that the death of Dyson was the accidental result of a struggle between
Peace and himself. He suggested that Mrs. Dyson had left her house that
night for the purpose of meeting Peace, and that Dyson, who was jealous
of his wife's intimacy with him, had gone out to find her; that Dyson,
seeing Peace, had caught hold of him; and that the revolver had gone
off accidentally as Dyson tried to wrest it from his adversary.
He repudiated the suggestion of Mr. Foster that the persons he had
confronted with Mrs. Dyson in the course of his cross-examination had
been hired for a paltry sum to come into court and lie.
Twice, both at the beginning and the end of his speech, Mr. Lockwood
urged as a reason for the jury being tender in taking Peace's life that
he was in such a state of wickedness as to be quite unprepared to meet
death. Both times that his counsel put forward this curious plea, Peace
raised his eyes to heaven and exclaimed "I am not fit to die."
Mr. Justice Lopes in summing up described as an "absolute surmise" the
theory of the accidental discharge of the pistol. He asked the jury to
take Peace's revolver in their hands and try the trigger, so as to see
for themselves whether it was likely to go off accidentally or not. He
pointed out that the pistol produced might not have been the pistol used
at Banner Cross; at the same time the bullet fired in November, 1876,
bore marks such as would have been produced had it been fired from the
pistol taken from Peace at Blackheath in October, 1878. He said that Mr.
Lockwood had been perfectly justified in his attempt to discredit the
evidence of Mrs. Dyson, but the case did not rest on her evidence alone.
In her evidence as to the threats uttered by Peace in July, 1876, Mrs.
Dyson was corroborated by three other witnesses. In the Judge's opinion
it was clearly proved that no struggle or scuffle had taken place
before the murder. If the defence, he concluded, rested on no solid
foundation, then the jury must do their duty to the community at large
and by the oath they had sworn.
It was a quarter past seven when the jury retired. Ten minutes later
they came back into court with a verdict of guilty. Asked if he had
anything to say, Peace in a faint voice replied, "It is no use my
saying anything." The Judge, declining very properly to aggravate the
prisoner's feelings by "a recapitulation of any portion of the details
of what I fear, I can only call your criminal career," passed on him
sentence of death. Peace accepted his fate with composure.
Before we proceed to describe the last days of Peace on earth, let us
finish with the two women who had succeeded Mrs. Peace in his ardent
affections.
A few days after Peace's execution Mrs. Dyson left England for America,
but before going she left behind her a narrative intended to contradict
the imputations which she felt had been made against her moral
character. An Irishwoman by birth, she said that she had gone to America
when she was fifteen years old.
There she met and married Dyson, a civil engineer on the Atlantic and
Great Western Railway. Theirs was a rough and arduous life. But Mrs.
Dyson was thoroughly happy in driving her husband about in a buggy among
bears and creeks. She did not know fear and loved danger: "My husband
loved me and I loved him, and in his company and in driving him about in
this wild kind of fashion I derived much pleasure." However, Mr. Dyson's
health broke down, and he was obliged to return to England. It was at
Darnall that the fatal acquaintance with Peace began. Living next
door but one to the Dysons, Peace took the opportunity of introducing
himself, and Mr. Dyson "being a gentleman," took polite notice of his
advances. He became a constant visitor at the house. But after a time
Peace began to show that he was not the gentleman Mr. Dyson was. He
disgusted the latter by offering to show him improper pictures and "the
sights of the town" of Sheffield.
The Dysons tried to shake off the unwelcome acquaintance, but that was
easier said than done. By this time Peace had set his heart on making
Mrs. Dyson leave her husband. He kept trying to persuade her to go to
Manchester with him, where he would take a cigar or picture shop, to
which Mrs. Dyson, in fine clothes and jewelry, should lend the charm of
her comely presence. He offered her a sealskin jacket, yards of silk,
a gold watch. She should, he said, live in Manchester like a lady, to
which Mrs. Dyson replied coldly that she had always lived like one and
should continue to do so quite independently of him. But Peace would
listen to no refusal, however decided its tone. Dyson threw over
the card into Peace's garden. This only served to aggravate his
determination to possess himself of the wife. He would listen at
keyholes, leer in at the window, and follow Mrs. Dyson wherever she
went. When she was photographed at the fair, she found that Peace had
stood behind her chair and by that means got himself included in the
picture. At times he had threatened her with a revolver. On one occasion
when he was more insulting than usual, Mrs. Dyson forgot her fear of him
and gave him a thrashing. Peace threatened "to make her so that neither
man nor woman should look at her, and then he would have her all to
himself." It was with some purpose of this kind, Mrs. Dyson suggested,
that Peace stole a photograph of herself out of a locket, intending to
make some improper use of it. At last, in desperation, the Dysons moved
to Banner Cross. From the day of their arrival there until the murder,
Mrs. Dyson never saw Peace. She denied altogether having been in his
company the night before the murder. The letters were "bare forgeries,"
written by Peace or members of his family to get her into their power.
Against the advice of all her friends Mrs. Dyson had come back from
America to give evidence against Peace. To the detective who saw her at
Cleveland she said, "I will go back if I have to walk on my head all the
way"; and though she little knew what she would have to go through in
giving her evidence, she would do it again under the circumstances. "My
opinion is," she said, "that Peace is a perfect demon--not a man. I am
told that since he has been sentenced to death he has become a changed
character. That I don't believe. The place to which the wicked go is not
bad enough for him. I think its occupants, bad as they might be, are too
good to be where he is. No matter where he goes, I am satisfied that
there will be hell. Not even a Shakespeare could adequately paint such a
man as he has been. My lifelong regret will be that I ever knew him."
With these few earnest words Mrs. Dyson quitted the shores of England,
hardly clearing up the mystery of her actual relations with Peace.
A woman with whom Mrs. Dyson very much resented finding herself
classed--inebriety would appear to have been their only common
weakness--was Mrs. Thompson, the "traitress Sue." In spite of the fact
that on February 5 Mrs. Thompson had applied to the Treasury for L100,
blood money due her for assisting the police in the identification of
Peace, she was at the same time carrying on a friendly correspondence
with her lover and making attempts to see him. Peace had written to her
before his trial hoping she would not forsake him; "you have been my
bosom friend, and you have ofttimes said you loved me, that you would
die for me." He asked her to sell some goods which he had left with
her in order to raise money for his defence. The traitress replied on
January 27 that she had already sold everything and shared the proceeds
with Mrs. Peace. "You are doing me great injustice," she wrote, "by
saying that I have been out to 'work' with you. Do not die with such a
base falsehood on your conscience, for you know I am young and have my
living and character to redeem. I pity you and myself to think we should
have met." After his condemnation Mrs. Thompson made repeated efforts
to see Peace, coming to Leeds for the purpose. Peace wrote a letter on
February 9 to his "poor Sue," asking her to come to the prison. But,
partly at the wish of Peace's relatives and for reasons of their own, a
permission given Mrs. Thompson by the authorities to visit the convict
was suddenly withdrawn, and she never saw him again.
III
HIS TRIAL AND EXECUTION
In the lives of those famous men who have perished on the scaffold
their behaviour during the interval between their condemnation and their
execution has always been the subject of curiosity and interest.
It may be said at once that nothing could have been more deeply
religious, more sincerely repentant, more Christian to all appearances
than Peace's conduct and demeanour in the last weeks of his life. He
threw himself into the work of atonement with the same uncompromising
zeal and energy that he had displayed as a burglar. By his death a truly
welcome and effective recruit was lost to the ranks of the contrite
and converted sinners. However powerless as a controlling force--and he
admitted it--his belief in God and the devil may have been in the past,
that belief was assured and confident, and in the presence of death
proclaimed itself with vigour, not in words merely, but in deeds.
In obedience to the wishes of his family, Peace had refrained from
seeing Sue Thompson. This was at some sacrifice, for he wished very much
to see her and to the last, though he knew that she had betrayed him,
sent her affectionate and forgiving messages. These were transmitted
to Sue by Mr. Brion. This disingenuous gentleman was a fellow-applicant
with Sue to the Treasury for pecuniary recognition of his efforts in
bringing about the identification of Peace, and furnishing the police
with information as to the convict's disposal of his stolen property. In
his zeal he had even gone so far as to play the role of an accomplice of
Peace, and by this means discovered a place in Petticoat Lane where the
burglar got rid of some of his booty.
After Peace's condemnation Mr. Brion visited him in Armley Jail. His
purpose in doing so was to wring from his co-inventor an admission that
the inventions which they had patented together were his work alone.
Peace denied this, but offered to sell his share for L50. Brion refused
the offer, and persisted in his assertion that Peace had got his name
attached to the patents by undue influence, whatever that might mean.
Peace, after wrestling with the spirit, gave way. "Very well, my
friend," he said, "let it be as you say. I have not cheated you, Heaven
knows. But I also know that this infamy of mine has been the cause of
bringing harm to you, which is the last thing I should have wished to
have caused to my friend." A deed of gift was drawn up, making over to
Brion Peace's share in their inventions; this Peace handed to Brion
as the price of the latter's precious forgiveness and a token of the
sincerity of his colleague's repentance. Thus, as has often happened
in this sad world, was disreputable genius exploited once again by
smug mediocrity. Mr. Brion, having got all he wanted, left the prison,
assuring the Governor that Peace's repentance was "all bunkum," and
advising, with commendable anxiety for the public good, that the warders
in the condemned cell should be doubled.
Peace had one act of atonement to discharge more urgent than displaying
Christian forbearance towards ignoble associates. That was the righting
of William Habron, who was now serving the third year of his life
sentence for the murder of Constable Cock at Whalley Range. Peace
sent for the Governor of the jail a few days before his execution and
obtained from him the materials necessary for drawing up a plan. Peace
was quite an adept at making plans; he had already made an excellent one
of the scene of Dyson's murder. He now drew a plan of the place where
Cock had been shot, gave a detailed account of how he came by his death,
and made a full confession of his own guilt.
In the confession he described how, some days before the burglary, he
had, according to his custom, "spotted" the house at Whalley Range. In
order to do this he always dressed himself respectably, because he had
found that the police never suspected anyone who wore good clothes. On
the night of the crime he passed two policemen on the road to the house.
He had gone into the grounds and was about to begin operations when he
heard a rustle behind him and saw a policeman, whom he recognised as one
of those he had met in the road, enter the garden. With his well-known
agility Peace climbed on to the wall, and dropped on to the other side,
only to find himself almost in the arms of the second policeman. Peace
warned the officer to stand back and fired his revolver wide of him.
But, as Peace said, "these Manchester policemen are a very obstinate
lot." The constable took out his truncheon. Peace fired again and killed
him.
Soon after the murderer saw in the newspapers that two men had been
arrested for the crime. "This greatly interested me," said Peace. "I
always had a liking to be present at trials, as the public no doubt know
by this time." So he went to Manchester Assizes and saw William Habron
sentenced to death. "People will say," he said, "that I was a hardened
wretch for allowing an innocent man to suffer for the crime of which
I was guilty but what man would have given himself up under such
circumstances, knowing as I did that I should certainly be hanged?"
Peace's view of the question was a purely practical one: "Now that I
am going to forfeit my own life and feel that I have nothing to gain
by further secrecy, I think it is right in the sight of God and man to
clear this innocent young man." It would have been more right in the
sight of God and man to have done it before, but then Peace admitted
that during all his career he had allowed neither God nor man to
influence his actions.
How many men in the situation of Peace at the time, with the certainty
of death before him if he confessed, would have sacrificed themselves to
save an innocent man? Cold-blooded heroism of this kind is rare in the
annals of crime. Nor did Peace claim to have anything of the hero about
him.
"Lion-hearted I've lived,
And when my time comes
Lion-hearted I'll die."
Though fond of repeating this piece of doggerel, Peace would have
been the last man to have attributed to himself all those qualities
associated symbolically with the lion.
A few days before his execution Peace was visited in his prison by Mr.
Littlewood, the Vicar of Darnall. Mr. Littlewood had known Peace a few
years before, when he had been chaplain at Wakefield Prison. "Well, my
old friend Peace," he said as he entered the cell, "how are you to-day?"
"'I am very poorly, sir," replied the convict, "but I am exceedingly
pleased to see you." Mr. Littlewood assured Peace that there was at any
rate one person in the world who had deep sympathy with him, and that
was himself. Peace burst into tears. He expressed a wish to unburden
himself to the vicar, but before doing so, asked for his assurance that
he believed in the truth and sincerity of what he was about to say to
him. He said that he preferred to be hanged to lingering out his life
in penal servitude, that he was grieved and repentant for his past
life. "If I could undo, or make amends for anything I have done, I would
suffer my body as I now stand to be cut in pieces inch by inch. I feel,
sir, that I am too bad to live or die, and having this feeling I cannot
think that either you or anyone else would believe me, and that is the
reason why I ask you so much to try to be assured that you do not think
I am telling lies. I call my God to witness that all I am saying and
wish to say shall be the truth--the whole truth--nothing but the truth."
Mr. Littlewood said that, after carefully watching Peace and having
regard to his experience of some of the most hardened of criminals
during his service in Wakefield Prison, he felt convinced that Peace
was in earnest and as sincere as any man could be; he spoke rationally,
coherently, and without excitement.
Peace was determined to test the extent of the reverend gentleman's
faith in his asseverations. "Now, sir," he said, "I understand that you
still have the impression that I stole the clock from your day-schools."
Mr. Littlewood admitted that such was his impression. "I thought so,"
replied Peace, "and this has caused me much grief and pain, for I can
assure you I have so much respect for you personally that I would rather
have given you a clock and much more besides than have taken it. At the
time your clock was stolen I had reason for suspecting that it was taken
by some colliers whom I knew." There was a pause. Mr. Littlewood thought
that Peace was going to give him the name of the colliers. But that was
not Peace's way. He said sharply: "Do you now believe that I have spoken
the truth in denying that I took your clock, and will you leave me
to-day fully believing that I am innocent of doing that?" Mr. Littlewood
looked at him closely and appeared to be deliberating on his reply.
Peace watched him intently. At last Mr. Littlewood said, "Peace, I am
convinced that you did not take the clock. I cannot believe that you
dare deny it now in your position, if you really did." Once more Peace
burst into tears, and was unable for some time to speak.
Having recovered his self-possession, Peace turned to the serious
business of confession. He dealt first with the murder of Dyson.
He maintained that his relations with Mrs. Dyson had been of an intimate
character. He wanted to see her on the night of the crime in order
to get her to induce her husband to withdraw the warrant which he had
procured against him; he was tired, he said, of being hunted about
from place to place. He intercepted Mrs. Dyson as she crossed the
yard. Instead of listening to him quietly Mrs. Dyson became violent and
threatening in her language. Peace took out his revolver, and, holding
it close to her head, warned her that he was not to be trifled with. She
refused to be warned. Dyson, hearing the loud voices, came out of his
house. Peace tried to get away down the passage into Banner Cross Road,
but Dyson followed and caught hold of him. In the struggle Peace fired
one barrel of his revolver wide. Dyson seized the hand in which Peace
was holding the weapon. "Then I knew," said Peace, "I had not a moment
to spare. I made a desperate effort, wrenched the arm from him and fired
again. All that was in my head at the time was to get away. I never did
intend, either there or anywhere else, to take a man's life; but I was
determined that I should not be caught at that time, as the result,
knowing what I had done before, would have been worse even than had I
stayed under the warrant." If he had intended to murder Dyson, Peace
pointed out that he would have set about it in quite a different and
more secret way; it was as unintentional a thing as ever was done; Mrs.
Dyson had committed the grossest perjury in saying that no struggle had
taken place between her husband and himself.
It is to be remembered that Peace and Mrs. Dyson were the sole
witnesses of what took place that night between the two men. In point
of credibility there may be little to choose between them, but Peace can
claim for his account that it was the statement of a dying, and, to all
appearances, sincerely repentant sinner.
Peace then repeated to Mr. Littlewood his confession of the killing of
Constable Cock, and his desire that Habron should be set free.(11) As to
this part of his career Peace indulged in some general reflections.
"My great mistake, sir," he said, "and I can see it now as my end
approaches, has been this--in all my career I have used ball cartridge.
I can see now that in using ball cartridge I did wrong I ought to have
used blank cartridge; then I would not have taken life." Peace said that
he hoped he would meet his death like a hero. "I do not say this in
any kind of bravado. I do not mean such a hero as some persons will
understand when they read this. I mean such a hero as my God might wish
me to be. I am deeply grieved for all I have done, and would atone
for it to the utmost of my power." To Mr. Littlewood the moment seemed
convenient to suggest that as a practical means of atonement Peace
should reveal to him the names of the persons with whom he had disposed
of the greater part of his stolen property. But in spite of much
attempted persuasion by the reverend gentleman Peace explained that he
was a man and meant to be a man to the end.
(11) William Habron was subsequently given a free pardon and L800 by way
of compensation.
Earlier in their interview Peace had expressed to Mr. Littlewood a hope
that after his execution his name would never be mentioned again, but
before they parted he asked Mr. Littlewood, as a favour, to preach a
sermon on him after his death to the good people of Darnall. He wished
his career held up to them as a beacon, in order that all who saw might
avoid his example, and so his death be of some service to society.
Before Mr. Littlewood left, Peace asked him to hear him pray. Having
requested the warders to kneel down, Peace began a prayer that lasted
twenty minutes. He prayed for himself, his family, his victims, Mr.
Littlewood, society generally, and all classes of the community. Mr.
Littlewood described the prayer as earnest, fervent and fluent. At the
end Peace asked Mr. Littlewood if he ought to see Mrs. Dyson and beg
her forgiveness for having killed her husband. Mr. Littlewood, believing
erroneously that Mrs. Dyson had already left the country, told Peace
that he should direct all his attention to asking forgiveness of his
Maker. At the close of their interview Peace was lifted into bed and,
turning his face to the wall, wept.
Tuesday, February 25, was the day fixed for the execution of Peace.
As the time drew near, the convict's confidence in ultimate salvation
increased. A Dr. Potter of Sheffield had declared in a sermon that "all
hope of Peace's salvation was gone for ever." Peace replied curtly,
"Well, Dr. Potter may think so, but I don't." Though his health had
improved, Peace was still very feeble in body. But his soul was hopeful
and undismayed. On the Saturday before his death his brother and
sister-in-law, a nephew and niece visited him for the last time. He
spoke with some emotion of his approaching end. He said he should die
about eight o'clock, and that at four o'clock an inquest would be held
on his body; he would then be thrown into his grave without service
or sermon of any kind. He asked his relatives to plant a flower on a
certain grave in a cemetery in Sheffield on the day of his execution. He
was very weak, he said, but hoped he should have strength enough to
walk to the scaffold. He sent messages to friends and warnings to avoid
gambling and drinking. He begged his brother to change his manner of
life and "become religious." His good counsel was not apparently
very well received. Peace's visitors took a depressing view of their
relative's condition. They found him "a poor, wretched, haggard man,"
and, meeting Mrs. Thompson who was waiting outside the gaol for news of
"dear Jack," wondered how she could have taken up with such a man.