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 horrid discovery created a very great degree of alarm; and Mr.
Bicknell, a respectable solicitor of the place, having despatched
messengers to Bow-street to communicate the dreadful intelligence, some
officers were immediately sent down to the spot to make the necessary
inquiries. An inquest was held upon the bodies in the course of the
week, but no circumstances were elicited which could lead to the
discovery of the perpetrators of the deed; and on the following Sunday
the remains of the unfortunate deceased were interred in Greenwich
churchyard, in the presence of an immense concourse of spectators.
During the three succeeding weeks several persons were apprehended on
suspicion, but nothing material could be alleged against them; but at
length a complete discovery took place, and the murderer was pointed out
by his own sister. This woman was married to a man named Godwin, and
resided with her husband at Peckham. About a week after the murders had
been committed, her brother, Charles Hussey, came to her house, and said
he was going to see his brother, who resided at Basingstoke. He went to
a box of his under a bed and took something out; she supposed it was
money, for he had sixty-seven pounds left him four days after the
murders were committed, by a sister, who cut her throat, in
Queen-street, Cheapside, where she had lived. Hussey told his sister he
should return in a week, but he did not do so for nearly a fortnight.
She then said to him, "Oh, Charles! I have been so uneasy during your
absence! I have had such frightful dreams, and could not think what
detained you." He replied, "Why, what could cause you to dream?" and
appeared greatly agitated. After he had gone away, Mrs. Godwin said to
her husband, "I think there is something in Charles's box there should
not be;" his behaviour caused her to say so; and with one of her own
keys she opened the box, when the first things that met her eye were a
pair of watches, which she and her husband suspected to have belonged to
the late Mr. Bird. Their suspicion was confirmed by Hussey not returning
according to promise, and, with a detestation of so black a crime which
did them infinite honour, they repaired to Greenwich and gave
information of the circumstance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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