The Girl in the Gallery
Janet Killengray
I was walking up Princes Street on the way back to Waverley and with half an hour to wait, I decided to visit the National Gallery rather than buy a cup of station coffee. I'd spent about twenty minutes there looking at the portraits, including the famous one of the old lad skating, the face of a thousand Christmas cards, and was looking for the cloakroom on the ground floor when I saw her: A picture of a girl sitting at a table, a servant girl, plainly dressed, eighteenth century. I walked on then did that thing you see in bad comic films: stop, walk back; look again. There was something odd about her surroundings. The door behind her was heavy and studded, there were bars at the window, and she was deathly pale apart from rouged cheeks. The only thing on the table was a rosary, so she was a Catholic. Not a very safe admission at a time when popery was like a swear word. And she had been painted by Hogarth. Hogarth! I knew him from History of Art lessons...the father of English painting, the great satirist and thorn in the flesh of the great and good who ran the country. People like Walpole could be looking at a Hogarth engraving and find their own faces, amusingly distorted, staring right back.
I read the inscription 'Sarah Malcolm in prison. Oil on canvas. Executed for the murder of her Mistress Lydia Duncomb and two fellow servants 1732/33. In Newgate prison she sat for Hogarth two days before her execution on 7th March.'
On the train back to Inverness, all I could think of was this girl. How could she kill three other women? Ones that she knew. What possible motive could she have?
I have met murderers in the flesh when I taught English at an open prison in Wayland, Norfolk; the one where they sent Jeffrey Archer, and the Kray twin who survived the longest, Ronnie? Reggie? The one who wasn't gay. But even so; this young girl, with her bare hands-the ones you could see in the picture, in reach of those wooden beads-a practising catholic?
Then there was the other great question: Her and Hogarth in that cell, the condemned hold. What on earth did they talk about? Did they talk at all? So from that day on I have been tracking her down like a private detective, albeit one whose client has been dead for nearly three hundred years. I have spent hours in the British Library reading the court proceedings, letters, and contemporary newspaper accounts. I have made several visits to the Inner Temple where it all took place and I recently bought an original, first edition pamphlet of her confession. I believe she was a thief but not a murderer. And now I am giving up teaching to write a book about it. It's funny what you find out. On the train home I figured Hogarth had painted the picture because he thought she was innocent, but in fact he was making money from the sale of the prints. 'I see by this woman's face she is capable of any wickedness.' he said. I disagree. You cannot tell a murderer just by looking at them. The man who made our tea at Wayland had killed his own mother and you would never know.
Well there she is, and here I am telling her story whether she would want that or not. She must have agreed to the portrait though; I cannot imagine Hogarth would have been able to paint her if she had been running about the cell and screaming. She did that as well at times. Well, wouldn't you? I imagine that was one of her unforgettable days.
My book may or may not appear but the picture is still hanging in the gallery, You could go along and see for yourself. Look at her face. What do you think?
