=1771.= On October 16, Mary Jones was executed at Tyburn for stealing from a draper’s shop on Ludgate Hill some pieces of worked muslin. The annals of Tyburn contain the record of no more poignant tragedy than this. It is a story so piteous that, once heard, it ever after haunts the memory. Mary Jones was a young woman whose age is variously given as nineteen and twenty-six: all accounts tell of her great beauty. She was married, lived in good credit, and wanted for nothing till her husband was carried off by a press-gang. Then she fell into great straits, having neither a bed to lie on, nor food to give to her two young children, who were almost naked. On her trial her defence was simple: “I have been a very honest woman in my lifetime. I have two children: I work very hard to maintain my two children since my husband was pressed.” Her beauty and her poverty prove Mary’s averment that she had been a very honest woman. But when the jury gave in a verdict of guilty, Mary cursed judge and jury for a lot of “old fogrums.” It was really for this that she died on the gallows. The theft had not been completed: she was arrested in the shop and gave up the goods. It was her first offence. Her neighbours in Red Lion street, Whitechapel, presented a petition in her behalf, but there was against her the record of her “indecent behaviour.” One of the two children was at her breast when she set out in the cart on the journey from Newgate to Tyburn. Her petulance had gone: “she met death with amazing fortitude.” So perished Mary Jones, whose husband had been torn from her side, who was now, in her turn, torn from her helpless babes. Poor Mary Jones! Beautiful Mary Jones, with your great crown of auburn hair! Our hearts are wrung as we seem to see you setting out on your last journey in this world, with your little one at your breast. Your last prayer was for your babes, your last thoughts of your husband, to whom, as honest as beautiful, you remained true in spite of the temptation to stay your children’s hungry cries with bread earned by your shame. History does not tell us more. Did the husband return from fighting the battles of his country—or rather of its politicians—to find that his true wife had perished on the gallows? Better far that he should have met his death in some glorious victory or inglorious defeat, reddening with his blood some distant sea. And the little ones, robbed by the cruel State of father and mother—what became of them? These are things it behoves us to know, for they are one side of glory, of imperialism. How many Mary Joneses, how many broken hearts and ruined lives are behind the naval victories celebrated by painting, by song, by sculptured tombs in temples dedicated to the Prince of Peace? Or are we to dry our tears, comforting ourselves with the reflection that “the suffering is irrelevant”?