Old and New London, Volume I: A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its PlacesThornbury, Walter
History
Old and New London, Volume I: A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its Places
Thornbury, Walter
London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- History
The Law Institute, that Grecian temple that has wedged itself into the
south-west end of Chancery Lane, was built in the stormy year of 1830.
On the Lord Mayor's day that year there was a riot; the Reform Bill was
still pending, and it was feared might not pass, for the Lords were
foaming at the mouth. The Iron Duke was detested as an opposer of all
change, good or bad; the new police were distasteful to the people;
above all, there was no Lord Mayor's show, and no man in brass armour to
look at. The rioters assembled outside No. 62, Fleet Street, were there
harangued by some dirty-faced demagogue, and then marched westward. At
Temple Bar the zealous new "Peelers" slammed the old muddy gates, to
stop the threatening mob; but the City Marshal, red in the face at this
breach of City privilege, re-opened them, and the mob roared approval
from a thousand distorted mouths. The more pugnacious reformers now
broke the scaffolding at the Law Institute into dangerous cudgels, and
some 300 of the unwashed patriots dashed through the Bar towards
Somerset House, full of vague notions of riot, and perhaps (delicious
thought!) plunder. But at St. Mary's, Commissioner Mayne and his men in
the blue tail-coats received the roughs in battle array, and at the
first charge the coward mob broke and fled.
In 1815, No. 68, Chancery Lane, not far from the north-east corner, was
the scene of an event which terminated in the legal murder of a young
and innocent girl. It was here, at Olibar Turner's, a law stationer's,
that Eliza Fenning lived, whom we have already mentioned when we entered
Hone's shop, in Fleet Street. This poor girl, on the eve of a happy
marriage, was hanged at Newgate, on the 26th of July, 1815, for
attempting to poison her master and mistress. The trial took place at
the Old Bailey on April 11th of the same year, and Mr. Gurney conducted
the prosecution before that rough, violent, unfeeling man, Sir John
Sylvester (_alias_ Black Jack), Recorder of London, who, it is said,
used to call the calendar "a bill of fare." The arsenic for rats, kept
in a drawer by Mr. Turner, had been mixed with the dough of some yeast
dumplings, of which all the family, including the poor servant, freely
partook. There was no evidence of malice, no suspicion of any ill-will,
except that Mrs. Turner had once scolded the girl for being free with
one of the clerks. It was, moreover, remembered that the girl had
particularly pressed her mistress to let her make some yeast dumplings
on the day in question. The defence was shamefully conducted. No one
pressed the fact of the girl having left the dough in the kitchen for
some time untended; nor was weight laid on the fact of Eliza Fenning's
own danger and sufferings. All the poor, half-paralysed, Irish girl
could say was, "I am truly innocent of the whole charge--indeed I am. I
liked my place. I was very comfortable." And there was pathos in those
simple, stammering words, more than in half the self-conscious
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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