Chapter 18

[Footnote 6: A 'row' is a wheel. This is one of the very few instances on which the terrible and vicious punishment of 'breaking on a wheel' was employed in Scotland. Jean Livingstone's accomplice was, according to Birrell's Diary, broken on a cartwheel, with the coulter of a plough in the hand of the hangman. The exotic method of execution suggests experiment by King Jamie.]

[Footnote 7: Hutchinson, 1930.]

[Footnote 8: Edinburgh, W. Green and Son, Ltd., 1930.]

[Footnote 9: Antony Weldon, The Court and Character of King James (1651).]

[Footnote 10: Fisher Unwin, 1925.]

[Footnote 11: State Trials (Cobbett's edition).]

[Footnote 12: Antony Weldon.]

[Footnote 13: State Trials.]

[Footnote 14: Probably started by Michael Sparke ("Scintilla") in Truth Brought to Light (1651).]

[Footnote 15: Sabatini, The Minion.]

[Footnote 16: According to one account. The Newgate Calendar (London 1773) gives Mrs Duncomb's age as eighty and that of the maid Betty as sixty.]

[Footnote 17: One account says it was Sarah Malcolm who entered via the gutter and window. Borrow, however, in his Celebrated Trials, quotes Mrs Oliphant's evidence in court on this point.]

[Footnote 18: Or Kerrol--the name varies in different accounts of the crime.]

[Footnote 19: Peter Buck, a prisoner.]

[Footnote 20: Born 1711, Durham, according to The Newgate Calendar.]

[Footnote 21: This confession, however, varies in several particulars with that contained in A Paper delivered by Sarah Malcolm on the Night before her Execution to the Rev. Mr Piddington, and published by Him (London, 1733).]

[Footnote 22: In Mr Piddington's paper the supposed appointment is for "3 or 4 o'clock at the Pewter Platter, Holbourn Bridge."]

[Footnote 23: One Bridgewater.]

[Footnote 24: On more than one hand the crime is ascribed to Sarah's desire to secure one of the Alexanders in marriage.]

[Footnote 25: It was once done by the parish priest. (Stowe's Survey of London, p. 195, fourth edition, 1618.)]

[Footnote 26: The bequest of Dove appears to have provided for a further pious admonition to the condemned while on the way to execution. It was delivered by the sexton of St Sepulchre's from the steps of that church, a halt being made by the procession for the purpose. This admonition, however, was in fair prose.]

[Footnote 27: Thanks to my friend Billy Bennett, of music-hall fame, for his hint for the chapter title.]

[Footnote 28: Sophie Dawes, Queen of Chantilly (John Lane, 1912).]

[Footnote 29: Lacenaire, the notorious murderer-robber in a biting song, written in prison, expressed the popular opinion regarding Louis-Philippe's share in the Feucheres-Conde affair. The song, called Petition d'un voleur a un roi son voisin, has this final stanza:

"Sire, oserais-je reclamer? Mais ecoutez-moi sans colere: Le voeu que je vais exprimer Pourrait bien, ma foi, vous deplaire. Je suis fourbe, avare, mechant, Ladre, impitoyable, rapace; J'ai fait se pendre mon parent: Sire, cedez-moi votre place."]

[Footnote 30: Or, simply, kermes--a pharmaceutical composition, containing antimony and sodium sulphates and oxide of antimony--formerly used as an expectorant.]