Chapter CLIX…

Chapter CLIX

SCENE AT STOKE FERRY――LAURA STANBRIDGE LED INTO AN AMBUSCADE――A LOVE STORY TO UNWILLING EARS.

It was the nineteenth of November, and it had been a cold, gloomy day, and the night descended black and noiseless as a funeral pall upon a corpse.

The railway station was built of red bricks, which the storms of winter had almost turned brown. One gas-light flickered feebly within its case of glass. Two travellers were waiting for the train――one of them reading the advertisements on the walls, the other walking quickly, to keep himself warm.

A bell was rung――two red stars appeared in the distance――there was a low hum, which became a roar, and the train stopped by the trembling platform.

There had been only one passenger. It was a lady neatly dressed, without luggage or attendants.

She was not young, but her features were very handsome, albeit her grey eyes, which had a cold and cunning look, and her low, receding forehead, together with the thinness of her lips, robbed her of half her beauty.

A red-haired man, with a whip in his hand and a copper badge upon his breast, came up and spoke to her, touching his hat. As he spoke he pointed to a large close carriage in the road outside the station, to which were harnessed a pair of strong brown horses.

“I wish to go to Broxbridge Hall,” said she. “Do you know the place?”

“Yes, ma’am――the seat of Earl Ethelwood. I know it well enough. I knew it when the old Earl was alive. Ah! me――things are changed since then, surely.”

As she stepped into the carriage, she glanced anxiously towards the western sky, where a few rays of light showed that the sun had lately set.

These rays resembled streaks of blood, and cast a lurid glow upon the purple and copper-hued clouds around them.

She drew down the blinds, and, throwing herself back at full length in the vehicle, gave herself up to the meditation of her schemes.

She was roused by the stopping of the carriage. She draw up the blinds and opened the windows. It was now nearly dark, and distant flashes of lightning betokened a storm. The wind also had risen, and moaned among the distant trees.

They were upon the banks of a broad river, which was covered with small but white-crested waves.

The driver gave a peculiar kind of shout, which was answered from the other side by another shout and the ringing of a bell.

The lady began to understand.

They were about to cross a ferry.

She looked back on the road they had come, and which merely consisted of two huge ruts.

She could faintly distinguish the road on the other side, and it appeared to improve but little.

“Is this the only road to Broxbridge?” said she, in a tone of anxiety.

“Well, ma’am, it be,” returned the red-haired man, “unless we’ed gone by the pike, which is five miles round. Cattle and men are both used to these roads hereabouts.”

“But I thought the station was close to Broxbridge.”

“There is a station close by it, but not the one I’ve brought you from.”

“Then they have deceived me, and I booked for the wrong station.”

“It can’t be altered now, ma’am. We must make the best of a bad job, but you’ll be all right enough.”

She walked to the brink of the river, and eyed the dark sullen torrent as it ran swiftly past.

She heard the rattling of chains, and, looking up, saw a man crossing the river in a large punt.

In the dusk of the evening the mass glided towards her like some monster ghost, and the noise of the chains added strongly to this impression.

The boat was moored to a post in the bank, the horses were led carefully in, the driver assisted the lady with rough courtesy into the boat, then the ferryman, having unloosed the chain, drove his long iron-pointed pole into the gravelly bottom of the river.

The boat moved slowly and silently through the water, which it cleaved into ripples with its broad bow. The sky was covered with clouds, some long, some narrow and streaky, floated irregularly over the general mass.

They are called mare’s tails, and generally forebode rain. The lightning flashes still continued, and once they heard a peal of thunder, faint and dull as an echo.

“The storm is coming up,” said the driver, and he patted his horses, which were sniffing the air nervously, and soothed them with those signs and words which form a language between men and the lower animals.

The ferryman appeared to be old and feeble. He bent his face over his pole as he drove it into the ground at the bow of the boat, and followed it into the stern.

“Aye,” said he, “the storm is coming up quickly and from what I can see of it at present we shall have it pretty sharp and no mistake.”

When the boat grounded upon the sandy shelving bank on the other side, the ferryman stepped out and fastened the chain, averting his face from the boat.

The driver led the horses out of the craft and up the bank, the carriage jolting and rumbling as he did so. As the lady passed out her dress touched the hand of the ferryman.

At this touch he started suddenly and trembled all over, and his eyes followed her savagely.

As soon as she was reseated in the carriage, and had pulled the blinds down, the driver looked back at him significantly.

He nodded and climbed into the rumble, where he sat with his arms crossed, and his head upon his breast.

Laura Stanbridge――crouched within the vehicle, which she had made dark as if her thoughts were too evil to bear the light――did not hear the wind which now howled fiercely above her head, nor the thunder peals, which every moment grew more long and loud.

“Ah!” said she, “I will see this proud earl, and let him know who and what his father is. He little thinks what an amusing tale I have to tell about Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Gatliffe. I will bring him to my feet, and he will be but too glad to purchase my silence at a princely sum. So, Mr. Gatliffe, you spurn me now like the rest――do you? Are meditating mischief, I’ll dare be sworn. Well, we shall see. Fool that you were to entrust me with your secrets!”

She uttered a cry of impatience as she saw, from the slow pace of the horses, and the manner in which the carriage hung back, that they were ascending a steep hill.

At the same moment a vivid flash of lightning darted past her eyes, and a peal of thunder, which made the windows rattle, followed it immediately――a sign that the storm was near.

The horses had stopped, and on peering through the front window she saw that the driver was no longer on the box.

She opened the door, and, alighting, found that a tree had fallen across the road. Upon this tree were seated two figures.

“Goodness me, how unfortunate!” exclaimed Laura. What must be done?”

The driver scratched his head, and seemed sorely puzzled.

“I don’t know how we are to get to the hall now, ma’am,” said he.

“But we must get there by some means or another,” cried Laura, in a petulant tone. “How very unfortunate we’ve been to be sure! Everything seems to go wrong. What do you propose, driver? Just think――there’s a good fellow.”

“I am thinking, but can’t tell what to do for all that.”

One of the figures rose and approached them. It was a woman, in the uncouth dress of a female peasant.

“If the leddy wants to see the Earl, a maun see ’im to-night――he’s off to Lunnon early the morrow.”

“I do want to see him most particularly,” said Miss Stanbridge. “My business is immediate. Can you tell me, my good woman, how I can get to Broxbridge Hall? You know the neighbourhood, I dare say.”

“I do, indeed,” was the ready response.

“And can tell me what to do?”

“Well, marm, my zon and oi be goin’ that way, and we can show ’ee if a doan’t moind goin’ by a rough road through the woods.”

“How far is it?”

“Oh, only a little bit of a step.”

“Very well; then I will go, and trust to you to guide me,” said Miss Stanbridge. “I do not see any other course left open.”

Having paid the man for the distance he had brought her, she prepared to accompany them.

The woman climbed the bank at the side of the road and passed through an open gate into the footpath which led across a field.

The person whom the woman had mentioned as her son followed behind. Laura Stanbridge turned round in the field to look at him, but the night was so dark that she could only make out a shadowy form, which appeared to be enveloped in a large cloak with a high collar, which completely hid his features. Neither his dress, nor his gait were those of a labouring man, and she began to think that she had acted imprudently in trusting herself so implicitly to two strangers.

“However,” she thought, “if they belong to any London gangs, I have only to speak to them in the thieves’ patter, and they will not dare to touch me. If, on the contrary, they are yokels, they will be content with robbing me, and I have not much to lose.”

They passed from the field into a small gorse common, across another high road, past a couple of lights which, shining in the windows of the cottages, showed that their inmates were already retiring to bed, and over a stile into a shaw or small copse, which skirted the side of the road.

Laura Stanbridge had addressed several questions to her conductress without receiving a reply. She had spoken once to the young man who followed like a phantom on her steps, and he had not chosen to make any answer.

Laura, who possessed the courage of a man or rather of a demon, began to be afraid. The night was miserably dark and cheerless, the way was lonely, the rain descended with much violence and the thunder seemed to shake the earth as it rolled from horizon to horizon.

Sometimes the lightning flashed through the trees and showed her three outstretched branches and their ghastly trunks.

But they could not show her the features of that grey-haired woman, who strode so swiftly before her, nor the face of that young man, who followed with equal speed, and who watched all her movements with glistening eyes.

She was trying to shake off her fears, which appeared to her idle and reasonless, when the woman stopped and pointed to the trunk of a tree, which had been stripped of its bark, and which lay like a naked giant across her path.

“Sit down there, madam,” said she, in a voice which she seemed to remember, “sit down, you must be tired.”

Laura hesitated. “Tut,” said she, “after all, what can be more natural? One meets every day with people who will not answer questions, and who will yet show every consideration for your comfort.”

So she did as she was requested. As soon as she was seated a rope was flung over her head, and her arms were closely pinioned to her side. She struggled violently to free herself, but in vain. She therefore became calm, and said some words in the secret language of thieves.

“You are mistaken,” answered the woman, in the same tongue, as she seated herself on the trunk. “I do not wish to rob you. I wish to tell you a story――that is all.”

Laura Stanbridge trembled. She began to suspect that she had fallen into the hands of a mad woman. But by a miraculous effort she recovered her self-possession and said quietly, “Very well, I shall be glad to hear what you have to say, but you need not have tied me. Unloose me first.”

“No, madam, I must not unloose you, for when you have heard my story you will try to run away.”

“I swear I will not attempt to do anything of the sort. I pledge my word as to this.”

“I do not choose to take your word.”

“Why not?”

“For many reasons. I do not intend to let you escape.”

Laura was bewildered.

The tones of this woman’s voice were firm and menacing, and she fancied they were not unfamiliar to her.

She remembered also the rustic accent with which she had at first cloaked her words, and which must have been used for the purpose of deceiving her.

All this began to resemble a preconcerted scheme.

She waited anxiously, with dilating eyes, and ears bent forward, like the stag which hears the first bay of the distant hound.

“Besides,” observed the woman, quietly, “if you tried to run away you might meet with an accident.” She produced a dark lantern from underneath her shawl, and flashed the light in front of them.

By the yellow stream of light she distinguished a black opening in the ground, at the distance of scarcely three feet from where they were seated.

She shrank back, shuddering. The woman smiled grimly.

“I do not understand your meaning, or what your purpose is,” cried the miserable Laura.

“You will understand all presently, I dare say.”

“Gracious heaven! you are――――”

“Mrs. Grover, your old friend,” replied the woman. “A light suddenly dawns upon you.”

“You do not mean to harm me?” cried Laura.

No answer.

The question was repeated.

“I have a story to tell,” said Mrs. Grover.

“Bah, silly woman! I have no desire to listen to your tales. I believe you are half crazed.”

“No I am not; listen. Once I was a young girl, as innocent and happy as a spring bird, but a gentleman saw my pretty face. He fell in love with me――he wrote me letters. I could show you them if I wished, for I have borne them on my heart ever since. We used to meet on this very spot――it was here that I first felt his warm lips and the pressure of his hand, so soft and small――it was here that I first learned what it was to love――to have a beating heart when he came near me――to tremble with delight when I heard him speak.

“He did not treat me at first as gentlemen treat poor girls. One day he told me to meet him at Broxbridge. I made an excuse for leaving home that day and night, and met him at the corner of a dark street as he had appointed.

“I asked him no questions, I felt no fears. I loved him too well for that.

“He took my hand in his, and asked me if I would go with him. I kissed that hand, and said I would go wih him to the end of the world.”

“Goodness me, what have I to do with your early days? What care I for your romantic love story?” ejaculated Laura Stanbridge. “Have you brought me hither for no better purpose than this?”

“You will know all in good time. When it was quite dark he took me to a little church which stands about half a mile from the town. In this church there was only one person――it was a young gentleman, in a white robe, who stood at the communion table between two wax tapers, with a book in his hand.”

“The woman’s as mad as a March hare,” murmured Laura.

“My sweetheart drew me towards him, and again took my hand and made me kneel with him. Then I knew that he was going to marry me, and I almost swooned with astonishment and joy.

“The young clergyman read the service in a low and solemn voice. I could hardly speak the answers, my lips were trembling so. A ring was placed upon my finger――a hand pressed mine, and something like a soft flower fell upon my forehead――it was my husband’s fond kiss.”

“Undoubtedly mad, but I must humour her,” thought Miss Stanbridge.

“Ah, how happy were we the first few months! We seldom saw each other, but that only made us love each other more.

“We used to meet on this very spot, and often on that soft bank he would crown me with a garland of fair wood flowers, and kiss me, and enfold me in his arms, and tell me again and again that he loved me as his life.

“And then,” she said, plaintively, “he deserted me, and died at sea.”

“Ah, it’s a sorrowful tale――very sorrowful,” said Miss Stanbridge, still, however, thinking that the narrator was most decidedly off her head.

“I had a child,” said the woman, continuing her singular narrative. “The neighbours scoffed at me, and called me a wanton and my child base-born. I did not tell them; so I kept my secret as my husband had ordered me.”

“Oh! he wished you to do so, then?”

“Yes; made me promise not to divulge it upon any condition whatsoever. After this I was ill awhile, and too weak to work out in the fields. No one would take me into their house because I had a base-born child. This made me mad. I cursed the poor infant for bringing its mother into shame. I tried to destroy it, but my heart failed me, and one night I abandoned it to its fate. Ah! there’s nothing like misfortune to harden the heart; it will make a mother murder her own child, and there is no worse crime in the world than that.”

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CLX. THE ACCUSATIONS MADE AGAINST LAURA STANBRIDGE

Mrs. Grover, or, more properly speaking, Mrs. Kensett, relict of Evershal Kensett, Esq., deceased, had spoken the words, which form the conclusion of the last chapter, in a voice which was tremulous and at times inaudible from emotion. After this she fell into a reverie.

The rain still pattered upon the leaves, the lightning still dashed its gleams through the wood, the thunder still rolled menacingly.

By these flashes of lightning Laura Stanbridge might have been seen pale, paralysed, and crouched rather than seated upon the log.

Now she knew by whom she had been captured, and she knew also that she was in imminent danger.

“Help――help!” she cried, in a loud voice. “Help――help!”

Her companion was awakened by these cries.

“You may shout as loud as you like――nobody will hear you. At the same time, if you do so again, I will kill you.”

This was enough; Laura became silent. It was evident that this woman was remorseless, and that her best hope to protect her life lay upon the chance of some one passing by.

It was a public footpath. Then she remembered that there was a young man present. He might be corrupted with a look――with a whisper.

She stole a glance towards him; he remained motionless as a statue of black marble, his face hidden by his cloak.

“Who can this man be?” she reflected, “whom she calls her son, and whom I cannot recognise? It must be some one whom she has hired to help her. If so, I may be saved.”

She darted another look piercing as a flame upon the mysterious individual. At this look he hid his head.

“Ah, he knows me, and fears to be recognised. It is perhaps, one of my old comrades. So much the better. He will understand that his employer is less powerful than I am.”

She half turned her head and whispered――

“A hundred pounds for my liberty.”

Mrs. Grover burst into a hoarse laugh.

“She is trying to bribe you. That is because she does not know you.”

The figure nodded.

“Woman,” exclaimed Mrs. Grover, with sudden vehemence, which made the other start, “what have you done with my son?”

“With your son?”

“Aye, don’t echo my words, but answer. Shall I tell you? Infamous wretch, hateful fiend, you have murdered him, and for this as well as for other crimes you have been brought here to die.”

“Oh, take pity on me! You do not mean to do anything so horrible. I will give you money, all you may desire, but, oh, I am not fit to die.”

“You are not fit to live, and I intend to have your life. Who was it you pushed over the cliffs at Margate? Answer me that.”

Laura Stanbridge gave utterance to a piercing scream as these words fell upon her ears. She trembled in every limb, and the first thought uppermost with her was that she had been betrayed by Tom Gatliffe.

“Listen to me――be reasonable,” she cried, in piteous accents. “I see now who has brought this about, and know who has charged me with this odious crime.”

“Who?”

“Tom Gatliffe!”

The woman smiled sardonically, and shook her head.

“Who, then?”

“Ah, ah, my lady, you want to know too much. You can’t deny the charge.”

“I do deny it.”

“You do!”

“Yes,” returned Laura, resolutely.

The man in the cloak passed slowly round the fallen trunk and stood in front of her.

The yellow light of the lantern streamed upon him. He tore open his cloak. Laura Stanbridge screamed with horror. She beheld the pale features of Alf Purvis, who uttered but one word. It was――

“Murderess!”

[Sidenote: No. 91.]

The lantern was hooked upon a branch and flung its ghastly rays upon the surrounding trees, and upon the young man who stood with his arms folded, a cold stern light in his eyes; upon the convicted wretch who, now cowering to the ground, uttered low moans of terror.

At the same time another figure also cloaked, and with features concealed, issued from behind the trees and stood in the dark shadows of the background, unheard and unseen save by Mrs. Grover, who however seemed to be heedless of his presence.

“Laura Stanbridge,” said she, “prepare to meet your fate. In a few minutes you must die.”

“Why must I die?” exclaimed the wretched woman. “What have I done that my life should be thus sacrificed?”

“Do not fear,” answered Mrs. Grover, “you shall be fairly judged, and I will accuse you first.”

“You have me in your power, and can of course do as you please with me. It is cruel and merciless to treat me thus.”

Heedless of this last observation Mrs. Grover proceeded. “I accuse you,” said she, “of decoying my child into your house, of depraving his mind and teaching him to steal, of driving me forth when I attempted to save him. How say you, Laura Stanbridge? Is that true or false?”

“It is true, but you must remember that I found him starving, and that I gave him bread to eat, that I taught him to earn money as I earned it, and as you earned it, and, at the time I parted with you, you did not yourself know that he was your son, and could allege no good reason for trying to thwart my schemes.”

“That I admit,” returned Mrs. Grover after a few minutes’ reflection. “We are not likely to disagree as far as that point of your history is concerned.”

Laura had a glimmer of hope.

“I accuse you,” said her relentless companion, “of urging my son to all sorts of crimes. I accuse you of betraying him to the law. What say you to this, Laura Stanbridge? Is it true or false?”

“It is false! it is false!” she cried “you cannot prove what you say.”

“Have you forgotten our conversation in the French café?”

“I have not forgotten it. I remember every word. I was jesting then; you know that as well as I do myself. Would you condemn me for a few empty words?”

The woman made no reply――but her son Alf Purvis, stepped forward and scowled at the prisoner.

“Subterfuge and prevarication will avail you not murderess,” said he. “Thrice guilty as you are any plea for mercy will be unavailing. Miserably guilty woman, your hour has come.”

“Mercy, mercy!” exclaimed Laura Stanbridge “I never meant to harm you. You drove me to desperation, and I know not what I did. You cannot, you will not turn against me.”

Alf Purvis held up his hand deprecatingly. “Silence,” said he. “For you I have no pity――you have made me what I am――a thief, and an associate of thieves. This done, you betrayed me and my companions. Not content with this, you hurled me from the cliff; but Providence, more kind than my companions or friends, watched over me. Fate willed that I was not to perish.

“Exhausted, and all but dead, I was picked up by a fishing-smack, and saved to become your accuser, and the avenger of those whom you have so deeply injured. Laura Stanbridge, are you prepared to die?”

“Gracious heaven, no! I am unfit to die,” said she, and she made the tears rise to her eyes, and turned upon Alf Purvis, one of those mournful and languishing looks by which the hearts of men are destroyed.

But this look was lost upon him. He knew her but too well.

“Is this all?” she said, scornfully. “Am I to be murdered?”

“My son evaded your wiles,” said Mrs. Grover. “It is well for him that he did so.”

“He offered me his hand and made me love him,” returned Laura. “Then, not content with affronting me by a rejection, he became my most bitter enemy. Is it in any way surprising that I should have striven to have revenge for the injuries sustained?”

“I will not answer you, infamous and merciless woman!” exclaimed Mrs. Grover. “But we have here another victim.”

The third accuser now advanced and bared his aged and weather-beaten face. This was the old ferryman.

“And who is this? Who is this?” cried Laura Standbridge, her hair undulating and rising over her head as if alive.

Mrs. Grover laughed.

“It is the faithful servant of the man you murdered――the man who patronised and protected you――it is Henry Wincott.”

“Oh! no――no, it cannot be,” she cried.

“Yes,” said the old ferryman, “I am Henry Wincott――the faithful servant of the gentleman whom years and years ago you robbed and murdered.”

She uttered two or three wild cries, which produced a strange and melancholy effect as they died away on the night wind; then she swooned.

There was a consultation. The three accusers debated for some time.

They had intended taking summary vengeance on the woman who had so deeply wronged them, but a better feeling at length prevailed, and Laura Stanbridge, when she had in a measure recovered from the deep trance into which she had fallen, was taken, bound as she was, to the home of Mr. Kensett, the magistrate, where she was charged with the murder of her paramour, and attempted murder of Alf Purvis.

A long examination took place, and Laura was taken to the lock-up in the neighbourhood.

She was placed in one of the upper rooms of this station, and left alone for the remainder of the night.

Her remorse and miserable thoughts would be difficult to describe. She became duly impressed with the hopelessness of her condition, and during the dark hours of the lonely night but one burning thought possessed her.

This was to effect her escape.

She tore up the sheets of her bed, contrived to unfasten one of the windows of her bedchamber, from which she flung herself, in the vain hope of reaching the ground.

The circumstances connected with the attempted escape were never rightly understood, but she was found in the morning hanging from the open casement quite dead, with the shreds of the sheets around her neck.

Whether she had purposely put an end to her existence, or her death was the result of accident, never transpired, but the close of her sinful life had this miserable ending.

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Chapter CLXI

PEACE’S LAST NIGHT IN SHEFFIELD――HIS REMOVAL TO WAKEFIELD――INCIDENTS BEFORE THE TRIAL――A TRUE BILL FOUND.

We must now return to Charles Peace, who, the reader will remember, was fully committed for trial upon the charge of murder, a report of the examination of which appeared in a previous chapter. Peace entered his cell, and there he soon recovered his spirits, and was more cheerful than he had been since his recapture.

He spent a much better night, and on Saturday morning he appeared refreshed and altogether a stronger man. It may not be, perhaps, out of place to refer here to an extraordinary statement made by Peace at this time.

His relative, who lives in Spring-street, made no secret of the fact that Peace did call on him on the night of the murder. Peace came to his door and found it locked.

He went into the public-house close by and asked for a glass of beer, and seeing his brother there, called him out. They were together a few minutes, and then Peace wished him “Good-bye,” and went on to the Attercliffe-road station, and took train at Rotherham.

When he arrived at the Masbro’ station, he found there was no train to Beverley for two hours; and he wandered about in the neighbourhood during that time, and when the train came up, he procured his ticket and went on, as stated, to Normanton.

At that time Peace was altogether unaware of the result of his encounter with Mr. Dyson. He saw his victim fall, and he heard Mrs. Dyson scream, and he had no doubt that the second shot had inflicted injury, but it was not until the next morning, when he was at York, and saw the papers, that he became aware that he had committed murder.

He further disguised himself, and took greater precautions than before to avoid detection. In confirmation of Peace’s story about having been seen in London, it may be mentioned that Mr. W. Fisher told Detective Carswell――amongst other officers――that he had seen Peace in Holborn.

Peace further stated that in the course of his career he has stolen thousands of pounds’ worth of property――diamond rings, gold watches, and, indeed, valuable articles of every description.

On the Saturday succeeding his committal Peace was removed to the county prison at Wakefield.

He was seen in the morning by Mr. Hallam, the police sergeant, for the purpose of ascertaining whether he was in a condition to be removed, and on his certifying that he could safely undergo the short journey from Sheffield to Wakefield, it was decided that he should be taken there in the afternoon.

This intention was observed with the utmost secresy. But, somehow or other, a rumour got abroad that Peace was likely to be removed, and small crowds hung about the station, and especially in close proximity to the entrance in Castle-green.

The appearance of the prison-van horses on their way through the town of course led to the supposition that the van was to be used, and the crowds quickly increased. But there was a strong force of policemen on duty in the neighbourhood of the station, and as their orders were to keep the people “moving on,” they carried their instructions out very literally.

The spectators indeed might as well have moved off altogether, for nothing whatever could be seen; and when the prison van did come out, it was driven off so rapidly that but a glimpse of it could be caught as it quickly disappeared down Castle-green.

There was also but little to be seen inside the parade ground at the police station, where the prison van was drawn up in readiness to receive its very notorious occupant.

The first intimation that Peace was about to leave his cell was furnished by some of the prison officials bringing down the mattress upon which he had lain since his arrival here, and the rugs or blankets which constituted his bed clothes.

These were placed upon the floor of the van, and an impromptu bed was thus readily at hand. Soon afterwards Peace himself came down. But he did not walk――whether he could not or because he was still “shamming,” is entirely a matter of opinion.

One of his warders, a man of sturdy frame and powerful build, held him underneath his arms, whilst the other warder and Inspector Bradbury, carried him by his legs. In this way he was taken from his cell, down the two flights of stairs, and then out into the parade ground.

If Peace were shamming, he did it admirably. He looked a miserable, wretched object of humanity――a little limp bundle of brown-coloured clothes, out of which peeped a face intensely wan and haggard.

It was noticed that he wistfully and almost pleadingly glanced into the faces of those who were in the parade ground, probably in the hope of seeing some one whom he knew; but there was no time for recognition, for he was carried quickly across the space between the bottom of the steps and the prison van, and placed upon the mattress on the floor.

The warders followed him in. Inspector Bradbury and others joined them; the door was then locked, and the van speedily driven out of the station.

In some mysterious manner the news became known that Peace would go from the Midland station, and a considerable number of people assembled there.

They stood about near to the entrance, of course expecting that the prison van would draw up there, and that a good view would be obtained of the convict as he was brought in. They were disappointed.

Presently several policemen suddenly appeared at the Heeley end of the platform, and immediately there was a rush in that direction.

Almost before the foremost of the crowd could get to the open beyond the platform, the prison van was driven rapidly into the yard and drawn up close to a passenger guard’s van, which was in waiting on the siding.

That had been placed there in readiness to receive the convict and those in charge of him. The movements of all concerned were marvellously quick in what they had to do.

The doors of the guard’s van were thrown open, and at the same time the doors of the prison van. Out of the latter stepped members of the Sheffield force, and then came the warders carrying their burden.

He was promptly lifted into the guard’s van, moaning piteously, and placed on the floor. Then his mattress and rugs were carried in, and a bed prepared for him, and on it he was laid and covered up.

He appeared glad to curl himself up under the rugs and to hide himself from the gaze of the bystanders; for notwithstanding the utmost exertions of the police and the officials at the station, a great number of people got near, and many hundreds more crowded the bridge across the line and other points from which they could see what was passing.

The warders, Inspector Bradbury, and Police-constable Capel, entered the van with the prisoner, and the doors were then shut and bolted.

The people surged round the window, anxious to catch a glimpse of the prisoner, but all that the most favoured could see was what was very much like a heap of rugs on a mattress.

Amongst the crowd was Police-constable Robinson, who was shot by Peace at Blackheath. He came forward and shook hands with the warders through the window, and had a look at the man with whom he had had such a deadly encounter.

After waiting a short time the train from London arrived in the station, the guard’s van was pushed up from the siding to it, and the train went on its journey.

The van was detached from the train at Sandal and Walton, and hooked on to the train for Wakefield, where it arrived soon after three o’clock. One of the warders left the van and called a cab, and into it Peace was lifted.

Accompanied by his two warders and Inspector Bradbury, he was driven to Wakefield prison, where he was safely lodged.

The warders were supplied with the necessary documentary evidence that Peace had been handed over to the officials at Wakefield, and later in the evening they set out on their return journey to Pentonville.

They were heartily glad to be released from any further charge of the convict, who since his escape had been a source of great anxiety and trouble to them.

Nothing of importance occurred during the journey. Soon after the train had left Sheffield, Peace threw back his rugs, looked at his custodians, and then asked, “Where are you taking me to?”

They told him he was going to Wakefield. He gave a groan, rolled himself up in his rugs, and nothing more was heard from him throughout the journey.

Peace, after his arrival to Wakefield, was watched with the utmost jealousy by the officials, and as the convict recovered from the effects of his leap from the railway carriage, he displayed a good deal of irritation at this strict supervision.

He declared that never before was he so closely watched as he was then. His system was recovering its tone, and the effects of the injuries sustained by his leap from the train were becoming less apparent.

REMOVAL OF PEACE TO LEEDS.

On the arrival of Peace at the Wakefield prison, on Saturday, a notice was posted at the principal entrance lodge in Love-lane, warning the officials not to divulge any information to the outside public, and this order was most strictly complied with.

It may be mentioned that Peace was no stranger at the Wakefield House of Correction, for he had been incarcerated there on three or four different occasions, and one of his visits was rendered famous by a most daring act.

A man named Roberts, who lived in Garden-street, Wakefield, and was for many years an officer at the Wakefield Prison, informed a correspondent on the occasion that in 1854 Peace was ordered to be imprisoned for four years, and he was sent to Wakefield.

For some time he worked in the gardens which surround the gaol, and in the evenings after work hours he was in the habit of whiling away the time and amusing himself by cutting out figures and making designs in tin, cardboard, &c., or in cutting tissue paper in various ways for the decoration of rooms.

Subsequently he was employed in what is known as the beaming room in connection with the manufacture of mats and matting, and one afternoon, whilst in charge of Roberts, he succeeded in making his escape out of the room, the door of which had been accidentally left unfastened.

He succeeded in getting upon a wall, and then climbed upon the roof of a house in the prison yard, which was occupied by the late Dr. Milner, who was convict surgeon at the prison at the time of which we speak――1854.

Peace removed some of the slates on the roof of the doctor’s house, and made an aperture through which he descended into one of the bedrooms.

Immediately he was missed from the work-room an alarm was raised, and a most diligent search commenced.

In a very short time the daring fellow was found secreted on the top of a wardrobe, out of which he no doubt intended to take a suit of the doctor’s clothing and attire himself in them in place of the prison dress he was wearing.

He was at once seized and placed in solitary confinement, when he became violent and made a most determined attempt to destroy himself. He inflicted a very severe gash in his throat, the mark produced by which was still visible.

On the Tuesday night, Councillor Atkinson, cab proprietor, received instructions from Captain Godfrey Armytage, the governor, to have two coaches in readiness at half-past one o’clock the following afternoon, for the purpose of conveying Peace to Armley, and the strict secresy which was enjoined on him was observed to the very letter.

It may be safely affirmed that not a single other person in Wakefield had the slightest idea of the time of Peace’s departure, and the fact that all the trains departing for Leeds up to two o’clock on Wednesday were closely watched, showed that the mystery remained as deep as ever.

Even at half-past one on Wednesday morning, when the fast train leaves for Leeds, people were found who, despising the cold, kept a steady look-out for Peace, and frequented the approaches to Westgate Station with the object of satisfying their insatiable curiosity.

Precisely at the preconcerted hour, one of the coaches arranged for was driven into the prison yard, and pulled up in front of the main entrance.

At that moment Peace was being conducted across the vestibule, heavily manacled, and guarded by three warders; so that as soon as the coach came to a standstill he was at the door.

The proceeding seemed to go altogether “against the grain” with him; at one moment he twisted his face as if in pain, then changing to a scowl, he at last flashed his eyes with evident anger as he was ordered to step into the coach.

This he seemed to do with pain, making it appear that the lifting of his legs was indeed a laborious task. When he had sat down within, three warders, armed with cutlasses and revolvers, got in after him, and then the windows being darkened by blinds drawn down, the coach was driven out.

The whole proceedings, which were under the personal direction of Captain Armytage, and were carried out in the presence of a considerable body of the prison officials, did not occupy much over a minute.

In the lane outside the prison scarcely a single person was stirring, so that the coach got clear away up Back-lane and through St. John’s, without any of the general public being any the wiser.

While matters were proceeding at the prison as we have just described, another two horse coach was being quietly walked up Back-lane, and destined to convey an extra body of armed warders to Armley along with those in the first coach.

It was arranged that this second coach should wait at the West Riding Police Depot until the other came up; but as it was thought that its standing in the open street for some time might attract attention it was driven on for some distance further.

When opposite St. John’s Church four warders, who had been sauntering along, got into it, and were driven along in the wake of the convict and his more immediate attendants.

Here another move was made to throw the public off the scent, for instead of keeping the Leeds road, the drivers turned into the Bradford road as soon as they had got out of the town.

Continuing on the route for four or five miles, when they got to the “White Bear Inn,” at Ardsley, they turned into the Leeds and Dewsbury road, by which they arrived at Armley Gaol.

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CLXII. THE TRIAL AND CONVICTION OF CHARLES PEACE

The eventful day at length arrived upon which the most daring and desperate criminal of modern times was to be tried upon the grave charge of “wilful murder.”

“Let Charles Peace stand forward.”

There is a scuffling of feet, and a small, elderly-looking, feeble man, in brown convict dress, is helped into the dock, and placed in a chair by stalwart warders.

The Clerk of Assizes states the charge.

“How say you, Charles Peace, are you guilty or not guilty?”

In a feeble voice, hardly audible, the words “Not guilty” are uttered.

The prisoner’s face is impassive, but he takes in all the surroundings with short, quick glances.

The jury is empanelled, the arraignment is opened, and Mr. Campbell Foster rises to address the jury.

The scene is one of much interest. As early as nine o’clock the small portion of the court allotted to the public had begun to fill with eager spectators.

The press enters in force, considerable portions of the court, and also of the gallery above the jury, being reserved for its representatives.

Barristers drop in, eager as the people who are unfamiliar with the courts, and quickly filling their seats, there accumulates a standing group, which remains about the door all day.

The occupants of the court, with scarcely an exception, deport themselves as men and women come to witness a comedy, not a grim tragedy――talking, laughing, joking, and congratulating themselves on their luck in gaining admission on so famous an occasion.

The judge takes his seat precisely at ten o’clock, and the case at once begins.

Mr. Campbell Foster bespeaks the unprejudiced and impartial attention of the jury, and enters upon a lengthened recital of the facts of the case.

The tale is a plain and unvarnished one, but, to be quite candid, that is all the praise that can be bestowed upon it.

A very frank critic might even say that it is somewhat dreary and decidedly commonplace. However, it is listened to with silent attention――by none is it followed with closer care than by the prisoner, who occasionally indulges in a nod of assent, or a remonstrating shake of the head, or now and then leans forward, his head on his hand, and eyes fixed upon the speaker.

The learned council spoke for half an hour.

Then the evidence began, the first witness being Mr. Johnson, who proved the plans put in of the Dysons’ house in Bannercross-terrace, and was asked a question or two as to Mr. Dyson’s physical appearance.

There was “sensation” in court when Catherine Dyson was called. She stepped into the witness-box, dressed in black, neatly, her jacket trimmed with crape, the somewhat jaunty hat which she had worn at the preliminary examination replaced by a modest bonnet.

She had a veil or “fall” over the upper part of her face, but it was not enough to obscure it. She had a heightened colour, suggestive of rouge, with a slightly sulky expression, and the look of a person who, tensely strung, yet knows what she is about and is resolved to act on the defensive.

She was examined by Mr. Shield, and spoke in a very low tone of voice.

The examination was uneventful; it only repeated the old familiar account of the transactions which led to this trial; and when Mr. Lockwood rose to cross-examine the witness, there was a feeling that now, the preliminary details settled, the real engagement of the day was about to be fought.

The first point on which the opposing forces came into conflict was as to whether or not Mr. Dyson, on the night he was shot, got hold or attempted to get hold of the prisoner.

Before the Coroner and before the magistrate, the witness had professed her inability to say that her husband did not grapple with the prisoner. She now declared positively that he did not, and there was a long struggle on this point.

Mrs. Dyson maintained her composure, during the searching catechising that ensued. Whatever she might have said before, she now said positively that her husband did not get hold of Peace.

Pressed hard for admissions that there was some sort of a struggle between the prisoner and Dyson, the witness adhered to her denial that any thing of the kind did or could take place; and the cross-examination then went on to deal with the photograph taken in the fair.

A good deal of fencing took place as to the precise fair at which this photograph was taken, based partly upon the mistaken assumption that the Peaces went to live at Darnall at the end of 1875, whereas they went there at the beginning of the year.

The witness could not see her way through the puzzle, except that there was some mistake in the dates――which was a very just conclusion at which to arrive.

Nothing was made of this――except to render it evident that no reliable dates could be got from the witness; and, with the positiveness displayed on previous occasions, she repudiated any knowledge of the letters found near Bannercross after the murder.

The journey to Mansfield, on the occasion when Peace followed her there, next came under notice, and the gift of a ring by the prisoner. Then the visits to Sheffield public-houses with Peace――she had been once with him to the “Marquis of Waterford,” Russell-street, she said, and might have been twice, but she could not say positively.

The keepers of several of these houses were called and confronted with Mrs. Dyson, but she knew them not, nor did she know (though she avoided positively swearing it) that she had ever had drink at the “Halfway House,” Darnall, charged to the prisoner.

Mr. Lockwood was equally unsuccessful in his attempts to extract confessions as to the transmission of notes between herself and Peace. As before the Stipendiary, so now Mrs. Dyson was subjected to a trial in caligraphy, and it may be assumed that the results were not very encouraging to Mr. Lockwood, since he did not pursue the subject further. But the incident elicited a curious example of Mrs. Dyson’s composure.

She was passing to Mr. Lockwood the paper on which she had written, with the ink wet. It had actually left her hands, when she took it back and calmly rubbed a piece of blotting paper over it.

Coming down to the day before the murder new points of much interest were opened up. The witness admitted that she was on that day at the “Stag” Hotel, Sharrow. A little boy was with her――not her own child.

A man followed her in and sat beside her――she would almost swear that the prisoner was not the man――upon which a sort of laugh ran through the court.

She was cross-examined as to her other movements that night, and as to going to a friend’s named Muddiman on leaving the “Stag.” She swore that she did not tell Peace that she was going there――for she did not see him.

A laugh was caused when Mrs. Dyson pleaded guilty to the soft impeachment of having been “slightly inebriated” at the “Halfway House,” but she denied that she had ever been turned out of that house either for being drunk or for being “slightly inebriated.”

This concluded Mrs. Dyson’s cross-examination, which had lasted exactly two hours, her examination in chief having previously lasted half an hour.

The re-examination by Mr. Campbell Foster lasted only a few minutes, and after a question or two from the Judge, the Court adjourned for luncheon, the general opinion being that Mrs. Dyson had passed through the trying ordeal with great firmness and self-possession, and that the defence had not made a material mark upon the case.

After half an hour’s interval the trial was resumed by the production of the Bannercross witnesses.

There were few new features in this, but Mr. Lockwood made a vigorous attempt to damage the credibility of the young man, Brassington, whose testimony went to establish malice and intent on the part of the prisoner.

Peace himself, during this, departed from his customary air of stoical calm, talking rapidly, in a low tone, and evidently challenging the witness’s statements in no amicable mood or feeble terms.

The evidence of Mr. Harrison, the surgeon, went to show that the direction of the shot was such as would be likely to be taken by a bullet fired from the low level of the road at a person above, and the questions of Mr. Lockwood, in cross-examination, pointed to the suggestion that certain bruises on the deceased’s nose and chin were caused by blows, in a struggle with the prisoner.

But Mr. Harrison did not take to this theory, though as the deceased had fallen on his back when shot, he did not seem quite able to account for these grazes.

Soon after this there took place between the learned counsel engaged in the case a contention of which there had been one or two previous indications. It was a struggle on the part of the defence to force the prosecution to put in the letters found in the field at Bannercross.

Mr. Lockwood wanted the letters to be put as evidence, that he might use them; but he did not wish to put them in himself, because that would deprive him of the last word to the jury, and give it to Mr. Campbell Foster. The point gave rise to much argument, but in the end Mr. Lockwood had to abandon his contention.

After this the prosecution called witnesses who had not been before the coroner or the magistrates. Then followed evidence as to the capture of Peace at Blackheath, and this closed the case for the prosecution.

Mr. Campbell Foster summed up the evidence he had produced in proof of the charge of murder, Peace listening to everything he said with unflinching attention.

Mr. Lockwood’s vigorous speech for the defence followed. It contained powerful appeals to the jury, and animated attacks upon the prosecution and the press; but it was an up-hill fight that the learned counsel was so gallantly waging.

He claimed to have utterly discredited Mrs. Dyson’s testimony, and urged that the jury could not send to execution any human being on such evidence as she had given.

The theory set up by him as to the actual occurrences at Bannercross on the night of the murder was, that Peace, finding himself pursued by Mr. Dyson, fired his revolver to frighten him from pursuit; but this not effecting its purpose, a struggle took place, and in that struggle the revolver went off accidentally, with fatal effects.

But unfortunately Mr. Lockwood had no testimony behind him to back up this ingenious attempt to reduce the crime to one of manslaughter; and the glamour of feeling in which he had sought to invest the case was quickly dispelled even in the breasts of the most sentimental in court when the learned judge, in a summing-up of a marked fairness and impartiality, placed the plain issues, and the unanswerable facts, about which there could be no question, before the twelve men on whose word the life of a human being hung.

His lordship, who began to speak at a quarter-past six, occupied fifty-five minutes.

The jury, who retired at ten minutes past seven, were absent fifteen minutes, and on their return the prisoner, who had been allowed to leave the dock, was brought back and replaced in his chair, looking limp and wretched.

The warders, who had hitherto sat beside him, now stood, one holding either arm. The Judge resumed his seat, and the jury immediately delivered their verdict of guilty.

Asked if he had anything to say why sentence should not be passed, he replied very faintly, “It’s no use my saying anything.”

The learned Judge forthwith passed sentence in a few calm, matter-of-fact sentences. There was an utter absence of feeling in court.

The unhappy man heard the sentence with an apparent indifference, bred either of stoicism or despair, and the warders at once raised him to convey him from the dock.

As he stood up he clutched at the rail in front and appeared to wish to speak, but his keepers paid no attention to the desire.

He bowed to his solicitor, and expressed in a word or two thanks for his efforts; then disappeared to his doom.

THE TRIAL.

In the Crown Court, at the Leeds Assizes, Charles Peace, described as a picture-frame dealer, forty-seven years of age, was placed upon his trial, before Mr. Justice Lopes, for the murder of Mr. Arthur Dyson; civil engineer, at Bannercross, Sheffield, on the 29th November, 1876.

It is almost unnecessary to say that the case has created the greatest possible interest――an interest not felt simply in Sheffield, but throughout the country.

This had arisen not so much because of the murder itself――for the facts were exceedingly simple――but because of the extraordinary career of the prisoner, his sudden disappearance after the murder, and his subsequent identity as the notorious burglar who kept Blackheath in a state of considerable excitement for some months.

Peace was already under a sentence of penal servitude for life for shooting at Police-constable Robinson, who apprehended him whilst he was endeavouring to escape from a house which he had burglariously entered at Blackheath.

At that time Peace was known as John Ward, a half-caste, who had, according to his own statement, recently arrived in this country. For considerably more than a week this was all that was known of him.

Then information came to the police, through a woman with whom he had been living, that the prisoner under remand at Greenwich was not Ward, but Peace, who was wanted for murder, and for whose apprehension a reward of £100 had been in vain offered for more than a couple of years.

Subsequent investigations resulted in some extraordinary disclosures. It was found that Peace had been living in a semi-detached villa at Peckham, in company with a woman named Thompson, who was supposed to be his wife; that he kept a pony and trap, and that he lived in a style of considerable comfort.

It was found, too, that he was the perpetrator of most of the burglaries which had for some months past been of almost nightly occurrence at Greenwich and Blackheath.

After his sentence of penal servitude for life the Treasury authorities decided to prosecute him for the murder of Mr. Dyson.

The chief witness, Mrs. Dyson, was then in America, having gone there, to reside with some relatives, a few months after her husband was shot.

A special messenger was dispatched in search of her, and on her arrival in this country, Peace was taken to Sheffield to undergo an examination before the stipendiary magistrate.

His attempt to commit suicide on the way down from Pentonville, by jumping from the train, is too well-known an occurrence to need more than a passing mention.

In consequence of the excitement prevailing, and the great desire to obtain admittance to the court on the occasion of the trial at Leeds, it was decided that only a limited number of seats should be thrown open to the public, all other parts being reserved for those in possession of tickets.

The public seats were taken possession of immediately on the opening of the court at nine o’clock. The other parts of the building were filled within the next hour, and when the Judge took his seat at ten o’clock every seat was occupied.

In one of the galleries were Lord Houghton and a number of guests from Fryston Hall. A large crowd remained outside the hall, but a strong force of police prevented them reaching the doors.

Peace was removed from Armley Gaol on Monday evening, and was placed in one of the cells at the Town Hall, under the care of four warders. He passed a very restless night, and on Tuesday morning was in a state of much weakness and depression. His appearance in the court, of course, attracted considerable attention. He partially walked and was partially carried up the step leading into the dock, and then was placed in a chair in front of the dock.

A warder occupied a seat on either side of him. Unless he was “shamming,” his condition was almost pitiable to behold. He seemed so weak that he could scarcely sit up in his chair, but, notwithstanding that, he appeared to take the keenest interest in the case as it proceeded.

On the charge being read to him he pleaded “Not Guilty,” but he spoke in so low a tone that he could scarcely be heard.

Mr. Campbell Foster, Q.C., and Mr. Hugh Shield prosecuted on behalf of the Treasury; and Mr. Lockwood and the Hon. Stuart Wartley (instructed by Messrs. Clegg and Sons, Sheffield), defended the prisoner.

Mr. Campbell Foster, Q.C., in opening the case for the prosecution, said he could not disguise from himself, nor from the jury, that the case, from the great public comment which had been made upon it in the various newspapers, must come before them under circumstances calculated somewhat perchance to bias their minds, but before entering upon it he would beg and implore them to put from their minds anything they might have read about the case, and be guided entirely by the sworn testimony which would be given by the witnesses as to the guilt or innocence of the prisoner.

It would be shown, he said, that, previous to July, 1876, the man, into whose death they had to inquire, lived at Darnall, a village about three miles to the east of Sheffield, and now one of the outskirts of the town.

He and his wife lived in a row of cottage houses, and next door, or next door but one, lived the prisoner and a person who, so far as they knew, was his wife.

From being so near neighbours the Dysons got to know the prisoner. He was in the habit of framing pictures, and was employed by them to frame two or three small prints and pictures which they had in the house.

This led to an acquaintance between the prisoner and the Dysons, but at last Mr. Dyson seemed not to like the persistent familiarity with which the prisoner was in the habit of treating them, walking into the house whenever he thought proper, at meal times, and generally obtruding himself upon them.

This annoyed both Mr. Dyson and his wife, and, as a consequence, shortly before the 1st July, 1876, Mr. Dyson wrote on the back of one of his address cards――

“Charles Peace is requested not to interfere with my family.”

The card was thrown over the wall into Peace’s garden, and the sending of it seemed to have created a bad feeling in the mind of Peace against Dyson, for it would be shown that on the 1st of July, meeting Mr. Dyson, he suddenly commenced an assault upon him, attempting to trip him up and throw him down.

Late in the evening Peace found Mrs. Dyson talking to some neighbours about his extraordinary conduct, and asked if she were talking about him.

She replied that she was, and apparently in a sudden burst of passion he produced a revolver and presenting it at her head said he would blow her brains out――of course using an expletive――and subsequently he threatened to blow her husband’s brains out as well.

In consequence of that a summons was taken out against him, but he did not appear, and a warrant was granted against him. He seemed to have known that a warrant had been obtained, and from that time until October he was not seen in the neighbourhood.

To be quite out of the way of his annoyance the Dysons decided to remove, and took a house at Bannercross, a village about three miles to the west of Sheffield, and consequently about six miles from Darnall.

They removed on the 29th, following the furniture by train, and when they arrived at Bannercross the first person they saw was the prisoner. Some conversation took place between him and Mrs. Dyson, and the prisoner said, “I am here to annoy you, and I will annoy you wherever you go.”

Mrs. Dyson told him there was a warrant out against him, and he replied that he did not care for the warrant and he did not care for the police. That sort of conversation would tend to show that there was the same bad blood, the same ill-feeling, in the breast of the prisoner against both Mrs. Dyson and her husband which had existed in the previous July.

Mr. Campbell Foster put in a plan of Bannercross-terrace, and described its surroundings to the jury. Prisoner, he added, went to the shop of a man named Gregory at the end of October, and engaged him in conversation, and at that time he was particularly noticed by Mrs. Gregory.

In about a month afterwards he again called, asked if her husband was in, and upon being answered in the negative, he went out and was seen to be loitering about.

During that time he was seen by a Mrs. Colgrave, who was going to Gregory’s shop. The meeting took place in the road.

The prisoner engaged her in conversation, and asked if she would take him a message to Dyson’s house, asking Mrs. Dyson to come out.

Mrs. Colgrave objected, upon which he made use of a coarse expression regarding Mrs. Dyson. At ten minutes to eight he was seen by a man named Brassington, who met Peace walking in front of the Bannercross Hotel.

They met under a gas-lamp, and prisoner inquired if he knew some strangers who had come to live there.

Witness did not, he said, and Peace showed him a bundle of notes and some photographs, but Brassington put them back, as he could not read.

They separated about ten minutes past eight. The jury would learn from Mrs. Dyson that about that time she had occasion to go to the closet in the yard. To do so she put on her clogs, and had to pass Gregory’s back door.

After being in the closet a short time, she opened the door, and saw standing before her the man Peace, who had a revolver in his hand.

He presented it in her face, and said, “Speak, or I will fire.”

The woman gave a loud and sudden shriek, and stepping back into the closet, slammed the door and fastened it.

She next heard her husband’s footsteps, and Mrs. Gregory also came up, but when she saw Mr. Dyson she went into her own house and fastened the door. Hearing her husband’s footsteps, Mrs. Dyson became emboldened, opened the closet door, and advanced towards the end of the passage.

Mr. Dyson passed her, and she saw Peace going out of the passage by the front. When he was a few steps from the gateway Mr. Dyson stepped after him.

According to Mrs. Dyson’s statement, he was never near enough to touch Peace. Having got into the road, Peace fired his revolver, apparently at Mr. Dyson. The shot struck the stone lintel of the doorway at the entrance to the passage.

Mr. Dyson continued to advance, and before he had got out of the passage, Peace, who was on the road, again faced round and fired his revolver, and Mrs. Dyson saw her husband instantly fall.

She shrieked out, and was heard by a young man named Whitting to say, “Murder! You villain; you have shot my husband.”

The learned counsel then proceeded further to describe how Peace escaped from Bannercross after the murder, and showed that Mr. Dyson died two hours after the bullet entered his temple.

He laid much stress on the fact that in a field which the prisoner had crossed over on his way from Mr. Dyson’s house, a packet of letters was found.

In this packet was the very card which Mr. Dyson had sent to the prisoner requesting him not to annoy his family.

There could, therefore, he said, be no doubt that the man who dropped the papers was Peace――the man in whose mind the card had produced so much ill-will and ill-feeling, and who had dogged the footsteps of the Dysons in the way he had described.

Mr. Foster next proceeded to show that after the murder Peace made his escape, and was not discovered until he was apprehended in the commission of a burglary at Blackheath.

He next showed what took place after his apprehension, and was proceeding to refer to the attempts made by Peace to escape on his way to Sheffield, when Mr. Lockwood objected to the matter being gone into. He said it would of course be affectation on his part to object to its being mentioned, because it was notorious to everybody, but he certainly strongly protested against the course his learned friend was pursuing.

His Lordship said he considered the reference that Mr. Foster was making was quite unnecessary.

Mr. Foster said he was quite content to leave the matter as it was.

He proceeded to say that if the jury believed the circumstantial evidence which showed the prisoner to have been at Bannercross from seven o’clock up to ten minutes past eight――which traced him across that field, and found on his path a packet of letters, they could not but believe that the prisoner was the man who fired the shot which killed Mr. Dyson.

With what intent did he do it? Did he do it maliciously and with the intent to do the full charge mentioned in the indictment? With what object did he go from Darnall to Ecclesall, hanging about the house, threaten Mrs. Dyson, and tell Brassington the scandalous story of which they would hear?

Did all that point to malice, to malignity, to hate? He thought it did. If the jury came to the conclusion that it was the hand of prisoner who shot poor Mr. Dyson, and if they found that the motive which prompted him to do it was a malicious and a premeditated motive, then he thought they could come to no other conclusion than that the prisoner committed the crime charged, and that he did it with malice aforethought.

Mr. Johnson, of the firm of Holmes and Johnson, architects and surveyors, of Sheffield, produced a plan of Bannercross, showing the house in which Mr. Dyson lived, and the gardens and fields adjoining.

MRS. DYSON’S EVIDENCE.

Mrs. Dyson, whose appearance in the witness-box aroused great interest in court, said she was the widow of Arthur Dyson, who was shot at Bannercross in 1876.

She lived with her husband in Britannia-road, Darnall, and at that time the prisoner resided in the next house.

She knew him then as Charles Peace, a picture-framer, and he frequently visited their house until her husband, annoyed at his visits, sent him a card requesting him not to annoy his family.

In July of the same year the prisoner threatened to blow out their brains, and put a pistol within six inches of her face.

[Sidenote: No. 92.]

A warrant was taken out against him for this, but he still continued to annoy them; so they removed on the 25th of October to Bannercross, where they hoped to be freed from his disagreeable visits.

But the very night they removed the prisoner appeared at Bannercross, and said to her “You see I am here to annoy you wherever you go.”

On the 29th of November, about ten minutes past eight in the evening, she went to the closet behind the house, and when she opened the door to come out she was confronted by the prisoner, who stood near the closet doorway with a revolver in his hand. He said, “Speak, or I’ll fire.”

She screamed, and stepped back into the closet and shut herself in; but, hearing her husband’s footsteps in the yard she came out. Prisoner was then in the passage leading to the road; but, being followed by her husband, he turned round and fired.

That bullet struck the wall, and on getting to the bottom of the passage the prisoner fired again. The second shot struck her husband in the temple, and he fell.

She screamed and the neighbours came, but in the meantime the prisoner had scaled the wall on the opposite side of the road and fled.

Her husband did not speak after he was shot, and died the same night about eleven o’clock.

Cross-examined by Mr. Lockwood: Before going to the closet I put my little boy to bed. The bedroom is in the front. There was a light in the room.

My husband at this time was downstairs reading, and when I went to the closet I left him still reading. I said nothing to him before going to the closet. I had to pass through the room where he was. When I heard him coming I came out of the closet.

[A plan of the premises was then put into witness’s hands, and she said she did not understand it very well.]

Cross-examination resumed: I was only four or five feet from the passage leading to the closet when my husband passed me to go down to the prisoner. I could see him plainly, and all that he did. He was going rather slowly.

I am prepared to swear that my husband never touched the prisoner before the shots were fired. He could not get near enough to him. Of course I cannot say what he intended doing.

I remember being before the coroner, but I cannot remember that I said to him that I could not say “whether my husband attempted to get hold of Peace or not;” but if I did say so it is correct.

The account which I gave to the coroner is the correct one. I cannot swear that my husband did not attempt to get hold of the prisoner, but I can swear that he did not succeed in doing so. I distinctly swear that he never touched the prisoner.

When were you first so certain of this?――I have been certain all the time.

Were you certain about it on the 24th of January last?――Yes; as certain as I am now.

When before the magistrates did you say this: “I cannot say. My husband did not get hold of the prisoner?” I cannot say that he did not try.

Mr. Lockwood contended that this was not an answer, and a conversation took place between Mr. Campbell Foster and the judge on the matter.

On the question being repeated, Mrs. Dyson said: I cannot swear I did not use the words just quoted. I will not swear I did not. Having heard the words, I still pledge my oath that my husband did not get hold of the prisoner. I don’t remember swearing before the magistrates that my husband didn’t get hold of the prisoner.

What I said before the magistrate is correct. I noticed how my husband fell. He fell on his back. Nothing touched him before he fell. I will swear that after the first shot was fired my husband did not get hold of the prisoner.

He did not catch hold of the prisoner’s arm which held the revolver, and the prisoner did not strike my husband on the chin and nose.

I will positively swear that my husband was never touched on the face except by the bullet which the prisoner fired.

How long have you known Peace?――Between three and four years. I never saw him before I saw him at Darnall. I cannot say whether I or my husband first made his acquaintance. He lived next door but one to us. My husband began to dislike him in the spring of 1876.

Was he jealous?――No.

Do you remember showing your husband a photo of yourself and the prisoner?――Yes. It was taken at the Sheffield fair.

How came you to be photographed together?――We went to the fair together with some children. The children were photographed, but we were in a separate picture. I cannot say whether it was the summer or winter fair. It was summer fair, but I cannot say whether it was the summer of 1876. It certainly was not in 1875.

If it was in the summer of 1876, how was it you were photographed with a man of whom your husband disapproved in the spring of that year?――I think there must be a mistake in the dates. I cannot say. I had known the prisoner for more than a year in November, 1876. I may have known him since the spring of the previous year, but I won’t be certain. I cannot say when we went to Darnall. I mean the jury to understand that I cannot tell within three or four months. When before the coroner I stated that we had been in England three years, and that we lived for a year with my husband’s mother. I also stated that afterwards we lived at Highfield. We did not remain there more than four or five months. We next went to Heeley, and remained three or four months. From there we went to Darnall. I still say I do not remember when we went to Darnall. We were there a few months before the prisoner. He framed four pictures for us. I remember a conversation about his framing the portrait of my husband’s mother. I asked the prisoner to frame it. I mentioned the matter to the prisoner or his daughter, but I cannot say when it was. I did not write to ask him to send the frame. He never sent the frame. I never wrote asking him not to send it. I know nothing about the matter.

Mr. Lockwood: Look at that letter.――Witness, after looking at it, said: It’s not mine, and I don’t know whose it is.

Another letter was then handed to her, and she gave a similar answer.

Mr. Lockwood next handed to the witness a scrap of paper on which she wrote some words when before the magistrates, and asked her to look at it. This having been done, Mr. Lockwood asked: Did anybody know except yourself, your husband, and the prisoner, that you wanted the portrait of your husband’s mother framed?――His wife and daughter knew.

Did you talk to them about it?――I mentioned it to the daughter. I remember going on one occasion to Mansfield. That was in the summer of 1876. I don’t recollect the month. Mrs. Padley went with me. I had not told Peace that I was going. I went by an afternoon train to Mansfield.

Did you ever write to the prisoner, telling him you were going by the nine o’clock train?――No.

Did you tell him he must not go by train, “because he (Dyson) will go down with me,” and also say, “Don’t let him see anything if you meet me in the Wicker. Hope nothing will turn up to prevent it. Love to Janie?” Did you write that?――No.

Just look at that (handing up the note just read).――That is not my handwriting. I was not in the habit of dealing with Francis Walker, wholesale and retail grocer and Italian warehouseman, at High-street, Attercliffe.

At any rate, when you got to Mansfield he was there?――Yes.

And you told him you were going?――No.

Can you account for his being there?――No, I can’t. He was a constant source of annoyance to me, and was always following me.

Do you remember the prisoner giving you a ring?――Yes. He gave it to me in the winter; at least I cannot tell when it was, or the year.

Was it before or after you were photographed together?――That I cannot say. I cannot say, too, if I showed it to my husband. I know I threw it away. The ring did not fit me.

Did you ever write this: “I do not know what train we shall go by, for I have a great deal to do this morning? Will see as soon as I possibly can. I think it will be easier after you leave; he won’t watch so. The ring fits the little finger. Many thanks. Love to Janey. I will tell you what I think of, when I see you about arranging matters, if it will. Excuse the scribble.” Now, did you write that?――No.

Did you ever tell him that the ring would not fit?――No.

Are you now prepared to swear that you did not write to acknowledge the ring?――I did not.

Mr. Lockwood then asked the witness whether she preferred a steel or a quill pen to write with, and Mrs. Dyson said it made no difference.

A steel pen was given to her, and she wrote as follows from the dictation of the learned counsel: “I write to you these few lines to thank you for all your kindness, which I will never forget. I will write you a note when I can.”

Mr. Lockwood: That is your best writing?――Yes.

Witness continued: On one occasion I went to a public-house with the prisoner, but I cannot remember the date. I cannot say where the public-house is. The prisoner told me that there was a picture gallery there. My husband became dissatisfied after that.

Was it in consequence of your going to the public-house with the prisoner that he became dissatisfied?――No.

Are you sure of that?――Yes.

Did you tell him you had been to a public-house with the prisoner?――Yes.

Was it after that he became dissatisfied?――I can’t say exactly. I know a public-house in the same street as that in which the prisoner lived. I don’t know it by name, nor do I know a man named Craig as the landlord. I have been to a public-house where there was a picture gallery, and there I had a bottle of “pop.”

Did you go to another public-house with the prisoner?――Yes.

Did you see Craig?――I don’t know him.

Craig was then called into court, and Mrs. Dyson was asked, “Have you not been to the ‘Marquis of Waterford’ public-house, in Russell-street, Sheffield, on several occasions, with the prisoner?”――I may have been once or twice, but not more often.

When you have been with Peace has he not paid for drink for you?――I have only had “pop” with him.

How many times have you been with him?――I am sure of once, but I don’t know that I have been any more times.

Do you remember when this was?――No.

Did you tell your husband?――I told him that Peace had introduced me to his brother.

Did you tell your husband that Peace had taken you to a public-house and paid for drink for you?――Yes.

And after that he became dissatisfied?――Yes.

Do you know the Norfolk Dining Rooms in Exchange-street?――No.

Have you ever been to some dining rooms, near the Market-place, with the prisoner?――Yes.

Alone, I mean?――Never alone.

Never alone, you say. Call in John Wilson. (Witness called in.) Now look at that man. Did you ever see him in those dining rooms?――Not to my knowledge.

Do you remember being introduced to that man by Peace?――I never remember seeing him before.

Look at him again.――I have looked at him. I will swear I have not been to some dining rooms with Peace on several occasions. I have been to some near the market once. Then we were not alone. There were two children with us. They were my own little boy, and a child of Mrs. Padmore’s. I had refreshment there. That was at the time of the Sheffield fair――the same fair at which I was photographed――the same day that I had been photographed with Peace. And these children went to the dining-room.

What had become of your husband?――He was away from home.

Was he not at the fair?――Yes. I saw him there and met him in the evening after the photograph was taken. My husband did not come into the fair until evening.

Do you know a music-hall in Spring-street, Sheffield?

Witness: What is the name of it.

Mr. Lockwood: The “Star.”

Witness: Is it a picture-gallery?

Mr. Lockwood: I don’t know.

A man named Goodlad was called into court, and Mr. Lockwood asked the witness: Have you ever been to the “Star” music-hall with Peace?――I don’t know it by that name.

Have you been to any music-hall with Peace?――I have been to a place where there is a picture-gallery, and where it looked as if singing went on. There was a small stage and tables and chairs.

Do you remember being introduced to that man by Peace at a music-hall?――I never remember seeing his face before, except at the Town Hall.

Have you not been three or four times to the music-hall in Spring-street?――No; I have only been once. I know a public-house at Darnall, called the “Halfway House.” To my knowledge, I have never had drink there which was put down to Peace.

That won’t do. Are you prepared to swear that you have not had drink there on Peace’s credit?――Never to my knowledge.

Though the witness was pressed severely on the point, this was the only answer that could be obtained.

I have shown you some letters――have you written a letter to the prisoner?――No.

Do you know a little girl named Elizabeth Hutton? Call Elizabeth Hutton.

On the child coming forward, the learned counsel asked: Can you swear you never sent that child with a note to Peace?――Not with a note.

What did you send her with?――I sent her with receipts for some pictures which the prisoner had framed. He was in the habit of asking my husband to write out his receipts and letters.

Now look at the child again. Will you swear that child has not brought back notes from Peace to you?――She brought me one, and I returned it. I can’t say when this was, but it was after Peace removed to the opposite side of the street at Darnall. I never gave the child anything for taking notes to Peace. I don’t know a man named Kirkham. (Kirkham was here called.) I never gave him any notes for Peace, but I gave him a couple of receipts. Those receipts were for picture-framing. Kirkham has not brought notes from Peace.

Can you swear that?――Not to my knowledge, he has not.

Can you swear one way or the other?――I can swear he has not――not to my knowledge.

Did you ever send that litttle girl for drink to the “Halfway House?”――Not to my knowledge.

By that I understand that you won’t swear either one way or the other?――I have sent her for beer, but not to the “Halfway House” in particular.

Now I want to bring you to the night before the murder. Were you, on the 28th of November, 1876, at the “Stag Hotel,” Sharrow?――Yes. I was there with Mrs. Padmore’s little boy. He is about five or six years of age.

Was anybody else with you?――No.

Mrs. Redfern, the landlady of “The Stag,” was called into the court, and Mr. Lockwood asked: Was there not a man with you?――No; I was by myself.

Now (looking at Mrs. Redfern), will you swear that?――A man followed me in and sat down beside me.

Was that man the prisoner?――No.

Will you swear that?――I would almost swear that the prisoner was not the man.

That will not do. On your oath, did not this man go into the “Stag” on that night with you?――No, he did not.

Did he not follow you in?――I don’t know that he did, unless he made himself different from what he is now.

On your oath was it not this man?――To the best of my belief it was not. He seemed a man about thirty-five years of age.

What did you mean by saying just now that you would almost swear he was not the man?――Because he was so much in the habit of disguising himself.

So it might have been him? Did you speak to the man?――I don’t remember.

Did he speak to you?――He asked me where I had been, or where I was going, or something of that kind.

Did you answer him? Yes, I passed some remark.

Did the man go out when you went out?――Yes, he followed me out.

Do you mean, on your oath, to say that you did not see the prisoner, and that he did not tell you he would come to see you the next night?――No, he did not.

Did he say anything to you?――Nothing particular, because I did not take any notice of him.

Not after you left the public-house?――I did not speak to him after leaving the public-house.

Did you think at the time that it might have been the prisoner?――I had not the slightest thought. I had not been in the fair that night. I passed by. I might have said to Mrs. Redfern that I had been. I had not been in any public-house before going into the “Stag.” I had previously been to the house of some friends of mine named Muddiman.

Did you tell Peace that you were going there?――Witness: What had he to do with it?

Answer the question.――Mr. Muddiman does not live at Sharrow.

Will you swear you did not tell him that?――I did not. I did not see the prisoner at all.

How long were you at Mr. Muddiman’s?――Perhaps an hour or so.

And from there you went to the “Stag”――Yes.

Witness continued: I have seen the landlady of the “Halfway House” at Darnall here.

Have you ever been turned out of that house on account of being drunk?――No.

What! never?――No. I have never been drunk in my life.

Will you swear this?――Yes.

Bring in the landlady. Now, will you swear you have never been drunk in this woman’s house?――Well I might have been slightly inebriated. (Laughter.)

Will you swear you have never been turned out of the house for being “slightly inebriated?”――No, not to my knowledge.

Mr. Lockwood: Quite true. You might not have been aware of it. That is all I ask you.

Mrs. Dyson was then re-examined by Mr. Foster, who asked: You have been questioned as to whether your husband got hold of Peace. Are you quite sure that he never tried to get hold of Peace?

The question was objected to by Mr. Lockwood.

Continuing, Mr. Foster asked: Can you tell me how your husband fell?――The witness: On his back rather slanting.

Was that in the passage or in the little court?――It was in the little court.

What is the width of the court?――It is about twice as wide as the passage.

Did you observe when he fell whether the side of his face went against the wall or not?――He fell close to the wall, slanting, and then on his back.

You have been asked about going to a dining-room, near the market, with two children. I think you answered that you went for refreshments?――Yes. The children were hungry, and I went to give them some refreshment.

My friend has asked you about a man bringing a note to you from Peace. Is that correct?――Yes, but I sent it back again.

Have any others been sent to you by Peace at all?――Not to my knowledge.

My friend got out the last answer from you about Mrs. Norton, that you might have left the house “slightly inebriated.” How did it occur?――I cannot tell. I might be slightly inebriated, but I cannot tell.

The Judge: You said the prisoner came to the closet door?――Yes.

How long was it after that the first shot was fired?――About a minute or two? It may be a little more.

What time elapsed between the first shot and the second?――About a second; it was almost immediately.

So far as you could see, did he stand in the same place when he fired both shots;――No; he stood on the lower step when he fired the second shot, and in the yard when he fired the first.

How far was your husband away from the prisoner at the time?――They were about four feet apart. There were only two steps between them. The prisoner was on the bottom step.

This concluded the examination of the witness, and the court adjourned for half an hour.

On the re-assembling of the court, Mr. Lockwood said if the case for the prosecution lasted till five o’clock he should ask his lordship to adjourn the defence till the following day.

His Lordship said that if it would be a convenience to Mr. Lockwood, he would certainly do so.

Mr. Lockwood added that if the case for the prosecution was over before five, he should not then ask his lordship to adjourn, but would proceed with the defence and finish the case that evening.

Mary Ann Gregory, wife of John Gregory, grocer, Bannercross, said she lived next door to the house occupied by the Dysons, and on the night of the murder the prisoner who had previously visited the shop, came again and asked to see her husband, who was away. The prisoner left the house, going down the road. An hour afterwards she saw Mrs. Dyson walking towards the closet, and two minutes afterwards heard her scream loudly. She told Mr. Dyson to go to his wife immediately, and he went directly along the passage. She then heard a banging noise, or rather two noises, and heard footsteps coming up the passage. The next thing she saw was Mr. Dyson bleeding from the head as he was propped up in a chair in his own house.

In answer to Mr. Lockwood, the witness said she heard Mrs. Dyson scream within a couple of minutes of her going into the closet. When Mr. Dyson left to go down in the direction of the closet he walked quickly.

Sarah Colgraves, wife of Thomas Colgraves, of Dobbin-hill, said she remembered going to the shop kept by Gregory on the night of the 29th of November, about half-past seven o’clock. She met the prisoner about thirty yards from the shop, and he asked her if she knew who lived in the second house down the road. She said she did not. He asked if she knew whether they were strangers, and she replied in the affirmative. The prisoner then said, “Do you mind going to the house to say that an elderly gentleman wants to speak to her?” Before that he had said, “You don’t know them?” and she replied, “No.” He then said, “I will tell you. She is my b―――― ――――.” She told the prisoner he had better mind what he said, particularly to strangers, and told him to take the message himself. About ten minutes afterwards she saw the prisoner come out of the passage by the side of the house.

This witness was not cross-examined.

Charles Brassington, living in the Lane End, Ecclesall, said he was on the road near Bannercross, on the 29th of November, standing opposite the Bannercross Hotel, about twenty yards from Mr. Gregory’s shop. It was about eight o’clock. The night was moonlight, and he noticed the prisoner walking to and fro on the causeway. Standing beneath a lamp at the time, he could see the prisoner quite distinctly. Peace approached him and said, “Have you any strange people come to live about here?” He replied, “I don’t know.” Peace then showed him some photos and letters, and desired him to read the latter. He said he could not. The prisoner then told him that he would make it warm for those strangers, for he would shoot them, and after saying this Peace walked down the road towards Gregory’s. He next saw the prisoner in Newgate, walking round the yard along with several others, and he was certain he was the man who uttered the threat at Bannercross.

In cross-examination the witness was severely questioned as to the date when he saw the prisoner and had the conversation with him. He admitted that he could not himself tell the date, but had been told by other witnesses.

Charles Wyville, living at Ecclesall, said on the night of the murder he was in the Bannercross Hotel, when his attention was attracted by hearing two reports of a gun or pistol. On his going to the door to see what was the matter he heard Mrs. Dyson screaming “murder.” He went in the direction of the screams and saw Mr. Dyson lying on the ground, with Mrs. Dyson holding his head.

Thomas Wilson, scythe-maker, of Brincliffe-hill, said he was outside the Banner-cross Hotel about twenty minutes past eight on the night of the 29th of November, when he heard two reports from a revolver. The sound came from Gregory’s house, and on looking that way he saw a man run across the road from the end of Bannercross-terrace and get over the wall on the opposite side. It was a moonlight night, but as the man was crossing the road the moon was under a cloud and he did not see the man distinctly. But he heard Mrs. Dyson scream, and on going into the passage from which he had seen the man emerge, he found Mr. Dyson lying on the ground and Mrs. Dyson was holding up his head.

Mr. J. W. Harrison, of Sheffield, surgeon, said on the 29th of November, he was called by Thos. Wilson to see Mr. Dyson, who had been placed on a chair in his own house. He was unconscious, bleeding from the temple, and there was a quantity of blood on the floor. He laid the injured man on the floor and attended to him, but he did not recover consciousness, and died about half-past ten o’clock the same night. Subsequently he made a post-mortem examination. On the left temple there was a valvular wound in the skin, flesh, and muscles. On removing the scalp he found in the substance of the brain, running upwards and backwards, a groove, and on the right side of the brain he discovered the bullet produced. It had entered the temple and passed in an oblique line to the right side of the head. The cause of death was the entrance of the bullet to the brain.

By Mr. Lockwood: He found some light abrasions on the nose and chin. He did not think they were caused by a fist, because in the case of abrasions the skin was grazed. A fist he did not think would produce the effect, not even if there was a ring on the finger. The abrasions seemed to have been caused by sand. At the coroner’s inquest he might have said he noticed a bruise on the nose and chin as if Mr. Dyson had fallen on his face. That really was correct, and he would adhere to that statement.

Police-constable Ward stated that on the 30th of November he searched in a field opposite Mr. Dyson’s house at Bannercross. The field was divided from the house by a road, a garden, and a wall. About fifteen yards from the wall dividing Mr. Dyson’s garden from the field he found a bundle of papers, and amongst them Mr. Dyson’s card.

At this stage a discussion took place between the counsel on either side and the learned judge in regard to putting in the letters found by this witness.

Mr. Campbell Foster objected to their being put in, on the ground that they were irrelevant; but Mr. Lockwood contended that his learned friend had gone too far, and that, inasmuch as he had opened the letters to the jury, he was bound to put them in now. His lordship entertained a contrary opinion, and consequently none of the documents were brought before the court.

Inspector Bradbury produced the bullet found by the surgeon in Mr. Dyson’s brain.

At the request of Mr. Lockwood, witness produced the photograph of Mrs. Dyson and Peace taken in the fair ground.

He said it was handed over to him by Mr. Jackson, the chief constable at Sheffield.

Mrs. Dyson was here recalled, and in answer to Mr. Lockwood she said the photograph was that to which she referred in her evidence.

This was the whole of the evidence regarding the murder, and Mr. Foster proposed to call evidence of threats used by the prisoner against the Dysons in July, 1876.

Mr. Lockwood objected to this course, but his lordship ruled that the evidence was admissible.

Rose Annie Sykes, wife of James Sykes, Darnall, proved that on the 1st July, 1876, she saw Mr. Dyson coming down the street. The prisoner was following him, and endeavouring to trip him up. On the night of the same day she saw the prisoner take a revolver out of his pocket, point it at Mrs. Dyson’s head, and say he would blow her brains out, and those of her husband, too.

Cross-examined by Mr. Lockwood: Witness said she heard nothing about a poker or a threat from Mrs. Dyson that she would use one. She did not hear about this time of any disturbance with the police, or of Mrs. Dyson being inebriated. She was quite certain about the date, because her little boy was born on the Tuesday following.

James Sykes, Darnall, said on a day in July, 1876, he was with his wife and Mrs. Dyson at Darnall. Peace came up at the time, and Mrs. Dyson said “That’s the man that’s always annoying my husband.” Peace replied, “I will annoy your husband and you and all.” At the same time he pulled a revolver out of his pocket, and presenting it at Mrs. Dyson, said, “I’ll blow your brains out and your husband’s too.” Peace then went up a passage, as if he was going into Mr. Dyson’s back door. He returned in a minute, and said, “Now, Jem, you be a witness that she struck me with a life-preserver.” Witness replied, “No, I will be a witness that you threatened to take her life.” He did not notice that Mrs. Dyson had a life-preserver, or that she struck at the prisoner.

During the examination of this witness Peace seemed somewhat excited, and kept muttering to himself.

Jane Wadmore said, in 1876 she was living in Britannia-road, Darnall. She knew both Mrs. Dyson and Mr. and Mrs. Sykes.

On the 1st of July in that year she was talking with them, when the prisoner came up. Mrs. Dyson said to him, “Why do you annoy my husband in the way you do?” Peace replied, “I will annoy you. I will blow your brains out and your husband’s too before I have done with you.” Peace then went in the direction of Mrs. Dyson’s back door, and subsequently went into his own house.

In answer to Mr. Lockwood, witness said she remembered going to Mansfield with Mrs. Dyson. Peace did not accompany them, but he followed them. On their arriving at Mansfield, she and Mrs. Dyson went to a house for some refreshments. Peace followed them right into the room, and called for a bottle of something to drink. She did not leave Mrs. Dyson alone with Peace on the occasion. Mrs. Dyson returned home with her. Peace did not ride in the same compartment, nor did he treat them to anything to drink. She did not accompany Mrs. Dyson to a fair, but she remembered that there was a fair in Whitweek of 1876.

Police-constable Robinson, of the Metropolitan Police Force, related the well-known circumstances under which he captured the prisoner when committing a burglary at Blackheath on the 10th of October, 1878, and described how he was fired at by Peace three times, and was wounded by the third shot.

Charles Brown, sergeant in the Metropolitan Police, who went to the assistance of the last witness, produced the revolver taken from the prisoner on the occasion.

James Woodward, a gunmaker, of Manchester, examined the revolver produced, and said it contained seven barrels. He believed it was of Belgian manufacture. The bullet produced found in Mr. Dyson’s head would fit the barrels.

In reply to Mr. Lockwood, witness said the revolver was of a common description.

This was the evidence for the prosecution.

Mr. Campbell Foster then summed up the evidence. He said, if it was true that Mrs. Dyson was on terms of intimacy with the prisoner, was that any justification for his shooting her husband? He characterised strongly the attempts made to discredit the evidence of Mrs. Dyson, and to prejudice the jury against her; and he showed what a conclusive case this was against the prisoner, even excluding the testimony of the murdered man’s widow. But taking Mrs. Dyson’s evidence, as reasonable men must take it, the case against the prisoner was irresistible.

Mr. Lockwood then rose (at five o’clock) to address the jury on behalf of the prisoner. In the course of a powerful appeal he declared that there had been a wild and merciless cry for blood, which was a disgrace to the country, and he spoke fiercely against the action of the press in this matter.

This remark elicited a low “Hear, hear,” from the prisoner, who listened with the utmost eagerness to the words advanced on his behalf.

The learned counsel maintained that he had placed Mrs. Dyson’s evidence in a light which necessitated a most suspicious examination on the part of the jury. It had been all-important to show at the time when Mr. Dyson became dissatisfied with his wife, she was still keeping up communication with the prisoner; and he claimed to have done this. Pointing especially to her prevarication as to the date of the fair at which she was photographed, the learned counsel claimed to have irretrievably shaken the testimony of Mrs. Dyson by means of the persons with whom he had confronted her. He dwelt emphatically upon her answers as to what transpired at the “Stag” Inn on the night before the murder, and her credibility, he insisted, was an essential element, because other than that woman and the prisoner no one could say what took place at Bannercross. The theory he adduced was that Peace fired a first shot to frighten Dyson; that a struggle ensued, and that during the struggle the pistol went off and killed the man. That was not murder, he pointed out. Mr. Lockwood maintained that there was strong corroborative evidence of a struggle. Turning to the letters, he commented strongly on the refusal of the prosecution to put them in evidence. They dared not place in the hands of the jury documents which might throw light upon the case, and might benefit the prisoner. Was not that an additional reason for looking with suspicion upon the woman who was accused of writing them? The whole case depended on Mrs. Dyson’s testimony, and it was not upon such evidence that human life should be taken. A detailed examination of the statements of the other witnesses followed, Mr. Lockwood maintaining that all these were consonant with his defence, or were fatal to Mrs. Dyson’s statement. He did not deny that his client had been a wild and reckless man, and it would be quite possible for one with such a temperament to use threats which he did not intend to carry out. He appealed to the jury to spare the man’s life. However bad he might have been, he was all the less fitted to die. But he had stronger grounds, and he asked whether on the uncorroborated testimony of that woman they were going to condemn this man to die? He concluded with a powerful appeal to the jury.

In summing up, the learned judge briefly defined murder as distinguished from manslaughter. The theory of the defence was that there had been a struggle between the two men; that the first shot had been fired merely to frighten, and that the second was the result of accident in the struggle. If that was the opinion of the jury, then they could not find the prisoner guilty of murder, but it was important to tell them that this was only a theory, and was not supported by a particle of evidence. The jury would be shown a revolver taken from the prisoner, which it was suggested was like the one, if not the same, which had been in his possession on the evening of the sad occurrence, and it would be for the jury to say for themselves whether they thought such a weapon could have gone off accidentally. To press home their theory the prisoner’s counsel discredited the testimony of Mrs. Dyson, and it would be for the jury to carefully weigh her evidence. At the same time he would remind them that the case did not rest alone on her evidence.

His lordship having remarked that no one could regret more than he did that the case had been talked about and written of so much, then proceeded to read over the evidence.

THE VERDICT AND THE SENTENCE.

The jury retired to consider their verdict at a quarter past seven, and returned into court ten minutes subsequently.

Having answered to their names,

The Clerk of Arraigns asked: Are you agreed upon your verdict? Do you find the prisoner at the bar guilty or not guilty?

The Foreman: Guilty.

The Clerk of Arraigns (addressing the prisoner): You have been indicted and convicted of wilful murder. Have you anything to say why sentence should not be passed upon you according to law?

The prisoner (very faintly): It’s no use my saying anything.

One of the ushers having called for silence,

His Lordship said: Charles Peace, after a most careful trial, and after every argument has been urged by your learned counsel on your behalf which ingenuity can suggest, you have been found guilty of the murder of Arthur Dyson by a jury of your country. It is not my duty, still less is it my desire, to aggravate your feelings at this moment, by a recapitulation of any portion of the details of what, I fear, I can only recall your criminal career. Imploring you, during the short time that may remain to you to live, to prepare for eternity, I pass upon you that sentence, and the only sentence, which the law permits in cases of this kind. (Here his lordship assumed the black cap.) The sentence is that you be taken from this place to the place from whence you came, and thence to a place of execution, and that you be there hanged by the neck until you are dead; and that your body be buried within the precincts of the prison in which you shall have been last confined after your conviction. And may the Lord have mercy on your soul!

The prisoner was then removed from the dock, but before leaving he expressed his thanks to Mr. W. E. Clegg for the efforts he had made in his behalf, and his appreciation of all that had been done for him.

Immediately after he was handcuffed, and leg chains were put upon him. The prisoners’ van was then backed to the inner gate of the Town Hall.

Peace walked along the corridors to the gate, muttering as he went. He was lifted into the van, and he was driven to Armley gaol shortly before eight.

Mr. Keene, the governor of the gaol, accompanied the van. There was one warder outside, and four warders were inside with Peace.

The only meals which he had on Tuesday, at the Town Hall, were breakfast and dinner, both of which he ate heartily.

Mrs. Dyson, attended by Inspector Bradbury, and several of the witnesses for the prosecution, left Leeds for Sheffield the same night by the 10.5 train.

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Chapter CLXIII

AFTER CONVICTION――PEACE AT ARMLEY GAOL――INTERVIEW WITH HIS RELATIVES――PEACIANA.

The accounts which appeared in the several papers of the condition of Charles Peace were at this time most conflicting. Some declared him to be in a sinking, desponding state, and hinted at his committing suicide if he was not carefully watched, while other journalists said he was perfectly resigned to his position, and was preparing, as best he could, to meet his doom with becoming fortitude.

Very much was made of the supposed letters which Peace dropped whilst running away from Bannercross on the night of the murder, and their supposed authorship by Mrs. Dyson.

They formed the subject of much of her cross-examination at the trial, and have been often referred to to show the terms of intimacy upon which she must have been with Peace. We are, therefore, glad to be able to say upon authority that the letters are not hers. That authority is none other than the statement of Mr. Dyson himself.

During the summer of 1876, when Mr. Dyson took out a peace warrant against Peace for threatening and annoying himself and family, he consulted Mr. Chambers, solicitor.

At that time the letters alleged to have been written by Mrs. Dyson to Peace were in existence, and had been seen by Mr. Dyson and other persons.

Mr. Dyson expressed to Mr. Chambers his full assurance that the letters were not his wife’s, but were forgeries concocted by Peace for purposes of annoyance. He was anxious that Peace should not be able to bring the letters into court, for he felt sure he would do so, if possible, for the sake of further annoyance and persecutions.

Peace’s step-son, accompanied by a friend, visited him in Armley Gaol. The cell was in a sort of cage within the cell, two sides made by the walls, and two composed of iron bars from floor to ceiling. Beyond this was the cell itself, into which no friends were allowed to pass.

The prisoner was dressed and sitting in a rail-backed arm chair, such as is common in old-fashioned public-houses. As the visitors entered his face was turned towards the door, and over his head, behind him, was a gas light.

Seated a little to the left, and looking him stedfastly in the face, was one warder; and behind him, a little to his right, was a second official――not lolling back in their chairs with folded arms, and endeavouring to make their irksome task as pleasant as possible. Nothing of the kind. They were all attention, ready to spring forward to the convict in an instant.

Willie asked his father how he was, and he replied, “I am a little better, but very weak.”

Dropping his head and breathing apparently with difficulty, he repeated, “I am really very weak.” He then looked at the friend as much as to say, “Who are you?”

Willie told his father that his friend was the gentleman to whom he referred on the previous day; and the convict nodded, as though gratified to see him. Peace asked respecting the witnesses who could be collected at Darnall.

“There are plenty of people there,” he said, “who can tell what sort of a woman Mrs. Dyson is, if you can only get them to come.”

Then becoming more animated and apparently wishful to get closer to the bars which separated him from his friends, he made a move as though he would stand up and draw his chair towards them.

Instantly the warders were at his side, and one of them said, “Don’t disturb yourself! We’ll move you!” Instead, however, of drawing him nearer to his son, they lifted the chair perhaps a foot further from the visitors, nearer to the wall, and more immediately under the gas.

A savage scowl came over his face, and he gave them a look that plainly said, “That was not what I wanted.”

An almost painful silence prevailed for a few moments, and then the convict looked at his son and said, “Do you know a house in Westbar, opposite to the top of Bower Spring? There is such a shop and such a shop (mentioning the business carried on in each), and then there is the house I mean.”

Willie asked him if he meant the “Little Tankard” or the “Old Tankard?”

The convict said he did not mean the singing-room. It was a little low house, with a shop front. Asked if it was opposite the “Shakespeare,” he answered, “Yes, it is opposite the ‘Shakespeare.’ It is a little beershop, with a passage up the side of it. The window of the snug looked into the passage. One day I was in the snug alone with Mrs. Dyson, and the landlord went out at the front door, down the passage, and peeped in at the window. I want you to get him to come to tell the jury what he saw. He will remember us; try and get him to come.”

Peace was then asked if anything occurred during the fortnight between his leaving Hull after the quarrel with his family, and the 29th of November, when Mr. Dyson was shot.

The convict replied, “I went from Hull to Manchester, and after stopping there three or four days, I went to Sheffield. Oh, yes; I went backwards and forwards to Sheffield several times. I saw Mrs. Dyson more than once,” and he repeated what he had said several times before, that on the evening of the 28th he was at the “Stag,” at Sharrow with her.

The convict was then asked where he went when he left Hull after the affair at Bannercross?

“I went from Hull to Cottingham, then to Beverley, and then to York. I there took train to London; but got out at a little station before I got to London, and went by the Underground to Paddington. From Paddington I went down to Didcot, from Didcot to Oxford, then to Bath, and on to Bristol. They will know that I was down there by this fact, that when going, I think it was from Didcot to Oxford, I travelled in the same compartment as a police-sergeant. He had been some where, and had apprehended a young woman for stealing £40, and he was bringing her to lock her up. I sat next to him, and talked to him nearly all the way, and he told me all about the case. He seemed a very smart chap; but not smart enough to know me. If you can find out the day an officer took a girl to Oxford that is the day I travelled there. I stopped in Bristol a few days and did a little ‘work,’ and then I left for Nottingham, and reached there, I remember, on the 9th January, or about six weeks after I had left Bannercross.”

Peace, apparently proud of the manner in which he had gone shoulder to shoulder with the police, went on to tell them how he once lodged at the house of a police-sergeant in Hull. He also entertained his friends with the story of his escape through the bars of the bedroom at Nottingham. It exactly corresponded with the version given more than a week before, and subsequently confirmed by Mrs. Thompson.

The convict seemed pleased to have someone to speak to, and he would laugh when he told them that he once threatened to report an officer for insulting him.

Willie asked him when that occurred.

The convict replied: In the summer after that affair at Bannercross I went down to York to see the races. The militia were up, and one day I found myself standing by the side of Mr. Cooke, who lived next door to us when we were on the Brocco. I think he was doing duty as a military policeman. I knew him, but he did not know me. A row broke out whilst I was there amongst a lot of the militiamen, who were drunk, and presently a mounted policeman rode up to help to quell it. He rode close past me, and his horse nearly knocked me down. I went after him, got hold of his horse’s bridle, and insisted on knowing his number. A superior officer came up and said, “Don’t stop him now, while the row is on. Come in the morning, if you have a complaint against him.” I replied “All right; I’ll be there; I’ll see if he is to knock people down like that.” Of course, said the convict, I did not go to pick him out. If you mention it to Cooke he will remember it.

On Monday Mrs. Bolsover, the daughter of the convict, with her little baby in her arms, and her husband, visited him. Peace, although dressed, was lying down in his little bed, and by his side were his two warders. The convict heard the visitors enter, and roused himself. Seeing his son-in-law, he said “How art thou, Billy?” The young man appeared overpowered, and he was unable to reply. Seeing his daughter, Peace then said, “Come forward, Jennie, and sit down.” She stepped forward, and sat on the little seat to the left of the door, but still within the barred enclosure.

“Have you” said he, “brought the baby with you?” The daughter replied that she had. “Then,” said he, “Let me look at it.” The mother held the child up to the bars, and Peace exclaimed with much earnestness, “God in heaven bless its little soul.” Peace asked how his wife was, and whether she fretted much. He was told that she was very poorly and in low spirits. “I should like to see her,” he said; “I should like to see her.” He then asked what efforts were being made for his defence, and if they remembered a row that took place one day at Darnall when Mrs. Dyson came out of her house with a “potato masher” and challenged any of the neighbours to fight. They did remember such an occurrence, and he asked that some who witnessed it might be called to speak to it.

Mr. Bolsover told him that Mr. Hutton’s little girl, who carried notes from Mrs. Dyson to Peace, was coming forward.

[Sidenote: No. 93.]

The Convict: I am very glad to hear that. Heaven bless her! I hope she will come.

Mr. Bolsover reminded him that two persons were in the ’bus with him and Mrs. Dyson when they rode up to the “Stag” at Sharrow on the night before the Bannercross affair, and told him that one of them would come forward and speak to that fact if he was asked.

The convict was pleased, and said, I hope you will tell Mr. Clegg all about that, and look after that witness.

The convict then alluded to the current version of the circumstances under which he jumped from the express train when on his way to Sheffield, and he said the warders stated that one of them caught him by the foot and held him head downwards for a distance of nearly two miles. Nothing of the sort, he said. Before he left London he made up his mind to jump from the train, and to kill himself if he could. When the train had passed Worksop, he stood up on the footwarmer, put his hands together, and sprang clean through the window. His heels struck the top of the window, and he fell head first on the footboard, and bounded away from the train. He did not remember anything that occurred after that until late in the afternoon. He declared the warder never had hold of his foot――otherwise he could have held him. He had not the slightest intention of escaping; he wanted to kill himself.

Mr. Bolsover told him he understood that the prosecution were going to bring down a gunsmith from London to prove that the bullets found at Blackheath and the bullet found in Mr. Dyson’s head were of the same size.

The convict replied that he had four revolvers――a little one that had five chambers, one that had six, one that had seven, and one that had ten chambers. The six-chambered one taken from him at Blackheath carried the same size bullet as the seven chamber. He did not attach much importance to evidence of that sort.

The convict then expressed the hope that Mr. Bolsover would take warning by what had befallen him; told them that he did not care who came forward against him if they only spoke the truth, and then asked to be allowed to shake hands with them. He was told that that could not be allowed; his friends withdrew, and the interview terminated.

Peace is said to have made an extraordinary statement respecting the murder. He stated that on the night Mr. Dyson was shot he was at Bannercross at the request of Mrs. Dyson, with whom he had an appointment. On reaching the house, he saw her go upstairs, and he alleged that she made signs to him signifying that Mr. Dyson was within, and that he (Peace) was not to enter the house. In consequence of these signs he remained outside, and, presently, Mrs. Dyson came into the yard with a lighted candle. She went into the closet and he followed her and remained talking to her for some time. At the time there was a warrant out against Peace, at the instance of the Dysons, and he asked Mrs. Dyson to get her husband to withdraw it. She replied, “I can’t do it; you know what an old devil he is for cash; he wants £40 to square the matter.” At this moment Mr. Dyson came out in the yard, and, according to Peace, a struggle took place between the deceased and his wife, in the course of which a pistol which Mrs. Dyson had in her hand went off. Peace then ran away.

PEACE’S EARLY CRIMES.

We now give some authentic particulars of Peace’s childhood and youth. It is said that when, having recovered from two years’ illness caused by an accident at Kelham Rolling Mills, he had been in the service of Mr. Edward Smith, and had after that become, under the tuition of one Bethley, a player on the violin at public-houses. There is a tradition that soon after this, having had a quarrel with his sister, he slept out, in an empty house, was caught, and got a month’s imprisonment therefor. Whether this be so or not, the next glimpse we get of him is making a highly promising commencement in his future profession. He was charged at the Sheffield Sessions on Saturday, Dec. 13, 1851, along with George Campbell, with breaking into the house of Mrs. Catherine Ward, Mount View, and stealing two pistols, a mahogany box, a bullet mould, and other articles. An entrance apparently had been effected by climbing upon the balcony and opening the bedroom window. The only property missed was a case containing Mrs. Ward’s jewels, a case containing a brace of rifle pistols, and a silk dress. The jewel case was found unopened on the balcony. The prisoners were afterwards found dealing with the pistols; Campbell was discharged, while Peace, who received a good character for honesty from his employer, got one month’s imprisonment. This robbery shows how closely Peace adhered through life to the modus operandi adopted thus early, and it fixes his then age (19).

A CROP OF BURGLARIES IN 1854.

During the subsequent years 1852-3-4, he continued his musical services at public-houses, and became familiar with company no better than it should be. In the autumn of 1854 he carried on a daring game of house robbery, and it appeared, that on the 13th of October, 1854, Charles Peace, Mary Ann Niel, his sister, and Emma James were placed in the dock of the Town Hall to answer several charges of felony. James had offered a pair of boots in pledge at the shop of Messrs. Wright, Westbar, and on her being detained on suspicion, Peace came forward and claimed the boots, and was given into custody. In Peace’s mother’s house in Bailey-field, there were found a large quantity of jewellery and wearing apparel (including crape shawls, silk dresses, &c.), the proceeds of robberies effected at the residences of H. E. Hoole, Esq., Crookes Moor House; R. Stuart, Esq., Brincliffe Edge; Mr. G. F. Platt, Priory Villa, Sharrow-lane; and Mr. Brown, Broomhall-street. The houses of all these parties had been robbed by effecting an entrance through the bedroom windows in the evening before the windows were closed and fastened for the night. At Mr. Hoole’s the thief had climbed the portico, and from Mr. Stuart’s a good deal of jewellery had been stolen. The prisoners were clearly proved to have been in possession of this property. The defence raised did not place in a very amiable light the affection subsisting between the sister and that brother who used to avenge the wrongs she sustained at her husband’s hands. Each accused the other of being the culprit. At the sessions at Doncaster (October, 20, 1854), Peace (who was undefended) said that a watchmaker named Bethley, in Division-street, had kept his sister (Neil) for some years, and she had had three children by him. Bethley, not having given her any money lately, sent the jewellery and a bundle of wearing apparel by him to her, instead of money. Peace was sentenced to four years’ penal servitude, and the female prisoners each to six months’ imprisonment.

Peace was described in the calendar at that time as being 22 years of age. The mention of Bethley’s name will remind our readers that he was the person who instructed Peace in the art of violin-playing, and Mrs. Neil’s connection with the case does not shed much lustre on the family annals. She died we may add by way of completing her history, on the 2nd April, 1859, aged 33.

MARRIAGE AND SIX YEARS’ PENAL SERVITUDE.

The matrimonial alliance with Miss James was, of course, rudely interrupted by the sentence pronounced at Doncaster. The tender passion does not seem to have survived his four years of penal servitude. It is believed that Peace served his whole term of four years. This brings us to the October of 1858, and the term of imprisonment conflicts with Mrs. Peace’s statement, that she was married to him in July, 1858. On his liberation he resumed his strolling vocation of fiddling at public-houses and feasts. It was at one of these that he met Hannah Ward, a widow, with one son Willie, and she became his wife. He was then earning a fair livelihood, partly in the way mentioned and partly by hawking cutlery, but his ingrained fondness for entering the houses of others, and for appropriating goods that did not belong to him, had not been eradicated by his prison discipline, and it was not many months after her marriage that Mrs. Peace’s eyes were enlightened as to the extra-professional avocation of her husband by a police visit to her house. The police at Manchester, having discovered a quantity of stolen property in a place of concealment, set a watch, and caught, but not without a violent resistance, two men who came to remove the goods. One of the prisoners gave the name of George Parker, and they both hailed from Sheffield. Parker was really Charles Peace, the other being the keeper of a beershop in Spring-street. They were tried at Liverpool Assizes, August, 1859, when Parker (Peace) was sentenced to six years’ penal servitude, and his companion to fifteen months’ hard labour.

DARING ADVENTURE AT WAKEFIELD.

In serving his time Peace made the acquaintance of the prisons of Millbank, Chatham (where he was mixed up in a mutiny, for his share in which he was punished――flogged), and Gibraltar. His handiness caused him then, as at other times, to be employed as a sort of general utility man about the prisons, doing any odd jobs in which dexterity and tact were needed. It was this sort of work which enabled him to make that daring attempt to escape from Wakefield during one of his sojourns there. Perhaps it is worth while to tell the story in some detail. The repairs he was executing gave him an excuse for smuggling a short ladder into his cell, and an opportunity also of nicking for himself a sort of saw out of a piece of zinc or tin. Thus armed he cut through a beam in the ceiling, made a hole through the plaster, and got through on to the roof. He was just drawing the ladder after him when an official opened the cell door. As he attempted to seize the ladder Peace gave him a blow with it in the chest and knocked him down. Then running along the roof he got on to the prison wall and was making his way along it when, the bricks being loose, he fell. It was supposed that he had fallen outside, and there was a hue and cry after him, but he had really fallen inside, not far from where some servants were looking out from the door of the governor’s house. Their attention was, however, directed away from Peace, and with the cunning of a hunted fox he slipped quietly past them into the house, and ran upstairs. Stripping off his prison clothes, he appropriated a suit of the governor’s, and watched for an opportunity to escape. But none came; and after being in the bedroom for an hour and a half, he was found and recaptured.

THE PICTURE-FRAME BUSINESS.

At the end of November, 1859, not long after Peace’s enforced departure for penal quarters, his wife gave birth to a daughter――now Mrs. Bolsover. The lonely wife had sold up her home to provide the means of defence at his trial, and had afterwards begun to keep a shop――that little bow-windowed shop so well known in Kenyon-alley. Hither he came, one night in the summer of 1864, the returned convict, released on ticket-of-leave, after serving nearly five of his six years.

It was now that he commenced that picture-frame making, which was the ostensible business of the remainder of his life. And for a time he seems to have been industrious, and to have done well. It was in Kenyon-alley that he began this trade, and he worked for Close’s in Gibraltar-street. Afterwards he was manager at Peters’ in Westbar-green. Then he engaged a workshop at the end of Kenyon-alley, and found so much to do, that from having only a boy he employed two journeymen to help him. In this way he got a good business together, and the place being too small, he made the unfortunate venture of taking a shop in West-street, two doors from Rockingham-street. The moment he got there his luck seemed to turn, and the takings were not as great in a month as they had been in Kenyon-alley in a day.

EIGHT YEARS’ PENAL SERVITUDE.

In this state of things the West-street shop was given up, and Peace migrated with his family to Manchester. He took with him a stock of frames; but he had not been there a fortnight when he was once more in the hands of the officers of the law. “Doing a job” at a house in Lower Broughton, he was caught in the act, and his excuse for such clumsiness was that he, who was usually strictly temperate, had had nine glasses of whiskey, and did not know what he was doing. He was tried at the Manchester Assizes on the 3rd of December, 1866, under the name of George Barker, alias Alexander Mann, and he was sentenced to eight years’ penal servitude.

HIS LAST RETURN.

Upon that Mrs. Peace for a short time kept a little shop in Long Millgate, Manchester, but before long she came bak to Sheffield, and got employment in charing, and in the bottling department of a wine merchant. At first she lived in Trippet-lane, but afterwards in Orchard-street, where Peace’s mother also lived. In 1865, shortly before leaving Kenyon-alley, there had been a son――John Charles――born, but he did not live to see the return of his father, who, on the night of the 9th of August, 1872, re-appeared at home. His eight years’ sentence had been commuted to less than six.

Having provided himself with picture-frame making tools, Peace then took a house in Brocco, and lived a few doors from Inspector Twibell, and his family helped him in the business. Here Brahma fowls were kept, and Peace there, besides resuming his performances on the violin, attempted, but without much success, to instruct Willie in the art. The frame-making prospering, there was a removal to Scotland-street. The testimony is that Peace was really industrious at this time, and being particular in the execution of his work he got much custom. His children attended the day and Sunday-schools of the parish church in Queen-street, and he was very strict with them as to the companions and the hours they kept. For himself he had never been known to go to church. He was accustomed to profess his belief in the existence of a God and a Devil, but he declared that he feared neither one nor the other. But he wished his children, he said, to believe in God and to fear Him.

Peace left Scotland-street through a disagreement with his landlord, and removed to Darnall, in the beginning of 1875. The house he chose was a semi-detached one in Milton Villas, Britannia-road. Next door but one, with an unoccupied house intervening (a circumstance which explains one of the letters found in the field at Bannercross), lived Mr. Arthur Dyson and his wife. And these were the materials out of which has to be developed the tragic termination of Charles Peace’s career.

The Bannercross murder led to the performance of extraordinary feats in telegraphing. On the day that Mrs. Dyson was under examination in the corridor at the Sheffield Police-offices press messages numbering 180,000 words were telegraphed away. The number of words actually sent away from Leeds in one day, in connection with Peace’s trial, was 200,000. The number of words delivered to all papers exceeded 300,000. With respect to Sheffield two special wires were used solely for the local papers. Ten men were specially employed at that end in writing up the news, and at no time throughout the day were they above twenty words behind hand. The news was delivered almost sheet by sheet by special messengers.

SALE OF PEACE’S MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS.

The excitement which prevailed at Mr. Harvey’s auction mart, in Bank-street, during the sale of Peace’s violins, was only excelled by that manifested at the Sheffield Town-hall when the convict was first brought up for the murder of Mr. Dyson. For several days it had been publicly announced that those celebrated violins which had accompanied Peace in his wanderings would be sold by auction by Mr. Harvey; and on the afternoon, long before the hour fixed, the room was filled by persons who were either intent upon purchasing if possible, or having at least a sight of the instruments.

Scores who were unable to obtain admittance collected outside the premises, and it required the efforts of two policemen to prevent a disturbance amongst the crowd, as there were a great number of roughs, who frequently indulged in shouts and yells.

The proceedings were characterised by no little amusement, and when, in the first place, Mr. Harvey inquired whether there was anyone present “concerned” about the property to be disposed of, he was met by the felicitious rejoinder, “Do you mean concerned with Peace?” and much laughter was created. Mr. Harvey then proceeded to open the sale, and first offered a copy of the “Duke” fiddle.

He said a gentleman had come a distance of 225 miles to look at the fiddles, that he might be able to say he had had Peace’s fiddles in his hand. He had also received letters from gentlemen residing at Tunbridge Wells, Manchester, London, and other places, offering to purchase them by private treaty. They were capital instruments, and if Peace had stuck to his music, he would not have been in the position he was now. There was no doubt the man had good as well as bad qualities.

The instrument having been handed round, several tunes were played upon it, and the bidding commenced at £1, followed by offers of £5 and £10. An offer of eleven guineas was increased by steady bids of one guinea each, until a bid of 20½ guineas was made, and at that price the violin was knocked down to Mr. G. C. Millward, provision merchant, York. Mr. Harvey said that £50 had been offered for the fiddle before it was put up for auction, and he firmly believed it was worth quite that to any person. He declared that there was not a bit of pluck in Sheffield, or the fiddle would have sold for double the amount.

The “Kit” violin was next put up, Mr. Harvey assuring his audience that there was no want of genuineness about the original ownership of both instruments. They were first pledged, he said, to pay for the defence of Mrs. Peace, and they had recently been redeemed by Messrs. Clegg and Sons to be sold for the convict’s defence. The offer made was 5s., which was quickly followed by offers of £2 10s., £5, £5 10s., £6, £6 10s., £7 10s., £8, and £8 10s., and an offer of £8 15s. being refused, it was sold to Mr. Lofthouse, of the “George Hotel,” Bridlington, for £9 10s.

A “Short Grand” piano, formerly the property of Peace, was then offered. An offer of ten guineas was first made, and the bids rising by one guinea each to nineteen, 19½ was offered, the figure slowly rising, by three other bids, to 23 guineas. Half-guinea bids were made in rapid succession, till 24½ guineas were realised, the purchaser being a gentleman from Hull, who desired that his name should not be published.

A violin, made by Peace himself, twenty years ago, was next offered for sale. Bidders were now, however, very scarce, and, though the instrument was of infinitely better tone than the one first disposed of, it only realised about one-third the sum. Mr. Harvey said the violin was now the property of a person named Hewitt, better known by the name of “Little Teddy,” who told him that he and “Charley” had played upon the instrument many a time. Mr. John Stansfield, of the Music Hall of Varieties, Leeds, was the buyer, for £6 10s.

No small amount of surprise was expressed that the instruents should have been permitted to leave the town.

PEACE AND MRS. THOMPSON.

It was suggested that there was some secret behind Mrs. Thompson’s alleged potent influence over the convict Peace. He sometimes treated her with more partiality and kindness than he did his wife; but when Sue got drunk and pawned the proceeds of his robberies, which he had given to her, he would treat her with as much savage brutality as he ever did his wife, and for days after she would carry the marks of his violence.

Mrs. Thompson, it was stated, was never asked to help Peace to make away with the goods he had stolen; but Hannah was frequently called upon to share in the risk of removing them. In this selection of his tool, Peace knew perfectly well what he was about; and it furnished no proof of his partiality for Sue over his wife.

She was his paramour, and had she been detected in possession of his stolen property, she could have been indicted with him. His wife, as the trial at the Old Bailey proved, could not be punished for making away with such goods, as she was supposed to act under his influence and control.

On the day when Peace’s daughter, Mrs. Bolsover, her husband, and his other relatives visited him at Armley Gaol, they implored the condemned man not to see Mrs. Thompson, stating that if he did Mrs. Peace would not come over. When put to him in that way Peace promised not to see her.

Mrs. Thompson called at the gaol immediately after they were gone, in response to a letter she had received from Peace, dated Feb. 9th, saying she would be allowed to see him; but after waiting two hours she had to leave without seeing him. A second letter addressed to her by Peace was, however, read to her by the Governor. For some reason the Visiting Committee were also opposed to letting Mrs. Thompson see Peace.

On Wednesday Mrs. Hannah Peace, her son, Willie, and the nephew, anew importuned Peace not to see Mrs. Thompson, threatening they would not come again if he did so, and they obtained a promise from him that he would not see her. In addition to his promise, they relied on the position assumed towards the woman by the Leeds Visiting Committee, who were indisposed to allow a mistress to visit her paramour in gaol.

It is also inconceivable that, knowing the unenviable position in which she stood to Peace, and knowing that he does not wish to see her; that his friends were strongly opposed to the interview; and that the local authorities had repeatedly refused her admission; that she should still hang about the gaol and persist in her attempts to obtain admission to the cell of the condemned man.

The following is the letter above alluded to, that Mrs. Thompson received from Peace, the envelope being addressed, “On her Majesty’s service, Thompson――letter box General Post-office, Leeds, to be called for.”

“From Charles Peace, H.M.’s Prison, Leeds, Feb. 9, 1879.

“My poor Sue,――I receive your letter to-day and I have my kind governor’s permission for you to come and see me at once so come up to the prison and bring this letter with you and you will get to see me I do wish particular to see you it is my wish that you will obey me in this one thing for you have obeyed me in many thing but do obey me in this one Do not let this letter fall into the hands of the press Hoping to see you at once I Remane your ever well wisher “CHARLES PEACE.”

The letter was written on the usual official paper. Mrs. Thompson took the original with her to Armley Gaol, and at Governor Keene’s request, give it to him. One of her friends, who went to the post-office for her, had, however, taken a copy of it. Had Mrs. Thompson gone with this letter at once, she would probably have seen Peace; but she delayed, and the permission to see him was delayed.

LETTERS TO PEACE’S FAMILY.

After the sentence of death had been passed upon Peace his wife and family were astonished at the interest taken in their welfare by people about whom they knew nothing. They received several letters expressing sympathy with them, and other people showed their regard for them by asking that some small article which the convict had used might be sent to them to keep in remembrance of him. It need hardly be stated that none of these modest requests were complied with. The following was one of the latest letters received:――

“Market Place, Middlesbro on Tees, “Feb. 11, 1879.

“Mrs. Peace,――I Have Taken the Liberty of writing to you under Your Painful Circumstances to ask if any think is beeing done on behalf of Your Husband Charles Peace i mean in the Ways of appealing to the Home Secretary for a Respite for your Husband i have made an Appeal in his Behalf to Mr. Cross the Secretary of State and the Reply is that it Shall have their Carefull attention i hope Some one or at Least a Large number will follow up in the Same line and urge for a Respite of Course i know nothing of your Husband only from the accounts of the Papers which i think as been most erroneous and Must have damaged his case in the Mind of the Public and i fear the Judge and Jury also it is upon this head that i make my appeal for his life to be Spared and i Should like to know if any other Effort is being Putt forth Please write a few lines if You Can or Get Some one else to do it for you and let me Know if you hear of any one that is making any Effort for what is done Should be done quickly and without delay and i hope God in his mercy will uphold You and Yours under Your Most trying Circumstances and i trust by the Mercy of God that Your Husband May not Come to die by the hands of the Exicuitor but i hope his life may be spared that he May depart at Last as is the way of all flesh. i am only a Poor man and a stranger to you all but never the Less i am doing all that i Can in this matter hopeing you Pardon me for intrudeing upon you in the manner i have done by writeing to you but i fell as tho i Should like to know if any think is beeing done in the way of Partitioning about where You live.――“Yours Respeffully

“E―――― W――――

“Please write by Return and let me know if any thing is beeing done”

* * * * * * *

To the above letter the following reply was at once sent:――

“Darnall, Feb. 13, 1879.

“Mr. W――――

“Dear Sir,――I received your letter this morning, and on behalf of my mother and family I heartily thank you for your kind and sympathetic letter. In reference to the petition, your letter is the first intimation we have had, and we are not aware that anything is being done in that direction.

“I quite agree with your remarks about the public being prejudiced against my father through the action of the press; for many of the papers have published things that are utterly untrue; but not too untrue or too romantic for the public to believe. The blacker a paper has painted him, and the more romance has been mixed with it, the more it has suited the public appetite.

“With reference to the jury being prejudiced I can only say they took a very short space of time in which to make up their minds to return a verdict of guilty in such a serious case. I thank you for your kind wishes towards us, and am pleased to tell you that Mr. Peace is resigned to his fate, and his state of mind is all that could be desired.

“Hoping you will not think it any intrusion if you wish to write again, I remain,

“Yours respectfully, “WILLIAM WARD.”

The following may be taken as a specimen of another class of letters that were received:――

“Dear Mrs. Peace,――I Hope you Will go and See your Husband Mr. Pease In Reading The Papers I think Hee Is not aware That It was Mrs. Tompson Thot Betraid Him ask Him If He Ever Come To Nottinghamshir with Mrs. Tompson If Mrs. Pease Is Not able To Goo I Hope Some of The Famely Will and Bee Shur and ask Him I Hope God Will Pardon Is Sins Befor The Execusion Takes Plais I Feel Sorry For You all But not For Those Two Wimen I think They Have Led Him To Mor Then He might Hev Don――Yours truly ―――― I will Right agoin to you.”

* * * * * * *

Charles Peace, while under sentence of death in Armley Gaol for the murder of Mr. Arthur Dyson, addressed the following letters to his son-in-law and son. They were written on one sheet of paper, the one letter following the other. Both the writing and the spelling were much better than in some previous letters received from the convict. The letters will speak for themselves; and will afford additional proof――if proof were needed――of the sort of man he was.

L. P.――C. 4. H. M. C. P. M. 12――73. From Charles Peace. “H.M. Prison, Leeds, 7th February, 1879

“My dear Son-in-law,――I hope this lettr will find you as well as it can do i am Still very week and ill but a little better then i have been. You will know well that i have been perged (purjured) against by three persons in Darnall what I wish to say to you is this do not attempt to avenge the wrong that was done to me by Jim and his wife and Mrs. Padmore, for under my Present feelings i feel no imbetterness against no Person in this world, for if i must be forgiven i must forgive. So, My Dear Son, do you Not Commit yourself in either thought, word, or deed against any of these Persons, but in Place of being in their Company do all you Can to avoid them, and this will keep you from doing anything at each other that will be offencive. I do Send you a form of Prayer that I Compiled Myself before i left Pen ton vile Prison.

O Lord, turn not Thy face from me, but have mercy. Good Lord, have mercy on me. I need not to Confess my life to thee, for thow knows what i have been and what i am. So O My Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, have mercy upon me, and wash and cleanse me from all my Sins and Make Me Clean, and save me from the danger of sin and from the Power of Hell. O God do not despise me nor Cast me from thee, but have mercy Good Lord have mercy upon me, and make me what thou would have me to be, to enter into the Kingdom of heaven, and then receive my Poor Soul at the last for Jesus Christs his Sake. Amen. “The Lord have mercy upon me, Christ have mercy upon me. Amen.”

“My Dear Son,――I have sent you this Prayer to Show you the State of Mind that i do now feel myself to be in i do not feel no trouble so great as i do my Sinful life against my God i begin to feel that my God will have mercy upon me and forgive me all my Sins and receive my Poor Soul into the Kingdom of heaven i send my best love, thanks and Good wishes to all friends that came up on my trial to Speak for me i do want to see all my family as often as i can do before i die you Can See me any week day but you will have to bring this lettr with you and go the Leeds Town Hall and enquire for Mr. John Thornton magistrates clerk and he will give you every information yo require to see me you cannot see me without an order from him So to Save time and trouble go and see him before you Come to the Prison. I send my Dearest love to my Dear, dear wife and all of you my loving children.――I am Your Wrecthed Husband and Father,

“CHARLES PEACE.”

* * * * * * *

WILLIE’S LETTER.

The above letters are in answer to the following:――

“Darnall, Feb. 6, 1879.

“Dear Father,――We had hoped to have had a letter from you this morning to tell us how you are. Will was in court on Tuesday and heard your trial, and when he came home and told us what the sentence was, it upset us all.

“We did all we could for you, and if there is anything more that we can do, write and let us know. We cannot come to see you as often as we could wish, but we hope you will write to us, and let us know how you are getting on.――Your affectionate son, WILLIE.”

INTERVIEW WITH HIS RELATIVES.

On Monday, no fewer than thirteen of Peace’s relatives and friends went from Sheffield to Leeds to have an interview with the convict Peace in his condemned cell. There were eleven in the first group, but in their appeals to Mr. Thornton, the magistrates’ clerk, for tickets of admission, they were not all successful.

Only five of them――Mr. Daniel Peace (the convict’s brother), and his wife, and three of their children――were granted permission to see the condemned man. The others were refused. The second group consisted of Mrs. and Mr. Bolsover (Peace’s daughter and son-in-law), and they readily obtained the necessary authority to see him.

On their arriving at Armley, the governor (Mr. Keene) gave them very strict injunctions as to how they were to behave themselves when in the presence of the convict. They were to restrain their feelings, and on no account whatever was there to be any “scene.” They were also to be extremely careful what they said to him. Having been thus suitably admonished as to their conduct, they were taken in two parties by the governor to the condemned cell. It was the same that the convict has occupied from his arrival at Armley, and they were simply admitted within the barred-off portion of the cell. He was sitting in a chair, and on either side of him stood a warder, watching his every movement; He seemed very weak――much weaker than when he appeared in the Crown Court to take his trial. Indeed, those who had not seen him for some time were quite startled at his pale, shrunken, weak appearance.

Peace was asked by one of the party how he was, and he replied, in very feeble tones, “I am no better; my head is very bad.” From further remarks he made it appear that he was suffering very much from the effects of his jump from the train. He said the wound on his head had broken out afresh, and he was in much pain from concussion of the brain. Proceeding, he said, “I am sorry now that I made such a rash attempt upon my life; I would never do it again.”

The governor, seeing the condemned man was becoming somewhat excited, interposed, and urged him to keep himself calm, and not to talk too much. Peace thereupon became quiet, and said little more, except to express a wish to see his wife. The interview allowed to either party was of short duration. The impression they formed was that the convict was perfectly resigned to his sentence, and that we had given up all hope of having his life prolonged. He was wearing the spectacles which the Home Secretary had given instructions that he should be furnished with, and near him were three books, which he had been reading. When the time allowed for the interview had expired, the relatives were exceedingly desirous to shake hands with him, but that was not allowed. The culprit, as one after the other bade him “good-bye,” quite broke down, and his grief expressed itself in tears.

INTERVIEW WITH HIS WIFE.

On Wednesday, Mrs. Peace, Willie Ward, her son, and Thomas Neil, a nephew, went from Sheffield to Leeds to visit the condemned man in his cell at Armley.

They left Sheffield by the Midland 9.5 train, and arrived at Leeds at 10.20. After an interview at the Town Hall with the chairman of the visiting justices the necessary order was then given to them, and they went a circuitous route to Armley.

The governor then conducted them to the cell, and the interview with the condemned man lasted more than an hour-and-a-half. He was sitting up, and since Monday the bandages had again been placed on his head. He was exceedingly pleased to see them; and, though weak, he appeared in excellent spirits, and during the whole time the interview lasted he carried on a most animated conversation with them. He gave his wife minute instructions with respect to private matters, about which nothing further need now be said; and as a memento of her visit he took off and handed to her, with the case, the pair of gold-framed spectacles about which so much has been said and written.

Peace had had those spectacles for many years, and he had them on the night he was captured by Robinson. They were then taken from him under the impression that a burglar would not come by a pair of gold spectacles honestly, and that they were part of the proceeds of some robbery. While he was in Pentonville, he asked to be supplied with spectacles, as he could not without them see to read and write, and the pair of brass-framed spectacles which gave him such a grotesque appearance――and which it was assumed he had adopted with a view to better disguise himself――were supplied to him. In his leap from the express train when on his way to Sheffield he lost those spectacles, but others were supplied to him while he was in Armley. A few days previously he wrote to the Home Secretary, asking that his own spectacles might be forwarded to him, and they were sent carefully packed in a small box. He was much gratified to receive them, and as they were almost the only articles with which he could part, he took them off, put them in their steel-bound leather case, and handed them to his wife, asking her to keep them for his sake.

With Willie and the nephew Peace talked with equal freedom, and gave them much good advice. Mrs. Peace had not seen her husband for four months, and she could not but observe the change that had taken place in him. But although he appeared feeble in body――so feeble that he could not walk alone, yet his mind was as clear as ever it was in his life, and never did he talk more sensibly. He had in his cell a Bible and a Prayer-book, and a number of tracts and letters which had either been supplied to him by the chaplain, or sent to him by sympathising friends. In reading, writing, listening to the exhortations of the chaplain, praying, and in talking, the convict passed his time. He appeared to be not only perfectly resigned to his sentence, but to have no fear of death whatever. Indeed, he expressed a hope that he would have sufficient strength to walk firmly to the scaffold, not in a spirit of bravado, but to show that he was not afraid to die. He asked his wife to forgive him every wrong he had done her, admitting, that had he followed her advice he would not have been in his present terrible position. She freely forgave him. He then said he entertained feelings of ill-will towards no one; and he hoped to receive the forgiveness of everybody towards whom he had done wrong. He spoke in terms of gratitude of the kind treatment he received at the hands of the governor and all who had to do with him, and said he had nothing to wish for at their hands. Towards the end of the interview his remarks were of so kind and tender a character as to affect his relatives to tears, and when they were leaving he entreated them to visit him again, and they promised to do so.

The Central News special reporter, referring to the interview with his family, wrote:――“There was an affecting scene between Peace and his daughter, who carried her baby in her arms. The woman sobbed bitterly, and even Peace himself cried. He inquired in affectionate terms after her mother, and seemed disappointed at her not being among the party. Mrs. Bolsover told him that she would tell her mother of his desire to see her, and that she would visit him. Peace took a great deal of notice of the child, and hoped that God would bless it as well as all his relations and friends. Although he seemed depressed, still he chatted freely and showed no reluctance to talk on any subject. He complained that he had not received justice, and that several of the witnesses against him had perjured themselves. Both Mr. and Mrs. Bolsover reproved him for thinking any more about Mrs. Thompson, and when they learned that he had written to her again, they became quite angry. They begged him to have nothing further to do with her, as she had been the means of giving him much trouble. Peace reluctantly vowed he would have no more to say to her. After an interview of over an hour the party took an affectionate good-bye of him, some of them promising to come back again if they could get admission.”

MRS. THOMPSON AGAIN.

It seems that before leaving Leeds Mrs. Thompson wrote the following letter, and entrusted it to one of her friends to deliver:――

“7th February, 1879. “To the Postmaster, Leeds.

“Please give the bearer any letters addressed ‘Mrs. S. Thompson, Post-office, Leeds, to be called for,’ and oblige.

“S THOMPSON, OR BAILEY.”

On Monday morning an elderly woman, dressed very plainly, called at the Post-office, and got two letters for Mrs. Thompson, one of which, was, it was known, from the convict Peace. The party receiving the letters must have telegraphed for Mrs. Thompson, for she was seen to enter the gaol shortly after four o’clock. She said she came from London, having left that place early in the forenoon.

She remained within the gaol about two hours, and had a long conversation with Governor Keene, but was not allowed to see Peace, the latter, it is said, declining to see her.

Mrs. Thompson cried a good deal, and said she had had her second journey for nothing. It was stated that this sudden change of the convict’s mind was brought about by the visit of his relatives earlier in the day.

A Leeds correspondent telegraphed:――“To the surprise of the officials of Armley Gaol, Mrs. Thompson made her appearance there again on Monday, accompanied by a young man. She drove up to the gates in a cab at dusk, and at once sought another interview with Mr. Keene, the governor. When she applied to the visiting justices, at Leeds Town Hall, on Friday week, she was told emphatically that she could not be allowed to see her former associate. On Monday, she received no more satisfaction. She was not admitted, and she seemed little disappointed.”

PEACE’S WILL.

Peace’s will was drawn up by Deputy-sheriff Ford, who is a member of a local firm of solicitors. It extended to but four or five lines and devised his property to Hannah Ward or Peace, his wife, the mention of her first name obviating the necessity of legal proof of marriage. The text was not to be published until the day of his execution.

In regard to the former will be made, bequeathing everything to Mrs. Thompson, the latter’s sister burnt the document, so that neither Peace nor his family need have any fears on that score. Mrs. Thompson has again made her appearance in Leeds. She was evidently bent on seeing the convict.

On Thursday morning she called at the office of Messrs. Ford and Warren, solicitors, 25, Albion-street. Shortly afterwards, or about noon, Mr. Warren drove to the gaol in a cab with Mrs. Thompson, and, presenting the following letter to Governor Keene, asked him to allow her to see Peace:――

“Prison Department, “Home Office, Whitehall, S.W., “8th February, 1879.

“Madam,――I am directed by the Chairman of the Commissioners of Prisons to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 7th inst., requesting to be allowed to see John Ward, alias Charles Peace, a prisoner under sentence of death in Leeds Prison. In reply, I am to acquaint you that by desire of the Secretary of State the Governor of the Prison has been authorised to permit you to have an interview with the prisoner under the usual restrictions, and subject to his wishing to see you, on your presenting this letter at the prison.――I am, madam, your obedient servant,

“C. N. JOSEPH.

“Mrs. Thompson, Post-office, Leeds.”

The letter, to which the foregoing was a reply, was as follows:――

“February 7th, 1879.

“Gentlemen,――I beg to be allowed to see the condemned man, Charles Peace, Thompson, or Ward, now in Armley Gaol, Leeds. He has been my reputed husband for years, and he has no other legal wife. He has ‘earnestly’ desired to see me, and for reasons that can easily be understood. I deeply hope and pray, gentlemen, that you will furnish me with the authority to see him before the end. I will not disturb his mind, but try to sooth him. Imploring you will speedily grant my prayer,

“I am your obedient servant, S. THOMPSON.

“P.S.――Please address to me, ‘Post Office, Leeds, to be left till called for.’”

Governor Keene said to Mr. Warren that since the letter sent by the prison authorities had been received, his (the governor’s) authority to allow the interview had been countermanded by the Home Office, but that if Mrs. Thompson had applied at the gaol immediately the letter reached Leeds he should have allowed her to have seen Peace.

Mr. Warren explained that there were difficulties that prevented her doing so, and withdrew, saying he would make a formal application, for leave for her to see Peace, to the Visiting Committee. After proceeding to the Town Hall, and being unable to find any of the members of the Visiting Committee, Mr. Warren went to the office of the chairman of the committee, John Ellershaw, Esq., who declined to accede to Mr. Warren’s petition, saying he should not do so unless Mr. Warren could show him a letter from the convict dated since Peace’s interview with his daughter, Mrs. Bolsover, stating the convict’s wish to see Mrs. Thompson.

MRS. BRION IN LEEDS.

As Mr. and Mrs. Bolsover were returning from Armley to Leeds, they were greatly astonished to see Mrs. Brion, the wife of Peace’s friend at Peckham, wending her way to the gaol. She told them that she had come down from London, and was going on to Armley, and hoped she would be allowed to have an interview with Peace.

She expressed great concern for his state of mind, and said she believed if she could see him she should be able “to say something to him that would do him a little good.” At that time she had not seen the magistrates’ clerk, and had obtained no authority to see Peace.

OFFERS TO HANG PEACE.

After Peace had been tried and condemned, the authorities had several applications to fill the grim office of executioner. These were from amateurs, one of whom, from the neighbourhood of Sheffield, wrote to say that he would undertake the duty gratuitously; whilst another asked the modest sum of only £3 10s. for his services, should they be accepted. It is scarcely necessary to say that no notice was taken of them, and Marwood was engaged to carry out the sentence.

SUGGESTED POSTPONEMENT OF THE EXECUTION.

A letter was forwarded to the Home Secretary on behalf of the convict, which said: “I hope you will kindly bear with me whilst I venture to address you upon a matter the immediate attention to which must prove of the utmost importance to one who stands condemned to suffer capital punishment, according to the organs of the newspaper press, in the course of the coming fortnight. There can be no disguising the fact that a large number of persons in the metropolis and throughout the country entertain the idea that the prisoner Peace’s late trial before the judge and jury was too hurried to be just. Such persons believe that the very circumstances which had been alluded to by the learned counsel for the defence――namely, that the cry for the prisoner’s blood and the sensational intelligence of the prisoner’s career which had appeared in the columns of the leading organs of the press――had combined to induce the jury to come to their most serious decision in the reported space of a quarter of an hour. A very unpleasant sensation has likewise been created, that the whole matter, namely, the condemnation of Peace, had been previously arranged――had, indeed, been cut and dried.… As I am confident that the spirit of justice of English law would rather permit ninety-nine guilty to escape than that one innocent should suffer, and as I feel it would lie upon my conscience did I abstain from laying the ‘evil’ alluded to before you, I have herewith endeavoured to discharge my duty――a duty which I feel I owe to the prisoner, his sympathisers, and to the best interests of English justice. Certainly, if the sentence cannot be reversed, the impression of unfairness would be removed by postponing the date for Peace’s execution.”

To this communication the following reply was received from the Home Secretary on Tuesday:――

“Whitehall, Feb. 8.

“SIR,――I am directed by the Secretary of State for the Home Department to acknowledge the receipt of your application on behalf of Charles Peace, and I am to acquaint you that the same will be fully considered.――I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

“A. F. O. LIDDELL.”

MR. BRION ALSO CLAIMS A REWARD.

The Central News said at this time Mr. Brion, of 22, Philip-road, Peckham, had prepared for the Treasury a statement of his work in connection with this case, in order that payment might be made him for his services.

It was with Mr. Brion that Peace was engaged in perfecting his invention for raising sunken ships; in fact, witness and the prisoner, in their quieter days, were in the habit of taking a large model ship, which had been built by them for experimenting in regard to the invention, to the pond at Peckham Rye, where they attracted the general attention of the neighbourhood.

Brion claims to have been the first to identify Peace after his apprehension for the Blackheath burglary. The notorious convict, when in Newgate, wrote to Mr. Brion in the name of Ward, on Nov. 3rd, beseeching him to come and see him, and attributing the whole of his misfortunes to drink.

Mr. Brion went to Newgate to see who the man was, and was very much surprised to find it was Mr. Thompson, his friend and neighbour. This fact he at once communicated to the governor of the gaol, and the police, being put on the alert, searched Thompson’s house at Nunhead.

The woman Thompson, it will be recollected, had got herself into the meshes of the law by being a party after the crime and acting as a receiver of his stolen goods.

[Sidenote: No. 94.]

The detectives worked upon her fears, and in this they were aided by Mr. Brion, who heard her drop words of a criminating character while she was under the influence of drink, so that partly by threats and promises of immunity if she would confess all and assist the officers of the law, the woman informed on Peace.

Mr. Brion received two other letters from Peace, but they merely referred to making subsequent visits, and arranging for the defence, and getting money for that object, and nearly all the facts narrated by this witness as regards Peace himself were published when he gave evidence before the magistrates.

He appears to have been most anxious to aid the police in their endeavours to recover the stolen property, and the long list of journeys which he undertook at that time with them testifies to the value of his services in this respect.

He was particularly successful in revealing the establishment in Petticoat-lane, where Peace had much of the proceeds of his robberies placed, and by representing himself to the receiver as an accomplice of Peace, and then revealing the results of his interview to the police, the latter were able to act with promptness and decision.

Among the many attributes of Peace, according to Mr. Brion, none were more remarkable than his wonderful ability to hide in the smallest limits.

He could place himself in a box with almost the same promptitude as Mr. Cook, of Egyptian Hall celebrity; in the bottom drawer of a chest, and in a cheffonier he was frequently hidden, while from long practice he was able to hide under an ordinary round table, clinging to the spiral stem in such a manner that even if the table had no cover he would escape the glance of a casual observer.

PEACE’S CYPHER CODE.

A Central News telegram states:――The convict evidently kept fully abreast of the age in all he did, for instead of making use of the ordinary thieves slang, when he had anything of a secret nature to communicate to his friends, he made known his message by means of numerals, each of which represented a word.

This cypher code of his, though somewhat crude and cumbersome, bore a general resemblance to those used by business firms and Government officers. Messages containing the secret cyphers of Peace were usually sent to certain receivers of stolen goods to whom he disposed of the proceeds of his burglaries, and to Mrs. Thompson.

As to Mrs. Peace, or Hannah, none of these messages were sent to her, for, as she says herself, “I am nae schullar.” Peace had 144 words at least in his secret vocabulary, as the number ran from 1 to 144. The numbers 27, 13, 21, 39, 40, 98, 100, 101, 102, were respectively the words, “he, me, of, we, call, pet, coming, house, pounds, night, and right.” In fact, the code was well calculated to enable him to communicate secretly in respect to almost any matter.

Peace had also another peculiarity. He kept a careful and accurate account of the money he received and expended in his city house. In little pass-books, each alternate leaf of which was provided with blotting paper, he entered an account of his payments and expenditure.

Mrs. Thompson had an interview with Governor Keene at Armley Gaol after Peace’s conviction, and he read a long letter to her which he had just received from Peace’s hands. The letter was full of most endearing terms, even fulsomely so, the convict calling Mrs. Thompson his “pet” and “darling,” and professing undying love for her. Mrs. Thompson wept passionately on hearing it read, and appeared much crushed.

The Central News special reporter, wrote:――As doubt has been expressed respecting the existence of Peace’s cypher code, the following is furnished as an accurate copy of it, the original having been for some time in the hands of the police authorities:――

1 one 2 I 3 is 4 oh 5 he 6 to 7 me 8 my 9 in 10 as 11 it 12 at 13 of 14 up 15 on 16 or 18 a 18 aye 19 am 20 so 21 we 22 us 23 but 24 you 25 nap 26 hope 27 they 28 thy 29 was 20 will 31 she 32 well 33 went 34 who 35 has 36 let 37 and 38 can 39 call 40 time 41 still 42 her 43 out 44 four 45 give 46 kiss 47 dear 48 pet 49 there 50 some 51 that 52 had 53 life 54 are 55 poor 56 course 57 come 58 coming 59 where 60 but 61 from 62 much 63 many 64 what 65 this 66 mean 67 when 68 must 69 may 70 read 71 uneasy 72 money 73 love 74 loving 75 every 76 then 77 old 78 how 79 never 80 name 81 Ben 82 sent 83 say 84 ―― 85 almost 86 friends 87 sum 88 pull 89 post 90 happy 91 wish 92 pain 93 until 94 bear 95 word 96 shall 97 used 98 house 99 back 100 pounds 101 night 102 right 103 write 104 mind 105 oblige 106 cannot 107 sold 108 things 109 said 110 know 111 just 112 railway 113 yes 114 believe 115 about 116 owes 117 told 118 fact 119 belong 120 word 121 since 122 away 123 early 124 such 125 finish 126 best 127 first 128 whose 129 early 130 Monday 131 Tuesday 132 Wednesday 135 Thursday 134 Friday 135 Saturday 136 Sunday 127 home 138 have 139 fancy 140 face 141 washed 142 ready 143 for 144 Johnny Johnny being of course himself.

PEACE IN THE COMPANY OF MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT.

We cannot refrain from telling a story of Peace’s extraordinary coolness and impudence. He was, as the reader perhaps has heard, the inventor of a plan for raising sunken vessels, and he actually exhibited his patent at Bristol, where, too, he offered £50 for the salvage of a wrecked schooner, though as the money was not forthcoming, the bargain was never concluded.

This invention, however, brought him into the acquaintance of several M.P.’s interested in the subject of his patent, and a friend of ours remembers going with him to the lobby of the House of Commons to see these gentlemen.

Peace conducted himself throughout these negotiations as a quiet, respectable, steady, and apparently well-to-do man. He seemed to be acquainted with most of the prominent M.P.’s, and quizzed them upon their peculiarities; at one time, indeed, it was thought he was the author of some of the political quizzing in Truth.

It would, doubtless, surprise Mr. Plimsoll and the First Lord of the Admiralty to learn that they had been in the company of Peace in connection with his patent. But we are told there is no doubt of it. And it was after the Dyson murder.

PEACEIANA.

Peace, it will be remembered, on more than one occasion assumed the role of a hawker of spectacles, and he provided himself with the necessary proof had his representation been challenged.

On one occasion, when visiting his friends at Hull, he was asked what he was doing, and he replied, “I am selling spectacles.” At the same time he produced a travelling sample case, made of leather and elaborately gilded, and on opening it exposed to view some thirty pairs of spectacles of different kinds.

He never did much in the way of pushing the spectacle trade; but no doubt the taking of it up assisted to conceal his identity. He had for many years worn the gold-framed spectacles about which so much has since been said. Previous to his murdering Mr. Dyson he only used them when reading or doing fine work; but afterwards he wore them out in the streets, and was seldom seen without them.

Peace was once terribly annoyed at a disappointment he met with at Croydon. He went down there one afternoon, and selected a house to rob. The same night he visited it again, expecting to obtain a good booty.

He reached one of the bedroom windows and forced back the hasp, but to his chagrin he found that the sash was secured from opening wider than a hand-breadth by patent fasteners――those little metal knobs, the shape of an acorn, that screw into a brass socket. He could not, therefore, open either that or any other window within reach.

He returned home in a most ill-conditioned humour, and made no secret how he had been “duffed,” but he said he would not be beaten. Provided with the necessary tools, he went to the same house the next night; took off the strips of wood which held the sashes of the bedroom window in its place, drew the lower sash forward and got into the bedroom.

He then not only gathered up jewellery and other articles of considerable value, but revenged himself for the disappointment he had experienced on the previous night by taking the patent fasteners off the window. When he got home he threw them on the table, and with an air of triumph exclaimed――“There’s your patent fasteners!”

A good many versions have been given as to the circumstances under which Peace met with the injury to his hand. The account he gave to his family was that one night in October, while he was living in the Brocco, he was going up Hollis-croft, when a young man struck him. He was about to return the blow, when either his assailant or some companion shot at him with a pistol, blowing off the first finger and otherwise injuring his left hand.

Peace walked to the Public Hospital, where he was treated as an in-patient for a month. He then took his discharge and “doctored his hand himself.” The police never discovered his assailant; and the opinion some of them arrived at was, that the injuries were self-inflicted――accidentally of course. They believed that Peace was carrying the pistol in his pocket, and that it exploded and shattered his hand.

Reference has previously been made to the long screws which formed part of Peace’s burglarious implements. It will be remembered that he used these to secure himself from intrusion while ransacking a room, and he also employed them to prevent pursuers from cutting off his retreat.

On one occasion he showed his confidence in them in a remarkable manner. It was night time, and he selected one of a row of houses in a main street at Brixton. He went to the front door and fastened it with a screw.

On going to the back he saw two doors, one of which opened to the lawn. He secured both of them in the same way. He then climbed a spout and entered the house by a bedroom window.

The door of the room he so fastened with a screw that it could not be opened from the outside, and then proceeded leisurely to ransack the drawers. He was just upon the point of forcing open the desk when a servant came to the door, and when she could not open it she began to scream.

There was a rush to both back and front doors, but it was impossible to open them. Peace remained in the room until he had broken open the desk and abstracted it contents, and then he left the house as he had entered it and escaped.

The “specials” of many newspapers drew the long bow very considerably when they began to pile on the agony in describing Peace’s appearance when sentenced to death. There was talk among them about fierce scowls, and convulsive twitchings of the mouth, and a pallor that extended to his very lips.

Others descended still lower, and described the tremblings of his limbs, and spoke of him as if carried out in something like a swoon. There was a great deal in all this as imaginary as Dr. Potter’s “trembling like an aspen leaf.” As the judge pronounced sentence Peace sat with one leg crossed over the other knee, without the symptoms of even a passing tremour.

And as for his face, it was almost expressionless. He had seemed the whole day to be in a sort of lethargy; if there was any change at the end it amounted only to an increase of stupor.

We wonder where Dr. Potter picked up his story about the convict having broken his aged mother’s heart? Possibly from the unreliable source whence many of the other fictions promulgated from St. Luke’s pulpit came.

We mean no disrespect to the ancient lady who was wont to hawk tapes and ribbons about the outskirts of the town, but her heart took an uncommon lot of breaking.

As to Peace having dishonoured his mother, if we mistake not she was largely responsible (far more responsible than the father, who received such short shrift at Dr. Potter’s hands) for his evil start in life. She is credited with having possessed a pretty accurate acquaintance with the details of her illustrious son’s career.

She had a domestic establishment, around which hovered anything but an atmosphere of sanctity; and our readers know how the poor creature was dragged over to Manchester Assizes to swear to an alibi for her son.

She managed to survive the tragedy, which according to Dr. Potter, broke her heart, by something like a twelvemonth.

Did Dr. Potter receive his intelligence “by electric telegraph?” That is the latest form of journalistic enterprise――to have news specially wired from Bank-street to High-street, that it may be reproduced from other columns in a surreptitious second edition, and that it may be claimed as confirming statements which it emphatically contradicts.

The account of Peace’s doings after the murder may be taken as one among the innumerable episodes which the Sheffield papers were the first to publish. They gave the route he took on that fatal night, and the manner in which he made his escape. That account was contradicted by the journal which was so sure Mrs. Dyson could not be found.

Two days afterwards one print ventured to give a route of its own. It told how Peace went down Ecclesall-road, on Sharrow vale, through Frog-walk, and into Cemetary-road. The statement by Peace, which was published afterwards showed that this story was the purest fiction.

AN OFFER TO MRS. THOMPSON.

Notoriety has with some people more merit than business qualifications, as the following indicates:――

“J. Myers, Queen’s Music Hall, 20, Bridge-street, Manchester, February 10, 1879.

“Mrs. Thompson. Madam,――You will excuse me taking the liberty of writing to you, as I thought I should like you at my house as waitress. If you would like to come to Manchester I could give you 25s. per week, if you think you would like to come. Hoping there is no offence in my proposition.――I remain yours most respectfully.

“JOHN MYERS.”

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Chapter CLXIV

MRS. DYSONS DEPARTURE――AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCH AND SELF-VINDICATION.

After the trial and condemnation of Charles Peace, Mrs. Dyson left for the United States, and subsequently she conducted herself while in New York in anything but a creditable manner. She left Sheffield for Liverpool on Thursday morning, Feb. 26th. 1879, and later in the day she embarked on board the White Star steamer Britannic (the vessel in which she returned to this country) en route for Cleveland, Ohio. She was accompanied by Police-constable Walsh as far as Queenstown.

Mrs. Dyson was desirous, before leaving this country of contradicting in the most emphatic terms the imputations which had been freely cast upon her character and her morality. She accordingly left the following narrative behind her with an earnest request that, by its publication, she would be set right in the estimation of her husband’s townsmen:――

I was born in Ireland, at Maynooth. There I remained until I was fifteen years old. Then, having just left school, I started off by myself to see my sister, who had previously gone off to America. She was living at Cleveland, Ohio, and is the wife of Mr. Mooney, captain on one of the Lake Erie steamers.

Though I only went originally to see my sister, I stayed at Cleveland, for I liked the place, the people, and the life. It was there that I first met my husband. He was then a civil engineer, in the service of Sir Morton Peto, and was at that time one of the engineers on the Atlantic and Great Western Railway.

We married, and spent our honeymoon on a visit to the Falls at Niagara. Coming back from our honeymoon, we went into housekeeping at Cleveland, but we did not remain there long. We stayed only until the section of the line of which Mr. Dyson had charge was finished.

Then he received another appointment――that of engineer to the St. Louis Railway, known as the Iron Mountain Road, and went to reside there. He subsequently became the engineer of other lines then in course of construction, and his last engagement in America was as superintendent engineer of the magnificent bridge which spans the Mississippi, and here his health broke down.

He had been often compelled to lead a very rough kind of life, and it began to tell. His duties made that necessary, for the railways on which he was engaged opened up quite new country. The life, however, had many charms for me. I am a good hand at driving, and am fond of horses. I always used to drive Mr. Dyson. He used often to say that I could drive better than he, and he would sit back in his buggy――they call them buggies there――whilst I held the reins and sent the horses along.

I liked the excitement of driving him to and from his work, and especially when we were in new country, and he was out surveying. I have driven him through forests where there were bears, and over creeks――they call rivers creeks in America――that were swollen by the floods. The horses have often had to swim.

I remember on one occasion sending the horses and the buggy across a river, and then coming over myself on a piece of timber. Of course such a life has some drawbacks, but I was young and strong, and it possessed for me considerable fascination.

My husband loved me and I loved him, and in his company and in driving him about in this wild kind of fashion, I derived much pleasure.

Afraid? Not I. I did not then know what fear was. Besides, I have a good deal of courage――I think I have gone through sufficient (here Mrs. Dyson’s tone was tinged with some sadness) of late to show that――and I always felt safe. To be in positions attendant with danger caused me not fear, but a kind of excitement which, if not always pleasurable, certainly possessed some kind of fascination.

But, as I have said, Mr. Dyson’s health broke down, and he was compelled to return to England. This was about four years ago. We first lived at Tinsley, with Mr. Dyson’s mother; then at Highfield, nearly opposite the police station; and afterwards we took a house in the Alexandra-road, Heeley. Then we went to Darnall, and it was there that my troubles began. But for our going there, Mr. Dyson would probably have been still alive, and I should have been spared all that has happened since.

You will naturally ask how I became acquainted with Peace. It was impossible to avoid becoming acquainted with him. Besides, at that time I did not know the sort of man he really was. He lived the next door but one to us at Darnall, and he used generally to speak to Mr. Dyson in going in and out.

Mr. Dyson was a gentleman, and, of course, when Peace spoke to him he used to reply. He introduced himself, and would have you to talk with him whether you would or no. At first Mr. Dyson did not object, and Peace became a constant visitor to the house. Our impression of him at that time was that he was really a nice old man. I suppose you have heard how plausible he was? He was plausibility itself. To hear him talk, you would have thought him the most harmless of men.

To us he appeared to be simply a picture-framer in anything but good circumstances, for he had but little business to do, and his wife used to go out every morning washing bottles. We considered they were poor. Mr. Dyson soon began to tire of him. He very soon began to show that he was anything but a gentleman. Mr. Dyson could not stand that; and, besides, he had seen something which disgusted him――some obscene pictures which Peace had shown him. He said he didn’t like a man of that kind, and wouldn’t have anything more to do with him.

Besides, another thing greatly repelled Mr. Dyson. It was this. Peace wanted to take him to Sheffield to show him what he called the “sights of the town.” Mr. Dyson knew what that meant, and being, as I have said, a gentleman, he became much disgusted at Peace and annoyed that he should force his company upon us. My husband had been used to other society. But we couldn’t get rid of him. We were bound to show him common politeness. Though he must have seen that we didn’t want his company, he forced himself upon us.

He would, for instance, drop in just when we were sitting down to tea, and we were compelled almost to ask him to have a cup. His constant visits to the house at last became intolerable to us, and then it was that my husband placed his card in the garden, desiring Peace not to annoy him or his family.

When he found that he could no longer gain access to the house, Peace became awfully impudent. He would, for instance, stand on the doorstep and listen through the keyhole to what we were talking about, or look through the window at us. His persecutions at this time became almost unbearable. He did everything he could to annoy us. I was not afraid of him, and should have taken the law into my own hands, but my husband would not hear of such a thing. He always advised me to keep quiet.

Amanuensis: It is impossible for you, Mrs. Dyson, to be unaware of the rumours afloat as to the terms on which you and Peace were at Darnall. Would you like to say anything about that matter?

Mrs. Dyson: That is just what I want to speak about. (Here Mrs. Dyson spoke under some emotion and her face became quite flushed with excitement.) That’s what I want to speak about, and I want you to do me the justice of writing down just what I state.

The public of Sheffield――the vulgar public I mean――have been prejudiced against me. I have been tried in every shape and form since I came over here to give evidence, and my character and credibility have been made light of. But I want the people of Sheffield to see that I am a different kind of person from that which they have taken me for. They have classed me with Peace and Mrs. Thompson, and others of his gang, but I wish to show them that I am far superior to any of them.

Mr. Dyson did not take a stronger disgust to Peace than I did. In fact, I think I was the first to express my disgust. I could not stand his impudence and the way in which he went on. I had not been used to such society as his proved to be, and I rebelled against it. I can hardly describe all that he did to annoy us after he was informed that he was not wanted at our house. He would come and stand outside the window at night and look in, leering all the while; and he would come across you at all turns and leer in your face in a manner that was truly frightful. How is it that having been so friendly with me and Mr. Dyson, Peace should conceive so intense a dislike to us? Well, I admit that’s a matter which has never been clearly stated, and I want it clearly stating now. His object was to obtain power over me, and, having done that, to make me an accomplice of his.

I have told you that when I knew him first I thought him to be a picture-framer, and nothing more. Since then, however, I have learnt a good deal, and much that was difficult to understand has been made plain.

He wanted me to leave my husband. “What should I do that for?” I said, “If you will only go to Manchester,” he answered, “I will take a store (American for shop) for you, and will spend £50 in fitting it up. You shall have a cigar store, or a picture store. You are a fine-looking woman. You look well in fine things, and I will send you fine clothes and jewellery, and if you wanted to pawn them it would be easy. The pawnbroker would think everything all right. Suppose for instance, you had a grand pair of bracelets on, all you would have to do would be to go into the pawnbroker’s, take them off your wrist, and say, ‘I want to pawn these things.’” He also said, “If you will only do what I want you, there shall not be such another lady in England as you may be.”

At the time I couldn’t understand what was his object. Of course, I see it plain enough now. At that time I didn’t know he was a burglar. But I was suspicious.

I remember on one occasion he offered me a sealskin jacket and several yards of silk. If I had accepted them I should have been quite in his power. I declined his present, and told him that if he had a sealskin jacket and some silk to spare, he had better make a present of them to his wife and daughter.

I also told him that they wanted them much more than I did, and that if I desired to have a sealskin jacket, I would wait for it until my husband bought it, and that if he couldn’t I was content to go without.

Some time afterwards he offered me a gold watch; but I wouldn’t have it. That, of course, was stolen. I consider that he offered me these presents as one means of getting me into his power.

I remember, when he was speaking to me about Manchester, he said, “If you will only go, I’ll fix you up there nice. You will have a splendid business, and will live like a lady.”

“Thank you,” I said, “I always have lived like one, and shall continue to do so quite independently of you.” I was getting downright mad with him, because of his constantly bothering me.

What he wanted me to go to Manchester for was to pass off his stolen goods――at least that is my opinion. When he found he could not succeed by fair means, then he tried what threats and persecution would do. He once came into my house, and said as I would not do what he wanted, he would annoy and torment me to the end of the world.

“Don’t you ever come into my house again,” I said, “or ever darken its doors.”

But it was no use. He still came whenever he could get in, and when he couldn’t he watched for me and followed me wherever I went. I have known him go to the railway station and say to the booking clerk after I had taken my ticket, “Give me a ticket for where she’s going.” That’s how it was he followed me to Mansfield, and then came into the same house there where I and my companion were staying.

That was, too, how it was that he was seen with me in the streets. So it was as regards his being with me in the fair ground, about which so much has been made.

I went to the fair with a neighbour and her children, and when we got into the photographic saloon my intention was to have the children photographed. I had no intention whatever of having myself taken with Peace, but he stood behind my chair at the time my likeness was taken. That was quite unknown to me, though, at the time.

You can have no idea, unless you know the man, how he persecuted one, and attempted to get me within his power.

Once I was terribly frightened at him. I was busy, I remember, doing something in the kitchen, and my back was turned to the door. Hearing a slight noise, I turned round, and then I saw Peace standing just inside the door. The expression on his face was something dreadful. It was almost fiendish――devilish. He had a revolver in his right hand, and he held it up towards me and said, in an excited and threatening manner, “Now, will you go to Manchester? Now will you go to Manchester?” I did not shriek, but I cried out “No, never! What do you take me for?”

Finding that I was firm, he dropped his hand and went out; but I can assure you that I was frightened at the time. He had a way of creeping and crawling about, and of coming upon you unawares; and I cannot describe to you how he seemed to wriggle himself inside the door, or the terrible expression on his face. He seemed more like an evil spirit than a man.

He turned against me solely because he could not make me do as he wanted. He thought he could handle me as he liked, that I was a weak sort of a woman, and could be got over like others who have been associated with him; but he found he was mistaken. I was terribly tried by him, though, and at last I was frightened――I don’t deny it.

There have been times when I haven’t feared him, and when I should have thrashed him if Mr. Dyson would have allowed me. I once did give him a good hiding, because he had insulted and annoyed me, but perhaps I had better not say much about that now. I used to be especially afraid of him at nights, because he had a habit of continually prowling about the house, and of turning up suddenly. He would, too, assume all sorts of disguises. He used to boast how effectively he could disguise himself; and I was afraid of his coming in some guise or other at night, and carrying out his threats.

I never saw such determination and persistency as his. It seems to me there was scarcely anything which he couldn’t accomplish if only he was determined. The only way to get rid of him was to knock him down, as I once did.

Determined as he was one way, I was equally determined the other, and that was why he never succeeded with me. He once made use of this expression to me, “I don’t care how independent you are, I’ll get hold of you some way or other.” But I said as firmly as I could, “Never!” and so I have always said.

The statement is not true that your husband was jealous of you and Peace, and so decided to go to Bannercross? Why should he be jealous? There was no cause; for all this time that we were at Darnall I was doing my best to withstand Peace. I know what has been thought and what has been said. (Here Mrs. Dyson spoke excitedly and in a tone of much bitterness.) I think no woman has ever been tried as I have.

Why, ever since I came from America to give evidence, they have been trying me, not Peace. I want the public to understand that I have been tested to the utmost, and yet what has been proved against me? Why absolutely nothing.

All that has been said about myself and Peace is a lie, and I wish it to be put down as a LIE. If you could draw three strokes under the word, so as to make it plainer I should like it done. I wanted this opportunity of saying what I have on this matter. I had no one to speak up for me, I had to speak for myself. I deny what has been said and imputed with regard to Peace and myself, and I dare and defy any one to say with truth that my conduct with regard to him was anything but what was right. We went to Bannercross simply because we were afraid of Peace. What became of Peace after the warrant was taken out I never knew, except that I heard he had gone over to Manchester.

He suddenly disappeared, and I did not see him again until on the very day that our furniture was being removed to Bannercross. I and my husband saw him coming out of our new house there. So annoyed and irritated was I at this that I really should have caught hold of him, and held him until a policeman could have been fetched. But my husband would not hear of such a thing. I really felt quite mad.

This was on the 25th October, and I did not see him again till the night of the murder. There is no truth whatever in the imputation that I was with Peace on the day and night previous to the murder. I say I never saw him from the time of his coming out of our house on the 25th of October till I saw him, pistol in hand, standing outside the closet door on the night of the murder. To say that I did is an abominable and wicked lie. But no one can really say that I did.

It is true certain persons were brought at the trial, but could they say that they had seen me? No, not one of them: and I defy them to say it.

I am aware, as you say, that when I was asked if Peace did not follow me into the “Stag” Inn on the night before the murder, I replied that I could almost swear it wasn’t Peace. I know also that it seemed as if my evidence at that point was weak. But I didn’t want to swear a lie.

Peace had been in the habit of so disguising himself and of following me about that I should not have been surprised if it had been him. That was why I answered Mr. Lockwood in the way I did. It certainly was not Peace. Of that I am confident.

It is not true, as it was imputed, that I was in the fair with Peace on the day before my husband was shot. I simply passed along the road from the Victoria Station and looked over the wall. Neither is it true that I went with him to any dining-rooms, or to a public-house. That is a lie altogether.

The only place I called at was at Mr. Muddiman’s shop, at the top of Pinstone-street, and I went from there to the “Stag” at Sharrow.

If I were to die this minute, I am altogether innocent of seeing Peace or of having anything to do with him from the time of our going to Bannercross till the night of the murder. I cannot put the matter plainer than that, and I want it putting plainly.

As to the letters which Peace dropped on the night of the murder, I say as I have always said――that I never wrote them. They were base forgeries, and were written with an object. I cannot say whether Peace wrote them himself or whether they were written by members of his family, because they, as well as he, tried to get me into their power. But I know what the object was. It was to endeavour to compromise me.

Yet how much has been said about those letters, and how I have been maligned in regard to them! I don’t think any woman has been tried as I have, or has been compelled to go through so much. But I have been able to stand up through it all, because I have spoken nothing but the truth. If the letters were mine, the handwriting could have been easily proved. Wasn’t I tried in court about it? Didn’t they ask me not once, but twice, to give specimens of my handwriting? If the letters were mine, they could then easily have proved it.

The letters must have been manufactured for a purpose. I don’t see how else they could have come into existence. So far from writing to Peace after the murder, I never wrote to him in my life. I never heard anything about Peace from the night of the murder until Walsh came over to Cleveland to fetch me.

I was staying at my sister’s house there, and Walsh went direct to the house. When told that he had come, I knew at once what he wanted me for, and to his question whether I was willing to go back with him to give evidence against Peace, I said “I would go back if I had to walk on my head all the way.”

That’s just what I said, and it will show how willing I was to give evidence.

Of course, at the time I didn’t know what I should have to pass through, but if it were to come all over again I would do the same. My friends didn’t want me to come, and did all they could to dissuade me. I also received a threatening letter from Sheffield. But I was determined to come. My desire was that Peace should receive the justice he so richly deserved.

I didn’t really know that Peace was a burglar until after the murder. If I had he would never have entered our doors. But what I know now explains a good deal.

For instance, when we were out walking together, if I happened to look into a shop window, he would say to me, “Is there anything there you would like? If there is I will get it for you before morning.” He would say that if I looked into a jeweller’s or a draper’s shop. I did not know what he meant then, but I do now.

My suspicions were aroused, for I used to see him leave his house at Darnall in the evenings with a little satchel under his arm, and he would come back early in the morning carrying a large bundle. The satchel, I suppose, contained his housebreaking implements. He often used to go to Manchester with this satchel.

He came to my door one morning just as he was going to Manchester. He then had his satchel with him. Looking into the room where I was, he said, “I’ll have you alive or dead. I’ll have you, or else I’ll torment you till the end of your life.”

On another occasion, when I had defied him, he said, “I’ll make you so that neither man nor woman shall look at you, and then I’ll have you to myself.”

I answered, “Never. What can you do? What are you capable of?”

“No matter,” he replied “I’ll do it.”

He was always wanting to get my photograph, and as I wouldn’t give him it, he or some member of his family stole one out of a locket which I had. It was afterwards copied by a photographer in Sheffield, and I have fancied since that he wanted to get my features transferred in some way or other to one of his obscene pictures and so disgrace me.

I cannot understand in any other way what he meant by saying that he would make me so that neither man nor woman should look at me.

My opinion is that Peace is a perfect demon――not a man. I am told that since he has been sentenced to death he has become a changed character. That I don’t believe. The place to which the wicked go is not bad enough for him. I think its occupants, bad as they might be, are too good to be where he is. No matter where he goes, I am satisfied there will be hell. Not even a Shakespeare could adequately paint such a man as he has been. My life-long regret will be that I ever knew him.

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Chapter CLXV

PEACE CONFESSES HIMSELF TO BE THE MURDERER OF A POLICEMAN NEAR MANCHESTER――THE CONVICT AND MRS. THOMPSON.

It was understood on the Wednesday night that the convict Charles Peace was expected to confess to having murdered Constable Cock, at Whalley Range, near Manchester――a crime for which a youth of eighteen years of age, named William Habron, had been sentenced to death, and only escaped with a commutation of his sentence to penal servitude for life. Peace, in justice to this young man, made a full and explicit confession. He admitted, with many professions of penitence, that he murdered the officer, and declared Habron to be perfectly innocent of the crime, for which he was at that time so cruelly and injustly suffering.

When, in July, 1876, Peace heard that Mrs. Dyson had taken out a warrant against him, he packed up his “tools” and some other things and prepared to leave Darnall. His family asked him where he was going, and he replied, “To Manchester.” He had often been there before. Indeed, it was a favourite resort of his. When he lived on the Brocco, and in Scotland-street, as well as after he went to Darnall, he frequently ran over to Manchester, sometimes remaining there for a week or more.

It is no secret that he went there to commit robberies. There was a man there to whom he sold his plunder, and he would come back to Sheffield with nothing but the proceeds in hard cash. Of course there was nothing remarkable in his going to Manchester, and he confessed that he went there on this particular occasion――as he had often gone before――“to work.”

On the afternoon of the 1st August he went round by Whalley Range to select a likely house as the object of his burglarious intentions, and he “put up” that occupied by Mr. Gatrix, at West Point, where three public roads, and an occupation road, converge. Towards midnight he went to the place, and as he was creeping along under the overhanging trees on the opposite side of the road he saw Mr. Simpson and the two policemen, Cock and Beanland, talking together on the footpath.

Presently he left his hiding-place and crossed from Upper Chorlton-road to Seymour-grove, looking distinctly at the officers as he passed. He entered Mr. Gatrix’s grounds, but before he could get up to the house he heard a policeman on his track; and it is a fact that Beanland followed him.

Peace doubled, and attempted to leave the grounds by another way, when he was confronted by Police-constable Cock, who attempted to apprehend him. Said Peace, I told him to “Stand back!” and, to frighten him, I fired one barrel of my revolver. He, however, came towards me, and was about to collar me, when I hit him. By “hitting him” Peace meant that he fired at him; the officer fell and he escaped.

Peace remained in Manchester for several days, and heard of the arrest of the Habrons, and the committal of John and William on the charge of “Wilful murder.” He then left the city and went to Hull.

During the next few weeks he gravitated between Hull, Sheffield, and Manchester several times, and he was in the latter place at the end of November. Incredible as it may seem, he distinctly stated that he went to the Assize Courts and heard the two Habrons tried for the crime which he had himself committed. He was present when John was acquitted, and he heard William sentenced to death.

He appeared to have had no compunctions of conscience whatever at the terrible position in which he had placed the youth. Had the sentence been carried out there is no reason whatever to suppose that Peace would have come forward and confessed to the crime. It would almost seem that his escape from the remotest suspicion at Manchester only made him more reckless, as the night after the trial he went to Bannercross and shot Mr. Dyson.

Since he was himself sentenced to death at Leeds, and he had occupied the condemned cell, he had thought not only of the crime for which he was suffering, but also of that other almost more diabolical act of his at Whalley Range, for which an innocent man was undergoing punishment. Having given up all hope of life himself, and having nothing to fear from any confession he might make, he decided to do tardy justice to young Habron.

Some days before his execution he asked the Governor to supply him with the necessary paper, pencils, rule, compassses, and so forth, that he might draw some plans. Having satisfied the Governor as to the object for which he wanted them, the articles asked for were supplied. He then began working diligently upon the plans; and the progress of his work was a matter of no small interest, not only to the governor and the chaplain, but to all the officials who had to do with him. The plan which he drew of Bannercross two years after the murder proved that Peace could remember localities, and that he could transfer to paper his recollections. The plans he drew of West Point――for they were in three or four parts――represent very accurately the locality, and on them the precise spot as indicated where Peace encountered Cock and shot him, and the route he took to escape. He completed the plans, and handed them over to the governor, together with a full confession of his guilt.

Peace affected to the extremely sorry for the young man Habron, but he excused himself for not having done him the scant justice he deserved at his hands in a very plausible way. He said that if he had come forward and accepted the responsibility of his act he would have been sentenced to death without any doubt whatever; whereas the one who had to bear it had escaped with penal servitude.

We give the circumstances under which the murder was committed, and it will be seen at once that the crime looks very much more like the work of a man of Peace’s experience than of a lad of eighteen, who probably never fired a revolver in his life.

Nicholas Cock, the officer who was murdered, was twenty-three years of age, and had been in the county constabulary about eight months. He was a Cornish man, but had gone from Durham to Manchester to join the force. His beat on the night of the 1st of August was from Chorlton village, along Chorlton-road, to its junction with Seymour-grove and Upper Chorlton-road. The junction is known as West Point, and is near Manley Hall. The officer’s beat terminated there, and from that place he would retrace his steps to Chorlton village. The junction is a triangular piece of ground, from which three roads diverge――Chorlton-road, Upper Chorlton-road, and Seymour-grove――and there is also a small occupation road leading from that triangle to Firs Farm.

Cock arrived at West Point at midnight, and there he was met by Mr. Simpson, who was at that time a law student, and whose father resided in Upper Chorlton-road. They walked together a short distance along that road, and meeting Police-constable Beanland they stopped and conversed for a few minutes.

Whilst they were standing they observed a man walk out of the shadow of the overhanging trees in Upper Chorlton-road, and cross over the triangle to Seymour Grove. Here he stopped under a lamp, and, after gazing steadlastly at the officers, passed on. Beanland said to Cock, “Who’s that man?” and he replied that he did not know.

They watched the man go up Seymour-grove, but finding that he did not pass the gates leading to the house of a Mr. Gatrix, Beanland said he would go and see who the man was.

The officer accordingly went up to the gate, and finding it open passed in and went up to the house. He tried both doors and windows, and found them safe, and was turning to leave the grounds when he heard two shots, and saw two flashes of fire.

At the same time he heard some one shout, “Oh, murder, murder! I’m shot, I’m shot!” Scarcely half a minute had elapsed since he had left Cock, and, running back to the spot, he found the officer lying on the kerbstone. He was bleeding from a wound in the breast.

Police-sergeant Thompson, who was on duty in Whalley Range, and had heard the shots, came running up, and joined Beanland, at the same time that Mr. Simpson returned.

That gentleman also heard the firing when he was about two hundred yards from the end of Upper Chorlton-road. At that moment a night-soil cart came past, and the injured man was lifted into it and taken to Dr. Dill’s surgery in Lower Chorlton-road.

Cock was unsconcious when he arrived there, but after stimulants had been administered he revived a little, and was repeatedly asked who had shot him.

Once he said “I don’t know,” but afterwards relapsing into semi-unconsciousness, he said “Leave me a-be. Oh, Frank, you are killing me.” There was no one named Frank in the room.

He died shortly afterwards, and at the post-mortem examination made by Dr. Dill, a gun-shot wound was found in the breast near the right nipple.

The ball had struck the fourth rib, shattered the bone, and had then gone through the right lung to the spine, where it had lodged. Death had resulted from hæmorrhage, which was very great, both internal and external.

Suspicion fell upon three brothers named John, William, and Frank Habron, the first of whom had been employed for nine years, the second for seven years, and the third for eight years, by Mr. Francis Deakin, nurseryman, of Chorlton-lane. Cock being a young officer, was disposed to take notice of things that older and more experienced men would have tolerated with impunity.

He had not been long in the neighbourhood before he incurred the ill-will of the Habrons, and both John and William were heard to use threats of violence towards him. In July, Cock saw John and William the worse for drink, and he obtained summonses against them.

The case against William was heard on the 27th July, and he was fined 5s. and costs. The case against his brother was adjourned until the 1st August, and between those dates John, on several occasions, and William, at least once, was heard to threaten what they would do to Cock if he was not careful. At the adjourned hearing, John was fined 10s. 6d., and that very night Cock was murdered.

Cock had told his superior officers what these young men had been heard to say, and immediately after his death, Superintendant Bent went with Inspector Whittam and a large staff of officers to apprehend the two brothers.

They occupied one room――a sort of outhouse――upon the premises of Mr. Deakin, their employer; and as the officers went up Chorlton-lane the room was full in view, and they saw a light in the window. Superintendent Bent called up Mr. Deakin, and then went to the outhouse, and found that in the meantime the light had been put out, and the police having rapped at the door, which was opened by one of the brothers, the three were arrested.

Next day the prisoners were brought before the magistrates.

[Sidenote: No. 95.]

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