Matthew Clarke: Love, Greed and a Murder at Willesden Green
On 28th July 1721, Matthew Clarke was executed at Tyburn for the murder of Sarah Goldington, a young servant at an alehouse on Willesden Green. Just weeks earlier, Clarke had pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to cutting Sarah’s throat during a robbery. His execution account, recorded by the Ordinary of Newgate, reveals a chilling mixture of confession, remorse and self-reflection from a man who claimed he had once loved the woman he murdered.
Clarke was about twenty-four years old and came from St Albans, where he had been brought up in respectable surroundings. Although he had worked honestly as a farm labourer and carter, he admitted that he had gradually abandoned honest employment. He confessed to lurking on Bushey Heath, hoping to rob travellers, and acknowledged carrying out at least one violent highway robbery before the murder. Much of the stolen money, he admitted, was squandered trying to impress young women.
Ironically, Clarke had recently persuaded another young woman to marry him. After bringing her to London to buy a wedding ring, he realised he had nowhere near enough money to pay for the life he had promised. Inventing a story about collecting a £15 inheritance, he instead travelled towards Willesden Green with the intention of raising the money through robbery.
There he encountered the landlord of an alehouse where he had once worked, who even offered him employment. Instead, Clarke noticed that it was haymaking season and that the household was largely empty. Calling at the inn, he renewed an old friendship with Sarah Goldington, the servant who was alone in the house. According to his confession, they talked together pleasantly and he twice embraced her. Hidden beneath his coat was a knife.
Clarke later claimed that he struggled with himself before carrying out the attack. The first time he rose to kiss Sarah, he lost his nerve and sat back down. A little later he embraced her again, drew the knife and slashed her throat. When the blade failed to kill her immediately and she staggered towards the door making desperate sounds for help, Clarke returned and inflicted an even more savage wound, cutting almost to the bone before stealing a small quantity of silver and fleeing.
The robbery itself achieved very little. Clarke admitted that he was so horrified by what he had done that he barely took anything from the house. As he attempted to make his way back towards London, he became overwhelmed with fear while passing Tyburn, unable even to continue past the place where criminals were executed. Trying to avoid suspicion, he began driving a wagon, but pursuers soon noticed blood on his shirt sleeve. His explanation that he had fought with a soldier quickly collapsed, and the weight of his guilt led him to confess.
The Old Bailey proceedings were remarkably brief. Clarke pleaded guilty to murdering Sarah Goldington by inflicting a fatal wound to her throat with a knife approximately five inches long. With no trial required, the court immediately sentenced him to death.
During the weeks before his execution, Clarke spoke at length with the Ordinary of Newgate. He insisted he had never hated Sarah and, in fact, “had some love” for her. He accepted full responsibility for both the murder and the earlier highway robbery, worrying constantly about how he would face Sarah on the Day of Judgement. He described terrifying dreams, overwhelming horror, and confessed that thoughts of being hung in chains after execution haunted him almost as much as death itself.
On 28th July 1721, Matthew Clarke was hanged at Tyburn. Before the cart was drawn away, he urged the crowd to learn from his fate, denied rumours that he had intended to sell his fiancée into servitude overseas, and asked those gathered to pray for his soul. His story remains one of the starkest examples in the Old Bailey records of how a robbery conceived out of greed ended in an entirely unnecessary and deeply remorseful murder.
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