was hired, himself a convict, whose fees for self and wife were twelve guineas. Then came the cost of the gallows, £4. 12_s._; and finally the funeral, cart, coffin, and other petty expenses, amounting to £7. 10_s._, making nearly £50 as the total expense. CHAPTER VIII NEWGATE NOTORIETIES Diminution in certain kinds of crime—Fewer street robberies—Corresponding increase in cases of fraud, forgeries, jewel and bullion robberies—Great commercial frauds—Offences against the person confined to murder and manslaughter—The Cato Street conspiracy—Thistlewood's history—Discovery of the plot—The conspirators' plan and its overthrow—Their trial and execution at the Old Bailey—Attacks on the sovereign—Oxford fires at Queen Victoria—Celebrated frauds and forgeries—Fauntleroy—The last execution for forgery—Joseph Hunton the Quaker—Sir Robert Peel's bill to amend forgery laws—The Forgery Act—Latest cases of abduction—Edward Gibbon Wakefield and Miss Turner—The most remarkable murders of the epoch—Thurtell, Hunt, and Probert kill Mr. Weare—Burke and Hall—Their imitators, Bishop and Williams, in London—Greenacre and Mrs. Gale murder Hannah Brown—Horrible means of disposing of the corpse—Detection, trial, and sentence—Courvoisier murders his master—An epidemic of murder. The record of crime has been brought down to the second decade of the last century. Some space should be devoted to criminal occurrences of a more recent date, only premising that as accounts become more voluminous I shall be compelled to deal with fewer cases, taking in preference those which are typical and invested with peculiar interest. It is somewhat remarkable that a marked change soon comes over the Calendar. Certain crimes, those against the person especially, diminished gradually. They became less easy or remunerative. Police protection was better and more effective; the streets of London were well lighted, the suburbs were more populous and regularly patrolled. People, moreover, were getting into the habit of carrying but little cash about them, and no valuables but their watches or personal jewelry. Street robberies offered fewer inducements to depredators, and evil-doers were compelled to adopt other methods of preying upon their fellows. This led to a rapid and marked increase in all kinds of fraud; and prominent in the criminal annals of Newgate in these later years will be found numerous remarkable instances of this class of offence—forgeries committed systematically, and for long periods, as in the case of Fauntleroy, to cover enormous defalcations; the fabrication of deeds, wills, and false securities for the purpose of misappropriating funds or feloniously obtaining cash; thefts of bullion, bank-notes, specie, and gold-dust, planned with consummate ingenuity, eluding the keenest vigilance, and carried out with reckless daring; jewel-boxes cleverly stolen under the very noses of owners