Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431: Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 — John Shaqi
Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431: Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852Various
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Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431: Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852
Various
Periodicals
I lifted my hand. 'Hurra! Take that, you cowardly lubber!' roared Dick
Redhead; and down went the avalanche of liquid, knocking not only the
pistol out of Wyatt's hand, but himself clean off his legs, and nearly
drowning Mary Ransome, her mother, and half-a-dozen others. A rope had
been made fast to one of the rafters, down which we all quietly slid
before the astonished smugglers could comprehend what had happened.
Resistance was then out of the question, and they did not attempt it.
I took Wyatt and one or two others into custody, for having contraband
spirits in their possession; and the others were permitted to make
themselves scarce as quickly as might be--a licence they promptly
availed themselves of.
I have but a few words to add. Henry Ransome died, I heard, not long
afterwards, of pulmonary consumption, brought on by the abuse of
alcoholic liquors, and his wife and daughter ultimately got into
respectable service. Mary Ransome married in due time, and with better
discretion than her mother, for she does, or did, keep one of the
branch post-offices in Bermondsey. Dr Lee disappeared from the
neighbourhood the instant the state of his leg enabled him to do so,
and I have never seen him since. John Wyatt, _alias_ Black Jack, was
transported for life, under the _alias_ of John Martin, for a highway
robbery near Fareham, in the year 1827. Lately I saw him on board the
convict hulk at Portsmouth.
AIR-TRAVELLING.
It may be generally known, that for some time extraordinary efforts
have been making to discover a method by which locomotion through the
air may be rendered as certain and practicable as locomotion by sea or
land. In this desperate enterprise, of bringing the principle of
aerostation into regular use, certain individuals in Paris have taken
the lead. Our belief, like that of others, is, that plans of this kind
will fail, as they have hitherto done; at the same time, we think it
would be improper to dogmatise on the subject, and will only say, that
if travelling by balloon becomes one of the established things of the
day, so much the better.
With these feelings, we have thought it consistent with our duty as
journalists, not to refuse publicity to an account of what was till
lately doing in Paris to forward practical aerostation--we say,
lately; for we are told by our correspondent, that the operations
towards perfecting the invention have been stopped by orders of the
French government, from an opinion that, if air-travelling were
introduced, it would be injurious to the custom-house, and
denationalise the country. This resolution of the French government is
to be regretted, not less on the score of science, than from the ruin
it has inflicted on the modest means of the ingenious operator. With
these preliminary explanations, we offer the following paper, just as
handed to us by a respectable party conversant with the details to
which he refers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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