Guilty Thing by Frances Wilson

Author:Frances Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Whether he was in his native country at the time of the unhappy troubles of 1798 can only be a matter of conjecture, but it is certainly not unnatural to suppose, that a monster capable of committing the late atrocities must early in life have lost that innate horror of bloodshed, which forms so striking a feature in the moral constitution of man. In the dreadful paths of rebellion, probably it was that he was first tempted to embrue his hands in the blood of his fellow-creatures; and, amidst those terrible scenes of midnight murder, which that unhappy country then afforded, might his sinful conscience have been seared to every feeling of repentance and remorse.

John Murphy, aka John Williams (as De Quincey continued to call him), aged around thirty, had until recently been at sea, a career he was ‘driven’ into as a result of ‘former bad conduct’. Having served on several East Indiamen, including the Henry Addington and the Nottingham, he was laid up for some time at St Thomas’s hospital with a leg injury. In April 1808 he sailed on the Dover Castle under Captain George Richardson, returning in July 1810. Employed as the captain’s personal servant on the same voyage was Timothy Marr.

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