Although such an escape was a physical impossibility to Fauntleroy, there is a rational explanation of the strange superstition--referred to in this book--that he did not die on the scaffold, but was resuscitated, and lived abroad for many years. At eight o’clock on the evening of his death the body was taken by the undertakers, Gale and Barnard, to their premises opposite Newgate prison, where the coffin was fastened down immediately by order of the relatives, who had reason to fear that the morbid--attracted by the notoriety of the criminal--would seek by means of a bribe to view the remains. The flames of rumour are set ablaze by a tiny spark, and the fact that no one outside the prison saw the dead body of the forger may have revived popular faith in a favourite belief. The haste, too, in sealing up the shell may have excited suspicion. For in later days it is certain that many persons cherished the idea that Fauntleroy, more lucky than Jack Sheppard or Dr Dodd, whose friends tried in vain to restore them to life, had survived his execution. _Vide_ also _Notes and Queries_, First Series, viii. 270, ix. 445, x. 114, 233. Possibly that prince of inkslingers, G. W. M. Reynolds, may have had the Fauntleroy legend in his mind when he drew the picture of the resuscitated forger in the first part of his obscene and scurrilous romance, _The Mysteries of the Court of London_. Fauntleroy was buried in the cemetery at Bunhill Fields on Thursday, Dec. 2. NOTE IV.--_Old Stories Retold._ By George Walter Thornbury (1867), p. 290.