The Chronicles of Crime or The New Newgate Calendar. v. 1/2: being a series of memoirs and anecdotes of notorious characters who have outraged the laws of Great Britain from the earliest period to 1841.Pelham, Camden
History
The Chronicles of Crime or The New Newgate Calendar. v. 1/2: being a series of memoirs and anecdotes of notorious characters who have outraged the laws of Great Britain from the earliest period to 1841.
Pelham, Camden
Crime -- Great Britain; Criminals -- Great Britain; Newgate (Prison : London, England)
"In the second place, the disappearance of Clarke is suggested as an
argument of his being dead; but the uncertainty of such an inference
from that, and the fallibility of all conclusions of such a sort from
such a circumstance, are too obvious and too notorious to require
instances; yet superseding many, permit me to produce a very recent one,
and that afforded by this Castle.
"In June 1757, William Thompson, for all the vigilance of this place,
in open daylight and double-ironed, made his escape, and,
notwithstanding an immediate inquiry set on foot, the strictest search,
and all advertisement, was never heard of since. If, then, Thompson got
off unseen, through all these difficulties, how very easy it was for
Clarke, when none of them opposed him! But what would be thought of a
prosecution commenced against any one seen last with Thompson?
"Permit me next, my lord, to observe a little upon the bones which have
been discovered. It is said (which perhaps is saying very far) that
these are the skeleton of a man. It is possible, indeed, it may; but is
there any certain known criterion which incontestably distinguishes the
sex in human bones? Let it be considered, my lord, whether the
ascertaining of this point ought not to precede any attempt to identify
them?
"The place of their depositum, too, claims much more attention than is
commonly bestowed upon it; for of all places in the world, none could
have mentioned any one wherein there was greater certainty of finding
human bones than a hermitage, except he should point out a churchyard;
hermitages, in time past, being not only places of religious retirement,
but of burial too: and it has scarce or never been heard of, but that
every cell now known contains or contained these relics of humanity,
some mutilated and some entire. I do not inform, but give me leave to
remind your lordship, that here sat solitary Sanctity, and here the
hermit or the anchoress hoped that repose for their bones when dead they
here enjoyed when living.
"All the while, my lord, I am sensible this is known to your lordship,
and many in this Court, better than to me; but it seems necessary to my
case that others, who have not at all, perhaps, adverted to things of
this nature, and may have concern in my trial, should be made acquainted
with it. Suffer me then, my lord, to produce a few of many evidences
that these cells were used as repositories of the dead, and to enumerate
a few in which human bones have been found, as it happened in this
question; lest, to some, that accident might seem extraordinary, and,
consequently, occasion prejudice.
"1. The bones, as was supposed, of the Saxon saint, Dubritius, were
discovered buried in his cell at Guy's Cliff, near Warwick; as appears
from the authority of Sir William Dugdale.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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