Sir John was an intelligent man; Windham used to say of him that he was very near being a clever man. He was a sort of busy idler; and his ruling passion was that of visiting remarkable criminals in prison, and obtaining their histories from their own lips. A murder had been committed, by one Patch, upon a Mr. Bligh, at Deptford; the evidence was circumstantial, but the inference of his guilt was almost irresistible; still many well-disposed persons doubted the man's guilt, and amongst them was Sir John, who thought the anxiety could only be relieved by Patch's confession. For this end, Sir John importuned the poor wretch incessantly, but in vain. Patch persisted in asserting his innocence, till, wearied with Hippisley's applications, he assured the Baronet that he would reveal to him, on the scaffold, all that he knew of Mr. Bligh's death. Flattered with being made the depository of this mysterious communication, Sir John mounted the scaffold with Patch, and was seen for some minutes in close conference with him. It happened that a simple old woman from the country was in the crowd at the execution. Her eyes, intent upon the awful scene, were fixed, by an accidental misdirection, upon Sir John, whom she mistook for the person who was about to be executed; and not waiting till the criminal was actually turned off, she went away with the wrong impression; the peculiar face, and above all, the peculiar nose (a most miraculous organ), of Hippisley, being indelibly impressed upon her memory. Not many days after, the old lady met Sir John in Cheapside; the certainty that he was Patch, seized her so forcibly that she screamed out to the passing crowd, "It's Patch, it's Patch; I saw him hanged; Heaven deliver me!"--and then fainted. When this incident was first related at the Steaks, a mock inquest was set on foot, to decide whether Sir John was Patch or not, and unanimously decided in the affirmative. Cobb, Secretary of the East India Company, was another choice spirit at the Steaks: once, when he filled the vice-chair, he so worried the poor president, an Alderman, that he exclaimed, "Would to Heaven, I had another vice-president, so that I had a _gentleman_ opposite to me!"--"Why should you wish any such thing?" rejoined Cobb; "you cannot be more opposite to a gentleman than you are at present."