Many curious items dealing with this custom may be found in the columns of old newspapers. The following particulars, for example, are drawn from the _Morning Post_, of 27th April, 1810:--"The officers appointed to execute the ceremony of driving the stake through the dead body of James Cowling, a deserter from the London Militia, who deprived himself of existence by cutting his throat at a public-house in Gilbert Street, Clare Market, in consequence of which a verdict of self-murder, very properly delayed the business until twelve o'clock on Wednesday night, when the deceased was buried in the cross roads at the end of Blackmoor Street, Clare Market." The most painful case which has come under our notice occurred at Newcastle-on-Tyne. Martha Wilson, the widow of a seaman, was last seen alive by her neighbours on Sunday, the 13th April, 1817, and on the following Tuesday she was found dead, suspended from a cord tied to a nail in her room at the Trinity House. She was subject to fits of melancholy, and had threatened to destroy herself. On the Wednesday following an inquest was held, and the jury returned a verdict of _felo de se_. Her mortal remains were buried in the public highway at night, and the strange sight was watched by a large gathering of the public. After a stake had been driven through the body of the poor widow the grave was closed. The last interment at cross roads in London of which we have been able to discover any account occurred in June, 1823, when a man named Griffiths, who had committed suicide, was buried at the junction of Eaton Street and Grosvenor Place and the King's Road. The burial took place about half-past one in the morning, and the old practice of driving a stake through the body in this case was not performed. Perhaps the few particulars we have given will be sufficient to fully illustrate the old-time custom of the burial of suicides at cross roads. At last the impropriety of the proceedings was forced upon Parliament, and on the 8th July, 1823, the Royal Assent was given to an Act "to alter and amend the law relating to the interment of the remains of any person found _felo de se_." The statute is brief, consisting of only two clauses, viz.:--