All the modern examples of THE “GALLOWS” LITERATURE OF THE STREETS come not only from different printers and publishers, but from distant towns,--London, Birmingham, Lincoln, and Preston, but they have all the same stamp. And the whole of the last dying speeches and confessions, trials, sentences from what ever part of the country they come, run in the same form of quaint and circumstantial detail, appeals to heaven, to young men, to young women, to christians in general, and moral reflections. The narrative, embracing trial, biography, &c., is usually prepared by the printer, being a condensation from the accounts in the newspapers. It is then necessary to add the “copy of verses.” Many of these are clearly by the same hand, probably one of the five or six well-known authors, who also chaunt their own verses in the streets. And with regard to this matter--“Time being the essence of the contract,”--it must also be noted that many of the most popular “Death-verses” being composed on the spur of the moment for the purpose of being sung while all the town is ringing with the event, all niceties of rhyme, metre, and orthography have to be utterly disregarded. “I gets,” says one of the fraternity, “I gets a shilling a copy for the verses _written by the wretched culprit_ the night previous to his execution.” “And I,” says another, “did the helegy on Rush. I didn’t write it to horder; I knew that they would want a copy of verses from the wretched culprit. And when the publisher read it; ‘that’s the thing for the streets,’ he says. But I only got a shilling for it.” “It’s the same poet as does ’em all,” says a third authority, “and the same tip: _no more nor a bob for nothing_.” This was paltry pay under any circumstances, but still more so when we find that in the case of the chief modern murders these “Execution Ballads” commanded a most enormous sale, thus: Of Rush’s murder 2,500,000 copies Of the Mannings 2,500,000 ” Of Courvoisier 1,666,000 ” Of Greenacre 1,650,000 ” Of Corder (Maria Martin) 1,166,000 ” Of the Five Pirates (Flowery Land) 290,000 ” Of Müller 280,000 ” Of Constance Kent (trial only) 150,000 ” Of Jeffery (1866) 60,000 ” Of Forward (Ramsgate) 30,000 ”