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)
At two o'clock the body was exposed on the table in the centre of the
Shire Hall; it was naked from the navel upwards. The crucial operation
had been performed, and the skin of the breast and stomach turned back
on each side. The body measured, as it lay, five feet five inches in
length, and presented a very muscular appearance. The face and throat
were somewhat swollen and discoloured, the right eye was open, and the
left partially so; the mouth was also open sufficiently to show the
teeth. The body was taken to the hospital the next day to be dissected,
in pursuance of the sentence.
After the execution a spirited bidding took place for the rope which was
used by the hangman; and as much as a guinea an inch was obtained for
it. Large sums were offered for the pistols and dagger which were used
in the murder, but they became the property of the sheriff of the
county, who very properly refused to put them up to public competition.
A piece of the skin of the wretched malefactor, which had been tanned,
was exhibited for a long time afterwards at the shop of a leather-seller
in Oxford-street.
We regret to say that little credit is to be attached to the confession
which was made by the unhappy man on the night before his execution;
for, taking the case in all its bearings, there can be little doubt that
the murder was the result of premeditation. The pistols which the
wretched malefactor carried with him had, according to the testimony of
witnesses who were called for the defence, long been in his possession;
but we are at a loss to know with what object he should have carried
them in his pocket, loaded as they were, on the day of the murder,
unless with a preconceived intention of taking away the life of his
unhappy paramour. Upon consideration of the main features of the case,
we fear that, revolting as such a conclusion must be to all persons
possessing the common feelings of humanity, it must be supposed that the
unhappy Maria Marten was enticed by her bloodthirsty assassin to the Red
Barn, for the sole purpose of being there murdered. Corder's possession
of the gun and the pistols, as well as the circumstance of his having
been seen carrying the pickaxe to the barn, all tend to confirm this
belief; and if a motive be looked for sufficient to induce the
commission of this most heinous offence, a second murder, namely that of
the infant child of the malefactor and his victim, and a desire to
conceal a secret which he knew to be in the possession of the latter,
and which might have been employed by her to the detriment of her
seducer, may be at once assigned. There can be little hesitation in
imputing so fearful an addition to his offence as that to which we have
alluded to a man, whose cold-blooded villany shines through every
passage of his connexion with his miserable victim, and of his
subsequent life. His conduct in buoying up the anxious and inquiring
hopes of the girl's mother after the murder, in so long residing on the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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