The contempt of the majesty of the law was not limited to the lower and dangerous classes. A gentleman’s maid-servant, having resisted the parish officers who had a distress warrant upon the gentleman’s house for unpaid rates, was committed by the magistrates to Newgate. “The gentleman,” by name William Frankland, on learning what had happened, armed himself with a brace of pistols, and went to the office where the justices were then sitting, and asked which of them had dared to commit his servant to prison? “Mr. Miller,” so runs the account, “smilingly replied, ‘I did,’ on which the gentleman fired one of his pistols and shot Mr. Miller in the side, but it is thought did not wound him mortally. He was instantly secured and committed to Newgate.” At the following Old Bailey sessions, he was tried under the Black Act, when he pleaded insanity. This did not avail him, and although the jury in convicting him strongly recommended him to mercy he was sentenced to death. Another case of still more flagrant contempt of court may fitly be introduced here. At the trial of a woman named Housden for coining at the Old Bailey in 1712, a man named Johnson, an ex-butcher and highwayman by profession, came into court and desired to speak to her. Mr. Spurling, the principal turnkey of Newgate, told him no person could be permitted to speak to the prisoner, whereupon Johnson drew out a pistol and shot Mr. Spurling dead upon the spot, the woman Housden loudly applauding his act. The court did not easily recover from its consternation, but presently the recorder suspended the trial of the woman for coining, and as soon as an indictment could be prepared, Johnson was arraigned for the murder, convicted, and then and there sentenced to death, the woman Housden being also sentenced at the same time as an accessory before and after the fact. Various causes are given for this great prevalence of crime. The long and impoverishing wars of the early years of the century, which saddled us with the national debt, no doubt produced much distress, and drove thousands who could not or would not find honest work, into evil ways. Manners among the highest and the lowest were generally profligate. Innumerable places of public diversion, ridottos, balls, masquerades, tea-gardens, and wells, offered crowds a ready means for self-indulgence. Classes aped the habits of the classes above their own, and the love of luxurious gratification “reached to the dregs of the people,” says Fielding, “who, not being able by the fruits of honest labour to support the state which they affect, they disdain the wages to which their industry would entitle them, and abandoning themselves to idleness, the more simple and poor-spirited betake themselves to a state of starving and beggary, while those of more art and courage become thieves, sharpers, and robbers.”