Watson's Apology

A novel written by Dame Beryl Bainbridge

In Stockwell in 1891, Revd Selby Watson, a noted classical scholar and ex-headmaster of Stockwell Grammar School, at the age of 67 murdered his Irish-born wife at No. 28 St. Martin?s Road. His age, and the apparent lack of motive for the crime, led to his death sentence being commuted. He is probably the only murderer to have been accorded a Times obituary and a notice in the Dictionary of National Biography.

Stockwell - October 12, 1891 - Classics scholar John Selby Watson, 67, bludgeons to death wife of thirty years---

These are the bare bones of a factual crime that Dame Beryl weaves her tale around. The story begins with Watson and Anne Armstrong's courtship in December 1844 and takes us through their outwardly quiet, but inwardly evolving marriage for the next 27 years. Dame Beryl does a masterful job of placing us in that period; from the household to the clothes they wore to the transportation of the times.

Mr. and Mrs. Watson were a match made in hell, both to be pitied. John was an inward-looking, introspective, self-sufficient, gentle (yes, gentle!) person. Anne was intelligent, needy, histrionic, and highly intuitive. She literally and calculatedly drove him mad because of her disappointed expectations.

The last third of the book was devoted to actual trial excerpts. I could have used less of these, as many were repetitious. However, I found it interesting that the defence was clearly angling toward a temporary insanity plea. Edward Stanton, later Lincoln's Secretary of War, defending Congressman Dan Sickles, later Union General, in a scandalous trial, first successfully used this defence in the United States in 1859. Sickles shot and killed the son of Francis Scott Key on the steps of the White House for Keys' improper attentions to Sickles' wife. Sickles was acquitted. From the transcripts of Watson's trial, you can tell this was a new and extraordinary defence in England twelve years later.

A compelling novel based on a real-life Victorian murder case, set in the early 1890s, chronicles the sudden and brutal killing of his wife of nearly thirty years by Victorian clergyman John Selby Watson, the sensational trial that followed, and the devastating impact of the crime.