Mary Jones did not die wholly in vain. Six years later, after “John the Painter” had been hanged on a gallows sixty feet high, for setting fire to the rope-house in Portsmouth Dockyard, ingenuity discovered a chance of adding one more capital offence to the two hundred or so already on the Statute-book. A Bill was promoted for making it a hanging matter to set fire to private dockyards. Sir William Meredith, a “faddist” of his day, inveighed against the Bill and the atrocious cruelty of the laws. He cited the case of Mary Jones. “I do not believe,” he said, “that a fouler murder was ever committed against law, than the murder of this woman by law.”[214] A girl of fourteen had lately been sentenced to be burnt for hiding, at her master’s bidding, some white-washed farthings. The faggots had been laid, the cart was setting out, when a reprieve, granted at the instance of the Lord Mayor, saved this poor child from the flames. “Good God, Sir,” he cried, “are we taught to execrate the fires of Smithfield, and are we lighting them now to burn a poor harmless child, for hiding a white-washed farthing?” This speech, delivered in Parliament, was printed by the Society for the Diffusion of Knowledge upon the Punishment of Death, founded by Basil Montague in 1808, and was also printed separately in several editions down to 1833. =1771.= _January 1._ John Clark and John Joseph Defoe executed at Tyburn, for robbery of a gold watch and money. Defoe was said to be a grandson of the immortal author of “Robinson Crusoe.” =1773.= _September 13._ Mrs. Herring was thus executed for murdering her husband:— She was placed on a stool something more than two feet high, and, a chain being placed under her arms, the rope round her neck was made fast to two spikes, which, being driven through a post against which she stood, when her devotions were ended, the stool was taken from under her, and she was soon strangled. When she had hung about fifteen minutes, the rope was burnt, and she sunk till the chain supported her, forcing her hands up to a level with her face, and the flame being furious, she was soon consumed. The crowd was so immensely great that it was a long time before the faggots could be placed for the execution. =1773.= _October 27._ The two sheriffs and under-sheriff attended the execution of five malefactors on horseback, and two persons clothed in black walked all the way before the prisoners to the place of execution, where they were allowed an hour and a half in their devotions, a circumstance not remembered for a great many years past. A vivid picture of the manners of the times is given in these two extracts from the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ of 1774. The first passage shows the extraordinary prevalence of highway robbery, which at this time seems to have become a recognised form of out-door sport among young men:—