Through East Anglia in a Motor CarVincent, James Edmund
General
Through East Anglia in a Motor Car
Vincent, James Edmund
Norfolk (England) -- Description and travel; Suffolk (England) -- Description and travel
Truth to tell, it was not the first time of reading. The late Sir Llewelyn
Turner, of Carnarvon, was one of those rare men who, inhabiting remote
corners of the provinces, escape provincialism and retain intelligent
appreciation of public affairs and a sympathetic interest in all sorts of
events. In the year 1902, having committed to paper his memories and
opinions upon a large number of subjects, and being all but eighty years
old, he entrusted me with the task of preparing his MS. for the printers;
and he had the satisfaction of seeing himself in print, to the extent of
some five hundred pages with illustrations, before he died. Among the
miscellaneous chapters of the book is one entitled "Stanfield Hall and its
Terrible Tragedies." It is, of course, far too long for quotation, but it
is also a treasure-house of nice points, some of them perhaps new even to
precise students of the history of crime.
"In the year 18-- I accepted an invitation from my valued friend,
connection, and old schoolfellow, Colonel Boileau, to pay him a visit in
this interesting old moated house, the scene of fearful murders and
bloodshed, viz., the murders of Mr. Isaac Jermy, the Recorder of Norwich,
of his son Mr. Isaac Jermy Jermy, and the shooting of Mrs. Jermy Jermy, the
son's wife, and her maid, by probably one of the greatest scoundrels that
ever disgraced humanity, James Bloomfield Rush." The quotation will serve
to show that my old friend's literary method is too leisurely and minute to
justify the repetition of the story in his own words. Truth to tell he
rambled somewhat and was not unduly particular about the sequence of
events. Still it may be possible after study of his monograph, to produce a
narrative of this crime having something more of freshness than would
follow from reference to the text-books of crime; for these murders, it
must be remembered, were on a colossal scale, and the case, although simple
enough in its legal aspect, has a place among the celebrated crimes by
virtue of its wholesale character, its beginnings in long-planned roguery,
and its culmination in thorough-paced brutality. The foundations of the
programme of crime which was finished on the 28th of November, 1848, were
laid many years before, and it is a curious study in the wickedness of
which human nature is capable to trace the evolution of the scheme.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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