Some Distinguished Victims of the Scaffold

The IDLE ‘PRENTICE Executed at Tyburn.
SOME DISTINGUISHED VICTIMS OF THE SCAFFOLD BY HORACE BLEACKLEY WITH TWENTY-ONE ILLUSTRATIONS LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER, & CO., Ltd. DRYDEN HOUSE, GERRARD STREET, W. 1905
To JOSEPH GREGO WHOSE MEMORY IS STORED WITH PICTURES OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY THESE MODERN IMPRESSIONS FROM OLD PLATES ARE OFFERED
No apology is needed, save that which the consciousness of inadequate work may call forth, from him who writes a history of great criminals. Since the lives of so many whose crime is their only title to fame have been included in the Dictionary of National Biography , it is inevitable that some of these old stories shall be re-told. Already the books of Charles Whibley and J. B. Atlay, as well as the newspaper sketches of W. W. Hutchings, have advanced this portion of our bibliography to a large extent. By a judicious selection some rare human documents and many an entrancing tale may be found in the crimson pages of the Tyburn Chronicle. The dainty squeamishness that put Ainsworth into the pillory, not because he had written a clumsy novel, but because he had dared to weave a romance around the grisly walls of Newgate, would be out of place in an age that will listen to ballads of a drunken soldier, and reads our women’s stories of the boudoirs of Mayfair.
Without a knowledge of the Newgate Calendar it is impossible to be acquainted with the history of England in the eighteenth century. On the other hand, to him who knows these volumes, and who has verified his information in the pages of the Sessions papers and among the battles of the pamphleteers, the Georgian era is an open book. No old novel gives a more exact picture of a middle-class household than the trial of Mary Blandy, nor shows the inner life of those on the fringe of society more completely than the story of Robert Perreau. While following the fate of Henry Fauntleroy we enter the newspaper world of our great-grandfathers. And as we look upon these forgotten dramas, the most illustrious bear us company. For a time Wordsworth and Coleridge chat of nothing but the Beauty of Buttermere and rascally John Hadfield. Dr Johnson thinks wistfully of the charms of sweet Mrs Rudd. Boswell rides to Tyburn in the same coach as the Rev. Mr Hackman, or persuades Sir Joshua to witness an execution. Henry Fielding lashes the cowards who strive to condemn a prisoner unheard. To all who desire to understand the eighteenth century the Newgate Calendar is as essential as the Letters of Walpole.