With a choking voice, almost drowned by the sobs of his relatives, he

prayed for the two men he had murdered, and for the relatives they had

left behind; and, in conclusion, he prayed long and earnestly for

himself that his sins might be forgiven him, and that he might meet

them all in heaven.

There was not much more conversation when Peace and his friends rose

from their knees, and then came the moment when the final separation

had to take place.

For the first time since he was sentenced to death Peace was allowed

to shake hands with his family.

Taking the hand of each in turn he held it for several minutes while

he blessed them, and prayed for them, and then kissed their hands.

When he saw the great distress of his wife and children, he broke down

himself, and the last few moments they were altogether were truly

sorrowful moments for them all.

Then they were conducted from the cell, and the interview, which had

lasted nearly three hours, terminated.

The relatives came away with the belief that Peace had committed no

other great crimes, or he would have confessed them.

FINAL INTERVIEW WITH HIS BROTHER AND OTHER RELATIVES.

On Saturday, Dan Peace, his wife, John Peace, and Ellen Peace, their

son and daughter, and Tom Neil, a relative, had their final interview

with him in Armley Gaol.

Cheerful, and apparently unconcerned at his fate hitherto, the

condemned man, knowing that he was speaking to his brother and those

who accompanied him for the last time, lost his old buoyancy of

spirits, and, although he did not seem at all alarmed at the end

awaiting him, appeared very much depressed in mind, and manifested

considerable emotion.

His brother, Dan Peace, and the other relatives mentioned, were with

him nearly two hours. The invitation was extended also to Mary Ann

Neil, but she was not present at the gaol, as she did not arrive in

Leeds in time for the interview.

The party had been specially invited by Peace, so that he could bid

them farewell. They found the convict lying down, but as soon as he

saw his brother, and the rest of the party, he struggled to raise

himself to a sitting posture.

Finding it difficult to do this, he asked the warders to raise him.

The two warders, each getting on one side of the condemned man, took

him by the arms, and lifted him up. So weak was he that even this

alteration of position seemed to exhaust him, and, according to his

brother Dan, he was “a pale, wretched, haggard man altogether,” almost

feeble as a child.

In answer to his brother, who asked, “How are you?” he replied, “I am

very, very ill, and very, very weak.” And in the opinion of his

relatives he certainly spoke the truth, for they affirm that he was

very much weaker than he had ever previously appeared.

His head was still bandaged, and he told them that although the

authorities were taking every possible care of him it seemed

impossible to stop the discharge from his wound, and that he felt very

weak and depressed in consequence.

Suffering much physically, and the subject of much mental depression,

he nevertheless made a great effort to welcome his brother and

relatives cordially.

“I am very glad to see you,” he said, and then remarked that he had

also invited two friends――George Goodlad, and Arthur Cragg――to see

him.

Being asked why they were not present, he said he had discovered that

none but his own relatives could be admitted to the gaol.

He regretted this very much, and said he had got into some little

trouble by persisting in asking to see these two friends.

He admitted now, however, that he had really no right to expect their

admission; yet, at the same time he stated that he was very, very

sorry he should not be allowed to see them; and, whilst speaking about

his acquaintance with them, and the improbability of meeting them

again on this side the grave, betrayed great emotion. “Give them my

kind love,” he said, “and tell them that I hope God will bless them,

and that I shall meet them in heaven.”

During the interview he became utterly exhausted, and was compelled to

cease from speaking altogether for a few minutes; and even when he was

able to converse, it was in such a low tone that his words were almost

inaudible to his friends, although they were only a few feet away from

him.

Dan said he understood that his brother was going to send them all a

farewell letter. Peace replied that it was his intention to do so.

He was going to write several letters, take them to the scaffold with

him, and on arriving there he should seal them up and hand them to the

chaplain, with the request that he would gratify him by sending them

to his friends by as early a post as he could after the execution was

over.

He hoped, he said, that the letters would be delivered by the same

evening’s post, and then his relatives would have, before the day was

over, his last thoughts about them.

The convict then went on to speak about his execution, mentioning

details that made some of his relatives shudder, and all of them to

grow sad.

He said: I am to die precisely at eight o’clock――so you will know when

it is all over with me. After I am dead they will hold an inquest on

my body, and I shall be buried, I expect about four o’clock in the

afternoon.

Here he paused for a few minutes, partly because he seemed to be

exhausted, and partly because he was overcome by his own feelings.

His relatives, seeing the distressed state he was in, broke down

utterly, and for some little time there was nothing to be heard but

their sobs.

Peace was the first to recover himself, and going on to speak of what

would be done on Tuesday, he said: I shall be buried in my clothes,

just as I am. They might, however, change my shirt, or something like

that.

Then, again giving way and betraying more feeling than could possibly

have been expected in a man who had led the life he had led, and

committed the crimes to which he had confessed, he said: I shall be

thrown into my grave, and there will be no service read over me; no

sermon preached; nothing of that sort.

He again seemed exhausted and stopped speaking, and his relatives

could only look at him and weep.

Peace after awhile aroused himself again, and alluding to the men he

had murdered and the robberies he had committed, he said: I wish it

was in my power to restore them to life, and to replace all the

property I have stolen; but, he added, that can never be.

His relatives asked him if he had any wish that they could carry out,

or anything that they could do to please him?

Peace replied with more animation than he had shown so far during the

interview: Yes, there is one thing you can do, and I wish you would do

it.

I want you on the day of my execution to go to the cemetery and plant

a flower or a little tree on my mother’s grave and on another grave

that he named, and then when you see them think of me, and where I am,

and where I am buried.

His relatives promised him that his wish in this respect should be

gratified, and he seemed much pleased.

Peace, referring again to his execution, said he did hope he should

have strength to walk to the scaffold, but he was afraid he should not

be able to do so――he was so very weak.

Dan replied: Yes; I should like thee to be able to walk. Stand it like

a man!

Peace answered with much show of feeling――Dan, thee knows I shall do

that if I can.

Dan afterwards asked him why he jumped out of the train when coming

from London to Sheffield; and he repeated what he had said before,

that he wanted to commit suicide.

He said he neither wanted to spend his life in prison and then die

there; nor to pass through what he had had to pass through since. He

thought if he had killed himself then he might have been buried

amongst his friends at Darnall.

Much of the convict’s conversation during the interview was on

religious topics. He said he wished he could speak to all his friends,

and then he would entreat them never to enter a public-house, or to

gamble, or go to handicaps.

He made a personal appeal to Dan, and begged of him to change his mode

of life and to become a good man; or as he put it “to become

religious.” In this strain he talked for a long time; at intervals

resting from sheer exhaustion, and then going on again.

Much of what he said, however, they could not hear, he spoke in so low

a tone of voice. He made no further reference to either of the murders

he had committed.

When the time came for the interview to terminate not only the

condemned man, but Dan and all his friends were much affected, and as

may be imagined the final farewell was a very sorrowful scene.

His last utterances to them were kind remembrances to George Goodlad

and Cragg, and a promise that he would write to them both.

The relatives left the cell, feeling that they had indeed taken leave

of a “poor, wretched, haggard man.”

As the party were returning from Armley to Leeds they were accosted by

Mrs. Brion and Mrs. Thompson who were urgent in their inquiries as to

what had passed between them and “Dear Jack.”

Dan, we understand, took no notice of them; but the others conversed

with the two women a short time. They were much impressed with Mrs.

Thompson, and greatly astonished that she should ever have taken up

with a man like him.

PEACE AS A PUBLIC PERFORMER.

An Ashton-under-Lyne correspondent telegraphs:――It is a well-known

fact that Peace on more than one occasion plied his many vocations in

Manchester and the neighbouring towns.

From inquiries made in Levenshulme it transpires that the notorious

criminal resided in that suburb about four years ago.

He stayed there only four months, and after he left the local

residents thought little more about him.

A day or two ago, however, a policeman took a photograph of Peace to

the locality, and many tradesmen at once recognised the portrait as

that of the man who had formerly lived among them, and for a time had

been quite a favourite in the district.

He rented a small detached house called Olive-cottage, in

Rushford-road Park, which he fairly well furnished.

He gave his name as Thompson, and he was accompanied by a woman

supposed to have been Mrs. Peace.

He was never idle, and always had some project on foot. He was

constantly painting his cottage, and took such trouble with the work

that the neighbours took it for granted that he meant to remain there

for some years.

He was very affable and obliging to everybody, and was, until he

decamped without paying his accounts, a great favourite with the

tradesmen.

To ladies he was especially polite and attentive, indeed almost too

much so, for if he met a woman in a shop he would say “Good morning”

in an agreeable tone, but usually accompanied his salutation by a wink

at the shopman.

He obtained considerable notoriety by his skill in contorting his

features and assuming the appearance of a cripple. Subsequently he was

known to have been the “Burnage bogie,” an apparition that had scared

many people in Burnage-lane, and made folks afraid to use the

thoroughfare after nightfall.

At the same time it is remarkable that he was never suspected of

committing any robbery, nor has it been proved that he gave effect to

his thievish prospensity in the neighbourhood.

Ostensibly he earned his livelihood as an acrobat, and was engaged at

the Abbey Hey Park in this capacity.

He was considered exceedingly clever, and it is stated that he could

throw half-hundred weights about like pounds of sugar.

He likewise performed publicly on the violin, and was regarded by

frequenters of the grounds as an able musician.

A Bristol gentleman who was staying with Mr. Plimsoll, M.P., at the

time Peace called upon him to submit plans for raising sunken vessels,

said that these plans were introduced as a grand scheme for raising

the “Vanguard,” “Captain,” and “Eurydice.”

The stranger wished Mr. Plimsoll to introduce him to the First Lord of

the Admiralty, and Mr. Samuda and Mr. Reed.

Mr. Plimsoll declined, desiring him, if he wished to communicate

further with him, to do so in writing through his visitor from

Bristol.

That gentleman afterwards received letters asking to be supplied with

the names of the owners of any sunken vessels in the Bristol Channel

or on the western coastline.

The writer was informed of the wreck on the Hook Sands of a Greek

brig, for which the owner wanted £50. He thereupon asked Mr.

Plimsoll’s Bristol friend to pay the £50, assuring him that the money

would be refunded; but, as may be supposed, asked in vain.

The Ashton-under-Lyne correspondent of the _Central News_

wrote:――“From inquiries made in Levenshulme it transpires that Peace,

about four years ago, came to reside in that place, but stayed only

three months.

“He had been forgotten, but several of the inhabitants, on seeing a

portrait of the convict a day or two ago, recognised in him their

neighbour, Mr. Thompson, who resided in a small detached house called

Olive-cottage, in Rushford-road Park.

“He lived with a woman who is supposed to have been Mrs. Peace, and,

being always affable and obliging, was a great favourite until he

decamped without paying his accounts.

“He was never suspected of robbery, but in consequence of fancied

apparations the people of the neighbourhood were afraid to use the

thoroughfare close to his house after dark. He ostensibly earned his

livelihood as an acrobat, and was considered extremely clever in this

direction.”

Peace’s will was drawn by Deputy-Sheriff Ford, member of a local firm

of solicitors.

It extended to but four or five lines, and bequeathe property to

Hannah Ward, or Peace, his wife.

The text was not to be published until the day of his execution. In

regard to the former will he made bequeathing everything to Mrs.

Thompson, the latter’s sister, it is said, burnt the document.

CHAPTER CLXXII.

THE EXECUTION OF CHARLES PEACE.

On Tuesday, Feb. 25th, 1879, Peace was executed within the walls of

Armley Gaol, Leeds, at eight o’clock in the morning. The convict had a

short sleep just after eleven o’clock the night before. At half-past

eleven the Governor of the Gaol (Mr. Keene) visited him and remained

with him until twenty minutes past one. Immediately after the Governor

left, the chaplain, the Rev. O. Cookson, came.

As Peace seemed drowsy and inclined for sleep, the chaplain retired.

At two o’clock Peace slept calmly and soundly until a quarter to six

next morning, when the chaplain again joined him.

Shortly afterwards he breakfasted, and was able to take a hearty meal

of toast, bacon, and eggs and tea.

He had eaten well all throughout, especially during the previous few

days, and had apparently become much stronger.

Between seven and eight o’clock a number of people began to assemble

outside the prison walls. At first their numbers were not large, but

as eight o’clock neared their strength increased largely.

The reporters arrived about seven o’clock; only four were present.

They were conducted by two warders from the entrance office to the

scaffold, which was erected on the west side of the prison, in an

angle of the hospital, which stands apart from the prison.

Up to that time the morning had been clear and fair, but about ten

minutes to eight there was a slight fall of snow, which did not last

long. At a quarter to eight the prison bell began to toll, and

continued tolling until a quarter past eight.

The scaffold was only within view from the western end of the

corridor, at the other extremity of which the condemned cell is

situated. The prisoners in this part of the prison were removed to

another part of the building, in order that they might not witness the

execution.

About five minutes to eight o’clock a procession emerged into the

yard, taking a winding course to the prison wall to the scaffold.

First came the Under-Sheriff, Mr. Gray, and the governor of the gaol,

Mr. Keene, bearing rods of office, then followed the chaplain in his

canonicals, reading the Burial Service, but he selected passages from

the Scriptures which form the usual service at the gaol on such

occasions. Immediately behind Mr. Cookson came the prisoner. He was

supported by two warders, and behind came Marwood.

As at the trial, he was dressed in yellowish drab, the Pentonville

convict suit. His arms were pinioned. His step was weak and feeble,

but he required less support than could have been anticipated.

There was no sign of terror or breaking down. He was very pale, but in

his general appearance little altered from that which he presented

when in the dock on his trial.

If anything, he looked in better health than at that time. Instead of

looking on the ground and gazing vacantly, he peered round, as if

looking for someone. The object of that was, perhaps, explained by

what took place afterwards. The procession was brought up by six or

eight warders.

Beyond the persons already enumerated and Mr. Price, the prison

surgeon, no one else was present. The prisoner ascended the scaffold

with a comparatively firm tread, although he had to be assisted up the

steps. He was placed upon the drop with his head forward towards the

spectators.

Whilst Marwood was tying his feet, the chaplain continued reading

selected portions of the Scripture. The prisoner also kept repeating,

“God, have mercy upon me! Christ, have mercy on me!”

As Marwood, who stood behind the culprit, was preparing the cap to

pull over his face, the convict evinced slight signs of irritation at

the unexpected haste, and again signified his wish to speak.

A brief space was accordingly allowed; and looking round amongst the

small company before him, he addressed them in a clear, firm voice,

the tones of which must have been heard outside the prison walls. He

said――

“You gentlemen reporters, I wish you to notice the few words I am

going to say. You know what my life has been. It has been base; and

had I wished to ask the world, after you have seen my death, what man

could die as I die if he did not die in the fear of the Lord.

“Tell all my friends that I feel sure that they sincerely forgive me,

and that I am going into the Kingdom of Heaven, or else to that place

prepared for us to rest until the day of judgment.

“I have no enemies that I feel to have on this earth. I wish all my

enemies, or those that would be so, I wish them well; I wish them to

come to the Kingdom of Heaven at last.

“And now, to one and all, I say, good-bye; Heaven bless you, and may

you all come to the Kingdom of Heaven at last. Amen.

“Say that my last respects is to my dear children and to their dear

mother. I hope that no paper will disgrace itself by taunting them and

jeering them on my account, but will have mercy upon them. God bless

you, my children; my children each good-bye, and Heaven bless you.

Good-bye and Amen.”

After the convict had thus delivered himself, Marwood drew the white

cap over his face; and, whilst this was being done, Peace turned his

head slightly towards the executioner, and said――

“I should like to have a drink. Have you a cup of water you could give

me?”

No attention was paid to this request, and Marwood proceeded with his

duty.

From beneath the cap, however, the voice of the culprit was again

heard: “May I not have a drink?” and again, as the rope was being

adjusted to his neck, he exclaimed: “Oh! that’s too tight.”

The voice of the chaplain was then heard saying: “In the midst of life

we are in death. Of whom may we seek succour but of Thee, O Lord, who

for our sins are justly displeased?”

Then was uttered the commendation: “Into thy hands, O Lord, we commend

this soul, now about to depart from the body. Lord Jesus receive his

spirit. Amen.”

As those words were being uttered Marwood stepped forward and drew the

bolt. The drop fell and the body disappeared. There was a distinct

thud, but not the slightest quivering of the rope, and Mr. Price, the

surgeon, said death must have been instantaneous.

The drop was 9 ft. 4 in. long. It was about four minutes past eight

when the execution took place, and the black flag was immediately

hoisted from the prison tower as an indication to the crowd outside

that all was over.

Those who had been much with Peace during the last few days said that

the speech from the scaffold was not altogether unexpected by them,

because the convict was a man who talked much.

What he said during the previous few days was fully in keeping with

what he said on the scaffold, and they believed what he said, and died

penitent.

No confession was handed to any of the prison officials, and they had

nothing to communicate except what had already been mentioned in the

public press relating to the Whalley Range murder, the documents

relative to which had been forwarded to the Home Office.

ANOTHER ACCOUNT.

The Press Association correspondent gave the following account:――One

of the most extraordinary criminals reaped his well-merited reward at

the hands of the common hangman at Armley gaol.

It is unnecessary to name the culprit, for the name of Peace has been

before the public every morning for two or three months.

When on his trial, and as the curtain lifted from his life, he has

gloated over his exploits, and notwithstanding his profession of

penitence, few would doubt that if he had been left free he would have

pursued the same murderous course.

There was a mingling with wonder and horror that a man who robbed

houses two or three times a night, and for months successively in the

districts where he prowled around as burglar, should have escaped the

police; should have carried off his booty and sold it; should have

passed as a respectable man in the neighbourhoods where he lived, and

even palmed himself off as one interested in science.

Touching appeals to the reporters from the scaffold and the whining

imploring way in which he begged Marwood to wait a bit when the noose

was being adjusted, showed that he was wanting in courage.

One can hardly conceive that any man could really pity that monster of

iniquity, who had lived in robbery through his life, and who had not

scrupled, when interfered with in his nefarious deeds, to use his

revolver in shooting down whomsoever he might chance to encounter.

He shot the policeman at Blackheath, he shot Constable Cock, at

Manchester, and actually attended the trial and conviction of another

man for the murder, whose sentence, however, was providentially

commuted, and shortly after this he shot Mr. Dyson in as cold-blooded

a murder as has ever been revealed, and, further, he was guilty of

attempting to slur with dishonour the wife of the man he murdered.

After his conviction he was removed from Wakefield to Armley gaol for

greater security. The prison was considered by Lieutenant-Colonel

Jebb, inspector of prisons, as the best and most substantial of its

kind in the kingdom. It lies to the west of Leeds, about a mile and a

half from the chief seat of the cloth trade. It is an imposing

castellated stone structure, and its walls and towers are blackened

with smoke from the neighbouring chimneys.

Standing on the crest of a ridge overlooking the valley of the Aire,

it has at its base the Midland and Great Northern lines, and the Aire

flowing sluggishly along, and viewed from its front or eastern side

Leeds assumes a horseshoe shape, with its smoky chimneys, and to the

north-west lies to the famous Kirkstall Abbey.

The prison is a conspicuous object for many miles around. It is worked

on the silent system, and each prisoner has his or her work to do at

the invisible results of the crank, or in making cocoa-matting, or in

picking oakum.

It has four wings, which radiate from a common centre, and there is an

exercising ground situate between each of the wings.

They are two stories in height, and they have cells underneath where

prisoners are put on bread and water for punishment. It was built in

1847, and for many years Mr. Keene had been the governor.

In the murderer’s cell of the prison, situate on the first floor of

the wing radiating to the north-west, Peace had been kept in close

confinement ever since January 29.

He was closely watched by the warders with a ceaseless vigilance from

the day of his sentence up to the time of his execution.

His relatives were never allowed to pass the part of the prison room

partitioned off with a few iron railings extending from the floor to

the ceiling. His cell, including the part so partitioned off, was not

more than six yards square, and visiting it a few minutes after Peace

left it for the last time, one must have thought the warders, the

chaplain, and the governor would be glad that their unceasing

vigilance was at an end.

It contained a bed, a table, and two stools near the table fastened

tightly to the ground, and here it was that two warders were at all

times in attendance――the one sitting and the other patrolling, with

the convict always in between them.

The guard was relieved about every three hours.

The room was only dimly lighted by two slits in the stone, opening

into the courtyard, and about twenty yards from the scaffold which

Peace must have known was being knocked together for him when the

workmen were busy with it.

He had two rugs and two blankets on his camp bedstead, and here it is

well to say that the reports about his not taking food were erroneous,

for he always took kindly to whatever was provided for him.

It was feared that because he had made the desperate attempt to jump

out of the express train that he would commit suicide, if he had a

chance, in his cell.

The governor, however, whilst enforcing every precaution to prevent

the convict succeeding in any attempt upon his life, considered that

the criminal had not sufficient courage to do that, and certainly his

conduct on the gallows corroborated that view.

He professed resignation and submissiveness, but these were not to be

relied upon. His whole life had been a lie.

Often as he had been in prison (from 1854 to 1858, from 1859 to 1864,

and from 1866 to 1872), he had conducted himself with such propriety

as to earn the rewards of docility to gaol discipline, and the

consequent shortening of his sentence.

But the moment he was freed confinement he plunged again into the

desperate courses of a criminal career, stopping at nothing, not even

at murder, to achieve his purpose of robbery.

He appeared cheerful and resolute, not in the demeanour of bravado,

but in that of absolute submission to what he had felt, from the

moment the death sentence was passed, could not be averted by any

accident of fortune or intercession of clemency.

The chaplain (the Rev. Mr. Oswald Cookson, M.A.) prayed with Peace

daily, and gradually the culprit appeared to follow the prayers, for

within the last few days of his life he had parted with his relations,

his reputed wife, and step-son, and he had confessed the rascalities

and atrocities of years of crime――from boasting of his deeds he

pretended to have become penitent.

He was anxious to show that he had been pierced with contrition to

such a depth as to give advice of a moral character to those who

visited him. He stoutly maintained what he had said all along, that

there was a struggle between him and Dyson, and that the revolver went

off accidentally. The wretched man slept perfectly sound and calm on

his last morning till a quarter to six, when the chaplain entered, and

Peace woke up.

Devotional exercises were then engaged in for about an hour. He

appeared to betray, by the fervour of his utterance to his responses

to the prayers, that he feared the doom awaiting him within an hour.

This, however, did not prevent his partaking heartily of breakfast,

which was now brought, consisting of eggs, slice of bacon, toast, and

tea.

At a quarter to eight o’clock the prison bell began to toll with a

dismal noise, and thus it continued to do till a quarter past eight

o’clock.

Just then Marwood was introduced, the convict submitted to have a belt

fastened round the waist tightly, and was securely attached to this

belt by straps. The Under-Sheriff, Mr. William Gray, the governor, Mr.

Keene, and the principal warders formed a group in the gloomy chamber,

all standing in front of the criminal, who submitted passively to the

pinioning process.

The death sentence was read to him, and then a procession was formed

to go to the gallows. The gibbet was erected within twenty yards of

the doomed man’s cell, but he was compelled to travel the whole length

of the corridor, about eighty yards, and on reaching the court-yard,

owing to a number of dressed stones lying about, the procession

skirted the outer wall of the prison, and traversed a distance of

eighty yards before reaching the gibbet.

This latter was a black grim structure, let about six feet into a

hollowed out piece of ground, the platform, only six feet from the

level of the courtyard, being reached by half a dozen wooden steps.

The lower part of the structure was draped in black sacking, and the

whole timber framework was painted black also. To this place, at

twenty minutes to eight, the Press Association reporter and three

other representatives of the press, who on this occasion became

officials on duty to conform with the Private Execution Act, by

signing their names as witnesses of the due carrying out of the law,

were escorted by an inspector of warders.

We waited for a few minutes listening for the approach of the

procession, which was now in readiness to start along the corridor,

and then issue from the door beyond the snow-covered stones strewed

about.

The procession was to take a beaten path, which, however, was very

slippery with frozen snow and ice, and we were to keep by the

scaffold.

At the front of the gaol where we entered, here and there were groups

of three and four people.

On learning that the hanging would take place at the other side of the

building, they made a circuit of the building through the fields.

We heard a hubbub of voices, and afterwards learned that not less than

1000 people had congregated outside.

The crowd consisted of men, women, and children, and as they could not

see the scaffold, all eyes were turned to the centre tower, where a

person was in readiness to hoist the black flag as soon as the fate of

the criminal was sealed. Policemen were stationed to keep the people

from the prison walls to prevent their hearing what was taking place;

but a rush was made, and they crowded round the wall, from which place

they could distinctly hear the chaplain going through the burial

service, and Peace making his last dying speech from the scaffold.

Inside the gaol the north wind was blowing piercingly cold. At five

minutes to eight a movement was made by the warders at the entrance of

Peace’s part of the building, and then issued forth the ceremonial

procession in which Peace was principal actor.

First came the governor and under-sheriff abreast, carrying a white

and black wand respectively, and at a few yards’ distance behind the

chaplain, slightly in front of Peace, who was supported by two

warders, Marwood walking after them.

The procession was closed up by a number of warders walking two

abreast. Peace was uncovered, and in his prison dress. He cast his eye

towards the four reporters at the farther side of the courtyard, and

then his quick piercing eyes seemed to fasten upon the scaffold, at

which he gave a momentary shudder.

He still kept looking towards it, and partly in consequence of this he

missed his footing two or three times on the slippery and undulating

pathway.

Turning to within half-a-dozen yards of the scaffold, he cast an

imploring look towards the reporters, and then he was helped up the

steps on to the platform, where a new 2½ in. rope was dangling in the

centre overhead.

He was nervous and agitated. He stood with his hands strapped to his

side, and now and then he opened and shut them with a nervous twitch.

Meanwhile the chaplain was reading the solemn burial service of the

Church of England, and the governor, two warders, and the executioner

Marwood took their stand round the murderer.

He looked ghastly pale; he had grown a little hair just behind his

forehead, and he had a white moustache and a grey close-cropped beard.

Marwood took the rope down, and whilst the warders were placing Peace

on the centre of the drop, he was keeping his eye on Marwood at his

side, who seemed anxious to put the white cap over the culprit.

“Stop a minute,” said Peace; “Let me hear this.” The chaplain read on,

“The Lord have mercy upon us!” to which Peace joined, “Oh God, have

mercy upon me; Christ have mercy upon me!”

Marwood was about putting on the white cap, when the little nervous

man excitedly turned his head to Marwood, and said: “I want to speak.”

He then addressed the reporters in a clear voice.

Marwood instantly, on the conclusion of the speech, drew the cap over

Peace’s head, and finally adjusted the ring, the condemned crying out,

“Almighty God, have mercy upon me!” and next ejaculated, “I should

like to have a drink.”

The chaplain continued, “In the midst of life we are in death! To whom

may we seek for succour but to Thee?”

Peace was trembling, and his hands were being moved nervously, when he

vehemently cried out, “Can’t I have a drink? Oh, it’s too tight.”

Marwood quietly remarked, “Keep still; I won’t hurt you a bit.” The

chaplain was repeating the words, “I am the Resurrection and the

Life,” to which Peace responded, “God bless you――good-bye.”

Marwood stepped back, pulled a string, a bolt was removed, the

platform fell, and the wretched murderer was launched into eternity.

Marwood had done his work most effectively. The victim never quivered.

The bystanders looked down into the space beneath the scaffold, and

then only a few officials were left on duty.

At nine o’clock he was cut down, very little altered in appearance so

far as the bloodless face was concerned. The mark of the rope was

clearly shown. The body was then conveyed to the deadhouse.

After the inquest the lid was adjusted to the coffin, and without

mourners, without others than officials to bear the burden, the body

was taken into the burial-yard of the prison, and lowered into the

grave reserved for murderers.

Others are in company in the dust adjacent, who have suffered the same

dread penalty and been borne to the same ignominious repose. Like

others also, he had a stone erected, with his initials and date of the

execution.

In his “Last hours of the Condemned,” a great Frenchman shows us,

after his fashion of mingled power and fantasy, the sentenced wretch

more appalled by the retrospect of an evil life than by the doom fast

darkening upon him.

The interest a master of sensational phrases contrived to enlist for

his subject is paralleled in actual fact by the curiosity with which

the last hours of the criminal Peace were regarded.

This curiosity was not unnatural. It had been stimulated by the

startling rumours which had been in circulation respecting certain

confessions it was said the prisoner intended to make before he

suffered.

In the old Tyburn days the great attraction of the gallows was, for

many, not so much the sight of a fellow-creature dangling from a rope,

as his dying speech and confession.

The British public supped full with the mere horror of executions in

times when stealing from the person any trifle value for twelve pence

was grand larceny, punishable by death, and offenders were turned off

every day.

But there was always the prospect that the criminal would “die

game”――that is, meet his end with bravado and blasphemy.

If he died penitent, he denied himself his right to address the

multitude from the drop; and, whether he spoke or perished in silence,

the inventive writers who purveyed the literature of the gallows made

his biography their care, and hawked his miserable chronicle among the

eager crowd for whom his hanging made a holiday.

The brutal longing to hear the worst and last that could be learnt of

an assassin or a highwayman can no more be gratified in the old ways.

Turpin, and Duval, and Gilderoy died, in spite of the law, like heroes

of romance. Fair ladies shed tears upon their irons in the cells of

Newgate, and when each fascinating scoundrel appeared with a noose on

his neck and a bouquet in his button-hole, the male beholders cheered,

while the women sobbed.

Justice had her revenge, but her victims lived in the ballad poetry of

the nation; for even at this very day the songs made upon some of

these ancient marauders are sung in parts of Great Britain.

All that is over now, fortunately, and all the unhallowed glory in

which formerly a villain died no longer demoralises.

If Peace were reserving himself for display (as for the “neck-verse of

Hairibee,” written of by Sir Walter Scott) he would have had to do

without an audience.

A century since and such a man would have set London society crazy

over his career. He would have made the most of his opportunities,

seeing what a figure he had managed to preserve long after the novelty

of his deeds might be supposed to have waned.

The publicity into which the man had been forced was largely

responsible for his demoralising eminence. It was raking in the sink

to publish every shred of correspondence which passed between the

condemned brigand and his paramours.

He treated these women cruelly, it would seem; they often had black

eyes and bore the weals of a whip.

It is stated that Peace went always armed with a revolver and a knife.

The manner in which he used his weapon against Dyson and Robinson

proved that he was prepared to take human life on the least

provocation, and gives a strong _prima facie_ colour to the fearful

tales that were told of him.

There is one good reason why it is well this man was eliminated from

the community. He belonged, from all we know of him, to the most

desperate and dangerous of his class.

Very few British highwaymen or burglars have shown themselves

bloodthirsty as well as dishonest. Most of them, indeed, if they

carried firearms, seldom had the heart to load them, and preferred

losing their plunder to taking it by fatal violence. But Peace had the

ferocious spirit of a Sicilian brigand. Mr. Dyson walked towards him,

and he shot him. He was as murderously prompt with Policeman Robinson.

His method does not suit in England, and if there were some who

admired the man and his career, it would be a corrective of their

admiration to know that the peculiarities of procedure which gave

their hero his notoriety are specially repugnant to the laws, and

revolting to the people of this country.

THE MORAL OF PEACE’S CAREER.

The last days, the confession, the letters, the will, the dying

speech, and the execution of Charles Peace will make a sensational

history of the most dangerous description.

The large place which his villainy marked for him in the public

attention for several weeks proved a stimulant to many a depraved

appetite for notoriety.

All persons, in short, who have had occasion to watch the effect upon

the public of the noisy passage of a great malefactor from the day of

sentence to the morning of doom, must have remarked the extraordinary

copiousness of the record of the sayings, doings, and writings of

Charles Peace with positive alarm.

The rogue’s march seemed to merge into a hymn of praise, and then into

a chant of victory at the gallows.

People shuddered when the murderer’s repulsive features were first

displayed in the shops, in a row with the ostentatious beauties and

the unabashed actresses of the day.

“No wonder,” said the crowd, “that this monster is the hero of a

string of crimes.” Just as Sydney Smith said of a saintly man that he

carried the ten commandments written in his face, might it have been

remarked of Charles Peace that the “Newgate Calendar” was wrought in

his.

But there is a fascination in the horrible as well as in the

beautiful, and the people who were dismayed while they contemplated

the brutal jaw, presently craved details of the crimes its owner had

committed; of the manner in which he wrote and talked of the human

creatures who had associated with――nay, loved him; of his appetite for

the fare of the condemned cell, and his capacity for sleep, with

Marwood for the subject of his dreams.

The poisonous food was forthcoming in large doses, and be it observed,

its production is the inevitable, the forced, result of the demand.

The blame lies, not with the newspapers, but with the system of

turning upon the murderer’s cell a light as fierce as that which the

poet tells us beats upon a throne.

The journalist is the servant of the public, and the appetite for news

about the murderer’s daily habits being strong, he has no choice but

to provide all he can obtain.

He may condemn the publication of a rogue’s correspondence with his

wife, his mistress, and his pals; but he cannot prevent it.

It has often been our duty to comment with severity upon such a parade

of crime as the career of the man who was hanged in Armley gaol-yard

on that Tuesday afforded to the British public. In Peace’s instance,

however, the abuse was carried to the wildest excess. The public were

with the Bannercross murderer night and day, from the hour when he was

condemned, to the gallows.

The comings and goings of the unfortunate people connected with him

were chronicled as methodically as the “Court Newsman” imparts to the

public the airings and the dinners of the Royal family.

That on the fatal morning bacon and eggs were provided for him before

his long journey; and that, albeit livid white, he ate with some

relish before he sat down to write a parting letter to his wife――are

facts in the biography of Charles Peace which the world that dotes on

Newgate records would not willingly let die. We have chronicled them

accordingly.

The culprit was even allowed to address a homily to the reporters, in

the character of a man who had done with the wickedness of this world,

and would be, in a few moments, among the angels.

He gave friends and foes his blessing, and wished they might follow

him to Heaven. There are still people who, as the author of “The Fable

for Critics” remarks――

――――think it looks odd

To choke a poor scamp for the glory of God.”

These old-fashioned folk may be also of the opinion that there is

something very monstrous in this spectacle of a malefactor, speaking,

with the rope round his neck, to “you reporters.”

And they may go on their way pondering on the strangeness of a

society, in which the honest and heroic poor die by the hundred

unsolaced by the priest, while a holy man stands at the elbow of the

murderer on the gallows, and as the hangman draws the bolt,

cries――“Lord Jesus receive his soul!”

When Thurtell stood upon the scaffold at Tyburn, the Championship of

England was about to be decided; and while the hangman was adjusting

the fatal noose, the culprit expressed his regret that his execution

could not be delayed for an hour or two, that before paying the

penalty of his crimes he might have the satisfaction of knowing to

which of the combatants the belt had been awarded.

Whether this great criminal’s attitude in the presence of death

contrasts favourably or unfavourably with that assumed upon the

gallows by Charles Peace, is a question upon which we will not venture

to express an opinion.

Both Thurtell and Peace, however, afford perhaps the most remarkable

illustrations we could instance of the curious fact that great

scoundrels apparently shuffle off the mortal coil more comfortably

than honest people.

Possibly it is that long inurement to crime has so blunted their

sensibilities that even conscience no longer makes cowards of them,

and Hamlet’s great query, “To die, to sleep, perchance to dream!”

troubles them not.

But, in whatever way the phenomenon is to be accounted for, the fact

remains that condemned culprits, as a rule, mount the scaffold with a

firm step, and, while consenting to death, apparently conquer agony.

Charles Peace proved no exception to the rule. He slept well up to

within an hour and a half of his execution, and on awaking partoook of

a hearty breakfast.

On emerging from the condemned cell to the courtyard in which the

scaffold was erected, he heard the bell tolling for his own funeral

without giving signs of terror.

Upon the scaffold he appeared to be in the same contented frame of

mind as the celebrated essayist and father of English journalism, who

on his death-bed requested his son to “come and see how a Christian

could die.” But, observed Thackeray, “unfortunately, he died of

brandy!”

It must be confessed that it somewhat detracts from Peace’s piety that

he did not take refuge in the consolations of religion until he found

there was no chance of his regaining his liberty.

We fear it would have been a dangerous experiment to have let him

loose again upon society, even as a “converted man!”

There seems to be something repulsive in the idea of such a consummate

rascal making sure of Heaven with so little effort, after having spent

his whole life in the shameless violation of every law of God and man!

The wretch was so steeped in vice and crime that his death seems to

remove him beyond the liberality of the old _de mortuis_ injunction.

Had he been really repentant of his atrocious crimes rather than of

the fearful consequences to which they had brought him, it would

surely have been more becoming on his part had he humbled himself in

the profoundest silence, and not run the risk of intensifying the

enormity of his hypocrisy by palming himself off as a local preacher

upon the scaffold.

When Christ converted people He told them to go home and keep

quiet――“see thou sayest nothing to any man.” But nowadays converts

seem to be encouraged to advertise themselves as much as possible.

Charles Peace’s demeanour in the presence of the hangman is, to our

thinking, far from being edifying. The sooner all memory of the career

of this cunning, cruel, and abject criminal is obliterated, the better

it will be for society.

[Sidenote: No. 99.]

[Illustration: SCENE ON THE SCAFFOLD――MARWOOD PINIONING PEACE’S LEGS.]

We may search in vain through the annals of crime to find the record

of a more infamous life than his. The fellow’s assumption of virtue

was, perhaps, the most horrible thing about him.

“Now, sir,” he is reported to have said to the Rev. Mr. Littlewood, “I

want to tell you, and I want you to believe me when I say that I

always made it a rule, during the whole of my career, never to take

life if I could avoid it.”

Virtuous man! “And it does seem odd,” he further observed, “that in

the end I should have to be hanged for having taken life――the very

thing I was always so anxious to avoid.”

It is a pity he forgot his intense respect for the sanctity of human

life on so many occasions. The vagabond who will talk like this, after

having for years prowled about at night with a six-chambered revolver

strapped to his wrist, must be an extraordinary combination of the

heartless ruffian and the sneaking hypocrite.

In addition to this, Peace was perhaps the most accomplished burglar

that ever necessitated the vigilance of the police.

But the terms murderer and burglar are scarcely adequate to paint the

blackness of his character, for on his own confession this man

actually sat in court at the Manchester Assizes and heard the sentence

of death passed upon an innocent man for a murder which he himself had

committed.

“I liked to attend trials,” he said, “and I determined to be present.

I left home for Manchester, not telling my family where I had gone. I

attended the assizes for two days, and heard the youngest of the

brothers, as I was told they were, sentenced to death. Now, sir, some

people will say that I was a hardened wretch for allowing an innocent

man to suffer for my crime.”

Undoubtedly all people would. Peace, however, was too much satisfied

with his good luck to permit his conscience to trouble him about the

matter.

If capital punishment is justifiable, Marwood unquestionably did the

State some service in ridding society of Charles Peace.

There is something terrible in the contemplation of a misspent life

like his, and the wretched man’s interment, after the terrible scene

upon the gallows was enacted, would make sadder even the saddest of

all cemeteries――namely, the burial-yard of a county prison.

The mercy which is infinite, and the repentance which secures it,

invited Peace as they invite all other mortals, and upon the mystery

of the felon’s grave all comment is struck dumb.

It may be noted, however, that though the last utterances of the dying

criminal were full of contrition and paternal solicitude, there is a

certain tone in the whole speech which suggests that the man had in

reality not awakened to a full estimate of the greatness of his

offences. His demeanour throughout indicates the same moral defect.

There were in his character many signs of an idiosyncrasy which, like

kleptomania and other depraved mental compulsions, dragged the

possessed being into the vicious path and disabled the faculty of

remorse.

Peace had the cunning of the rogue, plus that of the intelligent man

he was. But until the eleventh hour he was playing a part.

First he shammed ill, then he had a spell of sullen silence, which was

succeeded by that fit of communicativeness, oral and written, which

has taken up so much space in the newspapers. He appears to have made

a great many contradictory statements or confessions; and, if all that

have been published as such are really his, there is some difficulty

in accepting as authentic even the most solemn of these avowals on the

scaffold.

One of these confessions purported to be an admission of a series of

murders, known and unknown, committed by him singly, or with

accomplices, in London or the provinces.

If Peace reduced this horrid catalogue to two, and he in troth and in

fact stated what appeared in print, would require clear corroborative

evidence to sustain anything he asserted.

Peace declared in more than one of his many confessions that he

murdered the policeman Cock at Whalley Range, near Manchester, in

1876. For this crime a young man named Habron was sentenced to death.

The sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life, and that

terrible penalty the innocent and signally unfortunate man was still

undergoing when Peace was first rendered amenable. The real assassin,

according to his own avowal, was present in Court at the trial, and

heard Habron sentenced.

The same night Peace shot Mr. Dyson. There can be little question, but

he would have held his tongue to save his neck, had the poor man been

permitted to suffer for his crime, and been put to death for it.

The one point of relief in an ugly picture in this, where we find

justice done to the innocent by the detection of the guilty.

On the other hard, the vindication suggests grave reflections

respecting the adequacy of trial by jury, and the security of our

criminal procedure to place the guilt where it is charged on the

guilty head, and save the innocent from destruction, by circumstantial

evidence.

VISIT TO THE CONDEMNED CELL AFTER THE EXECUTION.

The _Central News_ reporter telegraphed:――The prison chaplain was

deeply affected on returning from the execution of Peace on Tuesday

morning. Dr. Price, the gaol physician, escorted him to his official

residence.

Under-sheriff Gray, his clerk, Mr. Waite, and the governor, together

with the representatives of the press, in leaving the fatal spot

passed into the wing of the gaol from which Peace had so recently

emerged. The cell which the condemned man had occupied was also

passed.

The gas was still burning in it, and the door was open. On the bed was

a closed bible and a prayer-book, whilst the convict’s shoes,

slippers, wide-awake hat, and other articles of apparel were placed on

the benches in the inner cell.

On the little table were a number of books and several sheets of

paper, on which the convict had apparently been scribbling. A tin

quart measure, nearly full of milk, also stood on the table.

SCENES OUTSIDE THE GAOL.

It was a fearful morning. The air was raw, and a searching wind

pierced through one almost to the bone, yet the fields dividing the

gaol from the houses near seemed to be covered with people almost

immediately.

They ran eagerly to get the best places that could be obtained.

Everybody ran and everybody was anxious to get the best places. The

peculiar coign of vantage, known only to the experienced, was said to

be behind the prison, near the hospital.

This was where the scaffold had been erected, and it was said that

outside the walls, at that point, the falling of the trap and the thud

caused by the jerk to the rope could be distinctly heard.

It is no exaggeration to say that at least 500 people assembed at this

spot, and that until the hoisting of the flag the most careful silence

was preserved. Indeed, some of the people who were standing there

declared that they heard Peace speaking, but could not make out his

words.

A large knot of people, numbering several hundred, appeared at the

outer gates, without any warning, and undisturbed took up positions

commanding a view of the flag-pole on the high tower.

About ten minutes to eight snow began to fall slightly, but it soon

discontinued, and at five minutes to eight the weather was fine again.

What a rude, unsympathetic, ribald crowd that was! Drawn together

merely by morbid curiosity, many of them laughed, smiled, and joked at

the dread ordeal which the convict was even then undergoing.

They spoke of him as at that moment submitting to the pinions, and

wondered with a fiendish glee how he liked the process. Women and

girls vied with each other in depicting his agony as a subject for

laughter, and the most horribly blasphemous expressions were used with

respect to his penitence.

It might have been a crowd of citizenesses during the French

revolution. There was an utter callousness, a cold-blooded

nonchalance, and a frequency of oaths which made the crowd almost

terrible as well as repulsive. There seemed to be not an atom of

feeling amongst the lot. Everyone had something to say.

There was a continual hum of conversation, but amongst the Babel of

words it was impossible to detect one which breathed kindly feeling,

regret, or even seriousness.

But it is now five minutes to eight, and the first sign comes from the

inside of the gaol. Upon the high tower a stalwart warder appears. At

length the prison clock strikes the hour. The signal is given, and in

another moment the black signal of death flutters in the clear fresh

breeze.

A kind of shudder is observable among the people as the flag ascends,

but the feeling soon passes away, and from a large number of the

assembled crowd rises a fiendish and inhuman shout. The “cry for

blood” was satisfied.

A stampede commenced immediately, and the hundreds of people streamed

back into Leeds. A few still lingered about the place, gazing fitfully

at the black signal, and talking together in knots of the strange and

adventurous career which had just closed so ignominiously.

THE INQUEST AND VERDICT.

At eleven on the fatal morning the inquest on the body was held in the

committee-room at the gaol, before Mr. J. C. Malcolm, the borough

coroner. The verdict of the jury certified that the identity of the

deceased as Charles Peace was proved, and that the sentence of death

passed upon him had been carried out.

Peace’s features were but little changed, and, excepting the usual

swollen appearance of the face and neck, always observable in those

hung, there was nothing to prevent anyone who had known him alive from

identifying the remains as those of the convict.

THE INTERMENT.

The remains were subsequently taken to the murderers’ graveyard, which

is inside the walls, and were there unceremoniously interred. Rude

stones mark the place of burial of previous victims of the law’s

highest penalty, and a headstone has been placed over Peace’s grave

similar to that of the others, on which are cut his initials and the

date of his death.

PEACE AND HIS REVOLVERS.

The statement made by Mr. Woodward, the London gunsmith, to the effect

that the manufacture of bullets like those found in the bodies of the

policeman Cock and Mr. Dyson had been discontinued for more than five

years, led to the inquiry where Peace could have obtained the bullets

that he used.

It appears that Peace stole the revolver from the house of a gentleman

at Manchester, in the early part of 1876; and with the revolver, which

was in a case, he also stole a box of Eley’s 442 pin-fire cartridges.

The box was full, and contained probably 100 cartridges, several of

which Peace used.

When the family at Peckham heard that Peace had been arrested at

Blackheath, Mrs. Peace and Mrs. Thompson each packed up a large box of

articles and left, the one for Nottingham and the other for Sheffield.

Mrs. Thompson put into her box Peace’s other three revolvers, together

with all the ammunition there was in the house, including the

remainder of the box of pin-fire cartridges.

A short time after Mrs. Peace asked Mrs. Thompson what she had done

with the revolvers and ammunition, and she replied that, being afraid

to retain them in her possession, she had packed all in a basket and

her sister had sunk them in the canal at Nottingham.

There is no reason to suppose, if properly gone about, that the sister

would refuse to point out the spot where she put the basket. If that

could be fished up from the bottom of the canal, and the pin-fire

cartridges found, there would be further confirmation of the truth of

Peace’s confession that he shot policeman Cook.

PEACE’S LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT.

Some very erroneous statements have been made, not only as to the

value of the property that was at Peace’s disposal, but also as to the

manner in which he had disposed of it.

At one of the interviews Peace had with his wife and family he signed

a “deed of gift,” in which he made over to them all he possessed.

They went to London in the hope of being able to obtain the property

stated to belong to Peace; but not being successful, he had a will

drawn up by Messrs. Warren and Ford, of Leeds, in which he left all he

possessed to Willie Ward and his daughter, Mrs. Bolsover. The

following is the full text of the will:――

“I, Charles Peace, at present lodged in Armley gaol, in the county of

York, under sentence of death, do hereby revoke all wills, codicils,

and other testamentary dispositions heretofore made by me, and declare

this alone to be my last will and testament.

“I give, devise, and bequeath all my real estate, and all my money,

securities for money, furniture, goods, chattels, and all other

personal estate of which I shall die possessed, or over which I shall

at my death have power to dispose by this my will unto William Ward,

of Darnall, grocer’s assistant, and Jane Ann Bolsover, of Darnall

aforesaid, in equal shares as tenants in common, the share of the said

Jane Ann Bolsover to be for her sole and separate use, and free from

the control and debts of her present or any future husband.

“And I appoint the said William Ward and Jane Ann Bolsover executor

and executrix of this my will. In witness whereof I have hereunto set

my hand this twenty-fourth day of February, 1879.”

The will is signed by Charles Peace, and witnessed by Osmond Cookson,

M.A., chaplain of her Majesty’s Prison, Leeds; and William Warren,

solicitor, Leeds.

According to an old law the property of a felon became forfeit to the

crown, and in consequence rich men who entered upon desperate

enterprises often contrived, by deed or gift and other means, to

outwit the avarice of the monarchy.

Practically, the law on this subject has long been obsolete, and hence

we had the spectacle of a condemned murderer putting his house in

order and making his will as if he were a respectable citizen dying in

the odour of sanctity.

Mr. Charles Peace, temporarily residing in her Majesty’s gaol at

Armley, had, with the commendable spirit of orderliness which were

found to have marked all the known events of a singularly active and

varied life, prepared his last will and testament, a dosument duly

signed and attested by the governor of Armley gaol.

The contents of Mr. Peace’s will had remained unknown until the

testator left a world which only his most ardent admirers could

contend that he adorned. However, there was not long to wait before

the public learned the full particulars of the manner in which Mr.

Peace disposed of what, if he had been half as careful as he was

enterprising, might be a considerable personal estate. The chest full

of jewellery and silver plate reported to have been discovered, buried

in the railway embankment at Nunhead, was not included in the

convict’s belongings, for the simple reason that the chest and its

contents never had any existence outside the imagination of the

penny-a-liner who invented the story. Besides the duly attested will,

Mr. Peace consigned to his wife a deed of gift, by which he disposed

of certain effects in her favour, with the exception of a watch and

his patent for raising sunken ships. Both watch and patent were

conferred upon his step-son, Willie Ward, in the hope that he would

make some use of the latter. So far as can be made out of the

conflicting statements on all subjects appertaining to the interesting

criminal, a half share in the patent for raising sunken ships belonged

to Mr. Brion, the geographer. Such a slight matter of detail would

not, however, affect a gentleman of Mr. Peace’s proclivities in

disposing by gift or otherwise of the entire property. A somewhat

clouded comprehension of _meum_ and _tuum_ throughout marked his

chequered career. Provided the Crown were willing to permit Mr. Peace

the disposition of what he was pleased to call his property, surely

the Government would feel some scruples in taking probate duty upon

the results of crimes. If Mr. Peace’s personalty were in cash, it

would nothing but fair to opine that this particular money was

essentually filthy lucre, with a genesis from the hands of a burglar,

through those of a fence, and thence by the melting-pot back again to

the possession of the criminal. Possibly the will itself might be, in

some person’s opinion, a bogus instrument, dealing with a fabulous

estate. For it would seem if Mr. Peace were possessed of means he

would have taken care for a satisfactory and complete defence.

Assuming for the sake of argument that property belonging be the

murderer had been hidden away somewhere, to be forthcoming after his

execution, his heirs, executors, and assigns ought not to object to

the £100 reward for his apprehension claimed by his “darling Sue”

being paid out of his personalty. It would, under the circumstances,

have been a hardship indeed if the country were saddled with the task

of enriching such a creature as Mrs. Thompson.

CHAPTER CLXXIII.

THE EXECUTIONER’S STORY――A QUIET CHAT WITH MARWOOD.

Shortly after the execution of Charles Peace the following interview

took place between a journalist and Marwood.

“The Irish call me the Prince of Executioners!” A gentleman of medium

height, with a ruddy face, puckered in humorous wrinkles, and with

bright eyes, shining with a merry light, utters these words to me in a

voice sweet and low――almost gentle as a woman’s.

It is Marwood, the executioner; he has just washed his hands of

Peace’s death, and now sits opposite me in the cozy drawing-room of a

gentleman’s villa, not far away from Armley gaol.

As he entered the room in his black suit of clerical cut I had an idea

that he dropped a carpet-bag in the passage――a bag containing the rope

and straps by the aid of which he had taken the life of a fellow-being

an hour ago; but he advanced towards me in such a pleasant way, and

bowed so politely, that my dread soon vanished, and in a few minutes

we were in the midst of a quiet chat on the subject of Peace’s

execution.

Without, the snow fell thickly, and a piercing wind swept round the

house, with an angry, stormy sound; but within the curtains were

drawn; a bright fire sent its glow throughout the room, and now and

then gleamed on Marwood’s face, making it look quite benevolent.

Seated by the fireside, conversing earnestly, we did not notice that

the gentleman whose guest he was had tired of knocking, and entered

the room to welcome his old friend.

Seeing him, Marwood immediately rose from the arm-chair in which he

had been seated, and, bowing, said: “My kind regards. I pray that we

may have happy lives, and that our work will be well done on earth.”

A rosy-cheeked, chubby-face boy toddled into the room as he was

speaking, and, seeing the little fellow, Marwood patted him on the

head kindly, and with a smile on his face said: “I hope you will make

a very good man.”

A kind-hearted man enough, despite his profession, the executioner had

promised me a private interview, and as soon as we were alone again he

referred to the great skill he had attained in the science of hanging,

and told me how Peace met his death.

“A firmer step never walked to the scaffold,” he said. “I admired his

bravery; he met his fate like a man; he acknowledged his guilt, and

his hope in God with regard to his future was very good.”

“But,” I asked, “don’t you think he feared death?”

“No,” replied Marwood; “during the seven years I have officiated as

executioner I never met a man who faced death with greater calmness.”

“You mean to say then that he met his fate without a tremour?”

“Yes,” responded the executioner. “It’s true he shivered a bit; but

not through fear. It was a bitter winter’s morning, and he complained

of the cold.”

“It is not surprising,” I said, “that a man like Peace, who has been

face to face with danger so often should endeavour to die without

betraying any weakness or timidity.”

“The bravery was an outcome of his nature,” replied Marwood. “He was

ignorant alike of weakness and timidity. I will prove it to you. He

had been suffering from a bad cough for some days. The night before

his execution he said to one of his warders, ‘I wonder whether Mr.

Marwood can cure this bad cough of mine?’ The warder replied, ‘I have

no doubt he could.’ And I can tell you that a man who jokes about

getting hanged to cure a cough is no coward.’

“Do you think he suffered much?” I asked.

“Not in the least; he was dead instantly. But perhaps I had better

tell you what occurred just before the execution.

“It is a most curious thing. He had got hold of the idea that I should

terribly punish him at the scaffold, and he repeatedly asked the chief

warder to be sure and tell me that he wished for an interview about a

quarter of as hour before he was led out to die.

“Accordingly at ten minutes to eight o’clock I went to the condemned

cell, which stands about in the centre of the gaol, some hundred yards

from the place where the scaffold was erected. Peace was seated――he

was in his convict dress, and there were several officials attending

upon him. The bandage had been removed from his head; and he did not

wear spectacles.

“He was neither weak nor prostrate, but sat upright on his chair, as

if he had never known a moment’s illness. When I appeared in the

doorway he seemed pleased, and holding out his hand said, ‘I am glad

to see you, Mr. Marwood. I wish to have a word with you. I do hope you

will not punish me. I hope you will do your work quickly.’

“‘You shall not suffer pain from my hand,’ I replied; and then Peace,

grasping my arm, said, ‘God bless you. I hope to meet you all in

Heaven. I am thankful to say my sins are all forgiven.’

“It was now time to pinion him,” continued the executioner. “He stood

up at my request, but did not really need the support of the two

warders by his side. He was not at all nervous, and quietly submitted

to my operations. Pinioning is a very ingenious process.

“I run a main strap round the body; and connected with it are two

other straps, which take the small of the arm, so that the elbows are

fastened close to the body and the hands are free.

“Peace complained, saying, ‘The straps fit very tight.’ I replied, ‘It

is better so; it will prevent you from suffering.’ He made no further

objection; and taking hold of the main strap, so as to keep my hand on

him, we started for the scaffold.

“The governor and the under-sheriff went first, then came the

chaplain; and I followed with the condemned man, two warders attending

him, one on each side. They grasped him by the arms, but did not

support him. He was bare-headed. His face was pale, but pinched with

cold rather than fear.

“As he arrived near the scaffold he gave a very wistful look at my

arrangements. They were all right, and seemed to satisfy him, for he

made no remark. He went up the steps leading to the drop with a firm

tread, whilst the chaplain read the burial service. I brought him to a

proper stand under the crossbar, and then strapped his legs.

“When that was done he wished to say something to the reporters, and

made a beautiful speech. Such a speech has never come from a condemned

man I have executed.

“It was really a good speech. When he had finished it he asked for a

drink; but you know that was unreasonable, and it could not be

admitted, for the time fixed for the execution had fully expired.

“So I placed the cap over his face, and adjusted the rope, when he

said――‘I say, the rope fits very tight.’ I replied, ‘Never mind; it’s

all for the best; hold up your chin,’ and he did so immediately, so

that I could properly fix the rope. ‘Good-bye, all; God bless you,’ he

kept repeating as I went towards the lever.

“At this time he did not require anyone to support him, but I told one

of the warders to take hold of the back strap.

“Whilst he stood in this manner on the drop, with the noose around his

neck, I pushed the lever forward; it withdrew the bolt from the

swinging doors, and Peace’s body fell through the aperture beneath the

platform. The drop was exactly nine feet four inches.

“Peace was dead in a moment; he never moved a finger or a muscle after

he fell; so I carried out my promise to do it well and quickly.”

I must admit that I was rather astonished at the matter-of-fact and

yet complacent way in which Marwood described the execution, and

modestly referred to his own dexterity; but I was anxious to know by

what method he had obtained such success as an executioner, and

endeavoured to glean from him the mysteries of his art.

The explanation is explicit, but rather embarrassing. The old system

on which Calcraft rested his faith was, he told me, the system of

strangulation, which frequently resulted in great suffering,

especially when the short drop did not kill the man, and the

executioner had to pull at his legs until the miserable being was

lifeless.

“But my process is humane,” says Marwood, “for it entails no suffering

whatever. My principles are rapidity and dislocation.

“When the neck is dislocated the man does not suffer at all――at least,

that is my opinion. I have no doubt that if you examined Peace you

would find the spinal cord severed. It is done in this way. I attach

the rope to the cross-bar; the noose at the opposite end is formed by

a brass ring woven in the rope, and this is placed on the left side of

the neck towards the chin.”

Anxious to give me a correct idea of his process, he placed his finger

on my own neck to signify the exact locality, and I began to grow

nervous, and to wonder whether I had committed some diabolical murder

or other, and was about to suffer for my sin. I suddenly became very

wise as to the adjustment of the noose, and told Marwood that I had a

very vivid idea of the perfection of the arrangement, with the

intention of leading him to speak on some topic not quite so personal,

but he said he had made this subject the study of his life, and he

continued to point out the merits of the long drop, compared with the

short drop, and to speak earnestly of the advantages derived from the

alteration.

I am not very easily frightened, but I found this dissertation on the

science of hanging oppress me. I had a desire to get outside the

house――to get into a freer atmosphere.

I could almost imagine that if I didn’t, and that speedily, I should

not escape the long drop myself.

Still there was nothing terrible about Mr. Marwood, as he reclined in

his easy chair, and spoke in his soft, pleasant tones of the strange

experiences he had gone through.

“I am doing God’s work,” he said, “according to the Divine command,

and the law of the British Crown. I do it simply as a matter of duty,

and as a Christian, and I think no more of it than I do of chatting to

you now.”

Such is the affable man who executed Peace. Conscious that he is doing

his duty, the character of the profession he follows has no influence

upon him, and he claims to be a benefactor to society.

I asked him what induced him to adopt such a mode of gaining his

livelihood, and he replied: “Oh, when I heard the old gentleman,

Calcraft, was breaking down, and I saw the accounts of his bungling

work, I thought if I could carry out the sentence of the law more

mercifully it would be a service to the public.

“I always had a love of anatomy, and even when a boy was greatly

interested in executions, but it is a most singular fact that I never

saw an execution until I myself became an executioner. I do my duty

with a kind hand, and with firmness, and believe I really render a

benefit to society. I have been successful in every engagement, and I

am respected wherever I go.

“I have told you that in Ireland I am known as the Prince of

Executioners;’ in Scotland I have received the kindest treatment, and

if I were really a prince I could not be better served. In the past

seven years more than 100 persons have died at my hand; but I cannot

tell you the exact number, as I do not now keep a record.”

“Are you ever haunted by the features of those you have executed?” I

asked in desperation, thinking that perhaps I might surprise him into

some expression of feeling.

“Bless your life, no,” he said, smiling. I sleep as soundly as a

child, and am never disturbed by phantoms. Where there is guilt there

is bad sleeping, but I am not disturbed in the least, for I am

conscious that I try to live a blameless life.

“The other night I slept in the warder’s apartments in Armley gaol

peacefully and undisturbed, although I had superintended the erection

of the scaffold, and knew I had to execute Peace in the morning. It is

a matter of duty with me entirely.”

“Have all the criminals who have received your attentions acted

courageously on the scaffold?”

“Well,” Marwood replied, “taking them altogether they are a brave lot.

The worst job I ever had was with a Spaniard, a sailor, at Usk, in

Monmouth. He had murdered a man, his wife, and three children, and

then set the house on fire. He was sentenced to death; and when he saw

me enter the cell with the straps he fainted, and was saved from

falling by two warders.

“I put the straps upon him; and said in an authoritative voice, ‘Stand

up, sir.’ It was only a sham faint. I told him I would not have such

nonsense, and he stood up immediately. With this lesson he walked out,

and was hanged quietly. Peace, however, gave me no trouble of this

kind, but met his fate like a man.”

I now ventured to ask the executioner if he was not looked upon with

some degree of loathing when he became the successor of Calcraft, and

he freely admitted that such was the case.

“I was frequently jeered at,” he said, “at first; but I put it down to

people’s ignorance, and now I am received with the greatest kindness

wherever my services are needed.”

“How does it affect you in your own town?” was the last question I put

to Mr. Marwood.

“Oh!” he replied, “at Horncastle I was looked upon as one of the first

men in the place. I was treated well by one and all. Detesting

idleness, I passed my vacant time in business; and worked in my

shoe-shop near the church day after day, until such time as I was

required elsewhere. It would have been better for those I executed if

they had preferred industry to idleness.”

I had passed nearly two hours in the society of the hangman when our

quiet chat was over, thanked him for his kindness, and bade him adieu.

As I left the room he shook me heartily by the hand, then said,

“Good-bye, God bless you,” and bowed me out of the villa with that

polished courtesy which is always so becoming in a Crown official.

CHAPTER CLXXIV.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT――MERCIFUL AND MERCILESS MODES IN DIFFERENT AGES.

In this chapter we propose giving a short review of the methods by

which obnoxious criminals have been, at various times, among various

peoples, invited to “shuffle off this mortal coil.”

Capital punishment, like Cleopatra’s charms, has been of “infinite

variety”――the variety, however, as a rule, being simply among the most

horrible possible methods. No records remain to tell how the

contemporaries of the Saurians and the Megatherium, the ingenious

dwellers in caves, and warriors of the flint age, disposed of their

malefactors, but the fullest accounts have been preserved of the

proceedings of our more modern ancestors, since the days of Adam, in

the way of executions.

The Jews, who led the bead-roll of antique nations, appear to have

usually stoned the criminals of their own race――a democratic sort of

penalty, where every good citizen had a finger in the pie, and hurled

his righteous rock, and even the little Hebrew boys could enjoy the

fun of the stoner. To the stoned it must have been something of a

lingering torture, requiring much patience to bear. For their enemies

they reserved the sharper practice of hewing them in pieces, or they

burned them alive, or turned them to agricultural account, and

fertilised the sites of their smoking cities by harrowing them in with

considerable vehemence.

The Chinese, another ancient and highly cultured race, have been

similarly merciless. It is singular how little difference there has

been in this respect of ingenious cruelty between the most cultivated

peoples and the wildest savages.

Decapitation is the mildest of Chinese extreme penalties, and is

usually performed with much skill and sang-froid by means of a sword,

the criminal, male and female, taking the matter most philosophically,

and making no indecorous remonstrances at their summary taking off.

There is a tariff, too, for substitutes――a plan which might commend

itself to our wealthier homicides. But our Celestial neighbours across

the Pacific prefer killing the doomed by not allowing them to sleep,

or starving them to death in cages or straightened limits, in which

they are exhibited during the process of skeleton-formation, in

peripatetic rambles on the shoulders of the local deputy sheriffs.

And chopping them deliberately into fragments, at intervals of an hour

or so, is much to their taste. There is a cage, part of the spolia

opima of the first Chinese war, among the archives of the Royal

Artillery, at Madras, India, in which they carried about Colonel

Rowlandson, and the London _Times_ had a liberal annual payment on its

pension list for the family of Mr. Bowles, a special correspondent,

similarly disposed of just before the last Chinese war.

The torturing propensities of the pleasing red man, whom Cooper

immortalised, and Custer has occasionally assisted to the happy

hunting grounds, are too well known to require much notice.

The use of fire is a prominent feature in their social circles,

complicated with the facetious tomahawk and the insinuating

scalping-knife. But we know the Modocs, the Sioux, and others like

them, only too well.

The Assyrians, Medes and Persians, ancient Egyptians, and other

Orientals seemed to have employed similar agencies to their

Israelitish neighbours for lopping off the rotten branches of their

family trees.

The processes are faithfully depicted and chiselled on the walls of

Thebes, Persepolis, and Nineveh.

The Greeks were somewhat tender-hearted in some cases; for instance,

they allowed Socrates to poison himself comfortably among his friends.

They objected to parricides, however, and for them reserved a

punishment adopted from the Egyptians, like their alphabet, and

naturalised at a later date by the Romans. They confined the too

impetuous slayer of his father in a bag with a snake, a monkey, and a

cat, to keep him company, and then gently dropped the congenial party

into the sea.

The Romans seem first to have hit on the idea of crucifixion, a

singularly torturing refinement of internal, external, and mental

pain.

It was esteemed an ignoble death, and must have been anguish to a

sensitive mind; the cruel nails rending the flesh, barely supporting

the weight of the writhing body, must have been severe, while the

dreadful thirst of the fevered victim must have been a culminating

horror.

The State criminals sometimes came floating over the Tarpeian rock,

and smashed into pulp below.

This has been emulated by Theodore of Abyssinia, at his mountain

fastness of Magdala, and by Tippoo Sahib at the Droorg, one of the

peaks of the Neilgherry mountains in Southern India, where is a

convenient precipice over 1000 feet clear of sheer natural wall.

The Roman taste for the joys of the circus stimulated their

imagination to devise novel torment, and criminals or Christians, or

simply prisoners of war, were exposed to combat wild beasts, or each

other, to “grace a Roman holiday.”

They sometimes, however, executed distinguished folks in polite

fashion, merely sending a polite message for them to “stand not on the

order of their going, but go” out of the world at their earliest

convenience.

A good deal of bleeding to death in warm baths and sudden insertion of

the “bare bodkin” resulted.

The chivalric Japanese custom of harikari is a similar concession to

the conventionalities of society, and is also eminently useful as a

duelling agent necessitating the absolute retirement of both

disturbers of the peace and their friends’ serenity.

It is hardly necessary to dilate on the ceremonious surroundings of

these interesting occasions, when the accomplished gentleman who has

offended the laws, or has been offended by a friend, calls his

relatives and acquaintances together and, supported by a second, a

veteran in the punctilio of the local code of honour, makes his little

speech, drinks his farewell toast, and then proceeds to carve himself

in the most approved style, proudly feeling as he dies that he has

done his duty to his country, his family, and the world at large, and

that the gentleman he had the difficulty with cannot survive him.

The Druids, like the Huns, the Aztecs, and the Ashantees and

Dahomeyans in the present day, were rather sanguinary.

Funerals were fittingly honoured by the sacrifice of a proportionate

number of slaves and criminals, to form a retinue for the worthy

departed in the world of spirits. The Druids usually burned a few

hundreds in a great wicker image of the human figure.

It is recorded that many thousands of men, women, and children, with

horses, jewels, arms, and domestic necessaries, were sacrificed when

Attila, “the Scourge of God,” died, and were buried with him in the

bed of a river, diverted temporarily from its course for the purpose,

and similar formalities are observed in the African kingdoms

mentioned, on any one event, but repeated annually as a “custom,” to

keep the manes of the deceased in good humour by the polite

remembrance implied by the observance.

But Christian Europe, in the Dark Ages, could vie with any race or

century in the ingenuity and refined cruelty of capital punishment.

The preliminary tortures of the rack, the boots, the thumb-screws, the

strappado, must have tended to make the recipient of these attentions

desirous of death.

The noble Barons who harried each other, and revolted at brief

intervals throughout their tumultous lives, pressed air, earth, fire,

and water into their service for the purpose of execution.

Men were judicially pressed to death as late as the Titus Oates

conspiracy, in the reign of Charles II. They were hanged in chains to

starve; they were burned alive, half hanged, mutilated, and then

burned; they were scorched with hot irons, their eyes seared out,

their limbs plunged into molten lead or tar; they were spitted like

cockchafers on stakes, they were drowned with unmerciful rapidity, or

chained to stakes at low water to be more slowly suffocated by the

rising tide; they were broken on the wheel, or torn apart by wild

horses, while the axe for the noble kept up a perpetual refrain like

the ticking of a clock.

The Inquisition, in the garb and under the name of religion, invented

and applied more exquisite barbarities. To drive a man mad first and

into a grave afterwards by the incessant trickling of a single drop of

water was a torment worthy of Satan himself.

The thousands burned to death in Spain, France, England, China, India,

Germany, attest the gusto with which the reverend brethren of the Holy

Office snuffed in the flavour of roasting humanity, and were

enraptured with the shrieks of the martyrs, as now-a-days we are when

Capoul or Tamberlik rouses our enthusiasm with the ringing C in alt.

In those good old days men were slain for sneezing in improper places,

for constructive disrespect, or for stealing a loaf, and the severity

remained till within comparatively recent times.

Some of the middle-age methods still survive. In Naples, three years

ago, of three women condemned for infanticide two were beheaded; the

third, the principal culprit, was mazzolated, or knocked on the head

with a trace, like an ox, her abdomen then slashed open, while the

executioner executed a “pas de fascination” on the quivering trunk,

spurting the blood out like a fountain.

In Spain, Spanish colonies, and the sister Republics who once owed

allegiance to that haughty country, malefactors are garrotted, or

strangled in an armchair with a steel cravat, which is jammed to the

choking point by the dexterous twisting of a screw behind.

They also shoot considerably, evincing a peculiar fondness for

shooting people in the back with a remarkably bad aim, and then

finishing them with a shot in the ear at close quarters, or a dagger

under the fifth rib.

It was in this way they disposed of William Walker, “the grey-eyed man

of destiny,” at Truxillo, in 1860. The French weakness for the

guillotine, an aggravated edition of the domestic bread or meat

chopper, has disposed of many multitudes of kings, queens, nobles,

ragamuffins, petroleuses, and others, with business-like rapidity and

cleanliness.

The baskets, sawdust, and brightly-polished cheese-knife employed are

familiar, and almost inviting in comparison with the gallows adhered

to by Anglo-Saxons.

Hanging nowadays seems a “lost art.” The Americans have improved the

machinery with patent drops and weights warranted to jerk up the

hanged with satisfactory promptitude.

But the education of the hangman has been sadly neglected. The knot is

rarely tied with scientific accuracy, or the rope in as good condition

as it might be.

The consequence is, but a small proportion of the sufferers enjoy the

sudden death they would prefer, if they must die in so hasty a manner,

and instead of their necks being broken they are slowly strangled, if

the rope does not break and necessitate a repetition of the

performance.

Physicians and anatomists say this slow strangulation must be

exquisitely painful.

Humanitarians have accordingly suggested “painless extinction.”

Chloroform applied long enough would soothe the slumberer to wake no

more here below, with absolutely no pain.

An overdose of laudanum might be an improvement, as bestowing positive

pleasure before he lapsed into unconsciousness.

Both these and other plans are warmly recommended, and discussed with

some heat by their respective advocates. Some gentlemen have even

hinted at the possibility of doing good at the same time by dissecting

the brain of the living but unconscious subject, during the calm

retreat from the sins and follies of his life.

Another method of painless extinction is by blowing the patient from a

gun. This was invented by the Mahommedans of India, was employed by

the British during the mutiny of 1857, and is still in favour with the

Ameer of Afghanistan.

It has one great advantage as a preventive of crime in its application

to Hindoos, as they believe, when a man’s body is split into

filaments, as it must be by such a process, that his chances of future

existence are very slim.

Their ideas of resurrection are peculiar and Pythagorean, but they

object to this total obliteration, and accordingly dread the

blowing-from-gun procedure above all other penalties. Physically, it

cannot hurt, however.

The conclusion and distribution of the fragments are so sudden and

complete that pain must be entirely wanting as an element. Destroying

a hanged Brahmin’s body with quicklime is also objectionable to

Hindoos, on account of similar doubts as to his future rehabilitation.

A Hindoo punishment, of gradually crushing a criminal under the foot

of a trained elephant, is repulsive, and is discountenanced by the

British Government. Any rajah who reverts to these ancestral

amusements renders his tenure on the throne insecure. It has not been

practised for some years.

The guillotine, of which such horrible use was made in the past French

Revolution, has been said to be the most merciful mode of putting

malefactors to death, but this is by no means certain.

Dr. Tuc and some German physicians and surgeons after him held that

there does indubitably remain in the brain of a decapitated head some

degree (_un reste_) of thought, and in the nerves something of

sensibility, and the case of Mademoiselle Corday was alleged as

proving that doctrine.

We abstain from any details of the thousands of murders by the

guillotine at this time. One fact will enable our readers to

understand something of its horrors.

It was proved on the trial of Fouquier Tinville that 160 persons of

all ages and ranks, and of both sexes, were tried and executed on a

charge of conspiracy, not merely false but absurd, visionary, and

impossible――forty-five of these persons, who were utterly unknown to

each other, were tried and condemned within twenty minutes, and

executed on the same evening in almost as short a space. These

executions were for many months the amusement――the spectacle of the

people――we wish we could say the populace of Paris. Chairs were

stationed round the instrument of death, where women, in a station of

life to be able to pay for that amusement, used to have seats, and

sit, and chat, and work, while waiting for the tragedy, which they had

looked at as a farce. We find in the _Revue Retrospective_ a curious

letter incidentally descriptive of this elegant scene of Parisian

amusement.

“The Procureur-Général Rœderer to Citizen Guidon.

“13th May, 1793.

“I enclose, Citizen, the copy of a letter from Citizen

Chaumette, solicitor to the Commune of Paris, by which you

will perceive that complaints are made that, after these

public executions, the blood of the criminals remains in

pools upon the place, and that dogs come to drink it, and

that crowds of men feed their eyes with this spectacle,

which naturally instigates their hearts to ferocity and

blood.

“I request you, therefore, to take the earliest and most

convenient measures to remove from the eyes of men a sight

so afflicting to humanity.”

Our readers will observe the tender regret――not that all this blood

was shed, but that it was not wiped up; and they will be startled when

they recollect that at the date of this letter not above a dozen

persons had been yet executed there, but that within one year the

blood of a thousand victims had saturated the same small spot of

ground.

In one of the foolish modern-antique processions of the Convention,

the whole cortège was delayed and thrown into confusion because the

cattle that were drawing some of their theatrical machines could

neither be induced nor forced to traverse this blood-tainted place.

This Chaumette was one of the most impious and sanguinary of the whole

tribe, and we could almost believe that he envied the dogs the blood

they drank. He it was that bullied the wretched idiot Gobel,

revolutionary Archbishop of Paris, to come to the bar of the

Convention to abjure Christianity, and proclaim himself an impostor,

at the head of a procession in which asses were insultingly decorated

with the sacred emblems of religion.

Chaumette himself it was who introduced to the Convention a prostitute

in the character of the Goddess of Reason. Robespierre sent this whole

clique to the guillotine, and on the 13th of April, 1794, Chaumette’s

own blood flowed to increase the horrors of which he had complained.

The guillotine remained in permanence in the Place de la Révolution

till the 8th of June, 1794, when the inhabitants of the streets

through which the batches (“fournées”), as they were called, of

sufferers used to pass, became at last tired of the agreeable sight,

and solicited its removal.

Robespierre seems at this time to have adopted a new policy, to have

formed some design of founding a dictatorial authority in his own

person on the basis of religion and morals.

On the 7th June he made his famous report acknowledging “l’Etre

Suprême,” and appointed the 20th June for the great _fête_ in the

gardens of the Tuileries, which was to celebrate this recognition.

Of this ceremony Robespierre was to be the “Pontifex Maximus,” and it

can hardly be doubted that it was to remove the odious machines from

the immediate scene of his glorification that it was――the day after

the decree and ten days before the celebration――removed to the Place

St. Antoine, in front of the ruins of the Bastile; but that a day

might not be lost, it was removed on a Decade, the republican Sabbath.

[Sidenote: No. 100.]

In the forty-nine days in which it is said to have stood at the

_Barrière du Trône_ it despatched 1270 persons of both sexes, and of

all ages and ranks, and it became necessary to build a kind of

sanguiduct, to carry off the streams of blood; and on the very last

day, when the tyrant had already fallen, and that the smallest

interruption would have sufficed to have stopped the fatal procession,

forty-nine persons passed almost unguarded through the stupified

streets to the place of execution.

And here we have the last occasion to mention Sanson; and it is to his

credit, as indeed all the personal details related of him seem to be.

On the 9th Thermidor there was, about half-past three in the

afternoon, just as this last batch of victims was about to leave the

Conciergerie, a considerable commotion in the town, caused by the

revolt against Robespierre.

At that moment Fouquier, on his way to dine with a neighbour, passed

through the court where the prisoners were ascending the fatal carts.

Sanson, whose duty it was to conduct the prisoners to execution,

ventured to stop the Public Accuser, to represent to him that there

were some rumours of a commotion, and to suggest whether it would not

be prudent to postpone the execution till at least the next morning.

Fouquier roughly replied that the law must take its course. He went to

dinner, and the forty-nine victims went to the scaffold, whither in

due time he followed them.

After the accession of Louis Philippe, for whom the guillotine must

have been an object of the most painful contemplation, sentences of

death were also very rare, and certainly never executed where there

was any possible room for mercy.

The executions, too, when forced upon him, took place at early hours,

and in remote and uncertain places; and every humane art was used to

cover the operations of the fatal instrument with a modest veil, not

only from motives of general decency and humanity, but also, no doubt,

from national pride and personal sensibility.

What Frenchman would not wish that the name and memory of the

guillotine could be blotted from the history of mankind?

“The word _Guillotine_,” says the author of _Les Festes de

l’Anarchie_, “should be effaced from the language.” But the

revolutionary horrors which France is naturally so anxious to forget,

it the more behoves us and the rest of Europe to remember and

meditate.

Such massacres as we have been describing will probably never be

repeated: they will, no doubt, stand unparalleled in the future, as

they do in the former annals of the world; but they should never be

forgotten as an example of the incalculable excesses of popular

insanity.

The invention of this instrument of death (the guillotine) is thus

described by a graphic writer:――Joseph Ignace Guillotin lived to

deplore his own ingenuity in inventing or suggesting a machine which

besides being effective for the immediate purpose intended, was the

result of a really kind feeling. The stern irony of fate occasionally

rewards inventors in this way.

Born in 1738, Guillotin received a medical training; he became a

physician of much repute, and was chosen professor in one of the

French universities. In 1789, when France was beginning to feel the

first throes of the Revolution, Guillotin was elected member of the

National Assembly, and took his seat among the Liberals or Reformers.

He proposed a resolution declaratory that capital punishment ought to

bear no relation to the rank of the culprit; that when a criminal is

condemned to death, for any crime whatever, the mode of execution

should be the same whether he were peer or peasant.

Until then, nobles and privileged persons, when condemned to death,

had the honour of being decapitated, either by the axe or by the

sword; whereas the common people were left to the tender mercies of a

hempen rope. Dr. Guillotin at the same time proposed a second

resolution.

He wished to save the unhappy being from the additional punishment

existing from the uncertainty, nervousness, or clumsiness of the

executioner, whether axeman or swordsman.

He cited historical incidents in which two, three, or even more cuts

were given, by the axe or the sword, before the head of the miserable

sufferer was finally severed from the body. He proposed to do away

alike with the gibbet, the sword, and the axe, and to substitute a

decapitating machine, in which a sharp, heavy knife should descend on

the neck of the condemned.

Feeling assured that bodily pain could not be felt during this brief

operation, he was quite carried away by his subject, and said,

enthusiastically, “I could cut off your head with my machine in the

twinkling of an eye, without your suffering the smallest pain!”

Poor Dr. Guillotin had to bear the shafts of ridicule, always a

terrible weapon to a Frenchman. Many of the members of the Assembly

smiled at his ardent words; and the Royalists out of doors made rare

fun of him. One of their journals gave a song, “On the inimitable

machine of Dr. Guillotin for chopping off heads called after his name

the Guillotine.”

Poor Dr. Guillotin had to bear the shafts of ridicule, always a

terrible weapon to a Frenchman. Many of the members of the Assembly

smiled at his ardent words; and the Royalists out of doors made rare

fun of him. One of their journals gave a song, “On the inimitable

machine of Dr. Guillotin for chopping off heads called after his

name.”

This name, started in this bantering way, has clung to the machine

from that day till now. The doctor protested against the designation,

but in vain. He did not even invent the machine; he merely pointed out

that the chopping action could easily be produced by a sharp, heavy

blade descending from an upright frame.

The National Assembly, on receiving Dr. Guillotin’s two propositions,

at once adopted the first of them, by decreeing equality of punishment

for all ranks of society; but left the mode of execution for further

consideration. It was not till nearly two years afterwards, that, on

the motion of MM. Lepelletier and Saint Fargeon, a decree was issued,

declaring that the mode of capital punishment should be by

decapitation. Even then the merits and demerits of the axe, the sword,

and the falling knife were left in abeyance. In March, 1792, the

Assembly sought the advice of Dr. Antoine Louis, a celebrated surgeon,

and secretary of the Paris College of Surgeons.

He explained, scientifically, how far the various decapitating

instruments acted like knives, and how far like scissors; and

expressed himself decidedly in favour of a chopping machine.

He showed that the idea of such a machine was by no means a new one.

An Italian book by Achille Bocchi, dated 1555, gives an engraving of

an Italian nobleman being beheaded; a heavy blade, suspended by cords

from a crossbar at the top of a frame, is represented as falling on

the neck of the victim.

In 1632 some such apparatus was employed in Languedoc, for

decapitating Duc Henry de Montmorenci. It was also ascertained that

Scotland in the North, and Persia in the East, had employed machines

bearing a resemblance to this.

Among the strange scenes of the French revolutionary days, not the

least strange was that of the National Assembly listening gravely to

the details given on these matters.

Dr. Louis conferred with Dr. Guillotin, and also with the famous

executioner Sanson. Sanson specially urged that, if all executions

henceforth were to be by beheading, a machine would be greatly needed,

as he distrusted his own power of using the sword or the axe so

frequently and so accurately as would be necessary.

After hearing all the explanations and suggestions, the Assembly

passed a decree for the use of a decapitating machine, in substitution

of the halter, the axe, the sword, and the various instruments of

torture such as the rack.

One Schmidt, a German musical instrument maker, residing at Paris, was

taken into council; and he, Guillotin, Louis, and Sanson, settled

among them the details of the machine.

Nay, there was even a fifth adviser. The king, always fond of

lock-making and amateur engineering, requested to have the designs

shown to him; and he suggested an improvement which was practically

adopted.

A sum of five thousand five hundred francs was paid for the machine,

constructed for the National Assembly by Guidon, the carpenter. An

attempt was made to give the name of Louisette, or Louison, to it, in

honour of the learned doctor; but the name Guillotine had been current

in the public mind for two or three years, and nothing could supplant

it, although Dr. Guillotine certainly never sought to have his memory

thus perpetuated.

The apparatus was first tried in decapitating the dead bodies of three

men, and some live animals, at the prison of the Bicêtre. Dr. Louis,

after seeing the efficacy of the invention tested in this way, died

just before the terrible days of the revolution came on; and was

therefore denied the pleasure, or spared the pain (whichever it might

be), of seeing the guillotine employed as the most dreaded of

political instruments.

The first victim was an ordinary criminal, an highwayman named

Nicholas Jacques Pelletier, who was guillotined on the 25th of April,

1792.

The _Chronique de Paris_, in its next day’s issue, stated that “The

novelty in this mode of execution caused a considerable augmentation

in the number of persons who usually witness such scenes.

“The machine is with good reason, preferred to other modes of putting

to death. One human being is not directly employed in decapitating

another; and the promptness with which the operation takes place is

more consistent with the spirit of the law, which is often severe, but

should never be cruel.”

The first political guillotining took place four months later, when

Louis David Collinot d’Augremont was executed by torchlight for the

crime of having been among “the enemies of the people” on the 10th of

August, the day on which “the people” broke into the Tuileries,

expelled the royal family, and filled the palace and its surroundings

with blood.

The National Assembly was succeeded by the National Convention, and by

this Convention was founded the Revolutionary Tribunal, in April,

1793. Then, indeed, commenced the fearful period, always since

recorded in history as the Reign of Terror, which lasted until July,

1794. How many unhappy persons were guillotined during these fifteen

months is not accurately known; but in the final six weeks preceding

the fall of Robespierre more than eleven hundred heads rolled in the

dust of Paris alone.

Whether M. Guillotin had the heart to join in these discussions we do

not know――he continued his practice as a physician, and was much

respected. A popular notion prevails that he himself fell a victim to

the machine which he had suggested――nay, that he was its first victim.

Such was not the case; he was in prison as a “suspect” during the

later days of the Terror; but the fall of Robespierre occurred just in

the nick of time, and M. Guillotin survived to the days of the

Consulate and the Empire.

He wrote a portion of autobiography, marked by the omission of all

notice of his much-regretted suggestion of a beheading machine. The

indifference to death, induced by an almost daily familiarity with

descriptions and spectacles relating to it, showed itself in ways

which we in our quiet country and quiet times can hardly regard as

credible.

During the Terror the guillotining of several persons every

day――sometimes many scores a day――became so much a matter of course as

to be treated by the Parisians as an ordinary element in city

business. In the prison, to “play at guillotine” was a favourite

amusement among the prisoners, and many jokes were manufactured about

the “national razor.”

Some of the shopkeepers went so far as to display earrings shaped like

little guillotines. Two years before the fall of Robespierre, when

violence had begun but had not yet assumed its more fearful aspect,

aristocratic or royalist families kept a good deal within doors in

their Parisian mansions, and sometimes amused themselves in a

strangely morbid way.

Dolls or puppets were provided with features resembling those of the

chief popular leaders. After dinner, during dessert, a small mahogany

guillotine was introduced, and wheeled along the table from guest to

guest; one by one the puppets were placed under the knife and their

heads chopped off.

Inside the trunk or body of the puppet was a liquid, vinous and

fragrant enough to be tasteful to the palate, but blood-red; this

flowed out over the table, and the guests, including ladies, dipped

their handkerchiefs into it, and applied it to their lips! In all

probability this strange game was played but seldom, but opposition

journalists magnified it into a regular habit of “les aristocrats.”

They do these things differently in France, even as regards hanging

and head chopping, to what we do in England, observes a writer while

noticing the well-known work, entitled “The Memoirs of the Sansons.”

There the office of public executioner is hereditary, and has been

held by one of the same family from 1681 down to 1867.

Here, when Mr. Calcraft resigned his post, Mr. Marwood, a person in no

way connected or related with his predecessor, succeeded him.

In this instance merit alone, and not hereditary right or title, we

presume, assured to the present hangman his high office.

M. Sanson, whose memoirs are here translated from the French, is the

last of his line. As the translator informs us, “he was the lineal

descendant of a race of headsmen through whose hands every State

victim, as well as every common criminal, had passed during two

centuries. They had hung, beheaded, guillotined, quartered, and

tortured, from father to son, without interruption.”

The grandfather of the author executed King Louis the Sixteenth and

his queen, besides a host of nobles and others.

He likewise had to carry into execution part of the sentence passed on

Madame de la Motte, who had been found guilty of cheating two

jewellers out of a valuable necklace on pretence that Queen Marie

Antoinette had commissioned Cardinal de Rohan to purchase it for her.

She was sentenced to be whipped, branded, and imprisoned for life. M.

Sanson thus describes how his grandfather performed the duties imposed

on him:――

WOMAN-WHIPPING.

Madame de la Motte shuddered; she clenched her hands, looked down, and

then raising her head, “Very well,” she said. The two assistants, who

had at first tried to secure her, came forward, but she motioned them

away, and advanced before them.

When the procession reached the hall, where a parliamentary committee

were sitting, the clerk read out the judgment. At the very first which

proclaimed her guilt, the strongest emotion appeared on Madame de la

Motte’s face.

Her eyes rolled in their sockets; she bit her lips, and the hitherto

pretty face now seemed to be the mask of fury.

Charles Henri foresaw a storm and approached her; and it was well that

he did so, for as the clerk came to the penalties, the unhappy woman’s

rage burst out with extraordinary violence.

She fell backwards so suddenly that her head must have been fractured

on the stones had not my grandfather caught her in his arms. Madame de

la Motte’s strength increased as the consciousness of her fate flashed

through her mind; and a protracted struggle ensued between her and the

assistants who attempted to pinion her.

She was at length carried down to the court. The scaffold was erected

opposite the gate, which had been left open. But it was six o’clock in

the morning, and only a limited number of persons were looking on.

She was stretched on the platform, and received twelve stripes. She

never ceased shrieking while the punishment was being inflicted. She

invoked vengeance on the head of Cardinal de Rohan; and she added that

it was her own fault that she had suffered the disgrace which had been

inflicted on her, since, had she said but one word, she would have

been hanged instead of having been flogged.

The second part of the sentence had no doubt escaped her, for when she

was seated on the platform she remained motionless, as if completely

subdued and powerless. Charles Henri Sanson thought the moment was

well chosen for the completion of the penalty.

Her dress had been torn, and her shoulders were bare; and he took an

iron from the grate and applied it to her skin. Madame de la Motte

uttered a wild shriek, and, writhing in the grasp of one of the

assistants who were holding her, she bit his hand with such fury that

she took a piece of flesh off.

She struggled again, and it was with the greatest difficulty that the

iron could be applied to the other shoulder. Justice was now

satisfied. Madame de la Motte was put into a fly, and taken to the

Salpetriere. As she was alighting she tried to run under the wheels,

and a few moments afterwards she thrust the sheet of her bed into her

throat in a frenzied attempt to choke herself. Her imprisonment lasted

for months.

AN AMATEUR HEADSMAN.

On August 20, 1792, the Tuileries were invaded, and the king

incarcerated in the Temple. A revolutionary tribunal was instituted.

This tribunal, although it numbered men like Fouquier-Tinville, used

the guillotine with comparative moderation. It applied severe laws

with severity; but it acted with justice, and respected the forms of

law.

It had chiefly to deal with common malefactors. From 1771 to 1792 the

number of raids on persons and property considerably increased.

Paper-money, which was of recent creation, excited the cupidity of

forgers. During a period of seven months, fifteen forgers were

executed on the Place de Greve. On August 19, 1792, one Collot was

condemned to death for forgery, and the guillotine was erected on the

usual spot selected for executions.

The Place was, as usual, well attended. As the cart, in which were

Charles Henri Sanson and the culprit, drove up, a tremendous clamour

greeted their appearance, and my grandfather distinguished a cry of

“To the Carrousel!” The horse continued to advance, but a man seized

the bridle and asked the driver why he did not obey the popular order.

Charles Henri Sanson interposed; but the man declared that the will of

the Commune was that the guillotine should henceforth be erected

opposite the palace of the late king, and that he must immediately

transfer his tools there. My grandfather replied that his duty was to

carry out the orders which were transmitted to him, and not to meet

the wishes of the magistrates before they were expressed. But the

clamour became more vociferous, and the horse’s head was turned in the

direction of the Tuileries.

Charles Henri Sanson’s position was very perplexing.

He asked, and at length obtained, leave to drive up to the Hotel de

Ville to ask for instructions. After some hesitation the Procureur of

the Commune authorised my grandfather to act according to the wishes

of the mob.

The scaffold was taken down and transferred to the Place du Carrousel;

and the cart repaired thither, escorted by the crowd. But a

considerable time elapsed before the guillotine could be erected

again; and the culprit, who had hitherto been calm, began to struggle

violently.

As the carpenters had gone away the people helped my grandfather to

reconstruct the instrument of death. This reconstruction, however,

progressed so slowly that night came on before it was finished, and my

grandfather, apprehending desperate resistance on the part of the

doomed man, requested some of those who worked around him to go to the

Commune and ask for an adjournment of the execution.

The request was received with jeers of anger and derision, and the

public indignation became ominously threatening.

A beardless young man, who wore the red cap, came forward, shrieking

that my grandfather was a traitor, and that he should taste of the

guillotine himself unless he “operated” without more ado. Charles

Henri retorted with some warmth that he could not execute the culprit

without special assistance.

“Your assistants are drunk?” exclaimed the young man. “You can find as

much help as you require here. The blood of aristocrats cement the

happiness of the nation, and there is not one man in the crowd who is

not ready to lend you a hand.”

A general cry of assent followed these words; but the circle around

the scaffold became wider, and it appeared obvious that few were

prepared to stand by their word. My grandfather perceiving this, had

hastened to prevent the first speaker from retreating, by accepting

his offer.

The culprit was led to the steps of the scaffold, which he refused to

mount, and Charles Henri was obliged to take him in his arms and carry

him up the platform. When the unfortunate man saw the dark outline of

the machine, his resistance became most desperate, and he shrieked for

mercy. The crowd was now silent. The improvised executioner did not

budge, but he was very pale.

At last, after a final struggle, the culprit was strapped to the

plank, but his contortions were so violent that an assistant had to

sit upon him.

Charles Henri Sanson now told the young man that he could not furnish

a better proof of his patriotism than by taking a leading part in the

execution; and he put in his hand the rope which communicated with the

knife.

At his bidding the young man gave a tug; the knife fell, and the head

rolled in the basket. This was not all; it was customary to show the

head to the multitude after the decapitation, and loud cries reminded

my grandfather of the custom. He explained to the young man what he

was to do, at the same time proposing himself to do the horrible duty.

But his substitute refused; he took the head by the hair, and advanced

to the edge of the scaffold; but as he was raising his arm to show the

bloody trophy, he staggered and fell back. Charles Henri Sanson came

to his assistance, thinking that he was fainting, but he discovered

that he was dead! Violent emotion had brought on an apoplectic fit,

which killed him instantaneously.

Notwithstanding all that had been said upon the efficacy of the

guillotine, we much question its being a more merciful mode of death

than Mr. Marwood’s “long drop,” as it is termed, as in many cases

death has taken place instantaneously, and as a sequel to this chapter

we subjoin a correct account of the leading phrenological

characteristics of the present public executioner.

Mr. Max Greger, our local phrenologist, whose description of the

“casts” of the convicts Wardlaw and Docherty was contributed at the

time of the executions, has just added the following analysis of the

phrenological characteristics of the “dread finisher of the law”:――

General size of head――very large.

Temperament――fibrous-nervous.

Posterior lobe of the brain――small.

Anterior lobe of the brain――rather large.

Portion of the brain above Cautiousness――moderate.

Portion of the brain above Causality――moderate.

Circumference at the base――23¾ inches.

He is only 5 ft. 5 in. in height; as to age, he will be on the shady

side of fifty; of remarkable muscular power, which is lost sight of in

the face, the narrowness of which, compared with the enormous width of

head, is strikingly peculiar――the disproportionate size of the latter

giving a drooping posture to the body, and seemingly indicating that

Nature had not intended this personage to hold up his head in society.

Though fully developed in the region of the reflective powers, those

faculties which judge of the relative size, shape, and design of

things, and which constitute the understanding proper, are conspicuous

by their absence――accounted for in him by want of education and

sedentary nature of previous calling (shoemaker). There is also a

decided want of balancing power, which, taken in conjunction with his

possession of large imaginative powers, and stimulated by his active

temperament, constitute him an enthusiast, and consequently he is

naturally prone to an erratic course of life, and to be in some

respects impracticable and visionary.

His large acquisitiveness denotes an inordinate desire to acquire

wealth, while his enormous caution will assist in holding fast the

same. His large reflective faculties will confer considerable

penetration and perception of character and events. His sense of the

ludicrous, with humour and mimicry, is large.

He, however, must be considered a somewhat grim joker, and he is not

at all likely to desire to be made the subject of his own fun. He is

ambitious of being thought knowing and deep. He has an inordinate

amount of vanity and self-conceit――must be foremost in his business:

“Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.”

Being highly sensitive to praise or the admiration of his fellow-men

(which, however, he seldom gets), he is likely to consider the

execution of Wainwright――a criminal of the first degree――as bringing

both himself and his office still more prominently before the public;

but this weakness, which is manifested in the manner in which he

gloats over the _modus operandi_ of his profession, may in time bring

his office more and more into contempt, and thus defeat the very

object he is anxious to attain.

From the development we find he is not wanting in energy, with

considerable shrewdness and tact, and his mechanical and constructive

talents would have enabled him to succeed in life either as a

manufacturer, a machinist, or an agriculturist.

MARWOOD’S CARD.

The following is a copy of Mr. Marwood’s professional card, in the

last line of which there will be found a touch of grim――and,

doubtless, unconscious――humour:――

WILLIAM MARWOOD,

EXECUTIONER,

CHURCH LANE,

HORNCASTLE,

LINCOLNSHIRE, ENGLAND.

_ALL ORDERS PROMPTLY EXECUTED._

CHAPTER CLXXV.

CONCLUSION.

We have seen the last of the miscreant whose career we have shadowed

forth, and our task is all but completed.

The celebrated Peace, says a journalist, terminated his disgraceful

career on Tuesday morning on the scaffold at Armley Gaol, Leeds. He

seems to have kept up his pluck and his appetite to the very last, and

concluded all by making a pious and edifying speech to the reporters.

We should be sorry to criticise too closely a production which was

given to the world under circumstances most trying to the nerves of

its author. It would be obviously absurd to judge the statement of a

man of Peace’s antecedents by the canons of good taste; and as for the

genuineness and sincerity of them they must be ascertained by a higher

tribunal than public opinion. Nevertheless there is a little too much

tendency to glorify a great criminal into a great hero. Peace was well

aware of this and naturally acted consciously or unconsciously, upon

the assumption. Several millions of people were kept from day to day

in a perfect flutter of excitement to know all that the convict was

saying, doing, writing, and almost thinking. Even the composition of

his breakfasts and the way in which he enjoyed them were telegraphed

for the information of an expectant public. For one who was not

altogether insensible to his own merits as a professional burglar and

murderer, there was a strong temptation to pose before the world. He

was almost as closely watched as Louis XIV., who walked, ate, slept,

dressed, and, Macaulay tells us, even vomited majestically before a

crowd of distinguished spectators. With the knowledge that everybody’s

eyes were upon him, he may perhaps have been a little too

self-conscious, and a little too solicitous not to spoil a reputation

which he evidently considered splendid. His repentance may have been

perfectly sincere, and his latest statements quite truthful. But it

would be obviously unwise to take all his revelations for gospel

verity without sifting them thoroughly. We trust that no pains will be

spared in the investigation of his latest confessions, and that if

they are found consistent, with known and undisputed facts, prompt

reparation will be made to the man who has, or may have, suffered for

his crimes. A more terrible fate than that of one who has been

convicted and punished for an offence which he has not committed, on

the strength of a chain of plausible circumstantial evidence, can

hardly be conceived. The lawyers are, no doubt, right in their dictum

that circumstantial evidence is the best of all evidence, always

supposing that it is strong enough. But, after the recent statements

of Peace, the public will naturally be tempted to re-open the question

of the Whalley Range murder, in order to ascertain whether every link

of the chain was complete; and if there is a single unsatisfied doubt,

they will not remain content until the prisoner Habron receives the

benefit of that doubt.

The last scene of what some exuberant journalists had delighted in

calling Charles Peace’s “life-drama” was thus enacted to the mild

satisfaction of everybody whose hopes had not pictured a sensation of

the type furnished by Mr. Meritt’s “New Babylon.”

There was the orthodox last dying speech and confession, ready to be

turned into what has now become the fashionable literature of the

period; there was the moribund posturising of nice old Newgate days;

and, to increase the likeness to that Saturnian period, there was a

crowd close at hand whose murmurs one could hear, and which the

parson’s and the patient’s voices could reach.

The “celebrity” Mrs. Thompson so coyly deprecates, and which her

paramour loved with all his little heart, was worthily crowned at the

end.

The unkind prudishness of the prison officials refused to admit more

than four reporters to the sickening ceremony; but those four were

found quite sufficient to flood every newspaper in the land with

funereal “flimsy.”

The descriptions resulting from these reports were literary gems

which, when he digs them up, will afford the coming New Zealander a

curious insight into the niceties of contemporary taste and the

peculiarities of contemporary syntax.

The most “thorough” descriptions took the convict very early

indeed――in fact it might almost be alleged that they never quite let

him go.

They informed us that his sleep was troubled and his supper hearty;

they dwelt on the poor wretch’s feeble endeavour to emulate his

betters in a silly and sickly “improving of the occasion”――which

apparently is achieved by an abundant use of the second person

singular, and frequent references to the Gospel of St. Chadband; they

hovered about his last sleep, and peered into the cups and egg-shells

of his last breakfast.

And the occasion was one of such surpassing interest, the opportunity

for distinguishing oneself in the appraisement of the criminal’s

linen, or the analysis of the criminal’s countenance, that at least

one gentleman, intoxicated with his sublimity, fairly forgot whether

the subject of his essay was hanged or not, and used “he is” and “he

was” in the same sentences with perplexing impartiality.

But that lucubration appeared in the _Daily Telegraph_, a journal

which is happy in the possession of a class of readers who do not

require good grammar to help down nasty stories. And this time the

story was nasty enough to suit the palate of an epicure in

Topsyturvydom.

Every step, every pause on that vulgar _via dolorosa_ that leads from

the prison door to the scaffold was counted, criticised, described.

Little scraps of the beautiful Burial Service were desecrated by being

quoted beside the doomed man’s call for drink.

The demeanour and voice of the hangman, the culprit’s dress, his

tremours, his appetite, his letters, his speeches, the scaffold

itself, with its draping of black sacking or black glazed calico

(authorities differ), all this forms as pretty a page of contemporary

history as confirmed _Daily Telegraph_ writers will ever care to dwell

upon.

Well might the moribund hypocrite address his last whimpering to “you

reporters;” the reporters make the “celebrity” of such as he was.

And we may add that the journalist just mentioned not only makes the

celebrity but suggests imitation by its morbid habit of manufacturing

monsters out of such sorry rascals as Charles Peace.

Its epitaph on the dead sinner is, “We hanged his detestable body

because it was in the highest degree expedient to rid the world of a

monster of iniquity.” Common gratitude to a subject that has filled

its most readable columns and suggested its most high-flown homilies

for a long three months might have moved even the _Daily Telegraph_ to

tardy and temporary charity.

It is pleasant to record that the unfortunate young Irishman Habron

has received her Majesty’s pardon, and is at present in Ireland, a

small yearly stipend having been settled upon him sufficient to

support him in comparative comfort for the remainder of his life.

This is as it should be. A great wrong was done to the ill-fated young

man, but every possible means has been taken to place him in a

respectable position, for which it is understood he is duly grateful.

It will be needful before concluding to take a cursory glance at the

other characters who have figured in this strange eventful history.

None of our hero’s quondam companions was more pained and mortified on

discovering the depth of guilt into which he had been plunged than

“Bandy-Legged Bill,” who, however, despite the overwhelming weight of

evidence, stuck to his friend “Charlie” to the last, but after Peace’s

trial and conviction Bill Rawton became an altered man.

The change, we are happy to say, was for the better; Rawton reformed

and became an altered character. He was never at any time what might

be considered hopelessly bad; indeed, to say the truth, he possessed

many good qualities, which, under different circumstances and

conditions, might have done much to lift him out of the slough of

despondency into which he had fallen, and in which he remained for so

many dark and miserable years.

But Bill saw the errors of his way. Mrs. Bourne was very good to him

and strove as best she could to lead him towards the right path, and

eventually succeeded. Bill Rawton is at the present time engaged as

handy man in one of the travelling circus companies.

No one knew better than he how to manage horses, and by diligence,

adroitness, and attention he has contrived to give general

satisfaction in his new vocation.

Brickett still continues the obliging host of the “Old Carved Lion,”

but the halo of crime with which the name of Peace has become

associated is still a puzzle to old Brickett, who, when the name of

our hero is mentioned, shakes his head, heaves a sigh, and says he

“can’t make it out rightly――the fellow must have gone off his chump,

or summat of the sort.”

Mrs. Brickett’s ghost is still said to haunt the precincts of the

“Lion,” and, in addition to this apparition, two others are at times

visible in Marshgrove-lane; these being the spirits of the late Mr.

Philip Jamblin and of Giles Chudley. This is, of course, only village

gossip, or superstition; nevertheless, the rustics have full faith in

the truth of the report.

Mr. Jakyl, full of years and honours, passed away tranquilly some

months before the arrest of Peace; and the radiant footman (now

radiant no longer) drives a prosperous business in the greengrocery

line, and is the father of five pledges of affection.

Lord Ethalwood got himself into a host of entanglements, both monetary

and amatory, and his life was none of the happiest for a very long

time.

One night a strange circumstance happened to his lordship, which

might, and indeed would, have proved fatal had it not been for a

sudden and strange intervention. Lord Ethalwood had left

Somerset-street after having paid a visit to Theresa Trieste.

He walked carelessly along until he reached Grosvenor-square. While

crossing the road he was suddenly attacked by some person behind, who

had aimed, what doubtless was intended to be, a fatal blow; but the

point of the knife of the would-be assassin struck against the

shoulder-blade, and did no further mischief than inflicting a long

superficial gash, which proved afterwards to be painful and

troublesome, but it was not dangerous.

Lord Ethalwood, young, active, and resolute, turned nimbly round upon

his assailant, whom he struck several violent blows on the head and

shoulders, at the same time shouting lustily for the police.

In a moment or so he was tripped up by another ruffian, who was

evidently in league with the others, and it was equally clear (so his

lordship thought) that their intention was murder.

He was not far out in his reckoning. The men who had been companions

of the young mountaineer, Janot, had sworn to have Lionel Ethalwood’s

life, and for this purpose they had lain in wait for him.

What the issue would have been, had not timely assistance arrived, it

would be impossible to say. Luckily, for his lordship, a passenger on

the other side of the way saw the position he was in, and at once

hastened to the rescue.

With one well-delivered blow he knocked down with his clenched fist

one of the mountaineers. Upon the instant the other closed with him,

and a short but desperate struggle ensued, the end of which was that

both combatants fell, the stranger undermost and the mountaineer on

the top.

Lord Ethalwood rose to his feet, whereupon both the foreigners

scampered off without further ado. Now that the struggle was over two

policemen came.

Lord Ethalwood was found to be bruised and wounded, but his rescuer

was in a still worse plight; he was stretched on the pavement in a

senseless condition, his head resting on the broad stone steps which

led to the vestibule of a palatial mansion.

The policeman stooped down and examined the features of the stranger,

from whose head a dark stream of blood was flowing. He was evidently a

man slightly past the middle period of life. Lord Ethalwood was

greatly concerned when he saw the lamentably prostrate condition of

the gallant gentleman who had risked his own life to preserve his.

The stranger was taken to the accident ward of the nearest hospital,

whereupon Lord Ethalwood jumped into a cab and proceeded at once to

his own residence. The family doctor attended to his wound, and

declared that his young patient had had a narrow escape.

In a few days, however, his lordship was convalescent. Not so,

however, was the ill-fated man who had come so opportunely to his

rescue. He had received from the fall a fracture of the skull, and for

some days he alternated between life and death.

Earl Ethalwood was constant in his visits to the hospital where the

patient lay, and it was on one of these occasions that a terrible and

harrowing fact became manifest.

He discovered that his preserver was his own father, Tom Gatliffe,

who, the reader will remember, had come upon the scene just in time to

save his son. When the fact was clearly established the Earl was

almost frantic.

Lady Batershall, Lady Marvlynn, and a host of other persons were in

close attendance on the sufferer, who, despite skill and unremitting

attention, breathed his last in the ward of a metropolitan hospital.

But very little now remains to be told. Mr. Kensett at his decease

left all his worldly wealth to him whom we have known as Alf Parvis,

who squandered his patrimony as he had heretofore squandered his

ill-gotten gains, and died in poverty and wretchedness while yet in

the springtime of his life.

Our story hath a mournful ending, but we trust that those who have

perused these pages have yet been able to derive entertainment and

instruction from the many noteworthy facts contained therein. One fact

has been clearly established――

“A life of crime is always a life of sorrow and care, for the hearts

of the guilty tremble for the past, for the present, and the future.”

THE END.

Transcriber’s Note:

Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like

this_. Footnotes were renumbered sequentially and were moved to the

end of the chapter in which related anchors occur. Obvious printing

errors, such as backwards, upside down, transposed or partially

printed letters, were corrected. Except for transcriptions of Peace’s

letters, final stops missing at the end of sentences and abbreviations

were added. Duplicate words and syllables at line endings or page

breaks were removed. Where unprinted or illegible words could not be

discerned, an elipsis was inserted. Typesetting vagaries and use of

quotation marks have been standardized for ease of reading. One

mid-sentence paragraph break was removed, and several paragraph

breaks were added between change of speakers.

Names of some people and places have multiple spellings. Dialect,

obsolete words and misspellings were left unchanged. Inconsistent

hyphenation was not changed. Occasional words omitted in the text were

not inserted. There is no CHAPTER XXII and there are two CHAPTER CV’s.

Unprinted III was added to CHAPTER XXXVIII; CHAPTER XXCII was changed

to CXXII; and CHAPTERX was changed to CHAPTER. There are several

numbers mistyped in the table of Pence’s cypher.