d Wood striking him on the head with a hatchet.
The murderers then held council as to the best mode of concealing their
crime, and it was determined that they should mutilate and dispose of the
body. They cut off the head, Mrs. Hayes holding a pail to catch the blood;
and she proposed that the head should be boiled until the flesh came from
the skull. This advice was rejected on account of the time which the
process suggested would occupy, and Billings and Wood carried the head in
the pail (it was at night) to the Horseferry at Westminster, and there cast
it into the Thames. On the following day the murderers separated the limbs
from the body, and wrapping them, together with the trunk, in two blankets,
carried them to Marylebone fields, and placed them in a pond. Hayes' head
not having been carried away by the tide, as the murderers expected it
would have been, was found floating at the Horseferry in the morning. The
attention of the authorities was drawn to the circumstance, and the
magistrates being of opinion that a murder had been committed, caused the
head to be washed and the hair combed out, and then had it placed on a pole
and exposed to public view in St. Margaret's churchyard, in the hope that
it might lead to the discovery of the suspected crime. Great crowds of
persons of all ranks flocked to St. Margaret's churchyard to see the head,
and amongst the rest a young man named Bennett, who perceiving the likeness
to Hayes, whom he knew, immediately went to Mrs. Hayes on the subject; but
she assured him that her husband was alive and well, which satisfied him. A
journeyman tailor, named Patrick, also went to see the head, and on his
return told his fellow workmen that it was Hayes. These workmen, who also
had known Hayes, then went to look at the head, and felt the same
conviction. It happened that Billings worked at the same shop in which
these men were employed in Monmouth Street, and when he came to work next
morning, they told him of the circumstance. Billings, however, lulled their
suspicious by declaring that he had left Mr. Hayes at home that morning.
After the head had been exhibited for four days in the churchyard, the
magistrates caused it to be placed in spirits, in a glass vessel, and in
that state it continued to be exposed to public view. Two friends of Hayes,
named Ashley and Longmore, who had seen the head without imagining that it
was his, some time after called on Mrs. Hayes, on separate occasions,