The stories regarding the last days in life of Sarah Malcolm would
occupy more pages than this book can afford to spend on them. To the
last she hoped for a reprieve. After the "dead warrant" had arrived, to
account for a paroxysm of terror that seized her, she said that it was
from shame at the idea that, instead of going to Tyburn, she was to be
hanged in Fleet Street among all the people that knew her, she having
just heard the news in chapel. This too was one of her lies. She had
heard the news hours before. A turnkey, pointing out the lie to her,
urged her to confess for the easing of her mind.
One account I have of the Tanfield Court murders speaks of the custom
there was at this time of the bellman of St Sepulchre's appearing
outside the gratings of the condemned hold just after midnight on the
morning of executions.[25] This performance was provided for by bequest
from one Robert Dove, or Dow, a merchant-tailor. Having rung his bell
to draw the attention of the condemned (who, it may be gathered, were
not supposed to be at all in want of sleep), the bellman recited these
verses:
All you that in the condemned hold do lie,
Prepare you, for to-morrow you shall die.
Watch all and pray; the hour is drawing near
That you before th' Almighty must appear.
Examine well yourselves, in time repent,
That you may not t'eternal flames be sent:
And when St 'Pulchre's bell to-morrow tolls,
The Lord above have mercy on your souls!
Past twelve o'clock![26]
A fellow-prisoner or a keeper bade Sarah Malcolm heed what the bellman
said, urging her to take it to heart. Sarah said she did, and threw the
bellman down a shilling with which to buy himself a pint of wine.
Sarah, as we have seen, was denied the honour of procession to Tyburn.
Her sentence was that she was to be hanged in Fleet Street, opposite the
Mitre Court, on the 7th of March, 1733. And hanged she was accordingly.
She fainted in the tumbril, and took some time to recover. Her last
words were exemplary in their piety, but in the face of her vindictive
lying, unretracted to the last, it were hardly exemplary to repeat them.
She was buried in the churchyard of St Sepulchre's.
V: -- ALMOST A LADY[27]
Born (probably illegitimately) in a fisherman's cottage, reared in a
workhouse, employed in a brothel, won at cards by a royal duke, mistress
of that duke, married to a baron, received at Court by three kings
(though not much in the way of kings), accused of cozenage and
tacitly of murder, died full of piety, 'cutting up' for close on
L150,000--there, as it were in a nutshell, you have the life of Sophie
Dawes, Baronne de Feucheres.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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