A sex scandal 225 years in the making

The saturation coverage in newspapers and on television of Scott Peterson’s recent trial makes abundantly clear (for those who may somehow have forgotten the lessons of the O.J. case) just how engrossing the public seems to find the spectacle of a shocking murder -- especially a killing that includes illicit sex. Public protestations of horror and disgust consort uneasily with the prurient fascination so evidently on display. Poring over the particulars as a staple of our daily entertainment, we profess ourselves shocked (shocked!) by the depravity of our fellow creatures. Then we hunger for more.

“A Sentimental Murder” by University of Chicago historian John Brewer suggests that this not very attractive display of hypocrisy is an enduring feature of popular culture and reminds us that some of these true-life soap operas have had exceptionally long runs. His “sentimental murder” is an 18th century episode, one that stirs a goodly smattering of snobbery into the mix, as befits the tale of an English aristocrat, his beautiful but lowborn mistress and the soldier-turned-clergyman who perhaps was her other lover but most certainly was her nemesis. Even distinguished academic historians, it would appear, are not immune to the fascinations of these domestic melodramas.

Martha Ray was, in 18th century argot, a demirep -- not just a casual mistress, yet not a respectable wife. She was someone who was seen in public with her aristocratic keeper (indeed, her portrait hung in his offices at the Admiralty) but could expect to be snubbed by society ladies, who treated her as a nonentity even when she was physically present. Born into poverty, possessed of great beauty and a singing voice to match, Ray at a young age attracted the attentions of the notorious libertine John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich (after whom the snack is named). Sandwich already had a suitably blueblood wife who could provide the necessary heir and a spare. Ray became essentially a second, common-law wife, bearing him nine children and serving as his constant companion for more than 16 years. In the convoluted sexual hierarchy that characterized the 18th century, Ray had far surpassed not just the women of the street and the brothel but even comparatively well-to-do courtesans.

On the night of April 7, 1779, the Earl of Sandwich was hard at work in his office, as was his habit -- hence the need for fortifying snacks of salt beef and bread. As First Lord of the Admiralty, he had much to occupy him, plotting strategy to defeat the rebellious colonists in North America. Meanwhile, Ray was headed for Covent Garden in the company of a Signora Galli to attend a crowded performance of two operas, “Rose and Colin” and “Love in a Village,” that lasted more than five hours. From her prominent perch near the royal box, Ray’s beauty was on display to the lesser beings in the stalls below, where lurked a former army officer, the Rev. James Hackman.

Onstage, the plot about a marriage between social unequals unfolded, moving toward an inevitably happy denouement. Below, Hackman worked himself into an emotional lather, dashed off to his nearby lodgings, penned a suicide note and returned to the theater with two loaded pistols. Ray, it turns out, had spurned his prior offer to marry her and take her to his new rural parish. Then, as the crowds left the performance and the object of his affection got ready to enter her carriage, he dashed forward, raised a pistol and shot her dead. Attempting to follow her into the afterlife, he succeeded only in grazing himself with his second bullet before being wrestled to the ground and carted off to jail.

Eighteenth century British justice offers some interesting contrasts to its modern U.S. counterpart. Hackman’s trial at the Old Bailey lasted a day. His plea of temporary insanity was brushed aside and the judge donned the dreaded black cap. Three days later, he was driven in a mourning coach to Tyburn Gallows, where he was hanged before a throng gathered for the occasion. When Hackman’s dance at the end of a rope concluded, his body was cut down and sent to Surgeon’s Hall for dissection.

Such are the facts of the case that forms the centerpiece of Brewer’s analysis. But an attempt to figure out what “really” happened on the night of April 7, is not for him. Were Hackman and Ray lovers? Was Signora Galli involved in a plot against her companion? What was Sandwich’s role in the events that had such a tragic ending? Who knows? Surviving records permit no more than guesses. Instead, Brewer’s focus is on public reaction to the murder and to the principals involved, at that time and in the more than two centuries since. Along the way, he sketches the appalling social and sexual exploitation that was the underside of aristocratic glamour: the vulnerability of poor women to the depredations of Sandwich and his ilk, the wretchedness that engulfed the masses and the preference of aristocratic rakes forchildren -- an unedifying spectacle worthy of the pen of Jonathan Swift or the artistic talents of William Hogarth.

Newspaper reporters swarmed like crows on carrion to pick over the salacious details of the affair. Book publishers produced volumes that purported to reprint letters written by the doomed lovers to each other and pried into the sexual secrets of the upper ranks. Meanwhile, gossips hashed over the few known facts, embellishing them with speculation and innuendo that soon acquired the status of truth. It is a wearyingly familiar pattern as the Laci Petersons of the moment substitute for their 18th century sisters.

The fascination with Martha Ray’s story extended far beyond the initial flurry of publicity attending the killing, trial and execution. Victorian moralists returned to it a century later to construct ethical lessons to be drawn from the affair and to paint the principals in very different hues from those favored by 18th century commentators. Female historians would later offer still other versions of the event and the characters involved.

By turns, Hackman was pictured as a noble and ill-used lover (the murderer as victim) who bravely met his frightful end; as a madman whose reason was swept away by an excess of passion; as a romantic hero; or as a depraved sexual sinner and assassin. In some circles, Ray was accorded the status of a virtuous woman, true to her lord, a person deserving of the utmost honor, respect and sympathy (a portrait neatly encapsulated in the oxymoronic title of a 1930 biography, “The Chaste Mistress”). Others saw her as a beautiful, talented but impoverished creature who could scarcely be blamed for the predations of an aristocrat. The more judgmental insisted that she was a wretched adulterer who drew the due wages of sin. As for the third member of this romantic triangle, Sandwich -- even in his own time -- regularly found himself traduced as a corrupt and corrupting politician, and condemned as a debauched and dissolute rake, the very embodiment of 18th century aristocratic excess. Belated attempts to rescue his reputation issued from an unexpected quarter: A handful of early 20th century female writers embraced a radically revisionist and romantic estimate of the man, insisting that he be seen as “a faithful friend, an energetic man of business, and a genial host,” and, more consequentially, as a devoted lover deeply attached to his murdered mistress.

What is one to make of this convoluted tale in all its contradictory versions? In the end, Brewer leaves us to decide, preferring to examine the shifting tides of historical fashion, movements he claims explain his own engagement with apparently so frivolous a case.

Once upon a time, at the beginning of Brewer’s academic career, history was written largely by men about other men who ruled the world and made the decisions that affected everyone else. Brewer made his reputation with a study of this sort, “The Sinews of Power,” a clever and original examination of Britain’s emergence in the 18th century as an international power. Like others of his generation, however, Brewer grew restless with the limitations of a vision of history inherited from the Victorians.

Drawing on the very different traditions of popular history, antiquarian and literary as they often were, and emphasizing the lives of the lower orders (embodied most notably in the work of E.P. Thompson), Brewer ventured onto the broader terrain of economics, ideas, culture and society. His previous book, “The Pleasures of the Imagination,” a study of 18th century English culture, was a magnificent demonstration of the value of such an approach. By contrast, “A Sentimental Murder” is a much slighter work, and I am far from convinced that what Brewer disarmingly calls “an experiment” in historical writing is worth repeating.

Many readers, though, will find this story of sexual high jinks, jealousy and murder an entertaining tale with its own special charms. It beats reading the tabloids. *