. They told a tale of two attractive young people – a dashing young army officer and an aristocrat’s mistress of great accomplishment – who meet by chance. The mistress has a keeper who is almost twice her age and with whom she has had five children. The young man falls in love, asks for the mistress’s hand in marriage, but is forced to leave his loved one and join his regiment in Ireland. Eager to return to the object of his affections, he leaves the army, takes holy orders, and asks Ray once again for her hand in marriage. Rejected by her, he is driven first to plan suicide and then to commit murder.

This story opened with richly detailed (though sometimes contradictory) accounts of Hackman and Ray’s first meeting. Several papers portrayed the two on romantic rides in the Huntingdonshire countryside: ‘It was Miss Ray’s custom, at that time, for the benefit of air and exercise, to ride out on horseback behind her servant. Undeniable it is, that Mr Hackman took frequent opportunities of riding out at the same time; and being a good horseman, and dexterous at a leap, was sure to afford no small diversion to the lady

(#litres_trial_promo).’ Others spoke of Hackman as ‘being of a facetious, agreeable turn of conversation’ which secured him a place at Sandwich’s table and a place close to Martha Ray. Joseph Cradock later

(#litres_trial_promo) recalled the first time that Hackman appeared at Hinchingbrooke, when he was asked to dinner and ended the evening unpacking a telescope, newly arrived from London, to look at the stars.

Sandwich’s house parties in Huntingdonshire were jolly and roistering, attended by musicians and naval explorers, Admiralty officials and minor literati, as well as other aristocrats and rakes. John Cooke, Sandwich’s chaplain, recalled that

The earl of Sandwich was one of the few noblemen, who spend a considerable portion of their time at their country-seats; where he usually resided whenever he could gain a vacation from the duties of his office, and attendance on parliament. His house was at all times open for the reception of his friends and neighbours; and distinguished for the generous, truly hospitable, and liberal entertainment which it afforded

(#litres_trial_promo).

Another of Sandwich’s friends put it more pithily: ‘Few houses were more pleasant or instructive than his lordship’s: it was filled with rank, beauty and talent, and every one was at ease

(#litres_trial_promo).’ Charles Burney

(#litres_trial_promo), the music scholar and father of the novelist Frances Burney, found the parties so boisterous that they gave him a headache. There must have been many witnesses who noticed the handsome young man who paid Martha Ray such attention. The beginnings of Hackman and Ray’s relationship were neither unknown nor obscure, for it had not been difficult for paragraph writers frequenting the fashionable coffee-houses of St James’s to pick up details from former guests at Sandwich’s country house.

Thereafter the story became more shadowy and suppositious. Attempts to find out what had occurred between Hackman’s departure from Hinchingbrooke and his presence on the steps of the Covent Garden Theatre four years later were met with silence and prevarication. ‘The lady’s [Ray’s] friends do not know that there has been any intercourse whatever since

(#litres_trial_promo)’, reported the opposition GeneralEvening Post. Lord Sandwich, as we have seen, took a similar line. The papers all agreed that Hackman had gone to Ireland, had exchanged his red coat for a clerical habit, and returned to London in the hope of persuading Ray to marry him. Many papers believed that Hackman’s clerical preferment to the living of Wiveton in Norfolk was obtained with the help of Sandwich, probably because of Ray’s solicitation for her friend. All of the press suggested a sudden change in Ray’s attitude towards Hackman, whom she pointedly refused to see.

The papers were perplexed by the nature of Hackman and Ray’s relationship – were they friends or lovers? Was their affection mutual or was Hackman enamoured of a woman who did not care for him? How often did they meet, and how intimate were they with one another? The General Advertiser, after reporting that ‘Lord Sandwich says he does not know there has been any intercourse’ since Hackman’s visit to Hinchingbrooke, confidently asserted, ‘We however hear that he [Hackman] renewed his addresses to her some time ago now at Huntingdon, and received some hopes, which her future conduct had entirely disappointed

(#litres_trial_promo).’ The General Evening Post, though it shifted the venue of the intrigue to London, was also sure that Ray had continued to meet Hackman: ‘his visits became frequent to the Admiralty … The Tables, however, afterwards turned in his disfavour; for, from whatever cause, he was certainly forbidden the house

(#litres_trial_promo).’ Whatever the papers said, they all agreed that the story ended tragically: Hackman was rejected and his final actions were prompted by terrible feelings of unrequited love.

In these versions of the drama, the characters were all portrayed sympathetically. Hackman was always an accomplished, handsome and admirable young man. On the day of his trial, he was described in the General Advertiser as ‘The unfortunate Mr

(#litres_trial_promo) Hackman’, who ‘was esteemed one of the most amiable of men. When in the army, his company was courted by all who knew him; his readiness to oblige, by every act of kindness in his power, endeared him to every body.’ The General Evening Post, the London Evening Post and the Gazetteer each printed a report describing him as ‘descended from a very reputable family; he is a person of a lively disposition, and was esteemed by his numerous acquaintance, and his character was never impeached until the unhappy catastrophe on Wednesday night

(#litres_trial_promo)’. Hackman’s respectable origins and his station in the middle ranks of society made his crime more extraordinary and his fate more sympathetic.

Much was made of the honourable nature of Hackman’s obsession. A correspondent who called himself ‘PHILANTHROPIST’ in the St James’s Chronicle of 10 April pointed out that ‘Mr Hackman, so far from being an abandoned and insensible profligate, was rather distinguished for taste and Delicacy of Sentiment

(#litres_trial_promo)’, while James Boswell wrote in the same paper a few days later:

As his manners were uncommonly amiable, his Mind and Heart seem to have been uncommonly pure and virtuous; for he never once attempted to have a licentious connection with Miss Ray. It may seem strange at first; but I can very well suppose, that had he been less virtuous, he would not have been so criminal. But his Passion was not to be diverted by inferior Gratifications. He loved Miss Ray with all his soul, and nothing could make him happy but having her all his own

(#litres_trial_promo).

Writers thought it important to establish that Hackman was no sexual predator – a rake or libertine – who lashed out in anger because of thwarted desire, but merely a young man hopelessly in love.

Martha Ray, ‘the lovely victim

(#litres_trial_promo)’ as she was described in the London Chronicle, was given a similarly good press. The PHILANTHROPIST who praised Hackman described her as ‘irreproachable in her conduct, any otherwise than what perhaps was not well in her power to prevent, that she was unprotected by the legal Marriage ceremony

(#litres_trial_promo)’. A poor girl who became a rich man’s mistress was hardly culpable. The General Evening Post assured its readers that ‘the memory of Miss Ray, with respect to Mr Hackman, stands clear, at present, of every imputation

(#litres_trial_promo)’. He may have loved her, but she remained true to her keeper. The St James’s Chronicle saw her as a female paragon. It glossed over the potentially sordid origins of Ray’s relationship with Sandwich, alluding only to her being ‘under the protection of the noble Peer

(#litres_trial_promo)’. It lauded her looks and accomplishments: ‘Her person was very fine, her face agreeable, and she had every Accomplishment that could adorn a woman, particularly those of Singing, and Playing most exquisitely on the Harpsichord

(#litres_trial_promo).’ And it placed her in the bosom of the family: ‘She was also highly respected by all those who knew her, especially all the Servants, and her death is most sincerely regretted in the Family

(#litres_trial_promo).’

Several papers dwelt on Ray’s virtues as a companion and parent. Her fidelity to Sandwich, the General Evening Post reported, ‘was never suspected’. In return for his ‘protection’ Ray gave Sandwich a ‘life of gratitude and strict fidelity

(#litres_trial_promo)’. Her five surviving children were raised, according to the London Chronicle, with the ‘strictness of motherly attention

(#litres_trial_promo)’. Several papers reported on her concern for the financial well being of her much-loved but illegitimate children. ‘Miss Ray made it a rule, on the birth of every child,’ they wrote, ‘to solicit her noble admirer for an immediate provision for it, which was invariably acquiesced in.’ Her children were therefore provided for after her death: ‘the issue of this lady will have nothing to lament from her sad fate … but the circumstance of having lost a tender mother

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In the eighteenth century charity came high among the concerns of virtuous women, and Ray was seen as no exception. She was ‘liberal in a high degree, and the bounty of her noble Lover enabled her to indulge benevolence, in becoming the patroness of the poor’. One of the objects of her charity, it was said, was her elderly and poor parents who lived in Elstree. She could not refuse them aid though, in line with her reputation for moral scrupulousness, she refused to see her father because of the way he had encouraged her to become a mistress or a courtesan.

Ray’s most remarked upon quality was her having mastered the skills of an elegant lady. Sandwich, the papers said, had spent lavishly to refashion a milliner’s apprentice as a lady. The London Chronicle waxed lyrical on her accomplishments:

There was scarce any polite art in which she was not adept, nor any part of female literature with which she was not conversant. All the world are acquainted with the unrivalled sweetness of her vocal powers, but it was the peculiar pleasure of a few only to know that her conversation, her feelings, and indeed her general deportment, all participated of an unparalleled delicacy, which had characterized her through life

(#litres_trial_promo).

No doubt the shocking manner of Martha Ray’s death prompted a surge of sympathy for her. The General Advertiser commented on how ‘all ranks of people drop the tear of pity on her bier, while the sharp tooth of slander seems for a time to have lost its edge

(#litres_trial_promo)’. Even the author of one of the most vicious attacks on Ray, a mock opera published in 1776 that had portrayed her as an unfaithful greedy harridan who twists a besotted but impotent Sandwich round her finger, was heard ‘to describe in the most pathetic terms, the amiable qualifications of her head and heart

(#litres_trial_promo)’. Sympathy for Ray stemmed equally from admiration for a poor, fallen woman who had successfully transformed herself not into a flamboyant courtesan, but into a respectable mother who could pass for a lady.

Sandwich was the least likely of the three victims of Hackman’s crime to be treated kindly in the press, but even he was accorded an unusually sympathetic reception. Naturally enough the government-subsidized Morning Post pleaded his case:

Is there any one so obdurate, however party may have warped or blunted his affections, as not to feel some little concern for a man, who, in the course of one month, has had a personal accusation adduced against his honesty as a man – several vague imputations, and the measure of a direct charge against his character, as a Minister – a daughter dead [his daughter-in-law had just died], and a beloved friend most bloodily assassinated?

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But even the opposition papers were willing to acknowledge Sandwich’s dignity in his suffering. Several articles emphasized his benevolence towards Martha Ray – his willingness to pay for her education and to provide for their offspring. His performance as a good father and spouse matched the domestic virtues of his murdered lover. Others praised his remarkable action in being willing to forgive James Hackman for his terrible crime. ‘We are assured from respectable authority, that a noble Lord, much interested in the death of the late unfortunate Miss Ray, pitying the fate of the unhappy Hackman, sent a message to him after condemnation by the Honourable Captain W––– [Walsingham], informing him, “that he would endeavour to get him a pardon;” but that unhappy man replied, “he wished not to live, but to expatiate his offence, if possible, by his death

(#litres_trial_promo)”.’

Above all, reports of Sandwich’s suffering at the news of Ray’s death made the man who was regularly depicted in the opposition press as a political monster appear altogether more vulnerable and human. He was ‘inconsolable’…‘he wrung his hands and cried, exclaiming – “I could have borne anything but this; but this unmans me

(#litres_trial_promo)”.’ The General Advertiser suggested that Sandwich was so stricken that his servants feared that he might kill himself, while the Gazetteer depicted his situation as ‘deplorable’ and portrayed him as withdrawn and wounded, seeing ‘no one but his dearest friends

(#litres_trial_promo)’. The St James’s Chronicle, no special admirer of Sandwich as a politician, summarized the prevailing sentiment: