Curiosities of Street Literature. Various

with your mother you shall die, the wretched father said—

      He seized them by their little legs, and dashed them on the floor,

      And soon their tender lives were gone, alas! to be no more.

      The eldest child seeing what was done, upon his knees did rise,

      And loud for mercy he did call, whilst tears were in his eyes—

      Oh, Dadda dear, oh, Dadda dear, and asked me for a kiss,

      Why are you going to murder me, what have I done amiss?

      Again for mercy he did plead whilst pearly tears did fall,

      The cruel father’s hardened heart, was deaf unto his call—

      Again took up the iron bar, and beat him on the head,

      And soon the blood of the dear boy, was spilt upon the bed.

      It was early the next morning, before the break of day,

      He by Policemen taken was, and to prison sent straightway,

      Where till the Assizes he must lie, his trial for to stand,

      When blood for blood will be required, by the laws of God and man.

      [Smith, Printer, High Street, London.

A REMARKABLE PUNISHMENT

       OF

       MURDER.

       Table of Contents

      The following melancholy account was given by a very worthy man, Mr. Thomas Marshall, a Church warden well-known and respected by all.

      Some years ago, a young gentleman and lady came out of Scotland, as is supposed, upon a matrimonial affair. As they were travelling through the country, they were robbed and murdered, at a place called the Winnetts, near Castleton. Their bones were found about two years ago, by some miners who were sinking an Engine-pit at the place.

      One James Ashton, of Castleton, who died about a fortnight ago, and who was one of the murderers, was most miserably afflicted and tormented in his conscience. He had been dying, it was thought, for ten weeks; but could not die till he had confessed the whole affair. But when he had done this, he died immediately.

      He said, Nicholas Cock, Thomas Hall, John Bradshaw, Francis Butler, and himself, meeting the above gentleman and lady in the Winnets, pulled them off their horses, and dragged them into a barn belonging to one of them, and took from them two hundred pounds. Then seizing on the young gentleman, the young lady (whom Ashton said was the fairest woman he ever saw) entreated them, in the most piteous manner, not to kill him, as she was the cause of his coming into that country. But, notwithstanding all her intreaties, they cut his throat from ear to ear! They then seized the young lady herself, and, though she entreated them, on her knees, to spare her life, and turn her out naked! yet one of the wretches drove a Miner’s pick into her head, when she dropped down dead at his feet. Having thus dispatched them both, they left their bodies in the barn, and went away with their booty.

      At night they returned to the barn, in order to take them away; but they were so terrified with a frightful noise that they durst not move them: and so it was the second night. But the third night, Ashton said it was only the Devil, who would not hurt him; so they took the bodies away and buried them.

      They then divided the money: and as Ashton was a coal carrier to a Smelt Mill, on the Sheffield Road, he bought horses with his share; but they all died in a little time. Nicholas Cock fell from a precipice, near the place where they had committed the murder, and was killed. Thomas Hall hanged himself. John Bradshaw was walking near the place where they had buried the bodies, when a stone fell from the hill and killed him on the spot, to the astonishment of every one who knew it. Francis Butler, attempted many times to hang himself, but was prevented; however, he went mad, and died in a most miserable manner.

      Thus, though they escaped the hand of human justice (which seldom happens in such a case), yet the Invisible Hand found them out, even in this world. How true then it is, that He art about our path, and about our bed, and spiest out all our ways!

      Evans, Printer, Long Lane.

THE LIFE, TRIAL, CHARACTER, AND CONFESSION

       OF

       The Man that was Hanged

       IN FRONT OF NEWGATE, AND WHO

       IS NOW ALIVE!

       WITH FULL PARTICULARS OF THE RESUSCITATED.

       Table of Contents

      “There are but two classes of persons in the world—those who are hanged, and those who are not hanged; and it has been my lot to belong to the former.”

      There are few men, perhaps, who have not a hundred times in the course of their life, felt a curiosity to know what their sensations would be if they were compelled to lay life down. The very impossibility, in all ordinary cases, of obtaining any approach to this knowledge, is an incessant spur pressing on the fancy in its endeavours to arrive at it. Thus poets and painters have ever made the estate of a man condemned to die one of their favourite themes of comment or description. Footboys and prentices hang themselves almost every other day, conclusively—missing their arrangement for slipping the knot half way—out of a seeming instinct to try the secrets of that fate, which—less in jest than in earnest—they feel an inward monition may become their own. And thousand of men, in early life, are uneasy until they have mounted a breach, or fought a duel, merely because they wish to know, experimentally, that their nerves are capable of carrying them through that peculiar ordeal.

      Now I am in a situation to speak from experience, upon that very interesting question—the sensations attendant upon a passage from life to death. I have been HANGED, and am ALIVE—perhaps there are no three other men at this moment, in Europe, who can make the same declaration.

      Before this statement meets the public eye, I shall have quitted England for ever; therefore I have no advantage to gain from its publication. And, for the vanity of knowing, when I shall be a sojourner in a far country, that my name—for good or ill—is talked about in this—such fame would scarcely do even my pride much good, when I dare not lay claim to its identity, But the cause which excites me to write is this—My greatest pleasure, through life, has been the perusal of any extraordinary narratives of fact. An account of a shipwreck in which hundreds have perished; of a plague which has depopulated towns or cities; anecdotes and inquiries connected with the regulations of prisons, hospitals, or lunatic receptacles; nay, the very police reports of a common newspaper—as relative to matters of reality, have always excited a degree of interest in my mind, which cannot be produced by the best-invented tale of fiction. Because I believe, therefore, that to persons of a temper like my own, the reading of that which I have to relate will afford very high gratification;—and because I know also, that what I describe can do mischief to no one, while it may prevent the symptoms and details of a very rare consummation from being lost; for these reasons I am desirous, as far as a very limited education will permit me, to write a plain history of the strange fortunes and miseries to which, during the last twelve months, I have been subjected.

      I have stated already, that I have been hanged and am alive. I can gain nothing now by misrepresentation—I was GUILTY of the act for which I suffered. There are individuals of respectability whom my conduct already has disgraced, and I will not revive their shame and grief by publishing my name. But it stands in the list of capital