Everything about James Hackman totally explained
The Reverend
James Hackman (baptized
13 December 1752, hanged
19 April 1779), briefly
Rector of
Wiveton in
Norfolk, was the murderer who killed
Martha Ray (c. 1742–1779), singer and mistress of
John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich.
Early life
Baptized on
13 December 1752 at
Gosport,
Hampshire, Hackman was the son of William and Mary Hackman. His father had served in the
Royal Navy as a
lieutenant. Hackman was
apprenticed to a
mercer, and although according to some accounts he became a member of
St John's College, Cambridge, no record of this can be traced at
Cambridge. and in 1776 was promoted lieutenant, but by early 1777 he'd resigned from the
army to become a
clergyman. On
24 February 1779, Hackman was ordained a
deacon of the
Church of England and on
28 February a
priest, and on
1 March 1779 was instituted as
Rector of
Wiveton, a place which he may never have visited.
Martha Ray
In about 1775, while he was a serving army officer, Hackman visited
Lord Sandwich's house at
Hinchingbrooke and met his host's mistress
Martha Ray. who had lived with Lord Sandwich as his wife since the age of seventeen and had given birth to nine of his children.
On
14 April 1779, Martha Ray was entombed inside the parish church of
Elstree,
Hertfordshire, but her body was later moved into the cemetery.
On
16 April 1779, just nine days after the event, Hackman was tried for murder at the
Old Bailey. Despite having previously decided to plead guilty, in the event he pleaded not guilty, explaining that "the justice of my country ought to be satisfied by suffering my offence to be proved". Hackman was convicted and sentenced to be hanged.
After the trial,
James Boswell told Frederick Booth that Hackman had behaved "with Decency, Propriety, and in such a Manner as to interest everyone present".
At Tyburn, "Hackman... behaved with great fortitude; no appearances of fear were to be perceived, but very evident signs of contrition and repentance". His body was later publicly dissected at Surgeons' Hall, London.
Horace Walpole remarked that the murder fascinated much of London during April 1779. At first, given Sandwich's position as
First Lord of the Admiralty, a political motive was suspected. Not long before, Sandwich and Martha Ray had found themselves fleeing from
Admiralty House, where a mob was rioting against the government and in particular against what it saw as the mistreatment of
Admiral Keppel.
The affair inspired
Sir Herbert Croft's epistolary novel
Love and Madness (1780), an imagined correspondence between Hackman and Martha Ray. In this, Hackman is dealt with sympathetically. He is represented as a man of sensibility suffering from an extreme case of unrequited love who descends into suicidal and homicidal despair, even to the point that the reader is invited to identify with Hackman rather than with his victim.
Samuel Johnson and
Topham Beauclerk debated whether Hackman had meant to kill only himself. Boswell himself (who had visited Hackman in prison) wrote that the case showed "the dreadful effects that the passion of Love may produce".
In his
Mind-Forg'd Manacles (1987), the
social historian Roy Porter argues that Hackman was well aware of the madness of his passion.
Likenesses
A
mezzotint of Hackman by Robert Laurie, after Robert Dighton, was published in 1779. Another engraving of Hackman (artist unknown) was used as an illustration in
The Case and Memoirs of the Late Rev. Mr James Hackman (1779).
[Further Information]
Get more info on 'James Hackman'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://james_hackman.totallyexplained.com">James Hackman Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
