Part 15

The father of Bishop was a worthy and industrious man, who for some years kept an errand-cart between Highgate and London. On the 8th of November, 1816, he was unfortunately run over by one of Pickford's vans, the wheels of which passed over both his legs, and crushed them so dreadfully that amputation was necessary. He did not long survive the operation. The estimation in which he was held was evidenced by the fact, that immediately upon his decease the inhabitants of Highgate subscribed upwards of three hundred pounds for the relief of the family. He left his widow far advanced in pregnancy. The money thus subscribed was placed in the hands of trustees, to be dispensed to the family as occasion might require. It was soon discovered that the objects of this liberal benevolence were unworthy of the exertions that had been made in their behalf, for the widow of the deceased and her son-in-law scrupled not to live together openly as man and wife. The money, however, had been raised for them, and the trustees who had no power to withhold it, were pestered with applications until the family had secured the whole. A great portion of it went into the hands of the widow, the son, and the daughter, who is now the wife of Williams, alias Head.

The conduct of both Williams and Bishop on the day previous to their execution was an intermixture of hardened indifference, and that agonizing restlessness which harrows up the soul of the criminal as the hour of his execution approaches.

Both the convicts slept during Sunday night, but awoke at intervals, and conversed with the officers of the jail appointed to watch them. Occasionally they entered into religious observances, but generally were averse to them. Once, when the person who sat up with Williams proposed to read to him some extracts out of religious books left with him by the Ordinary, Williams roughly declined the proposal, saying, 'I had religious talk enough during the day--I will have none of it to-night.' He then entered into conversation with the officer upon the subject of the offence for which he was going to suffer. He solemnly assured him that, up to the time of his marriage, he had never had any connexion with resurrection-men, and even added, that it was not until his wedding-night that he had any idea that Bishop got his livelihood by that horrible trade. He told the officer that on that night, shortly after he had got to bed, his wife conjured him not to have anything to do with the snatchers. This led to inquiries on his part, which terminated in a full disclosure, by his wife, of the practices by which her brother-in-law supported his family. No communication took place between himself and Bishop on the subject till some time afterwards, when he was suddenly thrown out of work. Bishop then gradually disclosed to him his mode of life, and asked him to become a partner in the trade. Williams assented. He then became a regular resurrection-man; but being tired with the difficulties and dangers of the trade, he proposed to Bishop, that, instead of disinterring, they should murder subjects. He was then asked what led him to make such a proposal; and his reply was, 'The recollection of what Burke had done at Edinburgh.'

After some other facts, tallying with those in Bishop's account, he stated that on the Sunday after the murder of the woman Pigburn, they attempted to Burke a man whom they accidentally lured into their power. The laudanum, however, which they had mixed with his liquor was not strong enough, as Bishop said, to stupify him beyond resistance, and he was, therefore, allowed to escape, partly from a fear of his struggles, and partly from Bishop's arm being palsied by a similar feeling to that which palsied _Lady Macbeth's_ arm in a similar situation,--namely, the feeling that the man whom he was about to despatch 'resembled _his_ father as he slept.' Still bent on their murderous trade, they endeavoured, on the following Tuesday, to get another subject by the same means. Again was the laudanum inefficient; and in this case, as in the former, both the intended victims left the house in which they met these ruffians, without any idea of their having been exposed to such great and imminent danger.

Two men were appointed to sit up with each of the criminals during Sunday night. About half-past twelve o'clock, Williams, who had evinced during the evening a great degree of restlessness and feverish anxiety, became somewhat calmer, and said, 'I shall now go to bed for the last time.' He first threw himself upon his knees, and prayed for some time fervently, and then undressing himself, went to his couch, but continued in conversation with the men for more than an hour, during which time he wrote a note, of which we give a copy, addressed to the Rev. Mr. Russell, the chaplain to the Penitentiary, where he (Williams) was confined for about three years.

'_Newgate, Dec. 4th, 1831._

'Mr. Russell,--If you will be kind enough to let my brother prisoners know the awful death which I shall have suffered when you receive this, it will, through your expostulations, prevent them from increasing their crimes when they may be liberated; and tell them bad company, and drinking, and blasphemy, is the foundation of all evil. Give my brotherly love to them, and tell them never to deviate from the paths of religion, and to have a firm belief in their blessed Saviour. Give my love to John Edwards, John Justin, and John Dingle, and receive the prayers of the unfortunate and guilty

'THOMAS HEAD.'

Both prisoners rose at six o'clock in the morning, and were soon after visited by the rev. gentlemen who had before attended them. Williams, at times, appeared fervent in his devotions, and prayed earnestly; but at intervals he would pause, and seem as if his prayer was hopeless; again he would resume his prayer, and clasp his hands in great agony. Bishop also prayed; but he by no means showed the same fervour as his companion. There was a listlessness in his manner approaching to indifference, not merely to religion, but to everything passing around him. At one time, when urged on the subject of his hope of forgiveness, he said, he did hope and trust for mercy through Jesus Christ. He added, that he fully deserved what he was about to suffer, but that his case would be desperate, if some greater mercy were not extended to him in the world which he was about to enter.

We should here mention a fact, that has been communicated to us on highly respectable authority, that on Sunday, besides the Rev. Mr. Cotton and another gentleman, there were two clergymen present with the convicts. The two clergymen were instructing the men on doctrinal points, which Mr. Cotton thought unnecessary. He therefore advised that the prisoners should retire into different corners of the room, and pray silently to God. Mr. Cotton found it necessary to give this advice twice. On both occasions the men withdrew as desired, fell on their knees, prayed for a short time, and then burst into tears. Before this, both prisoners seemed agitated to a degree which it was most distressing to witness. As they prayed they became more composed. The Rev. Mr. Russell, and another clergyman, were with the prisoners early on Monday morning, and remained with them up to the time of their being removed into the press-room.

The applications made on Sunday to the sheriffs, by the nobility and gentry, to allow them admission to the interior of the prison to witness the preliminaries of the execution were beyond all precedent.

Many applications were also made for admission to the condemned sermon. None, however, was preached. In the case of murderers this solemnity is not granted. The tolling of the prison-bell, which adds so much to the horrors of a common execution, by sounding the knell for the dead in the ears of those about to die, was also dispensed with. We never heard that any sufferer complained of the omission. We have seen many who were not murderers deeply affected by the funeral honour or compliment thus paid to them on their way to the scaffold.

During the whole of Saturday and Sunday, the lord-mayor and sheriffs, assisted by the city marshals, Messrs. Brown and Cope, were busily engaged in adopting precautions to guard against the possibility of accident at the execution. All the officers of the various wards in the city were ordered to attend; and besides the usual force of the city police, a large body of special constables were sworn in. An extra number of heavy barriers were erected in the Old Bailey, immediately contiguous to the space on which the gallows stands, at short distances, so as to prevent the crush of the multitude as much as possible; and the same precautions were adopted at either end of the Old Bailey, at the end of Newgate-street, Giltspur-street, and Skinner-street.

All the constabulary force received orders from the city marshals to assemble at five o'clock in the morning, and to take the stations appointed for them.

During the afternoon of Sunday groups of persons were congregated in different parts of the Old Bailey. Towards evening the crowds increased, and by midnight great numbers were assembled, who actually remained all night on the spot, in order to secure places near the scaffold on the following morning. The occupiers of houses, from the windows of which a view could be obtained of the execution, exhibited placards, announcing various prices for seats according to the proximity of the domicile to the spot, and though it was generally stipulated that such seats could not be kept for parties after six o'clock in the morning, they were eagerly sought for and secured at a guinea per seat and upwards. So much as ten guineas was given for a single window, and all these seats were occupied by those who had engaged them, at so early an hour as five o'clock, upon a cold, cheerless, and most uninviting morning. Shortly after midnight the gallows was brought from the yard, and the workmen proceeded to erect it in the usual place, opposite the debtors' door of Newgate. A large space around it was barricadoed to keep off the crowd, and the inside of that space was subsequently nearly filled by constables and marshalmen.

The crowd, as early as one o'clock, amounted to several thousand persons, and continued rapidly increasing. By five o'clock nearly two-thirds of the Old Bailey were filled with a dense mass of people. The continued buzz among the multitude at this time, the glare of light from the torches that were used for the purpose of enabling the workmen to proceed with their labours, and the terrific struggles among the crowd, altogether presented a scene which those who witnessed it will not soon forget. As the dawn of day approached, and with it the fatal hour that was to consign the wretched criminals to their well-merited fate, all the streets leading to the Old Bailey were thronged with people, chiefly of the working classes, hastening to the spot. Constant streams of population were pouring into the Old Bailey till they formed, around the scaffold and at the corner of every street from whence even a distant or a faint view could be obtained, a vast lake of life. Amongst the immense assemblage might be noticed several females, most of them of that _caste_ whose attendance on such an occasion might be naturally expected, but some of them, we regret to state, of a class that decency, if not humanity, should have kept away from a scene so revolting to those delicate sensibilities that generally characterize females.

When the fatal drop was stationed in its usual place, it was observed that three chains were suspended from it. As soon as Mr. Wontner, the governor of Newgate, heard of it, he ordered an officer to remove one of them, May having been respited. This was done, and although it was then dark, it was instantly communicated throughout the vast assemblage, and a general cry of 'May is respited' was uttered. The announcement did not seem to excite much surprise, although a few individuals expressed their disapprobation by yelling and hooting.

About half-past six o'clock a body of city police, amounting to about two hundred men, came up the Old Bailey, but the crowd was so dense at this time that it was found impossible for them to proceed to their station, which was at the foot of the gallows. After several ineffectual attempts to pass on, it was arranged that they should be allowed to go through the prison. Several persons seized this as a favourable opportunity, by presenting constables' staves, to pass themselves off as belonging to the police; but Mr. Browne, the marshal, suffered no one to pass whom he did not recognize either as belonging to the city police or as special constables. The pressure in the immediate neighbourhood of the scaffold was tremendous, in spite of the barriers; and many persons exhausted with fatigue, as early as seven o'clock, rescuing themselves with difficulty from the throng, were heard to exclaim, as they passed the outskirts of the mob, 'Thank God, I have got away!' Many who thus quitted the scene with torn clothes, and faces streaming with perspiration, had remained on the spot for hours. Indeed, the avenue from the house of Mr. Cotton, the ordinary, to the house of Mr. Wontner, the governor of Newgate, was so completely blocked up at an early hour, that Mr. Cotton, and another clergyman who accompanied him on his last visit to these unhappy convicts, were unable to force their way through the crowd, and could only obtain admittance into the prison by making a _detour_ to the other end of the Old Bailey, and by entering it through the iron railings around the New Court.

As day began to break we had an opportunity of surveying the crowd from the top of Newgate, and we should think that at that time there were not less than from thirty thousand to forty thousand persons assembled. The tops of the houses, lamp-posts, and every station from which the most distant view of the execution could be obtained, were by this time occupied. In fact, from one end of the Old Bailey to the other, was one dense mass; and the streets in the neighbourhood, although not a glance could be had of the platform or the proceedings, were, from an early hour, rendered impassable by the throng of persons hurrying towards the scene of execution. The assemblage was the largest that has ever been witnessed on an occasion of the kind, since the execution of Holloway and Haggarty, upwards of twenty years since, when some fourteen or fifteen persons were trampled to death in the crowd. The following fact will convey some idea of the extent and densely-congregated state of the crowd on Monday,--namely, that even so far as St. Sepulchre's church, in Skinner-street, several individuals, whose screams for relief had induced the people to raise them up, were passed over the heads of their neighbours for some dozen yards before they could obtain a resting-place.

Notwithstanding the many precautions taken by the city authorities to prevent accidents, we are sorry to say that several occurred; and though no lives were lost, we fear that some of the injuries that were sustained were of a very serious description. At the end of Giltspur-street, immediately opposite the Compter, a very heavy barrier was erected across the road for the purpose of counteracting the immense pressure of the mob, which in that direction extended to Smithfield. This barrier was fastened to two uprights, that were placed two feet in the ground, by iron hooping, which was by no means of sufficient strength for the immense weight of the timber to which it was attached. The consequence was, that at the moment the culprits were visible on the gallows, the barrier was forced down, and a number of persons of both sexes fell with it. The screams of the females, and the confusion that ensued, were truly alarming. One female of very respectable appearance, with her husband, were most dreadfully injured, the barrier having fallen upon their chests, and others of the mob pressing upon them. A city constable was also under the barrier, which rested on his abdomen, and his cries were most deplorable. In this dreadful situation did the sufferers remain for some minutes. A cry of 'Stand back; for God's sake, stand back!' was raised, but all was of no avail, and people in all directions were trampling upon each other.

At length some of the officers from the Compter came out, and with the assistance of several other officers, a space of ground was obtained, and the individuals were rescued from their perilous situation and carried to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, where they were promptly attended to by Mr. Birkett, the dresser to Mr. Vincent, the principal surgeon, who had been in attendance all night to receive any accident that might be brought in. Before nine o'clock, every bed in Colston-ward was occupied by persons who had been injured at the moment the barrier gave way, and many of them most seriously so.

As the hour of eight approached, the anxiety of the multitude became more intense, and every eye became directed towards the door through which the wretched criminals were to be led to the scaffold.

At half-past seven o'clock, the Sheriffs, accompanied by the Under-Sheriffs and several gentlemen to whom they had given permission to be present, entered the prison. The Sheriffs immediately proceeded to the condemned cells, where Mr. Wontner, the Governor, delivered the prisoners up to them for execution. The Sheriffs then proceeded to the Press-room, in which the strangers who had got admission to the prison were also admitted. The prisoners were soon after introduced by the Sheriffs' officers. Bishop entered first. That kind of stupor which we already noticed when the verdict of the jury was pronounced, was still more strongly upon him. He advanced in rather a drooping manner, his eye fixed on the ground. His step was slow without being firm, and his whole bearing was rather that of a man unconscious of, than of one indifferent to, the dreadful scene through which he was about to pass. He had got more than half way to the upper end of the room before he looked around; when he did, a kind of half-suppressed groan escaped him, as from one who was for a moment roused to a quick sense of an approaching violent death. But it was only for a moment, for at once he seemed to relapse into his former stupor: his eye was again bent on the ground, and he moved mechanically up to the officer, who stood ready to tie his hands, and stretched forth his arms, the wrists being closely pressed together. When that part of the preparation was concluded, he turned round and allowed his arms to be pinioned. This done, he took his seat at a side-bench without uttering a word. There were many persons in the room who seemed to think that this calm and quiet manner showed great firmness, but if they had seen him before, or watched him more closely, they would have perceived that there was nothing of real firmness in the man. His eye was sunk and heavy, and seemed to shrink from the gaze of those around him. It was for the most part fixed on the ground. One of the Under-Sheriffs took a seat by his side, and in a low tone asked him (we understood) whether he had anything more to confess. His answer was, 'No, Sir, I have told all.' The Under-Sheriff remained with him for a few moments, but the only answers we could hear from him were to the effect that he had nothing more to tell.

Williams was next introduced, and came up the room with the same short hasty step, which we noticed at the time of his sentence. Since then, however, his whole appearance had undergone the most terrible alteration. That cunning and flippant look, which we noticed in him on his trial, had left him, and had given place to a wild and frenzied stare. His look, as he entered the Press-room, was one of downright horror--every limb trembled as he approached the officer by whom he was to be pinioned, and his hands shook to that degree, that one person was obliged to hold them up while another bound the wrists together. While submitting to this operation, he frequently ejaculated, 'Oh, I have deserved all this, and more!--oh, I have deserved all that I am about to suffer!' One of the Under-Sheriffs now asked him whether he had anything more on his mind, or wished to make any further disclosure; he replied, 'Oh no, Sir, I have told all--I hope I am now at peace with God. What I have told is the truth.'

It was remarked that Bishop or Williams took no notice whatever of each other while they remained in the Press-room. Neither seemed to be conscious of the presence of the other, or to wish to avoid any recognition. The contrast in the manner of the two was very marked in this respect,--for Williams seemed relieved when any one addressed him, as if anxious to escape from his own thoughts, or to have his attention called off even for an instant, from the dreadful scene which approached him. Bishop, on the contrary, was sullen, and seemed rather desirous of avoiding any conversation. His answers, when addressed, were short, and delivered in a tone as if pained by any questions put to him.

After the operation of pinioning had been gone through, at a few minutes before eight, the Sheriffs, accompanied by their officers and the prisoners, proceeded towards the scaffold, the Ordinary reciting part of the funeral service. Bishop moved on in the same gloomy and desponding manner which we have already noticed. His appearance underwent no change as he approached to the foot of the scaffold. Williams became more and more agitated as he went on. Just as he came to the room which led out to the drop, he expressed a wish to see the Rev. Mr. Russell once more. That gentleman came forward, and while Bishop was led out, seated himself near him. Williams said something in a low tone, which we did not hear. Mr. Russell said to him, 'Now, Williams, you have but another moment intervening between you and death; and as a dying man I implore you, in God's name, to tell the truth. Have you told me the whole truth?'

WILLIAMS.--'All I have told you is true.'

Mr. RUSSELL.--'But, Williams, have you told me all?'

WILLIAMS (still evasive).--'All I have told you is quite true.'

This was the last remark he made, and in a few moments he ascended the scaffold.

We were glad to observe that the very absurd custom of the Sheriff taking leave and shaking hands with the prisoner was, in this instance, very properly dispensed with.