PRISON calendars obviously reflect the criminal features of the age in which they appear. Those of Newgate since the beginning of the eighteenth century are numerous and voluminous enough to form a literature of their own. To the diligence of lawyers and publishers we owe a more or less complete collection of the most remarkable cases as they occurred. These volumes have been published under various titles. The ‘Newgate Calendar,’ compiled by Messrs. Knapp and Baldwin, attorneys-at-law, is one of the best known. This work, according to its title-page, professes to contain “interesting memoirs of notorious characters who have been convicted of outrages on the law of England; with essays on crimes and punishments and the last exclamations of sufferers.” There are many editions of it. The first I think was published by Nuttall, Fisher, and Dixon, of Liverpool; a later edition issues from the Albion Press, Ivy Lane, London, under the auspices of J. Robins and Co. But another book of similar character had as its compiler “George Theodore Wilkinson, Esq.,” barrister-at-law. It was published by Cornish and Co. in 1814, and the work was continued by “William Jackson, Esq.,” another barrister, with Alexander Hogg, of Paternoster Row, and by Offor and Sons of Tower Hill as publishers. Early and perfect editions of these works are somewhat rare and curious, fondly sought out and carefully treasured by the bibliophile. But all of them were anticipated by the editors of the ‘Tyburn Calendar,’ or ‘Malefactor’s Bloody Register,’ which issued soon after 1700 from the printing office of G. Swindells, at the appropriate address of Hanging Bridge, Manchester. The compilers of these volumes claimed a high mission. They desired “to fully display the regular progress from Virtue to Vice, interspersed with striking reflections on the conduct of those unhappy wretches who have fallen a sacrifice to the injured laws of their country. The whole tending to guard young minds from allurements of vice and the paths that lead to destruction.” Another early work is the ‘Chronicle of Tyburn, or Villainy displayed in all its branches,’ which gave the authentic lives of notorious malefactors, and was published at the Shakespeare’s Head in 1720. Yet another dated 1776, and printed for J. Wenman of 144, Fleet Street, bears the title of ‘The Annals of Newgate,’ and claims upon the title-page, that by giving the circumstantial accounts of the lives, transactions, and trial of the most notorious malefactors it is “calculated to expose the deformity of vice, the infamy, and punishments naturally attending those who deviate from the paths of virtue; and is intended as a beacon to warn the rising generation against the temptations, the allurements, and the dangers of bad company.”

All Newgate calendars have seemingly a common origin. They are all based primarily upon the Sessions’ Papers, the official publications which record the proceedings at the Old Bailey. There is a complete early series of these session papers in the Library of the British Museum, and another in the Home Office from the year 1730, including the December sessions of 1729. The publisher, who is stated on the title-page to be “T. Payne, at the corner of Ivy Lane, near Paternoster Row,” refers in his preface to an earlier series, dating probably from the beginning of the century, and a manuscript note in the margin of the first volume of the second series also speaks of a preceding folio volume. These sessions papers did not issue from one publisher. As the years pass the publication changes hands. Now it is “J. Wilford, behind the Chapter House, St. Pauls”; now “I. Roberts at the Oxford Arms in Warwick Lane.” Ere long “T. Applebee in Bolt Court, near the Leg Tavern,” turns his attention to this interesting class of periodical literature. He also published another set of semi-official documents, several numbers of which are bound up with the sessions’ papers already mentioned, and like them supplying important data for the compilation of calendars. These were the accounts given by the ordinary of Newgate of the behaviour, confessions, and dying words of the malefactors “executed at Tyburn,” a report rendered by command of the Mayor and corporation, but a private financial venture of the chaplains. As the ordinary had free access to condemned convicts at all times, and from his peculiar duties generally established the most confidential relations with them, he was in a position to obtain much curious and often authentic information from the lips of the doomed offenders. Hence the ordinary’s account contained many criminal autobiographies, and probably was much patronized by the public. Its sale was a part of the Reverend gentleman’s perquisites; and that the chaplains looked closely after the returns may be gathered from the already mentioned application made by the Rev. Mr. Loraine, chaplain in 1804, who petitioned Parliament to exempt his “execution brochure” from the paper tax.[140]

In the advertisement sheets of these sessions’ papers are notices of other criminal publications proving how great was the demand for this kind of literature. Thus in 1731 is announced ‘The History of Executions: being a complete account of the thirteen malefactors executed at Tyburn for robberies, price 4d.,’ and this publication is continued from year to year. In 1732 “T. Applebee and others” published at 3s. 6d. the ‘Lives of the most Remarkable Criminals,’ a volume containing as a frontispiece the escape of Jack Sheppard from Newgate. In the description of this book the public is assured that the volume contains a first and faithful narration of each, “without any additions of feigned or romantic adventures, calculated merely to entertain the curiosity of the Reader.” Jack Sheppard had many biographers. Seven accurate and authentic histories were published, all purporting to give the true story of his surprising adventures, and bequeathing a valuable legacy to the then unborn historical novelist, Mr. Harrison Ainsworth. Again, Rich, the Manager of the Lincoln’s Inn Theatre, brought out ‘Harlequin Jack Sheppard’ in the year of that desperado’s execution, an operatic pantomime founded upon his exploits. A little before this another dramatic performance, the ‘Beggars Opera,’ having a criminal for its hero, had taken the town by storm; and many strongly and with reason condemned the degradation of national taste which could popularize the loves of ‘Polly Peachum’ and ‘Captain Macheath.’ Besides these books and plays there was a constant publication of broad-sheets and chap-books of a still lower type, intended to pander to the same unwholesome taste, while a great novelist like Fielding did not hesitate to draw upon his personal acquaintance with crime, obtained as a police magistrate, and write the life of Jonathan Wild.

The demand was no doubt fostered by the extraordinary prevalence of crime. Criminal records would probably be read with avidity at times when ruffianism was in the ascendant, and offences of the most heinous description were of daily occurrence. New crimes cropped up daily. The whole country was a prey to lawlessness and disorder. Outrages of all kinds, riots, robberies, murders, took place continually. None of the high-roads or bye-roads were safe by night or day. Horsemen in the open country, footpads in or near towns, laid wayfarers under contribution. Armed parties ranged the rural districts attacking country houses in force, driving off cattle and deer, and striking terror everywhere. The general turbulence often broke out into open disturbance. The Riot Act, which was a product of these times, was not passed before it was needed. Riots were frequent in town and country. The mob was easily roused, as when it broke open the house of the Provost Marshal Tooley in Holborn, “to whom they owed a grudge for impressing men to sell as recruits to Flanders.”[141] “They burnt his furniture in the street; many persons were killed and wounded in the affray.”[142] Now political parties, inflamed with rancorous spirit, created uproars in the “mug houses”; now mutinous soldiers violently protested against the coarse linen of their “Hanover” shirts; again the idle flunkies at a London theatre rose in revolt against new rules introduced by the management and produced a serious riot.[143] In the country gangs of ruffians disguised in female attire, the forerunners of Rebecca and her daughter, ran a muck against turnpike gates, demolishing all they found. There were smuggling riots, when armed crowds overpowered the custom’s officers and broke into warehouses sealed by the Crown; corn riots at periods of scarcity, when private granaries were forced and pillaged. A still worse crime prevailed—that of arson. I find in ‘Hardwicke’s Life’ reference to a proclamation offering a reward for the detection of those who sent threatening letters “to diverse persons in the citys of London, Westminster, Bristol, and Exeter, requiring them to deposit certain sums of money in particular places, and threatening to sett fire to their houses, and to burn and destroy them and their families in case of refusal, some of which threats have accordingly been carried into execution.”[144] Other threats were to murder unless a good sum were at once paid down. Thus Jepthah Big was tried in 1729 for writing two letters, demanding in one eighty-five guineas, in the other one hundred guineas from Nathaniel Newnham, “a fearful old man,” and threatening to murder both him and his wife unless he got the money. Jepthah Big was found guilty and sentenced to death.

The state of the metropolis was something frightful in the early decades of the eighteenth century. Such was the reckless daring of evil-doers that there was but little security for life and property. Wright, in his ‘Caricature History of the Georges,’ says of this period, “robbery was carried on to an extraordinary extent in the streets of London even by daylight. Housebreaking was of frequent occurrence by night, and every road leading to the metropolis was beset by bands of reckless highwaymen, who carried their depredations into the very heart of the town. Respectable women could not venture in the streets alone after nightfall, even in the city, without risk of being grossly outraged.” In 1720 ladies going to Court were escorted by servants armed with blunderbusses “to shoot at the rogues.” Wright gives a detailed account of five-and-twenty robberies perpetrated within three weeks in January and February of the year above mentioned. A few of the most daring cases may be quoted. Three highwaymen stopped a gentleman of the Prince’s household in Poland Street, and made the watchman throw away his lantern and stand quietly by while they robbed and ill-used their victim. Other highwaymen the same night fired at Colonel Montague’s carriage as it passed along Frith Street Soho, because the coachman refused to stand; and the Duchess of Montrose, coming from Court in her chair, was stopped by highwaymen near Bond Street. The mails going out and coming into London were seized and rifled. Post-boys, stage-coaches, every-body and everything that travelled were attacked. A great peer, the Duke of Chandos, was twice stopped during the period above mentioned, but he and his servants were too strong for the villains, some of whom they captured. People were robbed in Chelsea, in Cheapside, in White Conduit Fields, in Denmark Street, St. Giles. Wade, in his ‘British Chronology’, under the head of public calamities in 1729, classes with a sickly season, perpetual storms, and incessant rains, the dangerous condition of the cities of London and Westminster and their neighbourhoods, which “proceeded from the number of footpads and street-robbers, insomuch that there was no stirring out after dark for fear of mischief. These ruffians knocked people down and wounded them before they demanded their money.” Large rewards were offered for the apprehension of these offenders. Thief-catchers and informers were continually active, and the law did not hesitate to strike all upon whom it could lay its hands. Yet crime still nourished and increased year after year.

The Englishman’s house, and proverbially his castle, was no more secure then than now from burglarious inroads. House-breakers abounded, working in gangs with consummate skill and patience, hand and glove with servants past and present, associated with receivers, and especially with the drivers of night coaches. Half the hackney coachmen about this time were in league with thieves, being bribed by nocturnal depredators to wait about when a robbery was imminent, and until it was completed. Then, seizing the chance of watchmen being off their beat, these useful accomplices drove at once to the receiver with the “swag.”

Towards the middle of the century, Henry Fielding, the great novelist, and at that time acting magistrate for Westminster, wrote:[145] “I make no doubt but that the streets of this town and the roads leading to it will shortly be impassable without the utmost hazard; nor are we threatened with seeing less dangerous groups of rogues amongst us than those which the Italians call banditti....” Again, “If I am to be assaulted and pillaged and plundered, if I can neither sleep in my own house, nor walk the streets, nor travel in safety, is not my condition almost equally bad whether a licensed or an unlicensed rogue, a dragoon or a robber be the person who assaults and plunders me?” Those who set the law at defiance organized themselves into gangs, and co-operated in crime. Fielding tells us in the same work that nearly a hundred rogues were incorporated in one body, “have officers and a treasury, and have reduced theft and robbery into a regular system.” Among them were men who appeared in all disguises and mixed in all companies. The members of the society were not only versed in every art of cheating and thieving, but they were armed to evade the law, and if a prisoner could not be rescued, a prosecutor could be bribed, or some “rotten member of the law” forged a defence supported by false witnesses. This must have been perpetuated, for I find another reference later to the Thieves or Housebreaker’s Company which had regular books, kept clerks, opened accounts with members, and duly divided the profits. According to the confession of two of the gang who were executed on Kensington Common, they declared that their profits amounted on an average to £500 a year, and that one of them had put by £2000 in the stocks, which before his trial he made over to a friend to preserve it for his family. Another desperate gang, Wade says, were so audacious that they went to the houses of the peace officers, and made them beg pardon for endeavouring to do their duty, and promise not to molest them. They went further, and even attacked and wounded a “head borough” in St. John’s Street in about forty places, so that many of the threatened officers had to “lie in Bridewell for safety.”

In Harris’s ‘Life of Lord Hardwicke’ is a letter from the solicitor to the Treasury to Sir Philip Yorke, referring to “the gang of ruffians who are so notorious for their robberies, and have lately murdered Thomas Bull in Southwark, and wounded others. Their numbers daily increase, and now become so formidable that constables are intimidated by their threats and desperate behaviour from any endeavour to apprehend them.” One of these ruffians was described in the proclamation offering rewards for their apprehension as “above six feet high, black eyebrows, his teeth broke before;” another had a large scar under his chin.

Still worse was the “Resolution Club,” a numerous gang, regularly organized under stringent rules. It was one of their articles, that whoever resisted or attempted to fly when stopped should be instantly cut down and crippled. Any person who prosecuted, or appeared as evidence against a member of the club, should be marked down for vengeance. The members took an “infernal oath” to obey the rules, and if taken and sentenced to “die mute.” Another instance of the lawlessness of the times is to be seen in the desperate attack made by some forty ruffians on a watch-house in Moorfields, where an accomplice was kept a prisoner. They were armed with pistols, cutlasses, and other offensive weapons. The watchman was wounded, the prisoner rescued. After this the assailants demolished the watch-house, robbed the constables, “committed several unparalleled outrages, and went off in triumph.” The gang was too numerous to be quickly subdued, but most of the rioters were eventually apprehended, and it is satisfactory to learn that they were sentenced to imprisonment in Newgate for three, five, or seven years, according to the part they had played.

The contempt of the majesty of the law was not limited to the lower and dangerous classes. A gentleman’s maid-servant, having resisted the parish officers who had a distress warrant upon the gentleman’s house for unpaid rates, was committed by the magistrates to Newgate. “The gentleman,” by name William Frankland, on learning what had happened, armed himself with a brace of pistols, and went to the office where the justices were then sitting, and asked which of them had dared to commit his servant to prison? “Mr. Miller,” so runs the account, “smilingly replied, ‘I did,’ on which the gentleman fired one of his pistols and shot Mr. Miller in the side, but it is thought did not wound him mortally. He was instantly secured and committed to Newgate.” At the following Old Bailey sessions, he was tried under the Black Act, when he pleaded insanity. This did not avail him, and although the jury in convicting him strongly recommended him to mercy he was sentenced to death. Another case of still more flagrant contempt of court may fitly be introduced here. At the trial of a woman named Housden for coining at the Old Bailey in 1712, a man named Johnson, an ex-butcher and highwayman by profession, came into court and desired to speak to her. Mr. Spurling, the principal turnkey of Newgate, told him no person could be permitted to speak to the prisoner, whereupon Johnson drew out a pistol and shot Mr. Spurling dead upon the spot, the woman Housden loudly applauding his act. The court did not easily recover from its consternation, but presently the recorder suspended the trial of the woman for coining, and as soon as an indictment could be prepared, Johnson was arraigned for the murder, convicted, and then and there sentenced to death, the woman Housden being also sentenced at the same time as an accessory before and after the fact.

Various causes are given for this great prevalence of crime. The long and impoverishing wars of the early years of the century, which saddled us with the national debt, no doubt produced much distress, and drove thousands who could not or would not find honest work, into evil ways. Manners among the highest and the lowest were generally profligate. Innumerable places of public diversion, ridottos, balls, masquerades, tea-gardens, and wells, offered crowds a ready means for self-indulgence. Classes aped the habits of the classes above their own, and the love of luxurious gratification “reached to the dregs of the people,” says Fielding, “who, not being able by the fruits of honest labour to support the state which they affect, they disdain the wages to which their industry would entitle them, and abandoning themselves to idleness, the more simple and poor-spirited betake themselves to a state of starving and beggary, while those of more art and courage become thieves, sharpers, and robbers.”

Drunkenness was another terrible vice, even then more rampant and wildly excessive than in later years. While the aristocracy drank deep of Burgundy and port, and every roaring blade disdained all heel-taps, the masses fuddled and besotted themselves with gin. This last-named pernicious fluid was as cheap as dirt. A gin-shop actually had on its sign the notice, “Drunk for 1d.; dead drunk for 2d.; clean straw for nothing,” which Hogarth introduced into his caricature of Gin Lane. No pencil could paint, no pen describe the scenes of hideous debauchery hourly enacted in the dens and purlieus of the town. Legislation was powerless to restrain the popular craving. The Gin Act, passed in 1736 amidst the execrations of the mob, which sought to vent its rage upon Sir Joseph Jekyll, the chief promoter of the Bill, was generally evaded. The much-loved poisonous spirit was still retailed under fictitious names, such as Sangree, Tow Row, the Makeshift, and King Theodore of Corsica. It was prescribed as a medicine for cholic to be taken two or three times a day. Numberless tumults arose out of the prohibition to retail spirituous liquors, and so openly was the law defied, that twelve thousand persons were convicted within two years of having sold them illegally in London. Informers were promptly bought off or intimidated, magistrates “through fear or corruption” would not convict, and the Act was repealed in the hope that more moderate duty and stricter enforcement of the law would benefit the revenue and yet lessen consumption. The first was undoubtedly affected, but hardly the latter. Fielding, writing nearly ten years after the repeal of the Act, says that he has reason to believe that “gin is the principal sustenance (if it may be so called) of more than a hundred thousand people in the metropolis,” and he attributed to it most of the crimes committed by the wretches with whom he had to deal. “The intoxicating draught itself disqualifies them from any honest means to acquire it, at the same time that it removes sense of fear and shame, and emboldens them to commit every wicked and desperate enterprise.”

The passion for gaming, again, “the school in which most highwaymen of great eminence have been bred,”[146] was a fruitful source of immoral degeneracy. Every one gambled. In the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ for 1731 there is the following entry: “At night their majesties played for the benefit of the groom porter, and the king (George II.) and queen each won several hundreds, and the Duke of Grafton several thousands of pounds.” His Majesty’s lieges followed his illustrious example, and all manner of games of chance with cards or dice, such as hazard, Pharoah, basset, roly-poly, were the universal diversion in clubs, public places, and private gatherings. The law had thundered, but to no purpose, against “this destructive vice,” inflicting fines on those who indulged in it, declaring securities won at play void, with other penalties, yet gaming throve and flourished. It was fostered and encouraged by innumerable hells, which the law in vain strove to put down. Nightly raids were made upon them. In the same number of the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ as that just quoted it is recorded that “the High Constable of Holborn searched a notorious gaming-house behind Gray’s Inn Road; but the gamesters were fled, only the keeper was arrested and bound over for £200.” Again, I find in Wade’s ‘Chronology’ that “Justice Fielding, having received information of a rendezvous of gamesters in the Strand, procured a strong party of the Guards, who seized forty-five of the tables, which they broke to pieces, and carried the gamesters before the justice.... Under each of the broken tables were observed two iron rollers and two private springs, which those who were in the secret could touch and stop the turning whenever they had flats to deal with.” No wonder these establishments throve. They were systematically organized, and administered by duly appointed officers. There was the commissioner who checked the week’s accounts and pocketed the takings; a director to superintend the room; an operator to deal the cards, and four to five croupiers, who watched the cards and gathered in the money of the Bank. Besides these there were “puffs,” who had money given them to decoy people to play; a clerk and a squib, who were spies upon the straight dealings of the puffs; a flasher to swear how often the bank was stripped; a dunner to recover sums lost; a waiter to snuff candles and fill in the wine; and an attorney or “Newgate solicitor.” A flash captain was kept to fight gentlemen who were peevish about losing their money at the door was a porter, “generally a soldier of the foot guards,”[147] who admitted visitors after satisfying himself that they were of the right sort. The porter had aides-de-camp and assistants—an “orderly man,” who patrolled the street and gave notice of the approaching constables; a “runner,” who watched for the meetings of the justices and brought intelligence of the constables being out; and a host of linkboys, coachmen, chairmen, drawers to assist, with common-bail affidavit men, ruffians, bravos, and assassins for any odd job that might turn up requiring physical strength.

As the years passed the vice grew in magnitude. Large fortunes were made by the proprietors of gaming-houses, thanks to the methodized employment of capital, embarked regularly as in any other trading establishment, the invention of E. O. tables, and the introduction of the “foreign games of roulet and rouge et noir. Little short of a million must have been amassed in this way,”[148] individuals having acquired from £10,000 to £100,000 a-piece. The number of establishments daily multiplied. They were mounted regardless of expense. Open house

Faro’s Daughters.
Faro’s Daughters.

was kept, and luxurious dinners laid for all comers. Merchants and bankers’ clerks entrusted with large sums were especially encouraged to attend. The cost of entertainment in one house alone was £8000 for eight months, while the total expenditure on all as much as £150,000 a year. The gambling-house keepers, often prize-fighters originally, or partners admitted for their skill in card-sharping or cogging dice, possessed such ample funds that they laughed at legal prosecutions. Witnesses were suborned, officers of justice bribed, informers intimidated. Armed ruffians and bludgeon men were employed to barricade the houses and resist the civil power. Private competed with public hells. Great ladies of fashion, holding their heads high in the social world, made their drawing-rooms into gambling places, into which young men of means were enticed and despoiled. This was called “pidgeoning,” and probably originated the expression. The most noted female gamesters were Lady Buckinghamshire, Lady Archer, Lady Mount Edgecombe, a trio who had earned for themselves the soubriquet of “Faro’s Daughters.” Their conduct came under severe reprehension of Lord Kenyon, who, in summing up a gambling case, warned them that if they came before him in connection with gambling transactions, “though they should be the first ladies of the land,” they should certainly exhibit themselves in the pillory. This well-merited threat was reproduced in various caricatures of the day, under such heads as, “Ladies of Elevated Rank”; “Faro’s Daughters, Beware!” “Discipline À la Kenyon.”

The Government itself was in a measure responsible for the diffusion of the passion for gambling. The pernicious custom of public lotteries practically legalized this baneful vice. State lotteries began in the reign of Elizabeth, and existed down to 1826. They brought in a considerable revenue, but they did infinite mischief by developing the rage for speculation, which extended to the whole community. The rich could purchase whole tickets, or “great goes”; for the more impecunious the tickets were subdivided into “little goes.” Those who had no tickets at all could still gamble at the lottery insurance offices by backing any particular number to win. The demoralizition was widespread. It reached a climax in the South Sea bubble, when thousands and thousands were first decoyed, then cruelly deceived and beggared. But lotteries lingered on till the Government at length awoke to the degradation of obtaining an income from such a source.

While crime thus stalked rampant through the land, the law was nearly powerless to grapple and check it. It had practically but one method of repression—the wholesale removal of convicted offenders to another world. Of prevention as we understand it our forefathers had but little idea. The metropolis, with its ill-paved, dimly-lighted streets, was without police protection beyond that afforded by a few feeble watchmen, the sorely-tried and often nearly useless “Charlies.” The administration of justice was defective; the justices had not sufficient powers; they were frequently “as regardless of the law as ignorant of it,”[149] or else were defied by pettifoggers and people with money in their pockets. “A mob of chairmen or servants, or a gang of thieves, are almost too big for the civil authority to repress;”[150] and the civil power generally, according to Fielding, was in a lethargic state. Yet private enterprise had sought for some time past to second the efforts of the State, and various societies for the reformation of manners laboured hard, but scarcely with marked success, to reduce crime. The first of these societies originated in the previous century by six private gentlemen, whose hearts were moved by the dismal and desperate state of the country “to engage in the difficult and dangerous enterprise;” and it was soon strengthened by the addition of “persons of eminency in the law, members of Parliament, justices of the peace, and considerable citizens of London of known abilities and great integrity.” There was a second society of about fifty persons, tradesmen, and others; and a third society of constables, who met to consider how they might best discharge their oaths; a fourth to give information; while other bodies of householders and officers assisted in the great work. These in one year, that of 1724, had prosecuted 2723 persons, and in the thirty-three years preceding 89,393; while in the same period they had given away 400,000 good books. However well meant and well directed were these efforts, it is to be feared that they were of little avail in stemming the torrent of crime which long continued to deluge the country, and which has far from abated even now.

The character of offences perpetrated will best be understood by passing from the general to the particular, and briefly indicating the salient points of a certain number of typical cases, all of which were in some way or other connected with Newgate. Crime was confined to no one class; while the lowest robbed with brutal violence, members of the highest stabbed and murdered each other on flimsy pretences, or found funds for debauchery in systematic and cleverly contrived frauds. Life was held very cheap in those days. Every one with any pretensions carried a sword, and appealed to it on the slightest excuse or

Back Premises of the Keeper's Apartment.

provocation. Murderous duels and affrays were of constant occurrence. So-called affairs of honour could only be washed out in blood. Sometimes it was a causeless quarrel in a club or coffee-house ending in a fatal encounter. Richard Savage the poet was tried for his life for a murder of this kind. In company with two friends, all three of them being the worse for drink, he forced his way into a private room in Robinson’s coffee-house, near Charing Cross, occupied by another party carousing. One of Savage’s friends kicked down the table without provocation. “What do you mean by that?” cried one side. “What do you mean?” cried the other. Swords were drawn, and a fight ensued. Savage, who found himself in front of one Sinclair, made several thrusts at his opponent, and ran him through the body. Lights were put out, and Savage tried to escape, but was captured in a back court. He and his associates were committed first to the gatehouse and thence to Newgate. Three weeks later they were arraigned at the Old Bailey, found guilty of murder, and cast for death.[151] The king’s pardon was, however, obtained for Savage through the intercession of influential friends, but contrary, it is said, to the expressed wish of his mother. Savage was the illegitimate child of the Countess of Macclesfield, the fruit of a guilty intrigue with Captain Richard Savage, afterwards Earl Rivers. Lady Macclesfield was divorced, and subsequently married Lord Rivers; but she conceived a violent hatred for the child, and only consented to settle an annuity of £50 upon him when grown to man’s estate, under threat of exposure in the first publication of Savage’s poems. Savage, after his release from Newgate, retired into Wales, but he continued in very distressed circumstances, and being arrested for debt, lingered out the remainder of his days in Bristol Gaol.

The case of Major Oneby is still more typical of the times. He was a military officer who had served in Marlbro’s wars, and not without distinction, although enjoying an evil reputation as a duellist. When the army lay in winter quarters at Bruges, he had been “out,” and had killed his man; again in Jamaica he had wounded an adversary who presently died. After the peace of Utrecht Major Oneby was placed on half pay, and to eke out his narrow means he became a professional gambler, being seldom without cards and dice in his pocket. He was soon known as a swaggerer and a bully, with whom it was wisest not to quarrel. One night, however, he was at play in the Castle Tavern in Drury Lane, when a Mr. Gower and he fell out about a bet. Oneby threw a decanter at Gower, and Gower returned the fire with a glass. Swords were drawn, but at the interposition of others put up again. Gower was for making peace, but Oneby sullenly swore he would have the other’s blood. When the party broke up he called Gower into another room and shut the door. A clashing of swords was heard within, the waiter broke open the door, and the company rushed in to find Oneby holding up Gower with his left hand, having his sword in his right. Blood was seen streaming through Gower’s waistcoat, and his sword lay upon the floor. Some one said to Oneby, “You have killed him;” but the Major replied, “No, I might have done it if I would, but I have only frightened him,” adding, that if he had killed him in the heat of passion the law would have been on his side. But his unfortunate adversary did actually die of his wound the following day, whereupon Major Oneby was apprehended and locked up in Newgate. He was tried the following month at the Old Bailey, but the jury could not decide as to the exact measure of the Major’s guilt, except that it was clear he had given the first provocation, while it was not denied he had killed the deceased.

A special verdict was agreed to, and the case with its various points referred to the twelve judges. The prisoner, who had hoped to escape with a conviction for manslaughter, was remanded to Newgate, and remained there in the State side without judgment for the space of two years. Becoming impatient, he prayed the Court of King’s Bench that counsel might be heard in his case, and he was accordingly brought into Court before the Lord Chief Justice Raymond, when his counsel and those for the Crown were fully heard. The Judge reserved his judgment till he had consulted his eleven brethren; but the Major, elated at the ingenious arguments of his lawyer, fully counted upon speedy release. On his way back to gaol he entertained his friends at a handsome dinner given at the Crown and Anchor Tavern.[152] He continued to carouse and live high in Newgate for several months more, little doubting the result of the Judges’ conference. They met after considerable delay in Sergeant’s Inn Hall, counsel was heard on both sides, and the pleadings lasted a whole day. A friend called in the evening, and told him when he was making merry over a bowl of punch that eleven of the Judges had decided against him. This greatly alarmed him; next day the keeper of Newgate (Mr. Akerman) came to put irons on him, unless he was prepared to pay for a special keeper to occupy the same room. Oneby was indignant, but helpless. He felt the ground slipping from under his feet, and he was almost prepared for the judgment delivered in open court that he had been guilty of murder, his threat that he would have Gower’s blood having had great weight in his disfavour.

Oneby spent the days before execution in fruitless efforts to get relations and friends to use their influence in obtaining him a pardon. But to the first he was so overbearing that they would not visit him in Newgate, and the latter, if he had any, would not stir a finger to help him. His last moments seem to have been spent between laughing at the broad jokes of his personal gaoler, who now never left him, one John Hooper, afterwards public executioner,[153] and fits of rage against those who had deserted him in his extremity. He was further exasperated by a letter from an undertaker in Drury Lane, who, having heard that the Major was to die on the following Monday, promised to perform the funeral “as cheap and in as decent a manner as any man alive.” Another cause of annoyance was the publication of a broad sheet, entitled ‘The Weight of Blood, or the Case of Major John Oneby,’ the writer of which had visited the prisoner, ostensibly to offer to suppress the publication, but really as an “interviewer” to obtain some additional facts for his catch-penny pamphlet. The Major was so indignant that he laid a trap for the author by inviting him to revisit Newgate, promising himself the pleasure of thrashing him when he appeared, but the man declined to be caught. On the Saturday night before execution Oneby, learning that a petition had been presented and rejected, prepared to die. He slept soundly till four in the morning, then calling for a glass of brandy and writing materials, he wrote his will. It was brief, and to the following effect:

“Cousin Turvill, give Mr. Akerman, for the turnkey below stairs, half a guinea, and Jack Hooper who waits in my room five shillings. The poor devils have had a great deal of trouble with me since I have been here.” After this he begged to be left to sleep; but a friend called about seven, the Major cried feebly to his servant, “Philip, who is that?” and it was found that he was bleeding to death from a deep gash in his wrist. He was dead before a surgeon could be called in.

In these disastrous affrays both antagonists were armed. But reckless roysterers and swaggering bobadils were easily provoked, and they did not hesitate, in a moment of mad passion, to use their swords upon defenceless men. Bailiffs and the lesser officers of justice were especially obnoxious to these high-tempered bloods. I read in ‘Luttrell,’ under date Feb. 1698, “Captain Dancy of the Guards killed a bailiff in Exeter Street, and is committed to Newgate.” Again in 1705, “Captain Carlton, formerly a Justice of the Peace for Middlesex, is committed to Newgate for running a Marshal’s man through the body who endeavoured to arrest him on the parade by the Horse Guards in St. James’ Park, of which wound it is thought the man will die.” I can find no mention of the fate which overtook these murderers; but the ‘Calendars’ contain a detailed account of another murder of much the same kind, that perpetrated by the Marquis de Paleoti upon his servant, John Niccolo, otherwise John the Italian, in 1718. The Marquis had come to England to visit his sister, who had married the Duke of Shrewsbury in Rome, and had launched out into a career of wild extravagance. The Duchess had paid his debts several times, but at length declined to assist him further. He was arrested and imprisoned, but his sister privately procured his discharge. After his enlargement, being without funds, the Marquis sent Niccolo to borrow what he could. But “the servant, having met with frequent denials, declined going, at which the Marquis drew his sword and killed him on the spot.”[154] The Marquis seems to have hoped to have found sanctuary at the Bishop of Salisbury’s, to whose house he repaired as soon as Niccolo’s body was found. But he was arrested there after having behaved so rudely, that his sword, all bloody with gore, had to be taken from him, and he was conveyed to Newgate. His defence was weak, his guilt clear, and much to his surprise, he was sentenced to be hanged. He declared that it was disgraceful “to put a nobleman to death like a common malefactor for killing a servant;” but his plea availed little, and he suffered at Tyburn five weeks after the murder. Forty years later an English nobleman, Earl Ferrers, paid the same extreme penalty for murdering his steward. His lordship was tried by his peers, and after sentence until his execution was lodged in the Tower, and not in Newgate. His case is sufficiently well known, and has already been briefly referred to.

Another aristocratic miscreant, whose crimes only fell short of murder, was Colonel Francis Charteris. Well born, well educated, well introduced into life, he joined the army under Marlborough in the Low Countries as a cornet of horse, and soon became noted as a bold and dexterous gambler. His greed and rapacity were unbounded; he lent money at usurious rates to those whom he had already despoiled of large sums by foul play, and having thus ruined many of his brother officers, he was brought to trial, found guilty of disgraceful conduct, and sentenced by Court Martial to be cashiered. On his way back to Scotland, by falsely swearing he had been robbed at an inn, he swindled the landlord out of a large sum of money as an indemnity, and does not seem to have been called to account for his fraud. In spite of his antecedents, Charteris obtained a new commission through powerful friends, and was soon advanced to the grade of Colonel. Moving in the best society, he extended his gambling operations, and nearly robbed the Duchess of Queensbury of £3000 by placing her near a mirror, so that he could see all her cards. Escaping punishment for this he continued his depredations till he acquired a considerable fortune and several landed estates. Fate overtook him at last, and he became the victim of his own profligacy. Long notorious as an unprincipled and systematic seducer, by means of stratagems and bribes he effected the ruin of numbers, but was at length arrested on a charge of criminal assault. He lay in Newgate on the State side, lightly ironed, and enjoying the best of the prison until the trial at the Old Bailey in Feb. 1730. He was convicted and sentenced to die, but through the strenuous exertions of his son-in-law, the Earl of Wemyss, obtained the king’s pardon. He died two years later, miserably, in Edinburgh, whither he had retired after his release. He was long remembered with obloquy. Dr. Arbuthnot, who wrote his epitaph, has best depicted his detestable character, as a villain, “who with an inflexible constancy and inimitable impunity of life persisted, in spite of age and infirmity, in the practice of every human vice except prodigality and hypocrisy, his insatiable avarice exempting him from the first, and his matchless impudence from the latter, ... and who, having done every day of his life something worthy of a gibbet, was once condemned to one for what he had not done.” Dr. Arbuthnot appears from this to have dissented from the verdict of the jury by which Charteris was tried.

In times of such general corruption it was not strange that a deplorable laxity of morals should prevail as regards trusts, whether public or private. Even a Lord Chancellor was found guilty of venal practices—the sale of offices, and the misappropriation of funds lodged in the Chancery Court. This was the twelfth Earl of Macclesfield,[155] who sought thus dishonestly to mend his fortunes, impaired, it was said, by the South Sea Bubble speculations. He was tried before his peers, found guilty, and declared for ever incapable of sitting in Parliament, or of holding any office under the Crown; and further sentenced to a fine of £30,000 with imprisonment in the Tower until it was paid. Lord Macclesfield promptly paid his fine, which was but a small part of the money he had amassed by his speculations, and was discharged. “To the disgrace of the times in which he lived,” says the biographer of Lord Hardwicke,[156] “the infamy with which he had been thus covered debarred him neither from the favour of the great nor even from that of his sovereign.”

Various cases of embezzlement by public officials previous to this are mentioned by Luttrell. Frauds upon the Exchequer, and upon persons holding Government annuities, were not infrequent. The first entry in Luttrell is dated 1697, May, and is to the effect that “Mr. Marriott, an underteller in the Exchequer, arrested for altering an Exchequer bill for £10 to £100, pleaded innocency, but is sent to Newgate”; others were implicated, and a proclamation was issued offering a reward for the apprehension of Domingo Autumes, a Portuguese, Robert Marriott, and another for counterfeiting Exchequer bills. A little later another teller, Mr. Darby, is sent to Newgate on a similar charge, and in that prison Mr. Marriott “accuses John Knight, Esq., M.P., treasurer of customs, who is displaced.” Marriott’s confession follows: “He met Mr. Burton and Mr. Knight at Somerset House, where they arranged to get twenty per cent, by making Exchequer bills specie bills; they offered Marriott £500 a year to take all upon himself if discovered. It is thought greater people are in it to destroy the credit of the nation.” Following this confession, bills were brought into the House of Commons charging Burton, Knight, and Duncombe with embezzlement, but “blanks are left for the House to insert the punishment, which is to be either fine, imprisonment, or loss of estates.” Knight was found guilty of endorsing Exchequer bills falsely, but not of getting money thereby. Burton was found guilty; Duncombe’s name is not mentioned, and Marriott was discharged. But this does not end the business. In the May following “Mr. Ellers, master of an annuity office in the Exchequer, was committed to Newgate for forging people’s hands to their orders, and receiving a considerable sum of money thereon.” Again in October, “Bellingham, an old offender, was convicted of felony in forging Exchequer bills; and a Mrs. Butler, also for forging a bond of £20,000, payable by the executors of Sir Robert Clayton six years after his death.” Later on (1708) I find an entry in Luttrell that Justice Dyot, who was a commissioner of the Stamp-office, was committed to Newgate for counterfeiting stamps, which others whom he informed against distributed. Of the same character as the foregoing was the offence of Mr. Lemon, a clerk in the Pell office of the Exchequer, who received £300 in the name of a gentlewoman deceased, and kept it, for which he was turned out of his place. Other unfaithful public servants were to be found in other departments. Robert Lowther, Esq., was taken into custody on the 25th October, 1721, by order of the Privy Council, for his tyrannical and corrupt administration when Governor of the Island of Barbadoes. Twenty years later the House of Commons fly at still higher game, and commit the Solicitor of the Treasury to Newgate for refusing to answer questions put to him by the Secret Committee which sat to inquire into Sir Robert Walpole’s administration. This official had been often charged with the Prime Minister’s secret disbursements, and he was accused of being recklessly profuse.

Returning to meaner and more commonplace offenders, I find in the records full details of all manner of crimes. Murders the most atrocious and bloodthirsty, robberies executed with great ingenuity and boldness by both sexes, remarkable instances of swindling and successful frauds, early cases of forgery, coining carried out with extensive ramifications, piracies upon the high seas, long practised with strange immunity from reprisals. Perhaps the most revolting murder ever perpetrated, not excepting those of later date, was that in which Catherine Hayes assisted. The victim was her husband, an unoffending, industrious man, whose life she made miserable, boasting once indeed that she would think it no more sin to murder him than to kill a dog. After a violent quarrel between them she persuaded a man who lodged with them, named Billings, and who was either her lover or her illegitimate son, to join her in an attempt upon Hayes. A new lodger, Wood, arriving, it was necessary to make him a party to the plot, but he long resisted Mrs. Hayes’ specious arguments, till she clenched them by declaring that Hayes was an atheist and a murderer, whom it could be no crime to kill, moreover that at his death she would become possessed of £1500, which she would hand over to Wood. Wood at last yielded, and after some discussion it was decided to do the dreadful deed while Hayes was in his cups. After a long drinking bout, in which Hayes drank wine, probably drugged, and the rest beer, the victim dragged himself to bed and fell on it in a stupor. Billings now went in, and with a hatchet struck Hayes a violent blow on the head and fractured his skull; then Wood gave the poor wretch, as he was not quite dead, two other more blows and finished him. The next job was to dispose of the murdered man’s remains. To evade identification Catherine Hayes suggested that the head should be cut off, which Wood effected with his pocket-knife. She then proposed to boil it, but this was over-ruled, and the head was disposed of by the men, who threw it into the Thames from a wharf near the Horseferry[157] at Westminster. They hoped that the damning evidence would be carried off by the next tide, but it remained floating near shore, and was picked up next day by a watchman, and handed over to the parish officers, by whom, when washed and the hair combed, it was placed on the top of a pole in the churchyard of St. Margaret’s, Westminster. Having got rid of the head, the murderers next dealt with the body, which they dismembered, and packed the parts into a box. This was conveyed to Marylebone, where the pieces were taken out, wrapped in an old blanket, and sunk in a pond.

Meanwhile the exposed head had been viewed by curious crowds, and at last a Mr. Bennet, an organ-builder, saw a resemblance to the face of Hayes, with whom he had been acquainted; another person, a journeyman tailor, also recognized it, and inquiries were made of Catherine as to her husband. At first she threw people off the scent by confessing that Hayes had killed a man and absconded, but being questioned by several she told a different story to each, and presently suspicion fell upon her. As it had come out that Billings and Wood had been drinking with Hayes the last time he was seen, they were included in the warrant, which was now issued for the apprehension of the murderers. The woman was arrested by Mr. Justice Lambert in person, who had “procured the assistance of two officers of the Life Guards,” and Billings with her. One was committed to the Bridewell, Tothill Fields, the other to the Gatehouse. Catherine’s conduct when brought into the presence of her murdered husband’s head almost passes belief. Taking the glass in which it had been preserved into her arms, she cried, “It is my dear husband’s head,” and shed tears as she embraced it. The surgeon having taken the head out of the case, she kissed it rapturously, and begged to be indulged with a lock of his hair. Next day the trunk and remains of the corpse were discovered at Marylebone without the head, and the justices, nearly satisfied as to the guilt of Catherine Hayes, committed her to Newgate. Wood was soon after captured, and on hearing that the body had been found, confessed the whole crime. Billings shortly did the same; but Mrs. Hayes obstinately refused to admit her guilt. This atrocious creature was for the moment the centre of interest: numbers visited her in Newgate, and sought to learn her reasons for committing so dreadful a crime; but she gave different and evasive answers to all.

At her trial she pleaded hard to be exempted from the penalty of petty treason,[158] which was at that time burning, alleging that she was not guilty of striking the fatal blow. She was told the law must take its course. Billings and Wood hoped they might not be hung in chains, but received no answer. Wood actually died in prison before execution; Billings suffered at Tyburn, and was hung in chains near the pond in Marylebone. Mrs. Hayes tried to destroy herself, but failed, and was literally burnt alive.[159] The fire reaching the hands of the hangman, he let go the rope by which she was to have been strangled, and the flames slowly consumed her, as she pushed the blazing faggots from her, and rent the air with her agonized cries. Hers, which took place on 9th May, 1726, was not the last execution of its kind. In November, 1750, Amy Hutchinson was burnt at Ely, after a conviction of petty treason, having poisoned a husband newly married, whom she had taken to spite a truant lover. In 1767, again, Ann Sowerly underwent the same awful sentence at York. She also had poisoned her husband. Last of all, on the 10th March, 1788, a woman was burnt before the debtors’ door of Newgate. Having been tied to a stake and seated on a stool, the stool was withdrawn and she was strangled. After that she was burnt. Her offence was coining. In the following year an Act was passed (30 Geo. III., cap. 48) which abolished this cruel custom of burning women for petty treason.

Sarah Malcolm was another female monster, a wholesale murderess, whose case stands out as one of peculiar atrocity even in those bloodthirsty times. She was employed as a laundress in the Temple, where she waited on several gentlemen, and had also access in her capacity of charwoman to the chambers occupied by an aged lady named Mrs. Duncombe.[160] Sarah’s cupidity was excited by the chance sight of her mistress’s hoarded wealth, both in silver plate and broad coins, and she resolved to become possessed of it, hoping when enriched to gain a young man of her acquaintance named Alexander as her husband. Mrs. Duncombe had two other servants, Elizabeth Harrison, also aged, and a young maid named Ann Price, who resided with her in the Temple. One day (Feb. 2, 1733) a friend coming to call upon Mrs. Duncombe was unable to gain admittance. After some delay the rooms were broken into, and their three occupants were found barbarously murdered, the girl Price in the first room, with her throat cut from ear to ear, her hair loose, hanging over her eyes, and her hands clenched; in the next lay Elizabeth Harrison on a press bed, strangled; and last of all, old Mrs. Duncombe, also lying across her bed, quite dead. The strong box had been broken open and rifled.

That same night one of the barristers, returning to his chambers late, found Sarah Malcolm there kindling a fire, and after remarking upon her appearance at that strange hour, bade her begone, saying, that no person acquainted with Mrs. Duncombe should be in his chambers till the murderer was discovered. Before leaving she confessed to having stolen two of his waistcoats, whereupon he called the watch and gave her into custody. After her departure, assisted by a friend, the barrister made a thorough search of his rooms, and in a cupboard came upon a lot of linen stained with blood, also a silver tankard with blood upon the handle. The watchmen had suffered Sarah to go at large, but she was forthwith rearrested; on searching her, a green silk purse containing twenty-one counters was found upon her, and she was committed to Newgate. There, on arrival, she sought to hire the best accommodation, offering two or three guineas for a room upon the Master Debtors’ side. Roger Johnston, a turnkey, upon this searched her, and discovered “concealed under her hair,” no doubt in a species of a chignon, “a bag containing twenty moidores, eighteen guineas, and a number of other broad pieces.” This money she confessed had come from Mrs. Duncombe; but she stoutly denied all complicity with the murder, or that she had done more than contrive the robbery. She charged two brothers, named Alexander, one of whom she desired to marry, and a woman, Mary Tracy, with the greater crime. Upon her information they were arrested and confronted with her. She persisted in this line of defence at her trial, but the circumstantial evidence against her was so strong that the jury at once found her guilty. She herself had but little hope of escape, and had been heard to cry out on her first commitment, “I am a dead woman.” She was duly executed at Tyburn. The Alexanders and Tracy were discharged.

I have specially instanced these foul murders as exhibiting circumstances of atrocity rarely equalled in the records of crime. Catherine Hayes and Sarah Malcolm were unsexed desperadoes, whose misdeeds throw into the shade those of the Mannings and Kate Websters of later times. But women had no monopoly of assassination, in those days when life was held so cheap. Male murderers were still more numerous, and also more pitiless and bloodthirsty. The calendars are replete with homicides, and to refer to them in anything like detail would both weary and disgust the reader. I shall do no more therefore than briefly indicate a certain number of the more prominent cases remarkable either from the position of the criminals, the ties by which they were bound to their victims, or the horrible character of the crime.

The hangman figures among the murderers of this epoch. John Price, who filled the office in 1718, and who rejoiced in the usual official soubriquet of “Jack Ketch,” was a scoundrel rendered still more callous and cruel by his dreadful calling. He had begun life well, as an apprentice, but he absconded, and entering the navy, “served with credit on board different king’s ships for eighteen years.” On his discharge, seeking employment, he obtained the situation of public executioner. He might have lived decently on the hangman’s wages and perquisites, but he was a spendthrift, who soon became acquainted with the interiors of the debtors’ prisons for Middlesex. Once he was arrested on his way back from Tyburn after a good day’s work, having in his possession, besides fees, the complete suits of three men who had just been executed. He gave up all this to liquidate the debt, but the value being insufficient, he

Arresting the Hangman on a Charge of Murder on his way to Tyburn.
Arresting the Hangman on a Charge of Murder on his way to Tyburn.

was lodged in the Marshalsea. When released, in due course he returned to his old employment, but was soon arrested again, and on a serious charge—that of a murderous assault upon a poor woman who sold gingerbread through the streets. He had attempted to outrage her, and maddened by her resistance, had ill-used her shamefully. “He beat her so cruelly,” the account says, “that streams of blood issued from her eyes and mouth; he broke one of her arms, knocked out some of her teeth, bruised her head in a most shameful manner, and forced one of her eyes from the socket.”[161] One account says that he was taken red-handed close to the scene of his guilt; another, the more probable, that he was arrested on his way to Tyburn with a convict for the gallows. In any case his unfortunate victim had just life left in her to bear testimony against him. Price was committed to Newgate, and tried for his life. His defence was, that in crossing Moorfields he found something lying in his way, which he kicked and found to be the body of a woman. He lifted her up, but she could not stand on her legs. The evidence of others was too clear, and the jury did not hesitate to convict. After sentence he abandoned himself to drink, and obstinately refused to confess. But on the day before his execution he acknowledged that he had committed the crime while in a state of intoxication. He was hanged in Bunhill Fields, and his body afterwards exhibited in chains in Holloway near the scene of the murder.

Wife-murder was of common occurrence in these reckless times. The disgraceful state of the marriage laws, and the facility with which the matrimonial knot could be tied, often tempted unscrupulous people to commit bigamy.[162] Louis Houssart was of French extraction, settled in England, who married Ann Rondeau at the French church in Spitalfields. After about three years “he left his wife with disgust,” and going into the city, passed himself off as a single man. Becoming acquainted with a Mrs. Hern, he presently married her. He had not been long married before his new wife taxed him with having another wife. He swore it was false, and offered to take the sacrament upon it. She appeared satisfied, and begged him to clear his reputation. “Do not be uneasy,” he said; “in a little time I will make you sensible I have no other wife.” He now resolved to make away with the first Mrs. Louis Houssart, otherwise Ann Rondeau, and reopened communications with her. Finding her in ill-health, one day he brought her “a medicine which had the appearance of conserve of roses, which threw her into such severe convulsive fits that her life was despaired of for some hours; but at length she recovered.” This attempt having failed, he tried a simpler plan. Dressed in a white coat, with sword and cane, he went one evening to the end of Swan Alley, where his wife lived with her mother, and finding a boy, gave him a penny to go and tell Mrs. Rondeau that a gentleman wanted to speak to her in a neighbouring public-house. When she left the house Houssart went in, found his wife alone, and cut her throat with a razor.

“Thus murdered she was found by her mother on her return, after inquiring in vain for the gentleman who was said to be waiting for her.” Suspicion fell on Houssart, who was arrested and tried, but for want of the boy’s evidence acquitted of the murder. But he was detained in Newgate to take his trial for bigamy. While waiting sentence the boy, a lad of thirteen, who knew of the murder and arrest, and who thought he would be hanged if he confessed that he had carried the message to Mrs. Rondeau, came forward to give evidence. He was taken to Newgate into a room, and identified Houssart at once among seven or eight others. The brother of the deceased, Solomon Rondeau, as heir, now lodged an appeal, in the name of John Doe and Richard Roe, against Houssart, who was eventually again brought to trial. Various pleas were put forward by the defence in bar of further proceedings, among others that there was no such persons as John Doe and Richard Roe, but this plea, with the rest, was overruled, the fact being sworn to that there was a John Doe in Middlesex, a weaver, also a Richard Roe, who was a soldier, and the trial went on. The boy’s evidence was very plain. He remembered Houssart distinctly, had seen him by the light of a lantern at a butcher’s shop; he wore a whitish coat. The boy also recognized Mrs. Rondeau as the woman to whom he gave the message. Others swore to the white coat which Houssart had on; but the most damning evidence was that of a friend whom he had summoned to see him in Newgate, and whom he asked to swear that they had been drinking together in Newgate Street at the time the murder was committed. The prisoner, however, owned that he did give the boy a penny to call the old woman out, and that he then went in and gave his wife “a touch with the razor, but did not think of killing her.” Houssart offered this witness a new shirt, a new suit of clothes, and twenty guineas to swear for him. The prisoner was found guilty and hanged at the end of Swan yard in Shoreditch, on Dec. 7, 1724.

Vincent Davis was another miscreant who murdered his wife, under much the same conditions. He had long barbarously ill-used her; he kept a small walking-cane on purpose to beat her with, and at last so frightened her by his threats to kill her that she ran away from him. She returned one night, but finding that he had put an open knife by the bedside, she placed herself under the protection of the landlady, who advised her to swear the peace against him and get him imprisoned. Next day the brutal husband drove her out of the house, declaring she had no right to be in his company, as he was married to “Little Jenny.” But she implored him to be friends, and having followed him to an ale-house seeking reconciliation, he so slashed her fingers with a knife that she came back with bleeding hands. That same night, when his wife met him on his return home, he ordered her to light him to his room, then drawing his knife, stabbed her in the breast. The poor woman bled to death in half-an-hour. Davis after the deed was done was seized with contrition, and when arrested and on his way to Newgate, he told the peace officer that he had killed the best wife in the world. “I know I shall be hanged,” he added; “but for God’s sake don’t let me be anatomized.” This man is said to have assumed an air of bravado while he lay under sentence of death, but his courage deserted him as the time for execution approached. He had such a dread of falling into the hands of the surgeons that he wrote to several friends begging them to rescue his body if any attempt should be made at the gallows to remove it. He was hanged at Tyburn on the 30th April, 1825; but the calendar does not state what happened to his corpse.

George Price, who murdered his wife in 1738, had an analogous motive: he wished to release himself from one tie in order to enter into another. He was in service in Kent, his wife lived in lodgings in Highgate, and their family increased far more rapidly than he liked. Having for some time paid his addresses to a widow in Kent, he at length resolved to remove the only obstacle to a second and more profitable marriage. With this infernal object in view he went to Highgate, and told his wife that he had secured a place for her at Putney, to which he would himself drive her in a chaise. She was warned by some of his fellow-servants against trusting herself alone with him, but “she said she had no fear of him, as he had treated her with unusual kindness.” They drove off towards Hounslow. On the way she begged him to stop while she bought some snuff, but he refused, laughingly declaring she would never want to use snuff again. When they reached Hounslow Heath it was nearly ten o’clock at night. The time and place being suitable, he suddenly threw his whip-lash round his wife’s throat and drew it tight. As the cord was not quite in the right place he coolly altered it, and disregarding her entreaties, he again tightened the rope; then finding she was not quite dead, pulled it with such violence that it broke, but not till the murder was accomplished. Having stripped the body, he disfigured it, as he hoped, beyond recognition, then left it under a gibbet on which some malefactors were hanging in chains, and returned to London with his wife’s clothes, part of which he dropped about the street, and part he gave back to her landlady, to whom they belonged. Being seen about, so many inquiries were made for his wife that he feared detection, and fled to Portsmouth.

Next day he heard the murder cried through the streets by the bellman, and found that it was his own case, with an exact description of his appearance. He at once jumped out of the window—the inn was by the waterside—and swam to another part of the shore. Thence he made his way into the country and got chance jobs as a farm-labourer. At Oxford he found that he was advertised in the local paper, and he again decamped, travelling on and on till he reached his own home in Wales. His father gave him refuge for a couple of days, but a report of his being in the house got about, and he had to fly to Gloucester, where he became an ostler at an inn. In Gloucester he was again recognized as the man who had killed his wife on Hounslow Heath by a gentleman who promised not to betray him, but warned him that he would be taken into custody if he remained in the town. “Agitated by the momentary fear of detection, Price knew not how to act,” and he resolved at length to go back to London and give himself up to justice. He called first on his former master, was apprehended, and committed to Newgate. He took his trial in due course, and was, on “the strongest circumstantial evidence ever adduced against an offender,” cast for death, but fell a victim to the gaol-fever in October, 1738.

I will mention a couple more cases of wife-murder, and leave this section of criminals. The second marriage of Edward Joines, contracted at the Fleet, was not a happy one. His wife had a violent temper, and they continually disagreed. A daughter of hers lived with them, and the two women contrived to aggravate and annoy Joines to desperation. He retaliated by brutal treatment. On one occasion he pushed his wife into the grate and scorched her arm; frequently he drove her out of doors in scanty clothing at late hours and in inclement weather. One day his anger was roused by seeing a pot of ale going into his house for his wife, who was laid up with a fractured arm. He rushed in, and after striking the tankard out of her hand, seized her by the bad arm, twisted it till the bone again separated. The fracture was reset, but mortification rapidly supervened, and she died within ten days. The coroner’s jury in consequence brought in a verdict of wilful murder against Joines. He was in due course convicted of murder, although it was difficult to persuade him that he had had a fair trial, seeing that his wife did not succumb immediately to the cruel injury she had received at his hands. He was executed in December, 1739.

The second wife of John Williamson received still more terribly inhuman treatment at his hands. This ruffian within three weeks after his marriage drenched his wife with cold water, and having otherwise ill-used her, inflicted the following diabolical torture. Having fastened her hands behind with handcuffs, he lifted her off the ground, with her toes barely touching it, by a rope run through a staple. She was locked up in a closet, and close by was placed a small piece of bread and butter, which she could just touch with her lips. She was allowed a small portion of water daily. Sometimes a girl who was in the house gave the poor creature a stool to rest her feet on, but Williamson discovered it, and was so furious that he nearly beat the girl to death. The wretched woman was kept in this awful plight for more than a month at a time, and at length succumbed. She died raving mad. Williamson when arrested made a frivolous defence, declaring his wife provoked him by treading on a kitten and killing it. He was found guilty and executed in 1760.

The victim of Theodore Gardelle was a woman although not his wife. This murder much exercised the public mind at the time. The perpetrator was a foreigner, a hitherto inoffensive miniature painter, who was goaded into such a frenzy by the intolerable irritation of a woman’s tongue, that he first struck and then despatched her. He lodged with a Mrs. King in Leicester Fields, whose miniature he had painted, but not very successfully. She had desired to have the portrait particularly good, and in her disappointment gave the unfortunate painter no peace. One morning she came into the parlour which he used, and which was en suite with her bed-room, and immediately attacked him about the miniature. Provoked by her insults, Gardelle told her she was a very impertinent woman; at which she struck him a violent blow on the chest. He pushed her from him, “rather in contempt than anger,” as he afterwards declared, “and with no desire to hurt her;” her foot caught in the floor-cloth, she fell backward, and her head came with great force against a sharp corner of the bedstead, for Gardelle apparently had followed her into her bed-room. The blood immediately gushed from her mouth, and he at once ran up to assist her and express his concern; but she pushed him away, threatening him with the consequences of his act. He was greatly terrified at the thought of being charged with a criminal assault; but the more he strove to pacify the more she reviled and threatened, till at last he seized a sharp-pointed ivory comb which lay upon her toilette-table and drove it into her throat. The blood poured out in still greater volume, and her voice gradually grew fainter and fainter, and she presently expired. Gardelle said afterwards he drew the bed-clothes over her, then, horrified and overcome, fell by her side in a swoon. When he came to himself he examined the body to see if Mrs. King were quite dead, and in his confusion staggered against the wainscot and hit his head so as to raise a great bump over his eye.

Gardelle now seems to have considered with himself how best he might conceal his crime. There was only one other resident in the house, a maid-servant, who was out on a message for him at the time of his fatal quarrel with Mrs. King. When she returned she found the bed-room locked, and Gardelle told her her mistress had gone into the country for the day. Later on he paid her wages on behalf of Mrs. King and discharged her, with the, explanation that her mistress intended to bring home a new maid with her. Having now the house to himself, he entered the chamber of death, and stripped the body, which he laid in the bed. He next disposed of the blood-stained bed-clothes by putting them to soak in a wash-tub in the back wash-house. A servant of an absent fellow-lodger came in late and asked for Mrs. King, but Gardelle said she had not returned, and that he meant to sit up for her and let her into the house. Next morning he explained Mrs. King’s absence by saying she had come late and gone off again for the day.

This went on from Wednesday to Saturday; but no suspicion of anything wrong had as yet been conceived, and the body still lay in the same place in the back-room. On Sunday Gardelle began to put into execution a project for destroying the body in parts, which he disposed of by throwing them down the sinks, or spreading in the cock-loft. On Monday and Tuesday inquiries began to be made for Mrs. King, and Gardelle continued to say that he expected her daily, but on Thursday the stained bed-clothes were found in the wash-tub. Gardelle was seen coming from the wash-house, and heard to ask what had become of the linen. This roused suspicion for the first time. The discharged maid-servant was hunted up, and as she declared she knew nothing of the wash-tub or its contents, and as Mrs. King was still missing, the neighbours began to move in the matter. Mr. Barron, an apothecary, came and questioned Gardelle, who was so much confused in his answers that a warrant was obtained for his arrest. Then Mrs. King’s bed-room was examined, and that of Gardelle, now a prisoner. In both were found conclusive evidence of foul play. By-and-by in the cock-loft and elsewhere portions of the missing woman were discovered, and some jewellery known to be hers was traced to Gardelle, who did not long deny his guilt. When he was in the new prison at Clerkenwell he tried to commit suicide by taking forty drops of opium; but it failed even to procure him sleep. After this he swallowed halfpence to the number of twelve, hoping that the verdigrese would kill him, but he survived after suffering great tortures. He was removed then to Newgate for greater security, and was closely watched till the end. After a fair trial he was convicted and cast for death. His execution took place in the Haymarket near Panton Street, to which he was led past Mrs. King’s house, and at which he cast one glance as he passed. His body was hanged in chains on Hounslow Heath.

Women were as capable of fiendish cruelty as men, and displayed greater and more diabolical ingenuity in devising torments for their victims. Two murders typical of this class of crime may be quoted here. One was that committed by the Meteyards, mother and daughter, upon an apprentice girl; the other that of Elizabeth Brownrigg, also on an apprentice. The Meteyards kept a millinery shop in Bruton Street, Berkeley Square, and had five parish apprentices bound to them. One was a sickly girl, Anne Taylor by name. Being unable to do as much work as her employers desired, they continually vented their spite upon her. After enduring great cruelty Anne Taylor absconded; she was caught, brought back to Bruton Street, and imprisoned in a garret on bread and water; she again escaped, and was again recaptured and cruelly beaten with a broom-handle. Then they tied her with a rope to the door of a room so that she could neither sit nor lie down, and she was so kept for three successive days, but suffered to go to bed at night time. On the third night she was so weak she could hardly creep up-stairs. On the fourth day her fellow apprentices were brought to witness her torments as an incentive to exertion, but were forbidden to afford her any kind of relief. On this the last day of her torture she faltered in speech and presently expired. The Meteyards now tried to bring their victim to with hartshorn, but finding life was extinct, they carried the body up to the garret and locked it in. Then four days later they enclosed it in a box, left the garret door ajar, and spread a report through their house that “Nanny” had once more absconded. The deceased had a sister, a fellow apprentice, who declared she was persuaded “Nanny” was dead; whereupon the Meteyards also murdered the sister and secreted the body. Anne’s body remained in the garret for a couple of months, when the stench of decomposition was so great that the murderesses feared detection, and after chopping the corpse in pieces, they burnt parts and disposed of others in drains and gully holes. Four years elapsed without suspicion having been aroused, but there had been constant and violent quarrels between mother and daughter, the former frequently beating and ill-using the latter, who in return reviled her mother as a murderess. During this time the daughter left her home to live with a Mr. Rooker as servant at Ealing. Her mother followed her, and still behaved so outrageously that the daughter, in Mr. Rooker’s presence, upbraided her with what they had done. He became uneasy, and cross-questioned them till they confessed the crime. Both women were arrested and tried at the Old Bailey, where they were convicted and sentenced to death. The mother on the morning of her execution was taken with a fit from which she never recovered, and she was in a state of insensibility when hanged.

Elizabeth Brownrigg was the wife of a plumber who carried on business in Flower de Luce Court, Fleet St. She practised midwifery, and received parish apprentices, whom she took to save the expense of keeping servants. Two girls, victims of her cruel ill-usage, ran away, but a third, Mary Clifford, bound to her by the parish of Whitefriars, remained to endure still worse. Her inhuman mistress repeatedly beat her, now with a hearth-broom, now with a horse-whip or a cane. The girl was forced to lie at nights in a coal-hole, with no bed but a sack and some straw. She was often nearly perished with cold. Once after a long diet of bread and water, when nearly starved to death, she rashly broke into a cupboard in search of food and was caught in the act. Mrs. Brownrigg, to punish her, made her strip, and while she was naked repeatedly beat her with the butt end of a whip. Then fastening a jack-chain around her neck she drew it as tight as possible without strangling, and sent her back to the coal-hole with her hands tied behind her back. Mrs. Brownrigg’s son vied with his mother in ill-treating the apprentices, and when the mistress was tired of horsewhipping the lad continued the savage punishment. When Mary Clifford complained to a French lodger of the barbarity she experienced, Mrs. Brownrigg flew at her and cut her tongue in two places with a pair of scissors. Other apprentices were equally ill-used, and they were all covered with wounds and bruises from the cruel flagellations they received.

At length one of the neighbours, alarmed by the constant moaning and groanings which issued from Brownrigg’s house, began to suspect that “the apprentices were treated with unwarrantable severity.” It was impossible to gain admission, but a maid looked through a skylight into a covered yard, and saw one of the apprentices, in a shocking state of filth and wretchedness, kept there with a pig. One of the overseers now went and demanded Mary Clifford. Mrs. Brownrigg produced another, Mary Mitchell, who was taken to the workhouse, but in such a pitiable state that in removing her clothes her boddice stuck to her wounds. Mary Mitchell having been promised that she should not be sent back to Brownrigg’s, gave a full account of the horrid treatment she and Mary Clifford had received. A further search was made in the Brownrigg’s house, but without effect. At length, under threat of removal to prison, Mrs. Brownrigg produced Clifford “from a cupboard under a beaufet in the dining-room.” “It is impossible,” says the account, “to describe the miserable appearance of this poor girl; nearly her whole body was ulcerated.” Her life was evidently in imminent danger. Having been removed to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, she died there within a few days. The man Brownrigg was arrested, but the woman and son made their escape. Shifting their abode from place to place, buying new disguises from time to time at rag-fairs, eventually they took refuge in lodgings at Wandsworth, where they were recognized by their landlord as answering the description of the murderers of Mary Clifford, and arrested. Mrs. Brownrigg was tried and executed; the men, acquitted of the graver charge, were only sentenced to six months’ imprisonment. The story goes that Hogarth, who prided himself on his skill as a physiognomist, wished to see Mrs. Brownrigg in Newgate. The governor, Mr. Akerman, admitted him, but at the instance of a mutual friend played a trick upon the painter by bringing Mrs. Brownrigg before him casually, as some other woman. Hogarth on looking at her took Akerman aside and said, “You must have two great female miscreants in your custody, for this woman as well as Mrs. Brownrigg is from her features capable of any cruelty and any crime.”