Gill's Hill Lane

The Radlett Murder, which was posted about on July 16th, occurred this day, October 24th, in 1823.  The murderer, John Thurtell, set up his victim, William Weare, by inviting him to a gambling weekend, with a well-known fellow gambler.  Thurtell owed Weare a substantial sum at this time. Along the way, Thurtell and Weare passed a lane known for murders in its day - Gill's Hill Lane.

This version of the events of that night come from the “Dictionary of National Biography”, and a comment related to Walter Scott is included.  ‘Thurtell was especially exasperated against "Weare, whom he charged with cheating him of £300, by means of false cards, at blind hookey. A reconcilation was, however, patched up, and on Friday, 24 Oct. 1823, Weare consented to accompany Thurtell to the house of a friend named Probert, near Elstree, for a few days' shooting. Picking up Weare near Tyburn, Thurtell drove rapidly in his gig along the St. Albans road towards Elstree. When close to Probert's house in Gill's Hill Lane, Radlett, Thurtell produced a pistol and shot his companion. The latter managed to jump out of the gig, but Thurtell stunned him with the butt of the pistol, and finally cut his throat. The body was taken to Probert's the same evening, but was eventually thrown into a 'green swamp' some two miles distant. Suspicion was promptly aroused by the discovery of the pistol and other evidence of a recent struggle in Gill's Hill Lane, and the murderer's associates, Probert and Hunt, turned king's evidence upon Thurtell being arrested by George Ruthven of Bow Street at the Coach and Horses, Conduit Street, on 28 Oct…

The Gill's Hill tragedy, in spite of the vulgar brutality of its details, laid a powerful hold upon the popular imagination. Thurtell was a sporting man, who was thought to have been hardly used by fortune, was for the time almost a popular hero. Hazlitt spoke of the gigantic energy with which he impressed those who heard his rhetoric at the trial. Sir Walter Scott made a 'variorum ' out of the numberless newspaper and chapbook accounts of the tragedy…’

Elias Ashmole

On October 24, 1660, Samuel Pepys records in his diary visiting William Lilly's house, where he met Elias Ashmole and John Booker; astrologers all.  Per Pepys: '...I went to Mr. Greatorex, where I met him, and so to an alehouse, where I bought of him a drawing-pen; and he did show me the manner of the lamp-glasses, which carry the light a great way, good to read in bed by, and I intend to have one of them. So to Mr. Lilly’s with Mr. Spong, where well received, there being a club to-night among his friends. Among the rest Esquire Ashmole, who I found was a very ingenious gentleman. With him we two sang afterward in Mr. Lilly’s study. That done, we all pared; and I home by coach, taking Mr. Booker with me, who did tell me a great many fooleries, which may be done by nativities, and blaming Mr. Lilly for writing to please his friends and to keep in with the times (as he did formerly to his own dishonour), and not according to the rules of art, by which he could not well err, as he had done....'

Elias Ashmole was an antiquary, politician, and founding member of the Royal Society, as well as being an astrologer.  Ashmole's name lives on at Oxford University, to which he bequeathed a collection of antiquities, stipulating that a museum be built to house them.  That museum was named in his honor, the Ashmolean Museum (http://www.ashmolean.org/about/historyandfuture/).

As told on Edinburgh University's Walter Scott archive, Sir Walter Scott relied on his "Antiquities of Berkshire" for the tale Amy Robsart and Cumnor Hall that he employed as source material for "Kenilworth"(http://www.walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk/works/novels/kenilw.html).

The Slough of Despond

..."Vilely low in spirits. I have written a page and a half, and doubt whether I can write more to-day. A quick throbbing at my heart, and fancies thronging on me. A disposition to sleep, or to think on things melancholy and horrible while I wake....

...I wrested myself so far out of the Slough of Despond as to take a good long walk, and my mind is restored to its elasticity..."

From Scott's Journal, October 24, 1827.

Good example of one benefit of exercise. Also the challenges of creative work, and the workings of the mind.  The Slough of Despond is one of several phrases taken by Scott from John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress".