whims? Katherine did not ask herself the question while she carved her ugly mannikin. A spirit such as Tibbie's deserved encouragement, that was all; and one who lived so near the miser could not but be interesting to the future bride of his nephew. Katherine wondered, as she worked, how long the old man could live. How if his seventy years should multiply until they counted a hundred? Katherine sat up long that night, with brows bent, over the fire. She was beginning to feel care, she who had never met any obstacle to her wishes which had not been easily Overcome. The owls hooted in the belfry, and the winds moaned round the cloisters; and even May was fast asleep before Katherine left her chair.

CHRONICLES OF LONDON
STREETS.

NEWGATE (CONCLUDED). JOSEPH WALL, Commandant of the African Corps, was lieutenant-governor of the island of Goree, in Africa, and superintendent of trade to the colony of Senegambia, in the year 1782. He was an Irishman of good family, but of a severe and unrelenting disposition, and liked neither by his officers nor men. At the revolution of the Havannah in 1762, he had fought with especial courage, and won his well-deserved promotion. As a subordinate the man would have been brave and loyal, as a superior he was merciless and tyrannical, for power intoxicates and brutalises some minds. His wife was an accomplished woman of noble birth. In July, 1782, the governor being affected by the disease proverbially so fatal to Europeans, prepared to return to England. The day before he sailed, at eleven A.M., twenty or thirty men out of the three hundred soldiers of the African Corps came up in a body to the Government House, and respectfully requested that before the paymaster left with the governor, they might receive money that had been stopped from their pay, for certain restrictions in food that the garrison had just before been voluntarily enduring for some months, when provisions ran short. As spokesman at the head of these petitioners was a soldier named Benjamin Armstrong, who advanced hat in hand, and paid the governor every respect. The governor, enraged at the complaint of the men, instantly ordered Armstrong and his party back to the barracks under threat of punishment.

The men obeyed and returned without noise about two P.M. A second party,

led by a soldier named Upton, without uniform or arms, also made the same perfectly just application to Ensign Dearing, the paymaster. Soon after the governor's dinner-hour, Wall ran out, beat one of the men who appeared to be drunk, and snatching a bayonet from the sentry, struck him with it, and then put both men under arrest. Thirsting for revenge on what he called "the mutinous rascals," who had dared to ask for their rights, the governor ordered the long roll to be beat, and parade called. The three hundred men, without firearms, were formed into a circle, two deep, in the midst of which stood the implacable governor, the drummers, his obsequious captain, and pliant ensigns. Immediately the cumbrous carriage of a six-pounder was dragged into the circle, and the governor called Benjamin Armstrong out of the ranks. Five or six brawny black slaves then appcared, with an interpreter to give them orders, and unfortunate Armstrong was lashed by the wrists to the rings of the guncarriage, to receive on the spot eight hundred lashes. The rope used was not the usual whipcord tied to a wooden handle, such as the cord with which they sting garotters in Newgate at the present day, nor even the tight-twisted log-line used on board men-of-war, but a long lashing of rope nearly an inch in circumference. With brutal cruelty, Governor Wall ordered a fresh black to take the rope every twentyfive lashes, and if the stalwart slaves at all relaxed, he shouted: "Lay on, you black beasts, or I'll lay on you; cut him to the heart, cut his liver out."

When this cruel punishment was ended, poor Armstrong, with his back " as black as a new hat," walked to the hospital, saying he felt he should certainly die. Rowe, the assistant-surgeon, found the rope had bruised and not cut the flesh, and the injuries were therefore the more serious. The poor fellow sank and died five days after the governor left for England. In March, 1784, Wall, who had been arrested at Bath by order of Lord Sidney, escaped from his majesty's messengers at the Brown Bear, Reading. He then escaped to France, changed his name, and there and in Italy lived respectably and kept good company, much affecting the Irish officers in the French service, and the professors of the Scotch and Irish colleges in Paris. In 1797, Wall returned to England and lodged in Lambeth Cut, and afterwards in Upper Thornhaugh-street, Bedfordsquare, Tottenham Court-road, where his wife visited him. In October, 1801, Wall

immense iron shovel full of coals to throw on the fire, Ay, in one hour that will be a blazing fire;' then, turning to the doctor, questioned him, 'Do tell me, sir, I am informed I shall go down with great force, is that so?' After the construction and action of the machine had been explained, the doctor questioned the governor as to what kind of men he had at Goree; 'Sir,' he answered, they sent me the very riff-raff.' The poor soul then joined the doctor in prayer; and never did I witness more contrition at any condemned sermon than he then evinced."

Directly the execution was over, Mr. Smith left Newgate, where the hangman's yeoman was selling the rope that had hung Governor Wall for a shilling an inch, while in Newgate-street a starved old man was selling another identical rope at the ridiculously low price of only sixpence an inch, and at the north-east corner of Warwick-lane, a woman known as Rosy Emma, reputed wife of the hangman's man, was selling a third identical noose to the Epping buttermen, who had come that morning to Newgate Market.

Mr. Steele, a lavender merchant, who lived at No. 15, Catherine-street, Strand, left town for Feltham, near Hounslow, where he had a small house and a nurserygarden, on the afternoon of Friday the 5th of November, 1802. Having seen to his gardens and stock and paid his workmen, he left his nursery the next day, Saturday, about seven in the evening. He wore at the time a light green coat, striped waistcoat, half-boots, and a round hat. Mr. Steele, not returning to London the next day, Mr. Meyer, his brother-in-law, became alarmed, and set out for Feltham, but Mr. Steele was not there. Mr. Meyer's alarm increasing, he went to the barracks at Hounslow to procure assistance, and a vigorous search was then instituted. The soldiers scouring the heath soon came on traces of the man who, it was began to be feared, had been murdered by foot-pads. His drab great-coat was found inside some flags in a gravel-pit about ten or fifteen yards from the road going from Hounslow to Staines. Soon after the soldiers discovered the body of the murdered lavender merchant on the opposite side of the road, about two hundred yards from the path. It lay in a ditch by a clump of trees, and a portion of the bank had been pulled down, or had fallen upon it. A buckled strap was drawn tight round the neck of the

corpse, which was stained with blood and dirt. There was the mark of a crushing bludgeon blow on the back of the head, and a large bruise on the right arm. The hat and shoes were gone, and the flap of the coat was spread over the face. Mr. Steele's shoes were found about fifty yards from the body. The cruel murder excited great horror at the time, and the coachmen at night, by glimpses of the moon, would point out to pale and hushed passengers the exact spot were the body was found, and the third clump of trees, near the old gravelpit, where the searchers had picked up an old hat supposed to have belonged to one of the murderers. The story was discussed, no doubt, often enough in Catherine-street, where timid eyes would turn towards the shop with the lavender-water in the window, as if the ghost of Mr. Steele might at any moment emerge from it and start again on the road to Hounslow.

The murder had been almost forgotter, when one day in the autumn of 1807, Benjamin Hanfield, a convict in a ship then lying at Portsmouth, confessed that he had helped in the crime, and could disclose the names of the two men who really killed Mr. Steele. Holloway and Haggerty, the two men pointed out by Hanfield, were at once arrested. Haggerty was a marine on board the Shannon frigate, then lying at Deal. When taken before the port admiral and asked where he had been four years ago, his countenance fell, and he would have fallen backwards had not Vickery, the police officer, caught him, sat him down, and given him some water. Holloway was found in Clerkenwell Prison, suffering for some offence for which he had been con victed. When taken by Vickery to Johnstreet, Bedford-row, and the warrant read. he said, "I am innocent! Oh, dear! I know nothing about it. I will down on my knees to you and the justice if you will let me go."

Hanfield's version of the story was this He had known Haggerty and Holloway, and been much with them for six or seven years. They generally met at the Turk's Head in Dyot-street, the Black Horse in Dyot-street, or the Black Dog at the corner of Belton-street. In the beginning of November, 1802, Holloway Hanfield at the Turk's Head, and asked him if he had any objection to being in a good thing. It was to be a "low toby" (foot pad robbery). Hanfield consented, and was arranged for the Saturday following On that day, Hanfield, Haggerty, and

came to

Holloway met. Holloway had found out a gentleman to "sarve" (rob) on Hounslow Heath. They sat drinking some time, and then started for Hounslow, and at Turnham Green they stayed again to refresh themselves, and at the Bell at Hounslow again drank. At half-past four they left the Bell, and proceeded over the heath till they reached the eleventh mile-stone towards Belfont. They were rather too soon, so they struck out over the heath to a clump of trees. It was dark when they got there, but by the time they had waited an hour the moon rose, and they again sallied out.

As they came out from the trees, Holloway said he thought he heard a footstep, and they went along the road till they thought they could descry the figure of a man coming along the road towards Hounslow. This man was Mr. Steele. On their stopping him and demanding his money, the lavender merchant at once consented to give it up without showing fight, and begged them not to hurt him. On his declaring he carried no pocket-book, Holloway knocked him down, and declared if he spoke he would knock out his brains. Hanfield took hold of Mr. Steele's legs. Haggerty then searched him, and on his struggling to get across the road, as a night coach approached, Holloway said, "I'll silence the beggar," and killed him with two dreadful blows of his blackthorn bludgeon. Hanfield then left them in terror, but was rejoined by them in a publichouse at Hounslow. Holloway was then wearing the murdered man's hat. But on the Monday following, to avoid detection, he filled the hat with stones, and flung it into the Thames from Westminster Bridge. This was Hanfield's story, but the transported convict, who had turned king's evidence, was by no means to be implicitly believed.

From the beginning that shrewd and energetic man, Mr. James Harmer (afterwards Alderman Harmer), the attorney for Holloway and Haggerty, had a strong conviction that the two men were innocent. Hanfield it was proved had been a hackneycoachman and a thief, and had deserted from no fewer than five different regiments. Moreover, he had been once quartered at Hounslow. He had before escaped transportation by turning informer. Mr. Harmer also brought forward the sworn deposition of a fellow-prisoner of Hanfield's at the House of Correction, who proved that Hanfield had said, the day before the execution of the two men, that they could not be inno

cent, for if they had not done this they had done other things as bad, that the hulks were dreadful, and that rather than be seven years in the hulks he would hang as many men as were killed at the battle of Copenhagen. Hanfield was peculiarly brutal and ferocious in prison. There were endless discrepancies in his evidence, and after all the two men were chiefly convicted by means of a conversation overheard by an officer, when they were in adjoining cells in Worship-street, when they confessed a previous knowledge of each other. This cruel stratagem seems more worthy of Venice in the Middle Ages than of England in 1807, and after all it only proved that they had met before. To our mind the innocence of the two men is unquestionable, and the wretch Hanfield was probably the only murderer.

To the last the two men pathetically asserted their innocence. Upon the entrance of the sheriffs, Haggerty came out into the press-yard, and had his fetters struck off. He appeared deeply depressed, but uttered not a word, and returned into what is called the Long Room to be pinioned. Holloway was pinioned before his irons were removed. He again returned into the Long Room, and a few minutes after said he wished to speak to the gentlemen. At this time several noblemen, the lord mayor, Alderman Flower, and many gentlemen, besides the sheriffs and undersheriffs, were assembled in the yard.

A circle was formed, and, on his entering it, he began on his right, bowing slowly and reverently, until he had completed the circle; he then stood erect in the centre, and in an audible voice said, "Gentlemen, I die innocent; I know nothing of this here affair that I am going to suffer for." He then dropped down upon his knees, and with his hands, as in the posture of prayer, said, "I am innocent, by God!" He then arose, and with great composure proceeded to the scaffold.

The final catastrophe was terrible indeed. The crowd which assembled to witness the execution was nearly forty thousand. The pressure of the crowd was such, that before the prisoners appeared, some women who could be no longer supported by the men, were suffered to fall, and were trampled to death. This was also the case with several men and boys. In all parts there were continued cries of "Murder! murder!" particularly from the female part of the spectators and children, some of whom were seen expiring without the

possibility of obtaining the least assistance, every one being employed in endeavouring to preserve his own life. The most affecting scene of distress was seen at the end of Green Arbour-court, nearly opposite the debtors' door. The terrible occurrence which took place near this spot was attributed to the circumstance of two piemen attending there, and one of them having his basket overthrown, which stood upon a sort of stool with four legs; some of the mob, not being aware of what had happened, and at the same time severely pressed, fell over the basket and the man at the very moment he was picking it up, together with its contents. Those who once fell were never more suffered to rise, such was the violence of the mob. At this fatal place a man of the name of Herrington was thrown down, who had in his hand his youngest son, a fine boy about twelve years of age. The youth was soon trampled to death; the father recovered, though much bruised, and was amongst the wounded in St. Bartholomew's Hospital. A woman who was so imprudent as to take with her a child at the breast, was one of the number killed; whilst in the act of falling, she forced the child into the arms of the man nearest to her, requesting him, for God's sake, to save its life; the man finding it required all his exertion to preserve himself, threw the infant from him, but it was fortunately caught at a distance by another man, who, finding it difficult to insure its safety or his own, got rid of it in a similar way. The child was again caught by a person who contrived to struggle with it to a cart, under which he deposited it until the danger was over, and the mob had dispersed. In other parts the pressure was so great, that a horrible scene of confusion ensued, and seven persons lost their lives by suffocation alone. It was shocking to behold a large body of the crowd, in a convulsive struggle for life, fighting with the most savage fury with each other; the consequence was that the weakest, particularly the women, fell a sacrifice. A cart, which was overloaded with spectators, broke down, and some of the persons, falling from the vehicle, were trampled under foot, and never recovered. During the hour the malefactors hung, little assistance could be afforded to the unhappy sufferers; but after the bodies were cut down, and the gallows removed to the Old Bailey yard, the marshals and constables cleared the street where the catastrophe occurred, and shock

ing to relate, there lay near one hundred persons dead, or in a state of insensibility, strewed round the street.

In an interesting account of a visit to various prisons in 1818, written by that excellent philanthropist, Joseph John Gurney, in 1819, that writer appends some sensible and practical remarks made on prison discipline by himself and his noble sister, Mrs. Fry, the very type of Christian charity. He speaks warmly of the good effected by the Ladies' Prison Visiting Association, which commenced its labours among the female prisoners of Newgate in April, 1817. Those excellent people, the Quakers, always alive to works of charity, originated the movement, and were first, here and in America, to revive a remembrance of the almost forgotten fact that the object of law and justice is not so much to punish as to reform the criminal. Mere cruelty transforms him into a wild beast, kindness and religion restore him to hu manity, bring him back from the pariah state, and often restore him to civilisation. The feeling that good men still care for him, and do not look upon him as utterly lost, softens his heart, and habits of order, sobriety, and industry, recreate him, as it were, and often recal him to humanity. The cold-blooded murderer alone the law considers as hopeless, irreclaimable, and dangerous, and so dismisses him from life in terrible but just retaliation for the life he has taken: all other criminals it should endeavour to warn, and if possible to reclaim. Poverty has perhaps led him to crime, and his habits of crime may have arisen merely from never having heard of or seen virtue. Most young prisoners are reclaimable; most women whom vice (the result of their seducer's crime) has turned into thieves or drunkards, are reclaimable if a better mode of life is opened to them. On these great principles Mrs. Fry acted, and with a success that seems the result of Heaven's special blessing. At that time the female prisoners in Newgate were sunk into an apparently hopeless state of idleness, abandoned and shameless vice, riot, and drunkenness. They were the dregs of the dregs of London, the scum of the scum, blasphemous, filthy, ignorant of the commonest decencies and duties of life. Frequent communication was allowed them, through an iron grating, with visitors of both sexes, many of such visitors as vile, degraded, and desperate as themselves.