CHAPTERCLXXII.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, theRev.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 9ft.4in.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 (theRev.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 2½in.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 strongprima faciecolour 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 oddTo 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 oldde mortuisinjunction.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.No.99.Illustration: SCENE ON THE SCAFFOLDSCENE 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 theRev.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.TheCentral Newsreporter 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 ofmeumandtuumthroughout 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.
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, theRev.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 9ft.4in.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 (theRev.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 2½in.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 strongprima faciecolour 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 oddTo choke a poor scamp for the glory of God.”
“—think it looks oddTo choke a poor scamp for the glory of God.”
“—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 oldde mortuisinjunction.
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.
No.99.
Illustration: SCENE ON THE SCAFFOLDSCENE ON THE SCAFFOLD—MARWOOD PINIONING PEACE’S LEGS.
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 theRev.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.
TheCentral Newsreporter 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 ofmeumandtuumthroughout 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.