The Magistrates of the Liberty of Peterborough had a general commission of gaol delivery. There are people living in Peterborough who recollect a man being hanged on Butcher’s Piece, against the North Bank, under sentence by the local magistrates, and I should imagine there was as much heard of it as there is news given in this scrap of print. In 1820 an Act of Parliament was passed enabling Magistrates at local jurisdictions to commit persons charged with capital offences for trial at the Assizes. In the Peterborough Court no counsel used to appear, and just imagine what a sensation would be excited if we were now told by our Court of Quarter Sessions that by authority of their Charter they were going to hang a man. I recollect when I was a boy at school, just before I came to Peterborough, I have been into the Old Bailey, and I have seen put into the dock at the close of the Sessions 15 or 16 men and women, all of whom were sentenced to be executed. Sheep stealing, horse stealing, cow stealing, forgery, robbing a dwelling house to a certain amount were all at that time capital offences, and you would see in the London newspapers that the Recorder of the City had been down to Windsor to make his report to the King, and that there were so many cases of death sentences, all of which his Majesty was graciously pleased to respite, except some who were to be executed as a deterrent example. There is a novel of Theodore Hook’s which gives a most striking account, partly humorous, and partly tragic, of the proceedings and sentences at the Old Bailey in those days. One recollects in the course of his professional experience many cases of interest. Many striking cases of daring burglaries have been dealt with in Peterborough. At Glinton a house was broken into by five or six people, most convincing evidence was given of their violence and intimidation, and the coolness of the witnesses on the trial of the prisoners. The witnesses, as they very frequently are, were ordered out of Court, and as they were called they pointed out and identified particular prisoners. After this had been done two or three times, the gentlemen in the dock changed their positions, thinking that probably the witnesses had been tutoring one another, and that they would then defeat them; but it did not answer, and it being pointed out to the jury, it sealed their conviction, convincing them that the witnesses were accurate, and not tutored. The same thing was mentioned in the papers a few days ago as having occurred when the prisoners were in the dock in Dublin for the Phœnix Park murders. Another case occurred where a gang who had been the terror of the district, all strangers, broke into a house, the Thirty Acre Farm, at Fengate, and striking coolness and courage was shown by a girl who was pulled out of her bed and threatened with death to compel her to open her box and produce her money. She afterwards identified her assailants, some by their voices even.