four of this generation can be expected to know correctly), let me pass to
the circumstantial details of the affair.

Yet, first of all, one word as to the local scene of the murders.
Ratcliffe Highway is a public thoroughfare in a most chaotic quarter of
eastern or nautical London; and at this time (viz., in 1812), when no
adequate police existed except the _detective_ police of Bow Street,
admirable for its own peculiar purposes, but utterly incommensurate to the
general service of the capital, it was a most dangerous quarter. Every
third man at the least might be set down as a foreigner. Lascars, Chinese,
Moors, Negroes, were met at every step. And apart from the manifold
ruffianism, shrouded impenetrably under the mixed hats and turbans of men
whose past was untraceable to any European eye, it is well known that the
navy (especially, in time of war, the commercial navy) of Christendom is
the sure receptacle of all the murderers and ruffians whose crimes have
given them a motive for withdrawing themselves for a season from the
public eye. It is true, that few of this class are qualified to act as
'able' seamen: but at all times, and especially during war, only a small
proportion (or _nucleus_) of each ship's company consists of such men: the
large majority being mere untutored landsmen. John Williams, however, who
had been occasionally rated as a seaman on board of various Indiamen, &c.,
was probably a very accomplished seaman. Pretty generally, in fact, he was
a ready and adroit man, fertile in resources under all sudden
difficulties, and most flexibly adapting himself to all varieties of
social life. Williams was a man of middle stature (five feet seven and
a-half, to five feet eight inches high), slenderly built, rather thin, but
wiry, tolerably muscular, and clear of all superfluous flesh. A lady, who
saw him under examination (I think at the Thames Police Office), assured
me that his hair was of the most extraordinary and vivid color, viz.,
bright yellow, something between an orange and lemon color. Williams had