And all agreed there must have been But since no body could be found, Next, that it no self-murder was, For no man could cut off his head, Ere many days had gone and past, God prosper long our noble king, Our lives and safeties all, And grant that we may warning take The second volume begins with the trial of that ruffianpoet, Richard Savage-whose gross barbarities of nature Doctor Johnson endeavoured to adorn and obscure with the cumbrous flowers of his biography. Savage's crime is too well known to need notice here. Colonel Charteris, whose name Pope has damned to everlasting fame, soon follows. His epitaph is the only good thing he ever lived for. At page 152 Sarah Malcombe, for murders, holds out five and thirty tempting and desperate pages-but we cannot heed her. The trial of Charles Macklin, for insinuating a cane into the left eye (which, of course, became the left eye no longer) of Thomas Hallam, occurs at page 234. The accident, for such it really was, arose about a wig:-Hallam was a brother actor. Quin and others vouched for the peaceable disposition of Macklin, and he was acquitted of the murder. In Richard Coyle's trial for the barbarous murder of Captain Hartley, the letter, written by the prisoner the night before he suffered, is well worth reading. It is at once devout, sly, simple, and pathetic. The second volume concludes with an account of George Price, for the murder of his wife, which is too frightfully cruel for our pages. It is singular, that this work teems with accounts of men murdering their wives, while there are not more than one or two instances of uncourteous retorts on the part of the women. The third volume commences with that "black prince" of highwaymen, the desperate and cruel Dick Turpin. He was notorious in the shires of York and Lincoln. Turpin, after innumerable minor offences, was tried for horse-stealing, and he immediately wrote to his father for a character, as though it could be sent by post. He behaved in York Castle with great impudence. His villanies were heavy and manifold. His behaviour at the place of execution (for he suffered for horse-stealing) is curious. "The morning before Turpin's execution, he gave three pounds ten shillings amongst five men, who were to follow the cart as mourners, with hatbands and gloves to several persons more. He also left a gold ring, and two pair of shoes and clogs, to a married woman at Brough, that he was acquainted with; though he at the same time acknowledged he had a wife and child of his own. "He was carried in a cart to the place of execution, on Saturday, April 7, 1739, with John Stead, condemned also for horse-stealing; he behaved himself with amazing assurance, and bowed to the spectators as he passed. It was remarkable, that as he mounted the ladder, his right leg trembled, on which he stamped it down with an air, and with undaunted courage, looking round about him; and after speaking near half an hour to the topsman, threw himself off the ladder, and expired directly. "His corpse was brought back from the gallows about three in the afternoon, and lodged at the Blue-Boar, at Castle-gate, till ten the next morning, when it was buried in a neat coffin in St. George's churchyard, within Fishergate Postern, with this inscription: I. R. 1739, R. T. aged 28. He confessed to the hangman that he was thirty-three years of age. The grave was dug very deep, and the persons whom he appointed his mourners, as above-mentioned, took all possible care to secure the body; notwithstanding which, on Tuesday morning, about three o'clock, some persons were discovered to be moving off the body, which they had taken up, and the mob having got scent where it was carried to, and suspecting it was to be anatomized, went to a garden in which it was deposited, and brought away the body through the streets of the city in a sort of triumph, almost naked, being only laid on a board covered with some straw, and carried on four men's shoulders, and buried in the same grave, having first filled the coffin with slacked lime," Turpin was, perhaps, as desperate a ruffian as ever pulled trigger in the face of a traveller. He shot people like partridges! Many wild and improbable stories are related of him; such as his rapid ride to York, his horse chewing a beef-steak all the way: but setting these aside, he was hardy and cruel enough to shine as a mighty malefactor. His name comes upon the memory, as the fumigating vinegar at the Old Bailey comes upon the senses; and he seems (to quote a Newgate jest) to have been " booked at his very birth for the Gravesend coach, that leaves at eight in the morning." He had some partners in the course of his exploits; but he quarrelled with many-many of course separated, and suddenly died! for, as the Ordinary on one occasion shrewdly remarks, "there is no union so liable to dissolution, as that of felons." An admirable account of Mary Young, the Jenny Diver of her day, and actually so called by her companions, ensues. It is one long, lively narrative, of clean pocket-picking. We wish we had room for this choice bit of biography, from the top to the toe, as it is really a piece " with nothing but kings!" For all her nimbleness, however, she could not get her neck out of the noose; but death picked her corporeal pocket at Tyburn, of its "invaluable metal," life !—And it's Oh! poor Polly! There is a grand smuggler murder at page 134. But we go right on. The trial of W. Parsons, for returning from transportation, has some rare romantic letters worth reading, to those who are fond of tender epistles written at a pinch. Captain Lowry's ship murder is well known. Miss Blandy, of York, follows: her murder of her father was sufficiently mysterious to make a million wet eyes for her at the fatal tree. Thomas Twinbrow, a young highwayman of twenty-one years of age, suddenly closes his life, and the third volume. The fourth and last volume is rich indeed in bold bad men; but our article has already extended to so fearful a length, that we must pass lightly even over such names as the Perreaus, Mrs. Caroline Rudd, Captain Porteous, Mrs. Elizabeth Brownrigg, Cameron, Lord Lovat, Theodore Gardelle, and Eugene Aram. Sir Walter Scott, the great unknown, has deepened the fame of Porteous; and Paley has cast some additional interest over the bone-mystery of Aram. We are desirous of concluding with a few remarks, and must therefore despatch our subject with a Jack Ketch-like ingenuity and rapidity. There are clusters of highwaymen and every-day murderers in this volume. But the Wills and the Toms must lie quiet in Surgeons'-hall. We have not room to embalm all their bones in our literary museum; or to rescue them all from a long and inglorious oblivion. The first trial of any great interest in the fourth volume, is that of William Barnard, charged with sending threatening letters to the Duke of Marlborough. This case is mystery itself, cloaked from foot to forehead. Eugene Aram (some trials intervening) follows: he was, as it is well known, accused of a murder, on the strength of some bones being discovered near certain lime-kilns at Knaresborough. Much circumstantial evidence was adduced on the trial, and Aram was called upon for his defence, which he read to the court. It is a masterly composition, written with consummate art and beauty of language; but from its very ingenious and argumentative nature, fatal, we think, to the cause which it was intended to prop. The jury, after a wholesome summing up, found the prisoner guilty; and he, subsequently, in a letter confessed his crime. Earl Ferrers, for shooting his steward, comes in the wretched train: he dressed himself in his bridal dress to die in. Theodore Gardelle's murder of Mrs. King, is one of the most fearful narratives in the work: the crime was so quietly committed; the body so cruelly hacked for secresy; the neighbourhood so horridly moved to suspicion. He endeavoured to burn the remains, limb by limb; and the stench of the process infected the very atmosphere of Leicester-square, where this murder was committed. We never pass the spot now without seeing Theodore stepping, as in the picture, with a hatchet in one hand, and a leg in the other-while Mrs. King's head, resting on a flaming brand, is consuming in the fire-place. We pass over Elizabeth Brownrigg, the terrific whipper-in of apprentices-such women are things to dream of, not to tell.” She was one of the very few malefactors who have had the pernicious fate of being hallooed out of this world by an infuriated populace. Governor Wall died to the same mob-music! Mrs. Richardson, for the murder of an attorney, we read, perished at Tyburn. Had she lived in these prolific days, her crime might have stood a chance of going undiscovered. We should think any given solicitor might now be picked out of the law-list, and not missed. Mr. Pimlott was killed in Michael mas term, which was an excess of cruelty. Jemmy Dawson, the Manchester rebel, whose death, on Kennington Common, is recorded in this volume, is only remembered now in poor Shenstone's pitiful nimini-pimini ballad. If Shenstone had been suspended as a poet, when Jemmy was suspended as a traitor, Jack Ketch would have done the world double service, and we should have held him in double love. It was mercifully arranged, that Jemmy Dawson was not destined to read the ballad written upon him : dissection would have been a joke to it! Captain Porteous's trial has been so well and so potently hammered out, in the Heart of Mid-Lothian, that we need not weary our readers with a withered abridgement of it here. The author of Waverly, we should think, might, out of the Newgate Calendar, make novel volumes enough to bale the Edinburgh smacks for a thousand years. We should like to see the number ascertained by rule of three :-If Captain Porteous give four volumes, how many volumes will all the rogues in the Annals of Newgate give?-This would carry the quotient somewhere in amongst the billions, we should suppose. The trials of the lords Balmerino and Kilmarnock are, fortunately for us, so well known, and the characters of those gallant rebels so well understood,-thanks to the lively letters of Horace Walpole, who certainly dealt with them before he got into his Anecdotage,-that we may be very well spared noticing them here. Balmerino joked to the very final flash of the axe, and made a sturdy sport of death, to the lasting delight of your surly, game Englishmen. Lord Lovat was of the same gay, satirical temper, and drank the health of the gentleman who brought the dead-warrant to him. He practised positions for execution, by placing his head on the foot of the bed, and talked at last of being ready for the part he had to play. Just before he ascended the scaffold, he said a short prayer on his knees, and drank a little burnt brandy and bitters. Before he laid his head on the block, his lordship presented a purse to the headsman, and assured him he should be angry if his axeship should so awkwardly cut, as to be compelled to come again. The man was true to the money, and struck off his lordship's head at a blow. There is a poor trial of poor Baretti, the dictionary man: but we authors make miserable convicts. To be sure, a tolerable calendar might be made of our trials in this world! 66 Several daring highwaymen follow, and crows, crapes, and centre-bits, are plenty as blackberries"-but our space is nearly consumed. The melancholy account of the two unfortunate Perreaus', for forgery upon Mr. Adair, with intent to defraud Drummond the banker, is written in a style of pathos perfectly subduing. They were both found guilty.-Death!The two brothers made a fair and manly defence, but Mrs. Rudd, that human adder in their path, was too wily for them, and they fell a sacrifice to her. They were all tenderness to each other, and to all around them. The Ordinary seems to write as though his pen were dipped in tears. Mrs. Rudd, who had destroyed them, as we think, was brought to trial and acquitted. The trial of the Dutchess of Kingston closes the work. Thank heaven! her Grace's vices are not worth remembering. She was unfortunately found guilty of marrying one man too many; but she pleaded her privilege, and so glided out of the hands of the house of peers. The peers are certainly bad judges of a lady's case. We had marked several interesting passages in the course of our journey through these four volumes, which we intended returning to explore; but we must content ourselves with merely extracting a curious account of the punishment visited upon prisoners who refused to plead; and a singular piece of |
