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)
If the appellee were so far vanquished that he could not or would not
fight any longer, he was adjudged to be hanged immediately: and then, as
well as if he were killed in battle, Providence was deemed to have
determined in favour of the truth, and his blood was declared attainted.
But if he killed the appellant, or could maintain the fight from
sun-rising till the stars appeared in the evening, he was acquitted. So
also, if the appellant became recreant, and pronounced the word
_craven_, he lost his _liberam legem_, and became infamous; and the
appellee recovered his damages and was for ever quit, not only of the
appeal, but of all indictments likewise of the same offence. There were
cases where the appellant might counterplead, and oust the appellee from
his trial by battle: these were vehement presumption or sufficient proof
that the appeal was true: or where the appellant was under fourteen, or
above sixty years of age, or was a woman or a priest, or a peer, or,
lastly, a citizen of London, because the peaceful habits of the citizens
were supposed to unfit them for battle.
It is almost needless to add, that this remnant of barbarity has now
ceased to exist, an act of parliament, the introduction of which was
attributable to the above case, having removed it from the pages of the
lawbooks by which our courts are governed.
CHARLES HUSSEY.
EXECUTED FOR MURDER.
The murders of the Marrs and the Williamsons were not yet forgotten,
when others of a nature equally atrocious and mysterious were committed
upon the persons of Mr. Bird, a retired tallow-chandler, who lived at
Greenwich, and who was eighty-three years of age, and his housekeeper
Mary Simmons, aged forty-four, on the 8th February 1818.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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