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Legwork is the hallmark of a good reporter. But perhaps no journalist has taken that truth to heart as much as James Curtis, a certifiable oddball who once slept in a murderer's bed as a way to get inside the killer's head.
IT WAS CURTIS'S PECULIAR habits combined with a macabre interest in executions that brought him to the zenith of his profession in the 1820s, when a shocking murder captivated pre-Victorian England.
After the killer had swung on the gallows, Curtis wrote what is perhaps the first modern true-crime book. But despite his innovation, Curtis was forgotten-until a chance "meeting" between Paul Collins, assistant professor of English, and the long-dead author.
"I was in Powell's Books on Hawthorne, reaching up for a book," Collins says, "and another book fell off the shelf and hit me."
The slender blue volume that fell was a reprint of the author's 1828 book, An Authentic and Faithful History of the Mysterious Murder of Maria Marten.
James Curtis (top) wrote a true crime book in 1828 about victim Maria Marten (center) and her murderer William Corder (bottom) that had a Truman Capote tone, says English professor Paul Collins.
As Collins flipped through the musty pages, he read Curtis's first-person account of looking out the window of the local hotel and seeing the house of the victim and the nearby scene of the crime.
"When I read that," says Collins, "I was floored. It didn't read anything like other reportage of that time. What struck me was how it was like Truman Capote . . . an amazingly inventive, crazy journalist who actually created a whole new genre."
But this "early Capote" was elusive. Nothing had been written about him in more than 100 years.
Fortunately, Collins travels frequently to the great libraries of New York and London to compile research for his steady stream of published works. Still, it took almost five years of persistence before he had unearthed enough on the long-forgotten reporter to compile a portrait of the times and the man.
Published in the November 2006 issue of The Believer magazine, the professor's article brings to life a man who was a reporter's reporter even by today's standards.
Curtis was fascinated by many trials at London's Old Bailey court and missed only two in 25 years, when he was attending court cases in outlying areas. A reporter for The Times of London, he wrote verbatim records of every trial for his own amusement and developed his own form of shorthand described in his book, Short-hand Made Shorter, so he could keep up with the witnesses, defenders, prosecutors, and judge.
Executions in particular fascinated Curtis. He told contemporaries that in one 25-year stretch he attended every public hanging in the London area. He slept a mere four hours a night and arose at 4 a.m. daily to hobnob his way through the colorful flower, fish, and farmers markets of greater London, gathering stories as he strolled.
He refused to ride in wheeled vehicles and instead walked everywhere, including—when a particularly interesting trial took place—to outlying villages 20 miles from London or farther.
Collins learned that Curtis was an insomniac whose odd sleeping habits and passion for his work helped him stay up all night with men condemned to hang in the morning. He heard from these tormented souls an outpouring of remorse and terror at the prospect of the dawn.
But it was the grisly murder trial of Maria Marten that brought every one of the reporter's peculiarities and talents into focus.
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William Corder shot his fiancée in a rented red barn (top), where he buried her. Three days after he was found guilty of the murder, thousands gathered to watch him hang (bottom). |
IN 1827, in the tiny hamlet of Polstead—population 900—Marten was shot and perhaps stabbed by her lover on the night they were to elope to nearby London. The murderer, William Corder, buried her body under the dirt floor of a red barn. For 10 long months, Corder wrote letters to his "intended" father-in-law with excuses as to why Maria could not visit or write. "She is," he wrote, "so busy looking after me." Then one day, the young woman's father dug up the grisly truth. Corder was promptly arrested and dragged before the court. Fanned by heated accounts in London newspapers, the trial created a sensation. Some 10,000 people crowded into the village where the proceedings unfolded. Women were barred from the courtroom so as not to shock their delicate sensibilities with the macabre details, which included the display of Maria Marten's skull. Curtis was in his element. Like other journalists of his era, Curtis was engaged in a competitive business. The papers strived to outdo each other, especially on popular court stories. And the public was ravenous for the details of this one. During the course of the trial and afterwards, vendors sold an estimated 1 million newspaper broadsheets. So many people crowded outside for a look into the courtroom that a glass windowpane gave way under the pressure. And in the thick of it all was Curtis. As was his wont, he had walked from London to the trial. Along the way, he met other travelers and learned that the local fair was also under way. He wandered through the crowds there and began interviewing everyone who had ever known any of the principal figures in the murder. Curtis put in long hours in the courtroom and became so ingratiated with the defense team that a visiting sketch artist mistook him for the murderer. During his time in Polstead, Curtis stayed at the Cock Inn, sleeping in the very bed where Corder had spent his last night before being confined to jail. Through it all, Curtis was collecting detail. When the judge pronounced the sentence, Curtis was there. He was there with Corder through the murderer's last night alive. And he was there when the hangman dropped the trapdoor. When the deed was done, Curtis turned his hand to writing up a full account. And somehow he thought to write it in a strange new way. CRIME REPORTING OF the day, says Collins, was typically a dry transcript of the trial or a summary couched in moralistic bombast. Curtis opted instead to stitch together the transcript with his interviews of people in the village and the murderer himself. As Collins researched the author and his times, he realized he had found something rare: Combining his interests and skills in interviewing and reporting, Curtis had written the first true-crime book. AND COLLINS LEARNED one final gruesome fact. It was not entirely unheard of for the judge to order the dissection of the hanged, as the judge did in Corder's case. The undertaker took the process one grisly step further. He skinned the dead man, tanned the epidermis, and used it to bind a copy of Curtis's book. Melissa Steineger, a Portland freelance writer, wrote the article "Beyond Hyperspace" in the fall 2006 Portland State Magazine. |
Literary Detective
Paul Collins, assistant professor of English, regularly writes books and magazine articles about figures whom history has forgotten. As a frequent guest speaker on the topic for National Public Radio, he has earned the honorary title of "literary detective."
It's an apt label.
Collins grew up an avid reader of old books his parents picked up at estate sales, developing his lifelong interest in "then-famous figures who are now unknown."
His first book, Banvard's Folly: Thirteen Tales of People Who Didn't Change the World, celebrates a baker's dozen, including painter John Banvard.
In the 1840s, Banvard painted large panoramas. Very large. His crowning achievement was 12 feet high and about a half-mile long. Dubbed a "moving panorama," the painting of the eastern bank of the Mississippi River was slowly cranked between giant spools to give the admiring throngs the sensation of traveling along the Big Muddy.
Banvard was said to be the first artist to earn $1 million, but he died destitute in 1891 after squandering his resources in an expensive attempt to open a museum.
Collins is also the author of four other books, including Not Even Wrong: Adventures in Autism, a memoir about raising his autistic son.
At Portland State, Collins teaches writing courses in personal essay and nonfiction profiles of overlooked or forgotten people—passing along to students his fascination with the characters who have fallen into history's dustbin.