Beggars on HorsebackJesse, F. Tennyson (Fryniwyd Tennyson)
General
Beggars on Horseback
Jesse, F. Tennyson (Fryniwyd Tennyson)
Fiction; Short stories, English
"The Counsel for the Crown having opened the indictment, proceeded to
inform the Court and Jury that this prosecution was carried on by the
order, and at the expense of his Majesty (who is ever watchful to
preserve the lives, liberties, and properties of his subjects) against
the prisoner at the bar, Sophia Bendigo, for one of the most atrocious
crimes; the cruel, inhuman, and deliberate murder of her own father:
That the prisoner at the bar was the daughter and only child of Mr.
Constantine Bendigo, Squire of Troon, in the hundred of Penwith, a
gentleman both by his birth and education; that as she was the only, so
she was the beloved child of her father, who had spared no pains in
giving her a genteel, as well as a pious education; that her father,
indeed, had used this pious fraud (if he might be allowed that
expression) in saying that her fortune would be £10,000, to the end, he
supposed, that his daughter might be married suitable to such a fortune.
That in June of the preceding year one Capt. William Lucius Crandon came
to Penwith map-making, and hearing that Miss Bendigo was a £10,000
fortune, and having a mind to marry this fortune, notwithstanding he had
a wife and child alive, contrived to get acquainted with this family;
how well he succeeded, and how sadly for this family, this unhappy
catastrophe has shown. That Mr. Bendigo, having been informed that Mr.
Crandon was married, he desired his daughter to break off all
correspondence with him; that instead of doing so, she acquainted Mr.
Crandon with her father's command, who, instead of clearing his
character to her father's satisfaction, contrives the means and
persuades this beloved, this tenderly indulged daughter, to be an actor
in her father's destruction.
"That the Captain left Cornwall at the end of September, since when, on
the miscarriage of his plans, he had disappeared entirely; and soon
after he is gone, we find this wicked scheme beginning to be put into
execution. That on October 20, Mr. Bendigo found himself much disordered
after taking some tea, that next day, the prisoner having made him
another dish of tea, deceased had thought it to taste odd and sent it
downstairs; that Crandon, to hasten the work of destruction, sent a
letter to the prisoner, making use of an allegorical expression, not to
spare the powder, in order to keep the rust off the pebbles. That the
tea being too thin to admit of a larger quantity at the time, you will
find by the witnesses that shall be produced, that the prisoner did mix
a large quantity of the powder in a pan of water-gruel and gave some of
it to her father next day which had such terrible effects as to occasion
his death on the morning of the 23rd. That he would call the physicians
first, and they would prove that what was administered to the deceased
was poison and the cause of his death.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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