James Greenacre who murdered his fiancée, Hannah Brown, by striking her a fatal blow in a fit of temper, will ever figure as a criminal of a very curious type. Many a deed like that which brought him to the scaffold has occasioned but a passing interest. It was the means he adopted for the purpose of evading the consequences of his crime that aroused the excitement and indignation of the people. He dismembered the body, and deliberately distributed it in broad daylight to widely different parts of the Metropolis. The discovery of the various parts of the body from time to time, the bringing of them together, and the final identification of the remains wrought up the public mind to a state of high tension, and after the culprit had been brought to justice many thousands visited the Exhibition to scan for themselves the features of his model which had been installed. It will be remembered that we are dealing with a period when the extreme penalty of the law was exacted in public, a condition of things which lasted till 1868, when it was enacted that all executions should take place privately within prison walls. The night before Greenacre’s execution at Newgate (the 2nd of May, 1837) hundreds slept on the prison steps and round about the neighbourhood of the old gaol. Crowds spent the night in taverns and lodging-houses, indulging in unseemly revelry and ribald and drunken dissipation. Nor were the spectators all drawn from the lowest class; all classes were represented. Positions within sight of the drop fetched from five shillings to a couple of guineas each, and a first-floor room overlooking the scaffold commanded as much as £12, no small price in those days. It is a grim story, but who has not been entertained by the account in the _Ingoldsby Legends_ of the way in which “My Lord Tomnoddy” failed to witness the launching into eternity of a doomed fellow creature? As the result of a happy thought from “Tiger Tim”-- “An’t please you, my Lord, there’s a man to be hang’d”-- Tomnoddy invites a party of convivial friends to enjoy the scene, for “To see a man swing At the end of a string, With his neck in a noose, will be quite a new thing.” So he Turns down the Old Bailey, Where, in front of the gaol, he Pulls up at the door of the gin-shop, and gaily Cries, “What must I fork out to-night, my trump, For the whole first-floor of the Magpie and Stump?” St. Sepulchre’s clock strikes eight, and God! ’tis a fearsome thing to see That pale wan man’s mute agony,-- The glare of that wild, despairing eye, Now bent on the crowd, now turn’d to the sky. Oh! ’twas a fearsome sight! Ah me! A deed to shudder at,--not to see. The clock strikes Nine! ’twas the last concluding stroke! And then--my Lord Tomnoddy awoke!