The Chronicles of Crime or The New Newgate Calendar. v. 2/2: being a series of memoirs and anecdotes of notorious characters who have outraged the laws of Great Britain from the earliest period to 1841Pelham, Camden
History
The Chronicles of Crime or The New Newgate Calendar. v. 2/2: 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)
The prisoner was then removed to Aylesbury jail, but not until he had
made repeated new attempts to destroy his own life. He viewed the body
of his murdered victim without the smallest degree of agitation or
excitement; and on his arrival in the prison, he dictated a letter to
King, the jailer, for his mother. He was subsequently visited by Mr.
Ashfield, the chaplain of the jail, by whom he was brought to a proper
sense of his situation. His mother, sister, and a clerk in Sir R.
Burnett's establishment, subsequently reached Aylesbury jail from
London, and at the entreaty of the first named individual, the wretched
prisoner made the following singular statement as to his inducement to
commit the horrid crime of which he had been guilty. He said, "I and
Abraham went to the Saracen's Head, Snowhill, and got upon the Liverpool
coach: I saw two men in deep conversation with him, and two gentlemen
were on the coach; the two men who spoke with Abraham I knew to be
resurrection-men; and I was convinced that Abraham was agreeing to sell
my body to them for the surgeons, two of whom were on the coach. Just
before the coach started, one of the resurrection-men, who was dressed
like a sailor, got a bottle of gin, and on the road they wanted me to
drink two glasses for their one. The men afterwards threw the bottle
away, but purchased another on the road. I and Abraham got down at the
White Lion, Brick-hill, and the landlord and others were talking about
robberies and murders: I did not like the conversation, and I went and
slept at the public-house opposite. On the following morning I went to
the White Lion, and the landlord said to me,--'It's lucky for you that
you were not up sooner, or your body would have been half way to London
by this time.' I got on another coach with Abraham, and passing by a
common, I jumped down and ran away; Abraham followed with my gun. When I
got near a wood I heard the sound of horns and trumpets, and I thought
the resurrection-men were after me, and that Abraham intended to kill
me, and I am sure if I had not killed him he would have killed me." This
remarkable statement was reduced to writing, and was produced at the
trial of the unfortunate prisoner, which took place at Aylesbury, on
Tuesday, the 8th of March, in the same year.
The evidence, which was then adduced, was precisely similar in its
details to that which we have stated in substance; and the prisoner in
his defence addressed the jury in an unconnected strain, repeating his
belief that an intention existed to murder him. Witnesses were then
called, who swore that they believed that the prisoner was insane, and
the jury returned a verdict, finding the prisoner guilty of killing the
deceased, but declared that he was of unsound intellect at the time.
The prisoner was thereupon ordered to be detained during His Majesty's
pleasure, and was subsequently confined in an asylum for lunatics.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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