Murder
Recalled – Mary Bax, 1783
‘Every
now and then a melancholy house is seen suggestive of
ghosts and murders, but the windows are darkened, and not an inhabitant is to
be found. … [Y]ou look ahead to the miles and miles of dreary waste with fear
and trembling. All at once you stand rooted before a white sepulchral stone,
which the moon brings in relief. For fifty yards around this spot vegetation
has ceased; the grass will not grow, the flowers refuse to bloom. …Is it a mile
stone or a boundary mark? Neither. It is a murder sign!’
This somewhat melodramatic description comes from Clement William
Scott’s Round About The Island (published
in 1874). The location he’s describing is a headstone situated halfway long the
ancient highway, which runs between the Kentish towns of Sandwich and Deal (a
distance of 4 miles). According to Scott this is the site where one Mary Bax
was ‘brutally murdered’ by Martin Lash – ‘a foreign seaman’. He goes on:
Our blood curdles in our veins, and we picture the murder
on such a dreary night as this, and the shrieks of Mary Bax being carried out
to sea over the salt sand-hills; no help at hand, nothing to save her from the
bludgeon of Martin Lash.
The bloody incident, Scott informs his
readers, took place in 1792, ‘so long ago,’ he writes, ‘that possibly it was
not true’. Only it was true. Both
Mary Bax and Martin Lash (also spelt ‘Laas’, ‘Lass, and Lascar’) had once been
living breathing souls, whose paths crossed one fateful day during the summer
of 1783 (and not 1792 as Scott stated). There are also other errors in Scott’s
account of the murder. So what is the truth behind the slaying of Mary Bax? Who
was Martin Lash? And what was his motive?
Today the ancient highway snakes its way between the farmland and golf
courses. During the late 1700s the
landscape – known as the ‘sandhills’ – was a mixture of grassy dunes and marshy
pasture used for grazing, with clumps of willow clinging to the banks of the
water-filled ditches that criss-crossed fields. Then as now it was an isolated
spot, perfect for anyone harbouring nefarious motives. As L. Fussell comments
in A Journey Around the Coast of Kent (1818),
‘[it] is both disagreeable and dangerous.’ Of course, Fussell’s remarks refer
mainly with the nature of the terrain. But he would most likely have been aware
of the Bax murder, so when he says ‘dangerous’ perhaps it’s not just the
landscape he’s alluding too.
According
to Robert Michael Ballantyne, in his 1864 book The Lifeboat, Mary was a ‘young and beautiful girl’. Burial records
record her as twenty-three-years-old. ‘Having occasion to visit Deal,’
Ballantyne wrote, ‘she set out one evening on her solitary walk across the
bleak sandhills.’ Mary was heading for Sandwich, some four miles away, though
Ballantyne gives no reason for her journey. At the halfway point she is
accosted by a ‘brutal foreign seaman’ called ‘Lascar’ – not Lash as in most
other accounts. ‘This monster,’ Ballantyne continued, ‘murdered the poor girl
and threw her body into a ditch that lies close to the spot on which her tomb
now stands.’
Again no motive is given. It’s as if Lash (or in this case ‘Lascar’)
just attacked Mary for no reason. And as with Scott’s account, Ballantyne is
wrong on a number of points. The most important of these is Mary’s burial. The
ground in which the murder victims was interred was not consecrated ground. So
Mary would not have been buried here.
John Winter was Mary’s seventeen-year-old ‘devoted admirer’. Upon
hearing of her murder he vows to hunt down Lascar, resting ‘neither night nor
day’ until he has satisfied his desire for revenge. Winter’s little brother,
David, just happened to be on his way the Checker’s Inn when he witnessed the
murder. The terrified boy then runs to inform his brother. ‘It was chiefly
through the exertions of these two,’ Ballantyne tells us, ‘that the murderer
was finally brought to justice.’ A heartbroken John Winter then leaves the
country, returning thirty years later when ‘the crime had been forgotten and
most of his old friends and companions were [either] dead or gone abroad’. But
it’s still a bitter homecoming, for Winter learns that during his absence David
was drowned at sea.
If this is all sounding like some mid-nineteenth century sensation novel
then you’d be right. The Lifeboat is actually a work of fiction. A search
through the local records did reveal a John Winter, who was born in Deal on 16th
October 1767. This would make him the same age as his namesake in the book. But
whether or not he was an actual ‘admirer’
of Mary Bax is open to speculation. A similar search for John’s little brother
was fruitless.
Ballantyne’s was not the only fictional account of Mary’s murder. In
1850 the Penny Illustrated News published
“Mary Bax: A Tale, Founded on Fact” by Thomas Mills.
R.M. Ballantyne and the cover of his 1864
novel, The Lifeboat.
The story opens with Mary looking out at a moonlit sea at the ships
anchored off shore. Believing she is alone she comments on the beauty of the
site before her and the greatness of God. A voice behind concurs. Startled she
turns to find Martin Lash (whom we are told is of Spanish birth, but has lived
most of his life in England) is there too. After a brief exchange of
pleasantries they bid each other good night. Lash, who is by now madly in love,
watches Mary recede into the distance. Later he declares his love for her. But
Mary is already engaged to another – a sailor who is away at sea – and she
rejects Lash’s romantic proposal.
“Since then,” said Martin ironically, “the conversation
is painful, doubtless my presence is not required. I wish you good evening,
Miss Bax; the next time we meet again,” he continued, his eyes gleaming with
rage, “it will be under different circumstances – we shall see who will be the
suer then.”
Mary
is terrified by Lash’s rage. She later, through a ‘torrent of tears’, explains
to her father what has occurred, and how she believes Lash now ‘intends me
harm’. Her father tries to console her, saying the Spaniard’s angry words are
nothing more than hurt vanity. But the experience unsettles Mary for days after
and she experience nightmares. Weeks later she meets Martin Lash on the ancient
highway, where (after conveniently being told to ‘prepare to die!’) she is
strangled.
Lash goes on the run, but is later caught in a churchyard in Dover.
After his trial he is executed at the murder site and gibbeted; his bones being
left to ‘blanch in the sun’.
Mills’ account to us would seem over the top melodramatic. But for the
Victorians they just couldn’t get enough. Other notorious crimes and criminals
were retold by writers, who wouldn’t allow a little thing such as historical accuracy
to get in the way of a good yarn. Mill’s even gives us a description of Mary
Bax, but is it accurate? According to him she was of middle height with a
‘faultless figure’ and ‘symmetrical proportions’. Her features were plain, but
the more you looked at them the more pleasing they became. When serious, her
‘wild blue eyes’ kindled into ‘vivacious brilliancy’ and ‘sparkled with
diamond-like lustre’.
As with nineteenth century accounts on Jack Sheppard, Sweeney Todd and
Dick Turpin, it’s hard to know in Mills’ account of the murder of Mary Bax
where fiction ends and historical truth begins. So let me repeat an earlier
question. What is the truth behind the slaying of Mary Bax? To answer that it’s
best we turn to the official records, which paint a far less romantic picture.
St Peter’s Church burial register recording the date of Mary’s burial.
The morning of Monday 25th
August 1783 had been one of sunshine and showers. At around 10 a.m.
twenty-five-year-old Mary Bax, a well-respected young woman from Deal, began
her journey along the ancient highway to Sandwich. The purpose of her journey
was to deliver a parcel (sadly, records don’t record its contents). As she
passes the Checker’s Inn (also known as the ‘halfway house’) she passes a young
vagabond sitting at the road side. Whether Mary took any notice of Martin Laas
(all the official records spell his name thus) is not known. But upon spotting
Mary carrying her parcel Laas decides to follow and rob her.
He stalks his victim for about half a mile, before finally catching her
up. Laas asks for directions to Sheerness. Mary replies that he is a ‘great
distance’ away, and when Lass begs for money to ‘bear his expences’, Miss Bax
regrets she has none to give. Unperturbed, Martin Laas accompanies his prey a
little longer. The Newgate Calendar reveals
what occurred next:
…[O]n
passing a ditch, [he] pushed her into
it, and jumping upon her, into mud and water up to his middle, and thus
smothered her. He then took a bundle which she carried in her hands, and her
shoes from her feet, with which he made off through the marshes, across the
country towards Dover.
Unfortunately for Laas his crime was witnessed by a looker’s son
(‘Looker being a Kentish colloquialism for a shepherd). The boy, whose surname
was Rogers (eleven or
twelve-year-of-age), had been sheltering from the rain in a haystack, when he
heard Mary’s desperate screams. Upon seeing Rogers coming towards him Laas
fled. After discovering Mary’s body lying among the reeds and bulrushes, Rogers
then ran toward Deal to raise the alarm. He was immediately taken to the local
magistrate, where he explained all.
Martin Laas was eventually caught sleeping in a churchyard in Dover
(some more contemporary accounts state it was Folkestone). He was committed to
St Dunstan’s Gaol at Canterbury, to await his trial at the next Maidstone
Assizes.
The only known illustration of Martin Laas, as featured in the Illustrated
Police News of 18 November 1882.
At his trial in Maidstone the defendant behaved with ‘unparalleled
audacity’. He showed no remorse; on the contrary he appeared very cheerful. He
mocked the court and insulted the witnesses. When the guilty verdict was given
Laas gave three cheers and became so rowdy that the judge ordered that the
prisoner be chained to the floor of his cell, until the time of his execution.
It was during this period that Laas confessed to the murder. He was hanged on
Penenden Heath, which until Christmas 1830 was the site for all Maidstone’s
executions. Laas didn’t die alone. Also upon the scaffold was John Huntley (convicted
of murdering his wife). After the execution Huntley was sent to be anatomized,
but the surgeons, according to the Newgate
Calendar, had no interest in Laas and his corpse was burned beneath the
gallows.
Laas,
it was later established, had been born in Norwegian port of Bergen in 1756. As
a boy he had come to England aboard a Danish trading ship. Deserting the
services of his employer, he then joined the British Royal Navy, where he saw
action in the West-Indies at the Battle of Grenada (1779) and the Battle of the Saintes (1782). But after several years’ service
he was discharge. Like many dismissed sailors Laas fell into destitution, which
would eventually lead him to murder. ‘In this culprit,’ wrote the Newgate Calendar, ‘we have another deplorable
instance of dismissing seamen, often pennyless [sic], at the end of that war, in which they often have
conquered.’ It continued ungratefully, ‘When
foreigners enlist under our banner, and having served our purpose, ought not
the government, at least, to send them back to their own home?’
As for Mary Bax, she wasn’t buried where she’d been murdered. Only the
condemned criminals were interred in unconsecrated ground. Instead Mary was
laid to rest in the churchyard of St Peter’s Church in Sandwich. The stone
erected out on the ancient highway was commissioned by her friends. Upon it was
inscribed the following:
On this spot
August the 25th,
1782,
MARY BAX, spinster,
was murdered by
Martin Lash, a foreigner,
who was executed for the
same.
The year, of course, is wrong. An error made
by the stonemason perhaps? The burial register for St Peter’s records that
‘Mary Bax, spinster, aged 23, [was] murdered near sandwich, 25 Aug.’, and
interred three days later.
The ancient highway looking towards Deal and the stone marking where Mary was murdered.
Copyright © Martin Charlton,
2016
